
Not even a big, scary snake can stop the PROOF team from chasing the truth.
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Sal
Hey, Sal.
Hank
Hank.
Sal
What's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana, and it was so easy.
Jacinda
Too easy.
Sal
Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.
Hank
Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
Benjamin Boster
Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster.
Susan
Hello, and welcome to this week's sidebar. We're here to discuss episode eight of season three of Proof. And I'm here with Jacinda and Kevin. Hey, guys. Got any snakes around you right now?
Hank
I do not like snakes.
Susan
Have we confirmed for sure there was no snakes in the. In James Long's bag?
Hank
You know, we have not confirmed that because we have not opened it.
Jacinda
But when we got out of the car, like, we saw the snake go up to, like, under the car. When we got out of the car, like, 45 minutes or an hour later, Jacinda, like, wouldn't get out of the car. She wanted me to look under the car, and I'm, like, driving, like, 70 miles an hour for 45 minutes. I don't think it's gonna be under there.
Hank
We saw the snake go up underneath. Like, I was convinced it was gonna crawl through somehow, but, yeah, we survived.
Susan
Well, we heard in the episode that James Long passed away a few years ago now, which is unfortunate. We are really, really hoping to talk to him. I feel like one way or another, he would have had a lot of useful information to give us.
Hank
Yeah. And, I mean, we were kind of surprised. Like, we couldn't find any record of his death.
Susan
He had no record of death. Like, I was. I was like, he's gotta be alive. Like, there'd be something of his death. There was nothing, but, no, he's dead.
Jacinda
I think the thing that surprised me was in talking to the neighbors, and nobody knew a thing about him. Like, nobody had a conversation with him. Nobody had an exchange with him. I mean, he was there, and I think you say it in the episode, Susan. He was there for two decades.
Susan
Yep. Early 90s when they moved there, and
Jacinda
nobody had an interaction with him. Like, there'd never been, like, a neighbor that, like, signed for a package or, you know, had an exchange. It was. That was extraordinary to me.
Hank
They didn't even really know his name. Like, they seemed confused that they were both named James.
Jacinda
It was Jimmy who was the one who interacted with the neighbors.
Susan
Yeah. So training information about James Long has been difficult. Even in Kalamazoo, the only people who knew him, they're few and far between. So we're still looking into James Long, hoping to find more about him. But it was a setback learning he had died.
Jacinda
Yeah. I keep hoping someone will call in with more information.
Hank
I would love to see pictures of him from that time. Even though we've gotten a description, we know he was tall and slender and had blonde hair, but I'd love to see more pictures of him. It was also strange. You know, we mentioned this in the episode, too, that James Long ended up living not that far from where Stacy ended up living. No, there's nothing we've seen or any of.
Susan
No, it's not connected. It's just. It's just a strange.
Hank
Yeah, they don't know each other, but it's still kind of. You know, it's a weird coincidence.
Jacinda
We're talking about 15, 20 miles, which, down in that section of Alabama is nothing. That's like being neighbors. I mean, it was kind of crazy when we realized they were both right there.
Susan
So we heard more about Stacy and her testimony and how her statements came to be. Yeah. Like Stacy, do we believe everything she says? No. Do we think she's just a liar who's made up the whole story about Scott? No, that's not what happened here. Something more. More complicated and more difficult to detect, I think, is what happened in this case.
Jacinda
Yeah. I think that she's also now someone who's come under. What she feels is so much pressure that I feel that every time someone asks her a question about it, she's defensive, even if the question isn't aggressive. At least that's how I felt with talking to her. Sometimes I felt like she was a little. She was defensive, particularly on this second trip to Alabama. She was nervous a little bit, I would say. And I think that the story has changed so much that I think that she constantly finds herself trying to say, well, this is what happened. And I think it becomes frustrating for her probably too.
Susan
One example of this that does not get Discussed in the show is that in Stacy's very first statement, she actually says that, in fact, when Scott confesses to her, he tells her that he and someone else committed the murder and that someone else will be a guy named, let's say, Brad. And after that, this is totally forgotten from her story. She never mentions it again to the police at the trial. When you guys asked her about it, she's like, no, never came up. Never ever came up. But we know she specifically saw this guy, Brad, did it with Scott back in 1989. Well, of course, the cold case team went and found this Brad guy, one friend of Scott's, and then confirmed that he was in the military and living in the South. Like, he was stationed in the south at the time of the murders. Definitely did not commit the crime with Scott. So Stacy's memory just totally writes out the fact that she claimed at one point that Scott confessed he'd done it with someone, probably him.
Jacinda
I mean, I've said this before, but the thing that always confuses me is that she's not clear on when he actually confessed to her. That that seems to change. And we talk about that in this episode.
Susan
I would argue she is clear in that, like, her gut reaction, her instant response in, like, 2009 and 2025 and in 1989 was that he confessed right away. It's only when the cold case team starts questioning her, this whole, like, maybe it was a year later thing happens. But her, like, her memory does seem to be pretty firm in her head now that it was quick that he confessed.
Hank
I don't know if I agree with that entirely, because she remembers sequences of events. So in her mind, she remembers he confessed and I went to the police right away.
Susan
Yeah, but she remembers the Jeep which was sold within, like, two weeks. Yeah, she remembers. Remembers it being on Forest and they were living somewhere else a year later. I mean, it's. Her story cannot be true, literally, because it's. It defies, like, space and time. So. Yeah. Where does that leave you?
Jacinda
I remember saying to Rich Madison, I find it confusing that she's, like, the key witness and she doesn't know when he confessed to her. Like, you're talking about a murder. It's not an everyday, ordinary thing.
Susan
If her story was straightforward and simple and Scott just confessed to her, she should be able to answer this.
Jacinda
Right? Right. She should be able to tell you when it happened pretty specifically, but she's not. And even if she says, I know it was within a couple of days, the facts still get cloudy there. And the specifics still get cloudy for me when I'm talking to her about it. And I think that confuses me and gives me pause.
Susan
She's also. Again, she testifies and she says originally he's like, oh, I was at work and picked me up with deja vu and drove me home and confessed to me on the drive back. And the two guys. She's like, oh, I'm very sure I was at home and he came over the house and I said, I'll go out and, you know, just say hi and like, get him away. And then he confessed. And then she'll be like, I remember, like, waiting for my sister to get home so I could tell her about the confession. And she's like, I remember waiting for my sister to wake up to go to work so I could tell her about the confession. So, like, she's had like a hundred, like, sequences of how this occurred each time. She's like, here's my clear memory.
Jacinda
Yeah. And that just seems. That seems odd to me. And, you know, I don't have a personal reference point to sort of equate it to, you know, about someone coming to me and confessing about a murder, but, you know, still remember finding out that my mother had died. Like, there are things that happen that you sort of. That sort of stand out and you have a frame of reference for them and.
Susan
Or if you didn't remember, you wouldn't recall a very precise memory dozen different ways. That's right.
Jacinda
I think I would be like, I'm not sure really. Or I blocked it out and that's not what we get.
Susan
We also heard this episode about Lloyd Magruder and Missy Jarsma, who were the corroborating, quote unquote, witnesses for Stacy's story. And what we found out from Lloyd, which is Scott's friend, yes, he does recall this whole deal about Scott painting his Jeep and that was used to corroborate Stacy at trial. But the rest of Stacey's story he has no idea about.
Hank
Yeah. He has no memory of seeing a bloody stick being thrown across the yard, picked up, thrown back, put in the burn barrel, bloody clothes, nothing. He was there. He saw Scott spray painting his Jeep matte black, and that's it.
Susan
And when you ask Stacey about it, Stacey's like, well, maybe Missy wasn't there. Maybe it was just Lloyd and he didn't see me. Which changes the story entirely.
Jacinda
Yeah, it changes the story entirely. Yes, completely.
Hank
It goes from I showed Missy the newspaper or I called, you know, all kinds of stories to, well, Maybe she didn't see me there.
Susan
There's also a detail in Lloyd's original police statement that Lloyd still remembers when he spoke to him. And it's about Stacey. So he does not recall ever seeing the bloody clothes, burn barrel, the bloody stick, like never saw any of that. That's not something that happened the day he was there and Scott painted the Jeep. He does, however, recall like a few days after that hearing a story from Stacy as he told the cold case team about Stacey saying that Scott came home bloody and like burned some clothes in a burn barrel or something. So he remembers hearing something about that, but definitely not being there and definitely it not being about a murder and also not at the same time that the Jeep was being painted.
Jacinda
The whole Lloyd and painting the Jeep thing. Rich Madison says this in a previous episode of the show. We're talking about, like Scott's painting the Jeep and he puts it up under the covering in case it rains. And he's doing this and it's. Everybody's giving all this sort of credence to him painting the Jeep. And I've never taken it to think that Lloyd thought it was anything other than him just painting his Jeep and Scott was painting his Jeep and he'd been, I don't know, talking about doing it for a while or something and
Susan
for a few days. Yeah, there is evidence support that like before Earl o' Burn was murdered, this plan for fixing up the Jeep was in progress.
Jacinda
It feels like the investigation gets fixated on this concept and I'm just not sure I'm buying it.
Hank
I mean, Scott pointed out to us the Jeep was like a dark green and he spray painted it matte black. He's like, if I was trying to disguise it, you know, why would I choose another dark color?
Susan
Yeah, forest green to black's not really a huge. Like, that's not the, the COVID up you think it is.
Hank
And at night, if someone sees a dark green or black maybe, you know, it's close enough.
Susan
But he's like, see the CJ7 dark CJ7 done. It's a match. Okay. It's not forest green, but at night it could have been black.
Hank
Right.
Susan
So, yeah, the idea that the Jeep painting was about him hiding a murder. I mean, even in a world where Scott was guilty, I don't think the Jeep was about that. Like, I don't think that's connected. Like the timing, the motivation, like, it just doesn't add up.
Hank
No, it doesn't add up at all.
Susan
Jacinda, what's the One thing we need the most during the podcast season, anything
Hank
that helps make our lives easier and more simple. And that includes food and meal prep.
Susan
Yeah, the only reason I'm not eating just like instant noodles the entire podcast season is thanks to Green Chef.
Hank
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Susan
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Hank
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Susan
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Hank
Is that why you love quince so much?
Susan
That is why I love quince so much.
Hank
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Susan
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Hank
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Susan
That's quince.com proof.
Jacinda
I just. I wish we could have spoken to Missy, right? I think that that would have been important information and I wish that she was in a position to Speak to us. She says that she's not, and, you know, we'll have to take her at her word on that.
Hank
Yeah, I wish so, too, but, you know, it's not the end of our investigation. It was helpful to hear from Lloyd and his side of the story, and it was so alarming, I guess, is the right word. Susan, when. When Lloyd testifies at trial, no one follows up and says, who else was there with you?
Susan
Yeah, like, that's the next question. Ask it.
Hank
That. That's sort of stunning. Yeah.
Susan
I mean, there's a. So Stacy. There's a lot about her statements and all of it that just never came out of trial. Like, one thing Stacy kept telling you guys was that, like, oh, Scott came home with blood in him all the time. He would try and, like, break into cars and get blood in his hands. So I feel like that would have been relevant for a trial, too. Like, Scott coming home with blood on him.
Hank
Yeah. She told.
Susan
Unheard of.
Hank
He would, like, break a window or something and have bloody hands. And she recalled a time when his mom had to help, you know, bandage his hands. So, yeah, I mean, I guess that would have helped. It also doesn't paint him in the greatest light that he saw.
Susan
That's true. Sting windows, and I'm not even sure it's true because there's no evidence. We have evidence of crime Scott was committing going into cars, but there's zero reports of him breaking windows like that. So.
Hank
Yeah, and he would say, if car is unlocked, I'd open it. Yeah, he totally admits to that.
Susan
And the police reports back him up in that. So we're not sure what Stacy's talking about, but just hearing Stacy when I first heard her on the audio say, oh, yeah, Scott came home bloody a bunch, I'm like, what? That's a. That seems relevant.
Hank
Well, and also, it's like, if he came home bloody a lot, how do you know this night was the night connected to the murder?
Susan
Because he had a broken piece of wood 12 inches long. Yeah, apparently so. Yeah. I mean, it's.
Jacinda
It.
Susan
Stacy should never have been the witness that someone was sentenced life in prison on.
Hank
There's something about her, and you guys probably disagree with me, but I feel like she. She thinks she's doing the right thing. I believe that she believes Scott was involved in this. She believes this, and she feels like she did the right thing. Now, beyond that, if what she reported isn't true and everything we found supports that it wasn't true, then is she doing the right thing? No. But it was a gut feeling she had, and she followed it through.
Susan
Like, the story she tells shows that she is someone who can be prone to exaggeration.
Hank
Prone to exaggeration and prone to being led. Even Kevin and I realized that when we were talking to her.
Jacinda
I think she does have this mentality that. And I think that a lot of witnesses have this mentality that they want to please you or they want to, you know, say something that, in your mind is right. And I don't think that that was happening to an incredible detail with us.
Susan
Well, also, you were being very conscious of it and trying to be very careful about not doing that.
Jacinda
No, sure. Absolutely. But I do think that, you know, it seems like that could have happened in her discussions with the police officers. And maybe not saying that they're intentionally trying to get an outcome. That's not what I'm suggesting. But I. I am saying that I think she could be prone to wanting to give them the story that they think what might have happened.
Susan
Well, we talk in the show about, like, work him on his waking, a memory. But you guys unintentionally do that with her by telling her that Lloyd says he didn't see her, and suddenly she has this memory of, maybe Lloyd didn't see me, maybe. Maybe I stayed inside the basement the whole time.
Jacinda
That's right.
Susan
And she just immediately pops up with this new memory, slash, version of the story to accommodate the new information she's been given.
Jacinda
And that's what I meant by what I was talking about earlier. Like, she's felt this pressure all the time. So she's looking for logical ways that that could have happened if that, in fact, is the case. Right. If Lloyd didn't see her, she's looking for a logical way that that could have happened. Like, oh, maybe he didn't see me. I'm not even saying that she's lying about it. I'm saying she's looking for a logical explanation for why that would have been the case. And I think that can happen to witnesses and cases. I think it's certainly possible that it happened in this situation. And when you see someone sort of doing that in front of you, you sort of naturally think, well, when else has it happened?
Susan
All right, so talk to Stacy James. Log is dead. That was not the end of the trip because y' all got a phone call while talking to me, mysteriously rushed off again. And y' all were literally driving to the airport, weren't you?
Hank
Yeah, we were heading out of town when we got a phone call that we could come back over to James Long's house, the abandoned house, and pick up a bag of his belongings.
Jacinda
The neighbors who'd been deeded the house, you know, when we first met them, talked about how we wanted to get inside and have a look around, and they're like, it's just. It's too dangerous. And that was obviously disappointing for us and sort of, you know, pushing my nose against the window, like, trying to see what's what. And so when we got this phone call from them that they had gone in and bagged up everything that they could find that was sort of extraordinary. So here we are driving through, you know, the back roads of Alabama, racing to. To get this trash bag filled with clothes from James and. And Jimmy.
Susan
And I want to stress the fact that this is in no way, shape or fashion how evidence collection should be done.
Jacinda
Right, right.
Susan
But, you know, like, there's not a whole lot of other options here, like, if there's ever going to be a chance to test James DNA, like, this is not the ideal chance, but it's a chance.
Jacinda
It was the only chance. And I'll stress to everyone who's listening going, what the fuck? It had already been bagged up before they even talked to us. So it wasn't like, oh, hey, like,
Susan
it was not the plan.
Jacinda
Let us come and do it and take pictures while we do it and videotape it or something. Nope, it was, yeah, we left this trash bag for you on the porch.
Hank
They did make a point to let us know that he wore gloves when he went in and bagged stuff up.
Susan
Again, not ideal evidence collection, but, like, it also, in terms of, like, getting James Long's DNA, it's not like a. It probably worked. I had to guess. There are probably a lot of James Long cells and DNA in that bag. Almost certainly.
Jacinda
In fact, yeah, I would think that there are. Like, I think, if I remember right, the time she said there was a toothbrush and a comb and maybe a hat and a jacket. So one would presume that if there's actually a toothbrush and a comb, that there's. There's a decent chance there's some DNA in there.
Susan
And their understanding was it came from the room that was James Long's and it was not the room that Jimmy, who they knew a little better because he talked to them once in a while after James's death. It was not Jimmy's room, it was James's room. Their understanding.
Jacinda
That's right. But I would say that, I don't know, like, you know they're putting clothes in. I mean maybe these guys, these guys are sharing clothes or. I don't know how they could know that for sure, but yes.
Susan
So do we know if there's any use that can come with this bag? We do not yet. We're looking into options. That may be the only way we get answers. Now I don't want to say that because that's a Hail Mary chance, but
Jacinda
it's something it is worth looking into.
Susan
So we also heard about Corky Laird's case. The cold case conviction of the man who pled guilty, got a manslaughter charge in only seven years and whom Rich Madison believes was actually innocent. And we heard about the murder he was convicted of and why. Why it's strange they even got Corky in the first place given that they had such a good suspect, an obvious suspect right in front of them. Tim Kissinger is dead now, but he was a violent criminal known for several home invasions of elderly people. Anyway, he was the last person seen with Wally Gould, the victim. He, Wally Gould and him drove home together. And we know that Wally Gould does not go home. And Wally Gould's car is found very, very close to where Kissinger lived. The only evidence to clear Kissinger is a past polygraph apparently, but nothing else. I mean it is hard for me to understand why Kissinger was not the one that the cold case team focused on other than maybe he was already doing life in prison. So there's no new story, I guess if you get him. I'm not sure.
Jacinda
But the interesting thing, and I don't think it's in the show, but Rich Madison told us that he kept going out there to the prison to try and get him to confess to it.
Susan
He did? Yeah. No Madison, this case, like even after it was over and everything was done, Madison still kept trying to get Kissinger to come clean about, about Wally Gould and I assume other cases too. And Kissinger never did.
Jacinda
I think that Rich certainly believed that Kissinger was the killer and he wanted to get him to just admit to it up until his dying day.
Susan
But instead the cold case team convicted Corky Lard despite the fact the none of the pieces really add up. Like again the story is that Corky and him, like somehow Wally Gould dropped off Kissinger and then went to go drink with his ex brother in law who was not like they weren't close friends or anything. They go and drink together in a cemetery and suddenly Corky kills him and leaves the body there and wraps it in a child's dress, even though, like, parts of Wally Gould's skull weren't even at this cemetery. So the body is clearly moved. And none of it makes sense. It just doesn't make sense.
Jacinda
Even though the car, the car is
Susan
found in the car. And then apparently after killing Wally Gould in the cemetery, Corky took his car and drove it over to Kissinger's house. Like, it doesn't make any sense at
Jacinda
all if somebody has committed other murders, seems plausible he's capable of it.
Susan
And again, last person seen with the victim and can't really explain what happened to him after so next week we will be talking all about a different cold case. We'll discuss more of the Polderman case, which was the last case, really that the cold case team ever took on.
Jacinda
And it is a doozy.
Susan
So tune in Monday for that and we'll be back next week for a sidebar. Bye, guys.
Hank
Bye, Susan. You've been listening to Proof Sidebar, a podcast by Red Marble Media in association with Glassbox Media. Send us your questions and comments@proofcrimepodgmail.com. follow us everywhere with the handle @proof crimepod and on our website, proofcrimepod.com thanks so much much for listening.
Release Date: March 12, 2026
Hosts: Susan Simpson, Jacinda Davis, Hank, Kevin
This sidebar episode is a companion discussion to Season 3, Episode 8 of Proof: Murder at the Bike Shop. Hosts Susan, Jacinda, Hank, and Kevin debrief their latest investigation, focusing on lingering questions, witness reliability, and new leads. The central theme is the reliability of witness testimony—especially that of Stacy—and the process of reinvestigating old evidence and suspects in light of cold case realities and missed investigative opportunities.
For further information, photos, and case files, or to send in tips, listeners are encouraged to visit proofcrimepod.com or reach out on social media @proofcrimepod.