Criminal - The Fifth Suspect

Episode Date: January 9, 2015

In June 2014, authorities released information about a massive child pornography ring being conducted in North Carolina. Four suspects had already been arrested, and the police were asking the public for help finding a fifth suspect. But they didn't need to look very hard -- the suspect, a man named Tommy Wall, was about to turn himself in, almost by accident. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Your own weight loss journey is personal. Everyone's diet is different. Everyone's bodies are different. And according to Noom, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Thank you. for a healthier lifestyle. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your free trial today at Noom.com. Today's episode is not okay for younger listeners, and it could be upsetting to victims of sexual abuse, so please use discretion.

Every time someone sees his face, they say, he's Tommy Wall. That's the boy they arrested. Even though they may know or they may not know. He can never live it down. You just don't have a charge of pedophilia and outlive it. You just can't outlive that. This is Mary. She's asked us not to use her real name.

Her ex-son-in-law, Tommy Wall, was arrested as part of an investigation into a child pornography and sex ring. Four people had already been arrested, three men and a woman. The ring was conducted under the guise of a daycare center in Sanford, North Carolina. It's a horrible story, something none of us ever want to even have to think about, much less have our name associated with. As Mary says, you just can't outlive that. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The Ring was run by a man named Brad Bird says that this unidentified man who he's looking for is part of the biggest sex crimes case that he has ever worked. The ring was run by a man named Bailey Joe Mills.

Mills presented himself as a babysitter and mentor, but actually was producing child pornography in the building behind his house, with victims ranging in age from 1 to 14. Mills was caught after he contacted a 13-year-old on Facebook about paying her for sex, and the girl's mother called the police. This was a big news story across North Carolina in June 2014. Four people had been caught, but the police were still looking for the fifth man. That's when Mary saw her former son-in-law on TV. I was sitting here in my reclining chair in my living room and the news came on and I was not paying real close attention to the television at that time but when it came on the second time I paid attention. I said that's Tommy Wall and it was just it was just nauseating.

It was just absolutely nauseating. And so I was basically sitting at my kitchen table working. And I get a text from my location manager at the store, Kim West, and she said, you look like the dude on TV. I said, what? Tommy Wall is 50 years old, a divorced father of two. Tall, white, thin hair. He's sitting in what seems like a brand new house in Four Oaks, North Carolina. It's so clean and new, it looks like one of those show houses they put together for new subdivisions. He has two pictures of his kids in frames.

That's about it. Back in June, he'd been working for a construction supply company, the same one he'd worked for for 23 years, when he got the text from his boss. She said, you were on the news tonight. I said, no way. So she sent me, because I don't watch the news, so I didn't know. And this was like 7 o'clock. So she sent me a link, and there was four people in the picture,

and I texted her back and said, I don't look like none of them. It was a girl, a guy, or three guys and a girl. And I was like, I don't look like none of them. It was a girl, a guy, or three guys and a girl. And I was like, I don't look like none. She said, scroll down. So I scrolled on my phone and I was like, wow, that is me. And there was a little number, a phone number, under my picture. I didn't read any of the article. I just hit that button that was going to copy the number.

Well, it dialed the phone number and the man answered the phone. I said, who is this? He said, who are you looking? I said, whoever's putting my pictures on the phone. I said, who is this? He said, who are you looking? I said, whoever's putting my pictures on the website. I said, I want to know what's going on. He had called the detective who was in charge of the case, Brad Bird. And he says, well, who is this? And I told him my name.

He says, well, where do you live? I told him where I live. I said, I need to come down. We need to straighten this out right now. I said, something's going on, and I don't know what it is. And I said, I want to get to the bottom of it. And the detective was like, well, we don't open till eight tomorrow. Can you come at 8.30? I said, 8.30 tomorrow? I mean, you know, I'm thinking, I want to do this right now. Tommy was trying to get himself off the TV, but what he had

essentially done is handed them his own name on a plate. We just received word within the last 10 minutes that police have identified who this suspect is. They have identified him as Tommy Wall, and he is not in custody, but they do know who he is. They're still looking for him right now. Now, they released this picture of the suspect. The next morning, Tommy went to the sheriff's office right before 8.30, as promised. I get there, and they call the detective, and we go back in the interrogating room for questioning. And he has a picture there, and he shows me this picture, and he says,

do you recognize this picture? And I said, nope. What is it? It was a picture of the building behind the home of bailey joe mills the leader of the pornography ring and uh he said i just need to go and tell you i'm gonna arrest you and uh so he read me my rights and my phone was still gone and uh he's reading and all this and i looked at at him, I said, dude, do you really think I've done this? And he looked at me with this sarcasm look. He says, yeah, I've got you on video. It's true Tommy was on video. Here's what happened. In 2011, Tommy had been online dating. One woman he met was the wife of Bailey Jo Mills. Her name is Elizabeth. Tommy went to the Mills home to visit her. He says he stayed for an

hour. He says they fooled around a bit and then he left. The only time he ever saw her, he says. But Bailey Jo Mills appears to have had a camera rolling in the house. We're not really sure why. Maybe for security. Who knows? But it caught Tommy's visit and the video was saved along with a whole trove of other materials, apparently including the child pornography at the center of the case. So, he was on video, from that visit three years earlier. The problem for Tommy was that the police were saying he was on other videos too, pornographic videos. His bail was set at $1 million.

I went to a holding cell. And I spent the day there and spent the night. And the next morning, I got up and they took me to court. That's when I went for my first court appearance. And then in front of the judge, the DA read all the charges. And then the judge looked at judge looked at me she says you know you've asked for a court-appointed lawyer and everything i said yes your honor and she says you know that these charges carry uh life in prison without parole and i was like what what what are the charges um what are you hearing the judge read? You know, assisting rape and child molestation and solicitation of sex with minors. Officially, the charges were first-degree rape of a child, first-degree sex offense against a child, and felony conspiracy.

You know, they're saying all these charges, and I'm just like shaking my head. I'm like, I don't, this is, something ain't right. Investigators are releasing little about Wall's involvement, only saying he performed a sex act with a child on film. Yeah, I've got a two-year-old daughter, you know, we play out in the yard and to think there's somebody like that, you know, living next door to you. Tommy and I have always had a good relationship and when all of this happened, everybody in the neighborhood thought Tommy was guilty. So I just never thought that.

This is Mary again, Tommy's ex-mother-in-law. Mary is 80 years old, and she, along with Tommy's best friend growing up, Tim, were basically the only people who helped once Tommy was arrested. Are you saying even your neighbors, those people that you considered your friends, thought he was guilty? Yes. What was that like? Well, it was not easy, especially when you go to church and people are asking you questions about such a sensitive matter. It was not easy.

Two days after seeing his picture online, Tommy was sent to the Harnett County Jail to await trial. He was terrified. He did whatever he could to stay close to the guards. And I'm sitting there at the TV, and the first thing I do, I'm sitting there, you know, I try to stay the very first seat, closest to the CO in case something was to go, you know, I had protection. And I heard this guy behind me. He's like, that's the dude. That's the dude that was on TV last night.

More than a month passed. Tommy cycled through some public defenders, eventually ending up with a court-appointed private attorney named Fred Webb. The first thing Webb did was go visit Tommy in jail. He was humped over. His appearance was of disbelief, and not in such a way as that, well, I just didn't do it. No, they got the wrong guy. That appearance, to me, meant a lot to me. Webb sat down with the files from the case,

and he says he found some inconsistencies. First off, the alleged fifth man in the ring, the man the police thought was Tommy, supposedly changed his cell phone number every 90 days. I thought that was something that could easily be tracked, if that was true. And I did track that, and I tracked that and determined that Mr. Wall had had the same telephone number for over 12 years. There was also the fact that Tommy Wall didn't have internet access at his home. He says he never had. He didn't even have a computer.

And you would assume that people who get involved in that kind of activity would at least have a desktop or something in their residence whereby they could communicate with people, that they would at least have an Internet connection at home. And he didn't even have that. So what do you think when you're sitting there, you're going through these 80 pages, you're finding one thing after another after another, what are you thinking? Well, I'm thinking that they've got the wrong guy.

And if there were videos that showed him, I want to see the video. Life in jail was hard for tommy he says he spent a lot of time alone in his cell reading the bible then one day he was served a search warrant and he says this this is the search warrant this is what we're gonna we got to take photographs of you and your body you know um without your clothes on i'm like me? Does my lawyer need to be here? Oh, no, he'll get a copy of the photos. And I was like, you know, you got two men standing there with pistols on. You know, what do you do? You know, there's two of them, one of me.

You know, I guess I got to take my clothes off. So you're standing there naked in the room, and they're saying, turn left, turn right. Hold your foot up. Hold your hands., hold your hands, take in my head, you know, all my private parts. I mean, this man taking pictures of me. The first thing that popped in my mind is someone was going to try to take these pictures and do something to incriminate me

because there was just the three of us in there. The whole time, I was thinking, I can't trust what's going on. A second month passed, then a third. Fred Webb kept working on Tommy's defense strategy, and he was finally able to watch the video that allegedly placed Tommy at the center of the ring. And, you know, I spoke with Tommy about this, and he says that he has not seen the video. No, he has not, and he cannot. Can you describe what's on that video? No, because of federal laws regulating the behavior. Is it fair to say that this is behavior that would absolutely fall into the label of child pornography? Yes. And when you saw it, did you know now for certain that Tommy Wall wasn't the right guy? To me, yes. According to

Fred Webb, there were some physical things that made it clear, but mainly he says it was the voice. It just didn't sound like Tommy. Did the district attorney say anything? Was there any comment in the room? His comment was that he did not want to keep a man incarcerated for something that he didn't do. And at that point, did Detective Byrd say anything? Did he apologize? Did he say, I think I've made a mistake here? No. I spoke with Detective Byrd and asked him about Tommy Wall. He said he couldn't comment on ongoing investigations. When do you find out that you're going to be set free? I was just laying in the bed reading, and they said,

Tommy, you've got an attorney visit. So I get up, and I walk out, and as I'm getting ready to go through the doors, Fred meets me in the hallway. Well, he doesn't have his notebook and all this, and I'm like, oh, God. He was teary-eyed. So we kind of go into our little room where the table's at. We didn't even sit down. He says, go home.

He said, I don't want to hear from you for a couple weeks. Just go home and get your life together. Be with your family. He said, and I'll be getting back with you. So we had just come out of the room. All the people were in the room, and everybody was standing there, you know, looking at, you know, what's going on, what's going on with Tommy. So I turned around and walked out the door.

And I come through. I said, I'm going home. And it was like I had just won a tournament, and they were cheering, crying. And I went and started packing up my stuff. That's when I go back and they give me my clothes. The same clothes that you had put on three months ago thinking it was... Shorts and T-shirt and flip-flops. Oh, because it was, like, summer.

Yeah. I weighed 189 pounds the day I was arrested, and right before I left, I got Holly, which was one of the nurses. I said, I'm going home. Can you weigh me? I weighed 151 pounds. It had been 105 days. What was it like when you finally heard that Tommy,

even though you had believed from the beginning that this was all nonsense, that of course he couldn't have been, but when you heard he isn't, he isn't guilty, he was never guilty, this was a mistake. I broke down and cried. I was so overjoyed when I heard that they had admitted they arrested the wrong person. I was just completely overjoyed because it was so grossly unfair to him. He can never live it down. In the months that Tommy had been in prison, he had lost his house. There was some issue with him missing a loan repayment meeting, and the house was auctioned. He'd also lost his job, the one he'd had for 23 years.

After his name was cleared, he tried to go back to the company and talk with a woman from HR. And basically she said, you know, we're not doing it. We've changed the way things are run. We don't have anything for you right now. And, you know, I just want to wish you well with your career. And I says, do what? She says, I just, you know, good luck with your career. And I said, okay, that's all I needed to hear. We called his employer, Stock Building Supply, and they said they don't comment on legal or personnel matters. A lot of news outlets ran stories about Tommy. The news clips you've been

hearing are from WRAL, a local TV station. Tommy was interviewed for a follow-up story after he got out, and an editorial note has been added to each of the old stories, saying Tommy was cleared of all charges and his record expunged. But his name and picture are still there. WRAL told us they didn't have anything to add to their coverage. As for the actual fifth man, the guy Tommy was mistaken for, police haven't released any information. We know that there are at least ten victims, and that police recovered tens of thousands of pornographic images. Tommy hasn't lost sight of that. It's sickening that you could basically hurt kids. You know, to me, anybody that hurts a kid should be punished. When we talked, Tommy had been out of jail for less than two months.

He says he sometimes has trouble leaving the house. He'll drive down the street and turn right back around. Even if he's scared to go out, people have started reaching out to him. He actually got a text message while we were sitting there, saying, congratulations, thinking of you. Then he showed us one from the night before.

Can you read it? Well, what it was, it says, Hey, buddy, wishing you a best, best Merry freaking Christmas. And then she goes to say, I have thought about you for months, and I hope you are doing well. I really, truly hope your holidays are special for 2015, and God bless you. Keep your head up. Love you. Hope to see you soon. Maybe by next Christmas, the same text message won't carry so much weight.

Criminal is produced by Eric Menel, Lauren Spohr, and me. Our episode art is by Julianne Alexander. You can find out more about this show and our previous episodes at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show. We're putting on a live show on January 21st at Motorco Music Hall here in Durham, North Carolina. We'd love to see you if you're around. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Check out the other shows at Radiotopia.fm. If you're interested in supporting this

and other podcasts like it, email sponsor at prx.org. Radiotopia from PRX is made possible with support from the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, who celebrate creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

Radiotopia from PRX. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you. Deliver that feeling to your customers every time. Klaviyo turns your customer data

into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees and it takes forever to build a campaign well that's why we built HubSpot it's an AI powered customer platform that builds

campaigns for you tells you which leads are worth knowing and makes writing blogs creating videos and posting on social a breeze so now it's easier than ever to be a marketer get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers