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- [00:03]
A
Hello, I'm Wes Ferguson.
- [00:04]
B
And I'm Carol Lawson.
- [00:06]
A
And we're back with another bonus episode of The Unforgotten Season 1, the Labor Day Ghost. Linking the chains.
- [00:17]
B
You know, Wes, it's been so interesting over the past few months how often people will finally come forward and tell us stories that they have been sitting on for a very, very long time. We've remarked on this before, and it's just interesting to see how brave people are getting and also how for so many people listening to what we have had to share, all of a sudden the penny drops and they realize that there is something that they know that they hadn't realized the full importance of before they started hearing the whole fabric of the Shelly Watkins case as it unfolded.
- [00:57]
A
Yeah. And it seems like people have been reaching out to you quite a bit, and you have recently uncovered some details that do shed new light on the disposal of Shelley's body. Or I should say, they seem to shed light on the disposal of Shelley's body in the Trinity River. You have two different stories that are connected here. Which one do you want to begin with?
- [01:21]
B
Well, I want to begin with the first one that I was told. It's so interesting because as we've said before, sometimes we will get a piece of information that seems interesting and important at the time, but it's just isolated, it's by itself. And then months later, somebody else will pipe up and go, oh, yeah, by the way, this was shared with me, or this happened to me, or I saw this. And you go, oh, that links directly in with something that I was told months and months ago. It's extraordinary to me how these pieces start fitting together. And as I said, we've alluded to this before, but today we're going to share two stories that we finally have permission to share with our listeners. And one of them was a story that I was told. Way last summer, when we had already started streaming the podcast, I was contacted by somebody in my hometown of Corsicana who told me something that they knew that they had received directly as a deathbed confession from the person who was directly involved. And this is the story. This is where it all began. On the night that Shelly Watkins vanished, which was Labor Day night, September 6, 1993. People the next morning were going to work at Watkins Construction. One of the guys who worked there was a guy named Richard. He was a truck driver, and he drove an 18 wheeler on which were often mounted large pieces of equipment for transport to different work sites. And to secure those large pieces of equipment, he Had a system of chains on the back of his truck. Now, his truck was, of course, like all the other vehicles, Locked up in the Watkins construction yard. And the morning after Shelly disappeared, He got to work to discover that all the chains of his truck were missing. Well, he was, of course, upset by this. He did not know what it meant. He did not know why anybody would have taken his chains unless it was another driver. He complained to the guy who was in charge of the yard that his chains had been stolen, that he had nothing to do with it, and that another driver was obviously responsible. He accused another driver of taking those chains. The other driver, of course, forcibly denied it. He still had all his chains. So this was going nowhere. So Richard had to just sit with this. Richard was the kind of guy who was very, very private. He did not, as I was told by this witness, he didn't like other people getting down in his business, and he didn't want to get down in anybody else's business. So after accusing the other driver of stealing his chains and that going nowhere, he didn't know what to think until a week later when Shelly's body was found in the river. And at that point, everything dropped into place for him. However, he did not want to get down in anybody's business. And that included the business of his boss, Jerry Mack Watkins, and Jerry Mack's father, Carmack Watkins. He wanted to quietly work, earn his paycheck, keep his job, and keep his mouth shut. And that's what he did for a number of years until he came down with cancer. And when he developed cancer and became too ill to work, he started receiving visits from his employer, Jerry Mack Watkins, who would bring him gifts of cigarettes and Crown Royal whiskey. Now, Jerry Mack has been famously known for his generosity to his employees, his kindness, and his willingness to help them out in all kinds of situations. And that is an earmark of who he has been as an employer. That's very well known. However, according to the person who has reported this to me, and it is corroborated by a second person who also was a witness and involved, Richard did not want to be alone When Jerry Mack would come and visit. So when he knew that Jerry Mack was coming to visit him, according to this person, he would contact Jeff, his son, to be there, so that his son would be present, and everything would just be a smooth conversation. Eventually, Richard was on his deathbed, and he had visitors. And one of the things that he confessed on his deathbed Was the story about his missing chain. And that he had realized what it meant that the chain was missing after Shelly's body was found, but that he had never told anybody and he did not want to suffer repercussions. And then he died. Now, one of the things that I have found out, Wes, and it's partly because of this, is that deathbed confessions are not considered hearsay in court. They are actually admissible in court as direct testimony.
- [07:05]
A
And he made this deathbed confession to multiple people, right?
- [07:10]
B
He did. There were multiple people present after his death. According to what I've been told, Jerry Mack erected a memorial bench on his grave. Another act of employer generosity to this story stood alone and was something that was told to me off the record at the time. And I was assured that it was not only true, but corroborated, but that the person did not see any point in bringing it up because Richard was dead. That was before we discovered that deathbed confessions are admissible in trial. So the story stood alone in my brain, floating around is one of the number of things that I have not been able to share publicly because it was off the record until quite recently. I was told another story that linked directly to this one, and that story was told to me by former police officer Lemoyne Lohan. Now, Wes, you might remember that Lemoyne was the one who we interviewed for the original 10 episodes of the podcast and who told us of how the eyewitness John McCollum, had said to him, I saw something strange on the early morning at 4:30 in the morning on the bridge on 85 on my way to work the morning after Shelley Watkins disappeared in. What John McCollum was saying at that time to Lemoyne Lohan was that he had seen a white luxury car parked on the shoulder of the bridge next to the parapet, and a guy standing outside that car whom he saw quite clearly and he could identify, and that the trunk was open and that the guy was doing something and he couldn't tell exactly what he was doing. And LeMoyne at that point said, you realize that I'm a police officer, right? Because they were speaking in a completely different capacity. Lemoyne was not in uniform. He was in a different spot from the police department. And he told John McCullum he, you realize I'm a police officer. You need to go tell this to Texas Ranger Ray Nutt immediately. Which John McCollum did, and subsequently identified Jerry Mack Watkins from a photo lineup as the guy he had seen on the bridge. Okay. I've spoken with Lemoine several times since, and in 2008. Lemoine Lohan left the Corsicana Police Department and worked with a friend who had a different company for about a year before he then started working for, get this, Louis Palos Enterprises.
- [10:16]
A
And who is Louis Palos?
- [10:18]
B
Louis Palos was lemoyne Lohan's fellow sergeant with the police department in Corsicana and a good friend of his who had then been allegedly directly involved in the whole Shelly Watkins story and was the police officer who sat on the knowledge that Shelley was missing for several days before finally, silently and against protocol, reporting her as a missing person with the Corsicana Police Department. And had failed even to tell his boss, Police Chief GM Cox at the time, that Shelley was a missing person. So GM Cox did not find out that Shelly was missing until a whole seven days after she had disappeared and blew his top when he found out and immediately turned the case over to the Navarro County Sheriff's Department because the Watkins home was out of the city limits and it was therefore a county case rather than a police case. Louise Palos also was a lifelong close friend, intimate friend of Jerry Mack Watkins and the Watkins family. Lewis is eight years older than Jerry is, and they had both come from the same general rural area of Navarro County. M house in Roane. And Lewis was at the time living in a trailer that was parked on one Watkins property, which is located more or less on the way to the 85 bridge. Okay. Lewis, as we have recounted in a previous episode, had established a couple of businesses, one of which was Lewis Palos Enterprises. And that business was a courier service, which Lewis established with Jerry Mack Watkins and. And Glenn sod. Glenn SOD was Jerry Mack's civil attorney and my father's law partner. My father had been his mentor and professor in Baylor Law School. And then always felt that Glenn was very, very smart and sharp and shrewd and would make a wonderful attorney. And had hired Glenn into his own law firm after Glenn passed the bar. So he was therefore a business associate as well as an attorney with Jerry Mack Watkins and Louis Palos. Now, Lewis had very little to do with the actual workings of these businesses that were established, as far as we can tell, as much for the tax advantage as anything else, because Lewis, of course, is of Hispanic origins. And at that time, there was a larger tax advantage for minority businesses getting established. So those guys took advantage of that tax exemption to establish these two companies. And Lewis Paylos Enterprises was located on the Watkins construction property.
- [13:33]
A
And now this is our opinion, right? Based on speaking to other people. We haven't proven that that's why these businesses were started, or have we?
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B
It is definitely the opinion of others, right? Not ours.
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A
They have never been, you know, convicted of fraud or anything like that.
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B
No, no. And Lewis, because he was continuing to be a policeman and also had at that time, just become a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, he had his hands full. He was busy. And so he and Jerry Mack hired his brother, Luther Palos, to run the courier service. Now, Luther had been working, as I understand it, for Watkins Construction. I don't know for how long, but it's a family proposition. The pay losses, the Watkins in their social and business links. So Luther was in charge of the courier service that would run from Watkins Construction property to all the different sites, in particular of Tugco, which became Luminant, and with which Watkins Construction had contracts. So they had a contract with Luminant for delivery of stuff. Between Watkins Construction and Luminant, the courier service had a contract, or rather, Watkins had a contract at that time on which the courier service was dependent.
- [15:10]
A
They subcontracted to the courier service, as I understand it. Okay.
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B
All right.
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A
And Luminant is the huge power company, and they have mining and power plants and supply energy to lots of homes and businesses throughout Texas.
- [15:26]
B
And they have several plants that are located in East Texas. So in 2009, a year after he had left the Corsicana Police Department, lemoyne Lohan started working alongside Luther. Now, Luther was growing ill at this time and eventually was diagnosed with cancer himself and died not too long afterwards. But while he was still very much functional, and he had Lamoine Lohan to help him with that courier service, that business, he was making these long drives and trips across various parts of Texas, transporting to and from Watkins Construction to these various other sites. And one day, about three weeks into LeMoyne's employment with Palos Enterprises, he was talking with Luther, and they were on their way to Mount Pleasant. And LeMoyne said to Luther, this is in 2009. LeMoyne says to Luther, remember all that stuff about Shelly Watkins and her murder back in 93, 15 years ago? Did you ever know anything about that? I mean, Lewis got in a lot of trouble over it. And at the time, I asked Lewis why he took so long to report the fact that Shelly was missing. And Lewis told me, well, it was because Jerry didn't want the embarrassment that his wife had left him. That was the excuse that Lewis gave him.
- [17:08]
A
Hmm.
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B
He said, so, Luther, you know, Lewis is your brother, and you were working for Watkins Construction at the time. Did you know anything about that whole business with Shelley. And this is what Luther responded. You know, I don't know anything about it other than the night it happened. Carmack called me in the middle of the night. I was in bed asleep, and he woke me up, and he told me, you need to go down to the shop right now. And when you go in the door over in the corner to the right, there's some chain. You need to get that chain and go dispose of it.
- [17:51]
A
Wow. And I'm sure everyone who's listening has already heard this a million times, but Carmack Watkins is the patriarch of Watkins family and the founder of Watkins Construction. And Luther just didn't think to tell anybody about this either.
- [18:06]
B
It's not that he didn't think to tell anybody about it. Lemoine then said, well, Luther, what did you do? I mean, he'd been awakened in the middle of the night in bed asleep. And he has Carmack, the patriarch, telling him to go right down to the shop with right then in the middle of the night, where he would find a pile of chain in a specific spot, and he was to go into the shop, remove that chain, and go get rid of it. So Lemoine says to Luther, what did you do? And Luther says, well, I went and got the chain, and I did what I was told, but I didn't know what it was about.
- [18:50]
A
Did he say how he got rid of it?
- [18:52]
B
Lemoine has told me that he really regretted not asking Luther what he did with it. I have heard other rumors through the years that some chain had been disposed of on a tank on Watkins property. I've never heard those substantiated. I don't know if that's true. A tank being, of course, a pond for those non Texan listeners about some of our ranching practices. At any rate, I have heard that from several people. They have just been rumors, and we've never brought it up. There's no point but the fact that Luther conveyed all this to Lemoine, a former law officer who eventually became chief of police in another small community there on Cedar Creek Lake. So it's not like Lemoine was a stranger to police practices. And I've wondered why Lemoine has sat on this information himself for so long. Because this was told to him in 2009, and Luther died the next year.
- [19:55]
A
Wow.
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B
At which point Lemoine became the sole operative for Paylos Enterprises and the sole courier for that courier service. And Lewis, not long afterwards, decided that since the contract using those services was not going to get renewed he was going to close the business down. I heard this story and I went, wait a minute. I now have two chain stories, and they happen to connect with each other, and they happen to be from people who heard the stories from the people directly involved and who are either willing to corroborate one another as far as the deathbed confession is concerned, or put their name out there on the story because they heard it directly from the horse's mouth.
- [20:51]
A
Yeah. And I was wondering, can you help me just wrap my mind around one thing? So, on the two different stories, we have Richard, the Watkins Construction employee. He shows up to work the day after Shelly's missing, not knowing that she's missing, and he's mad that the chain is gone from his truck. And then we also have Luther, a different employee, who says he's called in the middle of the night by the founder of Watkins Construction to go grab some chain and dispose of it.
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B
So.
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A
But those are two different chains. Like, how are those related? What, what connects them, do you think?
- [21:25]
B
They're two different chains, Wes? Really?
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A
Well, but we're talking about a chain that was wrapped around Shelley's body when she was thrown into the river, Right.
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B
We're talking about a great deal more length of chain that was removed from an 18 wheeler. And therefore a certain amount of that chain might have been used to weight Shelly's body down to the two cinder blocks that pulled her to the bottom of the river. And there would be leftover chain.
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A
So these are just different sections of the same long length of chain theft.
- [22:00]
B
For whatever reason, Carmack Watkins, according to Luther, and therefore LeMoyne, felt it necessary the very same night that Shelley was disposed of, felt it important and necessary that some chain be picked up from inside the shop in the corner to the right of the door of the shop at Watkins Construction and be disposed of immediately that night. So the implication would be that it was possibly the leftover chain from what was taken from Richard's truck and used to weight Shelley down. Because if those two pieces of chain were ever put together, it would become clear that they were from the same amount of chain.
- [22:50]
A
Yeah, and of course, this is all our or your theories about this. And Jerry Mack Watkins, of course, has always maintained his innocence, and he's never been convicted for all the reasons that we've already gotten into. But, you know, the fisherman that we spoke to not too long ago who found Shelley commented on how distinctive that chain was when it was the first thing they saw shining in the sun as they were boating down the river. And that's how they even found her. So I think he said it was, you know, kind of a new chain. It was shiny, so it would have probably been easy to identify.
- [23:26]
B
I would think so. And, you know, it is purely conjecture that the chain that Luther Palos, Louis Palos, his brother, and an employee of Watkins Construction was asked to dispose of in the middle of the night, the same night that Shelly disappeared. It is conjecture on my part that, oh, that's the unused part of the chain that the rest of which got used to weight Shelley down.
- [23:57]
A
Yeah, you really don't need a lot of common sense to see that obvious connection.
- [24:01]
B
No, but I want us always to be very careful to stipulate that we are speculating because, you know, we can't say for sure. But we do know that these two stories came to me months apart. And it was when I heard the second story from LeMoyne Lohan that I went, oh, the penny is now dropping. And there is a third story that we cannot yet disclose. I apologize, listeners, I'm so sorry that this is necessary. We just can't share it with you, at least not yet. But there is a third part of the story that also helps to make clear why these chain stories are important.
- [24:46]
A
And of course, these witness accounts that you've received, you have shared all of these with law enforcement?
- [24:53]
B
Oh, yeah, you bet.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Law enforcement has all of these stories. I have become a one way conduit of information to law enforcement. And as people know, if you share something with me, then I will always ask you, you know, if it's an important piece of information that you know directly. I will always promise you anonymity. And if you ask, to be kept off the record. And I will always ask you if it's okay to share it with law enforcement and are you willing to talk with law enforcement. And fortunately, all these people have said yes.
- [25:30]
A
If you're listening right now and you know anything else about the chain or maybe you are able to verify some of these rumors about where the chain allegedly ended up. We would absolutely love to hear from you.
- [25:43]
B
So that's the story of the chains so far.
- [25:49]
A
Well, thank you so much, Carol, for your continued reporting and for sharing this story because, I mean, it is so eye opening and just another, oh, my gosh, I don't even want to say it's another link in the chain of this, you know, story that we've been putting together for so long. And I think it can only help law enforcement advance this case to know about this story. So I'M grateful to these people for finally coming forward with what they know. And we look forward to hearing from more people who are starting to feel that it's to share what they've been holding onto all these years.
- [26:22]
B
Absolutely. And by the way, don't you love it when a metaphor becomes literal?
- [26:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Word nerds really, really get into it. For sure.
- [26:32]
B
Yeah. Exactly. Yes. So thank you very much, listeners, for continuing to take this trip with us through a long ago and not so long ago story. Not so long ago for the people who have been directly involved and for whom the impact of Shelly's death has never gone away. And I speak specifically of her family members. And we will just keep on keeping on, as my mama used to say.
- [27:05]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I've been working, too, with a couple of other writers on a completely different case. And it's going to be season three of the Unforgotten, and it's tentatively scheduled to roll out in early August. So I hope all of you will listen to that. But also know that Carol and I, and to be honest, really, Carol is the one still digging in and following every lead. We're not letting this go. So thank you for staying on this journey with us.
- [27:33]
B
And you can contact me anytime you want to through Facebook messenger through the Unforgotten contact points. I welcome anything that you can bring to us that sheds more light and brings more insight into the case of Shelly Watkins and her murder.
- [27:52]
A
All right, well, thank you so much, Carol. We'll be back soon. The Unforgotten is a Free Range production. Season one, the Labor Day Ghost was written, created and hosted by Carol Dawson and me, Wes Ferguson. I'm the executive producer at Free Range. This episode was edited by Aislin Gaddis and our theme song is by Will Mechatron Jones of Corsicana, Texas. Thank you so much for listening and be sure to follow. Follow along@unforgottenpod.com Bye.