← Small Town Murder
Small Town Murder
#564 - First Family Of Murder & Pecans - San Saba, Texas
01:12:03
This week, in San Saba, Texas, police arrive to a pecan farm to find a dead woman, in the doorway. Not only that, there is another woman, known as "The Pecan Queen", who seems to have disappeared into thin air. What looks pretty simple, at first,...
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- [00:02]
A
Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about Shutterfly. If you're like us, you take a lot of pictures because you have a camera right in your hand all the time. How would you not take a lot of pictures? And we're taking all these pictures, more than we've ever taken in the history of the world.
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B
But it's.
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A
That's the thing. You used to get a solid picture and then you'd look through them and you could enjoy them. Now they're like back on your camera roll. You can't even find them. You don't want that. That's why the cool thing you need to do and what I did, and I think it's pretty cool, is create a shutter photo book. Oh, what I did. And you're gonna enjoy this, Jimmy, because I haven't showed this to you yet, but took all of our pictures from being on tour this year. All live show pictures, us backstage, us on doing all that stuff and like some of the. Just the venues and things and made a little photo book out of that. Also, they have free 24 hour designer service as well. With their 24 hour designer service, a professional designer is gonna lay out the book for you for free in just a day. Make something that means something with Shutterfly. Enjoy. 40% off orders over $29 with promo code Smalltown C site for promotional details. And now back to the show. This is a Reese's Peanut Butter cup sound experiment. We're looking to find the perfect way to hear Reese's so you'll buy more of them. Here we go. Reese's, Reese's. Reese's. Reese's. Reese's. Hey, get out of here, you little stinker. Reese's, Reese's, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. That breathy one sounded very creepy. Am I right? Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.
- [02:02]
B
Yay. And choo choo.
- [02:04]
A
Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petregallo. I'm here with my co host.
- [02:09]
B
I'm Jimmy Whisman.
- [02:11]
A
Thank you all for joining us on another insane edition of Small Town Murder Express. This is a absolutely crazy episode. I don't know how this is one of those episodes where I'm going, how does you cram this into an hour? Because this is a lot of crazy. And we are going to. Boy, is this going to be a hot hour. Quickly, before we start now, head over to Shut up and give me murder.com tickets are on sale right now for all of 2025, our newest date was announced. That is Madison, Wisconsin and it's almost sold out already. So if you want to see unbelievable. Get them in a day. You guys, it's just about sold out. Columbus on February 8th. Sold out. It looks like at this point we might release another 10 tickets that they keep for us. But I mean, that's it. Pittsburgh. Not sold out. Pittsburgh. February 7th. Get your asses to Pittsburgh. Let's go. Can't go to Columbus, so go to Pittsburgh. Let's do this. We're very excited for it. And the rest of the dates, check them all out. Shut up and give me murder.com also you should listen to our other two shows, crime and sports and your stupid opinions obviously. But let's say you've listened to all of it and you need more. We have so much more for you. And that is Patreon P A t r e o-n.com crimeinsports that is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above. First of all, you're going to subscribe. You're going to get a monstrous hundreds of episodes deep collection of bonus stuff that you've never heard before. Then you're going to get new stuff every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder and you get it all. This week we're going to talk about for crime and sports we have an NFL player who just finished up a murder trial. So we'll talk about him. Travis Rudolph. Then for small town murder we're going to finish up this West Memphis three kind of origin story of how, how we got to the point of needing a documentary team to come down there and talk about this and how it just got to the point of having those three kids there and deciding on them. So we'll talk all about that and more. Patreon.com crimeinsports and you get a shout out at the end of the regular show too, on Wednesday. Gotta love it. So thank you so much for doing that, everybody that has that said. Let's get right into this. Okay, I think it's time here to sit back. What do you say, everybody? Let's all clear the lungs here and arms to the sky. Let's all shout. Shut up. Give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay, let's go on a trip, shall we?
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B
Where are we going?
- [04:39]
A
We are going to Texas this week. San Saba, Texas.
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B
San Saba.
- [04:44]
A
S A N S A B A. Two separate words. Two separate words. Now it's actually in Harkeyville, which Harkeyville doesn't. It's got a population of about 12 right now. And you'll find out that's named after this family we're going to talk about. But San SAP is the main area here. That's just kind of a little tiny speck in there. This is in Central Texas. It's about 3 hours and 20 minutes to Dallas, about 2 hours to Austin. So. So middle of God damn nowhere is the best way to describe this. About an hour and a half to Stephenville, Texas, which is our last Texas episode. Episode 515 against the wind. If you want Bob Seger references, that is your episode. Let me tell you. I don't remember what it was why exactly. But man, this guy was. He must have reminded us of Bob seger's. Population here, 3,121 in San Saba. So not a big place at all either. Median household income here, 39,583 a year, which the rest of the country it's about 69,000. So that is nowhere near that. And the median home price here kind of matches that though it's low. Median home price, $156,400 is the median. So that is low compared to the rest of the country motto here, the pecan capital of the world.
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B
Is that right?
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A
Apparently so. Or pecan. I know, listen, we're going to say pecan, pecan 100 times this episode. Yeah, I know that there it's about 50. 50 about. It's pecan or pecan or pecan or.
- [06:21]
B
I think the south, like Alabama might have something to say about.
- [06:25]
A
They have like pecan. But then some other people say pecan. I don't know.
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B
George's pecan too, right?
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A
I don't know. I'm allergic to them and I don't care. So I can't eat them. So either way I. I don't know if I love them because they make my mouth swell up and I can't breathe.
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B
So you may not have enjoyed the taste ever.
- [06:44]
A
No, I never. I've. I've always hated pecans. And I go, oh yeah, because I'm allergic to them. That's why I didn't like them because they make me not be able to breathe and stuff. So you know, history, little bit of history here. A little bit. We'll go very quickly here. In 1931, a rancher named Wh. Uncle Billy Gibbons, which I believe is. He's an original ZZ Top member. Very original ZZ Top. Top member.
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B
Uncle's Uncle Gibbons.
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A
Uncle Billy Gibbons over here. He gave the Boy Scouts of America a 99 year lease to campgrounds along the Brady Creek on his ranch property. Which by the way that's coming up in about six, five years. Yeah, it's gonna be up there. So then they relocated several miles upstream in 1946. But the boy Scouts continue to use Camp Billy Gibbons to this day.
- [07:37]
B
That is awesome.
- [07:38]
A
That is so fucking great. 1938 the San Saba river flooded causing country countywide just ruin just screwed everything up. One third of the town was underwater. It was a mess. Then in the 50s they had a huge prolonged drought that fucked everything up and they couldn't grow anything. How it goes. Notable people that have property here. I know. And he'll come up in the story, oddly enough very prominently. Tommy Lee Jones.
- [08:09]
B
No kidding.
- [08:09]
A
Absolutely. The actor comes up prominently in the story which is strange enough as it is.
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B
He plays a cowboy in a lot of shit. I guess it makes sense.
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A
He's got a giant pecan farm down there.
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B
Really?
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A
We'll talk all about it. Yeah. Reviews of this town. We'll just do one review because there's only two. Um, the other one was just kind of griping. So four stars here. I grew up in this town and majority of the town is related to me. So it made it difficult to make friends since everyone is your cousin and you almost have to already be friends with them.
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B
Dating was ruined.
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A
Wow. You did. That is amazing. When ever since everyone is your cousin. That is not good.
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B
Get the fuck out.
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A
That's its own joke, right? Its own cliche joke in itself. That's the town is small but has nice scenery to it. As in the country Living. I guess the magazine. I don't know what they're talking about. That was hard to read because I'm like do those words even go together? As in to it? As in country living. What the hell. I always come back to visit every chance I get. You loved it so much you moved away. That's what you just said.
- [09:18]
B
And then came back.
- [09:19]
A
And then you come back to visit which means you didn't love it that much if you left things to do. San Saba Pecan Capital trade days. Sure got that. That's just basically sounds like a giant flea market that they have in downtown San Saba around pecans. It doesn't seem to have much to do with pecans. But you know, if you want to buy, swap meet items. I feel like it's perfect. You want pecans, you go to the pecan bottom festival. Pecan bottom. Yeah. You're a bottom. A hardcore pecan bottom. That's a very specific type of guy. Well, there's bottoms and there's tops and there's power bottoms and all that. A pecan bottom is a totally different thing. That is like a. Ooh, man, you don't even know that. Makes power bottoms look like a pussy, you know. So at this little festival here, there's food and drinks. No coolers or outside food allowed in though. Keep your coolers at home. Let's see, we have bands.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The coveted 10:30am spot that all the bands want. The hangover slot there. Mark Scott and Southern Comfort is their name. Then at noon, again, coveted. The Samuel Bryce Lewis will play.
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B
Sure.
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A
130. Funky Glenn Phillips and the New Chitlins. Funky Glenn Phillips, the new Chitlins. You know, boring Glenn Phillips. But this is Funky Glenn Phillips. Totally different guy. Three o'clock. Presley, Grace. Sounds like they just took Elvis Presley in Graceland and made a name out of it.
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B
It's a gal.
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A
Yeah. Also the West Texas exiles. Okay. Carson, Jeffrey.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And then finally the big closer. Here we go with your headlining act, John Wolf with an E. Okay, then there you go. That.
- [11:13]
B
This sucks.
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A
That is $30 to get into, by the way. Holy shit. 15 for children 4 to 11? I don't think so.
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B
Inflation's crazy.
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A
You gotta love pecans, man. Let's just say that shit. Wow. I don't know what they're paying those bands, but too much would be my guess.
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B
That said, yeah, two bucks a ticket each person. I don't know. That's nuts.
- [11:36]
A
Let's talk about some murder here. Okay, this is based on. There is a very good article written here that a great information came out of. A real investigative piece called A Tree is Known by Its Fruit by Sonia Smith from Texas Monthly. Texas Monthly does great long form, in depth, stuff like this really do a great job. March 25th. Let's go to 2012. So not too far ago, too long ago, I should say, not too far back. And you know, everything's the same. Your phone looks exactly the same. Same apps, you got Instagram, you're fine. All right, here we go. Late afternoon, Sheriff Allen Brown is out on patrol when a 911 call came in from a 12 year old boy saying there's some trouble out at the ranch. Okay, so we'll talk about that. We'll get there. There's a trouble at the ranch, so. Not my ranch. A ranch is what he said. No. So the sheriff here, Sheriff Allen Brown, he takes off down US 190. You know, he's going and going. He pulls up here. He knew the house that he was going to because apparently Bonnie Harkey, who is the matriarch of the Harkey family, right, she's lived here and she's had big. I guess everybody goes to like the same Baptist church here too. So the sheriff knows Bonnie from Baptist church suppers and also she used to host cookouts for the church people at her house and stuff like that. So he's been there plenty of times. He knows where he's going. Yeah, absolutely. Now the ambulance is also en route and they assumed that the ambulance was for Bonnie Harkey, who is 85 years old and in terrible health.
- [13:26]
B
Oh, Bonnie.
- [13:27]
A
So they're like, oh, shit. By five, it's finally time to take Bonnie down here. So I guess not down, I guess to the hospital. Let's take her down.
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B
Put that old bag down.
- [13:38]
A
Bonnie's. Does she put up. We put up with enough of Bonnie shit for too long. We're taking her down. That's. I don't think that's what's going on in the backyard.
- [13:45]
B
And two bullets in the head.
- [13:47]
A
She's 85. Somebody's going to take over. So she's frail. She requires help from a caretaker. She's got some dementia going on and some physical maladies as well. But when they get to the house instead when they open the door, right in the open, right in the landing there, when you walk in the door is face down, is Bonnie's caretaker, 50 year old Karen Johnson, face down on the floor. Yeah. This is fucking crazy. Now they look around, there's an 11 year old boy there. He's the one who called 911. That is Karen Johnson's son, the caretaker. Karen Gail Johnson is her name. Yeah, that's her son. But Bonnie is nowhere in sight. Oh, so did Bonnie have a. Did she decide, I'm gonna kill this lady and take off? 85, 85. Fuck it, I don't care. Maybe she's Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie. We don't know. She is old. So the sheriff arrived at the house. He sees, you know, the ambulance that got there first. He sees Karen Gale Johnson sprawled face down just inside the front door on top of a floral doormat. So her reading glasses are right next to her on the floor. She was cool to the touch and she was dead. So, yeah, so they said, where the fuck is Bonnie? You know what I mean? So Karen's 11 year old son, she's the one who found her he found his mother and called 911. He was on the front porch with the cordless phone, you know, standing there. He had been playing video games in another room. And he said he didn't hear anything. He doesn't know. He came out looking for his mom and she was face down. So he called 911. He doesn't know what the hell happened. That's the normal routine is Karen will come over with her son to take care of Bonnie. They have a spare bedroom. The son will go in the spare bedroom, play video games while his mom.
- [15:43]
B
Works, send him off to the Nintendo Wii and we'll deal with this.
- [15:47]
A
Yeah, 2012, some PS4 and knock yourself out. So this kid is crying, saying, I didn't hear anything. I don't know what happened. And he doesn't have blood on him or anything like that. He's not a suspect at this point. There's no sign of a struggle here either. There's a broken fingernail on her right hand, but they don't know if that was there before. It's just one fingernail. So they didn't know what the hell was going on here. So they thought maybe. Maybe Karen had a heart attack and dropped dead. And Bonnie didn't know what to do, so she just wandered off because she's confused and old. Maybe she's.
- [16:25]
B
She needs a caretaker.
- [16:26]
A
Yeah, maybe they're on the property. So there's. They said there's plenty of space for that to happen. So they looked. They look all over. They live on a big pecan orchard. So the cops spread out. They get ATVs to go out into the fields to look for because it's pecan trees. So you can't just look out. Yeah, it's not. If it was some short crop, you can just look out and see if she's standing there. But it's not that. So you have to really go explore and see. They go everywhere. Local firefighters, deputies, they get a bloodhound named J.J. from the state prison. All hands on deck, basically, that they have there. A helicopter was dispatched from Waco to Circle. They had heat imaging cameras. I mean, they were looking for fucking bonds. I mean, we have an 85 year old lady lost. You know, she doesn't. And she's not in great health. So they don't know how long she can last out there on her own in the elements, who knows? So they do everything. They go all over the place. There's high bank, along the river, along the riverbank, there's high grass. They search through there they search all along Tommy Lee Jones's fence line. Tommy Lee lives next door? Well, he doesn't live next door, but his property is there. He's got his horses all grazing on the other side.
- [17:39]
B
I bet he does live there.
- [17:40]
A
I mean, he doesn't live there. I know for a fact he doesn't live there. No, it's just his property. Yeah, okay. He doesn't live there. They say that he doesn't live there, like in the thing. It's just one of his properties.
- [17:49]
B
I wonder how much property is there with all that shit you got to pay for all that. That's so expensive.
- [17:54]
A
Well, we'll talk all about it. We got him. We got stats here. So they said that maybe Bonnie had tripped in the orchard and fallen into the river. Possibly. Oh my God. Kind of. The property backs up to a river. So they're like, maybe she did that. They don't know. But the bloodhound followed her trail down the driveway almost to the road and then stopped. So they were like, okay, that looks like getting into a vehicle in the driveway is what that looks like, and then taking off. So what the fuck is going on? Let's talk all about it here. All right, as of 2012, the harky pecan farms we'll talk about because that's the thing here. It's a two story farmhouse and it's 3799 West US Highway 190 is the address. They have been. This family's been here a long time and we'll talk about it. Tommy Lee Jones has a huge cattle ranch property next door. He doesn't do pecans. They have about a 300 acre pecan farm though, the Harkey family. And then Tommy Lee's got an even bigger property, way bigger property next door.
- [19:04]
B
Really?
- [19:04]
A
Oh, it's huge. And he wants their property as well. Oh, yes, he's trying to buy their property. A lot of people think it's he doesn't give a shit about pecans. But good water rights come with that property. And in Texas, water rights are a big fucking deal. So that's a big deal. Apparently San Saba produces up to 5 million pounds a year of pecans. Claims to be the pecan capital of the world, which Chandler, Oklahoma, and Albany, Georgia would like to have a fucking talk with them about. Because they say, bullshit, we are the number one now. Little bit of Harky history. They're one of the first families to settle into the area before pecans were even in industry. They were here.
- [19:45]
B
Really?
- [19:45]
A
Absolutely. Riley and Israel Harkey Two brothers from Arkansas drove the first wagon train into the county while serving as Indian Scouts for the Republic of Texas. I can't. Oh boy, I can't even go through that sentence and pick out all the things that are so outdated and old timey. It's not even funny. Wagon train, Indian Scouts, Republic of Texas. It's all right there for you.
- [20:11]
B
They incredible.
- [20:13]
A
They liked it there. And then they ended up returning in 1855 with their parents and six other siblings. They were like, we got to go to this place, man. They got good soil there and shit. So the Harkey brothers founded Harkeyville, which we talked about as a population of 12, but in its, you know, prime. It had a general store, a cotton mill, a blacksmith shop, a millinery, a racetrack, you know, all sorts of shit.
- [20:38]
B
Now there's only 12 people.
- [20:39]
A
Now there's 12 people. It had a baseball diamond. You can't even get a game going now. You don't need. You're six people short of a game at this point. So that's crazy. The Great Depression shuttered most of the town and that's kind of how it went basically. Like a lot of these small towns, the depression wiped them out. Wiped them out. People went to where the work was. So that was that you got to do. So Riley is described as a man with a long, bushy goatee and a square head. Sounds hot at all. Sounds hot. Dude, that's a very handsome man right there.
- [21:19]
B
That's a problem.
- [21:20]
A
He bought the initial 113.9 acre tract for a farm there in 1885. And then his grandson and eventual heir, Olga Brian Harkey, they named their boy Olga. That stuff. He was born in 1898 here as well as well. So there was already native pecan trees on the property. Oh and yeah, apparently they were considered especially good trees in this area here. So Olga Brian Harky, he planted the first orchard in 1926, installing 1200 trees.
- [21:58]
B
Jesus.
- [21:59]
A
Yeah, but that wasn't even for business. That was just like a hobby. He was dicking around. Turkeys were his business. Absolutely. In 1932 the newspaper said they have been breeding for perfection. And believe now they have a strain that gives Turkey Dom about everything that is to be desired in a turkey. Turkeydom, all of Turkeydom. So 1957, OB he has one child and his name's Riley. So they get together with OB Riley, who was 32 at that point, together with Riley's two sons, 10 year old John, 5 year old Bruce, planted another 1500 trees in the grove that came to be known as Harkeyville Orchard. And the farms matured and they started making a really nice living off of these pecans. Sure doing really well. Now Riley we'll talk about. Riley is Olga Bryan's son. Riley had a lot of, you know, very good work ethic. Obviously he's planting 1500 trees. He gets his 5 year old out there to help me plant trees. That's decent work ethic. He ends up meeting a woman named Bonnie Sawyer Compton. And that's how Bonnie comes into the equation here. They were introduced in 1963. She was working as a telephone operator in Waco. She was divorced and had chill and had a 14 year old daughter of her own named Connie. So Bonnie and Connie. Connie and Bonnie. And now Riley, as we know, has two kids of his own as well, Bruce and John. So we're gonna have some step situations here. Bonnie grew up in a farming family during the Depression. So that tells you a lot. She had a tough life. Yeah, her father was a corn, cotton and wheat farmer. And yeah, her sister Wilma, Bonnie's sister, said it bothered Bonnie that we didn't have any money growing up. She never said anything about it, but I could tell by the way she acted, you know, grabbing her stomach in hunger and shit like that. I could tell she was pissed.
- [24:07]
B
I could tell when she was so skinny.
- [24:10]
A
She looked at her ragged clothes that were falling off her body from where, you know. Jesus Christ. Riley's wife Joan had walked out on him and the boys. So that's why he ended up with Bonnie. Joan took off. She packed up the station wagon and took off for Nevada. Fuck you people. I'm out of here.
- [24:30]
B
Keep the kids.
- [24:31]
A
Keep them. Yeah, I don't give a shit. Keep them. So Bonnie and Riley get married at Waco's Highland Baptist Church. A month after his divorce was finalized, Bonnie quit her job at the phone company. And she and her 14 year old Connie moved into the Harky house on the farm. So that's how Bonnie ended up here. And Bonnie really immersed herself in the town life. She made friends, she joined clubs. She. One of her friends said if there was a club in town, she belonged to it. All about it. She was a big Baptist, by the way. She did all of that. She was a huge reader of Better Homes and Gardens. That was her jam. She kept all of her back issues stacked neatly in the laundry room.
- [25:18]
B
Doesn't even throw them away.
- [25:19]
A
No, no, no. Those are her collector's items. Yeah, I saw an article in 1956 about how to do that garden better. I'm going to go get it. Wow. Interesting.
- [25:29]
B
You can use old flannel shirts to make sheets. That article told me.
- [25:33]
A
Wow, I could use flour sacks to make a dress. Yeah, not bad. So the. They also. She kind of helped fix up the house a little bit here. They added an extra bedroom. They built a sun porch that seats up to 27 people. That's a giant porch. It's a huge porch. Eventually, the home would reach 4,872 square feet.
- [25:56]
B
Nice.
- [25:56]
A
So doing great here. The marriage not so great. Bonnie and Riley. Yeah. One of her friends, or this is her sister, Bonnie's sister said he often criticized her when she'd tell a story. He'd interrupt and say, no, that's not the way it goes. They didn't care. They didn't care. She's a bad storyteller. Is he a dick or is she a bad storyteller? Some people are bad storytellers. Yeah.
- [26:19]
B
It could be both.
- [26:20]
A
When you hook up with somebody, one of the things you have to figure out is, can we tell a story? Can we tell a story together?
- [26:28]
B
Right.
- [26:29]
A
You know what I mean?
- [26:31]
B
Family spokesperson.
- [26:32]
A
That's the other thing. Can one of these people tell the story? And that's a very important deal. And I feel. I don't know if they did that here or not. The sister said they didn't care if they were in public or not. Riley would tell her something wasn't right and she would say, it is. And they'd get into a big fuss over it. Oh, my God. So it wasn't even just like, oh, you know, she'd be like, it is, too. And then they'd argue for 20 minutes in front of people. Jesus Christ.
- [26:57]
B
I love it.
- [26:58]
A
Also, none of the kids like each other, by the way.
- [27:01]
B
The step kids hate each other.
- [27:03]
A
The step kids? Yeah. The boys don't like Connie. Connie doesn't like the boys. And the boys don't like Bonnie either. And yeah, Connie doesn't like Riley. So that's how it is. Apparently. They were. John and Bruce were especially mean to Bonnie. Is from what people said here. Yeah, this is. Bonnie's sister said they would laugh at her and criticize her food. They take a mouthful of food and spit it out. Or they talk about her and giggle all the time and act rude. They had not been trained to be nice boys.
- [27:31]
B
What the fuck?
- [27:33]
A
Someone cooks you food, you fucking eat it. Don't spit it out, you little scumbag. What's wrong with you? Wow. My grandmother would have beat the shit out of me if I did that.
- [27:43]
B
Spit out your stepmom's food.
- [27:46]
A
No, her food. She would have fucking smacked the crap out of me. Your son of a bitch. She'd go crazy over my hide from the Nazis to get here. You know, you can't. It would have been one of those. Yeah, you don't waste food. So they. They said Riley didn't discipline them at all either, so that didn't help either. So Bonnie's relatives stopped coming out to visit for holiday dinners because of the boys. That's how bad it was. Yeah. Bonnie's niece said, I think part of their attitude goes back to being a Harky. They thought the whole county should still revolve around them. Riley trained his sons. He told them that as Harkies, they were special. We're the good people in town. We're the special people. We were here first, and we have land and all that kind of shit. Now Bruce is just looking forward to the day when he can take over the orchards. That's his. He sees that as his birthright. At least a third of the orchards. Yeah. So he expected that at some point when his father was starting to get older, he would hand over the operations to him, just like his father's father did for him. Sure, sure, sure. Because OB Gave him the pecan farming deal before OB Died. So OB could tell that Bruce. By the way, Bruce's name is Bruce Wayne Harkey.
- [29:08]
B
Is that right?
- [29:09]
A
Absolutely. And apparently he was named after Bruce Wayne.
- [29:14]
B
Bruce Wayne.
- [29:15]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't an accident. Yeah. His dad liked Batman, so apparently he saw Bonnie as an obstacle of, like, now I got to deal with this fucking lady, too. He said that, you know, she didn't like them, and she thought that. So he was worried, basically, that she was going to edge him out of this farm somehow.
- [29:35]
B
Maybe he shouldn't have spit out the green beans. Dickhead.
- [29:39]
A
He liked to tell a lot of people that. She made her feelings clear one afternoon when the family was in her new Thunderbird. And he said, I was in the back seat. And I leaned forward and said, so do we call you mom now or what? What do we do? This was right after. That's right after the wedding. And he said, I still have the scar where my brother kicked me. But all she did was laugh. She never responded. Like I could ever birth you losers. No, I don't think so. Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about one of our favorites, Simply safe.
- [30:20]
B
Oh, SimpliSafe.com S I M P L.
- [30:22]
A
I safe.com that's absolutely correct. And if you're anything like us, most important thing for you is probably protecting your family from harm, right? I mean, nothing else matters. If people are coming into your house and, you know, murdering your whole family and robbing your house, what's the difference? That's why us here at Small Town Murder, along with millions of other Americans, we trust Simplisafe with our home security. It's great. Both our studios, our homes, everything that we have is protected with Simplisafe because it is the best security you're gonna get. You can install it incredibly easy on your own. Even I can do it. And I can't put Ikea furniture together. It's so good. I'm telling you, start the year out with greater peace of mind. Visit simplisafe.comsmall to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and your first month free. That's simplisafe.com/s I m p l I safe.com small there's no safe like Simplisafe.
- [31:19]
B
Now back to the show.
- [31:22]
A
Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending. But the worst part is if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history. I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams. And I'm Brooke Zifrin. We've been telling the stories of the rich and famous on the hit Wondery show, Even the Rich. And talking about the latest celebrity news on rich and daily. We're going all over the world on our new show, Even the Royals. We'll be diving headfirst into the lives of the world's kings, queens and all the wannabes in their orbit throughout history. Think succession meets the crown meets real life. We're going to pull back the gilded curtain and show how royal status might be bright and shiny, but it comes at the expense of, well, everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow even the royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts you can listen to even the royals early and ad free right now. By joining Wondery.
- [32:20]
B
His brother kicked him so hard he got a scar.
- [32:22]
A
His brother? Yeah, his brother was like, shut the fuck up. Because he was 5. His brother was 10. So his brother 5 year old's like, do I call you mom? 10 year old's like, don't fucking ask her that. We're not calling her mom. She's just giggling, driving the Car, man. So Bruce claims that Bonnie issued an ultimatum to Riley saying, get rid of that kid or I'm going back to Waco and leaving. You get rid of the kid. So John packed up to go to college in 1965 to go to Texas Tech University. And Connie enrolled there a couple years later. By the way, she was San Saba's homecoming queen. Ol Connie. Now Bruce ends up going back and forth to live with his mother in Nevada and all this type of shit. This is such a small town. When he was 14 and he went to live with his mother, there was an article in the News and Star newspaper with the headline, bruce goes West.
- [33:13]
B
He's fable. Bruce is getting out of town. You guys.
- [33:16]
A
A 7 year old is going to live with his mom in Nevada for a while. Do we have a reporter that can get to the scene? Dateline, San Saba. Like, what the fuck are we talking about?
- [33:27]
B
Someone's getting out, y'all.
- [33:29]
A
He's going. He returned to San Saba for high school, moved in with his grandparents in town rather than live with Bonnie and Riley. So he had. He did a lot of extracurricular activities. He was pretty popular. Popular with the ladies. He met a girl named Judy Bishop and got knocked her up. They got married in August 1969, her and Bruce, and they move into an apartment and Bruce works at a Texaco station. That's how that goes.
- [34:00]
B
Doing great.
- [34:02]
A
She ends up giving birth to a 7 pound 2 ounce boy named Eric Harkey, Bruce's son. He's got some health problems, though. They learn that his epiglottis was not fully formed.
- [34:14]
B
Oh, no.
- [34:15]
A
Which meant that after feedings, he had to be held or laid on his stomach so that he wouldn't choke when he spit up. Oh, no. It's fucking. That's a. That's hardcore. So at one point, Bonnie invited them, the family, the three of them, Bruce's new wife and their young baby, to stay out on the farm for several days. But things went bad. On April 15, 1970. Bruce went to. Was in class, going to college. He sat in English class and apparently the baby stopped breathing. Bonnie took him to the hospital, but by the time she got there, the baby was dead.
- [34:49]
B
God damn it.
- [34:51]
A
The cause of Goddess. Yep. The cause of death was aspiration. Asphyxiation. Never laid down 14 days old, by the way. Poor baby.
- [35:00]
B
Is that like sids, you think, or. It's classified as that.
- [35:04]
A
No, no, no, because it's. She choked on. It's not just a stoppage. That was his condition. That Caused that. I guess Bonnie didn't pay close enough attention to him or something is what Bruce thinks. So it's a lot here. He's going to already be divorced from his wife here very quickly. By January of the next year, they're divorced. He ends up marrying his high school sweetheart at that point named Jennifer Carnes. But that only lasted three months and she moved back to where she was living at the time. Time he dropped out of college, drove trucks in California, did some odd jobs, and then ended up finding work. He went to the Reno Police Department Sheriff's Department in 1978 to be a police officer.
- [35:50]
B
He's junior.
- [35:52]
A
Yeah, he's definitely junior, this guy. He got married and divorced two more times, had a daughter two more times. For now, yeah. Bruce will have a total of eight wives. Eight wives. By the time he is 58 years old, he will have eight fucking wives. Eight. That is a lot. Eight is enough. That's his show. When they put that show on the air, he's like, I pitched this idea. Bullshit.
- [36:22]
B
That's unbelievable.
- [36:23]
A
Holy shit. That is fucking crazy. So, yes, he ends up moving back to Texas. And in 1987, he got a job in the Texas Attorney General's office investigating Medicaid fraud and nursing home abuse, which is pretty ironic considering what ends up happening here. So Bonnie and Riley end up. Connie ended up after college, got married, and they adopted an eight month old in 1984. And that baby they called Carl. So his name is Carl Presley. P R S S L E Y. And Bonnie loved this kid because it was her daughter, her daughter's kid. Even though it wasn't, you know, it was adopted kid, but whatever. So Riley here, remember Bruce's dad here, he purchased a third pecan grove in 1991. 94 acres. And he willed that to Connie. And then the other two groves go to John and Bruce. So each. Everybody gets a grove.
- [37:25]
B
Yeah.
- [37:26]
A
Is the way it works here giving.
- [37:27]
B
You all some nuts?
- [37:29]
A
Yeah. John was when it settled outside 4th Fort Worth and had some kids, and that's what he was doing. Now Riley ends up, we'll talk about dying coming up here pretty soon. And, you know, that kind of fucks everything up here. So he, by the way, Bruce will go back to him. Bruce is mad at Bonnie because of his son dying for years. He holds a grudge even in the 90s. 25 years later, he still says, bonnie killed my son.
- [37:58]
B
The man's been married eight times. It feels like he holds the grudge real strong.
- [38:01]
A
Real strong. Yeah. He ends up becoming A nursing home administrator. In 1994, while he's on wife number seven, 1996, after his 44th birthday, he married his eighth wife, a 20 year old. That's gonna work after. After seven marriages worth of experience.
- [38:22]
B
You didn't understand, James.
- [38:23]
A
I've been whittle it down my own age. You didn't whittle it down to what would work and what wouldn't work. You know what I mean? You think, well, blondes. I'm not good with blondes. Okay, none of them anymore. All right, that's wife number two, four and six, can't have them. Okay, what about you? Just go down the list.
- [38:38]
B
The woman that was married, that was born two years after my first marriage.
- [38:42]
A
What a fucking dude. That is crazy, man. That is crazy. Her name is Cammie Jones. Now apparently Riley, at this point, Bruce is saying, why don't you start stepping down Riley, 1996, and let me run the farm? And Bruce is saying no, he would say so. He would get mad. Cammy said Bruce would say stuff like, well, quote, well, they just need to die so I can have the farm. So Riley Does Die in 1997. Really took his advice, he just said thank you, that is good advice here. So Bonnie though, takes over everything. The three orchards bring in over $100,000 a year in pecan money. So she's sitting pretty, she's doing fine, she stays in the house and that's that. Basically that December she won second place for her pie and cookie entries in the San Saba County Pecan Food Show. Look at that. Now Bruce starts to really spin out. Apparently his marriage with Cammy, he grew very controlling after this. Oh, she's 20, she's 20. She gave birth to their daughter in 1998. And he would, then after that he was awful to Cammie, apparently. He would choke her, pull her hair, hold a gun to her head, things like that, fun stuff. Threatening to kill her, basically. One time she didn't have dinner on the table by 6:00, which was his rule, and he threatened to kill her for it. So that was nice. So when their daughter was four, Kami walked out on him. And so what he did is he's a nursing home administrator, he's all pissed off. He told a co worker at the nursing home that he was thinking about how to kill Cammy. How do I do this? He gave the co worker three guns, two old Chinese military rifles and a semiautomatic.22, asking him to, can you scrape these serial numbers off? Is that possible?
- [40:43]
B
Do you Got a Dremel at home.
- [40:45]
A
You got any of that? Then he talked about, this is funny. He had an idea. He goes, I think I know how to do it. One day, this is how I'm gonna kill her. I'm gonna put poison on her steering wheel. And then she'll hold it and it'll seep into her body and she'll die. So the co worker and Bruce's boss were so freaked out by this that they told the fucking police.
- [41:06]
B
Good. Yeah.
- [41:07]
A
And a Texas Ranger and an ATF agent began to record Bruce's conversations. Now they set up a sting operation where an informant provided Bruce with an illegal silencer. And federal agents arrested him, charging him with possession of firearm in connection with a crime of violence. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and all of that kind of thing. And his lawyer tried to say it was just all talk.
- [41:33]
B
He bought a silencer.
- [41:35]
A
And you gave someone guns and said, can you get the serial numbers off of these? That's a lot more than talk.
- [41:40]
B
You make this planning less traceable and get me a silencer. God damn.
- [41:44]
A
The judge said, you, sir, may fuck off. Five years in federal prison for you. He was released in 2007 and returned to San Saba. He had to have an address at this point for parole and shit. So he sent a letter to Bonnie saying, please let me live on the farm. Bonnie said that after she talked it over with her pastor, she agreed. I think the pastor probably told her, hey, you know, that's your stepson. And you know this whole Christian thing, We're supposed to be nice to people and shit. So you should probably let him stay here. I would assume so. Anyway. Bruce moves into an upstairs bedroom where his ex wife, one of Jennifer Carnes, remember her?
- [42:29]
B
Yeah.
- [42:30]
A
She moves back in with him. Yeah, they get back together. They fixed up a little apartment on the property there and did all of that shit. So now he can't find work though, because he's a convicted felon. And everyone around town knows he wanted to have his wife killed. So that doesn't work.
- [42:47]
B
Tried to kill a young woman.
- [42:49]
A
Yeah, they said that at that point the orchards were starting to kind of fall apart a little bit. Yeah, Jennifer said the orchards were in such horrible condition because Bonnie and Connie didn't know how to run a farm or what to do with pecan trees. So, yeah, that's how that worked, I guess As a favor to their friend's son here. They hired him to clean out their barn. But it was a short term deal. One afternoon this guy showed up at the Oliver Pecan Company an hour before closing time to ask for a job. This is Bruce showing up. And they said, quote, he just had a meltdown. He stayed for about two hours and cried. This is an hour before closing. So these people had to stay past the end of their shift to listen.
- [43:38]
B
To a stranger cry, listen to a grown man cry.
- [43:43]
A
The guy there said, he told me I'm the brokest millionaire in San Saba county because he had the property he couldn't touch. He also filed for bankruptcy in 1998 to discharge $176,256 worth of debts and owed more than $100,000 in back child support to CAMI. $100,000.
- [44:03]
B
He hasn't paid a dime.
- [44:05]
A
Wow. A former Texas ranger who knew him said if you asked him what time it was, he'd tell you how to build a watch. One of those guys, he said, there's no secrets around here. And if there is a secret, someone will make up a story to fill in the gaps. The Harkies had that reputation that there was always some trouble brewing after Riley died. I guess with any big estate worth any kind of value, you got a bunch of people involved, there's gonna be fuss. They love fuss here. They replaced the word fighting with fuss.
- [44:35]
B
Everybody's fussing.
- [44:36]
A
Everybody's fussing about. Now, Carl. Let's talk about Carl here. Remember Carl? Carl is Connie's adopted son. Yeah, yeah. Bruce began to hang out with Carl more around this time.
- [44:49]
B
Why? He's what?
- [44:51]
A
Carl's in his 20s. Carl developed two loves as an adult.
- [44:58]
B
Uh.
- [44:58]
A
Oh, motorcycles and methamphetamine. The two M's. The big M's right there, Those are his two big ones.
- [45:05]
B
The M and Ms. That real go together.
- [45:07]
A
Yep. This article describes him, at 24 years old, as having the meth. Has worn his bottom teeth down to little yellow stubs.
- [45:17]
B
How old?
- [45:18]
A
24.
- [45:19]
B
Oh, my God.
- [45:21]
A
Yeah, he's got a problem. Bonnie spoiled him fucking rotten, basically. He's been living with Bonnie for a while now. Connie and he would stay here while Connie did something else. She bought him a truck. When he ruined it, he said he wanted to raise boar goats, so she bought him a flock of them and shit like that. Like just whatever he wants. Yeah, she's the apple of his eye. I mean, she had a daughter. She didn't have any sons. This is a son. He dropped out of high school after the 11th grade and went to work in the oil fields. Then he married a local woman in 2003 when he was 19. They had a daughter and a son. They separated. Carl started dating Lillian King, who he had another daughter with in 2008. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's gonna keep having kids.
- [46:12]
B
He's 24 and has three kids and no teeth.
- [46:14]
A
Three kids, no teeth, and a pocket full of meth.
- [46:17]
B
Oh, my God.
- [46:19]
A
But a sweet motorcycle. It's sweet.
- [46:23]
B
He's also in charge of orchards and can't even eat the fucking pond. No.
- [46:26]
A
Fuck, no. He's like, oh, man, they look crunchy. He also has got a pretty good criminal record, too. He was. Charges include trespassing, domestic violence in 2005. The domestic violence isn't for a woman, by the way. In 2005, he allegedly tried to run his stepfather over with a tractor, which is a very small town murder kind of crime right there. That's wild. He also, you know, realized that pecans are worth a lot of money.
- [46:58]
B
Yeah.
- [46:58]
A
He said, you know, a truck full of nuts is worth a lot of money. So he started stealing pecans from the barn. One guy said Carl would show up with a pickup full of pecans, and we bought them. We didn't know he stole them.
- [47:12]
B
How could you tell? How would you know?
- [47:15]
A
Carl's such a fuck up. He's banned from the First Baptist Church.
- [47:20]
B
You can't even come where we forgive people.
- [47:23]
A
The church is like, come here to get redemption and all this type of shit. Except you asshole. You fuck everything up when you come here.
- [47:30]
B
We will not redeem nor forgive you ever.
- [47:33]
A
Shit, no. Apparently he showed up at Bible study on a Wednesday one time to demand money from Bonnie. And the pastor said if he was coming to worship and study, that was fine, but we didn't want that anger. Another time, Bonnie refused to buy him a new set of tires. So he blocked her car with his truck and refused to let her leave the house. Essentially kidnapped his step grandma or his grandmother here.
- [47:57]
B
Until you get me some new BFGs.
- [47:59]
A
Oh, my God. But she kept giving him money. Her niece said the more we tried to convince her to get away from him, the more she would say it was not the Christian thing to do, but he was bleeding her dry. 2011. Connie, Bonnie's daughter, Carl's mom, dies of pneumonia.
- [48:17]
B
Really?
- [48:18]
A
Yes, she dies.
- [48:20]
B
How old is she?
- [48:21]
A
She was 62, I think, or something like that. 2012, the Harky Bunch. Here they are. Bonnie, 85 years old. The pecan queen of the county, as she's known, the matriarch. She's got white, puffy hair. She looks like. If you said, draw me a Picture of a little old Baptist lady in Texas, you would draw her. Little old lady, white curly hair.
- [48:43]
B
She looks like that Mennonite dress. Yeah, the old lady from the Warner Brothers cartoons that beats up the cat.
- [48:50]
A
Yeah.
- [48:51]
B
Away from Tweety.
- [48:52]
A
Exactly. Yeah. She's got a pie cooling on the windowsill, one of those things.
- [48:56]
B
And a broom is her favorite weapon.
- [48:58]
A
Oh, yeah. She's in garden club and goes to all the Sunday school and everything like that. But she's also suffering from dementia, and she was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm. So she's on her way out. She's 85, not well and not well. Good health at all. She's on her way out. She declined a lot. She still lived on the home, though, and everything. But Bruce said that she couldn't recognize him or his wife when they visited about her in 2012. Bruce said, we knew that Bonnie was in horrible physical and mental condition, but she was also lucid about some things. Her daughter Connie had her driver's license revoked, had Bonnie's driver's license revoked. So Bonnie wrote a letter to the Texas Department of Public Safety to contest it.
- [49:47]
B
Could you maybe give her the back tour, please?
- [49:50]
A
She said, I really don't know what caused someone to report that I am incapable of operating an automobile. I. I try to be careful when driving. I do not take any medicine that would cause me, that would cause unsafe driving. I do drive slowly more times than I should because I would not want to hurt anyone. I do have family who want the property I live on. And I have heard many times they want to get rid of me. She wrote that. That's interesting. Her friend Betty Ann, who would stop by to fucking see her all the time, said, every time I went, she said, please do not let them take my home away from me, Betty Ann. I want to stay here as long as I can. Then you got Bruce the son who's got a murder for hire plot that happened already. Former police officer and Texas Attorney General's office investigator and ex husband of eight women. So, yeah, that's wild.
- [50:44]
B
Really. Living the opposite life of Bruce Wayne.
- [50:47]
A
Totally. Absolutely. Annette King is Bruce's common law wife at this point. A new one. In here now we have Carl Wade Presley. He's the grandson. He's about 27 at this point. And she the one that she's been given all this fucking money to and all that kind of thing. No teeth in his head. Yeah, totally not. Lot of jail stints, by the way, for Carl, besides the tractor incident. He also went to jail for harassment of his uncle, driving with an invalid license and violating probation by threatening his mother.
- [51:22]
B
Texas Murdaughs that's what they are.
- [51:24]
A
Yes, that's kind of what they are. Except not as rich. Yeah, Bruce said. Carl ran through money like water. She's the only woman who ever nurtured, ever cared for him, provided for him, gave him everything in the world that he ever wanted. And yeah, Lillian King is his girlfriend. She's 24. Tommy Lee Jones lives next door. That's the cast of characters at this point. So Bruce and John, the brothers, Briley's kids, Bonnie step kids, they saw their inheritance and they started wrangling over the property. In 2011, the pro the brothers had persuaded Carl to sell them his future rights to the orchard that his mother had for $75,000, even though the property was valued at $500,000. Well, those are meth prices.
- [52:11]
B
Fire sale.
- [52:12]
A
That's what a meth person. It's a $500,000 orchard. I'll give it to you. 75 grand. What do you say? Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media fueled fight.
- [52:26]
B
Over Harvard and its new president broke.
- [52:28]
A
Out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. This is the Harvard Plan, a special.
- [52:37]
B
Series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's.
- [52:40]
A
On the Media to Listen. Subscribe to on the Media wherever you get your podcasts. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, haunting sight, spirits and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada as we journey through terrifying and bone chilling stories of the unexplained search for haunted Canada on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. He was hip hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy Party. So, yeah, that's your son. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was up and I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses.
- [54:29]
B
I'm disgusted.
- [54:30]
A
I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy.
- [54:44]
B
Listen.
- [54:45]
A
To the rise and fall of Diddy. Exclusively with Wondery. That is fucking funny. Now, Bruce was broke, so Carl didn't see any of that money until a little bit later when another sale was approved of a field that they had and all this type of shit. But the most of all, their neighbor, Tommy Lee Jones, wants their property. He bought his property in 1981 and had amassed a 5050 acre ranch.
- [55:13]
B
Holy shit.
- [55:15]
A
Tommy Lee just adds on to it. Every.
- [55:18]
B
Trying never to see anybody, every movie.
- [55:21]
A
He just adds on to it. He's like, that's what you're like, why is he in all these shit movies? That's why. He's like, this is my happy face. They're like, why is he doing that? This is why.
- [55:30]
B
Men in Black eight. You bet.
- [55:32]
A
Doesn't care. I'll do it. More property.
- [55:36]
B
Wow.
- [55:36]
A
So, yeah, he's doing all this type of shit. He's trying to buy these. These properties here. John and Bruce reached out to him and after some negotiation through an intermediary, Tommy Lee Jones put down an offer of $541,822.50 on the offer. The brothers accepted. Contract was drawn up. But Bonnie still lives there.
- [56:00]
B
Yeah. You can't get rid of her. What's the agreement?
- [56:05]
A
That's the problem. So Bonnie's lawyer looked over the deal and found the terms were not beneficial to her at all and said, you can't do this.
- [56:11]
B
We're not doing it. Yeah.
- [56:12]
A
So Bonnie was pissed off at this point and Bruce is mad at her. And everybody's. Everybody's all goddamn pissed off here. So, yeah. So they decide, look, we gotta get this money. We're gonna get this money and we can't get it as long as she's alive. We're gonna sit here and wait and watch her wither away. So instead, Bruce goes to Carl and says, tell you what, Carl, I'll give you $500, 500 big ones to make her gone. This Weekend. Okay. Then after she's dead, I'll give you $55,000. So a down payment of 500 followed by 55,000, which is.
- [56:54]
B
You're gonna get 55,500 to do this.
- [56:57]
A
That's it. So Bonnie woke up, she ate breakfast. Karen, who brought along the young son. This is March 25, 2012, the day this all happened here. Brought along her young son. She drove Bonnie to church and Bonnie's gold Chevy Malibu. After Sunday school, they attended the 10:30 service, sitting in the sixth row listening to the pastor. It was deal. Afterward, they went home. Bonnie changed out of her Sunday clothes and Karen's son went into play in the bedroom. And Bonnie sat in her maroon or recliner to watch television and read magazines like she normally did. Not bad. So then you get the 911 call. Everybody goes, they find Karen Johnson now? No. Now, after reconstructing Bonnie's movements that morning, the search team had no fucking idea where she was. They looked. I told you. They didn't know if she fell in a river, she's in the pecan fields. So the sheriff, one of the sheriffs, said, someone's gotta go back to the office to be near the phones in case someone calls. Literally, everyone was out. Everybody went, everybody. The phones are ringing off the fucking hook at the police station.
- [58:06]
B
There's a water leak. There's just spraying everywhere.
- [58:08]
A
It's fucking crazy. It's all sorts of. There's food deliveries going. No one's getting them. So about 8:30pm that night, a call comes in. And it's Lillian King's mother, that is, Carl's girlfriend's mother. She knew that her daughter and Carl had been out at the Harkey house that afternoon and had asked a friend to contact the sheriff. When she learned that Karen was dead, she said, I know things are crazy right now, but I might have some information about where Bonnie Harkey is. I'm 99% sure that Carl Presley is involved. That's what she said. So they spent the next few hours, the cops do, trying to find Carl and Lillian and also requesting a silver alert for Bonnie and a statewide APB on Carl's Mustang. So finally, at 2 in the morning, they call Carl's cell phone all night. Finally, at two in the morning, he answers.
- [59:00]
B
Oh.
- [59:00]
A
He and Lillian were in Norman G, which is four hours east of San Saba, staying at a. At a campground. So they told him, get your ass back here immediately. Karen's dead. Bonnie's missing. Let's go. Lillian said Carl started crying at this point, but they weren't real tears. So they get to the station, they're separated immediately. And Carl said that, yeah, I did. I took Bonnie for a drive in her car. He said, we went to the San Saba river and that's what happened. So we just hung out. And then, I don't know, I brought her home and she's. I don't know where she wandered off to.
- [59:43]
B
An 85 year old woman wanted to run down to the river.
- [59:46]
A
You know, she likes the river down there. She was going swimming, so she likes to fight the current. It's good for her. It's good cardio. So then Lillian in the other room just breaks down and says, it was eating me alive. I just couldn't do it anymore.
- [59:59]
B
What?
- [60:00]
A
So they separate them, obviously, and they sat in the sally port of the jail, which is where the cop cars are, are where they could use a patrol car's dash cam to record the interrogation. Because they don't have a fucking interrogation room with a camera in it in 2012. Dude, in 2012, they don't have a fucking interrogation room with a camera.
- [60:26]
B
It does have a spotlight. Wow. Put her under the hot one.
- [60:30]
A
And he said, we don't have the budget of big cities. So he had to use the same thing we used to record traffic stops to record a capital homicide confession.
- [60:39]
B
Unbelievable.
- [60:41]
A
So they're trying to lock Carl into a story. And he said, yeah, me and Lillian went out there. And he said that. He's just bullshitting. Basically through it, he's saying that, yeah, now he says, I took. Because they said your girlfriend said you took her? And he said, yeah, I did take my grandmother out of the house to protect her from some tough guys I owed money to. They were mad at me. I'm trying to protect her. He said, I picked her up in the evening, Look, I am on drugs, obviously. Drives her to a Rainey's Crossing and drops her off in the bushes. He says, I said, stay here in the bushes and hang out. They said, no, that's probably not true. So he said, okay, yeah, that's not true. You're right. I took Bonnie back to my trailer in Normandy. And he said, yeah, I really miss my grandmother. And they were like, well, isn't she at your trailer in Normandy? What the fuck are you talking about? And that's weird. And so that all goes on. Finally, about two hours later, he says, fine. And he says, quote, she ain't gonna forgive me. No, he says, and the sergeant says, your grandmother's forgiven you for Everything else. Why wouldn't she forgive you for this? Just tell us. So finally he said. Okay, fine. Lillian dropped me off at the house while Bonnie was at church. I climbed through a window and hid downstairs and smoked meth while I waited for her to return.
- [62:07]
B
Why would you do that?
- [62:08]
A
Okay. When Bonnie and Karen get home, he texted Lillian, who was to come back and ring the doorbell, serving as a distraction while he tiptoed into Bonnie's bedroom. This is a meth plan. He planned to smother Bonnie with a pillow at nap time. He was gonna hide in the closet till she went to sleep, then pop out and fucking smother with a pillow.
- [62:27]
B
And that's gonna.
- [62:28]
A
Okay, okay. So that was the plan. And then he was gonna sneak out. But he said Karen spotted him as she answered the door. She answered the door for Lillian, and he was going to run in the bedroom, but she. It's a fucking. I don't know if she thought that. He thought Karen was blind and deaf also, or also 85, but she's a 50 year old lady. It was fine.
- [62:50]
B
Really focused on answering that door totally.
- [62:54]
A
So apparently that was the problem. Karen spotted him. He said he panicked and tackled her in a bear hug and threw her to the floor where he suffocated her beneath his body weight. He just smushed her until she couldn't breathe anymore and died. This poor lady.
- [63:12]
B
A meth head did that.
- [63:13]
A
A meth addict. Holy shit. Lillian, meanwhile, kept Bonnie occupied in the living room, away from all this with conversation and the tv. They're having a nice chat. Oh, you went where? Oh, that's nice. While he's suffocating a woman.
- [63:26]
B
That was the sermon.
- [63:28]
A
Carl then went to find Bonnie and asked if they could pray together in her bedroom. We go in your bedroom and pray together. Can't pray out here. Obviously. God's only in your bedroom.
- [63:36]
B
So how Baptist is she?
- [63:39]
A
Very. She agreed. They said her Bible sits on a doily on her coffee table, like it's a special thing. Yeah, she agreed. They sat together at the foot of the bed and prayed. And then Carl lunged toward her with a pillow. He said he stopped short of smothering her when he thought he heard the doorbell ringing. Then Bonnie called out to Lillian that Carl's trying to kill me. And then Carl somehow convinced Bonnie that. No, no, no, no. I wasn't trying to kill you. I was helping and convinced her of it because she's an old lady with dementia. Then he said we should all go for a drive. Come on, let's go. For a drive. It's a nice day. So they all got into Carl's car. He insisted that Lillian drive because his license had been revoked. Obviously. They went for the campground in Normandy. Or Normandy, I don't know which one it is. Where a friend from his motorcycle club had loaned him an rv, he said. But by the time they arrived, it was evening. And Carl told Bonnie that he wanted to show her a real nice fishing hole, like all 85 year old ladies care about. So she said, oh, okay, sure, dear. Because she's a nice old lady and it's her grandson. Fuck. So they walked. Yep, they walked. To a nearby ravine and down the embankment to a small stream where he hit her over the head with a dead tree branch. This is a fucking 85 year old lady. And pushed her face. The water's only ankle deep. He pushed her face into it until she stopped struggling. He fucking drowned her in ankle deep shitty brown water. Then he covered her up with leaves and mud by the handful and left.
- [65:16]
B
Oh my. What?
- [65:18]
A
Left her there? Yeah. So they said, who else is involved? And he said, lily. And they said, who else? And then he thought for a moment and looked down. And then he said, bruce wanted me to get rid of her and take care of her. He put money in my bank account. According to Carl, Bruce had come to see him on Friday to propose a deal. Get rid of Bonnie this weekend. I'll pay you. I'm gonna be out of town. I don't want nothing to do with it. Don't tell anyone I had anything to do with it. Bruce gave him $100. $100, that's all I need. $100 cash. With the promise of depositing 350 more in his bank account on Monday after it's done. And then he said, of course, we'll give you all that later. Here. He initially offered 500, but Carl offered to do it for $50 less, knowing that Bruce was kind of broke.
- [66:09]
B
I'll do it for 450.
- [66:10]
A
The cop later said. Carl has not been accused of being very intelligent. Which I could tell you that right now. I don't know if it's the meth or what. It's fucking crazy. He said that all Bruce ever talked about was Bonnie killed my son. She needs to suffer the way my son did. Bruce told me, wow, that is fucking wild. I don't even know what to say about that. So according to Carl, he approached another potential man about killing Bonnie. But the guy wanted 10 grand for it. So he's like, never mind, I'LL just have Carl do it. Yeah, Bruce told him, you know, I tried to get a guy to do it, but, you know, hitmen are expensive. You're a methad. You'll do it. He wanted more money than I have, man. So, yeah, when they searched for Bonnie, they found her. He led them to the body. They found her curled up in the fetal position and buried under a thick layer of leaves and mud caked into her white hair. Autopsy reveals? We'll find out. But she'd been hit over the head and drowned in shallow water, just like he said. He was honest with that. The preliminary autopsy said she died of a combination of homicidal violence comprising blunt force head injuries and probable asphyxia, including drowning. Water was found in her lungs, indicating she was still breathing when she was put under the water. Yeah, Carl's friend here said that he got a message, phone message from Carl about his grandmother's death. And he said he was this guy. Said, I was trying to help Carl rebuild his life and all this type of shit. I got him into a trailer home. I got dropping interviews lined up for him. I gave him gas money. He said, quote, I feel like I got stabbed in the back. At least you didn't get drowned in a shallow creek. It's better than that.
- [67:53]
B
Could have been worse.
- [67:55]
A
So a few hours after Carl's confession, Bruce gets news that the investigation knows about him. So he called the sheriff himself, and he said, sheriff Brown. He said, allen, I just got a phone call from my wife saying she just got a phone call about you coming to arrest me, my brother and her. I said, for what? And they said, yeah, you're gonna get arrested, stupid. And he was arrested.
- [68:19]
B
I've heard about you.
- [68:20]
A
He said, I didn't do it. He said, first of all, I wouldn't hire Forrest Gump to commit murder. That's what Carl said. He calls Carl Forrest Gump. You know what I'm saying? He said, second of all, if I thought somebody needed killing that bad, I'd take care of it myself.
- [68:34]
B
Oh, he's a stone cold killer.
- [68:37]
A
Not higher fucking Forrest Gump to do it. But then they talked to all sorts of people. Basically everyone in town said, oh, yeah, he's all I heard him say, I just wish the old bitch was dead. I wish that old bitch would die already. Another one said, quote, I told him that I could just get the money and go to Belize, go to South America now. It's wild here. So he had an alibi because he was. He. You know, he knows to make an alibi for himself. He was outside of Fort Worth at a friend's house when all this was going down on purpose. Yeah, he said, I'm going out of town. So anyway, by the time the three, within 72 hours of the murder here, Bruce is in jail, Carl's in jail, and so is. So is Carl's. Lillian there. So Lillian. And she goes by Annette sometimes. I don't know why. So they're all. I don't know if it's her middle name. Who knows? They're all sent to different county jails, I guess. Jennifer, Bruce's wife, was never arrested. And John, they were looking into him, the other brother, but he died of a heart attack three months later. So they just said, well, fuck it, I guess.
- [69:45]
B
I mean, he may have been part of it. We don't know. Maybe that killed him.
- [69:49]
A
Oh, my God. So, yeah, maybe that was it. Yeah. My brother killed my mother. That's crazy. So they. The. The. I guess they. He's got about. The family owns about 200 acres, they said, and they didn't know who will control the property at this point. It's one of those things, you know, that's all up in the air. So Bruce goes to trial. They say this was all about greed. May go down a list. He believed that Bonnie was responsible for his son's death. Resented Bonnie and referred to her using insults and expletives. Told people he wished she would die. A few days before the murder, King's mother overheard. This is Annette's. Lillian's mother overheard Carl tell another person that on the phone that Carl needed $100. She also overheard another conversation with Carl, said he. In which Carl said he needed $250 if the other person, quote, wanted something done. Yeah. Harkey told several people he was going to be out of town that weekend, emphasizing in an unusual way that he was going to be gone all weekend.
- [70:51]
B
I'm gonna be gone, you guys.
- [70:53]
A
I won't be back till Monday. Like on Sunday. Yeah, I'll be gone the whole day. Like, not coming back till the next day.
- [71:01]
B
Yeah, it's gonna be a while. At least. 2448.
- [71:03]
A
Fuck. Cell phone records show that Carl called Bruce twice the day of the murders. Bruce told an investigator that he could have killed Bonnie himself if he wanted to, and specifically mentioned he could have pushed her off a riverbank or put a pillow over her face. It's like, I could do that. He goes down a list for the investigators. I could have killed her this way, that way. Yeah, it's It's a lot here. And they said they had also evidence that Harkey had previously tried to have Bonnie killed as well. Testimony that Harkey had solicited two people to kill a sheriff, a justice of the peace, two lawyers, and two of his ex wives, too. These are all the different murders he's plotted.
- [71:44]
B
He just. He gets in relationships, people. And then just like, I'll kill everybody.
- [71:47]
A
I'll kill all y'all. So in exchange for a lighter sentence, Carl and Lillian testify against Bruce.
- [71:53]
B
Sure.
- [71:54]
A
They also hear from two inmates from where Bruce is housed in jail, including one member of the Aryan Brotherhood who claim that Bruce tried to hire them from jail to kill both Carl and fucking Lillian.
- [72:08]
B
I heard y'all are real bad men.
- [72:11]
A
Wow. One of Bruce's attorneys in the closing said that there's no evidence that links him to the killings at all. Nothing. He said, so what if those two testified that they were hired? That's bullshit. The verdict. The jury took an hour to reach the verdict of fucking guilty for Bruce.
- [72:28]
B
Holy shit. He couldn't be more guilty.
- [72:30]
A
Couldn't be more guilty. One of the cops said, quote, he was. He genuinely thought he was fixing to get a not guilty verdict.
- [72:37]
B
Genuinely thought.
- [72:38]
A
Genuinely thought. And when the jury read it out, his mouth dropped open and his shoulders dropped. He was floored, Getting fucked. Speaking of floored, you, sir, may fuck off. Life without parole for Bruce.
- [72:53]
B
Welcome to Texas.
- [72:55]
A
Welcome to Texas. For. He's lucky he didn't get the fucking death penalty for that shit. So the. It's a lot. Carl and Lillian, on the other hand, they're gonna get sentenced here. Carl. You, sir, may fuck off. You might not know where you are because you're a little Stunard, but that's okay. Life without parole.
- [73:15]
B
Same shit.
- [73:16]
A
Same shit. So no lighter sentence there. They just said, we'll take the death penalty off the table. At her hearing, Lillian here sobbed uncontrollably. The sheriff handed her a cup of water and said, you're making out better than anyone else in this by far.
- [73:31]
B
Don't worry about it.
- [73:32]
A
You, ma'am, may fuck off. 45 years in prison.
- [73:36]
B
There's a silver lining.
- [73:38]
A
It's silver lining. She's eligible for parole in 2034, I believe. Fuck, that's amazing. And then outside the courtroom, a witness who watched the whole trial and knows all these people said. They said, what do you have to say about this? You know, all the participants. You watched the whole trial and sum it up for us. And he said, well, we're just trying to Figure out who Tommy Lee Jones plays in the movie if he doesn't play himself. Oh, God.
- [74:08]
B
So Bruce is looking forward to Hollywood cast in this one.
- [74:12]
A
That's amazing. Bruce is housed at the James V. Allred unit in Wichita Falls, Texas. Carl and Bruce in prison, by the way. Holy shit. It's fucking funny. Carl said Bruce could con you into any doing anything he wanted you to do. He said, I thought Bruce was my best friend, but he don't care about anybody but himself.
- [74:31]
B
Bruce.
- [74:32]
A
That's right, he said. And then the author reached out to Bruce and Bruce said, the real story is of greed, corruption, love, hate, lies and violence. And I'm the only one left alive that knows the truth. That's right, he said, was I enamored or happy about Bonnie Harkey? No. I never did like her, never did get along with her, but that didn't mean that I was responsible for her murder. She's the closest thing to a mother that I've ever had. That's what she said. Yeah, I would say so. Carl said, quote or no, Bruce said, how is it if I'm the mastermind, that I established an alibi before I plan the crime? Exactly. That's what you did. Masterminds do totally. He then said, I didn't have anything to do with the death of Bonnie Harkey or Ms. Johnson. Nothing. If I waste my time and energy hating the people I've claimed I did, I'm taking away time for my loving wife and children. Which one? Which of your eight wives? And I won't do that. All I want to do is get cleared up and go home, clear it all up.
- [75:35]
B
It's real foggy around here. Nobody knows what happened.
- [75:38]
A
Shit. So that's fucking amazing. Carl's legal wife, by the way, who he wasn't living with. Just like three wives ago, Melissa Pafford and their two children, they move into the house, into the pecan house. The pecan house? Yeah, apparently. They said it appears the orchards would be divided up among them and the heirs. At this point, if you look up the house, it is like a one acre property. It's not. It's separated from the farms now.
- [76:04]
B
All the shit is gone and it's just the house.
- [76:07]
A
They had people, I guess, farming the property that had a lease, their lease ran out and that was that. That's how it goes. The author said that they drove up to the house to look at it and said as I got out to read the inscription, the property's owner, a mustachioed 74 year old named Larry Hibbler wrote up to me on an atv. He said this was all Harky before the whole area. He said his son had built the house where the Harky blacksmith shop once stood. And they said you could still find racing horseshoes if you dug in the dirt. This guy said, but I'm the mayor of Harkeyville now. And he looked around and said, there aren't any Harkies left. All gone. They did a city confidential on this, by the way, called San Saba's Deadly Harvest. So there you go, everybody. We're running late. I'm gonna run through the end real fucking quick. That's a crazy goddamn story. That's what I was trying to say. It's a lot to cram into an express. It's a lot. A huge piece of shit and Forrest Gump's a murderer. So there we go. Very interesting. Check out Shut up and give me murder dot com. February 7th we are in Pittsburgh. Get those tickets now. Next night in Columbus is sold out guys. So get your tickets right there. Also certainly get tickets for Madison, which just was released that date if you want to go because that show is almost sold out already. It's been on for sale for a day. So get in there right now and get those tickets for the rest of the year. Definitely. Shut up and give me murder.com patreon.com crime and sports all the bonus episodes you want. $5 a month gets you hundreds of back episodes of bonus shit. New ones every other week. This week for crime and sports. Football player finishing up a murder trial. Part two of West Memphis three. How the fuck did we end up here? We'll get to that. Patreon.com CrimeAndSports follow Smalltown Murder on Instagram Small Town pod on Facebook. ShutUpAndGiveMurder.com is the website. Keep coming back and seeing us until next week everybody. It's been our pleasure. By if you like small town murder, you can listen early and ad free now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey. And@wondery.com survey UFO lands in Suffolk. And that's official, said the News of the World. But what really happened across two nights in December 1980 when US servicemen saw mysterious lights in the forest near RAF Woodbridge and claimed to have had a close encounter with an actual craft Encounters A new podcast available exclusively on Wondery takes a deep dive into one of the most famous and still unresolved UFO encounters to ever take place in the uk. Featuring shocking testimony from first hand witnesses, hosts, journalist, podcaster and UFO researcher Andy McVillan that's me and producer L. Scott take us back to the nights in question and examine all of the evidence and conflicting theories about what was encountered in the middle of a Snowy Suffolk Forest 40 years ago. Are we Alone? Encounters as a podcast which is going to find out. Listen to Encounters exclusively and ad free on Wondry plus. Join Wondry plus in the Wondry app or in Apple Podcasts.