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- [00:02]
A
The summer before Shelly Watkins was killed and thrown in the Trinity river, another huge controversy was already boiling in Corsicana, Texas. Craig Thomas, a black man, tried to run from the Corsicana police during a traffic stop on June 5, 1993. He died not long after in in the local jail.
- [00:27]
B
Photographs of 29 year old Craig Thomas.
- [00:29]
A
Show he was beaten, a point police.
- [00:32]
B
Don'T deny the autopsy report called his.
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A
Death accidental, a result of a heart.
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B
Attack made worse by the use of.
- [00:39]
C
Drugs, alcohol, running from police and being beaten.
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D
Thomas's death opened old wounds in Corsicana following the town's oil boom in 1894. Several black people had been lynched in the town, the most notorious occurring in 1901 when John Henderson was accused of killing a white woman before he could go on trial. Thousands of locals and spectators from other towns gathered to watch him burn at the stake on the courthouse lawn. This time around in 1993, the NAACP and the Dallas chapter of the Black Panthers arrived to protest this latest young black man's death. In opposition, the Ku Klux Klan organized a rally around the courthouse square. Things grew chaotic and the chaos continued.
- [01:30]
B
Corsicana city leaders say many of those involved in the fights during Saturday's rally were from out of town. But they admit this scene is proof they do have racial problems.
- [01:42]
A
Eventually, two officers were fired and two more were disciplined. As far as we know, none of this had anything to do with Shelly Watkins, except for one coincidence. Shelley's husband, Jerry Mack, was best friends with the acting police chief, Louis Palos.
- [01:58]
B
Police Chief Lewis Palos says he's committed to a full investigation and will reprimand the officers if warranted.
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A
And here's Lewis.
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C
When they were going through those actions.
- [02:08]
B
I do not think that it was.
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C
Ever in their intention that this would result the way it did.
- [02:15]
A
Lewis had been a police sergeant for years and he was pretty well connected around town. He'd actually grown up with Jerry Mack in a small farming community northeast of Corsicana. That's where the Watkins family had lived for generations before they got rich and moved into town. Lewis stayed behind out there in the country, living in a trailer on some land the Watkins owned, about halfway between Corsicana and the Trinity River Bridge, which where Shelley's body was later found. Some people said that Lewis, or Uncle Lewis to younger generations in the Watkins family seemed like a shoe in to take over the local police force.
- [02:51]
C
And the mayor at the time had actually guaranteed Lewis the chief job and political powers that he just did not want that to happen. So they made him the acting Chief.
- [03:01]
A
This is GM Cox. He's a college lecturer with a PhD in public and urban administration. Back in 1993, GM was the police chief in a different town. He applied for the position in Corsicana that was promised to Lewis. Guess who got the job. So what was it like coming to Corsicana?
- [03:21]
C
Oh, man. Well, I knew it was a town in trouble. There's no doubt.
- [03:26]
A
Yep. GM Cox.
- [03:28]
C
Within 30 days, I had my knee dislocated. Riot at Lincoln Elementary. We were at a fifth grade open house and there was just a huge crowd. You've heard this. No justice, no peace. Well, this started long before Ferguson. So we had a group of people, protesters that ran through the hallway, lighting people's hair on fire, popping people in the face with bandanas. Oh, yeah, it was brutal. These people are throwing desks. I don't think they intended to hurt me, but they. The whole crowd pushed up against my left knee. Just crumbled.
- [04:03]
A
It's his first month on the job. He's dealing with riots. He's got a dislocated knee. Then he has to drop everything and deal with one of his own sergeants, the former acting police chief, Louis Palos.
- [04:15]
C
When I found out about it, I was livid.
- [04:18]
A
The wife of Lewis's best friend was missing, and Chief Cox says Lewis had already compromised the search. My name is Wes Ferguson.
- [04:29]
D
And I'm Carol Dawson. You're listening to the Unforgotten. Season one, the Labor Day Ghost.
- [04:40]
A
Chapter three. Compromised from the start.
- [04:45]
D
During the seven days that passed before Shelly's body was discovered in the Trinity river, one person did instigate a search for her. He didn't do so immediately after learning of her disappearance. In fact, he didn't do so at all until she'd already been gone for three days and nights. And even then, what he did was so stealthy and so out of line with his official job protocols that the effect of erasing possible clues and criminal trails was the same as if he had done nothing at all.
- [05:25]
B
Hey, Lewis.
- [05:26]
A
Yes, sir. How are you doing?
- [05:28]
E
I'm fine.
- [05:29]
A
It's former Corsicana police Sergeant Louis Palos talking through his screen door. I would have called first, but I couldn't find a phone number. So been interviewing, you know, everyone who even sniffed the case.
- [05:44]
B
Well, I haven't talked about that case to anybody because it's still under investigation. You know, the thing is, it's still an active case, and so, you know, I. I just wouldn't want to do that.
- [05:57]
A
Josh, that's been, what, 30 years?
- [06:00]
B
Yeah, I couldn't do that right now.
- [06:04]
A
Yeah, I understand.
- [06:05]
C
Yeah.
- [06:05]
B
Did.
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A
Did you provide any DNA for him recently?
- [06:12]
B
I. I'm not. I'm not gonna. I don't want to. I don't want to say anything.
- [06:16]
A
Former police chief GM Cox says Lewis Palos was a good cop.
- [06:21]
C
My experience was he was a very good police officer. He was a good supervisor. People looked up to him. He had leadership, he had charisma. Now, I will tell you, when I got there, it was made clear to me there were certain people that I should fire. I should get rid of it. And I'm not going to say that Lewis was on that list. But here's what I said to the person that tell me that you should have fired them before I got here, because that's not how I work. Everybody starts with a clean slate.
- [06:46]
A
But Lewis didn't have a clean slate with everybody in town. The district attorney had barred Lewis from testifying in court, even when the cases were crimes he'd worked.
- [06:55]
C
The district attorney at the time had put him on a blacklist. If he arrested somebody, that case was not going to go anywhere. It was dismissed because the district attorney was not going to take the case.
- [07:06]
A
That seems like a pretty huge red flag.
- [07:08]
C
It was a huge red flag. Huge red flag. In order for a prosecutor to do that. My guess is veracity is the issue. Usually what disqualifies a person serving as a witness is veracity.
- [07:23]
A
We've confirmed this about Lewis. A person with direct knowledge told us that he was caught giving false testimony earlier in his career. So how does Lewis fit into the story of Shelly Watkins? Remember, Shelly was last seen on the night of Labor Day in 1993, when her husband, Jerry Mack, said she walked away from their house and was never seen again. That was Monday. Lewis later told a local newspaper that his friend Jerry Mack called him the very next day to ask if he'd seen Shelly. That was Tuesday. Wednesday passes. Still no sign of Shelly. It's not until Thursday that three days after she supposedly walked off into the night, that Lewis issued a regional missing persons bulletin. He did it so quietly, without telling anyone, that as far as Shelly's friends and neighbors could tell, no authorities had been alerted that the wife of a prominent citizen from one of Corsicana's prominent families was missing. Lewis didn't file a police report either. He didn't even bother to alert his commanding officer, GM Cox. In fact, yet another three days passed before GM Heard anything about Shelly's case. By that time, she'd already been missing for a week. Here's my co host Carol, on the phone with Chief Cox.
- [08:41]
F
It is my understanding that he filed the missing person's report, but he kept it really, really quiet. He didn't really tell you who was his head officer, and he didn't really tell anybody else. And that the following Sunday, one of Shelly's friends who was very, very frustrated by the lack of action in searching for Shelly, had phoned you up anonymously and said, this woman is missing. Why isn't anybody looking for her? Her husband has said, oh, she walked off in the middle of the night, just stalked off after an argument, and she hasn't been seen since. But don't worry, she'll come back. She'll be back. I want to verify with you that what she told me is in fact, accurate.
- [09:36]
C
It's close to accurate, but it's not the only thing. Louis Talos did withhold that information from me.
- [09:42]
A
GM Says he only happened to find out about Shelly's disappearance when Corsicana residents started calling the police station to ask why a helicopter was sweeping the area. The helicopter belonged to a glass company in town. Lewis was friends with people at the company. It turns out that Lewis, again, without his chief's knowledge, had enlisted the private helicopter to search for Shelley around her home in Beaten Lake Estates. Was it unusual for him to have done that without notifying you?
- [10:11]
C
Yeah, that's why he got trouble. Better. He violated policy. And I told him, don't ever do it again.
- [10:16]
A
And here's another thing. The Watkins House was just outside Corsicana. It was in the county sheriff's jurisdiction. So why was Lewis, a city cop and not the county sheriff, leading the search for Shelley? Later on, Lewis told a newspaper reporter that he simply didn't realize the Watkins House was not inside Corsicana city limits. This is a claim GM Cox does not find credible.
- [10:40]
C
Oh, I'm absolutely sure he knew it. I mean, he'd been a cop there for almost all his life, and he was a telecommunicator before that. No doubt in my mind he knew it. Well, I was just trying to help. I said, well, first off, you don't have the authority to do that. Not using horse canopied his name. Sometimes there's a very thin line between acting as a private citizen and acting.
- [11:04]
A
GM Says he ultimately determined that Lewis was acting not as a Corsicana police sergeant, but but as a private citizen and friend of Jerry Mack Watkins. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me since Lewis was the one who filed the Missing Persons Bulletin, which is a thing only police do. He also used his influence as a police sergeant to launch the helicopter search. Lewis has said that he also called area motels looking for Shelly. According to a news article in a small Texas newspaper called the Athens Daily Review, there were questions about whether Lewis had knowledge of Shele's death or that he might have been involved in a cover up. The newspaper didn't say who was raising these questions. But if it was part of a cover up, why conduct the helicopter search?
- [11:48]
C
It was done strictly from what I understand, at the request Louis Palos. I've never heard Jerry Mac Watkins name mentioned. But why would he do it? I'll tell you why. Because it's a distraction. It makes you ask the question you just asked. Why would a guilty guy do that? Could be a little bit of arrogance. So I don't think. I don't think Lewis is that smart. I think he's been real lucky.
- [12:12]
A
GM is just speculating here.
- [12:15]
C
So their lawyer is going to go through this whole process trying to make other people think that, well, that's. That's dumb. Nobody would do that. Well, except people do things when they're in a panic. They don't think. They try to close the door after the horses are gone because they get to thinking about it and they try to cover all their tracks. It doesn't always work. In fact, most of the time it doesn't work. That's how we. We get evidence on crooks and their crimes. Because nobody said good.
- [12:46]
A
In the same newspaper article that raised questions about Lewis's possible involvement in Shelley's death, Lewis said that he had no idea what happened to his friend's wife. To clear up any suspicion, he offered to take a polygraph test. He did and apparently passed. From what we understand, investigators interviewed Lewis several times and they ultimately cleared him. At any rate, when his chief GM Found out, he immediately instructed Lewis to turn over the case to the Navarro County Sheriff's Office where the case belonged.
- [13:17]
C
Remember, this was not our case, so we didn't really conduct a criminal investigation at all.
- [13:24]
D
Not until that same Sunday, one whole week after Shelley went missing, did Chief GM Cox get the chance to route the case over to the Navarro County Sheriff's Office. It would rest in the sheriff's hands only for the next 24 hours. Which brings us to one of the trickiest circumstances of Shelly Watkins recovery from the Trinity River. When the fishermen found her, they apparently anchored her over on the Henderson county side of the water rather than the Navarro county side. The 911 call they then made was to the Henderson County Sheriff's Office, where dispatcher Christy Warrick was on duty. Suddenly the entire case fell into the jurisdiction of the county next door to the place where Shelly was most likely murdered.
- [14:11]
A
Since all this might be a little complicated, let's go back to the Trinity River Bridge for just a second where Shelly was found. So just to make sure that I have my bearings, like on the left, that is Henderson County.
- [14:24]
D
That's correct.
- [14:25]
A
And that's Athens is the county seat. And then on our right, Navarro county and Corsicana is the county seat.
- [14:31]
F
That's correct.
- [14:32]
A
And just because the fishermen happen to be from Henderson county, they pulled her to the Henderson county side.
- [14:40]
D
That's right. They'd probably parked their cars or trucks right over there.
- [14:45]
E
But I don't know.
- [14:46]
D
That's just speculation on my part.
- [14:49]
A
But you can still see there's a little truck trail coming down. We're told the Navarro County Sheriff's Office breathed a deep sigh of relief when its neighbor Henderson county took over this problematic case.
- [15:00]
C
Yeah, nobody wants to inherit a murder.
- [15:03]
D
But the Henderson County Sheriff's Office was starting at a disadvantage. Louis Palos may have been acting in good faith. We have no way of knowing. By taking the search upon himself, though, his actions effectively hid Shelly's absence from any of the people who should have been addressing it.
- [15:23]
C
Because Watkins lived in the county and where she was recovered was in another county, which created a whole bunch of broken linkages, not, not the least of which was really compromised by waiting. And don't think that was missed on me.
- [15:50]
D
On September 13, 1993, the same night Shelly Watkins was fished out of the Trinity river, she was transported to the office of the Medical examiner at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas. Her autopsy began at 7:45 the next morning. Some factors in Shelley's death had been obscured by her week long submersion in the river. But several things stood out clearly enough for the medical examiner to determine and state the cause of death as homicidal violence. Their findings reported that Shelly had not been sexually assaulted. She still wore the same size 34 white cotton briefs and dark blue athletic shorts and hoodie top outfit she had worn all day at Cedar Creek Lake. As for any injuries or signs of violence, her left hand ring finger was disjointed where somebody had pulled off her two diamond rings, possibly during the rigor mortis stage of her corpse, when removing rings would have been more difficult. Most telling, though, were the eight plus lacerations on the back of Shelley's head, indicating she'd been hit multiple Times from behind. Whatever had made them. It's likely Shelly. She hadn't seen it coming. The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy has died. So we asked another expert to help us make sense of the findings.
- [17:19]
B
This is Dr. Barnard.
- [17:20]
A
Hey, Dr. Barnard. Thanks so much for calling me. How are you, sir?
- [17:24]
B
Busy as always.
- [17:26]
D
Jeffrey Barnard, MD is the Director of the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences. The insights he provided about Shelly's condition are important, but they're difficult to hear.
- [17:38]
B
Yeah, I've looked at it. She's pretty decomposed. That's probably one of the major issues on this case. As far as coming up with a definitive cause of death. It's just a matter of the decomposition work to the killer's favor by making it much harder to do much with. And then when they get to this state, you start losing the detail that would make the case solvable. Trace evidence that could be available, all that kind of stuff is lost. Which is too bad. You decompose slower in the ground, whereas in the water now you got all the aquatic environment and the animals that are in the water that then start to feed on the body and, you know, make it a big mess.
- [18:25]
A
And whoever was smart enough to throw her in the river didn't account for the, the. The decomposition gases bringing her back to the surface.
- [18:34]
B
Yeah, it didn't account for that, but tried pretty hard with cinder blocks and chains.
- [18:38]
A
I saw that she had lacerations, but no skull fracture. Yeah, one of the theories of the lead investigator is that the husband maybe pushed her and then she. She hit her head on the. On. On their garage floor.
- [18:55]
B
I always felt like he grabbed her by her hair and, and beat her head against that floor.
- [19:01]
D
That was investigator Larry Warrick.
- [19:04]
A
But I mean, if. If that was the case, wouldn't there be a skull fracture?
- [19:09]
B
Not necessarily. I mean, those are closed head injuries. There certainly can be skull fractures, but in this case, multiple lacerations would be more than one impact, so that wouldn't be just a single impact. So she would. She would instruct multiple times to get that she's got this furrow on the neck. So she could have been strangled and beaten.
- [19:36]
D
A furrow is another word for a narrow groove. The medical examiner found that Shelley had a long horizontal furrow 12 1/2 inches long by 1,4 inch wide across the front and side of her neck. It might have been caused by a rope around her neck.
- [19:54]
B
When she's thrown into the river. If she's got something wrapped around her neck, that could cause a postmortem impression because the neck Dissection didn't show hemorrhage. But again, when they decompose, you lose a lot of your markers that we can see in fresh bodies.
- [20:09]
A
Okay, so it's, it is possible that she was strangled even though she didn't show the, the hemorrhages and contusions.
- [20:17]
B
Yeah, I mean, the, the reason you see the hemorrhage is because you have increased force over a localized area. Same thing with these impacts to the head, because I don't know what they, what it was that was used. So from 3/4 to 4 inches, sounds like more than one thing. Could be a two by four, could be, you know, a hammer, it could be a whole bunch of things. But because you have force over enough of it over an area that is sufficient to crack and break the bone. And so a lot of times people get blunt force injuries without a skull fracture and they have a lethal head injury and die. It could have been that. But then decomposing in the river in the brain is liquefied, you just can't tell squat a lot of times.
- [21:03]
A
Yeah. How likely is it that those lacerations were from turtles or something else in the river that we don't know?
- [21:10]
B
No, no, no, I don't think so. I think those are real.
- [21:14]
C
Okay.
- [21:15]
B
When turtles and things like that affect the body, they, they, they take a bite. They bite and so it's tearing. And that's not what this is describing.
- [21:26]
A
Did you look at the toxicology?
- [21:28]
D
Shelly's toxicology report showed that she had a blood alcohol level of 0.19%. That is more than twice the legal limit for drivers in the United States. But Dr. Barnard says not to read too much into that heavy percentage postmortem.
- [21:45]
B
They decompose, it can generate alcohol. So the fact is, over 0.1 is suggested that she had been drinking before she died.
- [21:55]
A
Yeah, her, her family had said, you know, they had been at the lake drinking all that day.
- [22:01]
B
Yeah. So it's consistent that she had had alcohol in addition to whatever was generated by the decomposition and bacteria.
- [22:11]
A
For me, you know, when I see 0.19, I'm thinking, oh, if I have.08, I'm going to jail, you know. But you're saying a lot of that might have come from the decomposition?
- [22:21]
B
Yes, yes, exactly.
- [22:23]
D
The toxicology report also showed that Shelley had a trace amount of an opioid pain reliever.
- [22:29]
B
I don't think that really means much. That's a low amount.
- [22:33]
D
So what we learned from the autopsy report and its interpreter is this. Shelly had not been sexually Assaulted. She had only one below the shoulders injury to her left hand, ring finger joint. She had alcohol levels present in her body that naturally increased exponentially during decomposition, along with a trace amount of a pain reliever. Also, her skin did not show evidence of fire ant bites, which contradicts a theory about her death that we've been told and work pursuing. Above her shoulders, a furrow indented her neck, indicating possible rope damage. And most important, she had multiple lacerations to the back of her skull, at least eight in all, indicating an attack strike from behind. That's what probably killed her, thanks to subsequent blood loss and a possible brain bleed. The day after Shelly's autopsy was conducted in Dallas, her father in law, Carmack, called her sister Sandy in Georgia to break the news of Shelly's death.
- [23:42]
E
Carmack called me and, you know, he's just, you know, never was a very warm and fuzzy. And his response to me was, God damn, they found the body. Is that the first thing he said? I think he said, are you sitting down? And I said, carmack, just go ahead and tell me what is going on here. And he just blurted out, goddamn, they found the body. My first grader came in and I was absolutely having a breakdown and I just said, I have to go. So we didn't talk for very long. And that was how he presented it to me. We got out there pretty quickly. I think we were all out there by Friday and, you know, things just weren't adding up. I know that I was definitely not very on top of it for those couple of days. I just couldn't seem to get a grip and I just kept thinking, something's not right. Well, clearly at this point, Jerry had kind of dropped off anyway. Well, then that made even more sense because, you know, he was shying away.
- [24:54]
D
Once Shelley's body returned to Corsicana from the Dallas morgue and her parents and siblings had time to arrive, her coffin rested at Corley's Funeral home. The memorial service took place at Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Shelley had been a faithful congregant, taking her two little girls to Sunday school there every week.
- [25:16]
E
When we got to Corsicana and we went to the funeral home, I never did see her body, which probably was a good thing. You know, there's already. There's lots of conflict on that too, because, you know, they tried to tell me that she was cremated and then. But we got involved and I said that you can't cremate a body that showed up in a river. You just. You can't do that. It's Evident, you know, Now I saw her casket as we walked in. Her picture was on top. And. And then immediately the police wanted us to come back and have conversation. And it became very clear very quickly what their thoughts were.
- [26:03]
F
Did you talk to anybody in Corsicana at that time, or were you all kept separate by the Watkins family?
- [26:11]
E
The only time that we mixed and mingled with anybody was when we went for the lunch afterwards. And Jerry was heavily sedated but still barely functioning. He was like kind of a zombie. And we knew that going in. Somebody said, yeah, well, he's pretty. Pretty out of it.
- [26:30]
F
He probably hadn't had very much sleep during that week.
- [26:33]
E
I'm sure not. I'm sure not. I mean, what was all unfolding was something out of a terrible movie, you know?
- [26:42]
D
When Chief Homicide Investigator Larry Warrick of the Henderson County Sheriff's Department and Texas Ranger Ray Nutt took over the Shelly Watkins case, the first thing they did was to gather all available information from Navarro County's preliminary investigation. They needed to eliminate any other possibilities regarding Shelley's movements before and after death. Before pursuing their prime suspicions, Navarro County Peace Officer Jimmie Johnson was able to inform them that he'd already checked with the surrounding businesses on Interstate 45 in the area near Beaton Lake Estates in case Shelly had walked from her home to one of them. And they all stated they hadn't seen her. Warrick had actually been on the scene at the river when Shelly was pulled out. The shock of the gruesome discovery has never since left his mind. Nor has it left the mind of his wife, Christy, the dispatcher who took the emergency call.
- [27:40]
G
It broke my heart for her. I mean, I didn't know her. She's from another county, didn't even know the family. And the family name, you know, Watkins Construction. And now when I. There's a truck here in town, when I see it on the side of his truck, it just angers me. It does. There's somebody that lives here that works for him. And I saw it the other day at Walmart. Not the man, but just seeing the name, just because you always heard, watkins Construction, Watkins Construction. Cause they, you know, we're proving everything came from Watkins Construction. The cinder blocks, the chains, the wrapped stuff. Just angers me for lots of reasons. For her, for her children, and then just the fact that he thought he could do that. People just can't do that to other people.
- [28:28]
D
The obvious place to start untangling what happened to Shelly was the place where she was allegedly last seen alive. So Ranger Nutt and Investigator Warrick traveled the 38 miles from Athens to the tiny neighborhood that Jerry Mack Watkins claimed Shelly had come home to on the night she vanished. According to the Athens Daily Review, under a headline published only 10 days after Shelley's body was recovered, Jerry Mack refused to cooperate with their investigation. He also refused to permit Ranger Nutt and investigator Warrick onto his property to conduct a search of the house and grounds. The house is the first on the right as one enters on the road leading into Beaton Lake Estates. The single family single story tan brick residential building had beige trim and olive green shutters. By then he had taken his two daughters to stay with his sister, Janice Watkins King and her family. So the investigators started with the neighbors and that was when they found their first surprise discoveries. According to David Williams and Carolyn Taylor, both of whom lived just across the street from Shelly and Jerry Mackay and both of whom had stayed up very late on that Labor Day night, the lights of the Watkins house were burning on full bright until at least 4am the garage itself has a side entrance and a large double wide uncovered window facing the front. A window through which with the lights turned on at night, observers would have been able to see through into the interior should they have wished to do so. And apparently someone did.
- [30:11]
A
So the, the reports about the, the voices and the lights on in the middle of the night and all that.
- [30:18]
B
You my boy, my boy.
- [30:19]
C
Now him and Danny was spending that.
- [30:22]
D
This is across the street neighbor David Williams.
- [30:25]
C
And I did tell the sheriff that, that we washed the baby and we went to bed and then when I got about, I got up about 2 o' clock in the night as Daniel Chad, what are y' all doing up? You know how kids are up playing video. And he said Jerry's lights are on over there. And I said oh they, if I went out of town, they'll be back or whatever. I'm gonna go back to bed.
- [30:44]
D
The second floor bedroom window of Chad Williams, David Williams 11 year old son commanded an excellent view of the front garage window of the Watkins house. Chad and his sleepover friend clearly found this unusual enough to report it to his dad. And one of the reasons for that may be that according to other neighbors, it wasn't only the main house lights that were burning that night. It was also the outdoor lights, the floodlights, the pool lights, the patio lights. All of which might have been necessary if anyone wished to thoroughly inspect the property to make sure nothing important had been missed or overlooked. This despite the statement Jerry Mack had already made to friends that he had gone Back inside and gone straight to bed and to sleep. Immediately after a spat with Shelley. Both vehicles, Jerry Mack's red Jeep and Shelly's white 1992 BMW, were parked in the driveway at that post midnight hour after 4am Though no one bothered to note anything further.
- [31:51]
A
And this is even more surprising. Two neighbors, David Williams and Robert Johnson, both told investigators that Jerry Mack confided in them two days after Shele was last seen. They said Jerry Mack told them he'd driven Shelly's less than a year old BMW to Dallas, a full hour's drive away to get it cleaned, detailed and installed with four brand new tires as a surprise for Shelly when she got home. Robert Johnson admitted he found this very strange. Why would anyone do that when their wife was missing? It gets even weirder. Investigators found out that Jerry Mack phoned ahead to a Mazda dealership in another area, Bryan College Station. He asked the service department at the car dealership to order new trunk, side panels and carpet for the BMW to replace the ones he claimed his wife had spilled some paint on. Just two days after Jerry Mack had Shelly's car serviced in Dallas, he had one of his employees drive the BMW 126 miles in the complete opposite direction. When the car arrived at the dealership, all of the original panels and carpet had already been stripped out. The job required specially designed tools, but Jerry Mag had not left this up to the dealership to remove the carpet and panels. The service manager who worked at the dealership back then still recalls the unusual job.
- [33:12]
H
Now this is a blast from the past. I just assumed the guy was in the Graybar Hotel all these years, that he'd been convicted and was, you know, on, on death row somewhere.
- [33:23]
D
This is the service department manager, Alan Mihal.
- [33:27]
H
Yeah, it's Alan Mahalik. I'm the one you're looking for. I mean, I was in the car business for 15, 16, 17 years. And this is the only time we ever replaced all the linings inside the trunk. The way I remember it was somebody from his company dropped it off. Supposedly was the wife's car. She had spilled paint. Was the story like, what the hell? And. But whenever we went and took a look in there, I mean, it was clean as a whistle. You know, all the soft linings were gone. It was down to the body and white, if you will, just the sheet metal everywhere. We had to order all the parts. We went ahead and, you know, got, just replaced the stuff and then sent them on their way sometime later. I can't remember when I want to say it was a Texas Ranger or some sort of investigator shows up and starts asking questions about that, and we're like, huh.
- [34:25]
C
Oh, boy.
- [34:26]
H
What are the odds of that?
- [34:28]
D
Here's investigator Larry Warrick again, like I.
- [34:32]
B
Say, he had replaced all that liner in. In there.
- [34:36]
C
Yes.
- [34:37]
B
I mean, who does that? Why would you do that? There was no paint spilled back here. I just believe he did it because that's where Shelly was transported. He used that vehicle to transport her.
- [34:52]
D
Back to Alan from the car dealership.
- [34:55]
H
But again, the car itself, they did a pretty good cleaner job on it, I think of Ult Dixon. Whatever they said, you bringing in the.
- [35:04]
A
Wolf, you sent in the wolf.
- [35:08]
C
Negro.
- [35:08]
A
That's all you had to say, you.
- [35:11]
C
Know what I'm saying?
- [35:12]
B
Yeah.
- [35:12]
A
From Pulp Fiction.
- [35:13]
H
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:14]
A
So if there hadn't been any paint, you. It would have been long gone. If there had been any other matter, then that would be gone too.
- [35:22]
H
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:24]
A
The Texas Ranger who interviewed you was named Ray Kaufman.
- [35:29]
C
Mr. Parkson. That's right, Kaufman.
- [35:31]
A
And he said the panels in a BMW are extremely difficult to remove and require special nuts and bolts to secure. What do you think?
- [35:42]
H
Yeah, there's a bunch of pieces they all have. You need, like, special tools. You know, they put that stuff there in the factory, and it's never removed again.
- [35:50]
A
And you never. You never encountered another trunk?
- [35:53]
H
Yeah, not since then or before that or after. Never. Never. Never had to do anything, a job like that. It's a one one off deal. That's. That's a fact.
- [36:03]
A
Why would someone go to that trouble for spilled paint?
- [36:07]
H
Must have been a lot of paint. Usually when you. Usually when you spill paint, it's just on the bottom panel.
- [36:12]
B
Right.
- [36:13]
H
Something tips over, that kind of thing or tips over on one side.
- [36:17]
A
So if it had been paint and they had.
- [36:19]
B
It's.
- [36:20]
A
And that's why they removed all the linings and the floor, they would have been having to, like, splash it around a lot, huh?
- [36:27]
H
I.
- [36:28]
B
Yes.
- [36:29]
H
I don't know. I mean, typically, if some paint tipped over or something like that, it would just, you know, go flat, go down into, like, the spare tire wheel and stuff like that. You know, if it leaked between the floor panels or everything, I think that on that car, there's center panel in the bottom, the bottom piece flips up in the spare tires underneath there, you know, in a. Well, that kind of deal. Yeah, but, but, yeah, but like I said, we. He said paint. We didn't have any reason to assume otherwise. When man with the dad showed up asking questions just like, huh, yeah. Like I said it was. It was clean as a whistle. I saw they had taken it to Dallas or something to get it cleaned. I thought that was kind of odd, too. If it's going to Dallas to clean it, why don't they just take it to the Dallas dealership?
- [37:16]
D
Good question. Ranger Nutt and investigator Larry Warrick thought so too. So did Chief GM Cox.
- [37:23]
C
A rational person doesn't do it, or at least not for rational purposes. You and I would. If they're trying to conceal a crime, they would do it.
- [37:32]
D
But there could have been a very possible reason for this action. Once they roamed further afield from the beaten Lake Estates, Warwick and Nutt received a word they had neither hoped nor expected to hear. A witness had come forward claiming to have seen a white and rather expensive car, the same bridge from which Shelly Watkins body had presumably been dropped. This is Lemoyne Lawhon, a career officer with the Corsicano Police Department.
- [38:01]
C
I was actually working on my pickup truck at Haney Record Service. It was out on South 287. And I was off and a guy come in and he started talking about it and he started telling me that he had seen the car on the bridge and all this other kind of stuff. And I said, well, you don't need to be talking to me. You need to be talking to the ranger. And so I set him up believer than that was the ranger that I set him up with.
- [38:32]
A
So that was John McCollum. John McCollum?
- [38:35]
C
Yeah, I think so.
- [38:37]
D
The witness, John McCollum followed Law Han's advice and contacted the Henderson County Sheriff's Department. He was willing to make a taped statement. He'd been on his work commute at about 4:30am the day after Labor Day, the morning of September 7th, when he crossed the Trinity river on the FM 85 bridge.
- [38:59]
A
Call John McCollum.
- [39:04]
C
Hello?
- [39:05]
A
Hey, is this Mr. McCollum?
- [39:08]
C
This is him.
- [39:09]
A
How you doing, sir?
- [39:10]
C
I'm doing fine.
- [39:13]
A
I'm. I'm working on a project about the. The Shelly Watkins case. And of course, your name is. Is all over that as. As one of the witnesses. Love to.
- [39:23]
C
You know, that's funny because, you know, they reported later that there was no witnesses.
- [39:29]
A
Oh, who reported that?
- [39:31]
C
Well, that's what come out in the papers. They were looking for witness.
- [39:38]
A
Well, what I read was that, that. That you were. That you were driving to work that morning when you crossed the bridge.
- [39:45]
D
Yes, that early morning on the Trinity river bridge. John McCullum had noticed a man standing beside the car engaged in some unknown task. That man McCollum, identified in a photo lineup as Jerry Mack Watkins, S.A.
- [40:31]
A
Thank you for listening to the Unforgotten. Get updates, photos, case files and more when you sign up for our newsletter@unforgottenpod.com the Unforgotten is a free range production. Season one, the Labor Day Ghost is created, written and hosted by Carol Dawson and me, Wes Ferguson. I'm the Executive Producer here at Free Range. Audio recording, editing and mixing by Austin Sisler at Eastside Studios in Austin, Texas. Scored by Austin Sisler and Jamie Cummins. Our theme song, Ghost, is written and performed by Corsicana's own Will Mechatron Jones. If you support our efforts to shine a new light on Shelly Watkins Cold Case, please like subscribe, give us a review and tell your friends thanks again and see you soon.