B (18:02)
And we already know from the toxicology report that accompanied the autopsy report that no diet pills or amphetamines or any other kind of what is called an upper were found in Shelley's system at the time. In fact, the only things that were found were a certain amount of alcohol and a trace of a Tylenol mixed painkiller. Knowing now what we've learned about Shelley's character and history, I personally consider this statement of 96 erstwhile lovers to be entirely fictitious on her part. I think it was an impulsive lie to goad her listeners. I think that perhaps she was taunting or challenging her husband, who was the real philanderer in their marriage, and that for whatever reason, she had no qualms about putting Liz on the spot, too. She already suspected that Jerry Mack was secretly having sex with someone else. She already knew that he'd had sex with many other women. Fed up and wrathful with this flagrant behavior, she had already left him at least once. During a vacation in Rome, Italy. After a shopping excursion with her sister in law, Barbara. She had entered a bar to join Jerry Mack and his brother Ronnie. There she discovered a strange woman sitting on Jerry Mack's lap, wrapping herself around his body. Shelly's reaction was immediate. She left the bar, marched to her hotel room, packed her bags, went to the airport, boarded a plane and flew straight home alone. Without informing her companion. At the time, she was seven months pregnant with her younger daughter, Lane. Quite late at night, Shelley arrived at Beaten Lake Estates from the Dallas Fort Worth airport. Jerry Mack trailed her back to Texas that same night, clearly concerned enough to take her angry exit from him seriously. And lately we have learned about the explosive argument that took place before lunchtime at the Watkins Lake house that labor day morning of September 6, 1993. We know from Barbara Watkins admissions, when initially questioned by the investigators, that Shelly was observed to be real nervous and jittery, unquote, and on the edge that day at the lake, not herself, as Barbara put it, to her daughter Brandi. This comment was included in the official search warrant affidavit. It's interesting to note that her descriptor words match those of our interviewee who suggested to us that Shelly was abusing diet pills. Thirty years after Barbara first spoke the words jittery and nervous to the investigators. And as we've already repeated, no diet pills, amphetamines, any kind of upper or speed or anything else was found in Shelley's body during the autopsy and afterwards. As reported in the toxicology report that morning, argument was so ferocious and violent that it was seen and overheard by Weldon and Pam Hatley Caldwell, who were fishing the COVID next to the lake house. It occurred outdoors in front of the other adult guests who were seated at the tables in the yard, as well as all the children present. Thanks to a breeze that carried sound toward the fight and away from the fishing couple, Weldon and Pam could only discern yells, screams, shrieks, and one clear word that Jerry Mack yelled bitch. Both members of the couple physically shoved each other, watched by the Caldwells. The very next day, on September 7, the day after Labor Day, when Pam Hatley Caldwell arrived at work at the sheriff's office, she told several people about the public quarrel she had just witnessed the day before. Of course, at that time she had no idea that Shelly Watkins had disappeared the same night of the argument. No one would know Shelly's status as a missing person until the following Sunday. One whole week after she had vanished. And Wes, it's very interesting to me that contrary to what he had done when Shelley had deserted him in Rome while pregnant with their second child and flown by herself back to Texas, Jerry Mack did not try to track her down during that week that she was missing. He did not hire a private detective. He did not alert the public. He did not put up missing signs. He did nothing to try to trace his wife. One week later, on the following Monday, when Pam first learned that Shelly was missing, she again reminded her colleagues at the Corsicana Sheriff's Office building about the argument. This was the day after the authorities had finally been informed that Shelley was officially missing and had actually been missing since the night of September 6th. Only the day before, on Sunday, September 12th, the search for Shelley had been turned over to the Navarro County Sheriff's jurisdiction following the revelation to Corsicana's chief of police that Sergeant Louis Palos had skipped protocol four days prior and filed a missing persons report on Thursday, September 9, without informing anyone else at the city police station, including his own boss. No one in Navarro county law enforcement seems to have ever conveyed Pam Hatley Caldwell's witness comments to Henderson County. Once Shelly's body was found, Pam Caldwell can to this day still cite the people's names whom she told of the argument. She is, as she states on the record with this information, as she has been for the past 31 years. And I know for a fact that if Larry Warrick, the chief homicide investigator on this case, as well as Ranger Ray Nutt, had any idea Pam Caldwell and her husband Weldon had witnessed this argument, they would have been over to Corsicana like a shot to interview her and add her information to everything they had already learned. To continue, we now also know that following the recovery of Shelley's body, the guests and family members who were there that day on Labor Day at the lake house misled law enforcement investigators by omitting any mention of the major pre lunch dispute between Shelly and Jerry Mack. They claimed only that there was tension between the couple and that Shelly had argued with Ronnie Watkins regarding the use of jet skis. Later that evening, Barbara Watkins added that Shelly was upset upon learning that Jerry had already taken their two little daughters home and left her at the lake. And later that night, Shelley wound up dead, struck at least eight times on the back of her skull, presumably after she had turned her back on whoever decided to hit her, and with a furrow around her throat that indicated possible strangulation. All this is according to to the official autopsy report Wes I don't know if you've ever tried to imagine standing behind somebody and bringing your arm down eight full times on the back of their head. The first couple of blows would probably send them to the floor. After that, you'd have to bend over them to continue to hit. I have physically tried to do this, and it's very, very challenging. It's like a whole physical experience that is shocking to the system. I challenge any listener who wants to learn what that's like to do the experiment that I did and try it. Shortly after Shelley's death, several people began to strongly suspect Kay Bryant to be Jerry's mystery lover. These included Shelly's cousin Mike Russ, Shelley's sister Sandy, and other members of Shelley's family, as well as some local Corsicanons. Kay's constant, close presence at Jerry's side during Shelly's funeral and afterwards at the grave ceremony struck them as inappropriate and bizarre. So did the fact she'd admitted to law enforcement that Jerry Mack had phoned her at 6:45am After Shelly's disappearance to tell her that he and Shelly had had a fight the night before, during which Shelly said she was leaving him and taking their daughters with her and that he had told Shelly she couldn't take the girls. This later grew more notable since Kay had frequently expressed her desperate wish to have children, vocally mourned her inability to do so, stated her devotion to Shelley's two daughters, and quickly jumped in to fill the void left in their lives by their mother's murder. Other circumstances reinforced these impressions as well. For instance, the frequent publicly observed socializing of Jerry Mack with Dennis and Kay Bryant on Cedar Creek Lake in the months following Jerry Mack's arrest. Kay Bryant would in fact, eventually go on to divorce her husband Dennis and marry Jerry Mack Watkins. A few months after Jerry Mack's murder trial was suspended and his case was canceled by Henderson County. Which brings us to another fact, the reasons why the case was canceled at all. Jerry Mack Watkins was scheduled to be tried for first degree murder on August 15, 1994. That same day, Eray Andrews was compelled to resign his district attorney by the Texas Attorney General. The previous April, following the pretrial hearing, Jerry Mack's defense attorney, Jack Zimmerman, had filed a motion to quash the original indictment on several grounds, including how three witnesses before the grand jury had felt intimidated during their testimonies due to the presence and behavior of the two lawmen who had previously questioned them, Texas Ranger Ray Nutt and homicide investigator Larry Warrick. These three witnesses claimed that their resultant nervousness might have given the grand jury a bad impression of their credibility and maybe left the grand jury thinking they might be lying. Out of the 35 witnesses testifying under oath, only these three first appeared on the motion to quash the indictment filed by Jack Zimmerman, the defense attorney. They were Jerry Mack's brother, Ronnie Watkins, Jerry Mack's sister, Janice Watkins King, and Jerry Mack's soon to be wife, Kay Bryant. Needless to say, all three had strong motives to wish the indictment overturned, considering their closeness to the accused. Nonetheless, the motion failed and the trial date was set. It would take a bribery scheme charge against the district attorney to finally affect what defense attorney Jack Zimmerman had attempted to do the previous April. But the capper that eventually helped fulfill the motion's purpose, after the trial date had come and gone and District Attorney Eray Andrews had smudged the case's status, came in the form of a document later. Appended to it. That document was another supplemental submission in support of motion. And it added one more name to the witness's complaint about the lawman, Karen Williams. Karen Williams lived across the street from the Watkins house. She was the mother of two boys and the wife of another state witness, David Williams. She worked in a Corsicana salon. She was not related to anyone involved in the case. Her older 11 year old son, Chad, had stated that he had watched the Watkins house through his second story bedroom window on Labor Day night. He reported seeing activity and lights to his father that night around 1:30 in the morning, and others through the following years until 4:00 the next morning. As shared with us by his father, David Williams, and some of those others, Karen, therefore seemingly had no agenda in helping to crush the indictment. There can be little doubt, however, that the addition of her name added more weight to the effort to erase the grand jury's judgment that Jerry Mack Watkins had murdered his wife. And on August 26, 1994, when Judge Jack H. Holland dismissed the indictment, it did just that. Since the first time we ever read the Watkins case file, we have felt puzzled as to why, out of all the scores of potential witnesses that might have joined their names to the motion to quash Jerry Mack's indictment, Carrion Williams was the sole volunteer. But I suspect that she believes Jerry Mack Watkins to be innocent.
