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Season Six: #4 HHH: Daddy Wants a Lawyer
186 Plays9 days ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Research Challenges
00:00:58
Speaker
In the last episode, we were talking about these rabbit holes that you can go down if you're like looking for one thing and you don't really find it, but you find something else. And I guess as I get older, my ADHD becomes more research focused.
00:01:16
Speaker
And i will literally sit down to do like a 30-minute thing. And then I realized like five hours have passed. And not only did I not do that thing, I did like five other things that I really never thought of.
00:01:32
Speaker
You do that? Dude, I walk in the kitchen to get a drink and I do 15 things and then I leave the kitchen without a drink. Yeah.
00:01:44
Speaker
So absolutely. i do that
The Mystery of Henry Lee Lucas
00:01:46
Speaker
all the time. The interesting part about this was it was such a brief mention in the other case, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's he's mentioned in kind of a rule-out way, and I don't know how you rule this guy out of anything.
00:01:59
Speaker
He is, by definition, we're talking about a serial killer today. ah Right, and one interesting point, I think i think it's this guy, um he came up as...
00:02:13
Speaker
as One of the victims was somebody that Henry Lee Lucas confessed to. Correct. Yes, he he comes up in. um So in the Carolinas, North Carolina, South Carolina, there are nine murders that Henry Lee Lucas has confessed to over the years that they, for the most part, have all been debunked. But this one is clearly debunked much later.
00:02:39
Speaker
and it It does get a mention. i think you can find, if I'm recalling correctly, like a cold case files on this episode where they talk to some of the family of the victims and stuff.
00:02:50
Speaker
um For me, one of the things that was really bizarre about this guy is I have, I've clearly stated on the show that like I'm interested in people who kill couples, but equally to that, I am interested in killers who have accomplices.
00:03:09
Speaker
And it's kind of rare that you have a serial killer with a true accomplice. I don't know that this counts, but he certainly involves other people in his crimes. Right.
Terry Alvin Hyatt's Criminal Beginnings
00:03:19
Speaker
um It's interesting. i feel like it it backs my theory up more because up to a certain point, there's accomplices, but the murders are really done by him.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah. I looked everybody up that is like kind of listed as an accomplice here. It looks like two of them have now passed away kind of recently, actually. One I can't tell because he has a charge in 2023 when he's 64 years old, and it's a trafficking charge.
00:03:51
Speaker
But it doesn't do what I normally think of when I look at trafficking charges, so I can't help but think maybe it was something that got stuck on some entrapment. ah but The guy that we're talking about today, his name is Terry Alvin Hyatt.
00:04:05
Speaker
was born March 28, 1957. He lives the majority of his life in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the second to youngest of five kids. By all accounts in the courts, his family is completely normal.
00:04:19
Speaker
It is believed that Terry Hyatt has some kind of learning disability that never really gets diagnosed appropriately. So he does not get an appropriate education per se He has trouble connecting with his peers on a social level and an emotional level.
00:04:39
Speaker
um He's described very early in life as behaving unusually, but people even... The ones who come to court and talk about him describe him as relatively friendly and helpful, if a little slow.
00:04:55
Speaker
But family, friends, neighbors, all of them, they describe him as sort of a backyard mechanic. And they say that he and learned at one point how to buy and sell used cars.
00:05:10
Speaker
He's also... known as a criminal pretty early in life. He's born in 57, but by November of 1975, he's getting sentences that indicate he's had a lot of contact with law enforcement.
00:05:23
Speaker
He ends up getting a four-year prison sentence for larceny. He had stolen a woman's purse, and he had been on probation and parole for another incident where they gave him like what is the old version of like a split sentence. He did a little bit of active time, but he had some active time looming.
00:05:41
Speaker
And Shortly after he's sentenced to this four-year prison sentence, he escapes. um He escapes from a North Carolina prison, but he ends up being recaptured in only a day later.
Hyatt's Suspected Crimes
00:05:54
Speaker
So where he comes in for us is we had talked about a double homicide that kind of happens in the same like vicinity as where Terry Hyatt, quote, unquote, operated.
00:06:09
Speaker
And he's definitely a violent felon. He is ah person who is listed as being checked out for that double homicide that we covered.
00:06:21
Speaker
ah Probably by the time you're hearing this is in the in the last episode. So it's the episode previous to this. I wanted to talk about him though, because I noticed something in several different documents that And that is, he's one of those killers that has a victim count with a little plus beside it.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I'm always interested, one, I'm just generally interested in the plus marks of the world. Like, why don't we know more about that? Two, I'm interested to know what you think about that in this particular case.
00:06:55
Speaker
And we can kind of get there as we talk about him.
00:07:00
Speaker
So the first known victim for this guy, Terry Hyatt, is going to be in 1979.
00:07:09
Speaker
On April 15th, 1979, Hyatt's going to be 22 years old. A 40-year-old woman named Harriet Delaney Simmons, who's a mother of seven and a night manager at a restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina, called Johnny's Supper Club.
00:07:26
Speaker
She's going to leave Raleigh. She's going head out in her blue Toyota. She's hoping to go and visit her boyfriend in Nashville, Tennessee. But she never shows up.
00:07:39
Speaker
Her son-in-law, a guy named Ronald, he goes out looking for her. He follows the same route that he believes she would have traveled. And he finds her car at a rest stop off of Interstate 40 near Statesville, North Carolina.
Simmons' Case and Investigation
00:07:56
Speaker
Most of her belongings are in this car, but missing are the car keys and her purse. He starts to worry. She had promised that she would let her kids know if anything had happened.
00:08:09
Speaker
The police in that area, and I don't know if you're familiar with, like, this area would be Iredale County. It's kind of small. the So you've got the local police. They go out trying to look for her, but they have to get...
00:08:24
Speaker
like the county level folks, so the Iredell County Sheriff's Office, the Statesville Police Department, they have to bring in the SBI because they can't find Harriet Simmons.
00:08:37
Speaker
And we're not going to know anything about her case until almost a year later. On March 1980,
00:08:48
Speaker
A man is walking through a national forest called Pisgah National Forest, and he finds what appear to be the skeletal remains of a body in a wooded section that are not far from Candler, North Carolina.
00:09:04
Speaker
So to give you some geographical references here, Candler, North Carolina is going to be about 110 miles from this rest stop where her car was found.
00:09:16
Speaker
That's kind of a hike. That's a couple hours of a drive. And it's mountain roads or interstate roads, depending on how you travel.
00:09:25
Speaker
Preliminary examinations of these bones determine that they're probably female. But because of deterioration, they cannot establish her age, race, or cause of death. The remains are sent down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
00:09:44
Speaker
And a guy named Dr. Larry Tate is going to perform an autopsy on the bones. He deduces in his report that the victim had likely been killed by four stabs to the left side of her chest.
00:10:04
Speaker
And just to throw this out there, ah I noticed this in some of the articles. They name different places that you could ah find her um information about her being missing.
00:10:17
Speaker
One of those is from newspapers.com. It's an old Raleigh News and Observer. And while she works in Raleigh, they call her Missing Franklin Woman, so from a place near Raleigh. They have a little article there that pops up March 27, 1980. So this is going to be the day before Terry Hyatt's birthday, which I thought that was kind of interesting.
00:10:42
Speaker
A skeleton found in rugged Pisgah National Forest near Asheville on Sunday is now believed to be that of Harriet Delaney Simmons of Franklin County, who had been missing for almost a year.
00:10:54
Speaker
A spokesman for the state chief medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill said the skeleton of a Caucasian woman could be that of 42-year-old Simmons. Dental records that would confirm the identity have been difficult to obtain, and a positive positive identification may take several days.
00:11:11
Speaker
Dr. Larry Tate, who is the assistant state chief medical examiner, said the woman had been stabbed at least four times in the last chest. Authorities are going to treat the case as a homicide, but spokesmen for the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office and the SBI declined to say whether a suspect has been identified.
00:11:29
Speaker
Mrs. Simmons, the mother of seven, had been missing since leaving Johnny's Supper Club in Raleigh, where she worked on April the 14th for an Easter Sunday trip to visit a friend in Nashville, Tennessee. And this is the boyfriend we were referencing.
00:11:43
Speaker
Her navy blue 1978 Toyota was found April the 20th on the exit ramp of an Interstate 40 rest stop near Statesville in Iredell County. Police had treated the case as a routine missing person incident because they had no evidence of foul play.
00:11:58
Speaker
Mrs. Simmons' keys and pocketbook were missing from the unlocked car, but her clothes, a thermos of coffee, and a thermos of milk were found inside. The skeleton was found Sunday by a person walking through a wooded area about 150 yards off of North Carolina 151 in the massive National Park near Candler.
00:12:18
Speaker
Larry Tate said it appeared that the skeleton had been at the site some 100 miles from where Mrs. Simmons' car was found for at least six months. Moncombe County investigator Earl DeWeese said car keys and jewelry found nearby had been identified as belonging to Mrs. Simmons.
00:12:35
Speaker
Two packs of cigarettes also were found, but the pocketbook was not. Family and friends have said they were baffled by the disappearance of Mrs. Simmons, who was divorced. Soon after she was reported missing, friends spotted newspaper advertisement featuring a picture of Mrs. Simmons and asked for information on her whereabouts.
00:12:53
Speaker
Her daughter said in a telephone interview Wednesday night that she was confident that authorities are doing all they can to solve this mystery. All of them have been very thorough, and they have all been very considerate.
00:13:04
Speaker
They have been in constant contact with us, and I appreciate their concern. I've been satisfied with their work. So this is going to go unsolved for a long period of time. But with the recovery of the body, they're able to...
00:13:21
Speaker
like work through the identification process and Dr. Paige Hudson releases a statement to the press. She's from a different division of the medical examiner's office and she claims that the decedent has been tentatively identified as Simmons because of those keys and other things found at the scene.
00:13:39
Speaker
Authorities began to investigate this case differently. ah They start to look at a possible link to something called the Old Time Fiddlers Convention, which would have been in Union Grove Township. So it was close to where her car was found, but it's not close to the place that her body is found.
00:14:00
Speaker
They point out in newspaper articles that there are visitors that come in from all over the country, and her disappearance occurred on the final day of the Old Time Fiddlers Convention in 1979.
Debunking Lucas' Confessions
00:14:14
Speaker
In 1984, authorities think they get a break in the case when Henry Lee Lucas admits that he killed her. And this was along with nine other murders that he had allegedly committed in North Carolina and South Carolina.
00:14:30
Speaker
But like everything else, over time, this has proven to have been impossible. And the way that it's impossible here is the timeline lines up where he's clearly somewhere else.
00:14:42
Speaker
um There's a pretty good article from the Charlotte Observer from August 19th of 1984 that talks about ah the 10 crimes that are allegedly Lucas's in North Carolina.
00:15:00
Speaker
Have you ever, ah in South Carolina, have you ever heard some of these ah kind of listicles that he gave out to people? Yeah. Yeah. So in this one, I thought it'd be interesting. We've talked a lot about Henry Lucas.
00:15:15
Speaker
um I thought it would be interesting to point out that Tex O'Neill covers this and he talks about how this might be linked. um According to ah this article, i says Harriet Simmons was a cautious woman.
00:15:32
Speaker
ah She was person who a person who had recognized her vulnerability when the Franklin County woman had once driven home on a flat tire rather than stop on the road.
00:15:43
Speaker
So this guy's talking to her family about it ah When Simmons left her job as the manager of a Raleigh supper club, it would have been at 1.30 a.m. on Easter of 1979.
00:15:56
Speaker
She was headed for Nashville, and she packed up her car so she wouldn't have to stop along the way. And she told her family she called them when she got to Nashville, but she didn't ever call.
00:16:07
Speaker
Five days later, her car was found ah at this rest area and I'm bringing this up because this has an important detail that isn't listed anywhere else that I've seen.
00:16:19
Speaker
One of her tires is flat.
00:16:23
Speaker
The night that she vanished a gap-tooth drifter named Henry Lee Lucas was criss-crossing the country in a casual quest for victims. So this is what they thought of Lucas back in 1984.
00:16:34
Speaker
Lucas has told police he killed as many as 360 persons all over the country, acknowledged picking up a motorist on I-40 about the time Simmons disappeared. He says he raped and knifed his victim, whose name he didn't know, and he dumped her body in Tennessee.
00:16:50
Speaker
Simmons is one of the at least 10 persons Lucas is suspected of having killed in the Carolinas during what was described by Lucas's own words as a five-year, 35-state odyssey of violence from 1976 to 1981. Yeah.
00:17:06
Speaker
Some of the names that are on this list are an eight-year-old girl that Henry Lucas says he snatched in 1978 near Perryville, Maryland. ah He says he dumped her in Four Oaks, which was 35 miles south of Raleigh. So he's describing going from Maryland down to Raleigh, North Carolina.
00:17:26
Speaker
ah Her name is unknown, and her body has never been found. ah Lou Della Jernigan, 54, was shot in the face in October 1979 when she answered the door at her home near Four Oaks.
00:17:39
Speaker
Two female hitchhikers, one was picked up in Durham, the other near Winston-Salem. Their names are also unknown. Eva DeBruhl, a 15-year-old who disappeared in June of 1977 from York County, South Carolina,
00:17:55
Speaker
ah Linda Cope, 32, of Lexington, South Carolina, whose dismembered body was found in a Georgetown County ah landfill in June 1981. Lynn Pittman, who was 21, whose body was found in July of 1981 in the Savannah River near Hardyville, South Carolina.
00:18:15
Speaker
And an unidentified couple found shot to death along I-95 in Sumter County, South Carolina in August of 1976.
00:18:26
Speaker
So Lucas talks a lot about different crimes that allegedly have happened in the Carolinas.
00:18:39
Speaker
But what we know now is that Henry Lucas lied about pretty much everything he ever said. Right. He was talking about crimes that were in files that were put in front of him.
00:18:50
Speaker
Right. We have what is Harriet Simmons' now unsolved murder, was a missing persons case, tied to Henry Lee Lucas. It is refuted.
00:19:00
Speaker
And the way that it's refuted is is going to come up here in a second. The second victim, though, is in August of 1979. Harriet Simmons is in April right around Easter.
Betty Sue McConnell's Case
00:19:17
Speaker
This victim is a 21-year-old who is a young mother of one child who works at a Dunkin' Donuts in Asheville, North Carolina. So now we're back in Buncombe County. So Iredell County is to the east of Buncombe County. We've moved into the mountains of North Carolina.
00:19:35
Speaker
She's supposed to meet a friend at a bowling alley on August 25th, and she goes missing. Her name is Betty Sue McConnell. After you're failing to return home on time, her mother and her older sister, they contact the police and the police immediately start looking for Betty Sue.
00:19:54
Speaker
Three hours later, Betty Sue is found off a bank of the French Broad River near Alexander.
00:20:03
Speaker
She has been stabbed multiple times in the chest. An ambulance is called and attempts to save her life are made, but she dies from her wounds en route to the hospital. Two hours later, her car is found partially submerged about five miles away from where Betty Sue McConnell had been discovered.
00:20:24
Speaker
So we have someone who almost survives and I find those to be so interesting um when someone is like right on the verge of like being a witness as opposed to a deceased victim.
00:20:38
Speaker
And we've got one more case here. So we're gonna fast forward from, ah actually we've got two cases. We'll talk about both of them. um Moving forward in time a little bit to October 1979.
00:20:55
Speaker
Terry Hyatt is driving around Asheville when he spots a 40-year-old woman who's walking home from work at Krispy Kreme. Dunkin' Donuts, Krispy Kreme.
00:21:08
Speaker
He pulls his truck up beside her and under the threat of a knife, tells her to get inside the truck. According to this woman's story, he drives around aimlessly for ah long period of time.
00:21:22
Speaker
He robs her of $44, and he is constantly threatening to cut her throat. But eventually, he releases this woman.
00:21:32
Speaker
After she convinces him and talks to him, saying she doesn't like the police and she's not going contact them,
00:21:41
Speaker
Shortly after she's let go, the woman walks into the police station. She describes her abductor. She describes his vehicle. They track him down and they arrest him. Now, they're going to end up finding him guilty of this crime and they're going to sentence him to 25 years in prison for armed robbery and kidnapping.
00:22:04
Speaker
Okay. Does that all make sense so far, what we're doing here? All right. So with this sentence, ah the Buncombe County sentence here.
00:22:15
Speaker
So his prison sentence for this attempted kidnapping and robbery, um he goes in shortly after the incident on...
00:22:29
Speaker
October 19th, 1979, he's arrested, he's held January 24th, 1980, he is convicted and he gets released on January 5th of 1990 from his parole.
00:22:47
Speaker
So he doesn't end up becoming a suspect in this other case until later.
Jerry Jones' Murder and Legal Proceedings
00:22:53
Speaker
But if you dig into his sentencing record, what you will find is he was actually released to a halfway house along the way.
00:23:04
Speaker
And that's how we get to our last victim that is known here. On July 9th, 1987, 19-year-old Jerry Jones is a cashier working at a Harris Teeter in Dorita.
00:23:18
Speaker
ah Dorita is a neighborhood outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. She gets reported missing after her boyfriend goes to see her at the store. 24 hours later, the local police find her body in a wooded section of the same neighborhood.
00:23:34
Speaker
She's naked and her throat had been slit. Police Captain Larry Snyder said that an unknown assailant might have kidnapped her from a parking lot on Graham Street. In response to this murder, Harris Teeter, who is Jerry Jones' employer, they offer up a $10,000 reward for any information provided to authorities relating to her murder.
00:23:56
Speaker
ah Crime Stoppers also releases a $1,000 reward. A few days later, police in Charlotte, North Carolina, announced that Jones' murder might be connected to the recent rape of 24-year-old woman.
00:24:10
Speaker
In both cases, witnesses reported seeing a white male driving a white pickup truck approach these women. And in the Charlotte rape, the woman said that her assailant drove her to an isolated area of Mount Holly Huntersville Road where she was raped.
00:24:26
Speaker
Following this announcement, police are overwhelmed briefly with various tips about both cases. However, despite their efforts, her murder becomes a cold case. So that's Jerry Jones's murder.
00:24:40
Speaker
It goes unconnected to anything else for several more years. The cold case squad of the Charlotte, North Carolina Police Department, when they're interviewed about old cases in 1994, so seven years after this murder, they express that they hope in the future that this is one of the cases that will be solved using advanced DNA technology.
00:25:05
Speaker
So we're we're going to see this be a cold case for some long period of time here. But in 1998, we're finally going to get an arrest in several of these cases.
00:25:20
Speaker
And we're going to get it in perhaps the dumbest way possible. Yeah, it's interesting, definitely. So in November of 1998, a man named Jerry Leon Harmon...
00:25:33
Speaker
who is absolutely drunk out of his mind, stumbles into the sheriff's office and claims that he has been wracked with guilt over something terrible that he did.
00:25:45
Speaker
He tells the officers that come out to talk to him that he had been accompanying a man when they rammed Betty McConnell's car off the road on the night of her death.
00:26:03
Speaker
The story he tells is that the driver of the vehicle said that they were going to steal money from Betty McConnell in order to buy drugs and buy alcohol.
00:26:17
Speaker
But that's not what happened. So this is the Dunkin' Donuts employee who went missing. She was found like wounded, ah on a bank of the French Broad River in near alex Alexander, North Carolina. She'd been stabbed in the chest.
00:26:34
Speaker
An ambulance is called. She dies on the way to the hospital, and they find her car submerged in water about five miles away ah from where her like where she was found injured.
00:26:50
Speaker
And this guy has information on that.
00:26:54
Speaker
He says that the driver... drags Betty McConnell off into the woods, and when he returns, his clothes are bloody, and he says that he killed the girl.
00:27:07
Speaker
And he says the driver's name is Terry Alvin Hyatt.
00:27:13
Speaker
The police are a little dubious of what this very drunk man is telling them. We're going to rely on a little section of a document called Hyatt v. Brinker. It's from 2009. This is an appellate court document where once you exhaust all your state appeals, you try to move into the United States, like the Federal Court of Appeals.
00:27:40
Speaker
In this instance, the document is coming out of the Fourth Circuit. It has ah paragraph in here where it describes a slightly different like timeline, ah but we're going to use this like for what we're talking about.
00:27:55
Speaker
says, on August 13, 1998, while intoxicated, Jerry Harmon visited the Sheriff's Department in Buncombe County, North Carolina. He provided officers with information relating to the murder of Betty Sue McConnell, which had occurred two decades earlier in August of 1979.
00:28:12
Speaker
Harmon stated that he and a man named Terry Hyatt abducted Ms. McConnell and that Hyatt then raped and murdered her. Harmon also suggested that a man named Lester Dean Helms might have additional information about ah Terry Hyatt.
00:28:28
Speaker
In October of 1998, law enforcement officers interview Lester Helms. He tells them that Terry Hyatt had kidnapped and murdered another woman named Harriet Delaney Simmons in April of 1979. I don't always advocate for the use of what I would call jailhouse snitches.
00:28:53
Speaker
But when they are describing firsthand knowledge kind of against their own interests, so... They're incriminating themselves to an extent, yeah. Yeah, they're they're they're incorporating this crime into their life story.
00:29:07
Speaker
When they do that, a lot of times you will find that they are probably relatively truthful. ah The account from Lester Dean Helms when he admits to participating in Harriet Simmons' murder is that they came across her at the rest stop where her car had broken down.
00:29:28
Speaker
um We now know, or believe we know, that to be the car had a flat tire. And I think I read somewhere on the internet that it said they offered her a ride to get car parts, but I think what they really did was they offered to go and get her a tire that they could help her put on her car.
00:29:46
Speaker
But instead of doing that, they drive her into the mountains and each of them rape her. So this is Lester Helms and Terry Hyatt saying they both raped her.
00:30:00
Speaker
He says they they both raped her. I don't think he does say they both What do you mean? I think he said Hyatt did. i I am going by a couple different things here.
00:30:11
Speaker
Um... The Asheville Citizen Times has an article from January 28, 2000.
00:30:18
Speaker
According to this article, the story that is told on the stand is that they both had sex with her, which would be rape.
00:30:30
Speaker
Do you think that's, I've seen it differently too, by the way. I'm just going from the opinion where it says that Helms and Hyatt encountered Miss Simmons at a rest stop where she was having car trouble.
00:30:40
Speaker
Miss Simmons entered their van after they offered to help. Helms and Hyatt then drove to a secluded wooded area and Hyatt raped Miss Simmons in the back of the van. Yes. I've read that as well. That's all I know. Yeah.
00:30:54
Speaker
But whatever. I'm just, I'm just, I was going to give both versions. So yeah you're, you're right there with me. After this sexual assault occurs, in one version of the story, Hyatt drags Simmons off into the woods, and he comes back without her. He has blood on his hands.
00:31:13
Speaker
Terry Hyatt attempts to prevent this from being admitted as evidence into court. A justice named James Downs overrules Simmons. this being suppressed.
00:31:24
Speaker
He reasons that after the arrest, the defendant had voluntarily waived his rights and he had not requested an attorney. So they try and exclude Helms's confession from implicating Hyatt, if that makes sense.
00:31:41
Speaker
He gets arrested November 19th, 1998. He's arrested for both murders at this point. I just want to clear up. um I want to be clear because Helms makes the statement after talk him, but Hyatt gives after the police talk to him but quiet gives enough of a response when they go to talk to him at the behest of the two guys that he was with, supposedly. Like, he incriminates himself to some extent. They're not going completely off of what the two guys told him.
00:32:21
Speaker
Right, right. and And some time has passed. we We're like, we get this confession in August. It's now November. So they did a little bit of investigating at the very least, right? Well, I presume so. I mean, because my initial thought, whenever you've got the...
00:32:37
Speaker
um the jailhouse snitch or accomplice confession, ah but downplaying of their own role, right?
00:32:48
Speaker
um I always wonder to what extent, I always wonder about like how accurate it is and It would be very, I will just say it this way. It would be very convenient for somebody to talk about their own crimes and pin it on somebody else in a way that is convincing.
00:33:09
Speaker
I do believe that. And for Helms' part, when he testifies in court, he says that he and Terry Hyatt had gone to the beach that day and they were driving home on 40. They come upon this woman when they go to the rest stop.
00:33:23
Speaker
Her car appeared to have been broken down and he said that ah Terry Hyatt tricks her into getting into their van. And there's they say, hey, we're going to take going to get some car parts. They drive out into the mountains.
00:33:37
Speaker
um He doesn't specifically say a flat tire, but the car had a flat tire. So that's what I'm assuming. They drive out into the mountains and Helm says that ah he believes the threat of killing her because he says that ah Hyatt had a knife out the whole time.
00:33:56
Speaker
um And that in his description, he kind of minimizes this. And this sounds terrible the way I'm going to say it, but he says that Simmons had sex with Hyatt out of fear and then performed a sex act on him.
00:34:13
Speaker
And he believed that was also out of fear. So that's in his testimony. And I don't think that that is unreliable testimony. Does that make sense?
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's not, it, it makes sense. Um, I, So one point of interest, I think, here is ah the idea that if they were at the beach that day and they encounter her in Statesville, that's a good, what, four and a half hours of a drive? Yeah. Depending on which beach you're at, it's a minimum four hours, yeah.
00:34:51
Speaker
Right. And so... I find that really interesting. But anyway, so, and then to go on, you know, i I would assume, I think that to drive across North Carolina from the beach to get to Tennessee, it would be about, it would be between six and seven hours, right? Oh, yeah.
00:35:08
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, if you're driving that far, you're, uh, maybe even seven to eight hours. Yeah. So there are some pretty good accounts of this in the Charlotte Observer and the Citizen Times. if you're that Citizen Times is an astral newspaper.
00:35:25
Speaker
If you're looking to read up on the trial itself, they cover it kind of in detail. I will admit that like when I got to this point in the story, I thought to myself, okay, well, we've got something happening here.
00:35:38
Speaker
The prosecutors have... They've charged Helms but not Harmon. The public defenders that are representing Hyatt,
00:35:50
Speaker
they go after the fact that they're charged and he claims that the witnesses are less than reliable. And they do point out in this case, because of the condition of the bodies, there's no reliable physical evidence.
00:36:03
Speaker
But The prosecutors acknowledge this, and they point out that like there's no real motive for Harmon to have confessed and to have dragged Helms into this story with Hyatt. and Hyatt ends up, on February 1st of 2000, being found guilty of both of these murders.
00:36:26
Speaker
um and And keep in mind, at the time, these would have been death penalty eligible murders. We have no idea how Helms and Harmon. We don't know why ah Jerry Harmon would have known to say, hey, you also need to go talk to Helms.
00:36:46
Speaker
Yeah, we don't know that yet. And it doesn't come up. I don't think it's in the appellate document. I don't i don't think we get to that point where we understand how this is all related to these guys.
00:36:58
Speaker
And personally, i would feel, because here, so this is my understanding of what happened. You've got um Jerry Harmon expressing what I would consider to be like consciousness of guilt, right? Correct, He feels guilty that this has occurred, and he's turning in himself, basically, and then to a greater extent, his friend Terry Hyatt.
00:37:23
Speaker
right And to bolster his credibility, he was like, you guys also need to go talk to Lester Helms, right? yeah and to me, all of that sounds sketchy because, like, I don't know their circumstances, says but it seems really odd that Because keep in mind, Jerry Harmon wasn't with Helms and Hyatt.
00:37:56
Speaker
Right. Okay. And then ah Helms wasn't with Harmon and Hyatt. Right. Okay. And so what? Do they sit around and talk about this?
00:38:07
Speaker
but it doesn't it doesn't even It doesn't really come up here. Well, know, but like how, so how would they know? And let, but so my immediate, so my immediate thought, now there's a conviction in everything of this. This has gone through the whole process, but my immediate thought was,
00:38:22
Speaker
That seems very convenient, right? and It does. And there's some there's some other things that come up here in a little bit, but I just wanted to point that out. So when you've got a situation where like not only I turning in a crime that my friend committed while I was with him, you need to talk to this other friend who was with Hyatt when he committed a different crime.
00:38:49
Speaker
Right. And I'm wondering if they didn't get drunk one night and like they were just talking and the two of them compared notes on how creepy high it was.
Legal Challenges and Interrogation Concerns
00:38:59
Speaker
Um, it's, and see, that makes me wonder, like, you're right, except I'm just not sure. But anyway, go ahead. I'm with you because like I said, I had doubts When I'm reading the like the the recount of the trial, I had doubts about it.
00:39:19
Speaker
Well, one of the things um we were talking about, we haven't really gotten to it yet, but there's some corroboration that to the fact that there's two guys involved um in these different situations.
00:39:34
Speaker
And, you know, there can be two guys involved. I had wondered if
00:39:45
Speaker
these guys were somehow the dudes from the other case um and had confessed, but it's not them. They're separate of it.
00:39:57
Speaker
And so, okay, let me get to a couple of things here. Oh, you mean the case you were talking about earlier? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The double homicide case. Sorry. So one of the things that pops up in this appeal is they make an argument about ah his rights under Miranda v. Arizona being ah being violated.
00:40:21
Speaker
So basically, we talked about this on the show before, but the appellate lawyers are arguing that North Carolina law enforcement officers denied him assistance of counsel during a custodial interrogation and that they had deceived him during the course of the interrogation.
00:40:39
Speaker
For the record, cops can always lie until somebody rules otherwise. The lawyers further contend that the state court clearly violated established federal law by failing to suppress incriminating statements that he had made.
00:40:53
Speaker
So we're going to swing back around to those. This is how they're trying to get this case so to be heard by the 4th District. Hyatt's argument rests on the fact that during his initial interrogation ah by law enforcement officers, his rights are violated.
00:41:11
Speaker
On November nineteenth of 1998, Tim Shook, That's a special agent we've talked about before with a North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and it's a detective named Ann Benjamin, who's a detective with the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department.
00:41:25
Speaker
They go to Terry Hyatt's home to talk to him. They tell Hyatt that they're investigating a murder that occurred earlier that year. And Hyatt offered to provide a DNA sample to clear his name.
00:41:39
Speaker
You see what they did there? Yeah. He knows... He didn't kill anybody in 1998.
00:41:46
Speaker
So he voluntarily drives his truck down to the Buncombe County Public Health Department, and he gets his blood drawn by consent. After he gives the blood sample, he and the officers drive over to the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office.
00:42:02
Speaker
When he gets into the interview room, Special Agent Shook explains that the officers are actually investigating the abduction, rape, and murder of Betty Sue McConnell. The officers tell Hyatt that they found fingerprint evidence that connects him to the scene of the crime.
00:42:20
Speaker
They do not have fingerprint evidence. They just tell him this. They say that Hyatt's demeanor changed and he became silent. At this point in time, Agent Shook reads Hyatt his Miranda rights, and Hyatt signs an acknowledgment to this effect.
00:42:39
Speaker
Hyatt agrees that he's going to talk to these two officers, but he asks if he can call his dad first. So the officers handcuff him. Agent Shook, Detective Benjamin, and the captain of the Monken County Sheriff's Department at the time, a guy named Pat Hefner, they put him in the car and they drive out to Terry Hyatt's dad's house.
00:43:01
Speaker
He's handcuffed the entire visit, but he's also been Mirandized. Hyatt and his father go out on the back porch and they speak. Hyatt tells his father that he's in trouble for something that has occurred a long time ago.
00:43:13
Speaker
According to his statement, Hyatt's father says that Hyatt told him, I want you to get me a lawyer. Although Hyatt and his father were whispering, Hyatt's father testified that Agent Shook, who was only 10 or 12 feet away, was close enough to hear their conversation and what they were saying, including Hyatt's request for a lawyer.
00:43:35
Speaker
Agent Shook acknowledges that he could hear most everything, but he testifies he did not hear Terry Hyatt ask for counsel. He says that he did recall that Hyatt's father instructed Terry Hyatt to get a lawyer.
00:43:51
Speaker
Detective Benjamin was a few feet further away, and she testified she did not hear much of the discussion. And Captain Pat Hefner, he stayed in the front yard.
00:44:03
Speaker
So Hyatt and his father, they walk around to the front porch. Hyatt's girlfriend, a woman named Sydney Spalding, is there. Shook and Benjamin follow Hyatt around to the front. Spalding says that at that time, Hyatt asked his father to find him an attorney.
00:44:18
Speaker
Again, Agent Shook says he did not hear Hyatt request counsel. And once again, the other two, Benjamin and Hefner, are too far away to have heard the conversation. So then they pile back into their cars and Hyatt returns to the sheriff's department with the officers.
00:44:35
Speaker
He's still in handcuffs. And once in the interrogation room, Hyatt stated that his daddy wanted him to call a lawyer. And Ann Benjamin says, you're 41 years old.
00:44:47
Speaker
You need to decide for yourself if you need a lawyer. But according to Shook and according to Detective Benjamin, They testify, Hyatt never says, i want a lawyer.
00:45:01
Speaker
During the interrogation that follows, because they continue to interview him, Hyatt makes a series of incriminating statements. He stated that he was guilty of robbing someone, but he denied having killed anyone.
00:45:15
Speaker
Nonetheless, he asked what would happen to him if he did admit to killing Mrs. McConnell. He then acknowledged that he was present when Mrs. McConnell was murdered, but contended That Harmon, Jerry Harmon, had raped and killed her.
00:45:31
Speaker
After Agent Shook asked him about the murder of Ms. Simmons, jerry Terry Hyatt ended the interview. So what happens at this point when you've gone that far and you've given this many statements, which ah Meg and I have told everyone, and we would have also told Terry Hyatt if he asked, don't talk to the cops.
00:45:52
Speaker
But he has. He's already talked to them, and he's given them just enough information to arrest them. Right, but I mean, he was already... He was under arrest before he he was taken to see his father. Yeah.
00:46:06
Speaker
And he acknowledged a waiver of his rights. um This is touchy for me. because it's It's complex. It is complex. i have I feel like in the spirit of...
00:46:23
Speaker
so So there's two things. I feel like in the spirit of like what being Mirandized means and like your Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate yourself, I think that that was satisfied yeah to to an extent here as far as him making comments about my daddy thinks I need to get a lawyer.
00:46:43
Speaker
but Ultimately, Hyatt, it's said in the, at least the court opinion, that Hyatt terminated the interview when they brought up Miss Simmons.
00:46:55
Speaker
Yes. so he if that's to be believed, he had the ability to terminate the interview at any time. And he did. Yes. He did, right.
00:47:08
Speaker
and so But my point is if he had really wanted an attorney and they weren't allowing him to have one, he could have terminated the interview at that point.
00:47:19
Speaker
Well, this is what I'll say. ah defendant who knows they've committed multiple homicides, who is sitting in a police interrogation room, asking for their dad, is terrified.
00:47:33
Speaker
And they should be. Because they know they committed multiple homicides. Why would that scare them, though? Because they're about to be put in jail, and they know it.
00:47:44
Speaker
i just I guess my brain just won't ever register like why that would be scary when you've killed people. Well, you killed women, and now you know a woman and a man are interviewing you about these women that you've killed. That just seems to me like if that's ah the route you want to go, just own it. Yeah.
00:48:02
Speaker
yeah you may It just seems like weird like you're such a tough guy. Why you turn into a frady cat because the law got involved? yeah It's weird, right? Yeah. So after he leaves his father's house, there's a conversation between Hyatt's father and Hyatt's brother.
00:48:17
Speaker
And they talk about like the fact that he's in handcuffs and going with the cops. The brother calls a local attorney named Sean Devereaux. He asks him to go in and represent Hyatt. Hyatt's father and his brother tell Devereaux that Hyatt had requested the assistance of his Devereaux calls the sheriff's department, he states he represents Hyatt, and he asks the officers to terminate the interrogation, but the officers of the sheriff's department refused and they stated that Hyatt has not invoked his right to counsel.
00:48:43
Speaker
And then there's a little bit of back and forth when Devereaux shows up explaining that he represents Hyatt, attempting to speak with him. They refuse the request. And this is not just from the law enforcement officers at the Sheriff's Department, and there's some SBI there at this point, but also from the assistant district attorneys for Buncombe County. They're in the room, and they...
00:49:04
Speaker
ah They're in the next room, and they refuse Devereaux's request. ah During the interrogation, the officers do not inform Hyatt that Devereaux has arrived and claimed to represent him.
00:49:16
Speaker
He's now terminated this interrogation, and at that point in time, they do permit Devereaux to see him. And Devereaux then witnessed the conversation where Hyatt reportedly asked Detective Benjamin, why did you lie to me about a lawyer?
00:49:30
Speaker
You know that I asked for one. And Detective Benjamin replies, no, you didn't, Terry. You asked to speak to your father. You never asked for a lawyer. And I felt like that was, if he was going to get like a good appeal out of this, it was going to be that. Right. But I would, I maintain though,
00:49:50
Speaker
And it's so tricky because you can feel a sense of like overwhelming dread that would cause you to not want to be like super firm with the police because they have all the power in this situation. Right. But still like, it's not just a matter of asking for an attorney, you ask for an attorney and then you, you just say,
00:50:16
Speaker
I'm exercising my right to remain silent. You don't engage in the conversation. and you're allowed to do that no matter what they threaten you with or whatever, right? Yeah.
00:50:27
Speaker
But I think that this is this is rather dicey, especially the way that the court ends up deciding it. Yeah, he and they like the right to counsel is literally the only leg that Hyatt has to stand on. There are a number of other things that happen in court, and He is appointed counsel because, to be honest with you, when you're looking at a double homicide case like this, it's expensive. It's so expensive. People don't understand how expensive it is.
00:50:59
Speaker
You're better off using capital defenders in most jurisdictions, which are the people who regularly interact on homicide cases, as opposed to the very few lawyers who regularly you know try a homicide case.
DNA Evidence and Hyatt's Plea Deal
00:51:16
Speaker
But the bottom line is, even when he's in court, he doesn't really ask for his counsel to be substituted. The family says they will hire another set of attorneys.
00:51:29
Speaker
um Ultimately, the the finding here is none of that really helps him. Would you agree that's a good summary of it all? and think so. um One of the things that I want to point out here that I said I had questions.
00:51:47
Speaker
It's going to be a while before those questions get like wrapped up. On February 1st, 2000, obviously we're talking about an appellate case. Hyatt is found guilty and convicted of McConnell and Simmons' murders.
00:52:03
Speaker
The family celebrates ah this verdict. He is handed two death sentences for the murder charges and six consecutive life sentences for counts of rape, kidnapping, and robbery.
00:52:18
Speaker
It's going to be five years before this gets cleared up in a way that I can look at it and go, okay, that probably makes sense. And I don't know if this did it for you, but it did it for me. Hyatt's DNA finds its way into CODIS.
00:52:31
Speaker
And you and i wonder about this all the time. There is a match made when investigators take the cold case of Jerry Jones and run a cigarette butt in Dakotas.
00:52:47
Speaker
That matches with Terry Hyatt. It matches Hyatt's semen. The cigarette butt and Hyatt's semen are found at the scene of her crime, including semen that is found in her mouth.
00:53:03
Speaker
And at that point in time, Hyatt has figured out that he does not have a leg to stand on. He's been in prison for five years. So he makes a plea deal with the prosecutors who agree not to seek the death penalty if he will plead guilty to Jerry Jones' murder.
00:53:16
Speaker
And he gets yet another life in prison to run consecutively with his other sentences. So after he is dead and his sentence is served for all the ones we just talked about, but he now has to serve life in prison as well.
00:53:32
Speaker
But yet, this plus is still sitting here. So that's three. We have Jerry Jones. We have Betty McConnell. We have Harriet Simmons.
00:53:44
Speaker
And he still has this little plus by his name. Have you seen anything where he might have committed other crimes when he's not in prison? add No.
00:53:57
Speaker
I haven't either. And I wonder why this plus is here. Because I can't find anything. Well, you have to presume that ah Betty Sue McConnell happened in 79.
00:54:09
Speaker
Harriet Delaney Simmons happened 79. He does his stent for kidnapping. we don't know his exact release date from actual
Hyatt's Potential Involvement in Other Crimes
00:54:18
Speaker
prison. We just know he was back out in the world.
00:54:21
Speaker
for 1987. But that happened in 1979. And so, so he goes into prison for that. And then Jerry Jones's murder is in 1987. And that's the only one that has DNA linking him to it.
00:54:34
Speaker
Yes. Okay. And so there's no indication that they ever even attempted to link his DNA to Harriet Simmons or Betty McConnell, right? Right.
00:54:51
Speaker
And so the time period that passes while he's in jail for the um for the crime against Carolyn Brigman,
00:55:03
Speaker
at something changed, right? Yeah. attempted yeah Because is suddenly there were things to test DNA on like later, right? Correct.
00:55:15
Speaker
And so there's always, so there's some...
00:55:19
Speaker
there's some leeway there as far as crimes that occurred that... Now, granted, he was put in jail fairly quickly. Yeah. after Carolyn Brigham.
00:55:35
Speaker
And so anything before Simmons, I'm not going to... I don't think in this area at this time that they would have been...
00:55:48
Speaker
ah retaining samples with the idea that maybe one day there'll be something to do with them. Right. Okay. And he couldn't have done anything until when he, I'm, I'm going to imagine he gets out right around 87. Yeah. um I would agree with that.
00:56:11
Speaker
Okay. I'm not really sure. It's weird that that's not more of a record um because when I first looked at it, it didn't seem possible that he could have done that murder. Right, yeah. Except that his DNA was found there, right? Yeah.
00:56:29
Speaker
So he had to have been out at some point before then. Anyway, this is a little bit concerning to me, especially it
00:56:44
Speaker
it
00:56:47
Speaker
yeah Maybe you can help me understand. How long did he go? So he gets out for his kidnapping charge. He kills Jerry Jones, but he's not arrested again until 98, right? Correct.
00:57:01
Speaker
Okay. And so anything that happened in between 87 98... ah eighty seven and ninety eight unless it was in a place that wasn't maintaining samples for possible DNA testing, it should have shown up, right?
00:57:18
Speaker
Yeah, it should have.
00:57:21
Speaker
I mean, he he should have popped in CODIS unless, ah the way that this would have to work is, I think he would have to, because he's so young, he's 22 years old when he commits his first murder.
00:57:32
Speaker
You would have to get a firm timeline on him, figure out when he's in the halfway house and when he's like on probation and out in the world. And when they terminate that, because that was the other weird thing is technically his probation expires, but like, I can't even pull that date.
00:57:48
Speaker
So if I could find that, I could give you a timeline and say, look, if you look at him from the first time he's arrested and when he goes to prison and he had done some jail time here and there, but it wasn't very long.
00:58:03
Speaker
Um, I think the longest sentence he'd had before this was 18 months, give or take. um But you could map it out and you could look for missing persons because that might be the reason, even beyond the DNA collection, that's the second problem that you have.
00:58:18
Speaker
But if you looked in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, the areas, particularly in the mountain areas, you could potentially find unsolved homicides to run evidence on or unsolved missing persons cases that seem to fit his M.O.
00:58:32
Speaker
of a female gone missing in a fairly vulnerable position, either walking, hitchhiking, um potentially with a disabled vehicle of some kind. Especially if they were near a donut shop.
00:58:47
Speaker
ah Yeah, that's that's I mentioned that earlier, the Krispy Kreme and the Dunkin' Donut things. That was weird, right? It's very weird. And then you've got the Harris Teeter, the grocery store.
00:58:59
Speaker
I don't know. I just, I brought him up. I don't have a lot more on him right now. He's one of those that like, I will now have a reason to look for the plus symbol. um That's not a part of the episode today. I just wanted to lay out kind of the facts of the case um and have an episode about him because i we had mentioned him ah in ah in a previous episode. And I realized like he pops up in some true crime media, but not everybody knows who he is.
00:59:22
Speaker
And he is a serial killer. Like, you know, he has three homicides he's convicted for. And if he did all three of them, um I don't think they'd have a reason to go back and look at Simmons and and McConnell for dna at the scene because he's been convicted.
00:59:39
Speaker
Right. it So does that conviction bother you at all? um You know, if it weren't for Jerry Jones,
00:59:50
Speaker
I would dig really deep into this, but because his semen is found at the scene of Jerry Jones and there are similarities to how she's killed to the other two women, I don't feel as bothered.
01:00:07
Speaker
I was trying to find, i wanted to see what,
01:00:13
Speaker
um, Harmon, There is, um i did go back through the state appeals in this case, if people want to go hunting them. ah State versus, ah Hyatt versus Brinker is one of them, and State versus Hyatt.
01:00:28
Speaker
So that, Hyatt versus Brinker is a federal appeal. State versus Hyatt, there are two separate appeals you can read about. um There was an indication that there was sperm found in McConnell.
01:00:41
Speaker
The woman who was who died on the way to the hospital, they did do a kit on her. because I had wondered that, and I wanted to clarify that as we we kind of wrap this up. um I don't think it was possible to do anything on Simmons because of the the time and the decomposition.
01:00:57
Speaker
Right, well, right, yeah, we i'm I'm not really sure of all the ins and outs, but I think maybe, it's not odd to me that they didn't have samples from the crime scene to do DNA testing on from, you know, 1979, but I didn't find that to be odd.
01:01:14
Speaker
What I do find to be odd is a situation where um Jerry Leon Harmon does not appear to have been imprisoned for anything to do with this crime.
01:01:29
Speaker
Correct. Lester Helms was. Leon Harmon was not. it It seems kind of odd, right? ah little bit, yeah. It doesn't look like Lester Helms was either.
01:01:40
Speaker
Lester Helms was. Does he have a different name? I have him... 1981 Assault with a Deadly Weapon. Maybe he's not then. 1982 is...
01:01:52
Speaker
nineteenage hero is some
01:01:56
Speaker
It says other other felony. Yeah, I guess guess I am wrong on that. As recently 23, you've got Harmon being arrested for trafficking cocaine.
01:02:10
Speaker
Well, here's my point. My point is I'm not so sure that he wasn't set up by his friends for the other ones. I mean. gets out and thinks, like, I'm going to do it. But he's got the attempted as well.
01:02:25
Speaker
No, I think that he did that one, and then I think his friends really felt guilty, and I think that the two of them were the ones that were involved in those, and that they, in turn,
01:02:37
Speaker
decided to blame it on him. Okay. Well, i would buy that. So that means he really just committed the one attempted and then the one murder.
01:02:48
Speaker
It just seems really odd they didn't get charged with anything. Oh, I'm with you, man. there's i have all kinds of questions about this. Otherwise, I wouldn't bring it up. There's just not a way to dig into this. i think the plus open-ended on purpose.
01:03:04
Speaker
Because he was so young, well,
01:03:10
Speaker
because he was young, when he supposedly, when when he, the first two crimes he was, um, No, I'm sorry. He had the attempted kidnapping first, and then and after 1998, when Harmon comes forward, he is then convicted, and he hasn't been out of prison since then, right? ah The reason that Jerry Jones was discovered was because of DNA from the scene matching his CODIS entry. Correct.
01:03:38
Speaker
And so he is ah he's on death row. is, yes. yes Okay. And... um Before the first two crimes that he was convicted of committing, like he was only 22 at that time. So we're probably not looking at a whole bunch before then. Right. right And then he's got a period of time where he's and car he's incarcerated for the attempted and they linked him to the,
01:04:10
Speaker
the statement of the victim, Right. She was able, because it was just the attempting kidnapping. She identified him. Right. Yeah.
01:04:21
Speaker
I presume. i mean, i assume she knew what she was talking about. Right. Correct. Yes. And he he was convicted and all of the things that come with that. Yeah. If you go back just briefly to,
01:04:34
Speaker
ah Betty McConnell was alive when she was initially found, and she had the opportunity to say, according to the court opinion, she said, i was picked up at work by two guys, stabbed, and thrown into the river.
01:04:52
Speaker
yeah Right? And that's about as far as that got. And up until the point when Harmon came in and was talking about it, there was nothing more to that case, right? Right. Right. I just would be interested to know what the connection between Harmon and Helms is and why they were let go scot-free. It's very clear from Betty McConnell's statement that there were two guys involved.
01:05:18
Speaker
Well, so that's how Helms and Harmon, for me, I
Reflecting on Case Complexities
01:05:23
Speaker
was like, I wonder if they had anything to do with this double homicide that we've been talking about. Like, were they the people?
01:05:30
Speaker
But I couldn't find anything linking them. Well, right. And they're not according... So they have been arrested. They just weren't arrested for this. And there's no indication that they'd be, quote, Native American, end quote.
01:05:44
Speaker
Correct. Remember the DNA or whatever they were talking about from the other case? There was some um Native... lineage there, and I don't think these guys would fit that.
01:05:56
Speaker
No, I don't think so either. I do, however, think that two different crimes having been committed with one of each of them involved was supposedly Terry Hyatt.
01:06:11
Speaker
Essentially, Terry Hyatt went to jail for both of the crimes and his two accomplices both got away with it. And so in the event that this story is were concocted that would have been a successful plan that they had because they literally got their buddy arrested for crimes the two of them committed and they got away with it i don't know that if that's the case i just find it very odd that they weren't charged at all
01:06:46
Speaker
And up i would say up to a certain point, they never would have been.
01:06:53
Speaker
i also would say that Terry Hyatt was going to be found more than likely because i don't know when he was entered into CODIS, but ah Jerry Jones' DNA match is unequivocal, right?
01:07:12
Speaker
In my opinion, it is, yeah. i thought that i I had to go back and look. I thought that there was a chance that they had matched him to something else with one of the other cases. i thought it was McConnell. For some reason, I thought there was available DNA evidence in McConnell's case because she was alive when they found her.
01:07:30
Speaker
Now, but not that I'm aware of, not that it not that comes up as evidence in the trial or in... im trying to think now.
01:07:42
Speaker
He went through trial on this, right? Or no? Yes. ah McConnell? Yes. McConnell and Simmons. And then supposedly he made incriminating statements.
01:07:53
Speaker
We don't know what it was what they were necessarily. but This was heavily skewed under the circumstances that, because I haven't, it's in the opinion and I haven't seen it anywhere else um to say differently that Harmon just stumbles into the sheriff's office one day.
01:08:18
Speaker
and you know, I've said previously, you've always got to wonder about the person talking, right?
01:08:28
Speaker
and
01:08:31
Speaker
Well, the person talking is usually downplaying their role in things, and it's an it's just an odd situation. 100% agree with that statement, by the way. I'm not disagreeing. I thought you had more to say there.
01:08:45
Speaker
Well, perhaps there's... perhaps there's there was something credible about the situation. Perhaps there's more to it than what's presented in the documentation we can find. Cause this was a long time ago, even like from 1998, right? yeah It, i think it is a stretch to put him off as, uh, to indicate he's like some sort of notorious serial killer.
01:09:12
Speaker
I, I mean, obviously if this is all true and his convictions are correct, I would say that, um, that he is by the definition, a serial killer, right? He's not a great dude.
01:09:25
Speaker
But at the same time, i would say that yes it is exceedingly odd to have two accomplices that
01:09:41
Speaker
in a in consciousness of guilt confess to being with you at crimes. And you have to keep in mind, there wasn't anything that independently verified his involvement, right?
01:09:54
Speaker
his semen was silenter on Jerry Jones. Harmon
01:10:01
Speaker
hot Harmon and Helms. They're all H's. It's crazy, right? Harmon and Helms did not implicate him and Jerry Jones. Correct. Correct.
01:10:12
Speaker
That's my what I'm getting at. yeah I understand that he is 100% responsible for Jerry Jones' murder. um It's DNA corroborated.
01:10:23
Speaker
My issue is, it's a little bit odd that, and I'm not saying it had to be DNA link, but like, it's 1998, so,
01:10:38
Speaker
but about nineteen years 19 years after the murders, and the only thing that links him to the crime is his... Well, I guess they weren't even his accomplices because they weren't charged.
Final Thoughts and Attempt to Contact Hyatt
01:10:58
Speaker
The people that were with him on the night of the incident, so that's what... I don't feel like that should have been enough. Not that I don't want him. I i want these murders solved. It's just very odd.
01:11:09
Speaker
Under the circumstances that I've looked into cases, I also don't, but I also don't get the impression that Helms and Harmon were really smart enough to pull something like this off.
01:11:22
Speaker
I didn't get that impression either. What I mean by pulling it off is that, you know, if they were the ones involved and Hyatt wasn't. Because, you know, their son was already convicted at one point for something, right? That's what I'm thinking they were thinking. Yeah, I don't know how to answer that. So here's what I did.
01:11:39
Speaker
i don't know if you have a lot more on this. I'll talk about it more. I reached out to Terry Hyatt to see if he would talk to us. What did he say? I don't know. He accepted my message. Oh, good. Well, we'll hear it from him then.
01:11:51
Speaker
um I would be interested to do that. He's sitting on death row in North Carolina. Yep. And he doesn't have a death date or anything, right? Nothing. Nope. But his death sentences stem from The two questionable homicides. that The two homicides that...
01:12:15
Speaker
his friends implicated, or I don't know if they're friends. I don't know what you call them. The people the help people, Helms and Harmon implicated him in. Okay.
01:12:27
Speaker
And my thought on it is like, it's really odd that that happened. It's, it's really odd. And the other thing was, did he stumble in or was he drunk and like, was he arrested?
01:12:38
Speaker
it says that he came in. i don't know about that. I didn't see an arrest for that night. Hold on. what Do we know what the day was? yeah it was August 1998. august thirteenth nineteen ninety eight Jerry Harmon visited the Sheriff's Department, according to the court
01:12:57
Speaker
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01:13:11
Speaker
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01:13:33
Speaker
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01:13:40
Speaker
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01:14:03
Speaker
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01:14:21
Speaker
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