Episode Transcript
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They say money can't buy love, but it
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the end for the check to come. We
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trade uncomfortable truths for comfortable lies, imaginary solutions
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to real problems. I'm James Sexton, host of
1:42
Unlikely Sources. You may know me from my
1:44
books or my many interviews such as Soft
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White Underbelly, Lex Friedman, or one of the
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many other places I've shared my perspective on
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love, life, and the law. I know a
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divorce lawyer isn't the first person you think
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of for advice on how to keep your
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relationship strong, but wisdom is found in unexpected.
2:00
counterintuitive places. In sickness, we see
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the value of health. The godfather, he
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can teach you more about business than
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an MBA. Fight Club, it's actually about
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religion. The most valuable practical wisdom comes
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from unlikely sources, and it's time we
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sit up and pay attention to what
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they can teach us. So if you're
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looking for compelling conversation, blunt talk about
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culture, religion, romance, and how to navigate
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life in the machine of modern society,
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I'll look forward to spending some time
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with you. I'm Jim Sexton. Unlikely sources
2:27
will be available May 28th. Hello,
3:06
everyone, and welcome to episode 366 of the
3:08
True Crime All the Time Month, all podcast.
3:10
I'm Mike Ferguson. And with me, as always,
3:12
is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson.
3:14
Gibby, how are you? Hey, I'm doing good.
3:17
How about you? I'm doing great. Yeah. We're
3:20
just coming off of the Memorial
3:22
Day weekend, recording early. We are.
3:24
So that we can get everything done
3:26
before we head out to CrimeCon. So
3:28
crunch time. Yep. Looking forward to it.
3:30
I got a lot to do. You
3:32
do. Let's go ahead and give our
3:35
Patreon shout outs. We had Emily Watson.
3:37
Hey, Watson. Heather Koval Dimiola.
3:40
Easy for you to say. Not really. I
3:43
hope I got it right. Dimioli. Jenny
3:45
Heather. Hey, Jenny. Candy. What's
3:48
up, Candy? Alessandra Galletti. Oh,
3:50
thanks, Alessandra. Kerry
3:52
Gimond. Hey, Kerry. Crystal
3:55
Valdez. Appreciate that, Valdez. And
3:57
last but not least, Stephanie
3:59
Yelvington. There's Stephanie. And then if
4:01
we go back into the vault, this
4:04
week we selected David Regan. What's
4:06
up Regan. We also had a
4:08
great PayPal donation from Mark to
4:10
Spain. Hey Mark, appreciate that. Yeah.
4:12
So we appreciate all the support
4:14
we get. Gives, we have
4:16
an episode out right now on true
4:18
crime all the time, where we're talking
4:20
about father Gerald Robinson and the murder
4:23
of sister Margaret and Paul. This
4:25
is up in Toledo, Ohio,
4:27
happened back in the eighties
4:30
and, you know, it took them a
4:32
very long time, over 20 years to kind
4:35
of figure out who murdered
4:38
sister Mark. Well, you know,
4:41
when you have so much trust in
4:44
someone who is in a position
4:46
of trust. Yes. I think
4:48
it was very hard to believe early
4:51
on, even though he, he was a person
4:53
of interest that he was
4:55
capable of this type of thing
4:57
because it was a very brutal crime. Absolutely
4:59
brutal. All right, buddy. Are you ready to
5:02
get into this episode of true crime all
5:04
the time on salt? I am. We're talking
5:06
about the Blue Ridge murders on
5:08
July 22nd, 1966. Three
5:11
bodies were found near Lake summit
5:14
in Henderson County, North Carolina. The
5:16
victims were 43 year old Vernon
5:18
Shipman, 36 year
5:21
old Charles Glass, and 61
5:23
year old Louise human Vernon
5:26
and Charles had been friends for
5:28
over 10 years, but Louise had
5:30
no known connection to the men
5:33
and nearly 60 years later, their
5:35
murders remain unsolved. Now, most
5:37
of the information for this
5:39
episode comes from the Hendersonville
5:41
Times News in July, 2006, reporter
5:45
Jenny Giles published a
5:47
series for the Times news titled
5:49
small town big crime, and
5:52
she spent eight months researching the
5:54
case and conducting interviews with investigators,
5:56
family members, and even one of
5:59
the suspects. Vernon Shipman
6:01
was born on January 7, 1923,
6:04
in Hendersonville, North
6:06
Carolina. He graduated from
6:08
Hendersonville High in 1944. Vernon
6:12
was drafted after high school graduation, but
6:14
he served in the military for less
6:16
than a year. No one
6:18
knows why he left, and he never really
6:21
talked about it with family and friends. Jenny
6:23
Giles could not find his discharge
6:26
papers. I don't think
6:28
it's that uncommon for some people
6:30
who have served not to
6:32
really want to talk about their time. I
6:35
know I had an uncle who served in Vietnam.
6:38
He absolutely would not talk about
6:40
it. I think it was
6:42
just a subject he didn't want to
6:44
relive. It's a little different. He
6:47
was in the military for less than a year, doesn't
6:50
want to talk about why he left.
6:52
So to me, there's something
6:54
there. Yeah, who
6:56
knows what his experience was, but obviously it sounds
6:59
like maybe it wasn't good. After
7:01
he left the military, Vernon graduated
7:04
from Blanton's Business College in Asheville,
7:06
North Carolina in the late 1940s. He
7:09
worked in Washington. In the early 50s,
7:12
he started working for the
7:14
North Carolina Employment Security Commission.
7:17
His co-workers thought he was dependable
7:19
and hardworking. Vernon lived
7:21
with his parents in Hendersonville all his
7:23
life, excluding the times he'd
7:25
left home to serve in the military,
7:28
attend college, or work out of state.
7:31
I was just stuck on that dependable and
7:33
hardworking. Doesn't that sound familiar? Like
7:35
somebody you know? Like somebody who's
7:37
sitting across from me? Oh, I mean,
7:39
if you're going to... Yeah, sure, I'll take
7:42
that. Like you weren't talking about yourself? You know?
7:44
Okay. I'll take credit for that. I
7:47
got you. But do you think it's strange
7:49
that, you know, here's the guy who lived
7:52
with his parents, essentially
7:54
all his life, even though it sounds
7:56
like he had a pretty good job,
7:58
probably had the meat. to move out,
8:00
I think it's a little strange.
8:03
Now there are some reasons maybe he was
8:05
helping to take care of them. We don't
8:07
know right exactly why that
8:09
that would have been, but what
8:12
I do know is most people can't
8:14
wait to kind of get out on their
8:17
own. In 1952 Vernon started
8:19
the record shop called Tempo
8:21
Music. The business was originally set
8:23
up in the corner of a hotel
8:26
lobby. 1952 that's pre
8:29
Elvis. I mean you
8:32
know you haven't really hit the rock and
8:34
roll bonanza at that
8:37
point. I don't know
8:39
what record you're selling in 1952. Perry Como, I
8:44
really don't know who was active in
8:46
the early early 50s. Vernon's
8:49
co-founder was a man named Charles Glass whom
8:52
he met in the late 40s
8:54
or early 50s. The two men
8:56
developed a close friendship that lasted
8:58
more than a decade. They started
9:01
a cafe together before they founded
9:03
Tempo. The record shop was
9:05
a successful business venture and they
9:07
eventually moved into a space on
9:09
Main Street in Hendersonville. You
9:12
probably were listening to like Benny Goodman if you
9:14
were around back then. Maybe you would have been.
9:16
Yeah. Yeah. In his orchestra?
9:18
Yes. But yeah I do want to
9:20
talk about the record shop or
9:23
you know the music store
9:26
as we got a little bit older
9:28
CDs came along all of
9:30
that but you had cassette tapes, records,
9:34
CDs, H-track.
9:37
Did you say H-track? Yeah. Okay.
9:39
I'm pretty sure it was eight track.
9:41
Yeah those. For you. Yeah. I
9:44
myself never listened to an eight track but
9:46
I do know what they are. But
9:49
that was like such a big deal.
9:51
Getting to go to the mall. Oh
9:54
yeah. Where they had a record store
9:56
or you know somewhere where you could
9:58
just see all the latest
10:00
stuff. There was no Apple
10:03
music or some
10:05
way to stream any
10:08
song you wanted at any time on your
10:10
phone. I mean, if you think about some
10:13
of the really good movies back in the
10:15
late 80s, 90, like your
10:17
timeframe, you had
10:19
Empire Records. That was a huge movie.
10:21
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Because it
10:23
was like one of those
10:26
big record stores. And that's how it was,
10:28
right? When you went to the mall, you went to these big
10:30
record stores and you can flip through
10:32
and find your favorite artist
10:35
and go to the listening booth to check
10:37
it out. Yeah. Well, short of listening to
10:39
the radio and
10:41
perhaps recording that
10:44
song on a cassette, which
10:46
a lot of us did back then, there
10:48
was no way to kind of preserve
10:50
a song and listen to it whenever you
10:53
want it, other than going out and buying
10:55
it. Charles Glass was born
10:57
on September 16th, 1929 in Asheville,
10:59
North Carolina. He joined the army
11:02
in the forties and was discharged
11:04
in August, 1951. By
11:06
1952, he was living
11:09
in Hendersonville. Charles was the
11:11
manager of Tempo Records. He
11:13
also worked as a
11:15
nightclub at the Vanderbilt Hotel in
11:18
Asheville and the Battery Park
11:20
Hotel. In addition to
11:22
this, he wrote a weekly
11:24
advice column for the WNC
11:26
Tribune, A. Hendersonville Paper. Well,
11:28
interesting. I also write a
11:30
device column, which is called
11:33
Advice by Gibby, Advice by Gibby.
11:35
Yeah. Okay. You
11:37
know, it jumped out at me is this
11:39
guy's got a lot going on. Pretty busy,
11:41
right? Managing a record store, night
11:44
clerk at a hotel. And you
11:46
know, one of these is pretty
11:48
famous, right? That Vanderbilt Hotel, the
11:51
record shop was a popular spot for
11:53
the local teens. And Charles and Vernon
11:55
were well known in town. Vernon
11:57
was described as quiet and easy. going.
12:00
He loved to cook and host dinner parties.
12:02
He was also close to his family because
12:04
he was his parents only child. Charles
12:07
loved music and was a performer.
12:09
He recorded albums when he lived in
12:11
Baltimore in the 1940s. Charles
12:15
once opened for Esther Phillips,
12:17
aka Little Esther. Esther
12:19
was a black rhythm and blues singer who
12:21
rose to prominence in 1950.
12:24
She died in 1984. So he
12:26
must have had some chops as
12:30
a performer to open
12:32
for somebody who was pretty famous. Charles
12:34
and Esther maintained their friendship over the years.
12:37
At this time, interracial friendships were
12:40
not common or widely accepted
12:42
in the South. When Esther
12:44
came to visit Charles in Hendersonville,
12:47
some people burned a cross in his yard, according
12:49
to a former employee at Tempo.
12:52
Charles and Vernon recorded at least
12:55
two records together, with Charles singing
12:57
and Vernon playing the piano. One
13:00
of Charles's songs was called Screaming
13:02
and Dying and was about
13:04
a man who kills his lover. Because
13:07
they cheated, the song was
13:09
released around the US and was
13:11
written about by Cashbox Magazine. And
13:14
for those listening who don't really
13:16
know anything about Cashbox Magazine, that
13:19
was huge. I mean, it
13:21
really kind of painted
13:24
the picture of what was
13:26
popular, really. Now, there
13:28
was a big payola
13:31
scandal that involved, I
13:33
think, paying to get played
13:36
or paying to get your
13:39
single up the list
13:42
on Cashbox Magazine. I don't remember
13:44
exactly what it was about, but
13:47
it was a big thing, Cashbox Magazine. So
13:50
if you read it, you were something at that moment.
13:52
Yeah. So I mean, it was a big deal
13:54
to be in it. Charles was an
13:56
outgoing and friendly person. He was known
13:59
for hosting parties. parties at his home, at
14:01
times more than 100 people would
14:04
show up for the party. This
14:06
guy is so unlike me, he
14:08
couldn't be more unlike me. I'm
14:10
just thinking about 100 people showing up your
14:12
home, you would freak out. Well, there's two
14:15
things. First of all, I don't host parties.
14:17
Secondly, I'm not even sure
14:19
that I would know 100 people
14:23
to invite to a party if I was
14:25
so inclined. Charles also enjoyed
14:27
going out to clubs. On
14:29
December 5th, 1965, Charles
14:32
fell and broke his shin and ankle, and
14:34
his legs didn't heal properly and he
14:37
was still using crutches at the time of
14:39
his death. That's rough, man,
14:41
breaking your shin and your ankle.
14:43
It's a painful break. Yeah, I
14:45
have broken an ankle once. It
14:48
was not fun. Not broken
14:50
a shin. Shins are kind
14:52
of resilient, but when they
14:54
get injured and they hurt, have
14:57
you broken a shin? I've broken it,
14:59
but I've bruised it pretty good. Oh, okay. Yeah,
15:01
that seems like on the same level
15:04
as what we're talking about. Another
15:06
one of Charles' interests was voodoo.
15:09
He published a booklet titled, Tales
15:11
of Voodoo and Black Magic under
15:14
the pen name Charles Laver, which is
15:16
the French word for glass.
15:19
I cannot believe how
15:21
much this guy is going on. He's a
15:23
busy guy, man. How does he have time
15:25
to do all of these things
15:27
he's doing? You ever read about people
15:29
like this and just think, man, what am I
15:31
doing with my life? Yeah, I'm wasting a lot
15:34
of time, I guess. I guess I could be
15:36
doing a lot more. I mean, you tell
15:38
me all the time, I'm wasting a lot of time, but
15:40
maybe I really am. Maybe.
15:43
One friend told the Hendersonville Times
15:45
News that Charles was not serious
15:48
about voodoo. In fact, he
15:50
might have been somewhat of a scam
15:52
artist. He sold products to black people
15:54
in the area, including
15:56
a special elixir and
15:59
curses. His charms and
16:01
hexes were just crushed herbs
16:04
according to the Hendersonville Times
16:06
News. This is something
16:08
that goes
16:10
back so many years. Tonics,
16:15
cure-alls, Post. Dr.
16:17
Feelgood's cure-all medicine, I don't
16:20
know, whatever it is. There's
16:23
always someone willing
16:25
to bet on and buy
16:27
a product claiming it will do X. I
16:30
mean, look at it today, it's a
16:32
billion dollar industry. People
16:34
are advertising and selling things that really
16:37
don't work. It's
16:40
the placebo effect. Easy
16:42
for you to say. One
16:45
of the most important facts about
16:47
Vernon Shipman and Charles Glass is
16:49
that both men were gay. Most
16:51
people in Hendersonville knew this. Sources
16:54
did not report that Vernon and Charles were
16:56
in a relationship with each other or that
16:59
they were in a serious relationship with
17:01
anyone else at the time of their death.
17:04
Although many people knew Vernon and Charles
17:07
were gay, they weren't very open about
17:09
it because members of the
17:11
LGBTQ community were not accepted
17:13
in small southern towns at
17:15
this time. Vernon Shipman
17:17
and Charles Glass were last seen alive
17:20
on Sunday, July 17th, 1966. The
17:24
day before, Charles was in
17:27
a sullen mood, according to Calvert
17:29
Hunt Jr., a former employee
17:31
of Tempo Music. Vernon
17:33
was invited to a business center
17:35
the following day and Charles was
17:38
not. So apparently, he felt slighted.
17:41
I get that. It's happened to you
17:43
many times. Absolutely. I've been
17:45
invited somewhere. You haven't. Yes.
17:48
You don't understand why that is. It
17:50
all seems very obvious, but you just can't pick
17:52
it up. On July
17:54
17th, Charles called a friend and
17:57
an employee that morning to ask him out
17:59
to lunch. but he had other
18:01
plans. Vernon ate a late
18:03
breakfast with his father, Harley Shipman. Vernon
18:06
was still home when Harley left.
18:08
He was on the phone with Charles around
18:10
2 p.m. Johnny Pestolas, the
18:13
owner of Johnny's restaurant and nearby
18:15
Mountain Home, reported that Charles and
18:17
Vernon ate lunch together and
18:19
were both drinking between 2.30 and 3.30 p.m. So we
18:22
are kind of setting up their
18:26
schedule their day. After
18:28
that they stopped to see their friends at
18:31
an antique shop. Vernon, Charles,
18:33
and their friend Robert Amstin were
18:35
supposed to eat dinner together that
18:37
evening around 4.45 p.m.
18:39
Robert Amstin called Vernon to tell
18:41
him their dinner would be at
18:44
the Hendersonville Country Club and
18:46
it was now at 6 instead of 5.30. Charles
18:49
answered the phone and said that he would
18:51
tell Vernon. Vernon was supposed
18:53
to pick up Amstin at the Echo Inn
18:55
at 5.30 but he never showed
18:57
up. Sue Nichols, a friend of
18:59
Vernon's, called him at 5.30. Charles
19:02
answered the phone and he sounded
19:04
drunk. According to Sue, she
19:06
could hear someone else who she
19:09
assumed was Vernon telling Charles to
19:11
get off the phone. Charles
19:13
said, no Vernon, God
19:15
no, don't hit me and
19:17
the phone went dead. Interesting.
19:20
Well I think it's
19:22
interesting on a number of levels.
19:24
First of all, if you're Sue on
19:26
the other end of the line, you're
19:28
trying to figure out what in the heck
19:30
that means. Yeah, what just happened? And
19:33
then secondly, it's
19:35
interesting from the standpoint that
19:37
both of these individuals we
19:39
know are going to wind
19:41
up dead and what does this
19:43
interaction, if it did actually
19:46
occur, mean? A woman
19:48
identified as Mrs. Hubert Orr,
19:51
saw Vernon's car driving north
19:53
on NC 191 around 5.45 p.m.
19:56
She saw Vernon driving in Charles's car.
20:00
in the passenger seat, there
20:02
were two people in the back
20:04
she did not recognize. Ambs
20:06
then called Vernon at 545 when
20:09
he had not arrived to pick him up, but
20:11
he didn't get an answer. He canceled the
20:13
reservations after 6 and
20:15
waited in the lobby until 7 and
20:18
that's about 50 minutes longer than I would
20:20
have waited. Yeah, you don't wait very long
20:23
at all. You have no patience. I
20:25
have very little patience. Now today
20:27
we have cell phones. People can call or
20:29
you can call them, but if
20:32
I say we're meeting at 6 o'clock and
20:34
605, 610 rolls around and I can't get
20:38
ahold of you, you haven't called me, I'm not
20:41
waiting around till 7 to see if you
20:44
show up. I'm leaving. You're gone.
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or property. It's the location and
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or situations. Prices vary based on
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how you buy. Ronnie
22:48
Hollifield, the circulation manager for
22:51
the Hendersonville Times News, saw
22:54
Vernon on Evans Road, a single
22:56
lane dirt road in Hendersonville. Hollifield
22:58
stopped at a curve in the
23:00
road and waved Vernon through. He
23:03
saw Charles in the passenger seat and
23:05
two others he didn't know in the backseat.
23:08
A woman with what he described
23:10
as an odd smile and
23:13
a man wearing sunglasses. A
23:16
woman with an odd smile.
23:18
Trying to think what a odd smile would
23:20
be like a fake smile like
23:23
a forest or fake maybe. As the core
23:26
got closer the strange man obscured
23:29
his face. The woman
23:31
however looked over at Hollifield
23:33
and smiled with what I
23:35
assume was an odd smile. Yeah. This
23:38
unknown man became the main
23:40
subject of the investigation. Many
23:43
investigators believe he was the
23:45
killer. Hollifield described the third
23:47
man as white and 40
23:50
to 50 years old with light hair. He
23:52
was wearing a dark blue suit with
23:54
pinstripes. Vernon and Charles were last
23:56
seen at 6.30 p.m. on Little
23:59
River Road. by tempo employee
24:01
Calvert Hunt Jr. He
24:03
saw Vernon's car heading to US 25 South. Yeah.
24:07
The one thing that is really jumping out at
24:09
me is the number of people that solve
24:13
Vernon's car that night. A lot
24:15
of eyewitnesses. Yeah. A lot of people recognized
24:17
his car, actually
24:19
saw four individuals in
24:22
the car. Knew that
24:24
it was Vernon Charles, a strange
24:26
woman, a strange man. Very
24:29
observant. Yeah. That's what I was thinking.
24:31
Now, maybe it's a small town atmosphere.
24:35
Everybody knows each other kind of thing. I don't
24:37
know. Harley Shipman got home at
24:39
8 30 PM and saw that
24:41
the front door was open. Vernon's
24:43
coat and tie were on Harley's
24:45
bed, which was unusual. Vernon's
24:48
parents were worried when he didn't come
24:50
home, but he was an adult. The
24:53
Charlotte Observer quoted Harley is saying he
24:55
always did tell me where he was
24:57
going or always left the note and
25:00
said, when he'd be back, I
25:02
always knew where he was going to be and
25:04
how long he was going to stay. But this
25:06
time he just told me he was going up
25:09
to echo in the dinner that night. When
25:11
I left here at two 30 that
25:13
Sunday, Vernon and his friend glass. We're
25:16
still here. That's the bad thing about
25:18
it. I don't know what time they left
25:20
and I don't know what they were going
25:22
to do. Vernon and Charles
25:25
were officially reported missing on
25:27
Wednesday, July 20. And
25:30
it's been said that prejudice
25:32
likely influenced the case from
25:34
the beginning. Retired Hendersonville
25:36
police chief, Bill Powers told
25:39
the Hendersonville Times news. We
25:41
had a report of shipment and glass
25:43
missing prior to the bodies
25:45
being found. Both being
25:47
homosexuals. We thought they
25:49
were probably off partying someplace.
25:53
Okay. As if all
25:55
gay men are partying all
25:58
the time. I
26:00
guess that's the way that we're supposed to
26:02
take that. But you and I
26:05
throughout the years have covered,
26:07
you know, a lot of
26:09
episodes where it does
26:11
seem very likely that prejudice played
26:14
a big role in the
26:16
investigation, whether it was
26:19
because police thought that
26:21
or knew that the victim was a sex
26:24
worker, whether it was due
26:26
to race or
26:28
sexual orientation. There's
26:30
no doubt that over the years, police
26:33
have treated some of
26:36
these cases differently. Just
26:38
a strange assumption to make, but
26:40
that they were partying. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
26:43
when it comes directly after
26:46
both being homosexual, you
26:48
can only take that to me because
26:51
they were homosexuals. They must have
26:53
been out partying. Right. Just so
26:55
strange. Harley Shipman stormed into
26:57
the Times news office to demand that
26:59
they put his son's picture on the
27:02
front page. Circulation manager,
27:04
Ronnie Hollifield overheard him
27:06
and said he saw
27:08
Vernon on Sunday afternoon with
27:10
Charles gloss and two unidentified
27:13
passengers on July 22nd, 1966. The
27:17
bodies of 43 year old Vernon Shipman, 36
27:20
year old Charles glass and 61
27:22
year old Louise Davis Schumacher
27:24
were found in a grassy
27:26
clearing near Lake summit
27:28
in Henderson County, North Carolina.
27:31
The bodies were found by
27:33
Charles Hill and Larry Shipman, both
27:35
with the Lake summit court. They
27:38
were driving on a dirt road
27:40
off North Lake summit road, and
27:42
we're at a spot where people
27:44
normally dump their trash. They were
27:46
going to dispose of some brush,
27:48
nothing like headed out to the local county
27:51
site, dumped some trash to find
27:53
a few bodies laying there. Oh, like we
27:56
always say, right? It's going to change your
27:58
day very, very quickly. I don't know what. What your
28:00
plans were besides the disposing of
28:02
the brush, but you got other
28:04
things to worry about. Now, at
28:06
this point, the two men had
28:08
to drive to get to a phone. At
28:10
first, dispatch sent an ambulance driver
28:13
that worked for a local funeral
28:15
service, but within a
28:17
few hours, the county rescue squad,
28:19
sheriff's deputies, police officers, and highway
28:21
patrol were at the scene. The
28:24
bodies were decomposed because they had been out
28:26
for days in the summer heat. The
28:29
bodies were lying in a semicircle with
28:31
objects placed on top of them. All
28:34
three victims died from
28:36
skull fractures. Investigators
28:39
came to believe that the murder weapon
28:42
was part of an automobile jet.
28:45
The killer put an 18-inch
28:47
long piece of scrap iron on Vernon's
28:49
neck. Charles' crutches were laid on
28:52
top of him in the shape of a
28:54
cross. Louise Shumate had
28:56
a whiskey bottle on
28:58
her neck. Okay, this is all
29:00
bizarre. It's very bizarre. We
29:03
have three brutal murders, but
29:06
then it's the posing of
29:08
the bodies and putting
29:11
various objects on
29:14
the bodies. Louise and Charles
29:16
had puncture wounds to their bodies.
29:19
Charles was punctured 21 times and
29:22
Louise was punctured 17 times. The
29:25
men were fully clothed, but
29:27
Louise was partially undressed. Rape
29:30
kits and DNA testing were not
29:32
available at the time, but the
29:34
police believed she was sexually assaulted
29:37
based on the evidence they had. Louise's
29:39
blouse was pulled back from her shoulders
29:41
and her slacks were below her knees.
29:44
Her bra was found a few feet from her
29:46
body, and a portion
29:48
of an automobile jack was
29:50
inserted into her vagina. Gibbs,
29:54
we're dealing with one seriously
29:57
nasty individual here. a
30:00
sick son of a, you know, a
30:02
medical examiner later determined that
30:04
Louise was punctured before she
30:06
died. Her left wrist and
30:09
elbow were broken, which indicated
30:11
she put up an arm to block
30:13
the attacker. She had other
30:16
bruises on her genitals and
30:18
inner thighs, which likely occurred
30:20
during the sexual assault. Investigators
30:23
found Louise's sunglasses
30:25
nearby, along with the
30:27
two men's wallets and
30:29
Louise's change purse. Vernon
30:31
and Charles' wallets were empty. Louise's
30:34
purse had 16 cents inside.
30:37
So we have three brutal
30:39
murders, skull fractures,
30:43
punctures of sexual
30:45
assault, a very nasty
30:48
sexual assault, but we also
30:50
have robbery. So
30:53
we have some different motives here
30:55
potentially, but it was unclear
30:57
what, if any, connection Louise
31:00
had to Charles and Vernon. And
31:03
we mentioned it upfront and kind
31:05
of detailed it out, right? Charles and Vernon
31:07
had been friends for over 10 years. Yeah,
31:09
they were close. But I don't
31:11
think anyone who knew them knew
31:13
Louise. Louise Davis
31:15
Schumate was born in Asheville,
31:17
North Carolina on August 21st, 1904.
31:19
She went to nursing school
31:22
from 1923 to 1925, but
31:24
she never had a career as
31:27
a nurse. She moved often and
31:29
lived in different states around the
31:31
US. In 1933,
31:33
she married Hazel Francis Schumate
31:36
from Beckley, West Virginia. The
31:38
couple moved to Massachusetts. In
31:41
1937, Louise returned to
31:43
Asheville alone and she divorced her husband
31:45
in 1942. She
31:47
had moved back to North Carolina by 1961. Her
31:51
niece, Linda Sherlin, told the Hendersonville
31:53
Times News that she
31:55
was a very private person and
31:58
a hard person to get to know. that. I
32:00
understand that. I have met a number of
32:02
people like that in my life. Doesn't
32:05
mean they're bad people. No, but some
32:07
people are more private than
32:09
others. They don't let their guard
32:12
down right away. Takes a
32:14
while for them to open up to you.
32:16
I'm pretty private. You are. Louise
32:19
didn't have a phone. She enjoyed
32:21
photography and often carried her camera
32:23
around with her, but she did
32:26
not keep any photos in her
32:28
apartment. Louise only
32:30
told her family about one friend, a
32:33
woman named Ruby Taylor who lived
32:35
in Henderson County. Louise
32:37
started working at the Taylor instrument
32:39
company in Arden, North Carolina in
32:41
1963. Her
32:43
coworkers said she was
32:45
difficult to get along with mean and
32:48
racist. All right. I've known
32:50
some people who fit one
32:52
or all of those descriptions,
32:55
descriptions in my working
32:57
life. Louise lived at
32:59
the Ravenscroft apartments in Asheville, but
33:01
her family didn't learn this until
33:03
after she died. She wouldn't
33:06
give her address to anyone when her
33:08
family went to her apartment after she was killed.
33:11
They said there were no personal
33:13
items inside. And some of
33:15
this about her is pretty strange.
33:17
You'd have to say, she
33:19
carried a camera everywhere she went
33:21
yet had no pictures, right
33:24
inside of her place. She didn't
33:26
even have any type of personal items.
33:29
Kind of like a pretty mysterious. Something's
33:31
like a safe house or something. According
33:34
to her niece, Linda Sherlin, Louise
33:37
liked to go to parties, but not
33:39
family functions. I think there's a lot of
33:41
people that would prefer to go to a
33:43
party than a family function. Yeah. Not everybody's
33:46
family functions are what
33:48
people would call at the top
33:50
of their lips. Yeah. A good time. A
33:53
lot of that depends on your family.
33:55
Exactly. Or your extended family. For
33:57
unknown reasons, Louise lied about. her
34:00
age. She listed her birth year as 1911
34:02
on her driver's license. She would not
34:06
be the first person to make
34:09
herself younger than what she really... What?
34:12
No, I think it's a pretty popular thing to
34:14
do. With some people, workers
34:17
at the Horseshoe Post Office, where
34:19
she collected her mail, thought
34:21
she was in her mid 40s. Her
34:23
co-workers thought she looked 15 years
34:25
younger than what she really was. Oh
34:28
yeah, I get that a lot too. Did you
34:30
look 15 years younger? Oh, absolutely.
34:32
Oh my gosh, you must be 85. No, but this
34:37
is saying something about her. It
34:39
is. It really is. Obviously, she
34:41
must have taken pretty good care
34:44
of herself to stay
34:46
looking so young, or she
34:48
was just genetically gifted, which I
34:51
guess some people are. Some people
34:53
are lucky like that. Investigators tried
34:55
to retrace Louise's last day.
34:58
They learned she went to work on
35:00
Friday, July 15th, and called her niece
35:02
on the evening of the 16th. She
35:04
was last seen leaving her apartment at 4.30
35:07
p.m. on July 17th. Both
35:10
Vernon and Louise's vehicles were found
35:12
while they were still considered missing
35:15
persons. And there were two important
35:17
vehicle sightings during that time
35:19
period. Two teens were on
35:21
North Lake Summit Road at 9
35:23
p.m. on July 17th. They
35:25
saw a light blue 1963 Pontiac parked on a dirt
35:28
trail that
35:31
led to the clearing where the bodies were
35:33
found. A man named Bruce Gordon
35:35
took North Lake Summit Road at 5.45 a.m. on
35:37
Monday, July 18th, and saw four
35:41
men and three cars at
35:44
the dirt trail. At 5.30 p.m. on
35:46
July 20th, Vernon's Ford
35:48
Fairlane was found by the Hendersonville
35:51
Police on a road parallel
35:53
to the local railroad tracks. It also
35:55
happened to be near his home on
35:57
Maple Street. Witnesses said the
35:59
car car had been there since
36:01
at least 7 a.m. on the
36:03
18th. The backseat was pushed
36:06
forward. There was a hole in the
36:08
middle of the backseat and the
36:10
separator board that joined the back window.
36:13
It was thought that Vernon most likely made
36:15
the hole because he lost the key to
36:17
his truck. Vernon's jack
36:19
was missing, but a
36:22
jack shaft was found at the crime scene.
36:24
A brand new jack was found in the
36:27
trunk of his car believed to be from
36:29
a Pontiac. Three tires were muddy,
36:31
but the fourth was clean and
36:33
two hubcaps were missing. One
36:36
of Vernon's hubcaps had been stolen before
36:38
the murders, but it was unclear
36:40
what happened to the second one. There
36:42
were scratches on the side of the car and
36:45
two fingerprints were found on the rearview
36:47
mirror. It's more mystery, right? There's
36:49
a lot of mystery here. Just
36:52
take the jack. It's
36:54
thought to have been the murder
36:56
weapon. His jack was
36:59
missing from his car, but
37:01
a brand new jack was found in the
37:03
trunk of his car believed
37:05
to be from another vehicle.
37:09
What do you make of that? Why are three
37:11
tires muddy, but the fourth
37:13
is clean? Yeah, was that the one that had
37:15
to be changed? I don't know. And
37:18
that's why Jack was out at some
37:20
point. Louise's preferred brand
37:22
of cigarettes, Paul Moll, were
37:25
found in the right rear
37:27
ashtray. One had cigarette
37:29
lipstick stains on it. Hardly
37:31
Shipman had the oil changed on
37:33
July 15th. The car had been driven
37:35
259 miles since then, but
37:39
the drive from Vernon's house to where he
37:41
was found was just 40 miles. So
37:44
that's a pretty big discrepancy there.
37:47
When you think about the timeframe, you know,
37:49
this oil was changed not
37:51
long at all before the murders
37:54
occurred, 200 and some
37:56
miles of driving in
37:58
that short amount of time. Yeah, so how
38:01
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a year later, on May 11, 1967, a
40:12
local teen named Dennis Waters signed
40:15
a statement admitting that he and
40:17
other youths found Vernon's car on
40:20
July 17 and moved it
40:22
to where the police found it. They found
40:24
the car parked in the grass near Ray
40:26
Avenue and 7th Avenue
40:28
East, about 6 miles from the
40:30
crime scene. They went out for
40:33
a joyride and returned the car where
40:35
they found it. They came back to
40:37
strip the tires and brought a jack
40:39
with them, but they decided not to
40:41
go through with it and left the
40:43
jack on the back floorboard. So
40:45
that helps answer, I think, some of the
40:47
questions. It does. You know, they probably
40:50
racked up quite a few of
40:52
those miles. Probably helps explain
40:54
where this new jack
40:56
came from, or at least a jack
40:58
from another vehicle. On
41:01
July 19, a light blue Ford
41:04
Fairlane was reported abandoned on
41:06
NC Highway 191 near the
41:08
French Broad River in the
41:11
rugby community. The car was first
41:13
seen on July 18. The
41:15
windows were down, the doors
41:17
unlocked, and the key was in
41:19
the ignition. This car belonged
41:22
to Louise Shoemake. A
41:24
complete jack was in the car. Louise's
41:26
handbag was hanging on the door handle,
41:29
and her camera was inside the
41:31
vehicle. Louise's friend, Ruby Taylor,
41:34
said she and Louise had picked
41:36
blackberries near the location where
41:38
the car was found. And
41:40
there are some strange things about this to
41:43
me. You know, windows
41:45
down, doors unlocked, keys in the
41:47
ignition. But then you also have
41:49
her handbag and her
41:51
camera, which people said she took
41:53
with her pretty much everywhere, was
41:56
inside the vehicle. normally
42:01
leave a vehicle if they were going
42:04
off with someone else. And
42:06
I would say probably not. Yeah.
42:08
I mean, even if it was in the sixties,
42:10
right? You mean you still wanted to lock up
42:13
certain things. Well, you're not just going to leave
42:15
your handbag sitting there. Not your
42:17
expensive camera. Initially investigators
42:19
thought Louise was killed because she was
42:21
in the wrong place at the wrong
42:24
time. One of her hobbies
42:26
was driving down back roads. And
42:28
as a friend mentioned, she had gone
42:30
blackberry picking before. The theory
42:32
was that she was killed because she
42:35
witnessed something. However, there
42:37
were no items in her car or on
42:39
her person to indicate she was out picking
42:42
blackberries. You ever picked blackberries?
42:45
I don't know about
42:47
blackberries specifically. I have
42:49
picked berries a number
42:51
of times. Yeah. I pick blackberries
42:53
at least once a year, wild ones. Okay.
42:55
Yeah. Well, at least I think they're
42:58
like berries. I haven't had any
43:00
medical conditions from eating them afterwards. I
43:02
think I'm safe. You did tell me
43:04
a story about taking off all your
43:06
clothes and running through the forest one
43:08
time after eating some berries. Yeah,
43:10
but I was okay. Oh, didn't have
43:12
to go to hospital. Wasn't out of the
43:15
ordinary is what you're saying. That was just a,
43:17
just a Thursday night. I
43:20
just signed the police report. But as you
43:22
can imagine, right? The entire community
43:24
was terrified after the murders. It
43:26
was all anyone could talk about. And
43:29
there were many rumors revolving around
43:31
the secret lives of Charles Glass
43:33
and Vernon Shippman. Authorities
43:35
believe that they had a large
43:37
pool of suspects because Vernon and
43:39
Charles were very social people. We
43:42
mentioned it, right? One of them had a party
43:44
and invited like a hundred people. Yeah. That's
43:47
a lot of people to consider or
43:49
have to interview, have to cross off. One
43:52
anonymous former state bureau of
43:54
investigation official told the Hendersonville
43:57
times news that that
43:59
man. Glass had relationships
44:01
with wealthy, prominent men
44:04
all over Asheville and Hendersonville.
44:07
There were rumors that their death was
44:09
a hate crime, but most of
44:11
the people in town knew the men were
44:13
gay before they were killed. Although
44:16
locals might not have liked or
44:18
approved of this fact, sources
44:20
did not report that anyone openly
44:22
hated them. Authorities also
44:25
ruled out the KKK's involvement in
44:27
the murders. So I don't
44:29
think there's any doubt it was
44:31
a tough time to be
44:33
gay, especially in the South. Oh
44:36
yeah, I would think so in the
44:38
60s. But you know,
44:40
if they're saying that everyone pretty
44:42
much knew they were gay, nobody
44:45
had an issue with them
44:47
specifically. Now they might not have
44:49
liked it, but they had
44:51
no known enemies. Okay,
44:54
you got to take that into account. One
44:57
of the biggest mysteries was how
44:59
Louise Schumate was involved in the
45:01
murders. She did have
45:03
connections to Henderson County. Her
45:05
mother grew up in the area and
45:07
many of her relatives lived there. She
45:09
also attended a church in Hendersonville the
45:12
weekend before the murder. She
45:14
enjoyed visiting different churches on
45:16
Sunday. One investigator said
45:19
to the Asheville citizen, it
45:21
appears that the fourth person
45:23
in Shipman's car was a
45:25
friend of Mrs. Schumate rather
45:27
than of Glass and Shipman. Louise's
45:30
family mentioned to the police that she
45:32
might have been addicted to prescription
45:35
pain pills. Investigators wondered
45:37
if she was getting those pills illegally. The
45:40
word in town was that there
45:42
were drugs at Charles Glass's parties
45:44
and there were rumors that they
45:47
allegedly gave people drugs for sexual
45:49
favors. But rumors, rumors, there's always
45:51
going to be a lot of rumors.
45:54
And I think sometimes it's hard
45:56
to separate fact from fiction, but
45:59
despite all the rumors, members, investigators
46:01
never made a formal connection
46:03
between Louise, Charles, and
46:05
Vernon. A couple years
46:08
after Louise's death, her brother
46:10
received a call from Asheville Federal
46:12
Savings and Loan. Louise had
46:14
$12,000 in her savings account. Her
46:18
family had no idea how she got
46:20
this kind of money, which only added
46:22
to the mystery. Other
46:24
theories involved blackmail, a jealous
46:26
lover, or a hitman hired
46:28
by a wealthy resident of
46:30
Henderson County. I mean,
46:33
I guess you can throw anything up on the wall and see
46:35
if it sticks. Yeah.
46:37
Or you can say that
46:40
until we know for sure we can't
46:43
really discredit
46:46
any of these things, is
46:48
it possible that one of these
46:50
men was having, you know, some
46:52
kind of relationship with a
46:54
wealthy man. It turned
46:57
south or there was blackmail or there
46:59
was something going on that this
47:02
person feared being
47:04
exposed and they
47:07
weren't going to take that chance. And
47:10
said, take him out and whoever's
47:12
with him. There have been
47:14
six official suspects in the decades
47:16
since the murders. None
47:18
of them were ever charged and all
47:20
six are now dead. Although
47:22
there were a number of leads, the case
47:25
went cold and has remained unsolved
47:27
for decades. Much of
47:29
the evidence at the crime scene
47:31
was contaminated by investigators and crowds
47:33
of people who watched them work.
47:36
Ginny Gauss wrote on her
47:38
website, Henderson Heritage, the degradation of
47:40
the crime scene, inexperienced
47:43
investigators, lack of technology
47:45
and training, and the
47:47
reluctance of residents in the county to
47:49
come forward with information hampered
47:52
the investigation. I bet it did.
47:54
Well, I think all of that does, right?
47:57
If you have investigators,
48:00
with little experience. Okay,
48:02
how is the crime scene preserved?
48:05
Are they keeping people from
48:07
walking all over it? Is
48:10
evidence being collected
48:13
properly? All of that's important.
48:16
And then, you know, this thing about people
48:18
being reluctant to come forward with
48:21
information. On the one hand, you
48:23
don't really know how many people
48:26
had credible information. What
48:29
I will say in this case
48:31
especially is that I
48:34
think there is a possibility that
48:36
some people could have been reluctant
48:39
because maybe they didn't want
48:42
information about them to come to light.
48:45
Yeah, they were trying to keep
48:47
their identity secret. Yes. Or
48:50
their sexual orientation or whatever
48:52
it was, something that
48:54
you may not have in all
48:57
cases. But in the
48:59
1960s in North
49:01
Carolina, I'm sure there were a lot
49:03
of people who were
49:05
gay but were not wanting
49:08
that information to come out. Yes,
49:10
because they didn't want to deal with the
49:13
repercussions. Yeah, absolutely. It's
49:15
sad that they had to feel that way,
49:17
but it was a fact of life.
49:20
Additionally, all the physical evidence in
49:23
the case is now
49:25
missing. That's always a big-time
49:27
head scratcher for me. Sure. And
49:30
the number of cases that we've heard that in
49:33
is astounding. It's like, how do they
49:35
let that happen? This is an unsolved
49:37
case. It's marked evidence. Did
49:40
somebody say, you know what? It's been
49:42
20 years, 30 years. We don't have that. We don't
49:44
have the room for it. Yeah. Just
49:47
go ahead and dispose of it. Now, I understand there are
49:49
or have been instances
49:52
where there's a natural
49:54
disaster or the evidence room
49:56
floods or catches on fire
49:58
or whatever. That that's going
50:01
to happen. But in a
50:03
lot of these cases, it's just
50:05
missing. They don't know why they
50:07
don't know what happened to it. I
50:09
don't know. Here's the room where
50:11
we keep all the evidence and there's
50:14
really no reason for it to move unless,
50:16
you know, something
50:20
comes up and we need that evidence. It
50:22
should still be there, but it's not.
50:25
I think it's more like someone said, Hey, let's clean this
50:27
file room out a little bit and then like, Oh,
50:29
down the road. That would be my wife.
50:32
Those were those files that we might need.
50:34
Oh, yeah, that would be my wife. She
50:36
is very into order and
50:39
getting rid of things, putting
50:42
things in different places, only
50:44
to then not remember where
50:46
she put it. Lead SBI
50:49
investigator, Gary Satterfield drove all the
50:51
evidence to the SBI lab and
50:53
Raleigh. It was stored there until July
50:56
14th, 1969 boxes containing the most important pieces
51:01
of evidence were given to Henderson
51:03
County Sheriff James Kilpatrick. The
51:05
boxes contained the Jax from
51:07
Vernon and Louisa's cars, the
51:10
iron shaft found at the
51:12
scene believed to be
51:14
the murder weapon, Charles crutches, and
51:17
a frog gig shaft. You
51:19
ever go frog gigging? I
51:22
have not went gigging yet. I
51:24
have never done it. I know
51:26
of it. And I know of
51:28
some people who I grew up with
51:30
who were into frog gigging. It
51:32
seems kind of cruel to
51:35
me, but do you eat frog?
51:37
Frog legs. Do you? I
51:40
don't know. I don't eat. I'm
51:42
saying people I think who gig
51:44
or catch frogs eat the
51:47
legs. I believe only gig and I do
51:49
is your weekend gig.
51:52
In 2006, the Hendersonville
51:54
times news discovered SBI
51:56
documents stating that Sheriff
51:58
Kilpatrick and. another individual
52:01
signed papers indicating
52:03
the evidence was returned to the county
52:05
on July 14, 1969,
52:08
but no one has seen the evidence
52:11
since. So there is a paper trail
52:13
here. The SBI had it.
52:15
I'm sure they did some analysis
52:19
on some of the evidence, and then they
52:21
gave it back to the
52:24
county sheriff, and then it
52:26
just disappeared. That's just some really
52:28
bad management of evidence. Well, it
52:30
seems like it, but a former
52:32
detective told reporter Jenny Giles that
52:34
the evidence was put in a
52:37
landfill. That's even worse. Because
52:39
that's where you want to store your
52:41
important evidence. We didn't lose it. We decided to just go
52:43
ahead and get rid of it. One
52:45
of the early suspects was a
52:48
man named Frank Myers, former tempo
52:50
music employee, Calvert Hunt Jr. told
52:52
the police that the man
52:54
he saw in the backseat of Vernon's
52:56
car was Frank Myers. Frank
52:59
Myers was the son of Louise
53:01
Myers Nichols. Louise was one
53:03
of the people who reported Charles and
53:06
Vernon missing. Myers was also
53:08
the half-brother of Sue Nichols, the
53:10
woman who called Vernon at 5.30 p.m.
53:13
on July 17 and
53:15
spoke to Charles instead. She
53:17
was calling to see if Vernon would
53:20
babysit for her sister-in-law so that they
53:22
could go out to eat. Frank
53:24
Myers was friends with Vernon. According
53:27
to Calvert Hunt Jr., Charles was
53:29
jealous of their friendship. He once
53:31
made a voodoo doll of Frank and
53:34
disfigured the face. Soon
53:36
after, Frank was involved in
53:38
a car accident and needed
53:40
plastic surgery. Okay, don't
53:43
mess with that voodoo. Somebody that didn't
53:45
really believe in it, something like he knew
53:48
what he was doing. Maybe he did believe
53:50
in it a little bit more than people
53:52
thought. You know, that voodoo that you
53:54
do so well. Vernon's
53:57
friend, Lynn Martin Blackwell, said
53:59
Vernon helped pay for the surgery,
54:01
but he wanted Frank to pay him
54:03
back. On July 18, 1966, Calvert Hunt
54:08
was informed that Charles didn't come
54:10
to work. Hunt mentioned that
54:12
he saw Frank Myers with Charles
54:15
and Vernon the evening before. Soon
54:17
after he made this statement, Myers'
54:20
mother called Hunt and said he
54:22
must have been mistaken because he
54:24
was at Lake Norman near Sowell.
54:27
So mom's going to call up and say, well,
54:30
that can't be true because my son
54:32
was at the lake. So
54:34
is she right? Or is she just trying to cover
54:36
for her son, like some moms will do? Yeah,
54:39
I don't know. What I do know is
54:41
that when Myers talked to the police, he gave
54:43
the same story. One of
54:45
the many rumors in town was
54:47
that Vernon had compromising photos of
54:50
various people in town and Myers
54:52
allegedly removed those photos from his
54:55
house. One anonymous
54:57
friend told reporter Jenny Giles, I
54:59
saw some of the pictures. They were not
55:02
taken at parties. They were not of young
55:04
people. The pictures I saw
55:06
were of straight guys without their clothes
55:08
who posed willingly for the pictures.
55:11
None of the men were under 18. Some were
55:14
married men who lived in town. Everybody
55:16
thought they were straight, even their wives.
55:19
They weren't blackmailing anyone. Vernon
55:22
was extremely generous. He would give you
55:24
the shirt off his back. He
55:26
was that way towards everybody. So
55:29
it sounds like the pictures were no big deal. Well,
55:31
I think maybe that's what this
55:33
person's saying. But if you're
55:36
a straight married man
55:39
who allowed some pictures of you to
55:41
be taken and then
55:43
later thought, hmm, that was a
55:45
really bad idea. Those could
55:47
come back to haunt me. Could one of
55:49
these individuals have
55:52
paid somebody to not only
55:55
get the pictures back, but
55:57
silence the individuals involved
56:00
in taking. Yeah, I would
56:02
think that's possible, right? It's
56:04
a theory. You know, local
56:06
business guy, picture is taken with
56:09
him with no clothes on. Right. Pillar
56:11
of the community, married. Is
56:14
he going to want to risk the
56:16
fallout? Yeah. People could
56:19
make assumptions of those pictures. I
56:21
think you could make a lot of assumptions of
56:23
those pictures. Some
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the first time ever on 60 Days In. We're
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going in. United's front, you know. We signed up
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for this. Would
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you? This day hit. New
58:02
episode Thursday at 9. Part of
58:04
the pursuit of a crime and investigation event
58:07
only on A&E. An
58:10
SBI agent later interviewed Frank Myers,
58:12
but he didn't reveal anything new.
58:16
Myers died in 1969 when
58:18
a Charlotte police officer shot him
58:21
during a domestic dispute. That's
58:23
pretty serious. Yeah, so something
58:26
very, very bad happened. Another
58:28
suspect was a man named John
58:31
Shadrick, who was 28 years old in 1966. Shadrick
58:35
had been in prison, but was paroled in
58:37
June of that year. He was
58:40
in Hendersonville on Saturday, July
58:42
16. Shadrick was
58:44
also blocked, which matched the
58:46
description of the unknown man
58:48
in Vernon's car on the 17th. On
58:51
August 13, 1966,
58:53
Shadrick and an accomplice tried to
58:55
force a young man to perform
58:57
a sexual act. The victim
59:00
reported that Shadrick said, I've killed
59:02
three people. I'd just as
59:04
soon kill you too. Shadrick
59:07
said he killed the three victims at
59:09
Lake Summit. He reportedly named
59:11
them, but the names he said were not
59:13
reported. According to the
59:15
victim, the accomplice
59:17
mumbled bumper jacks several
59:20
times, then said the
59:22
fourth man. That's where the cops messed
59:24
up. Unfortunately, Shadrick's charge
59:26
was later reduced to simple
59:29
assault, and he was
59:31
given a suspended sentence. That's
59:33
one of the very interesting things
59:35
that were said. If they were said. Yes.
59:39
That's the key. Then
59:41
you would have to say that this guy would
59:44
be up there, right on the radar. If
59:47
he really said, I killed
59:49
three people and I killed
59:52
these three people at Lake Summit
59:54
and named them. And that
59:56
the fact jacks were used. Yes. That
59:59
would be... Very very
1:00:01
damning a third
1:00:03
suspect was Jim burrows a
1:00:05
known homosexual acquaintance of shipment
1:00:07
and glass according to Hendersonville
1:00:10
police chief bill powers. Burrows
1:00:13
was an obituary writer for the
1:00:15
ashville citizen times until a week
1:00:17
before the murders he
1:00:19
was fired for reportedly coming into
1:00:22
work smelling like alcohol. That's
1:00:24
a big no no at most places. At
1:00:28
some point between july 18th and
1:00:30
the 22nd burrows called the
1:00:32
office to submit a tip he
1:00:34
said there are three
1:00:36
prominent people missing. Lewis green
1:00:38
the reporter who took the tip didn't
1:00:41
think anything of a statement until the
1:00:43
three bodies were found on july 22nd.
1:00:47
Burrows later confessed to committing
1:00:49
the murders to john shoulder
1:00:52
the editor of the wnc for
1:00:54
bune however he was never
1:00:56
charged because there was no real
1:00:58
evidence against most people
1:01:01
didn't think he was capable of
1:01:03
murder. Maybe just looking for
1:01:05
some attention could be we know
1:01:07
people confess to crime
1:01:09
even murders that they
1:01:11
didn't actually commit but i also
1:01:14
think there are times when. You
1:01:16
there are suspects that
1:01:19
police are really high
1:01:21
on but they just can't
1:01:23
charge them yeah because
1:01:25
they don't have enough like we like
1:01:28
to move forward but we can't move forward. In
1:01:31
early nineteen sixty seven another
1:01:33
suspect named joe henry parham
1:01:35
was arrested in fort meyers
1:01:37
forda on several charges while
1:01:39
in jail he confessed to the triple
1:01:41
homicide. He was soon ruled
1:01:43
out as a suspect because he was
1:01:46
incarcerated in another state at the time
1:01:48
of the murder these people are just
1:01:50
like wanna. Confess drives
1:01:52
me crazy i call it the
1:01:54
henry lee lukas effect yeah you
1:01:56
know there they're getting something out of
1:01:59
it you know. We know what he got out
1:02:01
of it. I don't know about some
1:02:03
of these other people. Maybe they just want
1:02:05
to mess with police. Maybe they want to
1:02:07
be more famous. They're already caught. But
1:02:09
I think if it's proven that
1:02:12
you're incarcerated at the time
1:02:14
the murders are committed kind
1:02:17
of tough. Yeah, you get scratched
1:02:19
off the suspect list pretty quick. I
1:02:21
think one of the
1:02:24
most promising suspects was a
1:02:26
chiropractor named Paul Saxman, who
1:02:28
was 40 years old at the time
1:02:30
of the murder and living in Indianapolis.
1:02:33
Saxman was born in Hendersonville.
1:02:35
His family owned a house next door
1:02:38
to Vernon's and they were childhood friends.
1:02:40
After he moved to Indianapolis, he rented
1:02:43
the house and Vernon Shipman agreed to
1:02:45
collect the rent for him. In
1:02:47
1965, Saxman found out the payments
1:02:50
were not being given to the
1:02:52
bank. He accused Charles Glass
1:02:54
of stealing the money. About
1:02:56
eight months before the murders, an
1:02:59
employee at Tempo Music overheard a
1:03:01
heated argument between Saxman and Charles
1:03:03
about the money. When Jenny
1:03:05
Giles interviewed Saxman for her 2006
1:03:08
series, he was the only
1:03:10
living suspect. Saxman tried to
1:03:12
end his life in May 1966, but
1:03:16
sources did not say why. Now
1:03:18
you would think, okay, this guy's
1:03:20
in Indianapolis. How did he, you
1:03:22
know, having the involvement in these
1:03:25
murders in North Carolina? Well,
1:03:27
apparently a woman offered to
1:03:29
buy his childhood home in
1:03:31
June 1966. He
1:03:34
said he would be in Hendersonville in July
1:03:36
and they could discuss the sale, but
1:03:38
the potential buyer was on vacation on
1:03:41
July 4th and wanted him to wait
1:03:43
for her offer after she
1:03:45
returned. She was the person who
1:03:47
told Saxman that the bodies were found on
1:03:49
July 22nd. Saxman
1:03:52
saw a patient on July 14th
1:03:55
and did not have another appointment
1:03:57
until July 18th. has
1:04:00
a timeframe there where
1:04:02
he could have potentially been
1:04:05
involved. His house went into foreclosure
1:04:07
after the murders and was sold in
1:04:10
November, 1966.
1:04:12
The woman who purchased the house found
1:04:14
a frog gigging pole with one
1:04:16
time broken off. She turned
1:04:18
it into the sheriff's office in February, 1967. Investigators
1:04:22
wondered if this tool could have
1:04:25
made the puncture wounds found on
1:04:27
Charles Glass and Louise Schumet's bodies.
1:04:29
The SBI crime lab tested the
1:04:32
frog gig and found blood
1:04:34
on it, but they didn't have
1:04:36
the technology at that time to
1:04:38
determine if it was human or animal
1:04:40
blood. And this was one of the
1:04:42
pieces of evidence that was lost in 1969. Well,
1:04:46
that's unfortunate because it could have been a key
1:04:48
piece of evidence that turned the case around. Well,
1:04:51
especially with today's technology,
1:04:54
I get it. They didn't have the technology
1:04:56
back then, but that's why
1:04:59
evidence is collected, preserved,
1:05:01
because technology is advancing all
1:05:04
the time. But if you lose
1:05:07
the evidence or if you intentionally
1:05:10
put it in a landfill, kind
1:05:12
of hard to go back and use any
1:05:15
technology because you don't have the
1:05:17
piece of evidence anymore. The
1:05:19
Indianapolis police interviewed Saxman.
1:05:21
He could not account for what he was
1:05:23
doing on the weekend of the murders. And
1:05:26
that's never good. No. Now,
1:05:28
I don't know how long it
1:05:31
was, you know, after
1:05:33
the murders, when they interviewed him, if
1:05:36
it wasn't all that long after and
1:05:39
you can't account for
1:05:41
your whereabouts, yeah, that's
1:05:43
not great. His estranged wife
1:05:46
told the police he was mad
1:05:48
enough to have committed the murders.
1:05:50
But the key part there for me is
1:05:52
the strange. Yeah. Is she really being
1:05:55
a hundred percent truthful or
1:05:57
is she mad at him and wanting to
1:05:59
throw up? him under the bus, I don't know. The
1:06:02
police set up a polygraph for Saxman,
1:06:04
but his lawyer told the police he
1:06:06
would not take the test. Smart
1:06:08
lawyer. Saxman never returned
1:06:10
to Henderson, though, and never collected a
1:06:13
$700 payment from
1:06:15
the foreclosure of his parents'
1:06:17
home. I thought that part was
1:06:19
strange. You have someone who
1:06:21
said they were willing to buy
1:06:23
the home. You never
1:06:26
really follow through with that. And
1:06:28
then the home is
1:06:30
sold at foreclosure. Apparently,
1:06:32
there was a $700 payment,
1:06:35
and you don't bother to
1:06:37
collect it. Why wouldn't you want to collect
1:06:39
it? Maybe you don't want to go back
1:06:41
to Henderson, though. Reporter Jenny Gao
1:06:43
spoke to Saxman at his nursing home
1:06:46
in October 2006. Again,
1:06:48
at that point, he was the
1:06:50
last living suspect. He told her
1:06:53
Charles Glass was behind the thing
1:06:55
and took my money. He
1:06:57
claimed he still had no memory of
1:06:59
where he was the weekend the bodies
1:07:01
were found. Saxman died on
1:07:03
November 24, 2006, based
1:07:07
on their conversation. Jenny
1:07:09
Gao did not believe he was the
1:07:11
killer. She believed the most
1:07:13
likely suspect was a man
1:07:15
named Edward Thompson Jr., who was 35
1:07:18
years old in 1966. Thompson was born
1:07:22
on June 18, 1931, in Eden,
1:07:25
North Carolina. He
1:07:27
was put in juvenile detention seven
1:07:29
times and never
1:07:31
completed high school. In 1945,
1:07:33
he was convicted of first-degree
1:07:35
burglary and sentenced to four to
1:07:37
seven years. In 1947, he
1:07:40
was charged with murder in
1:07:42
Rockingham County, North Carolina, but
1:07:44
was found not guilty. The
1:07:47
victim was the man who testified
1:07:49
against him in the 1945
1:07:51
case. Well, this
1:07:53
kid had a pretty Rough
1:07:56
childhood. First-degree burglary at the
1:07:58
age of what? The.
1:08:00
Murder. At sixteen Body sandbag
1:08:03
guilty And how are you found
1:08:05
not guilty when the victim was
1:08:07
a man who testified against you
1:08:10
and your earlier try. So.
1:08:13
Stretch. We don't have all the particulars,
1:08:15
but. Seem. Strange. In.
1:08:17
Nineteen System Thompson was convicted of
1:08:19
breaking and entering and censored ten
1:08:21
to fifteen years. In Nineteen Sixty
1:08:24
Six, he was convicted of breaking
1:08:26
and entering a second time in
1:08:28
since the nine to ten years.
1:08:31
So. He's decent.
1:08:33
At the breaking and entering. He's.
1:08:36
Terrible at the not getting caught. But.
1:08:38
Is in charge. These different time frames
1:08:40
from must not be. Completing.
1:08:43
Them all. Now. Ten to
1:08:45
fifteen years he's out, and probably
1:08:47
what? Five or six. But he's
1:08:49
going right back to breaking and
1:08:52
entering. And. Then the second
1:08:54
time. He. Gets a lesser
1:08:56
sense than the first time and
1:08:58
again only does maybe four years.
1:09:01
Because. And nineteen Sixty And nineteen
1:09:03
Sixty six, he was convicted of
1:09:06
assault. Escaped. Prison and
1:09:08
Nineteen Sixty Six, but was
1:09:10
soon rearrested. In sixty
1:09:12
seven. He was sentenced to
1:09:14
eight to ten years for breaking and
1:09:16
entering and been home town. Five.
1:09:19
Years were suspended on the condition
1:09:21
that he summit no further crimes
1:09:23
or I listen. We're. All gonna.
1:09:26
Make. You do all the time you just need to
1:09:28
tell is nava Do This anymore. Even
1:09:30
though you been doing it since you were
1:09:32
what fourteen years older than you commit to
1:09:34
us kinda do for us. Who
1:09:37
wouldn't say it's yeah. Yeah, I'll do
1:09:39
it anymore. Me: I'm good. Also, let's
1:09:41
break this down. He. Escaped
1:09:43
prison and nineteen Sixty
1:09:45
six. And then was
1:09:48
out. In. Nineteen Sixty Seven.
1:09:51
Year. Early grades. Prison.
1:09:54
System there another. all
1:09:56
the muslim the must not have been
1:09:58
much tacked on as anything for breaking
1:10:00
out of prison. But you're
1:10:02
right, I mean, that seems so
1:10:04
pie in the sky to say, you
1:10:07
know what, we believe in you. We're not
1:10:09
gonna put you in jail anymore. Just
1:10:11
promise us that you won't keep
1:10:13
committing these crimes. Later that
1:10:16
year, his conviction for the 1966 assault case
1:10:20
was set aside, but his appeal on
1:10:22
the escape conviction was denied, and
1:10:25
he was ordered to serve his sentence
1:10:27
in Buncombe County. In 1968, Thompson
1:10:30
went on a crime spree where
1:10:32
he kidnapped nine people, raped
1:10:35
five people, and killed two
1:10:37
others. We should be doing a whole episode
1:10:39
on this guy. Yeah, he should be on
1:10:41
TCAT. On TCAT. I mean, his
1:10:43
rap sheet printed out would
1:10:46
be quite a bit of paper. His
1:10:48
crime spree started in Hendersonville,
1:10:51
North Carolina on May 9th, 1968, at
1:10:53
10.30 p.m. A
1:10:56
doctor and his wife were kidnapped from
1:10:59
their home at gunpoint. They were
1:11:01
forced to drive their car to a house in
1:11:03
Fairview where they were injected
1:11:05
with drugs from the doctor's medical
1:11:07
kit. The captor drove the
1:11:09
car from Fairview to Batcave. The
1:11:12
couple was left at a clinic in Batcave at
1:11:14
3 a.m. and
1:11:16
the kidnappers stole their car. At 9.30 a.m.,
1:11:19
the doctor's car was found at a
1:11:21
local drive-in. His bag and tape
1:11:23
recorder were in the car, and the
1:11:26
keys were in the ignition. Officers
1:11:28
tried to arrest Thompson that
1:11:30
afternoon in Hendersonville, but he
1:11:32
shot at them and escaped out a back window
1:11:34
of a home. The crime spree
1:11:36
continued in June. On
1:11:38
the evening of June 16th, a 20-year-old man and
1:11:41
a 17-year-old girl were kidnapped at
1:11:43
gunpoint near Camp Green Cove
1:11:46
in Tuxedo. They were forced to drive
1:11:48
to a vacant house near Lake Summit.
1:11:51
The girl was raped at this location.
1:11:53
Thompson drove them from Lake Summit
1:11:56
to Saluda, North Carolina. The
1:11:58
young man was locked in the trunk. during
1:12:00
the drive. Thompson drove up
1:12:02
and down Pottscholes Road. It
1:12:04
appeared as if he was looking
1:12:06
for something. He finally stopped at
1:12:09
an abandoned cemetery and let the
1:12:11
man out, then ordered him
1:12:13
to drive to a gas station. The
1:12:15
young man wrecked the car at 4
1:12:17
a.m. and the couple escaped in Burke
1:12:19
County. On the night of June 23rd 1968, a 23-year-old
1:12:21
man and 14-year-old girl were accosted
1:12:27
at gunpoint at a
1:12:29
closed service station in Henderson County. They
1:12:31
had stopped to get drinks from a
1:12:33
vending machine. They were forced to
1:12:35
drive towards Mooresville. Once they
1:12:38
were out of Mooresville, the girl was raped and
1:12:40
the man was put in the trunk of the
1:12:42
car. Thompson drove 20 miles
1:12:44
north and the couple was taken
1:12:46
into the woods and tied up with
1:12:48
bedsheets. The girl was raped again. They
1:12:51
were left tied up and their captors
1:12:53
stole their car. They eventually managed
1:12:55
to free themselves. On
1:12:57
June 25th, the state trooper chased
1:12:59
the couple's vehicle north of Statesville
1:13:02
but the driver escaped. This
1:13:04
guy is pretty good at getting away from
1:13:06
the law. He is and he has no
1:13:08
fear. No, I think at this
1:13:11
point he doesn't. He
1:13:13
has a shootout with the cops. He's able to
1:13:15
escape out of a window. He's chased
1:13:17
by a state trooper. He's
1:13:20
able to get away from him.
1:13:22
Thompson was declared an outlaw
1:13:24
on June 26th which
1:13:26
stripped him of most legal protection.
1:13:29
He was the last person declared an
1:13:31
outlaw in the state. I
1:13:33
did not know that was actually
1:13:35
a thing. You are
1:13:37
now an outlaw. Maybe that means we
1:13:40
don't have to identify ourselves. We
1:13:42
can just shoot you. Shoot first, ask
1:13:44
questions later type of thing. One
1:13:47
article published by the Hendersonville Times
1:13:49
news during the crime spree said
1:13:52
any citizen who sees him may
1:13:54
arrest him on site or
1:13:56
kill him if he resists
1:13:58
without being subject to legal
1:14:00
action. So it's not
1:14:03
only shoot first and ask questions
1:14:05
later by police, any
1:14:07
person on the street can
1:14:09
try to arrest this man and
1:14:11
if he resists can shoot and kill him.
1:14:14
Now I don't know how many people are
1:14:16
going to want to take that on of
1:14:19
trying to arrest this really
1:14:21
bad guy but the young
1:14:24
couple's vehicle was found in early July
1:14:26
in the woods in Yadkin County with
1:14:29
the keys in the ignition. Edward
1:14:31
Thompson mailed a letter to the
1:14:34
Times News from the Hendersonville post
1:14:36
office on July 9th. He wrote,
1:14:39
every time I pick up your Jim Crow
1:14:41
news you got my name in it. Well
1:14:43
I'm still around town and
1:14:46
I hope to get a chance to blast the
1:14:48
daylights out of the whole crew. He
1:14:50
ended his letter with, I'm going
1:14:52
to give somebody something to write
1:14:54
about as soon as possible. Thompson
1:14:57
was a black man which likely
1:14:59
explains why he made the Jim
1:15:01
Crow comment. On July 14th, three
1:15:04
girls and two adults were kidnapped
1:15:06
and taken to a house near
1:15:08
Roanoke, Virginia. The man and woman
1:15:11
were shot to death. Thompson showed
1:15:13
up at a relative's house in
1:15:15
Rockingham County, North Carolina with the
1:15:17
three girls. His family was shocked
1:15:19
because they hadn't seen him since
1:15:21
1947. They
1:15:24
called law enforcement and Thompson
1:15:26
was finally arrested on July
1:15:28
17th. Hey, we haven't
1:15:30
seen you in 20 years. You're
1:15:33
in the paper as being
1:15:35
this horrible person. What do you
1:15:37
want us to do? Right. Break out
1:15:40
the mashed potatoes? Like
1:15:42
welcome home? No, we're
1:15:44
calling the police. On October
1:15:46
18th, 1968,
1:15:48
Thompson was convicted of
1:15:50
robbery with a dangerous weapon,
1:15:52
four counts of second-degree kidnapping,
1:15:54
first-degree rape, larceny, and
1:15:57
receiving. On July 16th, 1989.
1:16:01
Thompson died of AIDS at the state prison
1:16:03
in Raleigh. He was 58 years old. 58
1:16:05
years old
1:16:08
because his crime spree started at like
1:16:10
the age of 14. Yeah.
1:16:12
Yeah. He was destined to
1:16:14
spend his life in prison.
1:16:17
Reporter Jenny Giles believes Thompson is
1:16:19
guilty of the 1966 triple
1:16:22
murders because he reportedly confessed to
1:16:25
multiple people. Giles also
1:16:28
sees 20 similarities between the
1:16:30
triple murder and Thompson's other
1:16:32
crimes. For example, the man
1:16:35
murdered in Virginia was fully clothed, but
1:16:37
the woman's clothes were in disarray. A
1:16:40
rubber hose was draped over her shoulders.
1:16:43
Objects were left on the three
1:16:45
Hendersonville victims' bodies. Thompson told
1:16:47
one of the couples he kidnapped per
1:16:49
the Times News, I have a gun.
1:16:52
I've already killed three people. Two
1:16:54
more won't make a difference. In
1:16:56
several cases, Thompson abandoned
1:16:58
vehicles close to where the kidnapping
1:17:01
occurred. He always left the
1:17:03
keys in the ignition. Both Vernon's
1:17:05
shipment and Louis Shoemates keys were
1:17:07
left in their ignitions. He
1:17:10
also ordered victims to drive around and
1:17:12
made the driver put both hands on the steering
1:17:14
wheel. One of the witnesses
1:17:17
who saw Vernon driving on July 17th
1:17:19
said he had both hands on the
1:17:21
steering wheel and did not
1:17:23
acknowledge him. Investigators believe that
1:17:26
Thompson was trying to find the
1:17:28
1966 crime scene after
1:17:30
he kidnapped the couple in
1:17:32
Henderson County in June 1968. The
1:17:36
murders occurred near North Lake Summit
1:17:38
Road, directly across US 176 from
1:17:40
Pot Sholes Road
1:17:44
where Thompson was driving that night. Hendersonville
1:17:47
police officers found newspaper clippings
1:17:49
about the triple murder in
1:17:51
Thompson's home during the crime
1:17:53
spree. He once asked a
1:17:55
former detective what was going on with
1:17:57
the investigation. all
1:18:01
of the suspects are now dead. The
1:18:04
main evidence has been lost, which
1:18:06
essentially makes it impossible to
1:18:09
apply any type of
1:18:11
modern forensic techniques to this
1:18:13
case. Right. Yeah. I
1:18:16
think, you know, when you look at some
1:18:18
of these suspects, I see
1:18:20
why, you know, Jenny Giles
1:18:22
looks at Thompson as a
1:18:25
real possible suspect. I think
1:18:27
the one thing that I'm
1:18:29
struggling with is that
1:18:31
he doesn't match the description
1:18:34
of the fourth person in the car. Right.
1:18:37
Thompson was a black man.
1:18:40
The guy in the car was said to
1:18:42
have been blonde. So assuming
1:18:45
that the guy in the
1:18:47
car killed the other three
1:18:49
in the car, which I think is
1:18:51
a good assumption because who is
1:18:53
he? What happened to him? And what
1:18:55
happened to him? Why didn't he come forward to tell
1:18:57
his story? That for
1:18:59
me kind of makes it
1:19:01
tough. I get it. Thompson was
1:19:04
a bad guy. He had
1:19:06
a horrible rap sheet and
1:19:08
did horrible things, but a
1:19:10
lot of the similarities that she
1:19:12
pointed out, I think
1:19:14
are things that many killers
1:19:17
might do. Sure. Yeah. So
1:19:19
I don't know. I
1:19:22
don't know. None of the suspects to
1:19:24
me jump out as,
1:19:27
well, this person has
1:19:29
to be the killer. Yeah.
1:19:31
The definitive, right? Yeah. There's
1:19:34
obviously nothing definitive. I
1:19:37
think you can make the case for a number
1:19:39
of them. Sure you can. But like you
1:19:41
said, what are you going to do if you
1:19:43
don't have any evidence anymore? Yeah, there's, there's
1:19:46
really nothing. You know, the Saxman
1:19:48
guy with the frog gig, he
1:19:50
was an interesting. Character.
1:19:53
And the reason I look at him,
1:19:55
maybe as opposed to Thompson is because
1:19:58
he actually had a connection. Yeah,
1:20:01
to at least one of the
1:20:03
victim where Thompson would
1:20:05
have been a random
1:20:08
killer. Yeah, he just had to show
1:20:10
up at the right place
1:20:12
and time for him the wrong place
1:20:14
and time for them. Yeah, which is
1:20:16
not out of the realm
1:20:18
of possibility. But more
1:20:20
often than not people are killed by
1:20:23
people they have some connection to.
1:20:25
Right. And there's a reason, there's
1:20:28
a motive other than just,
1:20:30
hey, I want to go out
1:20:32
and kill people. We know some people are like
1:20:34
that, but as we wrap
1:20:36
this one up, it's a
1:20:38
very interesting case. The
1:20:41
fact that these two individuals were gay
1:20:43
in the 60s, in
1:20:46
the South, could that have been
1:20:48
a motive for someone? Could have
1:20:50
been. Definitely. Maybe they didn't like
1:20:52
the fact that they were gay. It
1:20:55
sounded like everybody pretty much
1:20:57
knew it. The other interesting
1:21:00
angle is these
1:21:02
pictures that allegedly
1:21:05
existed. Could
1:21:07
someone have been in one of these
1:21:09
pictures and either have
1:21:11
been blackmailed with the
1:21:14
picture coming out or just
1:21:16
thought after the fact? The
1:21:20
picture or pictures exist. I
1:21:23
can't live with that. Yeah. Maybe they
1:21:25
were going to run for office or do something. Yeah.
1:21:28
So I don't know. I think
1:21:30
people are left to just kind of
1:21:32
weigh everything and come
1:21:34
to their own conclusions. And
1:21:37
sometimes those are some of the most interesting
1:21:39
cases. Sure. The Blue Ridge
1:21:41
murders are a mystery that still
1:21:43
haunts Henderson County, North Carolina. Unfortunately,
1:21:46
and I think you kind of said
1:21:48
this, this case is going to
1:21:50
be really hard to solve and
1:21:52
may remain unsolved forever.
1:21:55
There's no evidence. The known
1:21:57
suspects were all dead. Right. What
1:22:00
do you do? And my thought is even
1:22:03
if somehow they could tie
1:22:05
the murders to someone That
1:22:07
person probably would never be
1:22:09
punished because they would
1:22:12
likely already be dead,
1:22:14
right? But building a case
1:22:17
with no usable evidence is
1:22:20
really really tough Multiple
1:22:22
people have confessed to these murders. Oh,
1:22:24
yeah, but that's not enough. No,
1:22:26
no, you need evidence You need something
1:22:29
to back that up and when all
1:22:31
of that is in a landfill that
1:22:33
becomes a tough proposition Sure
1:22:35
does but that's it for our episode
1:22:37
on the Blue Ridge murders. We got some voicemails. You
1:22:40
want to check those out? Let's hear them I've
1:22:44
called before and a very big
1:22:46
fan. I'm currently listening to the Henry
1:22:49
McCobb or McCabe Story
1:22:51
and you guys are talking about, you know things that
1:22:53
makes sense in your drunk Don't make sense when you're
1:22:55
sober and it reminded me of a time where I
1:22:58
was beyond Inebriated at the bar and
1:23:00
I was arguing with the bartender because
1:23:02
I thought she stole my ID and
1:23:04
my largest Point was that without my
1:23:06
ID I would not be able to
1:23:08
vote and I started crying about my
1:23:10
ability to vote It was
1:23:12
not even November or March. There were no
1:23:15
elections or voting coming up, but I was
1:23:17
pretty distraught I also wanted to say in
1:23:19
one of the last Last
1:23:22
week's episodes you guys were talking about
1:23:24
someone removing a kidney I work in
1:23:26
the Oregon procurement organization world so like
1:23:28
with transplants and I was actually Listening
1:23:31
to that podcast episode in my ear,
1:23:33
of course Holding someone's
1:23:36
kidney in my hand Packaged
1:23:38
holding a kidney in my hand as you
1:23:40
were talking about one of these killers holding
1:23:43
a kidney So I thought that was pretty
1:23:45
ironic and I love the show. Thank you
1:23:47
guys for everything Do you
1:23:49
know how many times I've argued with a bartender? Inebriated
1:23:53
yes, I just thought it was
1:23:55
funny because it wasn't like I
1:23:57
need my ID to
1:24:00
get home or I'll
1:24:02
need it down the road.
1:24:04
I need it to vote and
1:24:07
voting's not going to occur for
1:24:10
months and months and months. But you know,
1:24:12
Hey, we've all been there. Oh yeah. Alcohol
1:24:14
can, uh, cloud you just a
1:24:16
bit. Sure can. And make
1:24:18
things that are not
1:24:21
important seem really, really
1:24:23
important. Yeah. At the
1:24:25
time. Cause it seems like it's so much, but
1:24:28
in the kidney in her hand, she had a kidney in
1:24:30
her hand. You know, we
1:24:33
keep hearing about these connections.
1:24:35
Yeah. I'll call them. We've
1:24:37
never heard that one. You remember the last
1:24:39
time you had a kidney in your hand? No, I
1:24:41
was trying to think I can't. It's the fact that you
1:24:43
had a thing. It's been a while that
1:24:46
much. I know it's, it's been a while.
1:24:48
I would hope so, but we appreciate
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