Have you ever been gripped by the chilling echoes of an unsolved crime that linger in a small town's whispered tales? This week's Murder in the Mountains episode takes you to the heart of Waco, Texas, where the 1982 triple homicide case of Kenneth Franks, Jill Montgomery, and Raylene Rice remains etched in the town's memory. As your hosts, we navigate the murky depths of the investigation, led by the determined Sergeant Truman Simons, while uncovering the unsettling dynamics of local community reactions and the dark motives lurking behind what appeared to be a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Venture further into the shadows with us as we scrutinize the intricate layers of the Lake Waco murders, where life insurance policies and forensic odontology weave a complex web that challenged the very foundations of legal evidence. The relentless dedication of Sergeant Simons, coupled with the convoluted testimonies of informants, paints a tumultuous picture of justice seeking in the absence of concrete physical proof. The specter of bias and the lengths one will go to prove a theory come into sharp focus, revealing the harrowing journey towards a conviction rife with questions and controversy.
In our concluding segments, we confront the heart-wrenching realities of wrongful convictions and the profound impact they have on the lives entangled within the justice system. The somber fate of David Spence's mother, Juanita White, stands as a stark reminder of the fragility of truth amidst legal complexities. As we wrap up this episode, we invite you to join the conversation on Instagram, where the dialogue continues beyond the mountain peaks of Waco. Sharpen your true crime insights with us on Murder in the Mountains, and prepare for another gripping chapter next week.
Show Sources:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/the-murders-at-the-lake/
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3168
Have you ever been gripped by the chilling echoes of an unsolved crime that linger in a small town's whispered tales? This week's Murder in the Mountains episode takes you to the heart of Waco, Texas, where the 1982 triple homicide case of Kenneth Franks, Jill Montgomery, and Raylene Rice remains etched in the town's memory. As your hosts, we navigate the murky depths of the investigation, led by the determined Sergeant Truman Simons, while uncovering the unsettling dynamics of local community reactions and the dark motives lurking behind what appeared to be a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Venture further into the shadows with us as we scrutinize the intricate layers of the Lake Waco murders, where life insurance policies and forensic odontology weave a complex web that challenged the very foundations of legal evidence. The relentless dedication of Sergeant Simons, coupled with the convoluted testimonies of informants, paints a tumultuous picture of justice seeking in the absence of concrete physical proof. The specter of bias and the lengths one will go to prove a theory come into sharp focus, revealing the harrowing journey towards a conviction rife with questions and controversy.
In our concluding segments, we confront the heart-wrenching realities of wrongful convictions and the profound impact they have on the lives entangled within the justice system. The somber fate of David Spence's mother, Juanita White, stands as a stark reminder of the fragility of truth amidst legal complexities. As we wrap up this episode, we invite you to join the conversation on Instagram, where the dialogue continues beyond the mountain peaks of Waco. Sharpen your true crime insights with us on Murder in the Mountains, and prepare for another gripping chapter next week.
Show Sources:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/the-murders-at-the-lake/
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3168
Hey everybody. I'm Alexa and I'm J Arish. Welcome back to Murder in the Mountains we missed last week. I feel like life has just been crazy. And I don't even know why. It's just a lot's been going on. But we just went to dinner. We had some sushi, some noodles belly full. Now we're having a passion fruit martini, so what could go wrong?
Speaker 2:Really Nothing.
Speaker 1:And on the way home there's a police chase.
Speaker 2:We tuned in to Facebook to find that one out. You know we're such a small town. You want to know what's going on in the town. You just look on Facebook.
Speaker 1:And we saw the police just sitting there with their lights on at another light and they weren't doing anything. And then we were sitting at a red light and they were coming up behind but not moving. So we were like what are they trying to do? And then the cop pulled up like on the median and it was like frantically waving everybody out of the way. So I was like what in the world is going on? And then Cherish was like found out on Facebook there's a police chase. There we go. So this week's case takes place in Waco, texas. On the morning of July 14th 1982, the residents of Waco awoke to newspaper headlines that read man and two teenage girls found stabbed to death at Lake Park. Police say bodies bound, girls nude. The summer of 1982, waco was having an uncharacteristically violent summer. The city was a small town feel and was beginning to feel more like a big city, and the citizens weren't happy about it.
Speaker 2:I was going to say, when I think Waco, I don't think small town, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they. It feels like one, I guess, because they're kind of close to it, but it's definitely not as small as where we live.
Speaker 1:I would say yeah, I think Waco, I think the police standoff and Magnolia home chipping JoJo, oh God, because they're in Waco. I'm pretty sure I may be wrong. So, despite the recent crime wave, the murder of three teenagers was more shocking than anything they had heard. The night before the newspapers reported on the crime was July 13th. 17-year-old Jill Montgomery and her friend, 17-year-old Raylene Rice, were headed to Waco to pick up Jill's last paycheck from the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum where she was working over the spring. After cashing the check, they decided to grab 18-year-old Kenneth Franks, who was Jill's ex but now just friends.
Speaker 1:The pair had met at a boarding school for troubled kids called the Methodist Home and even though they went to that school they hadn't really been in any actual trouble. They wouldn't be considered like actual troublemakers. But Kenneth told his dad that they were headed to Cone Park to hang out. Cone Park was like a known hangout for teenagers who drink and smoke and just get together and hang out. It was right on Lake Waco, so it was the perfect place to spend a summer night. Jill was a small brunette who tended to be more on the shy side, but the opposite was Raylene, who was a very outgoing blonde and her best friend.
Speaker 2:Kind of half the two you have to.
Speaker 1:It's the duo, and they were, right up to the end, always together. Later that night, kenneth's father, richard, was worried because he hadn't heard from Kenneth. It wasn't like him to just not let him know that he would be home past curfew. However, he was 18, so, despite his worry, he drifted off to sleep, only to wake up multiple times with a dreadful feeling that he just couldn't shake. He decided that if he hadn't heard from Kenneth by sunrise, he would call the police.
Speaker 2:I feel like that when I'll use Lexie, for example, if she's still living in my house and she's 18 and she doesn't contact me, we have an issue.
Speaker 1:Right, and for the record, lexie is currently 16, correct? Yes, yeah, so not that far off from that. If she is still in your house, you have the right to know where she is, in my opinion. I mean, you can go, you can do, but be courteous, and it sounds to me like he had been courteous to his dad up until that point, and that's why he thought it was strange when he didn't hear from him and it was the 80s so he didn't really have the cell phone that he could just contact him.
Speaker 2:Let me pull out my pager.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, Let me beep you. So Jill and Raylene's families thought the same thing the first thing in the morning, when none of the teens had been heard from or returned home. The police were notified Around 6.30 PM. Patrol Sergeant Truman Simons received an urgent call. A body had been found at Spiegelville Park near Lake Waco. Having been on the Waco police force for 17 years, he knew his way around the town and was shocked to hear of such a discovery in a popular park. Once at the park entrance he met up with other policemen and they began driving the dirt road where two men who were out fishing made the gruesome discovery. The men saw a man propped up against a tree. They thought it was either a mannequin or maybe some guy passed out drunk so they had gone over to investigate. But much to their horror, when they got closer they saw the teenage boy gagged, wearing jeans and an orange t-shirt that was covered in blood and stab wounds. He was also wearing aviator sunglasses that were crooked on his face, as if somebody had placed them.
Speaker 2:Prop them up and try to make him look some kind of way or something like that.
Speaker 1:As police investigated the body themselves, detective Ramon Salinas showed Sergeant Simons a photograph of Kenneth Franks, who had just been reported missing. Upon studying the body and the photograph, they had no doubt that the dead teen was Kenneth. Once they had identified him, they had another issue on their hands. Kenneth had been last seen with two girls, raylene and Jill, and they too were reported missing. So where were they? Truman Simons commanded a search of the surrounding areas, letting officers know that they should be looking for two young girls. Within just minutes, another body was found, 75 yards away from Kenneth. She was stabbed multiple times, gagged, nude, had a bra tied around her leg and her hands were bound behind her back. Based on her blonde hair, they assumed they had found Raylene. Near Raylene's body, they saw a knee poking out of the grass. This time the body was of a brunette. She was also stabbed, nude, bound and gagged, but her throat had also been slashed. All of the teens had been bound with shoelaces and pieces of towel and had been stabbed and combined 48 times, and now all of them were deep. A lot were wounds that were shallow, which suggested that they were strictly for torture. Based on the particularly brutal nature of her murder.
Speaker 1:Simons had a feeling that Joe Montgomery had been the main target of the murder. He felt like this wasn't just a random attack. He kneeled down next to her body and told her quote I don't know what's happened to you, but I promise you one thing whoever did this won't just go to jail. He is going to pay for this. I promise you it won't be another unsolved murder case in Waco, texas. As news spread around town, the citizens of Waco were terrified. Was there a maniac on the loose? Was there a threat to the community? The people wanted answers and they wanted the person or people caught.
Speaker 2:Right police so exactly.
Speaker 1:Tips came pouring into the police station, where a special task force had been started to solve these murders. Some people claimed a devil, cult or Indian rituals were to blame. Someone said they picked up a hitchhiker with blood on his pants that night. Someone said a member of a biker gang was claiming he was responsible, but all of these tips came up empty. Investigators began interviewing people who were at the lake that night. A lot of people saw the teens arrive in Raylene's orange pinto, but nobody saw them leave. The biggest piece is that Raylene's car was still there. So how did they get across the lake where their bodies were found? There was no evidence of a boat, no tire tracks, no prints on the bud-like hands that were found near Raylene's body, very little blood, no knife and, despite sexual assault on both girls, there wasn't a lot of semen on the scene. There were a lot of people at the lake that day, but nobody saw anything out of the ordinary and nobody heard anybody scream, which is also odd because of the brutality of the attack.
Speaker 2:Well, because there's three of them too, it would almost make you wonder like was it more than one person.
Speaker 1:Yeah to like have to control three teenagers. Yeah, they interviewed 150 to 200 people and came up with nothing. Not a thing, no clues, no motive. By September 9th the case was marked inactive because police had nothing to go on. Truman Simons, who wasn't officially on the case he was just, you know, the officer that was called on to the scene at that time asked the police chief if he could take over the case. He agreed and he began working. The case that had gone cold. He was going over all the files and seeing if there was anything at all that could have been missed. Simon saw that a teen named Lisa Cater had been interviewed. Lisa lived at the Methodist home with Kenneth and Jill and she mentioned a man named Munir Dieb. Dieb was a 23-year-old Jordanian immigrant who owned a convenience store across the street from the Methodist home. It was known that Munir and Kenneth hated each other. Kenneth yelled racial slurs that Munir and Munir hated the fact that Kenneth got close to a girl named Gail Kelly.
Speaker 2:Is that like his daughter, or something?
Speaker 1:No, it is just a girl who worked at a store that he was infatuated with.
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, so I also have another question, sorry. It's okay, did they still live in the home?
Speaker 1:They did not. They just used to.
Speaker 2:Because Kenneth didn't call his dad.
Speaker 1:Right, okay. So Gail was a doppelganger for Jill Montgomery, one of the victims. The two had often been asked if they were sisters. Gail Kelly was 16 years old and lived at the Methodist home and worked at Munir's convenience store. To put it lightly, as I said, dieb was obsessed with her. He'd buy her gifts, give her money, which she would accept, even though she had no intention of dating him. Could be mixed signals, but she's not obligated, you know.
Speaker 2:She's young too, I mean. That doesn't make it any less weird. But maybe she's just naive to the fact that he is grossly infatuated with her.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So one night Munir Dieb took a Gail and her friend to see a movie. After the movie the three were talking and Dieb said he killed Raylene, jill and Kenneth. When he saw the girls' reactions he backtracked and tried to say that he was just joking. But Gail knew, by the way that he said it, that he was dead serious and she called the police to tell them this new development.
Speaker 2:What kind of reaction was he expecting out of them? Like, oh my gosh, awesome, you did that. Really Tell me more I know now, run away, run away.
Speaker 1:Lay it cool and then run away. So with that admission and the fact that multiple witnesses told police that when Dieb heard about the murders he laughed and said that he was glad Kenneth was dead, it seemed like he was a pretty good suspect. After catching wind that Dieb was planning to flee back to Jordan, simons knew that he had to bring him in immediately. So he was arrested on September 13, 1982, and brought in for questioning. The only issue was that Munir Dieb walked with a limp.
Speaker 1:They knew he probably wasn't physically able to subdue and murder three teens on his own so he had to have an accomplice. Police talked to Lisa Cater again and she mentioned a shady man that went by the name Chili, but she was pretty sure his real name was David. She said he hung around the convenience store a lot and he may be worth talking to. When they interrogated Dieb he said he did know a man by the name of David Spence who went by Chili. During his time in custody Dieb took a three hour long polygraph and passed and he was released five days after his arrest because they didn't have anything to hold him on.
Speaker 2:That turned him an insanely long polygraph.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in my head they're like maybe 30 minutes. I've never had a polygraph, but in my head it's just. I mean, what are you asking him for that time?
Speaker 2:I mean why, don't they try to get a baseline, so they'll start with questions that are, you know, pretty simple to answer. But three hours of questions, that's crazy, that is crazy.
Speaker 1:So police then shifted their attention to David Spence. It turns out that Spence was already in custody. He'd been arrested a few days earlier with his friend Gilbert Melendez, for cutting a teenaged boy on his leg and forcing him to perform oral sex on Melendez. So Simon's is thinking knife, sexual component to the crime a teenage victim.
Speaker 2:There's a link.
Speaker 1:There's a link. So, even though this victim was a male and only girls in the other case were sexually assaulted, you know there's like, like we said, there's a link. So let's talk about what Simon's theory on the case was. Simon's theory was that Gayle Kelly was actually the intended target that night. He thought that Muneer Dieb was essentially just pissed off that she kept rejecting his advances but accepting the gifts. So because he isn't physically capable of doing it himself, he hires David Spence to do the job. He sees Joe Montgomery and mistakes her for Gayle, kelly, raylene and Kenneth were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He later found out that Dieb had taken out a $20,000 life insurance policy on Gayle, so that added a financial motive as well. Dieb claimed that he took out policies on all of his employees, which, if that's true, is totally weird to me, because why and is that legal? Did they know about it? Like I just have so many questions.
Speaker 2:I mean, I know you can take out life insurance policies on your kids.
Speaker 1:I think you can do it on anybody and they don't have to sign off on it, which is bizarre to me. I feel like they should have to Like. I've heard so many cases. It's like she didn't even know that he had taken out a life insurance policy.
Speaker 2:It's like how is that legal? Now, I do know that and this is just because I've talked to somebody personally that if you take a life insurance policy out on someone, that person so like, if I took a life insurance policy out on you and I wanted to cancel the policy, I can't, you have to sign off on the cancellation of the policy. It's weird. You don't have to sign off on me putting one on you, you have to sign off on canceling the policy.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, yeah, Somebody who knows about this please tell me, because I've always thought that it was so weird that that's allowed and that's a thing. But after D but past his polygraph, Simons was humiliated. The other investigators thought he was on the wrong track and the higher ups were pissed. Like he thought he knew who did it. You know, he thought he was going to close a case where then the guy passes his polygraph and he's, like you know, ashamed or whatever. But he was like a dog with a bone. He was going to prove his theory one way or another and it didn't matter if everyone believed him or not.
Speaker 1:Truman Simon had this plan and when I say he was dedicated, he was dedicated. Him and his partner went down to the jail to talk to Spence. They hid it off and because he wasn't aware he was a suspect, Spence even told him that he would ask his girlfriend, Christine Jewel, to ask around about the murders. Christine worked at Deeb's convenience store, so that's why David was there all the time. The next phase of Simon's plan was he asked the jail if they had an open position as a jailer. So he would literally take a pay cut. But he wanted to get as close to Spence as he could and hope that he would confess to the murders or at least give him something that he could use.
Speaker 2:So true dedication.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a quick background on David Spence. He was a high school dropout who was heavy in drugs and alcohol. He got married at 16, was a father of two by 18, and was divorced by 20. At 21 he robbed a store with a hatchet and served 15 months in prison. By the time of the murders he was 24 and lonely in jail, so he was open to talk to Simon's, especially since they hid it off when they first met. A few weeks after he started his job at the jail, simon's told Spence he was a suspect in the Lake Waco murders. Why I don't know, but Spence was taken aback All this time. He just thought he was helping.
Speaker 1:Just chatting it up about it, Even though his girlfriend didn't turn up any information that was helpful. His attorney told him not to talk to Simon's, but he just couldn't help it. He insisted he had nothing to do with the murders, but Simon's just kept pressing and waiting for something he could use. Finally, in early January 1983, Simon's got the break he was waiting for. Another inmate named Kevin Michael claimed that David Spence had bragged to him about committing the murders. He even told him details like them being tied up with shoelaces and a bra being around Raylene's right leg. He also said that Gilbert Melendez, his partner in crime in the sexual abuse case, was part of the murders.
Speaker 2:Were those details released in any kind of paper or anything like that? Could he have known and just had it out for him?
Speaker 1:I do not believe so.
Speaker 2:Okay, also another question Could this officer just be so dead set that he's right that he's blinded by literally any other facts that could come in?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, definitely a possibility. So shortly after, other inmates came forward and gave info that they had said that Spence told them, including that he was hired by Munir Deeb to murder Gail Kelly but, just as Simon suspected, he killed Jill instead in a case of mistaken identity. So exactly what he thought happened is what he's being told happened. So he brought these findings to the DA's office, excited to show them what he found out. Unfortunately for him, they told him it was hearsay, because it is so. Simon's realized he'd have to get a confession in order for this to stand up in court. He began talking to David about his involvement and after him saying he doesn't remember doing any murders, simon suggested maybe he had a split personality and maybe that part of him was responsible and that's why he didn't remember.
Speaker 2:He's really grasping at straws.
Speaker 1:Yes. David said did I kill them kids? Simon said I think you did. David said why don't? I know? You're not a psychiatrist. I also want to point out that David Spence was emotionally distraught at the time. His girlfriend had just broken up with him. He's in jail. His attachment to Truman Simons was out of control. He would literally call him in the middle of the night on Truman's days off to talk to him. So to say that he would be impressionable is putting it lightly.
Speaker 2:I will say this. I've used the saying several times in my life, like somebody's been like, oh, I heard this or I heard you done that and I'm like, really I don't know about it. Why don't I know about it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, wow, like that's news to me, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I feel like maybe it could have been misinterpreted in a sense too possibly.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering if maybe you have a split personality Probably, and you don't know that you did those things.
Speaker 2:There's actually something wrong with me has that crossed your mind?
Speaker 1:No, well, maybe it should, according to Truman Simons. Apparently, a few months later, in March of 1983, gilbert Melendez pled guilty to the sexual abuse charges and received seven years in prison. Meanwhile, david Spence was found guilty and sentenced to 90 years in prison.
Speaker 2:On what evidence.
Speaker 1:This was on the sexual abuse on the kid.
Speaker 2:Oh, ok, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ok, ok yeah. I was about to lose my mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so sentenced to 90 years. But he was allowed to stay in that jail for the time because he was helping Simons with the case Around. That same time Simons began working on Melendez for a confession in the Lake Waco murders. He was a 28-year-old who had already served time for assault with intent to murder. I don't know how long that term was, but he was out and able to be accused of the Lake Waco murders, so apparently it wasn't a super long sentence.
Speaker 1:During questioning, gilbert denied any involvement in the murders. But that was before he basically convinced Spence that he had split personalities. So he told Gilbert that it was about to get crazy and if he talked and testified against David Spence he'd almost certainly escaped the death penalty. That's when Gilbert said he was there and he would testify. He said that he and Spence had been riding around on Spence's car. He said drinking and smoking. When they went to Cone Park They'd seen the kids who Spence enticed into the car with a promise of beer and weed. Spence raped and stabbed Jill, then Raylene, and finally killed Kenneth. He and Melendez drove the bodies to Spiegelville and dumped them there and then they went home. My first question when I heard that was why wouldn't you kill the man first and not the girls?
Speaker 2:first. Also, he's saying that he did it all by himself. There's no way one person took on three people. He was just there.
Speaker 1:Just wanted to. He was like oh no, david, don't do that Bad chili, no yeah. So this was the moment that Truman Simons had been waiting for Finally, a confession. Now the case is a slam dunk, right.
Speaker 1:Well when the other investigators heard this tape-recorded confession, they found some discrepancies. When asked for details on Spence's car, gilbert said it was a station wagon. But Spence hadn't bought his station wagon until two weeks after the murders. When confronted with the inconsistencies, gilbert changed his story three times over two days and ended up recanting his confession completely. He was pressured into it. Yeah, even after that wishy-washy confession, simons had hope. The hope was boosted when he was visited by Ned Butler, an assistant DA, who was very into forensic odontology, which is the study of bite marks. He asked Simons if there were bite marks on any of the victims and there were several on both of the girls' bodies. They took a mold of David Spence's teeth and delivered the mold to forensic odontologist Homer Campbell who said, based on photos and the mold, it was a match to Spence. So literally they just took a blown-up photo and put the mold next to it and not the mold on the actual body.
Speaker 1:So after investigating further, many witnesses said that after the murders they had heard Spence say that he thinks he killed someone and that he raped some girls at the lake. The investigation also took them to a third suspect, gilbert Melendez's younger brother, 24-year-old Tony Melendez, who had just been arrested in another city for robbery and rape. He insisted he was working in another city on the day of the murder, but trustee Jailhouse Snitches said they had heard him say that he was at the lake that day and he also failed two polygraphs. Based on the evidence they had a grand jury indicted Munir Deeb, david Spence and Gilbert and Tony Melendez on murder charges on November 21, 1983.
Speaker 1:David's attorneys thought he was being set up. They thought that the way Simon's weaseled his way into the jail and into Spence's life was abnormal. Even though forensic odontology was admissible in court, it wasn't backed by science and a lot of people still consider it junk science. After filing motions to try and get the forensic odontologist testimony removed and those motions being rejected by the judge, his attorneys wrote a letter to the FBI and US Attorney's Office that said quote an innocent man has been charged with this crime and is very likely going to be convicted in state court and sentenced to death. But that letter was ignored and his trial continued as scheduled. Six days before David Spence's murder trial was set to take place, his defense team was dealt another blow. Tony Melendez, the younger brother of Gilbert, agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a life in prison and no death penalty.
Speaker 2:So on a previous podcast we were talking about why people would plead guilty beforehand before whatever, it reduces their sentence, some of them up to 25%.
Speaker 1:Yep, and if they know that the death penalty is on the table, they'll just take life, Like not messing with all that. And in his confession he said that he was with Spence and his brother and participated in the rapes and murders. On June 18th 1984, the trial of David Spence began. Aside from calling the witnesses who said they heard David say he thinks he killed someone and that he raped two girls at the lake and various jailhouse snitches, the only piece of physical evidence they found, or that they had, was the bite marks and the mold of his teeth. None of the DNA or hair found at the scene matched him or the other accused, but the forensic odontologist Homer Campbell said that the only individual to a reasonable medical and dental certainty who could have bitten the women was Spence.
Speaker 1:However, the defense's expert testified that the image was too poor of quality to definitively say that it was Spence, but they also couldn't rule him out. But they said that I mean it could be Spence's, could be the tech who took the molds. They're so similar. It's not like a fingerprint or like DNA and they were matching it to a picture, not to the physical bite mark, and it's not like you had a gap tooth. So it was like a very like specific dental impression Right. As for the mistaken identity theory, David knew Gail Kelly because she worked at the convenience store that his girlfriend worked out and he was always there. So he knew very well what she looked like and would have no issue distinguishing her from Jill Montgomery. They also debunked the theory that Dee wanted Gail dead for insurance money because the insurance policies were supposedly taken out on all employees to cover accidents, which is so weird to me. But why was he the beneficiary?
Speaker 2:Did they check that out? Though? Did they check to see if the other employees had policies?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, and they did. Yeah. It's so weird to me, though, why he was the beneficiary. Like if somebody falls off a ladder in your store and dies, why are you get? You have, like, workers' comfort insurance or something. You know what I mean. You don't need a life insurance policy. I don't know, I don't own a business. I'm just saying that's very weird. Help us understand. Yeah, and $20,000 seems excessive, but the defense was planning to bring in alternative suspects James Bishop, a former Waco resident who had moved to California right after the murders and then had been arrested for raping and attempting to kill two high school girls on a beach, and Ronnie Brighton, a man who had been seen in bloody clothes after a night fishing at the lake. But the judge ruled the evidence irrelevant to the case against Spence and refused to allow it. Not a lawyer, but how is that not relevant?
Speaker 2:to the case. I feel like it provides doubt, I mean so it should be relevant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're providing alternative suspects, which I think is what you're supposed to do. But the judge was like nah, it's fine. Anyway. After a two week trial, the jury found David Spence guilty of murder after deliberating for less than two hours, and two days later he was sentenced to death.
Speaker 2:Can I tell you my theory? Sure, I've just been watching movies lately and I sit in a pickle-mopart and in my head. He inserted himself into this man's loft, spent so much time and effort to make him look guilty.
Speaker 1:So much time and effort.
Speaker 2:He had to do it. That's where my brain's been this entire time. I'm not going to lie to you.
Speaker 1:You're like when is she going to say that it was actually the cop?
Speaker 2:I've been waiting on it.
Speaker 1:Well, keep waiting.
Speaker 2:No man.
Speaker 1:But how mad you were when you thought David Spence got 90 years. Now he's got 90 years in the death penalty.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's just an insult to injury, honestly, like you're not going to live that long first of all, they're going to kill you anyways.
Speaker 1:It's taxpayers' money.
Speaker 2:So why tack on the 90 years? Or why tack on the death penalty?
Speaker 1:Like yeah, I know what you're saying. So after seeing footage of Spence, after hearing his death sentence, gilbert Melendez followed his brother's lead and pled guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Muneer Dieb was also sentenced to death for his involvement after 40 witnesses gave testimony, including Gilbert, who said Dieb provided $5,000 in exchange for the murders, which I feel like would be easy to prove. Like was there a money trail? Did any of the men come into $5,000? Was this looked into? I don't know. I couldn't find an answer. Cash is hard to follow, but I feel like people like that, who don't have a lot of money, come into money. You'd see them buying things or probably not putting it in a savings account. You know what I mean. Like were they making any big purchases? You know what I'm saying? That makes sense, but either way, two of the four men were sentenced to death for the murders of three teenagers, and the cases were very circumstantial. So fast forward a few years to March 2, 1986.
Speaker 1:Waco police detective Jan Price got a call about a death at a residence. When her and her partner got on scene, they found a footprint on the door where it had been kicked in. Inside the house they found the beaten body of 54-year-old Juanita White. She was the mother of David Spence. She had been raped, sodomized, beaten and suffocated. She had gotten off work at 9.30 pm the night before and when she didn't show up for church the next morning, her Sunday school teachers stopped by the house and found her. White had struggled with her attacker. Her nose was broken, her ear was torn and her body was beaten. She also had teeth marks on her skin as if she had been bitten. The contents of White's purse were strewn across the floor and her car was missing. The vehicle was found several hours later at an apartment complex about 15 blocks away.
Speaker 1:Detectives received a call to return to the scene seven hours later because the house had been broken into again. She's making faces but not saying anything. I have no words. What's your theory on this? I don't have one. I don't. So the intruder had not taken anything of value. The TV was still there, but the front bedroom had been ransacked. Several boxes were open, papers were scattered everywhere and that bedroom had been David Spence's.
Speaker 1:Detective Price immediately suspected someone had been looking for something specific, but she just didn't know what. During her investigation, detective Price found out Juanita White had started doing some investigating of her own, she was determined to prove that her son, david, had not killed those teenagers. She began digging around and talking to people and according to her other son, steve, she had been getting death threats and believed that her phone was tapped. She had also received a letter from David in prison that he had received from one of the people who had testified against him. In that letter the man apologized for lying and said his whole testimony was made up and that David never told him that he murdered or raped anybody. Did he keep the letter and turn it in? So David sent it to his mom and only two days after she received the letter and told David's attorneys about it, so they knew about it she was dead.
Speaker 2:Mom knew something somebody didn't want her to know.
Speaker 1:Very quickly into the investigation, jan Price noticed some weird things going on, not with the victim but within the police department.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, somebody is corrupt.
Speaker 1:Only two weeks into the case the DA's office took over and appointed Truman Simons as the lead investigator. She knew it wasn't typical for the DA's office to get involved so quickly. She also knew of the deputies, meaning Truman Simons did reputation for relying on informants and had heard negative things about him from her fellow officers. She was new to Waco and had only been a detective for two years, so she just went with it. When Simons contacted Price, he told her he already had a suspect, 31-year-old Calvin Washington. His colleague, dennis Baer, said a black man was seen exiting Juanita White's stolen car which had been found at that apartment complex, and Calvin was a black male who had recently been arrested for Kartha.
Speaker 1:Simons had searched Washington's sister's apartment where he had been arrested and found a sweatshirt that appeared to have blood on it, as well as some tennis shoes whose treads Simons thought might be a match to the footprint on White's door. Then Simons found out that Juanita had bite marks on her body, so he went to Washington in jail, asked to do a mold of his teeth and he agreed. And Simons was doing all of this without Detective Price. So when she found out about the dental mold she was like I'm gonna go with you to Dallas to talk to Jim Hale. He was a forensic odontologist. He ended up telling them that Washington's teeth matched the marks on Juanita's body.
Speaker 2:Remember they compared him picture again. I don't know?
Speaker 1:Okay, I do believe. So. Simons learned through jail house informants that Washington had an accomplice named Joe Sidney Williams. He was 19. So when they got back to Waco he began investigating him. Meanwhile, Jan Price is getting pretty suspicious about her partner and his tactics. She found out that a lot of the informants Simons was using were getting deals in exchange for information. So there's an issue. They're gonna say whatever they think the cops wanna hear to help themselves, because why wouldn't they? She also discovered that the blood that was found on Calvin Washington sweatshirt was less than a drop and his shoe prints did not match the shoe print on the door.
Speaker 2:I was gonna ask whether they actually compared the shoe prints or if it was just like oh, I think they match Well, simons was like oh, I think they match.
Speaker 1:And Price was like how about we actually match them? Yeah, what about?
Speaker 2:the blood. Did they do? Could they do they could do DNA testing. Then We'll get there. Okay, I'm jumping ahead.
Speaker 1:But the point is it's less than a drop and Juanita White was beaten and stabbed. You're gonna have way more than a drop. Yeah, absolutely so. She was obviously thinking Simons had the wrong guy, because neither of those things add up to being a suspect. On May 1st, another woman who lived only a few blocks away from Juanita White was attacked. She was beaten with a hammer, raped and left her dead. Just like in Juanita's case, her purse was taken, strewn about and the front door was kicked in.
Speaker 1:However, this woman survived her brutal attack and was able to identify her attacker. She said his name was Benny Carroll and he was dating her granddaughter. Eight days later he was arrested for the attack and he pled guilty. Price told Simons about this and he was too busy trying to get evidence on Williams that he just brushed her off. So of course, he got Joe Williams' dental mold and took it to Ol Homer Campbell, the expert who testified in David Spence's case, and he confirmed that it was actually Williams' teeth, not Washington's, like the other odontologist had said. That left the bite marks on Juanita White. So it's like he brings these people a mold and they're just like yep, yeah.
Speaker 2:Won't make it be whoever you want it to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like right there you have conflicting evidence, but nonetheless he thought he for sure had the guys, not the guy who just raped and tried to murder another woman after kicking her door in another older woman, same MO, a few blocks away With a positive ID. With a positive ID and he pled guilty. But Washington and Williams went to trial for the murder of Juanita White in August 1987 and were found guilty based on the testimony of jail informants and bite mark evidence, just like David Spence, I need another martini yeah amen, they were sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 1:Jan Price, to put it lightly, was pissed off. She thought they were wrongfully convicted and began to talk to them and other inmates and found out that the snitches shocker were liars and that Simons would give them preferential treatment and favors in exchange for quote unquote information that he fed them. So when you asked was that published? How would they know? Well, he would maybe drop those details and people would talk, and you know that's how multiple people came forward. So in November of that year the police chief gave Detective Price a new partner and told her she could start her own investigation on how the DA and Simons handled the White case, for example, how one of the inmates, arthur Brandon, was told by Simons that if he testified against Washington and Williams that he would drop murder charges against him. And he did so. Of course he did that. Why wouldn't he do that? Murder charges dropped and all I have to do is lie about these two guys who mean nothing to me.
Speaker 2:Done.
Speaker 1:Done.
Speaker 2:Son of me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, literally. The more people they talked to, the more her doubts about the guilt of Washington and Williams grew. She also couldn't help but think about the Lake Waco murders. She was wondering you know where all of those men innocent too? Her case into the DA and Simons went until May 1988 when it was presented to the FBI and US Attorney's Office.
Speaker 1:She hoped that her findings would free Washington and Williams, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Her case went nowhere. So with her hands tied on that case, she turned her focus to the Lake Waco murders and kept tabs on all the men convicted, hoping that their convictions would be overturned. To her surprise, in June 1991, muneer D was granted another trial after he filed his last appeal. He literally spent his time in jail, basically becoming his own lawyer, just scouring over all the things. And he wrote his own appeal and submitted it and it was granted and the judge ruled that a jailhouse informant that gave testimony against him was hearsay, so it was thrown out. His second trial was on January 12, 1993, and he was acquitted of all charges.
Speaker 2:I feel like this should be motivation for the other men to be like if they weren't involved in it, to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:So Price got another surprise. When Williams' appeal was also granted and his charges were dismissed. He was released from prison on June 30, 1993. But, for whatever reason, their co-conspirators weren't as lucky. Washington kept fighting for his freedom until 2001, when DNA evidence proved that the blood on his sweatshirt wasn't Juanita White's and the semen found at the scene did not match either Washington or Williams. He was released July 2001 and received a settlement of $374,999 to be exact. But who do you think the DNA matched to the cop, benny Carroll, the man who said he played guilty? He played guilty. I did it, yes. Well, not to that one but to the other one.
Speaker 2:But to the other one.
Speaker 1:Yes, correct, so.
Speaker 2:The same thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're all the same page. Yeah, so Shocker Price was right. Unfortunately he committed suicide in 1990, so he was never held accountable for the murder of Juanita White. But with both men finally out of prison, munir Deeb also released, you would think that the same thing would happen for David Spence and the Melendez brothers. But apparently in Texas you have to basically prove that it was somebody else once you're convicted, like it's not an easy thing to do to get a conviction overturned.
Speaker 2:So he was able to prove that it was, or potentially, one of the other men instead of him.
Speaker 1:His, I think when he went back to trial they had no jailhouse informants or anything saying that he hired anybody or did anything. So they really had no evidence against him and he was just acquitted in his new trial. He didn't even try to pin it on anybody else. So his, because he was granted a new trial, he got to do that, but these other men were not granted new trials.
Speaker 2:They were just going to have to appeal.
Speaker 1:Right, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:So, despite DNA tests on hairs found on the Terry cloth strips used to bind the hands of Montgomery and Rice eliminated Spence as well as the Melendez brothers. So DNA evidence said somebody else all three would never be released from prison. On April 3, 1997, david Spence was executed by lethal injection, proclaiming his innocence to the very end. In 1998, gilbert Melendez died in prison of complications of HIV, and Tony Melendez died from complications of bone cancer and kidney failure in 2017. And in 1999, muneer Dieb died of liver cancer. She's tearing at me with a blank stare, and that is also how I feel, because that is the end of our case.
Speaker 2:It's the stupidest case ever. Seriously, my brain can't wrap around any of it. I'm just like I'm honestly kind of at a loss for words.
Speaker 1:Mind blowing Because even if let's say David Spence did it, even though DNA evidence says he did it, like let's say he said it, you know whatever people say, that he maybe he wanted to be big and bad in jail. You know whatever people do. Or he thought I can say this and be big and bad, but they'll have an actual investigation and prove that I didn't do it, so I can say whatever I want, but that didn't work out.
Speaker 2:But you also have these informants that are given incentives to say whatever they need to say.
Speaker 1:When they're being fed information. Yeah, so even let's say, let's say he did it, he shouldn't have been convicted of it by any means because the evidence was not there. Like, I'm not saying he did do it, I'm just saying that he went to trial. Okay, he should not have been found guilty based on the evidence that was presented. You're a say 100% and phony bite mark evidence.
Speaker 2:And it's just like with the other gentleman he spent how many years of his life in prison?
Speaker 1:It was from like 1984 to 1991.
Speaker 2:That's a huge chunk of your loft to spend in prison because somebody had it out for you. Yep, I'm sticking to my theory.
Speaker 1:I don't know that he did it, but he definitely was a tunnel vision and maybe he knew who did it and he was just covering them up. Maybe Maybe he just wanted to be the hero and be and close the case. I don't know. I like that's a terrible way to go about it Absolutely, because then there's still somebody out there who murdered three teenagers.
Speaker 2:And you're also cutting deals with other murderers. You're letting them go just to appease whatever you're chasing. Correct? I don't like this one.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear what everybody else has to think, because we're pretty fired up about it, so I will post photos and everything on Instagram. You all can comment on that and let us know what you think. Leave a review. If you've ever thought about leaving a review, if you've never left a review on anything in your entire life, do it anyway, because it helps us and supports us and we appreciate it. It makes us very happy.
Speaker 2:We like to hear what you like to hear and what you want to know, and how you felt about the episodes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do that and all the things, and come back next week for another episode of Murder in the Mountains. See ya, bye.