School of Humans. On May fourth, nineteen ninety one, nine year old Christina Pipkin had lunch with her mother Frida, at her home in Hickory Ridge, Arkansas. Christina was just a month away from her tenth birthday. Hickory Ridge is a small farming community in East Arkansas down Highway forty nine, about eighty miles west of Memphis, Tennessee. Back then, it had a population of just over four hundred people. Today it's between two and three hundred people. But you get the idea this is not a major metropolis. You have to remember this was a time when kids would roam around after school. That was a lot more common than it is today. They would ride bikes and play in the woods, and of course this was also a time before cell phones. Christina Pipkin had a mission that day. She wanted to walk door to door to sell costume jewelry for her school fundraiser. She had her leaflet with the jewel listings on it and was carrying a pencil so that people could mark down what they wanted to order. Christina asked her dad James, if she could go around to neighbors houses, and at first he said no, but Christina asked again and he relented, but her father gave her strict instructions stay on your side of the railroad tracks and be home by dark. But Christina didn't make it back home before dark. On May fourth, nineteen ninety one, sunset and Hickory Ridge, Arkansas, happened at around seven fifty six pm. Christina's parents, James and Frieda, reported her missing to the Cross County Sheriff's department at eight fifty three pm. Soon everyone was looking for her. Over two hundred volunteers were searching the entire area. They covered a fifteen mile radius. They were calling friends and knocking on doors going to nearby houses, but there was no sign of Christina anywhere. Christina's description went out Christina Pipkin, age nine, four foot nine, weight eighty pounds. She was wearing a white desert storm T shirt with kuwait on the front and closed toe white sandals. Three days later, on May seventh, nineteen ninety one, a father and son who lived a few miles away, right across the Jackson County line, were walking through their rice fields. There had been some flooding recently, so they were looking around on their property to check the water levels. They lived near a large canal called Cowlake Ditch. After the flooding, the water levels were much higher than normal. Police later said the levels were up to around nine feet that day, and as they were walking over the bridge that crossed Highway forty two, the seven year old son saw something in the water. He said, Dad, isn't that the girl that's missing. They had found the body of Christina Pipkin. I'm Catherine Townsend. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. A few weeks ago, a woman named Amy Tubbs reached out to me. She had been investigating the Christina Pipkin case for years, ever since she learned that her father in law, Robbie Tubbs, had been a suspect in that case.

School of Humans. On May fourth, nineteen ninety one, nine year old Christina Pipkin had lunch with her mother Frida, at her home in Hickory Ridge, Arkansas. Christina was just a month away from her tenth birthday. Hickory Ridge is a small farming community in East Arkansas down Highway forty nine, about eighty miles west of Memphis, Tennessee. Back then, it had a population of just over four hundred people. Today it's between two and three hundred people. But you get the idea this is not a major metropolis. You have to remember this was a time when kids would roam around after school. That was a lot more common than it is today. They would ride bikes and play in the woods, and of course this was also a time before cell phones. Christina Pipkin had a mission that day. She wanted to walk door to door to sell costume jewelry for her school fundraiser. She had her leaflet with the jewel listings on it and was carrying a pencil so that people could mark down what they wanted to order. Christina asked her dad James, if she could go around to neighbors houses, and at first he said no, but Christina asked again and he relented, but her father gave her strict instructions stay on your side of the railroad tracks and be home by dark. But Christina didn't make it back home before dark. On May fourth, nineteen ninety one, sunset and Hickory Ridge, Arkansas, happened at around seven fifty six pm. Christina's parents, James and Frieda, reported her missing to the Cross County Sheriff's department at eight fifty three pm. Soon everyone was looking for her. Over two hundred volunteers were searching the entire area. They covered a fifteen mile radius. They were calling friends and knocking on doors going to nearby houses, but there was no sign of Christina anywhere. Christina's description went out Christina Pipkin, age nine, four foot nine, weight eighty pounds. She was wearing a white desert storm T shirt with kuwait on the front and closed toe white sandals. Three days later, on May seventh, nineteen ninety one, a father and son who lived a few miles away, right across the Jackson County line, were walking through their rice fields. There had been some flooding recently, so they were looking around on their property to check the water levels. They lived near a large canal called Cowlake Ditch. After the flooding, the water levels were much higher than normal. Police later said the levels were up to around nine feet that day, and as they were walking over the bridge that crossed Highway forty two, the seven year old son saw something in the water. He said, Dad, isn't that the girl that's missing. They had found the body of Christina Pipkin. I'm Catherine Townsend. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. A few weeks ago, a woman named Amy Tubbs reached out to me. She had been investigating the Christina Pipkin case for years, ever since she learned that her father in law, Robbie Tubbs, had been a suspect in that case.

So I married Robbie Tubbs Senior, his son who shares the same name, except there's a junior behind it. So we started dating in twenty fourteen, and on one of our first dates, my mom called me really freaked out and she said, oh my gosh, are you with him? You need to get your stuff and leave right now. And what are you talking about? And her and my aunt had googled his name obviously and found the various articles linking him to Christina and not I guess thought about the dates and how you know he was the child himself would not happen, and so he was like, well, this is not how I wanted to tell you about that, but here we go.

So I married Robbie Tubbs Senior, his son who shares the same name, except there's a junior behind it. So we started dating in twenty fourteen, and on one of our first dates, my mom called me really freaked out and she said, oh my gosh, are you with him? You need to get your stuff and leave right now. And what are you talking about? And her and my aunt had googled his name obviously and found the various articles linking him to Christina and not I guess thought about the dates and how you know he was the child himself would not happen, and so he was like, well, this is not how I wanted to tell you about that, but here we go.

Amy said that she's always had an interest in true crime. She wanted to know the truth about what happened, so she did a deep dive into the case, and the more she learned, the more questions she had.

Amy said that she's always had an interest in true crime. She wanted to know the truth about what happened, so she did a deep dive into the case, and the more she learned, the more questions she had.

So when I started looking into the case and just kind of googling it, I couldn't believe that there was so little evidence that they used against him, and that they were seeking the death penalty.

So when I started looking into the case and just kind of googling it, I couldn't believe that there was so little evidence that they used against him, and that they were seeking the death penalty.

Christina's body was found in cow Lake Ditch. She was face down and her head was caught in a tree branch, so even though the current was really strong and the water levels were high, Christina was wedged in there, trapped. The police recovered the body and senate for testing. They later revealed that Christina's body had no sign of injuries on it, and that she was fully clothed. Christina's family members said early on that she couldn't swim. But even though the police said they found no obvious signs of molestation on Christina's body, Dale Arnold, the state police investigator, said very early on police suspected foul play. They did not believe that Christina had gotten to cow Lake Ditch on her own. Cross County Sheriff Ronnie Hughey said, quote, there were no marks on her, no scratches, no trauma, nothing. But I think it's foul play. Somebody caused that child to be in that ditchway out there end quote. But if there was no obvious, visible sign of assault, why are they so certain that this involved foul play.

Christina's body was found in cow Lake Ditch. She was face down and her head was caught in a tree branch, so even though the current was really strong and the water levels were high, Christina was wedged in there, trapped. The police recovered the body and senate for testing. They later revealed that Christina's body had no sign of injuries on it, and that she was fully clothed. Christina's family members said early on that she couldn't swim. But even though the police said they found no obvious signs of molestation on Christina's body, Dale Arnold, the state police investigator, said very early on police suspected foul play. They did not believe that Christina had gotten to cow Lake Ditch on her own. Cross County Sheriff Ronnie Hughey said, quote, there were no marks on her, no scratches, no trauma, nothing. But I think it's foul play. Somebody caused that child to be in that ditchway out there end quote. But if there was no obvious, visible sign of assault, why are they so certain that this involved foul play.

Nobody in that town will talk to me. I don't know if it's because my name's Tod. I mean there's a strong chance, but about that state police had everything locked down and started acting real fishy when I started asking questions. I guess the reason why they suspect foul play was two things. One, it was about three miles from her house and they don't feel like she would have gone that far, And she had on white closed toed sandals the last time anyone saw and they never fail those sandals.

Nobody in that town will talk to me. I don't know if it's because my name's Tod. I mean there's a strong chance, but about that state police had everything locked down and started acting real fishy when I started asking questions. I guess the reason why they suspect foul play was two things. One, it was about three miles from her house and they don't feel like she would have gone that far, And she had on white closed toed sandals the last time anyone saw and they never fail those sandals.

Amy has done a lot of work over the years. She submitted multiple Floyer requests, She's contacted people and mapped out locations, and as she mentioned, she said that Christina's body was found around three miles away from her home, but some newspaper reports say the distance between where Christina was last seen and the ditch where she was eventually found was around four miles. Others estimate the distances closer to five miles. And it's confusing because when I looked on Google Maps and tried to map this location myself, it showed a walking distance of nine miles, which would have taken Christina about three hours to get to. This does not seem plausible, but I know this is a rural area and appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes distances are not an accurate depiction of what's actually going on on the ground. Sometimes there are shortcuts that we can't see online. So I feel like this is one of those questions that I'm going to have to go to Arkansas to answer. After Christina went missing, detectives went around the neighborhood and interviewed the people who had last seen her. While canvassing, they talked to a woman named Elsie Lyles. Elsie Lyles lived on Doty Street, right down from Christina's house. Elsie said that Christina had stopped by her house at four pm. Elsie said she gave Christina a pickle as a snack. After eating that pickle, Christina left Elsie's house and walked home. That's when she asked her dad if she could walk around to do her door to door jewelry sales. Christina had two school friends with her. They told police that for the next hour or so, they went around selling their jewelry door to door. According to the information Amy has, the girls told law enforcement they left Christina at about six thirty pm at East Ash Street. This was just a couple of blocks from Christina's home. Now. I haven't seen any of the official reports pertaining to Christina's case. Technically it's still an open case file. I have made a foyer request and I will let you know if I hear back from police. But I just want to put it out there. I would love to talk to those girls if they are out there and if they're listening to this, because I believe they could have crucial information about Christina's activities that afternoon, and they might not even realize how important it is. Detectives later found remnants of the pickle in Christina's stomach, partially undigested, which means that police believe she died on the same day she went missing. So we go back to that day, May fourth, nineteen ninety one. It's late afternoon, getting to early evening. Christina's friends parted ways with her at around six thirty pm. Now, Christina's dad specifically told her to be home before dark. So whether it was three or four miles or nine miles, what would make a little girl suddenly decide to walk on her own to a ditch right before dark when she couldn't swim. There are a few other odd facts about the case that could seem to point toward foul play. They're mainly circumstantial, like the fact that the detectives never found the items that Christina was carrying when she left her house. They didn't find her jewelry, leaflets, or the pencil she was carrying around with her to write down orders. Also, Christina's body was fully clothed. As we said before, she was wearing the same things she had been wearing the afternoon she disappeared, but her shoes were missing, and no one ever found her clothes toe white sandals. So what happened to the shoes? Did she take them off herself? Could someone have been chasing her through those dense, watery rice fields and her shoes peeled off her feet, that is possible, Or was she hanging out at someone's house or in their car and took them off herself. If she was killed, did the killer take the shoes, did they throw them away or did they still have them stashed somewhere. These are all the types of dark possibilities that have occurred to me with this case. As we said before, the sherif of Cross County, where Christina and her family lived, Ronnie Hughey, actually said at the time the detectives believed Christina was picked up and driven to the site where her body was found, and he's given a couple of reasons over the years to media about why he thinks this. First of all, he said, if she walked to that area would have taken a pretty long time, and he believes someone would have seen her out walking. Number two, kind of along the same lines, as I was thinking, just the fact that it was near dark. Christina was a couple of blocks from home, and she was supposed to be home before dark. Why would she randomly turn around and walk in the other direction hours away to a flooded ditch when she couldn't swim. Detectives did a lot of interviews, but they didn't make any arrests, and over the years, a lot of people in the county wondered why the case seemed to go cold, and Christina's body was not the last child body found in East Darkansas over the next few years. On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, a few months after Christina's body was found, sixteen year old Guardinia Jones Cross disappeared. Guardina was a tenth grader at high school in When, a nearby town. She lived with her grandmother, Hattie Cross. Guardinia was also a young mother herself. She was raising a one year old daughter. Guardinia's grandmother, Hattie, reported her missing, but Guardina was not missing for long because the next day, on October fourteenth, a man was walking along the side of a road called Moore Road outside of when he was collecting cans and he saw a body naked except for a bra. It was Guardinia Cross. Guardena had a puncture wound in her head, which investigators theorized was made with something like a tool, maybe a screwdriver, and unlike in Christina's case, this time there was no ambiguity. This had been a brutal murder. Forensic testing revealed something else. When she died, Guardina Cross was around five months pregnant. No one was arrested or charged with that murder. In May of nineteen ninety two, another young girl, a thirteen year old named Geneva Smith, was reported missing. On June first, a body was found in the Saint Francis River. Remember this was back in the nineties, before DNA testing was widespread, and police had nothing to go on. They didn't even have dental records to compare with Geneva. But investigators said at the time they were ninety nine percent sure that the body was her based on the clothing that she was wearing. The shoes and shirt matched the description that Geneva's family had given of what she'd been wearing the day she went missing. This was a tragedy. They did eventually determine that the was Geneva Smith. The body was so decomposed they weren't able to determine the exact cause of death. And not only that, all they could determine at first was that the victim was black. They couldn't even figure out what gender the body was. It was that badly decomposed and brutalized. I cannot imagine how horrifying that must have been for that young woman's family. So what happened in that case? Eventually police did make an arrest. They charged two suspects with that killing, but those two men were released, So Geneva Smith's killer or killers are also still out there. Then, in May of nineteen ninety three, there was, of course, the three eight year old boys, Michael Moore, Steve Branch and Christopher Byers, the boys who had become known as the West Memphis Three. The three friends went out for after school bike ride and they never came home. Their mutilated bodies were found in a nearby swamp. Now, eventually this case became a national sensation, and most of my listeners will be familiar with what happened next in the West Memphis three case, sixteen year old Jesse mus Kelly, seventeen year old James Baldwin and eighteen year old Damien Eccles were arrested, prosecuted, and eventually convicted. Jesse and James got life sentences, Damien was sentenced to death. All of them sat in jail for many years before numerous documentaries and books came out about this case and they documented the many injustices that had happened, the fact that there was no DNA evidence that matched any of them, no physical evidence, and there were a lot of problems with Jesse mc kelly's confession in particular, which had gone on for over twelve hours. Basically, Damien, James, and Jesse were convicted in an atmosphere of fear in West Memphis, and this followed the satanic hannicck hysteria that happened during the nineteen eighties. Because Damian was this kind of weird local guy who listened to heavy metal and wore black and was reportedly into witchcraft, the police just a laser focused on him and they refused to change course. Over the years, all three of them maintained their innocence and new DNA testing was done. In two thousand and seven, it was announced that the DNA found at the crime scene did not match any of them. It didn't match Damien, Jesse or James. Furthermore, there was DNA at that crime scene, the DNA of an unknown man. In twenty ten, the Supreme Court ruled that the defendants could present new evidence to establish their innocence. So the three of them had been sitting in jail for over twenty years and they were getting ready for a new trial, which, as we all know, could have taken years. That's when one of the defense attorneys suggested the men take something called an Alfred plea. Now, an Alfred plea is kind of unique. What it means is that they could still claim they were innocent while not changing their guilty plea. It's kind of a way of having it both ways. The state gets to save face. They don't have to have a new trial, they still have their guilty plea, and Damien, Jesse and James don't have to waste more years of their lives waiting for a new trial. They get to get out of jail and start their lives. So in twenty eleven, that's what happened. The three defendants were released without having to go through a new trial and having the verdict overturn. It's an ambiguous result. The case is still open. Damien and his attorneys are still fighting to get DNA from the crime scene. An Arkansas judge has denied that request. The judge said that he was denying the request because Damien's out of prison now. Damien and his lawyers have appealed this decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court and they are still waiting to find out if that DNA testing can happen. Remember, this saga has been going on for over thirty years at this point, and there's still no final answer. I bring this case up because I absolutely believe that if it hadn't been for the fact that all of these injustices were documented by journalists and books and documentaries, the problems with this case would never have been revealed. All three of those guys, Dami and Jesse and James would still be sitting in prison right now. I really believe that. And this was all going on in the early nineties. Especially during this time, there were some very real abuses going on in Arkansas, both in law enforcement and in the crime lab, and the repercussions of those mistakes are still going on to this day. Also, if those three guys weren't the killers. That means that the actual killer of the West Memphis three, the person or persons who mutilated those three little boys and dumped them in the swamp, is still out there, and a lot of people worry they may never be charged. Who knows how many predatory child killers are still out there any Darkansas. Now, despite the fact that all of these deaths happened in the same general area, investigators have never found a connection between any of them. Between the West Memphis three, Guardina Cross Jones, Geneva Smith, and Christina Pipkin, there were a lot of differences. The dead children were different ages. Guardina, like the West Memphis three, had a lot of damage to her body, while, for example, Christina did not have any obvious marks on her. Apparently Geneva Smith's body was too decomposed and no for sure. Cross County Sheriff Ronnie Hughey expressed his frustration back then. He said, quote, you keep scratching and clawing and digging. These kinds of cases are different because these are kids. We've been backwards and forwards. It's been very frustrating. End quote. Now let's come back to the Christina Pipkin case. Let's talk about what happened after police finally made an arrest. Police were questioning everyone in the neighborhood. They were checking out potential people of interest, including, from what my source says, some local sex offenders, including one guy from Florida who was living nearby. Then they began to focus on someone they considered a Bible suspect, and this is where Amy's father in law, Robbie Tubbs, enters the story. Amy admits that her father in law was, in her words, not a particularly good man. Back in the early nineties, Robbie was married and he and his wife, Sandra had five kids. According to Amy, Robbie was physically abusive with his wife Sandra at times. Robbie didn't have a regular nine to five job. He always did kind of side jobs. He would go out turtle hunting and fishing and selling things that he caught. Sandra Tubbs talked to the police in October of nineteen ninety one, a few months after Christina's body was found. When she came in to see them, she told them that back when Christina first went missing, Robbie had made a comment to her that she said disturbed her and it led her to believe that he had, in a way potentially confessed to Christina's murder. Sandra said Robbie told her, right after hearing that Christina was missing, that he knew Christina would turn up dead in a rice ditch in Jackson County. She told police that Robbie said, quote, there are too many rice ditches for somebody to drown in. She's dead end quote. Sandra said she confronted her husband and started asking him what he meant by that comment. When she did, the fight seemed to escalate. Sandra said she threatened to call the police, and that's when she said Robbie tied her up and gagged her to stop her from calling law enforcement. Sandra told a friend of hers, a woman named Susan, this same story at the time. Later, police called Sandra's friend and took a statement from her, and that friend confirmed that yes, Sandra had told her that story at around the time when Christina went missing. So the police went to talk to Robbie Tubbs. Arkansas State Police investigator Dale Arnold did the interview. According to police documents, the first time that Dale Arnold talked to Robbie, Robbie claimed he was not in the area of Hickory Ridge at all on May fourth, nineteen ninety one, so he said he was nowhere near the area where Christina went missing from, but later he apparently changed his story. He said he may have been around there on the day Christina disappeared. Police were finding issues with Robbie's alibi. Robbie claimed he had been staying in a motel and DeWitt, Arkansas, but police checked the motel registration they couldn't find any record of Robbie staying there, probably because police believed Christina had been driven to that location. Obviously, they were checking out every person of interest car. At some point police figured out that Robbie had a car, a nineteen eighty one amce EA that he had sold sometime in the spring of nineteen ninety one, so this is December of nineteen ninety one. After Sandra came to see them, police found the woman who Robbie had sold the car to. It wasn't running, just sitting out in her yard where it had been sitting for months. But police went out and found the vehicle and did forensic testing on that car. They got a hair sample which they bagged as evidence. Now, Robbie's private life was complicated. He was married to Sandra, but he had been seeing another woman named Janetta. Police asked Robbie during their questioning if Christina could have ever been inside his car, and apparently at one point he said that Christina and another child may have sat in his car with Janetta. Apparently her child went to the same school as Christina. Anyway, he said that he and these kids, one of whom may have been Christina, sat in his car in a nearby park with Janetta. But then police talked to Janetta. She said that wasn't true. She said Christina was never in that car and that they had never been in that park. So now Robbie's alibi seemed to be kind of falling apart. I want to point out, though, that without access to the case file, without recordings of what happened, we don't know what happened before Robbie made those statements. We don't know what the police told Robbie, how long they had him in custody. Were these statements coerced in any way. I'm not saying that they were. I'm just saying that, given what was going on in Arkansas at that time, we need to know for sure how that questioning went down. Growing up, I used to always think that if you hadn't done anything wrong, that there was no way that you would lie in a police interrogation room. But after what I've learned over the years, I now no longer believe that I want to know the context of what was being said. Police had Sandra's statement about Robbie, and they had that hair sample from Robbie's furm vehicle. Now, forensic testing was not nearly as advanced in nineteen ninety one as it is now, obviously, so the testing police could have done on that hair at the time would have been pretty limited. Without the advanced testing. The police had no physical evidence, at least not yet. But they were building a case against Robbie Tubbs, and they had Sandra Tubbs as their main witness. But no jury would ever hear from Sandra Tubbs because on May fourth, nineteen ninety three, exactly two years after Christina Pipkin vanished, Sandra Tubbs was brutally murdered. The circumstances around the murder of Sandra Tubbs are bizarre, to say the least, and they are controversial. Some people to this day believe that Robbie Tubbs had something to do with it. They just think that timing is too coincidental. They wonder if he somehow masterminded the murder. It just seemed very strange that exactly two years after Christina Pipkin's death, that Sandra would be found dead. On May fourth, nineteen ninety three, Sandra Tubbs was alone at home in Morrow, Arkansas. The school bus had come between five and seven am that morning. All of Sandra's children were already at school. Only her youngest son, who was sleeping on the living room floor in front of the TV, was home with her. Sandra was doing some home decorating. She had a can of paint varnish open with a brush lying on top of it, like she was in the middle of painting. Robbie later told police that he woke up that morning, he and Sandra made some coffee. They had a totally normal conversation about what they were going to do that day. Then he said he left the house by seven point fifteen. His plan, he said, was to go out and pull in some turtlenets, get out on the water for a little bit, then to head to the store in town and Morrow after Robbie left the house, sometime after seven am, two local teenagers named Jerry Lee Ray, and Stephen Chad Kapliner came to the door. Now, these teens were apparently acquaintances of Robbie and Sandra's kids, and rode the bus with them. The boys lived nearby and later told police they had kind of a vague plan to run away from home. They had started the day earlier but hadn't made it very far. Chad and Jerry had camped out all night in a tent in the woods. They were carrying an orange bag with them containing their pup tent, a flashlight, a pair of binoculars, a maroon jacket, a compass, a knife sheath, shotgun shells, some Alca seltzer, and a leather whip. They needed supplies, and they seemed to come up with this kind of half baked plan to steal some stuff from houses that morning. They waited until after the school bus left, then they approached Sandra's back door. Now, according to statements the teens made to police that Amy managed to get a hold of. Each of the guys had fairly similar versions of what happened, except they kind of blamed each other for doing the shooting. Chad claimed he was holding the shotgun and that after they came up on the back porch, he pulled the hammer back and threw the gun to Jerry Lee Ray. And after that, he said, Jerry Lee Ray started shooting. He had no idea what happened. Again, basically, each one blamed the other, but looking at their police statements, in my opinion, Jerry Lee Ray's story is much more believable and has a lot more credible details. Jerry said that they went to the door. Chad had the shotgun in his hand. Again, their objective that morning was to steal some food. They thought no one was home, but when they went up on the back porch, Sandra appeared at the door. She probably saw they were carrying a shotgun. She shut the door in their face. At that point, a shot was fired through the door. Police found drops of blood inside the home and they were able to recreate what they believe happened. Next. One of the teens, probably Chad, had the gun in his hand and fired that first shot. It went through the door and hit Sandra and wounded her, but it wasn't fatal. In that moment, it seemed like everyone panicked. Chad and Jerry chased Sandra through the house. When police came to the scene, the rest of the house looked basically untouched. It looked like they chased her straight through the back door and out the front door. At that point, it seemed like Sandra completely panicked. She left her young son sleeping on the living room floor. She was running for her life. She raced out that front door. Now, of course, it's impossible to know exactly what she was thinking at that point, but I'm thinking she was probably trying to get to the neighbor's house to get some help, or to attract attention, or just her instinct is a mother, maybe she was just trying to lure that danger away from her little son. Jerry Lee Ray said in his statement that once they got to the front yard, Chad was yelling at Sandra, but he couldn't understand what he was saying. Chad shot Sandra in the back. The shotgun blast knocked Sandra to her knees and she fell forward. Her glasses, which she couldn't see without, fell off during the struggle. Police later found two shotgun holes, which is the outer casing that holds the shells at the scene. One was on the back near the back porch steps, the other in the front yard about thirty yards from where Sandra was lying dead. After the shooting, Jerry and Chad ran to a nearby house. They stole some food out of the cabinet, stole some Easter candy and playing cards. Also, they stole a gun during that time. While they were at the neighbor's place. Apparently, they also took off their shoes and put on some other ones. These guys were not criminal masterminds. They left behind all kinds of evidence, including footprints and the actual shoes they wore. Police pretty quickly were able to bag those shoes up. They also left their bag with all of their supplies in it at the murder scene. They had to go back and grab it. They also tried to steal a truck that was sitting out in front of Robbie and Sandra's house, but they couldn't even do that because the vehicle wouldn't start, so they hid in the woods. After police showed up with bloodhounds, they quickly found the two teens. They also found the shoes and the gun and all the other evidence. They captured Chad and Jerry, and they quickly confessed. There are a lot of tragic things about Sandra Tubbs's murder, but one of the worst, in my opinion, was that the whole murder was literally for nothing. They killed Sandra, five children, don't have a mother, Jerry and Chad went to jail for their entire young lives and for nothing. All they got was some Easter candy. Probably because of that, the rumor mill started. There must have been more to it. Could the kids have been put up to that robbery by someone else, maybe Robbie senior, or by someone younger, maybe someone in the family, someone they knew, someone else who rode the bus with those kids. Again, I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I'm just trying to understand the family connections and how this all fits together, because on the surface, Amy pointed out that it does seem like Robbie and Sanders house would be kind of a weird one to target if he wanted to steal anything. Robbie was a turtle hunter. It's not like he had anything of any real value in there.

Amy has done a lot of work over the years. She submitted multiple Floyer requests, She's contacted people and mapped out locations, and as she mentioned, she said that Christina's body was found around three miles away from her home, but some newspaper reports say the distance between where Christina was last seen and the ditch where she was eventually found was around four miles. Others estimate the distances closer to five miles. And it's confusing because when I looked on Google Maps and tried to map this location myself, it showed a walking distance of nine miles, which would have taken Christina about three hours to get to. This does not seem plausible, but I know this is a rural area and appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes distances are not an accurate depiction of what's actually going on on the ground. Sometimes there are shortcuts that we can't see online. So I feel like this is one of those questions that I'm going to have to go to Arkansas to answer. After Christina went missing, detectives went around the neighborhood and interviewed the people who had last seen her. While canvassing, they talked to a woman named Elsie Lyles. Elsie Lyles lived on Doty Street, right down from Christina's house. Elsie said that Christina had stopped by her house at four pm. Elsie said she gave Christina a pickle as a snack. After eating that pickle, Christina left Elsie's house and walked home. That's when she asked her dad if she could walk around to do her door to door jewelry sales. Christina had two school friends with her. They told police that for the next hour or so, they went around selling their jewelry door to door. According to the information Amy has, the girls told law enforcement they left Christina at about six thirty pm at East Ash Street. This was just a couple of blocks from Christina's home. Now. I haven't seen any of the official reports pertaining to Christina's case. Technically it's still an open case file. I have made a foyer request and I will let you know if I hear back from police. But I just want to put it out there. I would love to talk to those girls if they are out there and if they're listening to this, because I believe they could have crucial information about Christina's activities that afternoon, and they might not even realize how important it is. Detectives later found remnants of the pickle in Christina's stomach, partially undigested, which means that police believe she died on the same day she went missing. So we go back to that day, May fourth, nineteen ninety one. It's late afternoon, getting to early evening. Christina's friends parted ways with her at around six thirty pm. Now, Christina's dad specifically told her to be home before dark. So whether it was three or four miles or nine miles, what would make a little girl suddenly decide to walk on her own to a ditch right before dark when she couldn't swim. There are a few other odd facts about the case that could seem to point toward foul play. They're mainly circumstantial, like the fact that the detectives never found the items that Christina was carrying when she left her house. They didn't find her jewelry, leaflets, or the pencil she was carrying around with her to write down orders. Also, Christina's body was fully clothed. As we said before, she was wearing the same things she had been wearing the afternoon she disappeared, but her shoes were missing, and no one ever found her clothes toe white sandals. So what happened to the shoes? Did she take them off herself? Could someone have been chasing her through those dense, watery rice fields and her shoes peeled off her feet, that is possible, Or was she hanging out at someone's house or in their car and took them off herself. If she was killed, did the killer take the shoes, did they throw them away or did they still have them stashed somewhere. These are all the types of dark possibilities that have occurred to me with this case. As we said before, the sherif of Cross County, where Christina and her family lived, Ronnie Hughey, actually said at the time the detectives believed Christina was picked up and driven to the site where her body was found, and he's given a couple of reasons over the years to media about why he thinks this. First of all, he said, if she walked to that area would have taken a pretty long time, and he believes someone would have seen her out walking. Number two, kind of along the same lines, as I was thinking, just the fact that it was near dark. Christina was a couple of blocks from home, and she was supposed to be home before dark. Why would she randomly turn around and walk in the other direction hours away to a flooded ditch when she couldn't swim. Detectives did a lot of interviews, but they didn't make any arrests, and over the years, a lot of people in the county wondered why the case seemed to go cold, and Christina's body was not the last child body found in East Darkansas over the next few years. On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, a few months after Christina's body was found, sixteen year old Guardinia Jones Cross disappeared. Guardina was a tenth grader at high school in When, a nearby town. She lived with her grandmother, Hattie Cross. Guardinia was also a young mother herself. She was raising a one year old daughter. Guardinia's grandmother, Hattie, reported her missing, but Guardina was not missing for long because the next day, on October fourteenth, a man was walking along the side of a road called Moore Road outside of when he was collecting cans and he saw a body naked except for a bra. It was Guardinia Cross. Guardena had a puncture wound in her head, which investigators theorized was made with something like a tool, maybe a screwdriver, and unlike in Christina's case, this time there was no ambiguity. This had been a brutal murder. Forensic testing revealed something else. When she died, Guardina Cross was around five months pregnant. No one was arrested or charged with that murder. In May of nineteen ninety two, another young girl, a thirteen year old named Geneva Smith, was reported missing. On June first, a body was found in the Saint Francis River. Remember this was back in the nineties, before DNA testing was widespread, and police had nothing to go on. They didn't even have dental records to compare with Geneva. But investigators said at the time they were ninety nine percent sure that the body was her based on the clothing that she was wearing. The shoes and shirt matched the description that Geneva's family had given of what she'd been wearing the day she went missing. This was a tragedy. They did eventually determine that the was Geneva Smith. The body was so decomposed they weren't able to determine the exact cause of death. And not only that, all they could determine at first was that the victim was black. They couldn't even figure out what gender the body was. It was that badly decomposed and brutalized. I cannot imagine how horrifying that must have been for that young woman's family. So what happened in that case? Eventually police did make an arrest. They charged two suspects with that killing, but those two men were released, So Geneva Smith's killer or killers are also still out there. Then, in May of nineteen ninety three, there was, of course, the three eight year old boys, Michael Moore, Steve Branch and Christopher Byers, the boys who had become known as the West Memphis Three. The three friends went out for after school bike ride and they never came home. Their mutilated bodies were found in a nearby swamp. Now, eventually this case became a national sensation, and most of my listeners will be familiar with what happened next in the West Memphis three case, sixteen year old Jesse mus Kelly, seventeen year old James Baldwin and eighteen year old Damien Eccles were arrested, prosecuted, and eventually convicted. Jesse and James got life sentences, Damien was sentenced to death. All of them sat in jail for many years before numerous documentaries and books came out about this case and they documented the many injustices that had happened, the fact that there was no DNA evidence that matched any of them, no physical evidence, and there were a lot of problems with Jesse mc kelly's confession in particular, which had gone on for over twelve hours. Basically, Damien, James, and Jesse were convicted in an atmosphere of fear in West Memphis, and this followed the satanic hannicck hysteria that happened during the nineteen eighties. Because Damian was this kind of weird local guy who listened to heavy metal and wore black and was reportedly into witchcraft, the police just a laser focused on him and they refused to change course. Over the years, all three of them maintained their innocence and new DNA testing was done. In two thousand and seven, it was announced that the DNA found at the crime scene did not match any of them. It didn't match Damien, Jesse or James. Furthermore, there was DNA at that crime scene, the DNA of an unknown man. In twenty ten, the Supreme Court ruled that the defendants could present new evidence to establish their innocence. So the three of them had been sitting in jail for over twenty years and they were getting ready for a new trial, which, as we all know, could have taken years. That's when one of the defense attorneys suggested the men take something called an Alfred plea. Now, an Alfred plea is kind of unique. What it means is that they could still claim they were innocent while not changing their guilty plea. It's kind of a way of having it both ways. The state gets to save face. They don't have to have a new trial, they still have their guilty plea, and Damien, Jesse and James don't have to waste more years of their lives waiting for a new trial. They get to get out of jail and start their lives. So in twenty eleven, that's what happened. The three defendants were released without having to go through a new trial and having the verdict overturn. It's an ambiguous result. The case is still open. Damien and his attorneys are still fighting to get DNA from the crime scene. An Arkansas judge has denied that request. The judge said that he was denying the request because Damien's out of prison now. Damien and his lawyers have appealed this decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court and they are still waiting to find out if that DNA testing can happen. Remember, this saga has been going on for over thirty years at this point, and there's still no final answer. I bring this case up because I absolutely believe that if it hadn't been for the fact that all of these injustices were documented by journalists and books and documentaries, the problems with this case would never have been revealed. All three of those guys, Dami and Jesse and James would still be sitting in prison right now. I really believe that. And this was all going on in the early nineties. Especially during this time, there were some very real abuses going on in Arkansas, both in law enforcement and in the crime lab, and the repercussions of those mistakes are still going on to this day. Also, if those three guys weren't the killers. That means that the actual killer of the West Memphis three, the person or persons who mutilated those three little boys and dumped them in the swamp, is still out there, and a lot of people worry they may never be charged. Who knows how many predatory child killers are still out there any Darkansas. Now, despite the fact that all of these deaths happened in the same general area, investigators have never found a connection between any of them. Between the West Memphis three, Guardina Cross Jones, Geneva Smith, and Christina Pipkin, there were a lot of differences. The dead children were different ages. Guardina, like the West Memphis three, had a lot of damage to her body, while, for example, Christina did not have any obvious marks on her. Apparently Geneva Smith's body was too decomposed and no for sure. Cross County Sheriff Ronnie Hughey expressed his frustration back then. He said, quote, you keep scratching and clawing and digging. These kinds of cases are different because these are kids. We've been backwards and forwards. It's been very frustrating. End quote. Now let's come back to the Christina Pipkin case. Let's talk about what happened after police finally made an arrest. Police were questioning everyone in the neighborhood. They were checking out potential people of interest, including, from what my source says, some local sex offenders, including one guy from Florida who was living nearby. Then they began to focus on someone they considered a Bible suspect, and this is where Amy's father in law, Robbie Tubbs, enters the story. Amy admits that her father in law was, in her words, not a particularly good man. Back in the early nineties, Robbie was married and he and his wife, Sandra had five kids. According to Amy, Robbie was physically abusive with his wife Sandra at times. Robbie didn't have a regular nine to five job. He always did kind of side jobs. He would go out turtle hunting and fishing and selling things that he caught. Sandra Tubbs talked to the police in October of nineteen ninety one, a few months after Christina's body was found. When she came in to see them, she told them that back when Christina first went missing, Robbie had made a comment to her that she said disturbed her and it led her to believe that he had, in a way potentially confessed to Christina's murder. Sandra said Robbie told her, right after hearing that Christina was missing, that he knew Christina would turn up dead in a rice ditch in Jackson County. She told police that Robbie said, quote, there are too many rice ditches for somebody to drown in. She's dead end quote. Sandra said she confronted her husband and started asking him what he meant by that comment. When she did, the fight seemed to escalate. Sandra said she threatened to call the police, and that's when she said Robbie tied her up and gagged her to stop her from calling law enforcement. Sandra told a friend of hers, a woman named Susan, this same story at the time. Later, police called Sandra's friend and took a statement from her, and that friend confirmed that yes, Sandra had told her that story at around the time when Christina went missing. So the police went to talk to Robbie Tubbs. Arkansas State Police investigator Dale Arnold did the interview. According to police documents, the first time that Dale Arnold talked to Robbie, Robbie claimed he was not in the area of Hickory Ridge at all on May fourth, nineteen ninety one, so he said he was nowhere near the area where Christina went missing from, but later he apparently changed his story. He said he may have been around there on the day Christina disappeared. Police were finding issues with Robbie's alibi. Robbie claimed he had been staying in a motel and DeWitt, Arkansas, but police checked the motel registration they couldn't find any record of Robbie staying there, probably because police believed Christina had been driven to that location. Obviously, they were checking out every person of interest car. At some point police figured out that Robbie had a car, a nineteen eighty one amce EA that he had sold sometime in the spring of nineteen ninety one, so this is December of nineteen ninety one. After Sandra came to see them, police found the woman who Robbie had sold the car to. It wasn't running, just sitting out in her yard where it had been sitting for months. But police went out and found the vehicle and did forensic testing on that car. They got a hair sample which they bagged as evidence. Now, Robbie's private life was complicated. He was married to Sandra, but he had been seeing another woman named Janetta. Police asked Robbie during their questioning if Christina could have ever been inside his car, and apparently at one point he said that Christina and another child may have sat in his car with Janetta. Apparently her child went to the same school as Christina. Anyway, he said that he and these kids, one of whom may have been Christina, sat in his car in a nearby park with Janetta. But then police talked to Janetta. She said that wasn't true. She said Christina was never in that car and that they had never been in that park. So now Robbie's alibi seemed to be kind of falling apart. I want to point out, though, that without access to the case file, without recordings of what happened, we don't know what happened before Robbie made those statements. We don't know what the police told Robbie, how long they had him in custody. Were these statements coerced in any way. I'm not saying that they were. I'm just saying that, given what was going on in Arkansas at that time, we need to know for sure how that questioning went down. Growing up, I used to always think that if you hadn't done anything wrong, that there was no way that you would lie in a police interrogation room. But after what I've learned over the years, I now no longer believe that I want to know the context of what was being said. Police had Sandra's statement about Robbie, and they had that hair sample from Robbie's furm vehicle. Now, forensic testing was not nearly as advanced in nineteen ninety one as it is now, obviously, so the testing police could have done on that hair at the time would have been pretty limited. Without the advanced testing. The police had no physical evidence, at least not yet. But they were building a case against Robbie Tubbs, and they had Sandra Tubbs as their main witness. But no jury would ever hear from Sandra Tubbs because on May fourth, nineteen ninety three, exactly two years after Christina Pipkin vanished, Sandra Tubbs was brutally murdered. The circumstances around the murder of Sandra Tubbs are bizarre, to say the least, and they are controversial. Some people to this day believe that Robbie Tubbs had something to do with it. They just think that timing is too coincidental. They wonder if he somehow masterminded the murder. It just seemed very strange that exactly two years after Christina Pipkin's death, that Sandra would be found dead. On May fourth, nineteen ninety three, Sandra Tubbs was alone at home in Morrow, Arkansas. The school bus had come between five and seven am that morning. All of Sandra's children were already at school. Only her youngest son, who was sleeping on the living room floor in front of the TV, was home with her. Sandra was doing some home decorating. She had a can of paint varnish open with a brush lying on top of it, like she was in the middle of painting. Robbie later told police that he woke up that morning, he and Sandra made some coffee. They had a totally normal conversation about what they were going to do that day. Then he said he left the house by seven point fifteen. His plan, he said, was to go out and pull in some turtlenets, get out on the water for a little bit, then to head to the store in town and Morrow after Robbie left the house, sometime after seven am, two local teenagers named Jerry Lee Ray, and Stephen Chad Kapliner came to the door. Now, these teens were apparently acquaintances of Robbie and Sandra's kids, and rode the bus with them. The boys lived nearby and later told police they had kind of a vague plan to run away from home. They had started the day earlier but hadn't made it very far. Chad and Jerry had camped out all night in a tent in the woods. They were carrying an orange bag with them containing their pup tent, a flashlight, a pair of binoculars, a maroon jacket, a compass, a knife sheath, shotgun shells, some Alca seltzer, and a leather whip. They needed supplies, and they seemed to come up with this kind of half baked plan to steal some stuff from houses that morning. They waited until after the school bus left, then they approached Sandra's back door. Now, according to statements the teens made to police that Amy managed to get a hold of. Each of the guys had fairly similar versions of what happened, except they kind of blamed each other for doing the shooting. Chad claimed he was holding the shotgun and that after they came up on the back porch, he pulled the hammer back and threw the gun to Jerry Lee Ray. And after that, he said, Jerry Lee Ray started shooting. He had no idea what happened. Again, basically, each one blamed the other, but looking at their police statements, in my opinion, Jerry Lee Ray's story is much more believable and has a lot more credible details. Jerry said that they went to the door. Chad had the shotgun in his hand. Again, their objective that morning was to steal some food. They thought no one was home, but when they went up on the back porch, Sandra appeared at the door. She probably saw they were carrying a shotgun. She shut the door in their face. At that point, a shot was fired through the door. Police found drops of blood inside the home and they were able to recreate what they believe happened. Next. One of the teens, probably Chad, had the gun in his hand and fired that first shot. It went through the door and hit Sandra and wounded her, but it wasn't fatal. In that moment, it seemed like everyone panicked. Chad and Jerry chased Sandra through the house. When police came to the scene, the rest of the house looked basically untouched. It looked like they chased her straight through the back door and out the front door. At that point, it seemed like Sandra completely panicked. She left her young son sleeping on the living room floor. She was running for her life. She raced out that front door. Now, of course, it's impossible to know exactly what she was thinking at that point, but I'm thinking she was probably trying to get to the neighbor's house to get some help, or to attract attention, or just her instinct is a mother, maybe she was just trying to lure that danger away from her little son. Jerry Lee Ray said in his statement that once they got to the front yard, Chad was yelling at Sandra, but he couldn't understand what he was saying. Chad shot Sandra in the back. The shotgun blast knocked Sandra to her knees and she fell forward. Her glasses, which she couldn't see without, fell off during the struggle. Police later found two shotgun holes, which is the outer casing that holds the shells at the scene. One was on the back near the back porch steps, the other in the front yard about thirty yards from where Sandra was lying dead. After the shooting, Jerry and Chad ran to a nearby house. They stole some food out of the cabinet, stole some Easter candy and playing cards. Also, they stole a gun during that time. While they were at the neighbor's place. Apparently, they also took off their shoes and put on some other ones. These guys were not criminal masterminds. They left behind all kinds of evidence, including footprints and the actual shoes they wore. Police pretty quickly were able to bag those shoes up. They also left their bag with all of their supplies in it at the murder scene. They had to go back and grab it. They also tried to steal a truck that was sitting out in front of Robbie and Sandra's house, but they couldn't even do that because the vehicle wouldn't start, so they hid in the woods. After police showed up with bloodhounds, they quickly found the two teens. They also found the shoes and the gun and all the other evidence. They captured Chad and Jerry, and they quickly confessed. There are a lot of tragic things about Sandra Tubbs's murder, but one of the worst, in my opinion, was that the whole murder was literally for nothing. They killed Sandra, five children, don't have a mother, Jerry and Chad went to jail for their entire young lives and for nothing. All they got was some Easter candy. Probably because of that, the rumor mill started. There must have been more to it. Could the kids have been put up to that robbery by someone else, maybe Robbie senior, or by someone younger, maybe someone in the family, someone they knew, someone else who rode the bus with those kids. Again, I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I'm just trying to understand the family connections and how this all fits together, because on the surface, Amy pointed out that it does seem like Robbie and Sanders house would be kind of a weird one to target if he wanted to steal anything. Robbie was a turtle hunter. It's not like he had anything of any real value in there.

Why they thought that a house of I don't know how many kids I had at the time, five or six, with the man who made his living off of shell diving and turtle turtling. I guess would be the house to Rob don't know. And I feel like if I would have been a sixteen year old kid looking at you know, because Arkansas was trying kids at that time for as adults and you know, seeking the best penalty for him, I feel like they would have sang like a canary if they had anything on him. I just don't feel like they were like harden thugs that were gonna, you know, go down for him. But her family says, her family for a long time just swore he was involved, and so they didn't have much to do with Robbie, my Robbie growing up, or any of the kids because you know, they all thought his daddy killed his mom or had something to do with it. So hard for your husband. Yeah, he's had a real tough life.

Why they thought that a house of I don't know how many kids I had at the time, five or six, with the man who made his living off of shell diving and turtle turtling. I guess would be the house to Rob don't know. And I feel like if I would have been a sixteen year old kid looking at you know, because Arkansas was trying kids at that time for as adults and you know, seeking the best penalty for him, I feel like they would have sang like a canary if they had anything on him. I just don't feel like they were like harden thugs that were gonna, you know, go down for him. But her family says, her family for a long time just swore he was involved, and so they didn't have much to do with Robbie, my Robbie growing up, or any of the kids because you know, they all thought his daddy killed his mom or had something to do with it. So hard for your husband. Yeah, he's had a real tough life.

Robbie Tubbs gave us statement to police and he was completely cleared of any involvement in this shooting. I did read his statement, and I did find just a couple of things I wanted to flag up because I thought they were a little bit inconsistent, mostly related to timing. Robbie said in his statement to police that he left the house at around seven fifteen. He said he went straight to a nearby body of water. He was out on the water for around thirty five minutes or so. Then he pulled his nets in and saw a neighbor of his he knew, named Danny. Robbie said, quote, he was fixing to go out and get some trout lines, and I asked him what time it was, so I would know if he was going to be free to show me some places to put my nets out. He said it's eight thirty as he was walking off. I have a bad habit of asking people what time it is. End quote. This is a little bit of a weird comment, but then again, I don't know. It might have made sense in that context. Remember this was back in the early nineties. This is a time before cell phones. People did ask other people if they noticed that person was wearing watches what time it was. It was a thing. We always have to be open minded and consider every possibility. But if that timeline's correct, that puts us at around eight thirty or eight thirty five, Robbie said. After that conversation, he left his friend Danny. He went back to his house and was messing around with the turtlenets when he noticed that the dogs were freaking out and barking. He went to the house through the back door. He saw the paint can, He saw his son sleeping on the floor. Then he said, he went out the front he was looking for Sandra. That's when he saw Sandra lying there. He said he turned her over just enough to realize there was a hole in her chest. Then he went back in the house, saw that his son was there, checked on him, and then ran to the neighbors. Robbie said after that he went to Danny's house, saw Danny's wife and that Danny's wife called nine one one. Then Robbie said he went back home and by the time he got there, Danny was arriving there too. They both went out and looked at Sandra's body. Remember, Robbie had said he made a point of asking his friend what time it was right after he left his house and went down to deal with the turtlenets. He said that Danny had said it was eight thirty, and that supposedly happened before he went back to the house and found Sandra's body. Danny's story to police was similar. He told police, yes, he had seen Robbie that morning, but he said the conversation about time happened after all this. So after they had their initial conversation, Robbie left to go home. Danny got home and found out that his wife had called nine one one. He rushes over to Robbie and Sandra's house, finds the body. After all that, he said they had a conversation about time, and at that time he said it was eight thirty five. Again, we don't have a recording. This could have been a misunderstanding by a police officer. I don't know, but obviously I'm super sensitive to anything involving the timeline. And police also talk to someone else, the stepfather of one of the murder suspects. Now their family lived nearby, and the stepfather said he heard a single shot earlier, at around seven thirty am. Of course, the part of my brain that's always thinking about albis and how people try to build alibis to fill in timeline to their advantage. I'm thinking if the shooting started closer to the time the bus left that morning, that could explain why Robbie might have wanted to make it seem like he was definitely out of the house and had been out of the house for a while when that went down. Either way, though the timeline does seem to check out without minor inconsistency. He left home according to him, and according to the suspects, he was gone by the time they got there. It's also a little weird to me that when Robbie went back to the house and saw his wife lying there with a hole in her chest, he checked to see if his son was there, saw him sleeping, and then left his son behind to go to the neighbor's house, because how would he know that the killer wasn't still there, which, as it turned out, well, they were, they were hanging out in those woods still. But also that could have just been shocked. Robbie said he and Sandra had not had any problems in their marriage. They had been getting along great for the last year or so. They had had a super happy marriage. Now, they did go through good times, and I'm sure they were happy at times, but this does also contradict what we heard about Robbie earlier, that he had abused his wife in the end. Though, Amy pointed out something that I've considered, which is that these teens were not trained assassins, and they were really scared when they talked to police. So if someone else had influenced them to do this killing, it seems like they would have had no hesitation in turning on Robbie Tubbs if he in fact masterminded this shooting. But they didn't. I do want to talk to these guys though, because, on Chad Kaplaner's statement, the officer who interviewed him did not record the conversation. Instead, he just tied up and paraphrased what Chad had said. He noted that Chad was handcuffed and unable to sign the consent form, saying he was aware of his rights. This to me is I don't want to say shady, but not good practice. And it happened in way too many cases back in the day. We have no idea how long the interview went on, if they offered him a break. What the officer said to these young men, that's a big problem for me. In the end, Jerry Lee Ray was sentenced to twenty years in prison, Chad Kaplaner got sixteen years. After serving their time, they were released and as far as I know, they are free men today. Meanwhile, the Christina Pipkin case went cold, especially after Sanders murder. Police suspected Robbie Tubbs, but there was no physical evidence against him. But by nineteen ninety nine, technology for testing physical evidence had advanced considerably. Police still had that hair from Robbie's former car than AMC. Eagle. They sent it for further forensic testing and they announced they had a match that the hair that was found inside Robbie Tubb's abandoned car was a match to Christina Pipkin. In nineteen ninety nine, Robbie Dale Tubbs was arrested in charge with Christina Pipkins's murder. Prosecutors said they were seeking the death penalty. The trial started out in a pretty shocking manner, and it just turned into one shocking twist after another. First, the judge ruled that Sandra's statement she had made to police about Robbie allegedly making statements to her about what happened to Christina Pipkin. The judge ruled that those were inadmissible, and obviously Sandra was dead, so even posthumously, the jury would never hear from Sandra Tubbs. The prosecutor, Fletcher Long said, quote, man, we'd be walking and talking. If she was alive today, if we had that, we'd knock those jurors dead. But there's no sense crying over spilt milt end quote. Just a little side note. I've noticed that a lot of these colloquial prosecutors, especially in Arkansas, have some very colorful comments. But I don't know if I agree with his comment, because there were some problems with Sandra's statement I found out when I was investigating Rebecca Gould's case and many others. Unfortunately, there are a lot of women whose husbands are abusive and violent, a lot of women who suspect that their partner might have been responsible for a murder. It's actually shocking how many violent people are out there, and how many people, men and women, are victims of intimate partner violence. I would be wary of the statement, not because I don't believe it. I believe that Sandra did hear him say that, and I believe she did tell her friend that. But I would be wary of the statement because without seeing exactly what he told her and what the context was, there's nothing specific to the crime in that statement. Just saying that Christina was drowned in a rice ditch is not enough in my opinion, to charge someone with capital murder. Now, the fact that Robbie tied Sandra up and threatened her would seem to make this much more compelling and potentially dangerous. But again, we need to know more about what the actual conversation was between Robby and Sander. We need to know what she told the police. Sandra Tubbs case file now should be open because the murder was prosecuted. I've done Foyer request for it, and I will keep you posted. But even without Sandra Tubbs's statement, the prosecutor, Fletcher Long felt pretty confident because he had this forensic evidence. He had the hair from Robbie's former vehicle that was a match to Christina Pipkins's hair, which brings me to the next shocking twist. Robbie Tubb's family got him an attorney, and according to Amy, they got him an expensive attorney. They took out a second mortgage so that they could pay for the defense attorney Martin Lily, and Martin Lilly had questions about that forensic testing. What he said in court was he believed there had been a mix up at the lab. He believed that the scientist had accidentally compared two samples that were taken from Christina's body to each other and not to the hair found in the car. Martin Lily put the FBI investigator John Hazen, who was in charge of shipping the evidence from the Arkansas crime Lab to the FBI lab in Quantico, on the stand, and to cut a long story short, it's pretty technical, but it appears there was a difference in labeling between the state crime lab and the FBI lab, and that's where the problem began. The FBI lab in Quantico labeled the hair differently than the Arkansas State crime Lab. John Hazen admitted that there might have been a mistake. I have such a hard time believing that's even possible. How could you compare to a identical hairs to each other and not realize they came from the same person. Even back then, Fletcher Long said that there might be a difference in labeling, but that it was not a fundamental mistake. Martin Lily disagreed. He insisted the two hairs that were sent to the crime lab were not one from Robbie Tubb's car and one from Christina Pipkins's body. He said they accidentally sent two samples from Christina's body, which of course were a match because they came off the same person. Lily said in court quote, it'll blow this case wide open, end quote. And it did. It all boiled down to that hair. That strand of hair was going to decide the entire case. In the end, Fletcher Long admitted there had been a fundamental mistake made and that the two hairs taken from Christina Pipkins's body were compared with each other and not with the hair from Robbie Tubbs's car. So what happened to the hair from Robbie Tubbs's car, Well, it had not been tested. It was still sealed sitting in an evidence bag at the crime lab. This was a shock in the courtroom. The judge ordered to pause in the case, and the judge gave Fletcher Long and the prosecutors two months to get the testing done on the correct hair. But when they sent the hair that had been found in Robbie's car to the FBI crime lab, the FBI came back with bad news. They said there just was not enough genetic material on it to do the testing. So the prosecutors had nothing. Robbie Tubbs was set free. This case was no lely prossed, meaning that they dropped the charges against Robbie Tubbs because of insubbition evidence. But at least according to my understanding, if new evidence ever came to light, he could be retried.

Robbie Tubbs gave us statement to police and he was completely cleared of any involvement in this shooting. I did read his statement, and I did find just a couple of things I wanted to flag up because I thought they were a little bit inconsistent, mostly related to timing. Robbie said in his statement to police that he left the house at around seven fifteen. He said he went straight to a nearby body of water. He was out on the water for around thirty five minutes or so. Then he pulled his nets in and saw a neighbor of his he knew, named Danny. Robbie said, quote, he was fixing to go out and get some trout lines, and I asked him what time it was, so I would know if he was going to be free to show me some places to put my nets out. He said it's eight thirty as he was walking off. I have a bad habit of asking people what time it is. End quote. This is a little bit of a weird comment, but then again, I don't know. It might have made sense in that context. Remember this was back in the early nineties. This is a time before cell phones. People did ask other people if they noticed that person was wearing watches what time it was. It was a thing. We always have to be open minded and consider every possibility. But if that timeline's correct, that puts us at around eight thirty or eight thirty five, Robbie said. After that conversation, he left his friend Danny. He went back to his house and was messing around with the turtlenets when he noticed that the dogs were freaking out and barking. He went to the house through the back door. He saw the paint can, He saw his son sleeping on the floor. Then he said, he went out the front he was looking for Sandra. That's when he saw Sandra lying there. He said he turned her over just enough to realize there was a hole in her chest. Then he went back in the house, saw that his son was there, checked on him, and then ran to the neighbors. Robbie said after that he went to Danny's house, saw Danny's wife and that Danny's wife called nine one one. Then Robbie said he went back home and by the time he got there, Danny was arriving there too. They both went out and looked at Sandra's body. Remember, Robbie had said he made a point of asking his friend what time it was right after he left his house and went down to deal with the turtlenets. He said that Danny had said it was eight thirty, and that supposedly happened before he went back to the house and found Sandra's body. Danny's story to police was similar. He told police, yes, he had seen Robbie that morning, but he said the conversation about time happened after all this. So after they had their initial conversation, Robbie left to go home. Danny got home and found out that his wife had called nine one one. He rushes over to Robbie and Sandra's house, finds the body. After all that, he said they had a conversation about time, and at that time he said it was eight thirty five. Again, we don't have a recording. This could have been a misunderstanding by a police officer. I don't know, but obviously I'm super sensitive to anything involving the timeline. And police also talk to someone else, the stepfather of one of the murder suspects. Now their family lived nearby, and the stepfather said he heard a single shot earlier, at around seven thirty am. Of course, the part of my brain that's always thinking about albis and how people try to build alibis to fill in timeline to their advantage. I'm thinking if the shooting started closer to the time the bus left that morning, that could explain why Robbie might have wanted to make it seem like he was definitely out of the house and had been out of the house for a while when that went down. Either way, though the timeline does seem to check out without minor inconsistency. He left home according to him, and according to the suspects, he was gone by the time they got there. It's also a little weird to me that when Robbie went back to the house and saw his wife lying there with a hole in her chest, he checked to see if his son was there, saw him sleeping, and then left his son behind to go to the neighbor's house, because how would he know that the killer wasn't still there, which, as it turned out, well, they were, they were hanging out in those woods still. But also that could have just been shocked. Robbie said he and Sandra had not had any problems in their marriage. They had been getting along great for the last year or so. They had had a super happy marriage. Now, they did go through good times, and I'm sure they were happy at times, but this does also contradict what we heard about Robbie earlier, that he had abused his wife in the end. Though, Amy pointed out something that I've considered, which is that these teens were not trained assassins, and they were really scared when they talked to police. So if someone else had influenced them to do this killing, it seems like they would have had no hesitation in turning on Robbie Tubbs if he in fact masterminded this shooting. But they didn't. I do want to talk to these guys though, because, on Chad Kaplaner's statement, the officer who interviewed him did not record the conversation. Instead, he just tied up and paraphrased what Chad had said. He noted that Chad was handcuffed and unable to sign the consent form, saying he was aware of his rights. This to me is I don't want to say shady, but not good practice. And it happened in way too many cases back in the day. We have no idea how long the interview went on, if they offered him a break. What the officer said to these young men, that's a big problem for me. In the end, Jerry Lee Ray was sentenced to twenty years in prison, Chad Kaplaner got sixteen years. After serving their time, they were released and as far as I know, they are free men today. Meanwhile, the Christina Pipkin case went cold, especially after Sanders murder. Police suspected Robbie Tubbs, but there was no physical evidence against him. But by nineteen ninety nine, technology for testing physical evidence had advanced considerably. Police still had that hair from Robbie's former car than AMC. Eagle. They sent it for further forensic testing and they announced they had a match that the hair that was found inside Robbie Tubb's abandoned car was a match to Christina Pipkin. In nineteen ninety nine, Robbie Dale Tubbs was arrested in charge with Christina Pipkins's murder. Prosecutors said they were seeking the death penalty. The trial started out in a pretty shocking manner, and it just turned into one shocking twist after another. First, the judge ruled that Sandra's statement she had made to police about Robbie allegedly making statements to her about what happened to Christina Pipkin. The judge ruled that those were inadmissible, and obviously Sandra was dead, so even posthumously, the jury would never hear from Sandra Tubbs. The prosecutor, Fletcher Long said, quote, man, we'd be walking and talking. If she was alive today, if we had that, we'd knock those jurors dead. But there's no sense crying over spilt milt end quote. Just a little side note. I've noticed that a lot of these colloquial prosecutors, especially in Arkansas, have some very colorful comments. But I don't know if I agree with his comment, because there were some problems with Sandra's statement I found out when I was investigating Rebecca Gould's case and many others. Unfortunately, there are a lot of women whose husbands are abusive and violent, a lot of women who suspect that their partner might have been responsible for a murder. It's actually shocking how many violent people are out there, and how many people, men and women, are victims of intimate partner violence. I would be wary of the statement, not because I don't believe it. I believe that Sandra did hear him say that, and I believe she did tell her friend that. But I would be wary of the statement because without seeing exactly what he told her and what the context was, there's nothing specific to the crime in that statement. Just saying that Christina was drowned in a rice ditch is not enough in my opinion, to charge someone with capital murder. Now, the fact that Robbie tied Sandra up and threatened her would seem to make this much more compelling and potentially dangerous. But again, we need to know more about what the actual conversation was between Robby and Sander. We need to know what she told the police. Sandra Tubbs case file now should be open because the murder was prosecuted. I've done Foyer request for it, and I will keep you posted. But even without Sandra Tubbs's statement, the prosecutor, Fletcher Long felt pretty confident because he had this forensic evidence. He had the hair from Robbie's former vehicle that was a match to Christina Pipkins's hair, which brings me to the next shocking twist. Robbie Tubb's family got him an attorney, and according to Amy, they got him an expensive attorney. They took out a second mortgage so that they could pay for the defense attorney Martin Lily, and Martin Lilly had questions about that forensic testing. What he said in court was he believed there had been a mix up at the lab. He believed that the scientist had accidentally compared two samples that were taken from Christina's body to each other and not to the hair found in the car. Martin Lily put the FBI investigator John Hazen, who was in charge of shipping the evidence from the Arkansas crime Lab to the FBI lab in Quantico, on the stand, and to cut a long story short, it's pretty technical, but it appears there was a difference in labeling between the state crime lab and the FBI lab, and that's where the problem began. The FBI lab in Quantico labeled the hair differently than the Arkansas State crime Lab. John Hazen admitted that there might have been a mistake. I have such a hard time believing that's even possible. How could you compare to a identical hairs to each other and not realize they came from the same person. Even back then, Fletcher Long said that there might be a difference in labeling, but that it was not a fundamental mistake. Martin Lily disagreed. He insisted the two hairs that were sent to the crime lab were not one from Robbie Tubb's car and one from Christina Pipkins's body. He said they accidentally sent two samples from Christina's body, which of course were a match because they came off the same person. Lily said in court quote, it'll blow this case wide open, end quote. And it did. It all boiled down to that hair. That strand of hair was going to decide the entire case. In the end, Fletcher Long admitted there had been a fundamental mistake made and that the two hairs taken from Christina Pipkins's body were compared with each other and not with the hair from Robbie Tubbs's car. So what happened to the hair from Robbie Tubbs's car, Well, it had not been tested. It was still sealed sitting in an evidence bag at the crime lab. This was a shock in the courtroom. The judge ordered to pause in the case, and the judge gave Fletcher Long and the prosecutors two months to get the testing done on the correct hair. But when they sent the hair that had been found in Robbie's car to the FBI crime lab, the FBI came back with bad news. They said there just was not enough genetic material on it to do the testing. So the prosecutors had nothing. Robbie Tubbs was set free. This case was no lely prossed, meaning that they dropped the charges against Robbie Tubbs because of insubbition evidence. But at least according to my understanding, if new evidence ever came to light, he could be retried.

I think Arkansas in general is a very and maybe the entire United States is very corrupt. I'm thankful that I've never been arrested and that I'm not a poor person, but I mean I couldn't. I couldn't afford a high dollar defense attorney. The only reason he was able, I firmly believe the only reason he's not on death row right now is because his mom and dad put a second mortgage on their home and hired that lawyer. Because he was hurt. Poor, you know, average maybe below average, white guy. I think they would have real roaded him and never even seen it coming.

I think Arkansas in general is a very and maybe the entire United States is very corrupt. I'm thankful that I've never been arrested and that I'm not a poor person, but I mean I couldn't. I couldn't afford a high dollar defense attorney. The only reason he was able, I firmly believe the only reason he's not on death row right now is because his mom and dad put a second mortgage on their home and hired that lawyer. Because he was hurt. Poor, you know, average maybe below average, white guy. I think they would have real roaded him and never even seen it coming.

After all that, Robbie Tubbs eventually left the area. He ended up in Missouri, and in twenty thirteen he made headlines again. The Tulsa World reported he was part of a crime ring that was illegally trafficking paddlefish eggs. The Tulsa World reported that Robbie seemed surprised when he got charged with this federal crime because Robbie apparently thought he would just get a ticket. According to the US Attorney's Office in Tulsa, Robbie pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to six months in prison, and after that he was released. Amy and I have both filed multiple freedom of information requests, but it's becoming clear that a lot of the answers to this case are in Arkansas. We need to answer several questions. First of all, we need to know exactly how far Christina Pipkin would have had to walk to get to that ditch, and was it plausible for her to walk that distance on her own. In addition to figuring out her exact route, we need to talk to people who were in the neighborhood at the time. We're going to investigate a couple of other people of interest who were questioned but apparently never charged. I would also really like to talk to Robbie Tubbs. I have no idea if he'll talk to me. Amy tells me he lives out in the middle of nowhere. I guess I'm going to find out. This case terrified me and kept me up at night for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's horrifying that someone could be almost sentenced to death based on such little evidence, evidence that, as it turns out, wasn't even real. It was literally one huge mistake, and, as Amy pointed out, one that probably never would have been discovered if the defendant had not been able to afford a pricey lawyer. So, how many other cases out there have potentially the wrong people behind bars based on such catastrophic errors? And also, in these cases where no one is ever successfully prosecuted or where the wrong person is potentially in prison, how many other killers are out there walking free. We're going to try to dive into the other mysterious deaths Guardena Cross Jones, and Geneva Smith. We're going to try to see if we can get any answers about what happened to those children, and to see if there is a child killer still out there stalking East Arkansas. So once again I'm on my way to Arkansas. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is how Hell and Gone Murder Line Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven, eight seven, four four, six, one four or five. Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. School of Humans