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E229: Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams
3.2k Plays7 months ago
Two separate traffic incidents. Two separate individuals who were driven away by police. Two separate men who were never seen again. Are the cases of Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams intricately linked or could the similarities be merely coincidental?
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Transcript
Understanding Intelligence and Memory
00:00:00
Speaker
Some portion of intelligence, I'm convinced, is about the ability to see connections and patterns. After all, our brain needs to form links in order to continue to build neural pathways. For details to make their way into our long-term memory, they can't be free-floating. They must be tied in to other memories or knowledge, to feelings, to people.
00:00:26
Speaker
As an avid Jeopardy watcher, I found that I only remember missed questions if I later recognize a word in the clue guiding me to the answer or if the way in which a contestant answered it was memorable. It's also why Maggie and I talk about memory and we argue that something will likely only stick out if it ties to something else.
00:00:50
Speaker
like remembering someone came to a meeting late because they fell while walking in. This week, I'm going to ask that you listen carefully, that you seek out connections and look for inconsistencies. Then, based on the tapestry of the details, what patterns emerge? What logical deductions can be made? These
The Disappearance of Felipe Santos
00:01:15
Speaker
are the cases of Felipe Santos and Terrence Williams.
00:01:54
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron.
00:02:03
Speaker
We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families. With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, Maggie, you probably guess that whatever it is I'm going to tell you about in our case this week is actually two cases and that the two young men I mentioned in the introduction are somehow linked. Yeah, I was literally about to ask you this before. Yes. So you would be right that most people do think these two cases
00:02:54
Speaker
are linked. That's why I want you to listen to the details very carefully to see if we also make the same connection. Correct. So most who hear about these two gentlemen actually end up hearing first about the most recent chronologically because it was only after Terrence Williams' case
00:03:18
Speaker
that the connection between the two cases was made. Obviously that makes sense. You're not going to make a connection when there's only one case. But I am going to start with a case that happened first chronologically, the disappearance of Felipe Santos. Felipe Santos
00:03:37
Speaker
had come to the United States illegally in 2000 when he was 21 in order to get a job and send money back to his family in Oaxaca, Mexico. He had found a job in Immokalee, Florida. Yes, I had to look that up.
00:03:57
Speaker
What's the pronunciation? Yeah, and the spelling. Yeah. Never what I've connected the two. I had to watch some news reports because I had to make sure I was saying it right. Yes, Immokalee, Florida, which is in Collier County, where he worked alongside two of his brothers. And Collier County is one of those places where affluence and the working class farming areas butt up next to one another.
00:04:26
Speaker
where the wealthy Naples, Florida is in one area and Immokalee, an area of various tomato and fruit farms where a high population of immigrant workers reside. You have that on the other. Gotcha. It was here that Santos, along with two of his siblings, had moved.
00:04:47
Speaker
In 2003, the now 23-year-old Santos was working hard both on a farm and on a construction site to save money that he could send back to his family. Neither of which are easy jobs. No, they are very labor intensive. Yes, very.
00:05:07
Speaker
And Felipe had big dreams of getting ahead and buying a home for his own small growing family, his fiance and his little girl who was three months old. Those who knew Felipe well just described him as a hard worker who enjoyed sports and said that he was humble in all of his interactions. He spoke fluent Spanish, but very little English.
00:05:37
Speaker
However, working alongside many others who had immigrated from Mexico, English wasn't necessarily extremely important for him to learn to communicate daily. On October 14th, 2003, Felipe wasn't feeling well and his fiance tried to convince him to stay home, but Felipe was not the type to skirt work, as you noticed.
00:06:02
Speaker
And he decided to go in anyway. And the fiance and baby are back in Mexico, yes. You know, that's a great question. It was very confusing in the research whether his, and I'm hesitant to even say fiance because some sources said common law wife, others said girlfriend, others said fiance.
00:06:24
Speaker
but we'll say fiance. His fiance and his little girl, some sources said were here, others said they were back in Oaxaca. So I'm unclear on that. But around 6.30 AM on October 14th, Felipe and his brothers were driving to work when they were in a minor car accident in Naples, Florida.
00:06:49
Speaker
Initially, Felipe and his brothers had urged the other driver not to call the police and that they would pay cash for damages because remember they were undocumented. So you can kind of understand why Felipe and his brothers were saying, Hey, you know, I'll give you money. Just please don't call the police. The driver did call the police though.
00:07:17
Speaker
When that officer arrived at the scene, Santos was cited for reckless driving and driving without a license and without insurance. He was then driven away in the officer's car. His two brothers were left there because Felipe had been driving.
00:07:36
Speaker
When the accident had happened one of the two brothers who remained behind had called their foreman at the construction site which was actually extremely close by to come pick them up for work because obviously they were on the way to work and the foreman agreed to do so and not only when the foreman arrived did he pick up the two brothers
00:07:56
Speaker
and take them to the worksite. But he also contacted the county jail in order to post bail for Santos. But Maggie, Santos wasn't at the jail. So he gets in the back of a police cruiser. Yes.
00:08:15
Speaker
but doesn't go to jail? Correct. Okay. So asked about the incident, the officer who had driven Santos away after the accident said that Felipe Santos had actually been so polite and cooperative that the officer had decided not to arrest him and to drop him off at a nearby gas station, a circle K instead. Okay.
00:08:45
Speaker
I know you said that he was very nice and he's humble. So, okay. Potentially that, that happened. Was the police officer Spanish speaking? I do not know that either. Because I feel like him being very polite and very nice would have to mean that they were able to communicate pretty effectively and his English was limited. It is limited. And then why drop him off?
00:09:15
Speaker
somewhere where it's going to be difficult for him to communicate with other people. He does explain later why he said he took him to the Circle Gay. One of the reasons is that because he didn't have a license or insurance, he wasn't just going to leave him with the car because he didn't want him to get back in the car. But we'll get into more of those details. But Maggie Santos never made it to work that day.
00:09:46
Speaker
He seemed to vanish. Initially his family worried that he had been arrested and deported. In fact, they feared every possibility because honestly, when you know nothing, anything is possible. Two weeks after not hearing from him on October 29th, 2003,
00:10:09
Speaker
Felipe Santos was reported missing. You know, this kind of makes me sad because I feel they probably waited longer than they were comfortable with reporting him missing because where he was here illegally. I know. And that is very sad.
Terrence Williams's Vanishing Act
00:10:27
Speaker
Our next case happens just 41 days after Felipe Santos disappeared. The disappearance of Terrence Williams.
00:10:37
Speaker
Terrence Williams hailed from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was a father of four children, but the young 27-year-old African American man had just moved to Naples, Florida, so he could be closer to his mother, Marcia, though he did often hang out with friends that he had made in Florida. He's young, he's 27.
00:10:59
Speaker
And Maggie, it was one of those friends, Jason Gonzalez, who sent Terrence's mother, Marcia, an email on January 13th, 2004 to say that he was concerned about Terrence because he hadn't heard nor seen him since the evening of January 11th. All right, so two days. Right. Marcia herself hadn't spoken with Terrence either since a couple of days earlier when she had picked him up
00:11:26
Speaker
from the Bonita Springs Pizza Hut where he worked and had driven him to a friend's house. In that last interaction, Terrence had given his mom some gas money, so sweet, son moved there before hopping out with an, I'll see you later, mama, on the evening of the 11th, that same evening that his mother last spoke with them.
00:11:50
Speaker
roommate Jason spoke with Terrence on the phone before going to bed, but Terrence's night was just getting started. There was a party that Terrence wanted to attend at a co-worker's home and Terrence had been actively trying to get a ride to the party. When he was unable to do so, Terrence had decided to drive himself there
00:12:14
Speaker
There was an issue with that decision though, Maggie, and that is that Terrence's vehicle registration had expired, and on top of that, he didn't have a valid driver's license because his had been revoked after he was cited for driving under the influence. So two no-nos there. Yes, but he wants to go to this party and can't find a ride, so he decides he's going to drive himself.
00:12:40
Speaker
Terrence's family knew immediately that something was wrong with Terrence not being in contact with friends nor family for several days, especially since he hadn't been in contact with his children either. So his family called the police to file a missing persons report.
00:13:00
Speaker
Obviously not wanting to wait a minute more without actively looking for Terrence themselves. His family didn't leave it at the report. They went out looking for Terrence as well. Oh, okay. And his aunt found something. Oh. She located Terrence's Cadillac.
00:13:22
Speaker
It had actually been towed from Naples Memorial Cemetery and the family got a copy of the tow report, which showed that the vehicle had been called in. The report of the tow noted not a whole lot, but it did say that Collier County Sheriff's deputy, Steve Kalkins had signed the report and without reeling any other lead and now wondering, okay, did Terrence,
00:13:51
Speaker
Was he taken to jail because he was driving without a license? Right, again, all these worries, yeah, what ifs are running through their mind. So the family called the sheriff's office to gain whatever information they could, but they were told that there hadn't been an arrest made, nor even an incident report filed, just the tow. So his car sounds to me like it was found abandoned. That's, yes.
00:14:21
Speaker
That's what it sounds like. Next, Terence's mother, she calls the cemetery. Because again, all we know is that his car was left there. So she calls the cemetery. She's thinking maybe somebody there had seen some. And they had.
00:14:41
Speaker
Three workers from the cemetery had seen an officer pull over a black man who met the description of her son Terrence sometime around 930 or so that morning. The officer had asked for ID, but the driver didn't have any. They then reported that the officer patted the driver down before putting him in the back of the police car and driving away.
00:15:05
Speaker
the officer had asked the workers if the Cadillac could be left in the parking lot. Oh. Around 45 minutes later, the same officer reportedly returned and moved the car to the road, the place from which it would later be towed for obstructing traffic. Okay. I was about to say what's the purpose of moving it because I feel it would be easier to get on a tow truck if it were in a parking lot. Yes.
00:15:32
Speaker
dropping the keys to the car on the ground by the driver's side door. And the officer was deputy Steve Kalkins, the one who signed the tow report. So they're saying, okay, this guy who you said signed the tow report, he's the same police officer that we saw with the tow truck and
00:15:56
Speaker
who was patting down somebody who looked like your son and put him in the back of the police car. But none of this made sense to the family Maggie, right? Why was Terrence patted down and driven away if he wasn't arrested, nor even an incident report filed? But even more confusing, when asked about the incident, Deputy Calkins initially had no memory of Terrence Williams, nor of the activity with the car,
00:16:25
Speaker
since there wasn't a written report to jog his memory. So he's literally just like, I don't remember what you're talking about. I don't have any idea. Exactly. Don't recall. However, when asked again about the incident several more days later by his supervisors, Culkin's memory had improved and here's what he said happened. Okay.
00:16:50
Speaker
He said that it was just after noon, 12.27 to be exact, when he noticed a Cadillac driving, quote unquote, in distress. So he followed the car to the lot of the cemetery. Kalkins said the driver of the car told him the car was acting up and he was running late for work. Kalkins then said that the driver asked him for a ride to work
00:17:16
Speaker
at the Circle K. Did Terrence Williams work part-time at a Circle K? He did not. Okay. Cause I thought you said Pizza Hut earlier. He did work at Pizza Hut. Kalkin said that he decided to give the driver a ride after the driver said he didn't have money to take a cab there. Because again, without a license, Kalkin said, I wasn't going to let him get back into the car. So the driver says, well, I don't have money for a cab.
00:17:44
Speaker
And Kalkin says, well, I'll drive you wherever you need to go. And he recalls that Terence said he needed to drive to work at the Circle K. So he took him. So Kalkin's next reported that he dropped the driver off, warning him that he needed to get paperwork in order to have the car properly registered and insured. When the driver of the car told him back,
00:18:11
Speaker
Well, I have registration paperwork in the glove box of the car. Kalkin said he then went back to the car to get it, couldn't find it. So the hints, the return to the car. And feeling that he had been lied to, or potentially that the car had been stolen, said that he called the Circle K to speak with the driver.
00:18:36
Speaker
Culkin said that's when he was told that a person of that description didn't work there. Okay. I don't know this, any of these people obviously, but I just feel so, you know, it's hard to make judgments, but I'm going to anyways. I just feel like
00:18:56
Speaker
This story, this improved memory came about, it almost feels like after this person had time to make this story up. I don't want to comment yet. Okay. Okay. Calkins said, again, he calls the circle K. They say nobody of that description works here. And it was at this point, Calkins reported that he called in the Cadillacs plates
00:19:26
Speaker
only to find that they were expired. So he went back to the Circle K to try to confront the driver, but was unable to find him. Calkins was adamant, though, that he had dropped the driver off at Circle K, and that where he had gone from there was anybody's guess.
00:19:50
Speaker
But Terrence Williams's family had reasons to be skeptical about what they heard. First, the witnesses from the cemetery recalled the stop happening between 9 and 10 a.m., not noon. And what the cemetery workers reported between 9 and 10 actually made more sense to the family since Terrence's work shift at Pizza Hut began at 10 a.m.
00:20:16
Speaker
Oh yeah, so he would have been driving. Exactly. So they're thinking that makes way more sense that that would be the time that he was driving, not later around noon. However, the family obviously couldn't be certain. I mean, could the workers have just misremembered? Had Terence actually been late for work? And regardless, what happened at the Circle K? Yeah, what's with the Circle K? Then Maggie.
00:20:42
Speaker
Terrence's mom would learn information that would completely change her set of questions. A St. Petersburg, Florida lawyer named Linda Friedman Ramirez was tasked with working on Felipe Santos's case. Obviously not believing that he would have chosen to give up his family and his life and just run away.
00:21:07
Speaker
Here's an account of Ramirez's thoughts and actions as told by reporter Curtis Kruger for TampaBay.com. Quote, at a loss, she went to the internet and typed in the name of the deputy, Stephen Calkins. Onto Ramirez's computer popped these words. Has anyone seen my son? It was a letter to the editor published in the Naples Daily News.
00:21:34
Speaker
The letter came from a woman named Marsha Bug, who told a sad story. On January 12, 2004, her son Terrence Williams, who was 27, was driving a white Cadillac north of Naples without a valid driver's license, insurance, or registration. A Collier County deputy stopped him. Corporal Stephen Calkins searched him and put him in the back of his vehicle and drove him somewhere, Bug wrote.
00:22:03
Speaker
He has not been seen or heard from since. Calkins, now 50, would later say that he did not arrest Williams, that he decided instead to drive him to a Circle K convenience store and let him go, just like Santos.
00:22:22
Speaker
When Ramirez read the letter on her computer screen and realized that two people had disappeared in the same way after last contact with the same deputy sheriff, she felt a chill. It was just very, very upsetting." Yeah, there's a lot of similarities so I can see how people think the two may be connected.
00:22:49
Speaker
Soon after, Terence's mother received a call from the Mexican consulate, a call which originally gave her hope that maybe her baby boy had been found.
Inconsistencies and Delays in Police Reports
00:23:00
Speaker
However, the information they shared with her was of another missing young man, Felipe Santos, who disappeared less than three months before her son and was also last seen in the custody of deputy Steven Coggins. Marsha,
00:23:17
Speaker
Terrence's mom also found out that after Felipe Santos was reported missing, an internal investigation began on the officer who had driven Santos away on Officer Steve Calkins.
00:23:33
Speaker
The whole fully based Santos thing happened before Terrence. Correct. Yes, three months earlier. Well, a little less than three months earlier. So remember how Calkins had reported that Santos was so polite and cooperative that he had decided not to arrest him? Well, the woman involved in that fender bender, the other driver that morning, reported something different.
00:23:55
Speaker
Saying of the responding officer, quote, he just stated that he was tired of pulling people over that didn't have licenses, end quote. That in and of itself isn't too alarming. Yeah. But there were other odd details about that day, October 14th, 2003, that stood out.
00:24:17
Speaker
Because I feel like as a police officer, you would probably say things like that. That would be the same as us saying, like, I get really tired of telling kids to sit down. Exactly. Giving directions five times. Exactly. So there were some other concerning things, though, as they related to Felipe Santos. For example, Cawkin stated that
00:24:36
Speaker
He didn't want Santos to be able to return to his car since Santos didn't have a license, right? We mentioned that earlier. So he said that was why he didn't take Santos to the mobile gas station, which was right beside the scene of the collision and had driven him further away to the Circle K. He further said that he took Santos to a gas station so that he could use a payphone. But Maggie, no calls were ever placed.
00:25:07
Speaker
And no one recalled actually seeing Santos at the Circle K gas station. I guess what I'm a little confused about with this story is if the intention were, Oh, he is being so polite. I'm not going to arrest him. Why not just say, Hey buddy, where do you work and take him to where he works? Which was remember extremely close by. Yeah.
00:25:33
Speaker
Or if that, I mean, from the beginning was, he wasn't going to arrest him, but drove him to the circle K just to get him further away from the court. Why didn't he just say, I'm going to wait here and you all are going to call somebody else to come pick you up. Right. I'm going to make sure you don't drive again. Then there are the questions surrounding the citations that were issued to Santos, three in all Maggie.
00:26:01
Speaker
Oddly, even though all three citations required Santos to sign them, Felipe's middle name, Maximino, looks different on all three. It is written as Medino on one, and the other two say Maximo. Like his signature that he supposedly signed? Yes. He misspelled his middle name? His own middle name. Okay. On all three of them.
00:26:29
Speaker
And Maggie, none of them actually look like Felipe Santos's handwriting. Okay. Interesting. So before we move on, let's pause to get an overview of this day with Felipe Santos, since it's of importance. Here's a timeline of October 14th, 2003. And this is courtesy of an article for CNN by Thomas Lake.
00:26:56
Speaker
Calkins logged the collision between Santos and the other driver at 6.55 a.m. Felipe's brothers and the other driver recall Calkins leaving with Santos in the backseat of the patrol car shortly after around 7.05 a.m.
00:27:15
Speaker
Calkins recalled attending a 730 a.m. Substation meeting, though we have honestly no way to know if he was actually there in attendance because attendance wasn't taken. I also read in a different source that the Santos collision call was cleared by Calkins at 735 a.m. What does that mean? I guess when you respond to a call after
00:27:45
Speaker
There has been a resolution. Oh, you mark it as like resolved. Exactly. So it wasn't cleared until 7.35 AM. But to me, that seems to imply that Calkins was just then leaving the scene, meaning he couldn't have been at the 7.30 substation meeting. Or even if he was at the 7.30 substation meeting, are you working on other stuff while you're in a meeting? Because I know the meeting had to last more than five minutes. Exactly. So there's already a few inconsistencies.
00:28:14
Speaker
Recalling his actions from that day, Culkin said that he then called to let Dispatch know that he was doing an extra patrol at nearby Naples Park Elementary School, which meant, by doing this extra patrol, he wouldn't be called on any additional runs. This was from 7.59 to 8.19 a.m.
00:28:38
Speaker
Calkins isn't physically seen again until he goes to nearby North Collier Hospital to take a statement.
00:28:46
Speaker
at 8.53 a.m. So if the brothers, actually a little longer, because if the brothers and the other driver recall the time more accurately, that Calkins actually left the scene of the accident with Felipe Santos in the back at 7.05. Oh yes, nearly two hours. Yeah, that's an hour and 48 minutes of time during which no one physically lays eyes on him.
00:29:15
Speaker
This CNN article also states that due to unknown reasons, the documentation of Calkins actions on the 14th abruptly stop at 11.19 a.m. So we don't know if it worked a half day. If documents just weren't kept, we have no idea what happened after 11.19 a.m.
00:29:38
Speaker
That CNN article also details that two weeks after Felipe disappeared, his brother Jorge filed a citizen's complaint against Calkins on October 29th, and an internal affairs investigation was started. The officer in charge, Doug Turner, told CNN the following about his questioning of Calkins, quote, I could not get Steve to engage me.
00:30:07
Speaker
And whenever I asked him a question, he would go directly to the report and just start reading from the report or the memo that he wrote. He was pretty much like reading from a book instead of just, you know, talking to me. Tell me in your own words what happened. Turner recalled wondering, why didn't you take him to jail? Why did you take him to the Circle K? You know, he said he's trying to give him a break and stuff like that, but it was just,
00:30:37
Speaker
It was just off, you know? But you also look at it as, here we've got a veteran officer that's been on the job for, you know, 15 years at the time or so. He was just burnt out, lazy or whatever, and just didn't want to do the paperwork. As for what happened to Santos, Turner recalled thinking,
00:30:59
Speaker
Maybe he just left." Basically what this Doug Turner is saying is it did feel off with Steve Calkins, but at the same time, they have no evidence that he's done anything wrong. He's a veteran law enforcement officer.
00:31:21
Speaker
Maybe he just didn't arrest him because he just didn't want to fill up, fill up the paperwork. So there was bigger fish to fry. The result of that internal investigation was to clear caulkins of all wrongdoing on December 2nd, 2003. Even though they were kind of like, this is a little weird. We're just going to be like, you're good to go. Yeah.
00:31:46
Speaker
So mere days later, we're talking three weeks later, on January 12, 2004, Calkins pulled over Terrence Williams. In terms of Calkins' activities on January 12, according to that same in-depth CNN article, while we know his shift began at 7 a.m.,
00:32:07
Speaker
Other than the 1227 phone call for the tow, and one other phone call at 1-12, that I'll tell you more about in a moment, Calkins doesn't physically respond to a call until 2.51 p.m. that day. And wasn't he pulling Terrence over at like 9 or 10? According to the cemetery workers, he said it was around noon. Well still, that's still a decent chunk of time.
00:32:38
Speaker
And we know that Calkins did not respond to calls that were made earlier in the day at 101 p.m. He didn't respond to nor at 154 p.m. We had that, like you said, the graveyard workers saying that they first saw the officer and the driver between 9 and 10 a.m. And that the officer returned to the car 45 minutes after pulling away with the driver.
00:33:01
Speaker
But again, we have no way of knowing whether their timeframe is 100% accurate. I mean, unless we talk about memory, unless it were punctuated by something memorable like a break or lunch or something like that. What we do hear from the cemetery workers is that the officer is seen alone when he returns.
00:33:23
Speaker
And you don't feel like that would be something you remembered. This guy was arrested, the officer leaves, and the officer comes back. Like, that would be weird, you know? I feel you would remember it. Yeah, because you're seeing the officer again. But how long had passed in the interim? Maybe that's... Ify.
Officer Calkins Under Scrutiny
00:33:43
Speaker
Right. Not 100% accurate. We have, we don't know. It could be, but it might not be.
00:33:47
Speaker
If something happened in that initial 45 minutes between taking the driver away and returning for the tow, then obviously the two couldn't have driven far in 45 minutes and to then return. Though obviously we do have to acknowledge, of course, it is possible that Terrence was taken somewhere initially left there. And then if he met with foul play, we'll talk more about theories in a second,
00:34:16
Speaker
that the perpetrator then returned to him. That is a possibility. But let's stick to what we know. In both cases, Officer Steve Calkins had driven away with the young men in the backseat of his patrol car. Yet, also in both cases, said that he had changed his mind and decided not to arrest either man.
00:34:40
Speaker
With both Santos and Williams, Officer Calkins maintains that he dropped the men off at local, though not the same, Circle K gas stations and that he is unsure of what happened to them from there. It just seems weird to me, but okay. Just like with Santos not making a call and not being seen at the gas station. Now I'm going to answer your question.
00:35:07
Speaker
Similar problems plagued the story of Terrence Williams being taken to a gas station. Kalkin said he dropped Terrence off at the Circle K, but his patrol car, nor he, nor Terrence, can be seen on the surveillance footage from the Circle K. Okay. So he drops them off, but none of them are on surveillance. Got it. Yes.
00:35:33
Speaker
Deputy Calkins' cell phone records also don't show the call that he said he made to the Circle K when he said he found out that Terrence Williams didn't work there. Got it. Okay. Additionally, sometime after the report of his potential involvement in Terrence Williams' disappearance, a recording of Calkins' phone call when he requested Williams' car be towed was reviewed. In it,
00:36:04
Speaker
Calkins is overheard saying that the car is not only blocking the road, but is abandoned and disabled. But I thought he moved the car. He did. So we know that those are lies.
00:36:18
Speaker
And we also know that, yeah, we know that it's not abandoned because he knows who the driver was. He also knows, we know it's not disabled because not only did he move the car, but it also wasn't even disabled after he moved it because a member of Terrence's family later drove it home from the towing company. Then on this audio recording, Calkins laughs.
00:36:48
Speaker
and says, maybe he's out there in the cemetery. He'll come back and his car will be gone before then using inappropriate language and calling the car a homie Cadillac. Calkins then says, nobody around.
00:37:05
Speaker
So at this point, in essence, Calkins is acting to dispatch like he doesn't know who the driver owner of the vehicle is and that he just stumbled upon it, except that he did know because he drove the owner away. I'm just very confused by this man's stories. Well, we'll talk about him. He also starts quoting with the dispatch
00:37:33
Speaker
Lines from the Clint Eastwood movie, Sudden Impact, which is a movie about taking the law into one's own hands. You should see my face right now. I suppose that Calkins may have done what he did here because he was, if we're playing devil's advocate and we believe what he's saying is true, he could have been angry.
00:37:59
Speaker
about having felt lied to about the registration being on the glove box, right? Like as a police officer, you should be used to being lied to. That's true. And maybe with dispatch, he didn't want to sound vindictive, which is why I acted like he didn't know who was driving the car. And he also did initially say that he didn't recall the stop because it was just so routine, but
00:38:24
Speaker
Maggie, number one, an officer of the law should not act on vindictive tendencies. That's dangerous. And number two, even if he was telling the truth about having been deceived and calling for the toe as a result, then I failed to see how this particular stop would have been quote unquote routine. Good point.
00:38:50
Speaker
So now let's go to the second call that Calkins made after the tow. I told you, you said you tell me about it. Yes. This call was made after he would have dropped the unnamed at this point driver off at the circle K and after the tow phone call. Okay. So at that point he said he didn't know the name of the driver. After he said he went back to the circle K,
00:39:18
Speaker
and couldn't find the driver, right? Because he was mad because the registration wasn't in there. So he went back to Circle K to confront him. At 1.12 PM, Calkins calls dispatch for a background check on a Terrence D. Williams. So he just randomly plucked that name out of the middle of the air if he didn't know who the driver was? Yeah. And it's the recording of this phone call that actually made Terrence's family convinced
00:39:47
Speaker
that Officer Calkins had something to do with Terrence's disappearance. And it's not only because he now has Terrence's full name, but also because Calkins gave Terrence's date of birth as April 1st, 1975 in that phone call. But here's what's weird about that. The date of birth that he gave.
00:40:09
Speaker
was the fake one that Terrence's family knew he always gave to cops, not his real date of birth. So if Calkins didn't know who had driven the car, number one, how did he get his name? And number two, how had he gotten that date of birth? Well, in the minds of his family, Terrence is the only one who could have told him.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah. But if Terrence had told him during the initial stop before Circle K, then why had Calkins taken so long to run his name and date of birth and why had he acted like he didn't even know who the driver of the Cadillac was? Right, because he's already had it towed. So many speculate that either Calkins never dropped Terrence off in the first place at Circle K or that he did return to the Circle K and that he found Terrence.
00:41:04
Speaker
and put Terrence in the back of the patrol car again. So you see, according to Calkins, when he made this call to dispatch with the date of birth, he said he was alone. And as I just mentioned, it would have been long after he said he had dropped the driver off at the Circle K. Again, at that point, acting like he didn't even know the driver's name.
00:41:30
Speaker
the date of birth couldn't have come from anything other than Terrence because remember, there's no registration in the car. And that's by Calkins his own admission. Yeah, because he says he got mad. Right. And goes back to the car. If Terrence didn't give him that information, there's nothing that would have given it to him because Terrence also didn't have a driver's license. If he had had a driver's license, it would have been his actual birthday, not the fake one. Exactly.
00:42:00
Speaker
Then Maggie, Officer Calkins goes off the grid for between one and two hours, a time during which he was on duty, but we cannot account for his activity.
00:42:11
Speaker
Of course, he was later asked to account for that time and to answer to the accusations of having something to do with the disappearance of Terrence Williams, especially since there had been a previous incident from which an individual, Felipe Santos, had disappeared after being stopped and taken into custody in the patrol car by Calkins. Very similar circumstances. Yes. Terrence's mom
00:42:36
Speaker
had continued calling the station, asking for answers concerning her son. Transcripts show that Dispatch called Hawkins on January 16th about the phone calls from Marcia, and the following was their conversation. Dispatch.
00:42:54
Speaker
I hate to bother you at home on your day off, but this woman's been bothering us all day. You towed a car from Vanderbilt and a hundred, do you remember it? Calkins. Um, no. Dispatch. Do you remember? She said it was near the cemetery. Calkins. Cemetery? And then he says something about the vehicle being abandoned and no driver present.
00:43:24
Speaker
Dispatch, well, somebody's at the cemetery telling the mother that you picked up the driver and he's been missing since Monday. Calkins, oh for Pete's sake. A whole week passed after that conversation and 11 days since Terrence Williams was last seen before an incident report was written about any interaction Calkins had with Williams and Calkins admitted
00:43:52
Speaker
that he only wrote the report in order to, quote unquote, cover his butt. It is here in this report that's written all these days later where Calkins outlined his recollections of the interactions with Williams, that he took Terrence to the Circle K, that Terrence said he had worked there, that Calkins went back to get the registration but couldn't find it, that he called the Circle K, he was told by the clerk that he didn't know of an employee by that description,
00:44:19
Speaker
And that he himself went back to the Circle K to find Terrence again and couldn't locate him. And he says his interaction with Terrence Williams ended there. Obviously not satisfied with that response. Why would she be? Terrence's mother filed a misconduct complaint against Calkins on January 28th. As part of the investigation for that complaint, Calkins was given three separate polygraph tests
00:44:48
Speaker
but Maggie, one indicated honesty, one indicated deception, and one was inconclusive. Okay, well. So talk about confusing. And with that muddled myths, let's talk about the theories. Oh, Lord. Okay, let's do it. Okay. First, there is the Calkins theory. Obviously. Yeah. An article in the Associated Press reported of Calkins that he was, quote, on medication for stress, anxiety, and depression.
00:45:19
Speaker
and a psychologist said he was burned out, overwhelmed, under considerable stress at home and work." End quote. Okay. But who isn't? Exactly. Yeah. And the issue is, was that an explanation as to why Calkins wasn't filing reports as he should have or part of what could drive someone to do something previously uncharacteristic?
00:45:45
Speaker
Like that's the straw. Yeah. So let's talk about both sides. In addition to all the questionable contradictions that I've already mentioned, we also have audio recordings of Calkins describing Santos and Williams as quote unquote scumbags. Oh, so I'm not polite and all the other things. Yes. Yes. Yep. Even though, as you just said, he previously indicated that he had let both of them go because they were so nice. Calkins stated quote,
00:46:14
Speaker
I'm not going to get drugged through the mud no more because a couple of scumbags are missing." End quote. Well, he's getting a Maggie look right now for that comment. Yeah, he's getting an Allison look too. Yeah. Now, Calkins did admit that at this point he was angry that his character was being questioned, but nothing is going to make that questioning happen quicker than a switch in perspective like that. Yeah, exactly.
00:46:44
Speaker
And I think as a police officer, you should be trained on how to kind of control your emotions. Oh, absolutely. In that questioning of caulkins about any potential involvement.
00:46:57
Speaker
Calkins goes from laughing at questions, to loud sighs of frustration, to saying he couldn't remember, and only providing answers read back directly from his own written reports. So much like the previous. Mm-hmm. One officer, Sergeant Mike Koval,
00:47:18
Speaker
asked Kalkin some hard questions too, like how he initially didn't know the name of the driver, and then when he called back after he said he dropped the driver off and then couldn't find him again, had the driver's full name and date of birth. Here's how that conversation went, according to Lake's CNN article, quote,
00:47:39
Speaker
It's on absolutely no documentation anywhere," Koval said. So 13 minutes after the car's towed and you go back looking for Terence, you now have all of his information? My question is, where did you get it? Where did I get the date of birth? Calkins asked. As Koval kept pressing him, Calkins sighed. Oh, brother, he said. I'm all confused again.
00:48:06
Speaker
Dispatch records show a gap of 53 minutes from 101 to 154 p.m. in which Calkins did not respond to any calls. He asked for the warrants check on Williams during that time. Later, when Calkins failed a polygraph test from internal affairs, the questions that elicited the strongest reaction indicating deception was
00:48:30
Speaker
Was Terrence with you when you ran his April 1st, 1975 date of birth over your next cell? The second strongest reaction came after the question, after you dropped Terrence at the Circle K, did you have any further contact with him? On January 12th, Calkins is not physically seen from the towing of the vehicle until that residential alarm call
00:48:57
Speaker
at 2.51 p.m. So that left a gap of two hours. However, as stated in an article by Mitch Stacey, published by the Associated Press, quote, Dawn Hunter, the Collier County Sheriff at the time, said Culkin's patrol car was tested for blood and for signs of a struggle, but nothing was found. A tracking device was put on Culkin's car
00:49:24
Speaker
In case he had dumped their bodies and went back to the scene, Hunter said, but again, nothing turned up." So Calkins went to court in 2019 after a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against him in relation to Terrence Williams's case. Calkins filed a motion to dismiss, which was denied by the judge.
00:49:50
Speaker
Reporter Jessica Rodriguez of the Naples News wrote of Calkins' statement upon the denial, quote, I just simply can't believe that the allegations are legally sufficient at this time. And I don't think personal jurisdiction has been established due to the fact that there really is no proof of the allegation, Calkins said.
00:50:11
Speaker
Calkins also argued that the statute of limitations for the lawsuit has expired. Florida law states a wrongful death claim must be filed within two years of the date of death, but there is an exemption for murder cases. If the death occurred in 2004, the death is now 13 years past the statute of limitations, Calkins said. I just don't see how this can be legal at all. There's been no murder from what I can see."
00:50:40
Speaker
Okay, but also, like, do we have a date of death at this point? No. We don't even have proof that they are deceased. Right. Your claim about the wrongful death claim must be filed two years after the date of death. Well, they're not considered dead at this point. Right. So that's what Calkins is saying. I don't even see how this is legal.
00:51:02
Speaker
And he did try to get it dismissed, but the judge denied it. Well, good for her. Delayed by the pandemic, though, Maggie, a final judgment was issued in 2021 by Circuit Judge Lauren Brody, as noted by Janine Zeitlin in an article for Naples News, published April 23rd, 2023, reiterating the judge's ruling that, quote, Marcia Williams and her son's children shall take nothing from caulkins.
00:51:31
Speaker
The Florida appeals court did not issue an opinion this week, but simply affirmed Brody's decision. Calkins as lawyer in Naples, John Hooley declined to comment on the decision beyond writing in an email. Judge Brody heard the evidence and reached a conclusion that was upheld on appeal as the proper disposition of the case.
00:51:53
Speaker
in an interview last year, who at least said about his client, this is not a guy who took Terrence Williams on a one-way ride to the swamp. This is Andy Griffith, end quote. Now, while I am not so sure about that depiction of him as Andy Griffith, there are many people, Maggie, who said that Calkins, who grew up in a farming community in Illinois, was caring and compassionate and not an angry person.
00:52:23
Speaker
You know, I can say as someone with the stress, as people with stressful jobs, which our jobs are stressful in a different way than being a police officer. Right. But I do think, you know, teacher burnout is real just as police officer burnout would be real. And I think we all, even like by the end of the year, when summer is coming, things that you could tolerate very easily in October,
00:52:51
Speaker
Mm-hmm when April May rolls around Get on your ever loving. Yeah. Yeah get on your last nerve and so I could see if this is the case he's compassionate that He gets really mad because you know here we are again somebody else driving without a driver's license get in the car And then maybe he has time to cool down and it's like oh, well, this guy's really nice. So I'm just gonna let him go. Mm-hmm
00:53:17
Speaker
Yeah, and there were lots of people, I mean, who said, I've never seen this guy angry or violent.
00:53:27
Speaker
Right after high school, Stephen Calkins worked as a security guard before getting law enforcement training after moving to Florida where several of his siblings resided. He got along really well with his coworkers. He was even known to actually give rides to people in his cruiser who needed them. So this wasn't, I mean, it was a common thing, I guess, that he would see somebody who maybe needed a ride and he would let them into the back of his patrol car and take them wherever they needed to go.
00:53:56
Speaker
And he had started patrolling in Immokalee, and his colleagues there, remember a young man who held it together under pressure. He did what he was supposed to do. One co-worker even recalled to reporters Catherine Showachett and Rosa Flores for CNN, a time when a man came out of a trailer, I think it was a trailer, swinging a machete.
00:54:23
Speaker
and that Calkins refused to use deadly force as a response. So for some, that kind of man doesn't just go from his previous demeanor to a cold-blooded killer. There were those who had different stories to tell though. Stories of disillusionment with making a difference as an officer, stories of a racist officer, stories of someone highly capable
00:54:52
Speaker
of committing a murder. As for the disillusionment, records actually indicate that Caulkin stopped making arrests in 2001. Just stopped. Just stopped. After that, he wrote, according to an article by Thomas Lake for CNN, roughly 400 incident reports without a single accompanying arrest.
00:55:16
Speaker
Interesting. Very odd. Yeah. And it was a common thread that not, it wasn't even noticed by his supervisors because two years after he stopped arresting people, Calkins' evaluation shows that he meets requirements, including in the area of apprehending and booking suspects. Okay. So we clearly weren't checking very well. They're not paying attention. Yeah.
00:55:42
Speaker
A friend of Calkins provided a potential reason to reporters, Catherine Shoechet and Rosa Flores, saying, quote, he always felt it was just a revolving door. They'd be back on the streets before we finished our paperwork, end quote. Okay. But again, I think a lot of jobs you can feel that way. That doesn't mean you stop doing your job. Right. Yeah.
00:56:07
Speaker
Then there were the stories of racism that would seem to indicate that maybe Santos and Williams were men killed for the color of their skin. And for this story, it's comments made by that same coworker who described the revolving door that stand out. After initially stating that he didn't think Calkins could commit such a crime, the same colleague later said, quote, do I think that Steve Calkins is racist? Yeah.
00:56:35
Speaker
I think he disliked Mexicans and I think he disliked blacks." End quote. Well, I'm going to be honest. I don't know if caring and compassionate can go in the same bucket of describing someone- As these descriptions. Yeah. Now, quickly after the colleague clarified though that
00:56:55
Speaker
He basically is like, well, maybe it's not just Mexicans and blacks that Calkins dislikes. He just gets angry with anybody who doesn't have license or insurance. So the colleague is kind of trying to backtrack a little bit, but then in terms of Calkins being capable of a murder, the colleague went on to say of Santos and Williams, quote, do I think they're alive? No.
00:57:25
Speaker
I think they're dead. And do I think Steve might have been involved in it? Good possibility. Is there evidence? No. Why? Because they never arrested him. Could he be a hidden monster inside? Yeah, he could be. I tell you, if Steve was capable and did do it, he would definitely make sure that the body would never be found in love. This colleague, though, I hope they weren't friends.
00:57:53
Speaker
Well, good for him for ratting on his friend. Yeah. But yeah. So we're getting a lot of conflicting information, not just from Steve Calkins, but from people who know him. Yeah. The judgment in the wrongful death lawsuit, though, Maggie, was ultimately in favor.
00:58:13
Speaker
of Officer Calkins and required that the Williams family pay Calkins $5,600 related to the costs linked to the lawsuit. During that investigation, the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who are now both looking into Calkins, tried several measures for obtaining a link, a potential link
00:58:40
Speaker
like doing the forensic analysis of Calkins' car, tracking him with a GPS device on his cruiser. They even went so far as to search the land on which he had been living at the time, and no evidence was found of any wrongdoing. So of this theory, I will say that while Calkins was fired after the investigation into his involvement in Terrence Williams' disappearance, because it revealed
00:59:10
Speaker
numerous misleading and or untruthful statements. For his part, Calkins continues to maintain that he did not do anything wrong. In an archived article on TampaBay.com of his firing, Calkins said that he felt it was an unfair action. When asked to explain why it happened, Calkins said, quote, call it bad luck, call it fate, end quote.
00:59:39
Speaker
Meanwhile, his then sheriff boss Don Hunter said, quote, I have lost trust in caulkins and his ability to describe incidents in detail and to recall them, end quote.
00:59:52
Speaker
Well, I think even if we don't think that Calkins is involved in these two disappearances, that what his former boss said is true. I mean, as a police officer, you have to be able to recall details. And if you can't do that, then you can't accurately do your job. Right. Kind of crucial. Yeah. So can it be coincidence that there are so many similarities between the Santos case and the Williams case?
01:00:21
Speaker
Tyler
Theories and Speculations on Disappearances
01:00:22
Speaker
Perry, who has covered this case on his show, Never Seen Again, stated, quote, if this is a coincidence, then he is the most unlucky man in the world, that this could actually be something that happened to him twice.
01:00:37
Speaker
I just don't see how that's possible. Yes, being struck with lightning in the same place. Yeah, it does seem pretty implausible to have so many similarities. But with that said, there is also no clear evidence to link him to any potential crimes. Theory number two is that it wasn't Calkins alone.
01:01:01
Speaker
who made Santos and or Williams disappear. So remember how earlier I brought up that the citations written to Felipe Santos didn't match Felipe's handwriting? Well, during the investigation into Calkins in relation to Santos's disappearance, investigators actually determined that the writing didn't match that of Stephen Calkins either. So one colleague who wished to remain anonymous
01:01:26
Speaker
told CNN, quote, I do not think one deputy did this all by himself. End quote. Before admitting, quote, blue don't tell on blue. End quote. But in terms of this theory, Maggie, of course, investigators, they weren't able to find evidence of Calkins's involvement, let alone that he had worked with someone else. Okay. Theory number three.
01:01:54
Speaker
is that both men, Santos and Williams, left of their own free will. As evidence, those who believe this theory note that Santos was here illegally and that Williams had a warrant out for his arrest at the time of his disappearance for failing to pay child support. Terrence was to appear in Hamilton County, Tennessee for court on January 14th.
01:02:19
Speaker
and didn't show in failure to pay child support, it was said that he would likely have faced 60 days, sorry, 60 days in jail and a fine of $5,000. So Sheriff Don Hunter indicated that to him, it was likely that the two men could have run on purpose to avoid law enforcement and consequences.
01:02:45
Speaker
But according to the article, the deputy in the disappeared for CNN, quote, Julia Perkins, who knew Santos through the coalition of Immokalee workers, did not like what the sheriff was implying.
01:02:58
Speaker
That just seemed like an excuse, she said. And honestly, it was a slap in the face to the families. Like others who knew Santos, she found it implausible that he would have willingly left behind his common law wife and their three-year-old daughter. A picture showed him cradling the baby in his arms. He was not a person who was going to abandon her, Lucas Benitez said. He loved Apollonia, and he was very happy about his girl's arrival.
01:03:27
Speaker
They didn't have any problems between them. They were two young people starting a life. They had dreams and plans together. Likewise, Terrence Williams had reasons not to disappear.
01:03:40
Speaker
Terence's young son, Tariq, lived nearby with Terence's mother, Marcia. Terence and Tariq played video games and went to the mall together, and Terence regularly cut Tariq's hair. He was a skilled barber who dreamed of opening his own shop. His mother was sure Terence would have called her if he could. She said he used to call her two or three times a day."
01:04:04
Speaker
Would you go from calling your mom two to three times a day to not calling her at all? No, absolutely not. Yeah. Like two or three times a day. So no. Even if you were going to run away. Yeah. You'd be like, I've got to find a way to send some sort of message to my mom. Carrier pigeons. That's right. There's another theory, theory four called the starlight tour theory, which is alluded to in the NPR podcast on this case called the last ride.
01:04:34
Speaker
In essence, the starlight tour is when law enforcement will drive someone to the outskirts of town and leave them there hoping that they either go away or that they die trying to get somewhere because they're exposed to the elements without protection. So either
01:04:53
Speaker
scorching heat or frigid cold temperatures. Absolutely not. Oh my. Around the areas in Florida in question in these two cases, cause they're right beside one another, the towns are, there's not only the Florida Everglades, but also several wildlife refuges. So we're just plopping these people down in the middle of the Everglades saying good luck and God bless. Watch them get eaten by an alligator or
01:05:20
Speaker
one of those gigantic snakes. That's one of the theories. However, many people do argue that even with the time gaps during the day, at least caulkins would not have had time to drive to those locations. Well, that's very frightening to think about that police officers could potentially do that when they are supposed to be like people that you can look to protect and serve. Yeah.
01:05:46
Speaker
Or there's theory number five, something else altogether. For example, it is possible that Calkins or something related to the actions that he took resulted in the death of one of the two young men, but not the other, that the other maybe did choose to leave of his own free will, or they could have met with foul play at the hands of someone else entirely. So Maggie, what are your thoughts? What connections did you make?
01:06:17
Speaker
while hearing about this case. Well, I think it's very easy for us to say, like, oh, these definitely have to be connected. They were both dropped off at a Circle K. You know, there's just a lot of inconsistencies with the story. They were arrested by the same officer, not arrested, I guess, but
01:06:36
Speaker
detained by the same officer. But then again, one, I wonder how big this community is. So would have been weird for the same officer
01:06:49
Speaker
to make those types of stops? And how often would he have pulled one over for not having a driver's license? So could it have been coincidence? You know, was that maybe the most popular driving violation in this area, driving without a license? Or, you know, is it more than coincidence? Yeah.
01:07:16
Speaker
I think you all know how I'm leaning. Yeah. I mean, obviously we can't, I would not want to defame somebody's character by accusing them of something when a court of law has not done so. Right, exactly. And we know that the court of law said that there wasn't enough evidence to find this officer guilty. And we typically always side with our law enforcement. Right. However,
01:07:45
Speaker
I will just say that I do think that they made the right decision in letting him go from his position on the force because of the inconsistencies. Yeah. And then inability to remember details. That's important for that job. And I do in my gut feel that the two cases are connected. Yes.
01:08:10
Speaker
I also feel there has to be evidence out there somewhere that would lead us to answers.
Hope for Justice and Community Support
01:08:18
Speaker
Terrence's mother, Marcia, told a reporter for Tampa Bay, quote, every morning I read my Bible. When I go to bed, I read my Bible. I talk to God and I pray. And that's how I'm coping when I get too stressed out. I don't talk. I'm so mentally drained, not physically, mentally.
01:08:38
Speaker
And I'm just so tired because this is constantly on my mind." In an article by Janine Zeitlin for WBUR, there's yet another quote from Terence's mother, Marcia, that shows her resiliency and her continued reliance on prayer to maintain that hope. She said, quote, I pray every night. I know God is tired of me. I'm not going to give up. End quote.
01:09:07
Speaker
Sleuthhounds, let's lift up our voices with her and our hope too, that justice can one day be served and that Felipe Santos and Terrence Williams are names we won't let anyone forget. Actor-producer Tyler Perry is offering a reward of up to $200,000 for information in connection with the two cases. Anyone with information concerning the disappearance of either Felipe Santos
01:09:37
Speaker
or of Terrence Williams is asked to call the Collier County Sheriff's Office at 239-252-9300 or to submit a tip anonymously to Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-780-8477.