School of humans. This is like being a washer woman, right, not my first favorite thing to do a little bit of skill. You don't want to scratch anything. So how many strokes did the guy did? The guy? The hip the lady? With one or two? I hurt somebody pretty bad. You can't get swim with one of those legs like that I had. You could get a good swing with one of those legs, he said, that was an understatement. We know that it was a piano leg that is suspected to be the murder weapon. According to my source, that piano leg was never found. So we're in a piano repair shop looking to learn anything we can that might help solve the case that haunts us all. In September of two thousand and four, twenty two year old Rebecca Gould was brutally murdered in a remote area of the Arkansas Ozarks. Fourteen years later, her killer is still out there. I've come back to Mountain View with one mission to get justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend, and this is Helen Gone narrowing it down in my old age, the piano repair shop feels a little bit like a junkyard, but with fancy pianos. There's instruments everywhere. If we're gonna find out what kind of piano leg killed Rebecca Gold, this is the place. So I was wondering, if you know, we just could take a look at some of the you know, these piano legs here, just the different types or something. Turn on the line over there. Rick Cooley is the shop owner. He's been working with pianos for forty five years, so he knows what he's doing. But I think we're the first people to ask him so many questions about piano legs. They just don't come off normally. You know, they come off if you have to get them off, but they're not ready to come off in particularly ended up right. Nobody's going to certainly get the leg off of bed. There's no way to get it off. It screwed to the toe, yeah, so it has to be a free leg. But most of them just have a bolt down the middle and just screw in there. And the French leg that's the one on the left where it's more like curR it probably has a couple of screws. It'd be hard to screw that one on. It might something to do, but most of them just have like a bolt that's glued into the leg and just screws on. I can see because they kind of stick out. So if something were to like hit it on the bottom, it would probably that one's kind of least it screws on. But I'm not going to take it off unless you want to go back and a six pag of meer or something. Well, I guess it might get break one off, or sometimes they're falling off, you know, sometimes the screws stripped out or something. Does that happen a lot? Who does what my moves one and beats one up, and they lived in a trailer, it probably gets pretty beat up. No, I mean imagine this, because there's a time somebody's ranch as living room. It probably wouldn't be bet up, but in a trailer it probably wouldn't be. Console and a spinet has a free leg. Usually that's the consoles a little taller, that's the spin it. So that's the pianos don't have a free leg once they get to be bigger consoles and spin it's that's a smaller one. But that's the only two. I said that those kind of legs are common to spin its and consoles that are verticals. They're all verticals, you know, but all ones are big things like that. I see they have more of like a top to them, right, and they're more that's the old fashioned. Yeah. And how much did you you think that a leg like that weighs like two three pounds or gosh, like four pounds or something like it? Would it could be heavy? A baseball is ash, which is a harder word. Would the most piano wood would be. I'm sure a baseball that probably wait in a little bit longer base on it probablyways a little more than a piano or piano leg was gonna be met out of just something like birch or maple or something probably had listen, I'd let you have it, don't. I mean? Have you think somewhere after visiting the shop, I feel like we have a clear sense of the suspected murder weapon. The piano in Casey's house was either a console or spin at piano, the smaller kind that can fit up against a wall and would fit in a tiny trailer. The legs for these pianos are mostly straight and decorative, and in cheaper models they just have one screw that connects the leg. Basically the legs look like upside down baseball bats, thin and they weigh around three to four pounds, light enough to pick up and swing, heavy enough to kill someone. Right now, we're looking for Chris, a former drug dealer who's been in and out of jail his whole life. He's rumored to be the cops number one suspect in the murder. A police source told me that their working theory is that Chris was allegedly high on drugs and he did it because Rebecca rejected his sexual advances. I've met Chris before. I visited him in jail several years ago. He was very cooperative and kind to me back then, but everyone keeps warning me that he's a dangerous guy. Plus his background and the unpredictability of drugs in general make this a scary situation. Finding him won't be easy, but it's what we have to do next. While we search for him, we need to follow the evidence and see if it supports this theory. Since we aren't going to be getting the case file, we'll have to find it ourselves. Fortunately, we were able to get the autopsy report from Rebecca's dad, Larry, along with a lot of other independent medical analysis and research he's commissioned over the years. We meet up with George Jerry to discuss the autopsy. Because of his reporting about Rebecca, George has become close to Rebecca's dad, Larry, and he's turning out to be a valuable member of our investigative team as well. You realize that every day there's at least probably a person who walks through that door who has flat out killed somebody in cold blood. Nobody knows who they are, and they're smiling at you, talking you, acting like nothing happened. It's just really surreal that they're out and walking around. What's frustrating about this case is if we could just get some basic information, I mean, you know, like the police to verify the piano leg theory. I mean, you know, we know it's probably true. I mean they someone told doctor Gould, because if you look at the autopsy report, she died from one or two blows to the head. Doctor Gould told me it was from a piano leg. Somebody was really mad and they hit her with enough force to kill her in one or two blows, which even with a piano leg, it would take a lot of it would take a lot of power. To do it, even for a grown man, and you know, you can hit somebody in the head with something and not kill them, and so for to do it, it must have been very anger fueled. Her actual death report, I guess it actually says only one blow. Doctor Gould said there he thinks there's two because there was like a like a a rendering of her skull and there was like some damage to another part of it, and he thought it was another another hit. But you know, technically she was hitt one time and that's that was the death blow. That is what actually the autopsy reads. Is a cold document, but it still gives me chills. It's almost like I'm back in the morgue watching the details of Rebecca's murder get poked and prodded by the medical examiner. Weighed out with precision written out in terse prose, this twenty two year old white female, Rebecca Gould died of blunt force injuries of the head. According to investigation. She was last independently known alive on Monday, September twenty seventh. By the way, that's not right, it's the twentieth that's mistake. At the time of her disappearance, she was staying at a friend's residence near Melbourne, Arkansas. She was reported missing on September twenty first. On September twenty seventh, her body was discovered in a ravine along State Highway nine south of Melbourne. Death was officially pronounced at ten fifty four am. Identification of the decease was established through dental records. A relatively high degree of decomposition change was noted. In general, this was consistent with death having taken place at or around the time of her disappearance. It was further noted that the amount of decomposition involving the head was disproportionately advanced compared to most of the rest of the body. Overall, examination of the body did not reveal any evidence of penetrating trauma. There was no evidence of significant blood force injury involving the thorax. An assessment for the presence or absence of trauma related to sexual assault could not be performed due to the advanced degree of decomposition present. In light of the suspicious nature of her disappearance, findings at the scene, and the nature of her injuries, the manner of death is homicide. So yeah, it was a really, really really hard hit to the head. Geez, maybe twice. It looks like the one super hard hit to the temple was something like the piano leg because it cracked her skull. That was the one that cracked her skull. I noticed the name at the bottom of the autopsy, Frank Peretti. He's the medical examiner for the Arkansas State Police, and he's actually a bit of a controversial figure because he also oversaw the medical examination of the infamous West Memphis three case. Larry also paid to have an independent review done. It confirms a lot of the details of the autopsy, but also has some additional insights. Larry told us that Dennis said Rebecca had been sexually assaulted, but the autopsy specifically said that certain medical tests could not be performed due to the length of time that the body had been exposed to the elements. Also, Rebecca was wearing her underwear and T shirt that, according to Danielle, she often wore to bed. Would a rapist attack someone and then put their underwear back on, but not bother to redress them. According to friends and family, Rebecca was a spitfire who would not back down from a fight. In the autopsy, it looks like Rebecca did not have defensive wounds. The autopsy mentions that material was taken from under her fingernails. The evidence suggests that she was not afraid of her killer. The date on the autopsy is wrong, but that's most likely a typo. So we have a murder weapon and an autopsy report that says Rebecca died from one or two blows to the head. But to make sure we're leaving no stone unturned, we call a neurologist to get their take. Hey, yeah, that's me to the left, and we can do one of a couple of things. Let's see it. This should be good in here. Any blunt trauma in the head can be dangerous. Typically when we think about the sort of severe trauma to the head that's that ends people's lives, we're thinking about bad falls or car accidents or anything like that, and usually those types of things cause some injury to the whole brain at the same time, sort of diffuse injury to the brain from deceleration and rocking around in the skull. However, other blood force trauma can can certainly cause injury significant enough to cause death. Trauma with a piano leg or any sort of you know, blunt instrument could cause bleeding on the outside of the brain, either what's called an epidural hematoma or a subdural hematoma, and those can put pressure on the brain and certainly could could could cause death if not recognized in a short period of time. So certainly, if it caused that much soft tissue damage and caused a skull fracture or you know, a fracture of any of the facial bones or anatomy, that certainly could be enough to cause death. And are there certain parts of the head that that may be more susceptible than others, So like if she was maybe hit like on the top of the head as opposed to like down by the jaw. So in the temple region is one area that is susceptible. There's an artery there called the middleman ingeal artery that if ruptured, can cause severe bleeding on the outside of the brain. And so that is one area, especially in a younger person, where we're damage that caused a skull fracture could could lead to death. I mean that would be the quickest, easiest, like least amount of force the two areas. I mean, that would be one the other would be at the at the base of the at the base of the skull where you can do damage to breathing structures and the the and the cervical spinal cord and the arteries that the vertebral arteries that supply blood to the base of the brain. And so that's another area that if if damaged, could cause significant, you know, significant injury pretty quickly. So it sounds like there was internal bleeding, But what about all the blood at the crime scene. So usually when we see blood on the outside of the body, that would indicate that someone's bleed bleeding from an external source. And so there are a number of number of arteries in the face and neck area that that if someone was bleeding outwardly, they could lose a significant amount of blood. That brings up another possibility, which is that that that it wasn't the brain injury at all. And that's you know, if there was a significant amount of blood, someone could simply, you know, lose enough blood volume to not be able to circulate blood to their organs. Adam opens a nearby textbook and rifles to images of brain injury. Is consistent with Rebecca's. Yeah, so this is a skin of something called an epidural hematoma. And what I'm looking at here is this. You can see there's like a lend shaped area that's that's not you don't see it on this side, and so the sort of bulges out right there. And so what happens is that's that's a hemorrhage that occurs between the skull and one of the outer layers of the outer coverings of the brain called the dura. And that's one that's oftentimes if you have a fracture that goes through the middle ninjea artery which runs sort of in the temple, sort of in the temple region. That that's something that you could see. After talking with Adam, it's clear that it is possible to cause enough damage to kill someone with one blow, and surprisingly it may not have required a significant amount of force. But the thing that really bugs me about the autopsy is the decomposition of the body and how that relates to the timeline of death. We head out to the spot on Highway nine where Rebecca's body was found, hopefully that will give us some context. There's a bomb, I mean, there's a skeleton. See look, and once you get over there, it gets really steep. So this area right here is a really hilly, remote area. It's near actually a scenic like beauty area overlook. It's near a lot of national forest land. You look down over like this, So from the road there's all this kind of brush and trees and yeah, and then you go past that and there's this huge rocky drop off and do you know, was it on this first drop off or was it on this much steeper lower I thought it was on the first drop off because a lot of people said you could see it from the road. But this would be a perfect dump area. Actually, I still think it would have been a much better plan actually to bury a body in the woods rather than just like because you know, it's going to get discovered if you throw it. I mean, you know, yeah, it might take a while, but like it's going to get discovered. That's what I wonder too, if there was something that just like spooked them. They were just kind of waiting, hoping to find a better spot, and then eventually they were just like, we need to get rid of this now, pulled up on the side of the road, and then disposed of the body. I think so, I mean, I think there's a very I think there's a really good chance that it was not here for a week, that it was somewhere else. It's funny though, like when I first heard about this, like before I first came here, they did make it seem They're like, oh, it was, you know, visible from the road, and as you can see, like not necessarily there's a lot of really wild growth and trees, and you know, I can see where it would stay hidden. Rebecca's body was found close to the road, beside a scenic overlook. It's one of the only places on the curvy steep road with a shoulder where people can actually pull over to check out the views or to dump trash. I'm torn about that because I feel like, on the one hand, I can totally see how a body could stay hidden down there for a week, you know, with my limited On the other hand, there were hundreds of people looking, and like you said, if it's an obvious garbage drop area, wouldn't this be like one of the very first places they searched. But some lingering questions remained for me. Was Rebecca dumped here immediately after she died, or was she kept somewhere else and then moved. I remember hearing from several first responders that they saw buzzards circling the site where Rebecca's body was found. Maybe that's a clue as a woman, Rebecca's body was actually dumped at the Highway nine site. So we contact Keith Bildstein, a conservation scientist who knows a ton about vultures. I have been into the northern part of Arkansas, but I have been into the southern part of Missouri, and that's gorgeous hill country. Two vultures that occur in that part of the country. One is a black vulture, which hunts entirely by sight and not by smell, and the other is the turkey vulture, which uses both old faction and vision to look carcass. Vultures can be pretty persnickety when a new kind of carcass occurs in a new area. If it's an If it's a typical kind of carcass like the deer, they might be more The vultures would be more likely to go to something that they're familiar with. It doesn't look out of place, that doesn't look strange, that looks more normal. If the carcass was unopened, the human carcass, it might take a little bit longer for the vultures to locate it. The question that you have to ask yourself is not the carcass you're thinking of, but how carcasses might have been around for the vultures to feed on, because they don't like really old meat unless there's no alternative. Over the last few days, as we've been investigating the facts of the autopsy report, I've been pulling out all the stops to try to find Chris. But in a town where everyone seems to be afraid of him, that's not always easy. I've made inroads with a local source who's scared of us even using their voice, and they've just given me a lead. During the weekends, Chris has been visiting his girlfriend, Cindy, but during the week he's a rehab facility in b Branch, Arkansas. And if that's where he is, then that's where we're headed. Heads south of Blachern Avenue, we're literally driving into the middle of meth Storm territory right now. We're driving straight through the heart of the part of Arkansas where the documentary meth Storm was filmed. This part of Arkansas has been decimated by poverty and myth. This is some creepy shit right here. Not Oh god, do you think somebody's list there left to see? This is? This is Midland, dude. I'm telling you, Wow, look at that. Look in there there's like a tree. It's like look to the right, look look this is this is a broken down nine miles turn left onto Highway sixty five. I know we're getting the hell out of here. The deeper we get, the scarier it gets, and the more I hope my grandmother's twenty year old durango does not break down. Okay, if he is at this rehab facility, I feel like we have a better chance. And wait, he might an area, he might not recognize me. But once I say, oh hey, I'm carelessis remember I came and saw you in jail, He'll know. I mean, how many people who visited right in jail? He'll know who I am. Once I say that I did read the contract with this one rehabits and b ranch, and it sort of said that they were expected to get jobs in the community and to you know, work, and it had it had this list of kind of like rules you fall, But it didn't sound like it was in pace, you know what I mean. It sounded more like maybe something that you could leave on the weekends. Okay, so that was my you answer my question then, like could we be at the right place? But he is at work, but at this point we don't really know. We're not sure of his exact address. We have this piece of information, so it's either we have really two options now because we don't know any of his friends. It's like either we try to go here and get him by himself and have a shot at that, or we have to try and get to him through Cindy. And I feel like that's really hit or miss. So I think this is unfortunately, like this is probably the best option to try this because if it worked, it would be much better than having to try and figure out what day is going to be in Mountain View maybe, or try to get him through Cindy. Absolutely, this guy nobody seems to know where he is, even his people are supposed to be his friends. Right. I brought along a letter I wrote to Chris, so if we can't ambush him, we've still communicated with him and let him know we're not a threat. Like if we leave this letter for him, but we don't want to leave it. If this is the next coming up is up here? Shit, man, this is on your right. This place as scary as now. God, oh god, damn it, that's him. I'm gonna pull, I'm gonna go. Beys fine, Hello, Hey, how's it going? The phone rings? It's my source. We're actually in b Branch right now. It's looking for Chris. Oh my god, Oh my god, are you Mountain View? He's back in Mountain View. No, like he's at Sindy's right now working on a truck. If he's outside right, Oh my god, this is killing me. How long do we How long do we rack to Mountain View? Two fifteen? I just really want to get him. We can. This might be our only shot. He says. He's sitting outside a house where Chris's car is right now. The GPS says, we're a half hour away. I can drive it him fifteen. We'll be right back. When people say, oh, find this person, it's not just like oh, you put it, put something in a database and it spits out an address. It's really hard. It involves and you don't have it confirmed until you physically are staking them out and seeing them at that place, and even then you know it could be different the next day, like and of course it's fucking so slow getting closer. We realize that this is about the spot where they lost Cindy on the stakeout how we passed it a million times. Then you know, nuts, I knew it. I knew she had to be right off of the road somehow, because there's no way. She's just weird. She just literally vanished. I got all the way back to like the one light in town, and I was like, shit, gone in a quarter mile. Your destination will be on the right. There's there. It is with their right. There's a white car. That's it. That's it. I'm superst that's a that's your destination. Unless that's it, because that also need it. That's him. That's him. The source has given us the road, but there's two houses it could be, and if we mess this up, we've just tipped the neighbors off that we're looking for him. We need to be one hundred percent sure before we pull into this driveway. It's the second one is the one with the people out fronts right in front of me. There's two guys out there. You ready, Yeah, take a deep breath, dude, get my ready. Yep. Chris. Hey, Chris is not that tall, but he's strong in stature. This is clearly a guy who has been through a lot in his life. His hands are coated in oil from working on his car. But the thing that strikes me most or his eyes. They're very light blue, almost glass like. He has a look of concern, like a friend asking for help. He looks surprised to see me, but he knew exactly who I was. He tells us he'll talk, but he invites us inside his house. My strategy when talking to anyone is to keep an open mind and not to judge. I think that they can sense that I'm straight with them, and that's why so many people are comfortable telling me their darkest secrets. It's clear that this case isn't just about the good guys and the bad guys. There's several shades of gray. Chris knows why I'm here and what I want to know. I've already asked him straight out if he killed Rebecca. Now that he's not being recorded by the cops, I want to know if he'll tell me why he doesn't trust them. Well, so, yeah, like I said, we've been working on this for a long time. And we've always been convined that the cops are just totally inconfident and they there's such a big word for me of confident or adopted him. And I think that since the beginning, I've never thought that you had even here with it, and Nick and I talked to lie never I thought you need to deal with it, and the police just seems super focused on that. So yeah, we're just we're just really trying to find out. Like, first of all, there's all these weird rumors, like that weekend. Do you have any idea like why they thought you were involved. Yeah, at the time, like my opinion at the time, like I was at a friend's house and he lived on a herple. Well, Rebecca had stopped by the that night. Well he had said something all the sidelines, like he was supposed to go fix your car the next morning. Well that's the morning she come up. She come up missing or whatever. And then like I told the copstead or whatever, and then it turned around, so they started trying to well, you know, her whereabouts or whatever. Real you know what I mean. I'm like, well, you know, uh, Daniel and Nick, Rebecca, me all of us went to together and I was really really friends with him. I mean, so like I felt like and Tim Mary kind of adopted me cause I had a bad influence environment that I lived in when I was a kid. And that asked me, you know, and I said, yeah, Mom, like you know, re Becca stopped at Jeb's house and uh thatnot or whatever, and he's supposed to go fix your car the next morning, and jab come up out of town for like two or three days, was gone, he said, either some kind of appointment or something. But I felt like when he looked at me, he looked at me like just empty empty eyes, you know. And I mean, of course we was all under in front of drugs and stuff back then, like really heavy. But in my heart, my opinion, I always thoughted had he knew something more than what he was saying or he had done, And so I always he was supposed to go to fix your car nex state, you know, like did you fix your car? And he wouldn't answer me, you know what I mean, Like, and so I always thought that, you know, he either brought some people down from Habit that did it, or he knew more about it than what he explained. And I like the more I kind of you know, tried to help solve the case. The more he got pushed on me that I had done it after that case with the kind of learnt me the hard way is never to you know, I put myself in it as a suspect basically, you know what I mean. And the only reason I even carried because we Becca we always raised in school together and like Rebecca and Daniell would always say Nick Danielle's I mean Nick was dating Danielle right, so we was always were closed and even like Rebecca Danielle's played the gas station with Kevin, Mary owned it up there and like we was always were close together, you know, And so in my opinion, I was lostuff. Like the last person is seeing that person with JB in my heart. I know that for a fact. So why don't you go to him to ask him? Well, what night was this? It's been a long time ago. It was a that night Rebecca stopped by there and got some weeding or whatever from JB. And then JB said, yeah, I'll come over to pitt your car the next day over there. Well he come up missing two three days after that. Well, why don't you go ask him, you know, instead of pushing them, my thought. But I went to cop squad ask him, I mean, had you ever been to that house at that point in time? I didn't know that, and I had never been to that house before. So that's why I told end Simon. I said, there's no way, Henes, I mean, you can keep me in a lot of tips questions. I've never been over there, yeah, you know ever, and I didn't. I met Casey one time and he he was at the gas station and I knew that something about Sun. That's all I knowed about Casey at that point in John right, So I've never been over there. Did they ever ask where you were on Sunday and Monday? That not or whatever. I went to Tim Marria's house, and that next morning when I woke up, she asked me, she said, have you seen Rebecca right? And I said, well, you know I heard it she stopped by JB's house last night, and that's what threw the cops over on me. But I said, I'll go over there to JB's house today and ask, you know, JB's been gone, you know, all day and haven't seen him. And then I come back by there, you know what I mean, And still know JB and still know JB. And it was like two days JB was gone, but he had an alibi because he went to some appointments, so I don't know what. Maybe he did have it, you know, he I don't know that wasn't you know, I didn't with him or nothing, but that's all I knew about it. But I was like, man, you know in my heart, you know, and you said it out of your mouth that you was gonna go to figure cards, you know what I mean? And this time he felt like I was trying to pinge him for you know what I mean. I was like, well, you know, in my heart, I think he has to do it, JAV. And I mean if I found out that, I mean, I you know, I'd hurt you, you know. And I was like, you know because I was like my sister, and I mean, nobody deserves something like that, you know. So you guys are close, I mean you and Rebecca, yeah, and Danielle, like we we went just like all the way from I think first grade all the way until like she passed away, like and we was all pretty close, you know what I mean. And you know how it is in school, you know, when we could pack ground and stuff like that. So they would also come to Tim and Mary's house a lot, and they'd also go to church with us. All tim America had adopted like all of us as a family, you know. So yeah, I was really close to all that whole family. Tim and Mary were Chris's adopted parents. They were also Danielle's ex husband Nick's biological parents, so there really was a close connection between Chris, Danielle and Rebecca. She was like a sister to him at one point in time. Like, I didn't have no place to stay when I first met Rebecca and Danielle and Joan, and they had a van sitting down in front yard, and like she would leave the van un locked and let me sleep in it because I had no place to sleep, somebody all opening the doors for me. It was just a van, but to me it was a home, you know. I mean, And I'd always go there after school and stuff. I'm especially in ball games, and I sliped that van, you know, and sometimes she let become in the house take showers, and I kept my clothing that van and stuff for like years. She was a good person and she had a good heart, you know, and like I just didn't, and that's how I always kind of cooperated, you know what I mean, because like anything that I might held my mind, I wanted to let it out, you know what I mean, because I mean unforgiveness, you know, and like, uh, I didn't want to and guilt and shame you know about you know, if I would have actually, you know, done something, you know, if I'd known that was gonna happen and stuff like that. You know, it was way heavy on me for a long time. But I mean I finally just you know, took the Lord, like you know, please take his burden for me, you know, and like, you know, just let me be able to accept it what to happen, you know, just going with my life because you know, I'm getting older and I'll have family and kids and stuff. But like I'd always walk ready with dinners, Simon and anybody that always come and ask me, you know. But you know that's what I told you in Simon. I was like, well, you know, you could do whatever to me, but I've never been over there, so you can't in the way you stick me for you, you you know what I mean. I was like, I mean, I tell you whatever I know, and the one told him more. I feel like I was a suspect, so I just he wanted to DNA sample and stuff, and I was like, look, dude, I'll give you an example, but I'm not giving it to you. I haven't got on a lot of texture tests one time, and like I flunked every question, and I felt like he was trying to manipulate me into saying something that I didn't, and I'm like, dude, you know, I'm just done. This went on, you know, like I don't you know, I think I even fund my own name. I'm like, you know whatever, you know what I mean, Like I flunked every question, like I was just lying about everything, and I'm like, you know, I told you everything. So they don't even like me at all, period, you know. And I pray every day to actually catch the person did it, but my heart, I feel like there already another person did it, and they're never actually gonna you know, h see his eyes, he had tears in his eyes. This is the guy that everybody's been saying is like the you know, this evil whatever. His eyes were all tearing up. He was I thought I was gonna cry. I mean it honestly sounded like he genuinely wanted the thing solved, and like one letter was why the fuck would he talk to us. He took us in there and like answered questions and was like, you know what we've heard from everybody is that at the time he had he was you know, he even said, I said, well, what day was this? You can't quite you know, you can't quite remember the days. I just feel strongly, maybe you know, everybody's fudging a little. JB might even be fudging about how close. Although no, he said it was a couple of nights. It was that weekend. Chris and JB's stories fit together, do you know what I mean? They do? They fit perfect. And he even said, you know, I thought it was him, I said, And JB's like he thought it was me, And that's Pistoph wanted to kick his ass. We get back to the car and Taylor and I are still shaking. We either just met with a murderer or someone who has been wrongly accused of murder. We'll be right back. After speaking with Chris, we head back to the house and meet George Jared to go over the murder board and unpack what Chris told us. So let's say this theory is correct, that Chris killed Rebecca while he was on some crazy drug rage and upset about Rebecca denying his sexual advances. Was there anything in the autopsy report to indicate that this could have been a meth murder? Doctor Gould, and I've actually gone back and forth on this particular detail. There is no indication she was sexually assaulted. Do you remember it's two thousand and four. It's you know, like DNA testing stuff like that. The techniques for collecting DNA not as advanced as they are obviously today. The decomposition factor, it was late September, and I can and I remember vividly it was very hot during that time period, so that the decomposition would have been more rapid. Now doctor Gold seems to think it's still a possibility that she may have been sexually assaulted, and ed she may have been. I mean, he obviously knows more about the human body than I do. But I just got you know, this is kind of the way I operate. Let's just operate from facts, and as of right now, there is no evidence of it, so I can't assume that it happened. And it also just I think for the simple fact that if you are on math, I mean it can make you. The crimes I've seen that have been committed while people on eth are just like something out of a horror movie. You know, it takes it to another level. The story you're about to hear is horrific. If you're easily disturbed, I recommend you skip ahead a minute and a half. I'm back in nineteen ninety eight. There was a family of foreign Dalton. A friend is having car trouble. The father gets up. He's a pretty good mechanic. He goes with his friend down to the river. Within a few minutes, he's shot in the head twice, thrown in the river. The killer comes back to the house. The little boy comes running up to the door. The killer has a tire tool in his hand. He crushes that kid's head like an eggshell. The mom comes running in to try to stop him, and he hits her twenty seven times with the tire tool. Twenty seven times. Then he goes into the room where the little girl's hiding under her bed. He drops the tire tool in her stuffed animals. He pulls her out from under the bed, wraps around a blanket, and throws her in the back of a car. As the killer is getting ready to leave, he notices something moving through the yard in the dark. It's the mom. She woke up and she climbed out the kitchen window and her parents lived next door. She was trying to get to their house and when she did, she got all the way to their front door on their porch. There's a bloody handprint on the door. Her killer came up behind her, slashed her throat from end to end. And the guy that did that, and I go through that whole theory high a meth. Yeah, it makes people insane. Her murder is not it's it shot. Any murder shocking, But it's not like the story I just told you about what happened to the Eliat family. That is grotesque. I mean, you hear a story like that and you're like, oh my god, and you won't stop thinking about it. What happened to her is she got hitting ahead a couple of times and everybody was dumped on the side of the road. It's not it's not a profoundly heinous crime, I guess, is what I'm trying to She wasn't to as far as she wasn't brutally sexually assaulted. So to me, it's one of these crimes. Okay, it's not. There's not a lot of complicated moving parts here like that case. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of dead people and missing people, and this is a whole thing. So in her case, it's not like that. Right now, I believe Chris, which means we have to go back and get everyone's stories on our own, explore all the possible suspects until we find the theory that sticks and we can bring Rebecca's killer to justice. So you've talked to JB already, I mean, do you think he had anything to do with it? No, I've ruled him out. I mean, I again, I'm following the evidence. I really, in my mind, he's been ruled out because for several reasons. I mean, number one, he was in cab at that weekend. His story makes sense. And also I do give him credit for the fact that he voluntarily he didn't have to respond to any of the social media stuff. He was calling me and tracking me down and being very available to meet with me and trying to get me to meet with him, And that says a lot because I feel like, if he was involved, why the hell would he do that. That's what I expect for somebody who is more or less being accused. You know, if people are saying, hey, you know JB had something to do it, that's how I I mean, that's how I would act too. I'd be like, hey, let me tell you what went down for real. You want it out there that you didn't do that. And this murder just nothing indicates that it was drug related in the sense that it was about drugs. It was a crime of passion one way or the other. It was a crime of passion. I think that they genuinely thought that Chris might have had something to do with it, and also perhaps the thought was, well, he's a bad guy, he deals drugs, he's on drugs. It was just really easy to sort of slot him into that and say maybe he did it. And we really don't even know why he got accused of it. Well, I still don't understand why. I mean, and granted the police aren't sharing evidence, so there could be evidence we don't know about, but I mean, I really have no idea why he was named as a suspect. It's even possible that when the police were doing their initial interviews, they heard the same rumors. Well, we're all here in you know, but it really is It's terrible that their names are still getting texted. When I say, does anybody have any names, some of the same names get texted to me. If it's proven they had nothing to do with it. Think about that living in a community where everybody thinks you killed somebody or you had something to do with it, and your name was kind of getting brought up as being connected to this and you had nothing to do with it. I mean, even if you did do drugs or something, that's a whole different thing than murdering someone. I feel like it would be a huge weight lifted off. This town shoulders to have this thing finally put to rest. So we have the murder weapon, a piano leg and we know it took just a single blow to the head to kill Rebecca. We've tracked down the prime suspects and don't think they did it. Now we just have to find out who did. I'm Catherine Townsend and this Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between How Stuff Works and School of Humans. It is written and recorded by me Catherine Townsend Taylor Church is our producer and story editor. Audio editing and designed by Jonathan Sleeve, mix engineer Glenn Mattulo, Audio mixing and love by Tunewelders. Executive producers Brandon Barr and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne and Chuck Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our field producer is James Morrison. Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Theme and original score by Ben Solee, available wherever you get your music. To dig into the investigation, please visit hellgoonpodcast dot com or follow us on social media. School of Humans

School of humans. This is like being a washer woman, right, not my first favorite thing to do a little bit of skill. You don't want to scratch anything. So how many strokes did the guy did? The guy? The hip the lady? With one or two? I hurt somebody pretty bad. You can't get swim with one of those legs like that I had. You could get a good swing with one of those legs, he said, that was an understatement. We know that it was a piano leg that is suspected to be the murder weapon. According to my source, that piano leg was never found. So we're in a piano repair shop looking to learn anything we can that might help solve the case that haunts us all. In September of two thousand and four, twenty two year old Rebecca Gould was brutally murdered in a remote area of the Arkansas Ozarks. Fourteen years later, her killer is still out there. I've come back to Mountain View with one mission to get justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend, and this is Helen Gone narrowing it down in my old age, the piano repair shop feels a little bit like a junkyard, but with fancy pianos. There's instruments everywhere. If we're gonna find out what kind of piano leg killed Rebecca Gold, this is the place. So I was wondering, if you know, we just could take a look at some of the you know, these piano legs here, just the different types or something. Turn on the line over there. Rick Cooley is the shop owner. He's been working with pianos for forty five years, so he knows what he's doing. But I think we're the first people to ask him so many questions about piano legs. They just don't come off normally. You know, they come off if you have to get them off, but they're not ready to come off in particularly ended up right. Nobody's going to certainly get the leg off of bed. There's no way to get it off. It screwed to the toe, yeah, so it has to be a free leg. But most of them just have a bolt down the middle and just screw in there. And the French leg that's the one on the left where it's more like curR it probably has a couple of screws. It'd be hard to screw that one on. It might something to do, but most of them just have like a bolt that's glued into the leg and just screws on. I can see because they kind of stick out. So if something were to like hit it on the bottom, it would probably that one's kind of least it screws on. But I'm not going to take it off unless you want to go back and a six pag of meer or something. Well, I guess it might get break one off, or sometimes they're falling off, you know, sometimes the screws stripped out or something. Does that happen a lot? Who does what my moves one and beats one up, and they lived in a trailer, it probably gets pretty beat up. No, I mean imagine this, because there's a time somebody's ranch as living room. It probably wouldn't be bet up, but in a trailer it probably wouldn't be. Console and a spinet has a free leg. Usually that's the consoles a little taller, that's the spin it. So that's the pianos don't have a free leg once they get to be bigger consoles and spin it's that's a smaller one. But that's the only two. I said that those kind of legs are common to spin its and consoles that are verticals. They're all verticals, you know, but all ones are big things like that. I see they have more of like a top to them, right, and they're more that's the old fashioned. Yeah. And how much did you you think that a leg like that weighs like two three pounds or gosh, like four pounds or something like it? Would it could be heavy? A baseball is ash, which is a harder word. Would the most piano wood would be. I'm sure a baseball that probably wait in a little bit longer base on it probablyways a little more than a piano or piano leg was gonna be met out of just something like birch or maple or something probably had listen, I'd let you have it, don't. I mean? Have you think somewhere after visiting the shop, I feel like we have a clear sense of the suspected murder weapon. The piano in Casey's house was either a console or spin at piano, the smaller kind that can fit up against a wall and would fit in a tiny trailer. The legs for these pianos are mostly straight and decorative, and in cheaper models they just have one screw that connects the leg. Basically the legs look like upside down baseball bats, thin and they weigh around three to four pounds, light enough to pick up and swing, heavy enough to kill someone. Right now, we're looking for Chris, a former drug dealer who's been in and out of jail his whole life. He's rumored to be the cops number one suspect in the murder. A police source told me that their working theory is that Chris was allegedly high on drugs and he did it because Rebecca rejected his sexual advances. I've met Chris before. I visited him in jail several years ago. He was very cooperative and kind to me back then, but everyone keeps warning me that he's a dangerous guy. Plus his background and the unpredictability of drugs in general make this a scary situation. Finding him won't be easy, but it's what we have to do next. While we search for him, we need to follow the evidence and see if it supports this theory. Since we aren't going to be getting the case file, we'll have to find it ourselves. Fortunately, we were able to get the autopsy report from Rebecca's dad, Larry, along with a lot of other independent medical analysis and research he's commissioned over the years. We meet up with George Jerry to discuss the autopsy. Because of his reporting about Rebecca, George has become close to Rebecca's dad, Larry, and he's turning out to be a valuable member of our investigative team as well. You realize that every day there's at least probably a person who walks through that door who has flat out killed somebody in cold blood. Nobody knows who they are, and they're smiling at you, talking you, acting like nothing happened. It's just really surreal that they're out and walking around. What's frustrating about this case is if we could just get some basic information, I mean, you know, like the police to verify the piano leg theory. I mean, you know, we know it's probably true. I mean they someone told doctor Gould, because if you look at the autopsy report, she died from one or two blows to the head. Doctor Gould told me it was from a piano leg. Somebody was really mad and they hit her with enough force to kill her in one or two blows, which even with a piano leg, it would take a lot of it would take a lot of power. To do it, even for a grown man, and you know, you can hit somebody in the head with something and not kill them, and so for to do it, it must have been very anger fueled. Her actual death report, I guess it actually says only one blow. Doctor Gould said there he thinks there's two because there was like a like a a rendering of her skull and there was like some damage to another part of it, and he thought it was another another hit. But you know, technically she was hitt one time and that's that was the death blow. That is what actually the autopsy reads. Is a cold document, but it still gives me chills. It's almost like I'm back in the morgue watching the details of Rebecca's murder get poked and prodded by the medical examiner. Weighed out with precision written out in terse prose, this twenty two year old white female, Rebecca Gould died of blunt force injuries of the head. According to investigation. She was last independently known alive on Monday, September twenty seventh. By the way, that's not right, it's the twentieth that's mistake. At the time of her disappearance, she was staying at a friend's residence near Melbourne, Arkansas. She was reported missing on September twenty first. On September twenty seventh, her body was discovered in a ravine along State Highway nine south of Melbourne. Death was officially pronounced at ten fifty four am. Identification of the decease was established through dental records. A relatively high degree of decomposition change was noted. In general, this was consistent with death having taken place at or around the time of her disappearance. It was further noted that the amount of decomposition involving the head was disproportionately advanced compared to most of the rest of the body. Overall, examination of the body did not reveal any evidence of penetrating trauma. There was no evidence of significant blood force injury involving the thorax. An assessment for the presence or absence of trauma related to sexual assault could not be performed due to the advanced degree of decomposition present. In light of the suspicious nature of her disappearance, findings at the scene, and the nature of her injuries, the manner of death is homicide. So yeah, it was a really, really really hard hit to the head. Geez, maybe twice. It looks like the one super hard hit to the temple was something like the piano leg because it cracked her skull. That was the one that cracked her skull. I noticed the name at the bottom of the autopsy, Frank Peretti. He's the medical examiner for the Arkansas State Police, and he's actually a bit of a controversial figure because he also oversaw the medical examination of the infamous West Memphis three case. Larry also paid to have an independent review done. It confirms a lot of the details of the autopsy, but also has some additional insights. Larry told us that Dennis said Rebecca had been sexually assaulted, but the autopsy specifically said that certain medical tests could not be performed due to the length of time that the body had been exposed to the elements. Also, Rebecca was wearing her underwear and T shirt that, according to Danielle, she often wore to bed. Would a rapist attack someone and then put their underwear back on, but not bother to redress them. According to friends and family, Rebecca was a spitfire who would not back down from a fight. In the autopsy, it looks like Rebecca did not have defensive wounds. The autopsy mentions that material was taken from under her fingernails. The evidence suggests that she was not afraid of her killer. The date on the autopsy is wrong, but that's most likely a typo. So we have a murder weapon and an autopsy report that says Rebecca died from one or two blows to the head. But to make sure we're leaving no stone unturned, we call a neurologist to get their take. Hey, yeah, that's me to the left, and we can do one of a couple of things. Let's see it. This should be good in here. Any blunt trauma in the head can be dangerous. Typically when we think about the sort of severe trauma to the head that's that ends people's lives, we're thinking about bad falls or car accidents or anything like that, and usually those types of things cause some injury to the whole brain at the same time, sort of diffuse injury to the brain from deceleration and rocking around in the skull. However, other blood force trauma can can certainly cause injury significant enough to cause death. Trauma with a piano leg or any sort of you know, blunt instrument could cause bleeding on the outside of the brain, either what's called an epidural hematoma or a subdural hematoma, and those can put pressure on the brain and certainly could could could cause death if not recognized in a short period of time. So certainly, if it caused that much soft tissue damage and caused a skull fracture or you know, a fracture of any of the facial bones or anatomy, that certainly could be enough to cause death. And are there certain parts of the head that that may be more susceptible than others, So like if she was maybe hit like on the top of the head as opposed to like down by the jaw. So in the temple region is one area that is susceptible. There's an artery there called the middleman ingeal artery that if ruptured, can cause severe bleeding on the outside of the brain. And so that is one area, especially in a younger person, where we're damage that caused a skull fracture could could lead to death. I mean that would be the quickest, easiest, like least amount of force the two areas. I mean, that would be one the other would be at the at the base of the at the base of the skull where you can do damage to breathing structures and the the and the cervical spinal cord and the arteries that the vertebral arteries that supply blood to the base of the brain. And so that's another area that if if damaged, could cause significant, you know, significant injury pretty quickly. So it sounds like there was internal bleeding, But what about all the blood at the crime scene. So usually when we see blood on the outside of the body, that would indicate that someone's bleed bleeding from an external source. And so there are a number of number of arteries in the face and neck area that that if someone was bleeding outwardly, they could lose a significant amount of blood. That brings up another possibility, which is that that that it wasn't the brain injury at all. And that's you know, if there was a significant amount of blood, someone could simply, you know, lose enough blood volume to not be able to circulate blood to their organs. Adam opens a nearby textbook and rifles to images of brain injury. Is consistent with Rebecca's. Yeah, so this is a skin of something called an epidural hematoma. And what I'm looking at here is this. You can see there's like a lend shaped area that's that's not you don't see it on this side, and so the sort of bulges out right there. And so what happens is that's that's a hemorrhage that occurs between the skull and one of the outer layers of the outer coverings of the brain called the dura. And that's one that's oftentimes if you have a fracture that goes through the middle ninjea artery which runs sort of in the temple, sort of in the temple region. That that's something that you could see. After talking with Adam, it's clear that it is possible to cause enough damage to kill someone with one blow, and surprisingly it may not have required a significant amount of force. But the thing that really bugs me about the autopsy is the decomposition of the body and how that relates to the timeline of death. We head out to the spot on Highway nine where Rebecca's body was found, hopefully that will give us some context. There's a bomb, I mean, there's a skeleton. See look, and once you get over there, it gets really steep. So this area right here is a really hilly, remote area. It's near actually a scenic like beauty area overlook. It's near a lot of national forest land. You look down over like this, So from the road there's all this kind of brush and trees and yeah, and then you go past that and there's this huge rocky drop off and do you know, was it on this first drop off or was it on this much steeper lower I thought it was on the first drop off because a lot of people said you could see it from the road. But this would be a perfect dump area. Actually, I still think it would have been a much better plan actually to bury a body in the woods rather than just like because you know, it's going to get discovered if you throw it. I mean, you know, yeah, it might take a while, but like it's going to get discovered. That's what I wonder too, if there was something that just like spooked them. They were just kind of waiting, hoping to find a better spot, and then eventually they were just like, we need to get rid of this now, pulled up on the side of the road, and then disposed of the body. I think so, I mean, I think there's a very I think there's a really good chance that it was not here for a week, that it was somewhere else. It's funny though, like when I first heard about this, like before I first came here, they did make it seem They're like, oh, it was, you know, visible from the road, and as you can see, like not necessarily there's a lot of really wild growth and trees, and you know, I can see where it would stay hidden. Rebecca's body was found close to the road, beside a scenic overlook. It's one of the only places on the curvy steep road with a shoulder where people can actually pull over to check out the views or to dump trash. I'm torn about that because I feel like, on the one hand, I can totally see how a body could stay hidden down there for a week, you know, with my limited On the other hand, there were hundreds of people looking, and like you said, if it's an obvious garbage drop area, wouldn't this be like one of the very first places they searched. But some lingering questions remained for me. Was Rebecca dumped here immediately after she died, or was she kept somewhere else and then moved. I remember hearing from several first responders that they saw buzzards circling the site where Rebecca's body was found. Maybe that's a clue as a woman, Rebecca's body was actually dumped at the Highway nine site. So we contact Keith Bildstein, a conservation scientist who knows a ton about vultures. I have been into the northern part of Arkansas, but I have been into the southern part of Missouri, and that's gorgeous hill country. Two vultures that occur in that part of the country. One is a black vulture, which hunts entirely by sight and not by smell, and the other is the turkey vulture, which uses both old faction and vision to look carcass. Vultures can be pretty persnickety when a new kind of carcass occurs in a new area. If it's an If it's a typical kind of carcass like the deer, they might be more The vultures would be more likely to go to something that they're familiar with. It doesn't look out of place, that doesn't look strange, that looks more normal. If the carcass was unopened, the human carcass, it might take a little bit longer for the vultures to locate it. The question that you have to ask yourself is not the carcass you're thinking of, but how carcasses might have been around for the vultures to feed on, because they don't like really old meat unless there's no alternative. Over the last few days, as we've been investigating the facts of the autopsy report, I've been pulling out all the stops to try to find Chris. But in a town where everyone seems to be afraid of him, that's not always easy. I've made inroads with a local source who's scared of us even using their voice, and they've just given me a lead. During the weekends, Chris has been visiting his girlfriend, Cindy, but during the week he's a rehab facility in b Branch, Arkansas. And if that's where he is, then that's where we're headed. Heads south of Blachern Avenue, we're literally driving into the middle of meth Storm territory right now. We're driving straight through the heart of the part of Arkansas where the documentary meth Storm was filmed. This part of Arkansas has been decimated by poverty and myth. This is some creepy shit right here. Not Oh god, do you think somebody's list there left to see? This is? This is Midland, dude. I'm telling you, Wow, look at that. Look in there there's like a tree. It's like look to the right, look look this is this is a broken down nine miles turn left onto Highway sixty five. I know we're getting the hell out of here. The deeper we get, the scarier it gets, and the more I hope my grandmother's twenty year old durango does not break down. Okay, if he is at this rehab facility, I feel like we have a better chance. And wait, he might an area, he might not recognize me. But once I say, oh hey, I'm carelessis remember I came and saw you in jail, He'll know. I mean, how many people who visited right in jail? He'll know who I am. Once I say that I did read the contract with this one rehabits and b ranch, and it sort of said that they were expected to get jobs in the community and to you know, work, and it had it had this list of kind of like rules you fall, But it didn't sound like it was in pace, you know what I mean. It sounded more like maybe something that you could leave on the weekends. Okay, so that was my you answer my question then, like could we be at the right place? But he is at work, but at this point we don't really know. We're not sure of his exact address. We have this piece of information, so it's either we have really two options now because we don't know any of his friends. It's like either we try to go here and get him by himself and have a shot at that, or we have to try and get to him through Cindy. And I feel like that's really hit or miss. So I think this is unfortunately, like this is probably the best option to try this because if it worked, it would be much better than having to try and figure out what day is going to be in Mountain View maybe, or try to get him through Cindy. Absolutely, this guy nobody seems to know where he is, even his people are supposed to be his friends. Right. I brought along a letter I wrote to Chris, so if we can't ambush him, we've still communicated with him and let him know we're not a threat. Like if we leave this letter for him, but we don't want to leave it. If this is the next coming up is up here? Shit, man, this is on your right. This place as scary as now. God, oh god, damn it, that's him. I'm gonna pull, I'm gonna go. Beys fine, Hello, Hey, how's it going? The phone rings? It's my source. We're actually in b Branch right now. It's looking for Chris. Oh my god, Oh my god, are you Mountain View? He's back in Mountain View. No, like he's at Sindy's right now working on a truck. If he's outside right, Oh my god, this is killing me. How long do we How long do we rack to Mountain View? Two fifteen? I just really want to get him. We can. This might be our only shot. He says. He's sitting outside a house where Chris's car is right now. The GPS says, we're a half hour away. I can drive it him fifteen. We'll be right back. When people say, oh, find this person, it's not just like oh, you put it, put something in a database and it spits out an address. It's really hard. It involves and you don't have it confirmed until you physically are staking them out and seeing them at that place, and even then you know it could be different the next day, like and of course it's fucking so slow getting closer. We realize that this is about the spot where they lost Cindy on the stakeout how we passed it a million times. Then you know, nuts, I knew it. I knew she had to be right off of the road somehow, because there's no way. She's just weird. She just literally vanished. I got all the way back to like the one light in town, and I was like, shit, gone in a quarter mile. Your destination will be on the right. There's there. It is with their right. There's a white car. That's it. That's it. I'm superst that's a that's your destination. Unless that's it, because that also need it. That's him. That's him. The source has given us the road, but there's two houses it could be, and if we mess this up, we've just tipped the neighbors off that we're looking for him. We need to be one hundred percent sure before we pull into this driveway. It's the second one is the one with the people out fronts right in front of me. There's two guys out there. You ready, Yeah, take a deep breath, dude, get my ready. Yep. Chris. Hey, Chris is not that tall, but he's strong in stature. This is clearly a guy who has been through a lot in his life. His hands are coated in oil from working on his car. But the thing that strikes me most or his eyes. They're very light blue, almost glass like. He has a look of concern, like a friend asking for help. He looks surprised to see me, but he knew exactly who I was. He tells us he'll talk, but he invites us inside his house. My strategy when talking to anyone is to keep an open mind and not to judge. I think that they can sense that I'm straight with them, and that's why so many people are comfortable telling me their darkest secrets. It's clear that this case isn't just about the good guys and the bad guys. There's several shades of gray. Chris knows why I'm here and what I want to know. I've already asked him straight out if he killed Rebecca. Now that he's not being recorded by the cops, I want to know if he'll tell me why he doesn't trust them. Well, so, yeah, like I said, we've been working on this for a long time. And we've always been convined that the cops are just totally inconfident and they there's such a big word for me of confident or adopted him. And I think that since the beginning, I've never thought that you had even here with it, and Nick and I talked to lie never I thought you need to deal with it, and the police just seems super focused on that. So yeah, we're just we're just really trying to find out. Like, first of all, there's all these weird rumors, like that weekend. Do you have any idea like why they thought you were involved. Yeah, at the time, like my opinion at the time, like I was at a friend's house and he lived on a herple. Well, Rebecca had stopped by the that night. Well he had said something all the sidelines, like he was supposed to go fix your car the next morning. Well that's the morning she come up. She come up missing or whatever. And then like I told the copstead or whatever, and then it turned around, so they started trying to well, you know, her whereabouts or whatever. Real you know what I mean. I'm like, well, you know, uh, Daniel and Nick, Rebecca, me all of us went to together and I was really really friends with him. I mean, so like I felt like and Tim Mary kind of adopted me cause I had a bad influence environment that I lived in when I was a kid. And that asked me, you know, and I said, yeah, Mom, like you know, re Becca stopped at Jeb's house and uh thatnot or whatever, and he's supposed to go fix your car the next morning, and jab come up out of town for like two or three days, was gone, he said, either some kind of appointment or something. But I felt like when he looked at me, he looked at me like just empty empty eyes, you know. And I mean, of course we was all under in front of drugs and stuff back then, like really heavy. But in my heart, my opinion, I always thoughted had he knew something more than what he was saying or he had done, And so I always he was supposed to go to fix your car nex state, you know, like did you fix your car? And he wouldn't answer me, you know what I mean, Like, and so I always thought that, you know, he either brought some people down from Habit that did it, or he knew more about it than what he explained. And I like the more I kind of you know, tried to help solve the case. The more he got pushed on me that I had done it after that case with the kind of learnt me the hard way is never to you know, I put myself in it as a suspect basically, you know what I mean. And the only reason I even carried because we Becca we always raised in school together and like Rebecca and Daniell would always say Nick Danielle's I mean Nick was dating Danielle right, so we was always were closed and even like Rebecca Danielle's played the gas station with Kevin, Mary owned it up there and like we was always were close together, you know, And so in my opinion, I was lostuff. Like the last person is seeing that person with JB in my heart. I know that for a fact. So why don't you go to him to ask him? Well, what night was this? It's been a long time ago. It was a that night Rebecca stopped by there and got some weeding or whatever from JB. And then JB said, yeah, I'll come over to pitt your car the next day over there. Well he come up missing two three days after that. Well, why don't you go ask him, you know, instead of pushing them, my thought. But I went to cop squad ask him, I mean, had you ever been to that house at that point in time? I didn't know that, and I had never been to that house before. So that's why I told end Simon. I said, there's no way, Henes, I mean, you can keep me in a lot of tips questions. I've never been over there, yeah, you know ever, and I didn't. I met Casey one time and he he was at the gas station and I knew that something about Sun. That's all I knowed about Casey at that point in John right, So I've never been over there. Did they ever ask where you were on Sunday and Monday? That not or whatever. I went to Tim Marria's house, and that next morning when I woke up, she asked me, she said, have you seen Rebecca right? And I said, well, you know I heard it she stopped by JB's house last night, and that's what threw the cops over on me. But I said, I'll go over there to JB's house today and ask, you know, JB's been gone, you know, all day and haven't seen him. And then I come back by there, you know what I mean, And still know JB and still know JB. And it was like two days JB was gone, but he had an alibi because he went to some appointments, so I don't know what. Maybe he did have it, you know, he I don't know that wasn't you know, I didn't with him or nothing, but that's all I knew about it. But I was like, man, you know in my heart, you know, and you said it out of your mouth that you was gonna go to figure cards, you know what I mean? And this time he felt like I was trying to pinge him for you know what I mean. I was like, well, you know, in my heart, I think he has to do it, JAV. And I mean if I found out that, I mean, I you know, I'd hurt you, you know. And I was like, you know because I was like my sister, and I mean, nobody deserves something like that, you know. So you guys are close, I mean you and Rebecca, yeah, and Danielle, like we we went just like all the way from I think first grade all the way until like she passed away, like and we was all pretty close, you know what I mean. And you know how it is in school, you know, when we could pack ground and stuff like that. So they would also come to Tim and Mary's house a lot, and they'd also go to church with us. All tim America had adopted like all of us as a family, you know. So yeah, I was really close to all that whole family. Tim and Mary were Chris's adopted parents. They were also Danielle's ex husband Nick's biological parents, so there really was a close connection between Chris, Danielle and Rebecca. She was like a sister to him at one point in time. Like, I didn't have no place to stay when I first met Rebecca and Danielle and Joan, and they had a van sitting down in front yard, and like she would leave the van un locked and let me sleep in it because I had no place to sleep, somebody all opening the doors for me. It was just a van, but to me it was a home, you know. I mean, And I'd always go there after school and stuff. I'm especially in ball games, and I sliped that van, you know, and sometimes she let become in the house take showers, and I kept my clothing that van and stuff for like years. She was a good person and she had a good heart, you know, and like I just didn't, and that's how I always kind of cooperated, you know what I mean, because like anything that I might held my mind, I wanted to let it out, you know what I mean, because I mean unforgiveness, you know, and like, uh, I didn't want to and guilt and shame you know about you know, if I would have actually, you know, done something, you know, if I'd known that was gonna happen and stuff like that. You know, it was way heavy on me for a long time. But I mean I finally just you know, took the Lord, like you know, please take his burden for me, you know, and like, you know, just let me be able to accept it what to happen, you know, just going with my life because you know, I'm getting older and I'll have family and kids and stuff. But like I'd always walk ready with dinners, Simon and anybody that always come and ask me, you know. But you know that's what I told you in Simon. I was like, well, you know, you could do whatever to me, but I've never been over there, so you can't in the way you stick me for you, you you know what I mean. I was like, I mean, I tell you whatever I know, and the one told him more. I feel like I was a suspect, so I just he wanted to DNA sample and stuff, and I was like, look, dude, I'll give you an example, but I'm not giving it to you. I haven't got on a lot of texture tests one time, and like I flunked every question, and I felt like he was trying to manipulate me into saying something that I didn't, and I'm like, dude, you know, I'm just done. This went on, you know, like I don't you know, I think I even fund my own name. I'm like, you know whatever, you know what I mean, Like I flunked every question, like I was just lying about everything, and I'm like, you know, I told you everything. So they don't even like me at all, period, you know. And I pray every day to actually catch the person did it, but my heart, I feel like there already another person did it, and they're never actually gonna you know, h see his eyes, he had tears in his eyes. This is the guy that everybody's been saying is like the you know, this evil whatever. His eyes were all tearing up. He was I thought I was gonna cry. I mean it honestly sounded like he genuinely wanted the thing solved, and like one letter was why the fuck would he talk to us. He took us in there and like answered questions and was like, you know what we've heard from everybody is that at the time he had he was you know, he even said, I said, well, what day was this? You can't quite you know, you can't quite remember the days. I just feel strongly, maybe you know, everybody's fudging a little. JB might even be fudging about how close. Although no, he said it was a couple of nights. It was that weekend. Chris and JB's stories fit together, do you know what I mean? They do? They fit perfect. And he even said, you know, I thought it was him, I said, And JB's like he thought it was me, And that's Pistoph wanted to kick his ass. We get back to the car and Taylor and I are still shaking. We either just met with a murderer or someone who has been wrongly accused of murder. We'll be right back. After speaking with Chris, we head back to the house and meet George Jared to go over the murder board and unpack what Chris told us. So let's say this theory is correct, that Chris killed Rebecca while he was on some crazy drug rage and upset about Rebecca denying his sexual advances. Was there anything in the autopsy report to indicate that this could have been a meth murder? Doctor Gould, and I've actually gone back and forth on this particular detail. There is no indication she was sexually assaulted. Do you remember it's two thousand and four. It's you know, like DNA testing stuff like that. The techniques for collecting DNA not as advanced as they are obviously today. The decomposition factor, it was late September, and I can and I remember vividly it was very hot during that time period, so that the decomposition would have been more rapid. Now doctor Gold seems to think it's still a possibility that she may have been sexually assaulted, and ed she may have been. I mean, he obviously knows more about the human body than I do. But I just got you know, this is kind of the way I operate. Let's just operate from facts, and as of right now, there is no evidence of it, so I can't assume that it happened. And it also just I think for the simple fact that if you are on math, I mean it can make you. The crimes I've seen that have been committed while people on eth are just like something out of a horror movie. You know, it takes it to another level. The story you're about to hear is horrific. If you're easily disturbed, I recommend you skip ahead a minute and a half. I'm back in nineteen ninety eight. There was a family of foreign Dalton. A friend is having car trouble. The father gets up. He's a pretty good mechanic. He goes with his friend down to the river. Within a few minutes, he's shot in the head twice, thrown in the river. The killer comes back to the house. The little boy comes running up to the door. The killer has a tire tool in his hand. He crushes that kid's head like an eggshell. The mom comes running in to try to stop him, and he hits her twenty seven times with the tire tool. Twenty seven times. Then he goes into the room where the little girl's hiding under her bed. He drops the tire tool in her stuffed animals. He pulls her out from under the bed, wraps around a blanket, and throws her in the back of a car. As the killer is getting ready to leave, he notices something moving through the yard in the dark. It's the mom. She woke up and she climbed out the kitchen window and her parents lived next door. She was trying to get to their house and when she did, she got all the way to their front door on their porch. There's a bloody handprint on the door. Her killer came up behind her, slashed her throat from end to end. And the guy that did that, and I go through that whole theory high a meth. Yeah, it makes people insane. Her murder is not it's it shot. Any murder shocking, But it's not like the story I just told you about what happened to the Eliat family. That is grotesque. I mean, you hear a story like that and you're like, oh my god, and you won't stop thinking about it. What happened to her is she got hitting ahead a couple of times and everybody was dumped on the side of the road. It's not it's not a profoundly heinous crime, I guess, is what I'm trying to She wasn't to as far as she wasn't brutally sexually assaulted. So to me, it's one of these crimes. Okay, it's not. There's not a lot of complicated moving parts here like that case. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of dead people and missing people, and this is a whole thing. So in her case, it's not like that. Right now, I believe Chris, which means we have to go back and get everyone's stories on our own, explore all the possible suspects until we find the theory that sticks and we can bring Rebecca's killer to justice. So you've talked to JB already, I mean, do you think he had anything to do with it? No, I've ruled him out. I mean, I again, I'm following the evidence. I really, in my mind, he's been ruled out because for several reasons. I mean, number one, he was in cab at that weekend. His story makes sense. And also I do give him credit for the fact that he voluntarily he didn't have to respond to any of the social media stuff. He was calling me and tracking me down and being very available to meet with me and trying to get me to meet with him, And that says a lot because I feel like, if he was involved, why the hell would he do that. That's what I expect for somebody who is more or less being accused. You know, if people are saying, hey, you know JB had something to do it, that's how I I mean, that's how I would act too. I'd be like, hey, let me tell you what went down for real. You want it out there that you didn't do that. And this murder just nothing indicates that it was drug related in the sense that it was about drugs. It was a crime of passion one way or the other. It was a crime of passion. I think that they genuinely thought that Chris might have had something to do with it, and also perhaps the thought was, well, he's a bad guy, he deals drugs, he's on drugs. It was just really easy to sort of slot him into that and say maybe he did it. And we really don't even know why he got accused of it. Well, I still don't understand why. I mean, and granted the police aren't sharing evidence, so there could be evidence we don't know about, but I mean, I really have no idea why he was named as a suspect. It's even possible that when the police were doing their initial interviews, they heard the same rumors. Well, we're all here in you know, but it really is It's terrible that their names are still getting texted. When I say, does anybody have any names, some of the same names get texted to me. If it's proven they had nothing to do with it. Think about that living in a community where everybody thinks you killed somebody or you had something to do with it, and your name was kind of getting brought up as being connected to this and you had nothing to do with it. I mean, even if you did do drugs or something, that's a whole different thing than murdering someone. I feel like it would be a huge weight lifted off. This town shoulders to have this thing finally put to rest. So we have the murder weapon, a piano leg and we know it took just a single blow to the head to kill Rebecca. We've tracked down the prime suspects and don't think they did it. Now we just have to find out who did. I'm Catherine Townsend and this Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between How Stuff Works and School of Humans. It is written and recorded by me Catherine Townsend Taylor Church is our producer and story editor. Audio editing and designed by Jonathan Sleeve, mix engineer Glenn Mattulo, Audio mixing and love by Tunewelders. Executive producers Brandon Barr and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne and Chuck Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our field producer is James Morrison. Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Theme and original score by Ben Solee, available wherever you get your music. To dig into the investigation, please visit hellgoonpodcast dot com or follow us on social media. School of Humans