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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
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- [01:32]
Hypnosis Practitioner
your two fingers up. Your two index fingers are about an inch. There you go. Okay, I want you to concentrate and focus on the space in between your fingers. Just take a deep breath and relax.
- [01:44]
Michelle Pitcher
It's February 4, 1998, and a petite blonde woman named Jill Bargainier is sitting in a desk chair. She's dressed in jeans and a striped shirt and she has those feathered bangs that were all the rage at the time. She's about to be hypnotized for the first time and you can tell she's nervous. She keeps pivoting back and forth in her seat.
- [02:05]
Hypnosis Practitioner
You're going to find that the space is starting to get smaller and smaller the smaller the space get. Your eyes are starting to become a little bit more, a little bit more tired. And when your fingers finally do come together, then and only then, it's okay for you to close your eyes and to rely.
- [02:23]
Michelle Pitcher
This isn't a stage performance or a street act. There's not a crowd of skeptics waiting to be wowed Voter have their doubts proven. Jill is sitting in an office at the farmer's branch police department in North Texas. An officer named Roan Cerna, who's also new to hypnosis, is the one hypnotizing her. He's trying to get her to remember some new details about something she'd seen a few days earlier.
- [02:47]
Hypnosis Practitioner
When we get you into a deep state of hypnosis, we're going to take you to a theater. It's going to be your own private theater. And basically what it is, you're going to be seeing a documentary. You're going to be seeing the film of the events that occur on that morning. Okay, I'm going to ask you to tell me what it is that you're seeing.
- [03:05]
Michelle Pitcher
Now, memory doesn't actually work that way. Like a tape, you can pause, rewind, and zoom in on something. You can narrate with perfect accuracy. But this was 1998, and hypnosis sessions like this one were more common than you might think. It was called forensic or investigative hypnosis, and it was used in cases where police were stuck or witnesses were having trouble remembering what they saw. In this case, Jill asked for the hypnosis session herself. She wanted to calm her nerves while she remembered what she saw out of her window the morning of January 29, 1998.
- [03:39]
Hypnosis Practitioner
I want you just to imagine, if you will, in your mind's eye all the stress and all the tension that's been built up in your brain that's shooting after fingertips, Almost a magical, mystical feel. You're going to count down from 100 to 0. You're going to do a breathing technique to help you get more aligned, to help you swim deeper and deeper into 199.
- [04:01]
Michelle Pitcher
As the police officer counts down, Jill slips into hypnosis and she tells him what she sees in her mind's eye. What Jill remembers then and what she says in court a year later will have huge consequences. Her story helped send a man to death row. How her story changed has been key to that man's attempts to save his own life.
- [04:26]
Wes Ferguson
Charles Don Flores was sentenced to die for a brutal home invasion and murder in the Dallas suburbs. Is he guilty of the crime? Or is the state of Texas about to execute an innocent man?
- [04:38]
Charles Flores
They say that you broke into a house and killed an old lady. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
- [04:46]
Gretchen Swenegan
They have no DNA. They have no fingerprints, they have no ballistics, they have no fibers. They have nothing that you would think of as objective evidence connecting Charles to this crime scene.
- [04:57]
Jeff Aschebranner
I mean, honestly, this was not a hard case.
- [05:00]
Wes Ferguson
We had a lot more evidence in
- [05:03]
Michelle Pitcher
this case Than I've had in a
- [05:04]
Hypnosis Practitioner
lot of other cases that we put
- [05:06]
Michelle Pitcher
people on death row.
- [05:07]
Charles Flores
You want to know all the dirt?
- [05:11]
Michelle Pitcher
From Free range productions and the Texas observer. This is season five of the unforgotten. Writing shotgun. I'm your host, Michelle pitcher.
- [05:20]
Wes Ferguson
And I'm Wes Ferguson. This is episode one, the guys in the bug.
- [05:25]
Hypnosis Practitioner
Foreign.
- [05:33]
Michelle Pitcher
Hey, Wes.
- [05:33]
Wes Ferguson
How's it going?
- [05:34]
Michelle Pitcher
I'm pretty good. How about you?
- [05:36]
Wes Ferguson
Not too shabby. Thank you for taking over this season of the unforgotten.
- [05:41]
Michelle Pitcher
It has been a pleasure. If that's not a weird way to describe it, it's been really, really interesting.
- [05:48]
Wes Ferguson
All right, let's jump right into the story of Charles Flores. Take me back to January 29, 1998. Where are we? What are you seeing?
- [06:00]
Michelle Pitcher
So it's early in the morning, and we are in a picturesque, quiet suburb of Dallas. We're on a street called Bergen lane, and it's full of single story family homes. One of these homes, 2965 Bergen Lane, is the home of the black family. And they've lived there since 1961, raise their kids there.
- [06:21]
Wes Ferguson
And then the blacks, Bill and Betty, have a neighbor named Jill. She's already gotten her kids up for school. And then she looks out the window.
- [06:30]
Michelle Pitcher
So she peeks out the blinds and sees a car pulling up to her neighbor's house. And it's this vw bug with a really weird paint job. She's never seen it before. And she sees two men get out of the car and start walking toward the house. She thinks it's a little weird. Her neighbors are elderly. Their two kids are grown. She doesn't really know why they would have these visitors at 6:45 in the
- [06:56]
Wes Ferguson
morning on this quiet street. You look out the window and you see this psychedelic Volkswagen beetle with pink and purple, like, homemade paint.
- [07:07]
Michelle Pitcher
The bug looks like a float in a parade that you were trying to make look like the 1960s. It's very psychedelic. It absolutely looks like a homemade paint job. It's got these waves on the bottom painted. It's clearly not the nicest car in town. It's definitely eye catching and it's definitely a young person's.
- [07:31]
Wes Ferguson
Yeah, it sticks out like a sore thumb. And it's one that she's never seen on her street before.
- [07:36]
Michelle Pitcher
Yeah, she actually tells her husband, you should go take a look at it, because it has such a weird paint job. She can't get it out of her head. Two men get out of the car and start toward the house and it strikes her as odd that her elderly neighbors, Bill and Betty Black would have visitors that early. Odd, but not alarming. Jill closes her blinds and goes to wake up her husband.
- [07:58]
Wes Ferguson
Now our story goes next door to bill and Betty Black's house.
- [08:02]
Michelle Pitcher
Jill's neighbor Betty Black was in her 60s and had some health issues, ones that caused her nerve pain and made it difficult to sleep without meds. But she stayed active. She played with her grandchildren and other neighborhood kids who came by the house. She and her husband Bill liked to go for walks. But her lifelong chronic pain did affect her. The Mets made her groggy in the morning. It took her the better part of an hour to fully rouse herself. She would have normally been in a deep sleep around 8:30am but something woke her up early on the morning of January 29, 1998. It might have been the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, car door slamming. Maybe she heard the whirring of the garage door opening. Maybe her Doberman, Santana barked. But she was known to be friendly to guests, even strangers. Whatever it was, it spurred her to get out of bed. She walked toward the other side of the house where a door in the den opened up to the garage. That's where two armed men came in and shot her, where she stood with her arms still crossed. The men shot Santana too, then ransacked the house. They didn't find whatever they were looking for. They drove off empty handed. Around 9:30, Bill Black came home from an early trip to his old workplace, a contracting company where he sometimes still put in a few hours as a plasterer. When he walked inside, he found his wife Betty lying dead on the floor, still wearing the white shirt and pink sweatpants she likely slept in. He immediately called 911. Pictures from the crime scene show a normal life interrupted. There's a fork on the coffee table, a newspaper still held together by the rubber band pull ups and stuffed animals for the grandkids. Framed photos of 64 year old Elizabeth Black, known to most people as Betty, and her husband Bill, sit on tables and above the fireplace you can see their blonde grandkids and some of them too.
- [09:59]
Wes Ferguson
Betty Black had moved to the US from Scotland in 1959 to meet Bill, who had gone ahead to look for work after he left the British Army. When she got to the States, the couple married at Lakewood Presbyterian Church in Dallas. Two years later they moved to the house on Bergen Lane. Over the years they had two kids. Betty worked at a finance company and Bill went into physical work doing plaster and Building.
- [10:25]
Michelle Pitcher
In 1998. Betty was by all accounts a generous and loving grandmother. She cut her gray hair short and wore jewelry, but nothing flashy. She had retired from her job and a lot of her life revolved around her family. She had two kids and four grandkids. Like any family, they had issues. Her son Gary was a couple years into a prison sentence on a drug charge, and Betty helped watch his kids at least twice a week. Her granddaughter Holly's middle name was Elizabeth, in honor of her doting grandma. Betty also often hand delivered checks to her son's estranged wife, Jackie Roberts, to help with rent. The checks came from a stash of money Gary kept hidden in his parents house while he was locked up. He asked them to dip into it to help Jackie and the couple's two kids whenever they needed money. And apparently that money was the worst kept secret in town.
- [11:24]
Wes Ferguson
I used to buy all these cheap clothes from like the dollar store or these, you know, big box stores or wherever and I thought I was getting sweet deals, but I really wasn't because within a week or two or three they would be falling apart. These days I am a lot more about quality over quantity, and that's honestly why I love Quint. Their fabrics feel elevated and the cuts are thoughtful and the pricing actually makes sense. My Quint's cable knit sweater got a lot of use this winter and I'm excited to add a couple of Quint's pieces for the spring too. Stop waiting to build the wardrobe you actually want because you don't need a closet full of options. You need pieces that work. Right now. Go to quints.com unforgotten for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com unforgotten for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quence.com unforgotten every day as a small
- [12:32]
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- [13:02]
Wes Ferguson
Early on a Thursday morning in Farmer's Branch, this sleepy town in North Texas, Betty Black and her dog Santana are found shot to death on the floor of her family home.
- [13:15]
Michelle Pitcher
This was the first murder of the year in the Dallas suburb and the police came out in force. I called up Jeff Aschebranner. He's now a police chief in far North Texas. We tried to talk face to face, but Zoom had other ideas.
- [13:31]
Jeff Aschebranner
Hello, Michelle.
- [13:32]
Michelle Pitcher
Hi, Chief Ashrabrenner. Sorry about that. I don't know why it was silencing you.
- [13:36]
Jeff Aschebranner
It's probably on my old computer here at home.
- [13:39]
Michelle Pitcher
Back in 1998, he was at the Farmers Branch Police Department.
- [13:43]
Jeff Aschebranner
I had several roles at the Farmers Branch Police Department from patrolman up to lieutenant. We've worked every division other than dispatch that was in the pd, Narcotics detention, Property Evidence patrol, bicycle swat.
- [14:00]
Michelle Pitcher
He was a sergeant in the narcotics unit at the time of Betty Black's murder. You mentioned that you remembered this case and it was a big case stuck out to you even though it's decades old at this point. Can I ask why it stuck out to you or. Or what you remembered or what you recalled?
- [14:16]
Jeff Aschebranner
Well, the reason it sticks out to me is just caused the horrific crime of killing that lady and all over dope money. And it wasn't, it wasn't the lady's dope myth or her son's dope money, but that's why it just sticks out to me. It's one of the biggest things we work with is in Narcotics besides just working narcotics.
- [14:34]
Michelle Pitcher
In his time in the narcotics unit, this was the only homicide he ever worked on. It stuck with him nearly 30 years later, but some details are hazier than others.
- [14:45]
Jeff Aschebranner
They called us, I think about 9:30 that morning of the homicide, and I don't think we got out there till 4:30. I can't remember what we did the night before, but really we worked the night before almost all night. And then we walked through the scene, we saw the hose knocked in the walls of the the bathroom, and they were in there looking for money.
- [15:04]
Michelle Pitcher
What they were looking for, why did Narcotics get called in?
- [15:08]
Jeff Aschebranner
The reason CID called us in is because of the name of the individual that was killed. That was the mother of Gary Roberts.
- [15:18]
Wes Ferguson
Just a real quick correction here. His name isn't actually Gary Roberts, it's Gary Black. You know, like his parents, Bill and Betty Black. It's easy to get this mixed up because Roberts is the name of Gary's ex wife Jackie. And Jackie Roberts is a name that will come up again and again throughout the season.
- [15:37]
Jeff Aschebranner
Gary Roberts was a well known methamphetamine dealer throughout the years and he was currently locked up in El Paso when this occurred. The reason they brought us in is because of that, because of Gary Roberts.
- [15:51]
Wes Ferguson
So Asherbrenner is telling you about these holes that have been knocked in the walls of the bathroom. How much damage was done to the house?
- [16:00]
Michelle Pitcher
The bathrooms were completely destroyed. The sheetrock was, was knocked in. The sink and the medicine cabinet were pulled off the walls. Someone had obviously been looking for something, but they didn't find it. So it is interesting that the people who broke in had reason to believe that the money was hidden in the bathroom walls. When officers learned that Betty Black was murdered, it didn't take long for them to piece together that she was Gary Black's mother. Homicide investigators called in Sergeant Ascherbranner's team to help investigate the potential ties to the Dallas area drug scene. According to FBI data, Farmers Branch only had two homicides in 1998. The suburb's population was just over 26,000. Small property crimes like burglary and theft were much more common. Underneath a lot of it though, was the influence of the Dallas area drug scene. It completely ignored city boundaries. The tree lined suburb of Farmer's Branch, where my dad actually grew up in the 60s and 70s, is separated from North Dallas by a freeway. It's a very porous boundary.
- [17:10]
Jeff Aschebranner
Behind the gleaming face of Dallas lies a war zone. Police spend half a billion dollars a year fighting drugs. But they're losing the war.
- [17:20]
Michelle Pitcher
I believe I. In 1989, Frontline aired a documentary titled the Dallas Drug War. The city had been hit hard by recession and it was very slow to bounce back. Drugs just took hold.
- [17:33]
Jeff Aschebranner
Last year, the Dallas Police made over
- [17:35]
Wes Ferguson
10,000 drug arrests in a city that has quickly become a major drug trafficking center. Here in America's seventh largest city.
- [17:45]
Jeff Aschebranner
Drugs are everywhere.
- [17:48]
Michelle Pitcher
Again, it wasn't just in Dallas proper. In the wealthy suburb of plano, less than 20 miles from Farmer's Branch, heroin was a huge problem in 1998, particularly among kids and teens. The drugs of choice in the Dallas area were cocaine, opioids, pot meth. Gary Black and his friends preferred meth. A picture started to emerge pretty quickly.
- [18:12]
Jeff Aschebranner
We were more starting to turn our focus towards the narcotic side of this. And Jackie Roberts.
- [18:19]
Michelle Pitcher
Jackie Roberts was Gary Black's estranged wife, the one he shared two kids with and who was getting monthly checks from the Blacks. She, like Gary, was also a longtime meth user In A letter police found at the scene. They learned Gary had cut Jackie's monthly allowance in half shortly before Betty was killed. It looked to officers like drugs were behind this in one way or another.
- [18:43]
Wes Ferguson
It seems like a pretty solid motive to ransack the house looking for money.
- [18:48]
Michelle Pitcher
Yes, like you said, it's very clear. People broke into the house, they were looking for something. Everyone knew that there was money in the house. The police actually found the stash in the master bedroom. And there was really no other reason anyone could think of for this wonderful woman to be, you know, gunned down in her living room on a Thursday morning. It. It really did not take long for police to know that they had to start looking more into the drug scene in Dallas. Police had a grasp on the probable motive for Betty Black's murder, but they didn't immediately know who could have killed her. She was murdered early in the morning on a sleepy suburban street, and witnesses were kind of hard to come by. A couple of neighbors were leaving for work or school around the time of the crime, and they reported seeing two men in a distinct car. But the descriptions of the men varied. One witness, a young boy, said that they were wearing black outfits with black and yellow gloves. That boy's mother said that one of the men was in a tan work uniform and the other in a tan overcoat. Jill Barganier, the next door neighbor who would later be hypnotized, described them as two white guys with similar medium to long hair. All of the witnesses remembered the car, though. I remember it was a DW Bug.
- [20:08]
Hypnosis Practitioner
And I remember seeing two guys get out.
- [20:11]
Michelle Pitcher
The VW Bug the men drove to the crime scene was like a psychedelic fever dream 30 years out of time and place. It was painted pink and purple with wavy patterns along the bottom. It wasn't exactly discreet. That night, after word got out that police wanted information about this particular car, Jackie Roberts ex husband, Doug, went to the Farmer's Branch police department. He told them that he knew who owned the VW Bug. A man named Richard Childs. He's Jackie Roberts new boyfriend and the son of an Irving police officer.
- [20:46]
Gretchen Swenegan
The minute word is out about this car, they know it's Rick.
- [20:50]
Michelle Pitcher
This is attorney Gretchen Swen. You'll be hearing from her throughout the season. Richard Childs, who a lot of people call Rick or Ricky, was a thin white man in his early 30s with long unkempt damn tear.
- [21:03]
Wes Ferguson
Like a guy who would be behind the wheel of a psychedelic Volkswagen Beetle.
- [21:08]
Michelle Pitcher
Like the guy who would be behind the wheel of the psychedelic Volkswagen Beetle. Jill Bargainer had gotten a good look at him through her window that morning. She picked his photo out of two lineups and told police that he was the driver.
- [21:21]
Jeff Aschebranner
When he found out who Ricky Charles was, we got the name of him. We got some information that he lived with his grandma. We went to the house. We approached the door and the door was cracked open. And we knocked on the door and he asked, who is it? We told him the police, and he slammed the door.
- [21:38]
Michelle Pitcher
Officers sat in cars watching the house as they did surveillance. Jackie stopped by to talk to Rick. It's not clear what they talked about, but by this point, Rick at least knew police were looking for him. They'd shown up on his doorstep earlier that night. Rick's Uncle Mac also came by. Then a blue pickup truck pulled up and a man in a hat and bandana got out and went into the house. After a while, officers watched Rick leave the house in that same outfit, trying to elude officers he apparently knew were watching. But the disguise didn't work. A patrol officer quickly pulled over the truck.
- [22:15]
Jeff Aschebranner
That's how we got Ricky Childs.
- [22:18]
Michelle Pitcher
Police had now ID'd the driver of the car in front of Betty Black's house. But the passenger in the VW was harder to pin down. The car itself, the Volkswagen Beetle, was also unaccounted for. Police talked to Jackie's mother. They went through her caller ID history and contacted her friends. One had seen Jackie the morning of the killing. Officers also tracked down Rick Child's brother, who Jeff said wasn't a suspect, but he can't recall what he told officers.
- [22:47]
Jeff Aschebranner
We talked to so many people in this investigation and it was all in a matter of days.
- [22:52]
Michelle Pitcher
They had a lot of potential leads about the mysterious passenger, but still nothing concrete. And a lot of the witnesses descriptions were contradictory. That's partly why Jill asked to be hypnotized, to see if she could remember anything identifiable about the other man she saw get out of the car that morning. She felt horrible about the fact that she'd seen the bug but hadn't said anything or intervened. She had no idea what the men planned to do. But after the hypnosis session, officers were no closer to an id. Jill did another composite sketch of a white man with a long face and shaggy hair. One that honestly looked similar to Rick, but that didn't lead anywhere. Now it seemed like officers best bet was to see what they could get from Rick Childs and Jackie Roberts. It looked like Rick, Jackie and a third man might have been in on the scheme. Together, they all faced Potential capital murder charges. It took some convincing to get Rick and Jackie to cooperate with the police.
- [23:53]
Wes Ferguson
How do the police get Rick and Jackie to cooperate?
- [23:58]
Michelle Pitcher
They do have to lean on them, but it honestly, it doesn't take all that much. Jackie talks pretty quickly. She gives a lot of detail. She is the first person to mention this third man being a man named Fat Charlie. So Jackie Roberts is the first person to mention the name Fat Charlie.
- [24:18]
Wes Ferguson
Fat Charlie.
- [24:19]
Michelle Pitcher
Fat Charlie. Which seems to just be something she came up with on the spot. Rick, on the other hand, took a lot longer to open up. Both of them were, you know, running on almost no sleep, either still high or coming down from pretty significant drug binges. And after police leaned on them and kind of told them what was at stake here with the capital murder charge, both of them turned the finger toward this third man, this Fat Charlie. Narcotics officers asked around, checking if any other departments knew who that could be. They got a hit in Irving, about 10 miles southeast of Farmers Branch. Irving police sent over a name and a mug shot.
- [25:08]
Wes Ferguson
That name, Charles Flores, was having a
- [25:11]
Jeff Aschebranner
meeting on this homicide. And we got there a bit late because we was getting Charles Flores photo from Irving. We come in there, we said, this is going to be your suspect. At first they said, it's not gonna be him. We said, that's your suspect, that he's the shooter. Because all the dopers we was talking to and everything we was doing, it was tracking, leading all the way to him.
- [25:33]
Michelle Pitcher
The investigators noticed that Charles Flores's picture didn't match witness descriptions of the passenger. Remember, their most reliable witness described two guys with longer hair. She even drew a composite sketch that suggested the driver and passenger looked alike. It seemed like one picture was emerging from the neighbors on Bergen Lane and another from the people in the local drug scene. Still, investigators showed Charles picture to Rick to see if he was this Fat Charlie.
- [26:01]
Hypnosis Practitioner
Rick, I'll ask you a couple questions, okay? You know this guy here? Reason I'm talking to you now is Charlie's a pretty bad cat. All right? I'm gonna tell you right now, there's gonna be two ways of walking in the prison. You're gonna walk through those prison doors. Is it dead man walking, or you're gonna walk through. Through these prison doors and a man with some hope. I'm being honest with you, man. I'm not bullshitting you, Ricky. You're fucked.
- [26:28]
Michelle Pitcher
You're listening to the interrogation tape, but a jury would never hear it. The copy we received from the Farmers Branch police department has a lot of holes in it where the tape appears to skip or the recorders abruptly turned off, it's hard to tell. But one thing's for sure, police are pressing Rick right now.
- [26:46]
Hypnosis Practitioner
Ricky, you're looking at the needle, all right? And so it's looking into me. Jackie may be looking into you. You want to do this, man, and it's no, I'll tell you this right now. If you don't want to talk to us, we'll get it and walk out because we don't need you.
- [27:06]
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- [27:37]
Michelle Pitcher
wherever you go, whatever they get into, from chill time to everyday adventures, protect your dog from parasites with Cridelio guattro. For full safety information, side effects and warnings, visit credelioquatrolabel.com consult your vet or call 1-888-545-5973. Ask your vet for Cordelio Cuatro and visit quattrodog.com talking to officers Having barely slept in over a week and likely high or coming down, Rick Childs implicated Charles Flores in the whole ordeal, the home invasion and the murder of Betty Black. Here's what happened, according to Rick and Jackie's stories to the police. At this point, Jackie admits that she and Rick had talked about the murders when they met up at Rick's grandma's house. Rick, Charles and a couple other friends are hanging out in Charles's trailer doing drugs the night of January 28, 1998. Around 3am Rick calls up his girlfriend Jackie and asks her to set up a drug deal that night so they can get more meth. Jackie, Rick and Charles go to an apartment in Dallas where the drug deal goes down. Charles hands over the money, but when he measures the drugs, he's angry. He accuses the dealer of shorting him and goes into a rage and demands that Jackie make it right. She tells him she's good for it, that she'll ask her in laws for money the next day if he'll just wait until they wake up. But according to Jackie, Charles doesn't want to wait.
- [29:10]
Wes Ferguson
That's kind of a weird story. He demands to go with them because he's Been burned before. And then they go to this apartment, they make the deal, and then he's like, again, complaining that he has been shortchanged. And then somehow Jackie is like, okay, I'm the one who will make this up to you.
- [29:27]
Michelle Pitcher
Yeah. So she says that Charles threatened her and said that it was on her because it was her connection who had allegedly shorted them. He and Rick arm themselves, and then they go to get the money. Rick said Charles was the main actor in all of this, that Charles is the one who broke into the house, but Charles is the one who shot Mrs. Black.
- [29:50]
Wes Ferguson
But Charles was the one who didn't know these people.
- [29:53]
Michelle Pitcher
Right.
- [29:54]
Wes Ferguson
He wouldn't have known about the money possibly in the walls and that sort of thing.
- [30:00]
Michelle Pitcher
That's not what Charles Flores says happened. He admits to hanging out with Rick, calling Jackie to get more drugs, and going to Dallas to make the deal. He says when they got back to his trailer and realized they'd been shorted, he did get mad. But it was late, and tensions were getting high. Charles's wife Myra, came out of the back bedroom where she was sleeping with her three kids and asked him what the hell was going on. Charles says he told Jackie and Rick to leave, and then he stayed behind and went to bed.
- [30:29]
Charles Flores
Rick. Charles was someone that I knew from before, and he'd kind of circled back into my life, and I don't know how. Hanging around. He was hanging around me. Let me say it like that. My overwhelming feeling was in that it was a setup from the beginning, man.
- [30:46]
Wes Ferguson
Two very different versions of how that night ended.
- [30:50]
Michelle Pitcher
Yes. So either Charles went with Rick to Betty's house to commit the robbery, or Charles stayed home and Rick found someone else to commit that robbery with him. And it's worth noting here that one of Rick's girlfriends will tell police that a few weeks before the murder, Rick had been asking what she would do if she knew of $100,000 hidden in a house and the guy was in jail, it seemed like he had been asking around about how to get the money long before this evening started. According to Rick and Jackie, who officers had seen meet up at Rick's grandma's house before they gave their statements, Charles went with Rick to Betty Black's house that morning to commit a robbery. Charles says he stayed home, and Rick must have recruited someone else to help him get the cash. It seems like a simple contradiction. Either Charles Flores was at 2965 Birkin Lane that morning, or. Or he wasn't. A witness saw two men in front of Betty Black's house that morning and she was able to ID Rick Childs in two photo lineups. She presumably would have seen the passenger just as well. She told police he even looked in her direction at one point, but she still struggled to identify him. She described the passenger to police as a white man with darker hair than the driver. She described his hair as almost black and thought it was longer. Charles, who remember was referred to as fat Charlie, was 6ft tall and weighed 235 pounds. He had shaved black hair and couldn't see without his glasses, which no witness noted on the passenger. He was also Hispanic and looked nothing like Rick.
- [32:33]
Gretchen Swenegan
The very morning of that observation after the murder was discovered, officers canvassed the neighbors and she told them she had seen two white males with long hair who looked similar.
- [32:48]
Michelle Pitcher
That's Gretchen Swenegan, Charles's current lawyer.
- [32:51]
Gretchen Swenegan
The notes about her first interview were never disclosed before trial. And meanwhile, conveniently, her first written witness statement lost from the file. All the other witnesses said were things like just two white males. It was very vague. What you can get is the assumption that, okay, these guys were pretty generic, looked alike.
- [33:14]
Michelle Pitcher
After narcotics officers got a hold of Charles mugshot, they put it in a lineup and showed it to Jill. Remember, Jill's the neighbor you heard being hypnotized earlier in the episode, the one who immediately ID'd Rick. Jill looked at the line of mugshots and did not pick out Charles. She didn't pick anyone. So the witnesses hadn't identified Charles. There was no physical evidence tying him to Betty Black's murder. But police had stories from Rick and Jackie, the alleged co conspirators, and that was enough for an arrest. On February 6, 1998, police issued a capital murder warrant for Charles Flores. But they had to find him first. The Dallas Morning News reported that Charles Flores was armed and dangerous. Coming up on this season of the Unforgotten riding shotgun. We'll look at what Charles's lawyers say are big flaws with the case. A hypnotized witness, shaky stories from co defendants, and a lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime. We'll talk about the fallibility of human memory and how we weigh whose memories to believe.
- [34:23]
Charles Flores
I remember thinking in my mind like, man, the cops are going to kill my ass. When they catch me, they're going to shoot me. So I was really afraid, right? And it's crazy because I'm right. Look where I'm at. Look where I've been. You know what I'm saying? I'm on death row.
- [34:46]
Wes Ferguson
Thank you for listening to the Unforgotten, a free range production. Season 5 Riding Shotgun was created in association with the Texas observer, and the season is written, reported and hosted by Michelle Pitcher, a staff writer for the observer editing by Aislin Gaddis audio engineering and sound design by Austin Sisler with Eside Studios. I'm executive producer Wes Ferguson. Stay up to date with us when you sign up for our newsletter@unforgottenpod.com.
- [35:26]
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- [35:56]
Gretchen Swenegan
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- [36:22]
Michelle Pitcher
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