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Season Five Home for the Holidays
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In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Tradition
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS. If you stuck with this so far, it is Christmas day and we provide this content for people that maybe don't do like a lot of stuff um on the holidays or or around people that they want to slip their headphones or AirPods on and and listen to something else. That's why we do this. Meg and I have both been in those situations at different points in time over the years where there are other things we would rather be doing. You had this idea years ago that we were gonna do these holiday episodes. I think you started with the 12 Days of Christmas, and I might have gone a little overboard with how I handle all of this. I i was like, why not just do an episode a day for 25 days?
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, I never would have thought of that, but it works. People really enjoy it. We get a lot of listeners to our 25 Days to Christmas, and it doesn't even have to be Christmas time. Yeah, it doesn't. I mean, i i people will message me and ask me questions, and I realize it's earlier this year, I think it was April.
00:01:27
Speaker
and somebody was messaging me asking about a case and I was like, when did we cover that? And I went back and looked and I answered the question and then I went back and looked at it and I was like, they're listening to a Christmas case. So people do listen and that's why we put it out. Obviously some of you are here today with us. I don't even know what I'm doing on Christmas day this year. Do you have like plans for Christmas day already by the time we're recording
Non-Christmas Themed Content Discussion
00:01:49
Speaker
all this or no? Well, no, not not this year. um I will be having Christmas at my house with my family, but that's about the extent of what I know at this point. And I think that putting out episodes like this, and well, it's our gift to our listeners, right? Or ourselves. I don't know, both. I pass i guess it's our gift. I don't know. why Okay, yeah, it could be to ourselves. But it also brings light to cases, right? Yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
that that otherwise maybe don't get the the same late. We tend to have a theme going, and my point is, like if you only listen to, you know if you don't have time during Christmas, like this could be a whole year's worth of content for some people, right? Oh, yeah.
00:02:40
Speaker
So it is, it's interesting because it's not really Christmas related this year. It is home for the holidays in some risk respects, but we've kind of veered off and we we really were looking just to cover interesting cases that had a few parameters, right? Yeah. But it's a smorgasbord of information that you won't get anywhere else. I can guarantee you that. It is, yeah. i you know I sit down and look at these, and you know the truth is I had some kind of question about something that happened. Most of these cases, people may not realize this, most of these cases, somehow, some way, they relate to this time of year. somebody
00:03:25
Speaker
Like a lot of these crimes either occur this time of year, there' there's a conviction this time of year, there's an exoneration this time of year, there's sentence this time of year.
Podcast Format and Challenges
00:03:35
Speaker
There's almost always a December, November date in there, but it's not necessarily like a Christmas story per se. um I do that, like I go through and I just, like I have piles and piles and piles of information.
00:03:51
Speaker
that I'm putting together and i feel like I feel like sometimes I put you in a weird position with these because like you you never really know how we're going to use them until we're sitting in front of the microphones and I turn it on.
The Bill Wilson Case Introduction
00:04:01
Speaker
This is definitely the most interesting time of a recording, yes.
00:04:07
Speaker
So we're going to cover two cases briefly today. These episodes are not as long towards the the end of this series for a variety of reasons. It gets difficult to record 20, 30 episodes at a time, and we're still actively recording.
00:04:22
Speaker
current episode. Yeah, the current episodes while we do this to sort of accommodate like our life and schedules. But I pulled up two for today. The first one's longer than the second one. And i these are more southern cases that I just kind of got down this rabbit hole. And I found them interesting, because there's not as much information available about them. Today first popped up and got my attention from 2005, I don't know, a booklet or like it's a book. It's it's ah like an anthology book out of the Northwestern University Press. ah Wilkie Collins had put this out and it's called The Dead Alive, the novel, the case and wrongful conviction. This case pops up in there. So this case is about an American farmer in Alabama. His name is Bill Wilson. If you go Googling Bill Wilson, I don't know if he shows up anymore. I think he has like his own space. but there's a lot of people named William Wilson and Bill Wilson out there. For background, Bill Wilson is married to a woman named Jenny Wade in right around 1900. They're 20 years old. and They have multiple children, and their third child is born in 1907. Sometime after this birth of their third child, ah not quite two years, but close to it, Jenny Wade, she leaves Bill, and she goes back to her family.
00:05:47
Speaker
Bill, at that point in time, he chose to move in with his father. He takes their older two children, but Ginny leaves with the third child. They're in the process of getting a divorce when Ginny and the third child manage.
Trial and Conviction of Bill Wilson
00:06:00
Speaker
A woman named Jane McClendon had also disappeared. So for several weeks, there's a ah lot of information kind of passed around that these two disappearances of Jenny Wade and Jane McClendon are probably going to be foul play. So several years later in in late 1912, a man and his son are fishing
00:06:26
Speaker
on a property along the Black Warrior River. The property there is close to Bill Wilson's father's house. And this man and and the son, they notice a bone sticking out of the ground. They find what's described as a mat underneath the soil and they expose what they believe to be the skeletal remains of an adult and a child. The people that are fishing, their first thought is that maybe this is some sort of native or indigenous burial mound nearby. So they search the areas for what would be like relics or or something that would be an artifact of the time these bones could have come from. And they don't find anything. So they put the bones back down, they cover them up,
00:07:14
Speaker
and they go back home, but they tell people about it. And people in the local area start looking, thinking that somewhere nearby there may be arrowheads or pottery or other Native American artifact. Over the course of the next several days, multiple people will search, they don't find anything, they lose interest. But a man named Jen House, he speculates that the remains are not those of indigenous people, but possibly of Jenny and her child. He said,
00:07:42
Speaker
that in 1908, he had seen Jimmy visit Bill Wilson's father's house carrying a basket. And at the following morning, he noticed that there were footprints that led to the river. He followed the track and he found some children's clothing and he found a rock that had blood on it. This is his story. This story spreads.
00:08:04
Speaker
And this information gets back to the county solicitor. I don't know if they have these everywhere, but a solicitor is just the prosecutor in counties and towns. So the county solicitor, James Embry, he calls a grand jury and they indict Bill Wilson for the murder of Jimmy.
00:08:22
Speaker
and Jenny and Bill's third child. This case goes before a judge named J.E. Blackwood. In James Embry's opening remarks, he says that Jenny Wilson went to her father-in-law's house to visit her two older children in what he believes was either late November or early December, 1908. Essentially, she's visiting for the holidays. He says that Jenny and Bill Wilson had quarreled and Bill Wilson had murdered his wife and child. He then took the bodies to the bluff,
00:08:51
Speaker
and he burned them there to destroy the evidence of his crime. The fisherman testifies that he found the bones that have now been placed into evidence. These bones are speculated at the time to be the remains of Jenny and her 19 month old child. A doctor named Marvin Denton, he's going to come and testify for the state about these bones.
00:09:10
Speaker
He agrees that the bones belong to an adult and a child, but he notes that this child, though smaller, has what he described as permanent teeth. Permanent teeth would not typically come in in a human until the human is around the age of six. He also testified that he had never seen any permanent teeth in a child under the age of four. Jim House, he gets up and he tells his story about Jenny having been seen visiting the Wilson farm. He adds that he was concerned for her safety and that he had tried to talk her out of going. He says that when he met Bill Wilson the following day, Jim House asked him about his wife and he said that Wilson denied that she had been there. It was after this encounter
00:09:55
Speaker
When Jim House found the footprints and he follows them to the spot where the blood was found on a rock, and of course, we have a jailhouse snitch. I don't think this is the oldest jailhouse snitch in the United States, but it's one of the older cases I've read about using a jailhouse snitch.
00:10:15
Speaker
where there's like a record of it. A convict who had been in a cell near Bill after he'd been arrested, he testified that he overheard Bill Wilson tell his oldest daughter, Ruthie.
00:10:26
Speaker
If you tell anything, I will tend to you when I get out. So they bring in Ruthie, who is seven years old. They put Ruthie on the stand and she is cross-examined about this statement. She states that the statement her father made was that if she was not a good girl, he would punish her when he got out of jail. There are multiple different witnesses brought on to describe conversations that have been overheard where Bill Wilson was showing animosity towards Jimmy or had made comments indicating she wouldn't be back. So the defense gets on and they bring on Jane McClendon.
00:11:08
Speaker
mother. Her name is Lizzie McClendon. Jane McClendon had gone missing shortly before Ginny went missing. And Lizzie tells the jury that Jim House had visited her after her daughter had vanished and said he would testify he saw the Wilsons collectively kill her daughter if she would swear out in a warrant for their arrest. Under cross-examination, Jim House had denied this claim But he did admit that there was some type of issue between himself and Bill Wilson without elaborating. So six different witnesses, including Jenny's sister, they swear that at various times in 1909, they had seen Jenny and that she was living with a man named John Wilson, no relation to Bill Wilson.
00:12:01
Speaker
A woman named Mrs. Benton Cornelius, I love when they do that, when they just give her her husband's name with an S on the in there, she testifies that in 1908, sometime around April, she had talked to Jenny and that Jenny had told her that since she was getting separated to Bill Wilson, she intended to move to Missouri. Bill Wilson's brother, John,
00:12:23
Speaker
not the other John, his sister Frances, his daughter Ruthie, and a man named John Rice who had worked for Bill Wilson, they all denied that Ginny had been at the Wilson's farm at any time after the separation. Testimony was given that the female skeletal remains had no dental work done.
00:12:44
Speaker
But Jimmy Wilson had fillings in her two front teeth. Dr. J.F. Hancock testified that he believed that the bones of the younger skeleton were at least 10 years old and that the adult skeletal remains belonged to an elderly person, that the child's permanent teeth excluded the skeleton from being that of a 19-month-old daughter. All right, so at this point, you've read some about all of this, right?
00:13:09
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So generally speaking, this trial is kind of run of the mill, except for the fact that we have these disputed bones laying here that are alleged to be the wife and child's bone.
00:13:24
Speaker
Right. And I would say that the permanent teeth and the lack of dental work was something that was strangely overlooked. And I can't figure out if maybe it was the timing that he didn't realize the importance of dental. Now, I'm not saying like forensic odontology, but I'm saying that like the science behind permanent teeth having not formed in a 19 month old's mouth and the fact that like fillings don't ever leave someone's mouth.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yeah, this is something that like we kind of take for granted today. It's really weird that it was just ah blatantly overlooked. Yeah. In order i would for the conclusion to be reached.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the jury does their thing here. And on December 18th of 1915, so right before Christmas, 1915, the jury finds Bill Wilson guilty. He is convicted of murder in the first degree, and he is sentenced to life in prison but to be served at Alabama's with Tumka State Penitentiary. That's the first prison ever established in Alabama, by the way. He files an appeal.
00:14:32
Speaker
I found a note that says the appeal was, quote, overturned. I take that to mean that his appeal was rejected or that the conviction was affirmed because afterwards there are several petitions for clemency and a pardon filed on Bill Wilson's behalf that are also rejected. Right. So that gets a little confusing, but that's how I interpret it as well. I know that it used to be that I've heard i've read some older like court type documents where objections are overturned.
00:15:02
Speaker
And that doesn't really make sense today, but it's basically just saying, you know, overruled, right? Right. So and ah in this case, it would be that, you know, the appeal wasn't granted.
00:15:15
Speaker
Right. In late 1916, so I just want to say, one of the things about this case that stood out to me is things move like lightning. Like the appeal happens, there's different pardons happening. There's a lot going on in this case, but it's all moving super fast. I don't know that there were a lot of these types of, cake because this would be a essentially that, you know, this man had killed both his wife and and one of their one of their children, right?
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was a big deal. And I think that these were not as commonplace. That's, yeah, I would, I would think that was probably true. I pulled up the record for this in the National Registry of Exonerations to see if there's anything off from the story that we were going to be telling here. So all right.
00:16:07
Speaker
There's a neighbor here, a guy named William Woodward. After Bill is convicted and the Supreme Court of Alabama has affirmed this conviction, he ah William Woodard gets kind of nosy.
00:16:21
Speaker
He believes that Jenny Wilson is a alive and you he starts looking around to figure out if he can't either find her or prove that like there's evidence of her still being alive. And in August of 1916, so this is about nine months after, eight or nine months after the conviction of Bill Wilson for the murder of
Discovery of Jenny and Bill's Pardon
00:16:44
Speaker
Jenny. William Woodard, he sends the bones to Dr. Alex Hirdlica. Now, Dr. Hirdlica is a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He examines the bones and he says, these bones, these skeletons are probably from some very old burials. He sends back a letter to William Woodard.
00:17:08
Speaker
Any says in his opinion these bones come from between four and five different individual so bill wilson's attorney. He hears this and he's also been looking along the same lines of what bill would it is doing. And he has the idea to start running notifications and newspapers seeking information about them.
00:17:30
Speaker
Now, this is done a lot when somebody can't be served. I'm sure you've seen it before where you're trying to serve someone and you end up not being able to find like a good address or they just ducked the process server or ducked the local sheriff. You can put a notice out. This would have been a very different experience back then, but Ultimately, the attorney putting these notices out pays off. In 1918, guess who pops up? Ain't not dad Jenny. Yep, Jenny Wilson. She is alive and she is well living in Indiana. She reads one of these newspaper notices. She had in fact left her parents home in 1908, just like she said.
00:18:13
Speaker
didn't have very much money. She moved north to Illinois. She worked as a waitress and she got remarried to a man named John Wilson and she had settled in a small town in Indiana. So After she learns that her ex-husband and the father of her children and has been convicted of murder, Ginny and her child travel back down to Blount County to prove that they're alive. On July 7th, 1918, they are greeted by a crowd of almost a thousand interested onlookers.
00:18:47
Speaker
But Alabama decided to leave him in prison for the rest of his life. Don't kidding. She arrives. She signs an affidavit that she is, who she says she is, and she gives a complete account of her movements from the time that she had disappeared until she was found. She is presented with her daughter, who is now 11 years old. And the same day, the governor grants a full pardon and releases Bill Wilson. If only things worked that fast, you know? That would be lovely.
Post-Pardon Struggles and Reflection
00:19:15
Speaker
In 1919, the Alabama legislator got a hold of this case and they granted ah a special appropriation for Bill Wilson. That legislation, February 15th, 1919, actually becomes a statute that would, in this case, it determines the amount of compensation that Bill Wilson would receive, which would be around $3,500. Now, if that's today's money, it's about $70,000. And this is for quote, services rendered to the state while in prison.
00:19:46
Speaker
This is entrusted to a Blount County probate court judge, the probate court judge who's supposed to hold onto this $3,500. Guess what he does?
00:19:57
Speaker
bes it He flees the state. The judge runs away with his $3,500. So Bill Wilson ends up having to sue the judge's bondsmen, and he finally gets the money, but it costs him $700 in legal fees to get the money back. It's believed it was around $2,500. So Bill Wilson uses the money. He buys a small farm.
00:20:20
Speaker
but he doesn't know what he's doing on the farm. He gets into debt, he loses the money. The last record we have of him, he was working as a day laborer digging coal in an Alabama mine. Thoughts on this one? I love these cases where somebody's alive and shows back up, like a Matlock moment in real life.
00:20:38
Speaker
but Yeah, and this isn't the only case that we've covered that that has happened. And it's so interesting that like you want to not believe that it's possible that these in this case, it was two people, right? It was the mom and the daughter. You would like to think that it's not possible that like somebody got convicted of their murders when they're living alive and well. it seems like somebody maybe she could have told somebody I think it was just a different time in terms of communication and so I have someone I was married to someone that I know nothing about now I don't see them I'll talk to them we're not on the same social media like I never see them and like
00:21:25
Speaker
something could totally happen in her life that I had nothing to do with where somebody was like, Hey, have you heard what happened to blah, blah, blah? And it could be something like they they won the lottery or whatever. I would not know anything about it. So I could see how that could definitely happen in 1908 or whatever 1909. I think that, well, for I think it's a genius move to put out those newspaper notices. I wondered who reads those and I guess now we know.
00:21:53
Speaker
Well and see a lot of times so this was a little bit different because that was like hey you know I'm trying to find somebody but like when you do service by publication like basically you run it for whatever the statute requires like if it's you know six publications or whatever um of a if it's six runs of a publication that would be reasonably assumed to be seen by the person. That is considered service, right? Yeah. like They have said they've had the opportunity to see it. I don't know how relevant that is anymore. Usually they can get people usually people can be served without that. It's fascinating that it it got to her and and she was able to see it and came forward with it because in a million years, I probably i don't know that I would run it because I would be like, this is pointless, right?
00:22:48
Speaker
Okay, so one of the things I found interesting about this case was this is all happening and the bones come back and they are like definitely not going to be like a woman and child. The judge panics. I don't know if you read this or not, but he starts. So you know how like in some of the cases we've talked about, there's like a kind of a champion when that person is there and they're like trying to so like, I've seen it be the lead detective before where they're trying to get someone to listen to what they're saying about a case. Yeah.
00:23:23
Speaker
and no one is listening. Well, in this case, it was the judge. J.E. Blackwood is the one that's like, okay, something is wrong here. I don't know exactly what's wrong, but if these bones are five different people, I have made a mistake. And he starts trying to pressure the governor of Alabama and the attorney general to commute this sentence, to let him out.
00:23:49
Speaker
The prosecutor in this case is like, you're crazy. So James Embry is blocking every single thing that comes up where like Bill Wilson might be innocent. He's saying, no, I don't know who would feel weirder in that instance, but like both of them kind of end up with egg on their face. You know what I mean?
00:24:09
Speaker
I think everybody ends up with egg on their face here. I mean, all of them. They convicted somebody for murdering two people that were in no way dead. Yeah. Yeah. This it's actually like it's it's worse than like convicting somebody who didn't do it. Like nothing even happened here.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, there's no crime at all ah in terms of ah the murder that everything happened that everything is ah kind of a hubbub about. So I wanted to bring this one
The Griffin Brothers' Wrongful Conviction
00:24:42
Speaker
up. I had a second one. Do you have anything else on the Bill Wilson case?
00:24:46
Speaker
now ah The Bill Wilson case, I found that interesting. I don't have a lot on it. um But I had this other short case I wanted to cover that is really interesting to me and doesn't have a ton of information. I've read a couple of little articles over the years about this case. ah One of them comes out of the Charlotte news. It's, it's off of newspapers dot.com at this point. It's literally the headline is for Negroes and Chester sent to electric chair. That's the article. And it talks about these two guys. So Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin, they live in Chester County, South Carolina around the turn of the century.
00:25:34
Speaker
Thomas was born in January of 1889. I don't know what day ah he he gets dumped into this open category. His brother, I don't know his date of birth at all. They are prominent black farmers in Chester County. And when a man named John Q. Lewis is murdered in 1913, this is a 75 year old Confederate veteran in Blackstock, South Carolina.
00:26:03
Speaker
When he is murdered, the Griffin brothers are convicted based on one guy's testimony. So this guy, John Monk Stevenson, he is found in possession of John Q. Lewis' pistol. He's threatened with a death penalty, but he's sentenced to life in prison if he will testify as to who has killed John Lewis.
00:26:33
Speaker
There are multiple people from the community who believe that John Lewis had been having a relationship with a 22 year old named Anna Davis. How all this plays out, I don't know, but I hadn't heard this word used in a court document in a really long time. The word used here is that this was possibly a part of a miscegenation scandal. Do you know what miscegenation is?
00:26:59
Speaker
ah Yeah, I do know what it is because I had to look it up because I did not know what it was. And it is a ah it's where people of two different races are married. Right, right. Right. It's just interracial marriage or intimate relations. That's it. and And like, I was like, why is this a thing? So I looked it up. There were laws. Now I knew it was like a thing in the US that you don't whatever, mixed races or whatever. I didn't understand it, but from 1935 till 1945, it was banned in Nazi Germany to to intermingle with people of other races. ah From 1949 till almost 1990 in South Africa, it was banned. There were laws in the United States on the books until 2000 that said that
00:28:00
Speaker
race mixing was an enforceable offense.
00:28:06
Speaker
I was shocked to realize like one that it had gone on this long to that like it was an actual thing. I, I thought it was just like some kind of prohibition that had happened. Like people just decided it wasn't going to be a thing.
00:28:20
Speaker
they So in the United States in 1967, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a case called Loving versus Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. So with this ruling, the laws were were no longer to be in effect. But they there were 16 states at the time, and they stayed on the books as blue book laws, like laws that were no longer enforceable, until 2000 when those states finally rectified it. So that's the rumor here. There were two other guys that were executed alongside Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin. Their names were Nelson Brights and John Crosby. The community
00:29:09
Speaker
scuttlebutt or rumor or whatever, they believed that this murder was essentially about some kind of sexual relationship with 22-year-old Anna Davis having a relationship with 75-year-old John Lewis. So Davis and her husband, they are never tried for fear of a miscegenation scandal.
00:29:34
Speaker
The Griffin brothers, at the time, they were believed to be the wealthiest black people that lived in this area. They sell their 138 acre farm to pay for their defense against these accusations. Over a hundred people petitioned the governor of South Carolina to commute the brothers' sentences, including the mayor of the town they lived in in Blackstock, um the sheriff,
00:30:04
Speaker
two trial jurors, the grand jury form it. And you know what South Carolina did on September 29th, 1915? They executed them. In 2009, Tom Joyner, do you know who Tom Joyner is?
00:30:20
Speaker
ah I don't know, maybe. he's He's a radio host for the Tom Joyner Morning Show. he is yeah He's an incredibly popular personality. He's older now. He was born in Alabama um from the South. I think he started broadcasting in the 70s. I don't think he would have been on the air in the 60s. He went to college with Lionel Richie.
00:30:44
Speaker
um He had joined a band as a musician. You know how you hear about those failed stories? You know what band he joined that like he wasn't, ah didn't continue with? The Commodores. So Tom Joyner is, he in 2009, he finds out he's related or he seeks the pardons because he's related to them.
00:31:11
Speaker
They are his great uncles. So he takes emotion before the appeals court in Columbia, South Carolina. He had been on a show called African American Lives, which this guy from Harvard, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who if you guys haven't seen this, they he they trace relatives on this show. And he traced 11 other relatives, but he traced Tom Joyner's lineage to Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin.
00:31:37
Speaker
And so it made him want to ah clear their name and he did it. And I just thought that was like, ah first of all, what happens to these people being executed for what is probably, I want to say like kind of pitchforks and torches. Like I can't figure out why they like jump on him. I'll jump on them for the murder, but like two farmers who are among the wealthiest people in the neighborhood killing a veteran. I just have trouble wrapping my head around that.
Exoneration and Conclusion
00:32:14
Speaker
Like it's not that I think, okay, well, but it could never happen. Keep in mind though that Nelson Brice and John Crosby were also executed for the same crime.
00:32:24
Speaker
So it's four guys. Yeah, you got four guys going down again. yeah It's that same shit. It's four people, three people, four people. It's the group of people they keep like they can't figure out while that guy couldn't have done it. We know that. I think that any time it's four, it's because there's brothers involved. Well, like that's why it goes from three to four.
00:32:47
Speaker
because there's like a set of brothers. Now, in this case, John Monk Stevenson was in possession of the victim's pistol. Which he probably shot him with. Well, that would be my guess. It seems odd. I don't know if John Stevenson was black or white. I'm going to say that if he were to be white,
00:33:15
Speaker
um He was spared and this is, cause this seems to happen like a lot of times, like white people tend to blame a group of black people and it's just, it rides all the way to the execution, right? It's the craziest thing because, you know, why would four black guys kill this 75 year old Confederate veteran for no apparent reason. hi No idea. It doesn't make any sense to me. I know these cases are always
00:33:55
Speaker
And it's almost like they throw in the Anna Davis innuendo just in case it doesn't work for some reason. It's so weird because so John Stevenson goes to jail for life according to what is put out there, right? Yeah. He is found in possession of the victim's pistol. I find it far more likely that this small time thief, which is how he is described, is solely responsible for this murder.
00:34:25
Speaker
And it was probably for some stupid reason, like a small town thief would do. Right? He probably got caught in the act. Now, how tragic is that entire situation? It's terrible. It is. It's really, really terrible. And it was allowed to go on for some some reason. I don't know why. I i can't imagine why anybody wouldn't now okay granted maybe it is hindsight yeah for us however i can't imagine anybody looking at the situation and going yeah it was the four guys and from what we can tell like nobody confessed no there's no confession here this is a quick trial the records have been largely scrubbed from the internet at this point
00:35:14
Speaker
So I went on to see like where to get more information. There's ah like, you could potentially go down a couple of rabbit holes here. I have been unable to find it. I just, I was stuck on that one article, which is what made me say, let's include this one. It's one of those cases that like, if you didn't know any better, you just kind of pass it by and it's like a blurb. But it is horrendous that killed four people for this one murder.
00:35:44
Speaker
we can't We have no real record of it all. And what we were told, I saw ah one quote on the internet about this. Paul Finkelman, this is one of those death penalty info quotes. He said that Monk Stevenson would tell a fellow inmate later. He implicated the Griffin brothers because he believed they were a wealthy enough that they could pay for legal counsel and they would be acquitted.
00:36:11
Speaker
I don't know why anybody would record that sentence because it makes absolutely no sense to me that you would tell someone. That is literally like trying to set the situation up. That is like, I have no idea what anybody's thinking there. That is one of the worst things I've heard another human being say. And I've heard a lot of crazy, crazy things. You literally derailed these 25, I think once 25 and once maybe 27 I may I may have it. I may have their ages slightly wrong because the records aren't great But I had read that sentence and I was shocked That like that was the reason because they were wealthy enough and that he had to implicate somebody I even read far enough in there to think well, maybe it's him and maybe it's these two other guys that were all executed but how do we get in there where we got these brothers in there and
00:37:09
Speaker
Thomas and Meeks had nothing to do with this. Right. And neither did Nelson Bryce or John Crosby. Like, none of them were involved. Yeah, it's probably just Monk. It is. And like I said, I don't know if he was white. and That's my guess. That's my best guess as to why he would plead guilty to when he has the pistol, right? Yeah. The victim's pistol.
00:37:36
Speaker
Right there, most of the time when, you know, there's always some sort of story like it was sold to them, and sometimes that does happen. But like, you got to look really hard at the person who shows up with the goods, right, of the victim? Of course, yes. And the fact of the matter is, nine times out of ten, just like the last person seen with the victim has got to be scrutinized. Anybody that has the victim's stuff I mean, it makes logical sense that you're either going to find out they did it or you're going to find a real easy path back to who did it. Right. But see, when the path is only like their uncorroborated testimony, which seems to be the case here. Yeah. It's not a valid path, in my opinion.
00:38:24
Speaker
Well, I agree with you on that. I don't have a lot more on this. I hope that anybody listening has a great Christmas day. You got any more on these two cases? yeah about that Happy holidays y'all. Do you want to say happy holidays? Merry Christmas and happy new year.
00:38:42
Speaker
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00:40:49
Speaker
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00:41:41
Speaker
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00:42:22
Speaker
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