Dateline NBC - Queen of the County

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

In this Dateline classic, the matriarch of a prominent pecan growing family in San Saba, Texas goes missing and her caretaker is murdered. Josh Mankiewicz reports. Originally aired on NBC on April 23, 2015.

The plot was hatched, this dreadful plot. It's like a movie script. It's family rivalries of betrayal and murder. It was so horrific. What were the last hours on earth like for her? It lurks here on this storied family estate. A mystery as tangled and gnarled as the trees that reach for the sky. I think she's dead. It eats at me. I can't sleep most of the time.

A crime like a storm. Everyone could see it coming. Everybody in the town has their suspicions. She was missing. The matriarch with a grip on her powerful family's fortune. Did someone have a powerful motive to do her harm? I saw bruises on Bonnie's arms like somebody had grabbed her. She looked at him and said, you tried to kill me. Who was behind this? A search in the dark. A secret in the family And a jailhouse interview to make your jaw drop You said you wished you were dead

And then later she became dead I'm Lester Holt and this Dateline is a twisted tale Deep in the heart of Texas People who are desperate will do desperate things Tonight Josh Mankiewicz with Queen of the County. In this country, we've always loved stories about power, money, and the struggle to get our hands on both. The story you're about to hear is like that.

It's an epic tale of greed and betrayal, and it's set in San Saba, a tiny town in the Texas Hill Country, and it stars a family that learned how to make money grow on trees, pecan trees. At the heart of the matter, a feud fueled by a lust for land, stoked by a battle of generations. And front and center, the life and times of the matriarch, Bonnie Harkey, who controlled a family fortune a century in the making. Well, I always say she was queen of the county because she really was a big fish in a small pond. This is Teresa Cook, Bonnie Harkey's niece. They were well-off, and they were property owners. And by local standards, very wealthy.

By local standards, sure. They were so prominent, in fact, that the Harkey name is carved on monuments, painted on road signs in San Saba. I'm the sixth generation in my family here in the county. Dwight Harkey says all the Harkeys descended from two brothers who came to the hill country in the 1850s. Well, there was two boys that came, and they were Calvary scouts. And they found this country, and nobody lived here.

A proud family history history to be sure. But on March 25, 2012, a new and bloody chapter was added. I remember that Sunday morning because of what happened the rest of the day. The events that would forever fix that day in the Reverend Sam Crosby's memory, centered on 85-year-old Bonnie Harkey, an active member of the First Baptist Church of San Saba. You could set your watch by Bonnie Harkey coming to church? You could. She'd be right here. She'd be right here, right, and even after she had to have 24-hour care, a caretaker would bring her. The trouble began a few hours after church out at the Harkey place, a few miles west of town. It was about 5 30 when the San

Saba Sheriff's Department dispatcher received this call from a young boy. I found my mom on the floor. Um, she, I think she's dead. I'm at the Harkey residence. Turns out the 11-year-old's mother was Karen Johnson, Bonnie Harkey's caretaker. And you don't know the address out there? No, ma'am. I'm just really, really worried. What phone are you using? I'm using Bonnie's house phone. I can't find Bonnie anywhere. Within minutes, the San Saba Sheriff's Department had deputies on the way.

I'm going to Bonnie Harfie's right out on 190 West. Yes, sir. Do you have an EPA? Five minutes. In a rural area where locals listen closely to police scanners, some worry deputies might be chasing some dangerous desperado. Is there somebody loose that I should see? No, no, no. Okay, I'm just wondering.

Yeah. There's all something up there near Miss Harky's place. The Harky place was a local landmark, and John Wilkerson, a San Saba Sheriff's deputy in 2012, was among the first investigators to arrive. When I walked in, of course, Karen Johnson's body was laying face down in the doorway, which raised some suspicion. Sign of a struggle? There really wasn't any clear signs of struggle.

There was some questionable issues that were at play. Like what? The fact that she was dead right by the front door, that just didn't make a whole lot of sense. The fact that I found a broken fingernail on her hand. Karen Johnson's son, the boy who'd called 911, told investigators he'd been playing a video game in a spare bedroom all afternoon and had not heard or seen anything unusual. Strange. But what also concerned the lawman was the fact that Bonnie Harkey was not there. So you're thinking Bonnie Harkey

is out there somewhere, maybe in the orchards. That was the thought with Sheriff Brown. Bonnie had serious health problems. She was frail, suffered from dementia. In short, she had to be found and fast. Sheriff Brown had called in prison dogs. He had the DPS helicopter out.

She can't have gone very far. Correct. And that's what our thoughts were. By nightfall, word of Bonnie Harkey's disappearance had spread far and wide. Her stepson, Bruce Harkey, who'd been visiting his brother in Fort Worth that weekend, called the sheriff's office wanting to know some details. This is Bruce Harkey. I'm getting some awful strange phone calls. I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on. What are these calls in reference to? She said they found some lady dead and Bonnie was missing

and something about having a road blocked off and everything. Even Bonnie's niece, Teresa, in Memphis heard the news within a few hours of that first 911 call. My mother and I always speak on Sunday nights, and she had called me and said, Bonnie's missing. And we both kind of went, oh, no. Teresa Cook may have been hundreds of miles from where searchers were looking for Bonnie Harky,

but she says she knew right away her aunt's disappearance was connected to the decades-long battle over the remains of the Harky fortune. Not home invasion. No, her family. When we come back, the search for the missing matriarch. I saw bruises on Bonnie's arms, like somebody had grabbed her. Somebody sure seemed to know something. I might have some information about where Bonnie Harkey is.

I was definitely concerned. If the Harkies of San Saba were ever made into a television drama, it would be chock full of character actors. There'd be a gentleman farmer, a pair of impatient heirs-in-waiting, a ne'er-do-well grandson, his enabling girlfriend. And the rock of the family would be a white-haired matriarch named Bonnie Harkey. She had book clubs. She was Red Hat Society.

She was just constantly socializing. There were roughly 200 acres to the Harki spread, with valuable water rights along the San Saba River, a rambling farmhouse, and nearly 3,000 pecan trees. When people hear the Harki name in that part of the country, what do they think? I mean, the Harkkeys were the somebodies in town. And, you know, I know Bonnie enjoyed that. And maybe that was just the way she pictured it back in 1963 when Bonnie met and married Riley Harkey. At the time, Riley was a recently divorced

father with two boys. Bonnie, a single mom with a teenage daughter of her own. It was a coup, you know. It was a coup, especially for a single mother who was really looking at having to either find a husband or work for the rest of her life in the early 60s. It was tough to be a divorcee. It was tough to be a single mother. Now, nearly 50 years later, the queen of the county was missing. Searchers were still out in the orchards looking for Bonnie Harkey, when a resident who'd been listening to the police scanner called with a vital clue. I know things are crazy going on right now, but I might have some information about where Bonnie Harkey is. The caller said she knew that Bonnie Harkey's 28-year-old grandson, Carl, had visited her that very afternoon.

I'm 99% sure Carl Presley is involved. Who's Carl Presley? Carl Presley is the adopted grandson of Bonnie Harkey. Bonnie Harkey had a daughter, Connie. Connie adopted Carl Presley at a very young age. When you hear that that call's come in, you're thinking, oh, this is what? Well, I was definitely concerned. Why so much concern over a grandson's visit to his elderly grandmother?

That's a tangled tale, really, that begins with the way Carl Presley came to join the Harkey clan in the first place. Connie said that she adopted him from a homeless woman, a homeless couple. They were living in a car. From a homeless couple. Yeah. And that they couldn't take care of him, and so they were willing to give him up for adoption. That's what I know. Teresa says there was always something a little bit off about Carl, something that tended to make other people uncomfortable. It was very odd and very sad at the same time,

as he seemed to be a very lonely, needy child, very clingy child, and nobody really seemed to want him to cling to him. But Teresa says there was nothing Bonnie wouldn't do for Carl. She'd buy Carl a truck and he'd wreck the truck and then she'd buy him another one. And he'd get a job, he'd lose a job. She'd house him. He was stealing pecans from the harvest and selling them. I mean, she was constantly bailing him out of one situation or another, you know, giving him money. In spite of that, Carl, who had a harder shell than anything that came out of these trees, was known to be verbally abusive to his grandmother if he didn't get what he wanted.

Teresa says that once when she dropped by to visit Bonnie, she had an unsettling encounter with Carl, who was also there. Everything I said, he'd argue against. He just fought with me, fought with me. It was like he couldn't get along with anybody. And I saw bruises on Bonnie's arms, like somebody had grabbed her. And little old ladies bruise so easily that I said to my mother on the phone, I said, I would not be surprised if Carl pushed her down the basement stairs. Given that history, it was understandable then that investigators' ears perked up once they learned that the last person to have seen Bonnie Harkey the day she went missing was Carl Presley.

We were pretty sure that if we were able to find Carl, we were going to be able to find Bonnie Harkey. According to the tipster, Carl was with his girlfriend, Lillian King. They were riding in her car. Do you have any information on her vehicle? All I know is she's driving a 2004 Mustang. Soon, just about every lawman in Texas was on the lookout for that 2004 Mustang. But in the meantime, Deputy Wilkerson says the San Sabas sheriff took a more personal approach. He's trying to call a cell phone. He's sending him multiple text messages.

You have Carl's number because of his numerous brushes with law enforcement. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Wouldn't it be great if police could just text suspects and get them to come in? But the world doesn't work like that. Except, perhaps, in San Saba. Just after midnight, Carl Presley responded. He was in Normandie, Texas, he told the sheriff, where he and his girlfriend lived in a trailer at an RV campground. Though Normandie is more than three hours from San Saba, Carl promised the sheriff he would be back by daybreak.

I think maybe about the time my eyeballs closed, my phone rang. It was about 7 o'clock in the morning. And dispatch told me that Carl Presley had showed up to the sheriff's office and Sheriff Brown needed me up there ASAP. And so with little or no sleep, Deputy Wilkerson says he headed back to the office at a face-to-face encounter with the man most likely to know where Bonnie Harkey was. Coming up, another life in danger. He had three knives on him, so I had to do what he said. And a dark secret down by the creek. Right there.

Right there. It's all right. It's all right. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. here's the thing about lawmen in rural texas they don't have all the gadgets and gizmos that come with working in a big city it's a different world uh you're working with limited budgets so you have to improvise yes yes you have to improvise and Yes, yes, you have to improvise. And that's what San Saba Deputy John Wilkerson did when Carl Presley, the chief suspect in the disappearance of Bonnie Harkey and the death of her caretaker, came in for questioning. Wilkerson used the video recorder embedded in his car. We're ready. Are you recording?

And that's your interrogation. And that's my interrogation right there in the Sallyport. My name is John Wilkes and I'm sorry to call you. I'm the sheriff's officer. This is Chief Deputy Bill Cross, okay? He was not under arrest, but Carl Presley wore prison stripes for his interview because investigators had taken his clothes so they could run tests on them. I'm not making any accusations at this point. I'm just trying to get him locked down into his original story.

From the beginning, Carl Presley admitted he and his girlfriend, Lillian King, had gone out to his grandmother's house for a visit that Sunday. Do you remember how long you stayed there? I'm not sure I really know. During the interview, he started to, you know, try to pretend like he couldn't remember certain things. Eventually, Carl's memory improved. He remembered how he took his grandmother out of the house

to protect her from some tough guys he owed money to. The story is, to protect his grandmother, he picks her up in the evening and drives her to Rainey's Crossing and drops her off in the bushes. An 85-year-old woman? Correct, yeah. Wilkerson wasn't buying, but officers did search that location. Then Carl told another story. He said he'd taken Bonnie back to his trailer home in Normandy. He misses his grandmother and he wanted to see her, which again didn't make a whole lot of sense. That was because investigators knew nothing to suggest that Carl Presley had ever missed anyone during his 28 years on planet Earth.

We're trying to figure out where is your grandmother at? Look at me. Where is she at? I think she's up there. Okay. Where up there? In Normandy. Where did you put her up there?

In Hilltop Lake. In short order, Texas Rangers and local lawmen near Normandy were combing Carl's trailer and the surrounding campground for clues. But they found nothing until Carl was flown to Normandie. I told her I wanted to show her a fishing hole down by the creek, and we went down there and stuff happened. Tell me what kind of stuff happened, Carl. It's her, it's her. That's going to be her?

Yes, sir. All right, David. All right, all right, all right. All right, Carl. All right, Carl. It's all right. It's all right. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

All right, Carl. It's all right, Carl. Hey. All right, Carl. I love you, Carl. I love you, too. Did you bring her with you? I love you, too.

I love you, too. Hang on a second. I love you, too. I love you, too. Hang on a second. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. Bonnie Harkey was dead, her body lying in a creek bed near Carl's trailer, buried beneath a pile of sticks and leaves. So Carl admits that he pushed her on the back of her head, holding her face underwater until she no longer moved.

It was the same story Lillian King had already given to lawmen back in San Saba. She'd been there, she said, when the caretaker was killed, and she'd stood idly by while Carl killed his grandmother. But in Lillian's telling of the story, she could very well have been Carl Presley's third murder victim that day. He had three knives on him. Three. You know, so I had to do what he said. What had driven Carl Presley to kill one of the few people on earth who had ever loved him? That was a question to which no one could supply an answer.

She doted on Carl. She did dote on him. No one could quite understand why. And I'll bet she couldn't in the last four or five hours of her life. Yeah. Yeah. Investigators didn't know why Carl Presley killed his grandmother, but they were pretty sure there was more to this murder than met the eye, and that there could be clues in the Harkey family history.

Coming up, a million-dollar inheritance, a neighbor from Hollywood, and a Harkey with a handful of ex-wives. He's just a solid jerk. Just constant drama. Police were about to get to the heart of the Bonnie Harkey murder. The matriarch of a prominent pecan-growing family had been brutally murdered by a member of that family. But why? The more investigators pondered that, the more they came to believe the answer might be found in a long-running family feud. The first time I met the Harkey family, I was bailiffing in court because we were shorthanded. And I got to sit through a little hearing where the Harkeys were trying to gain control of the property.

And you could tell it was a very heated situation. Very heated. That pot had been at a slow boil ever since that day in 1963 when Bonnie Harkey became stepmother to her husband Riley's two boys, Bruce and John. Bruce and Johnny just didn't like Bonnie. They didn't like her at all. And so almost from the beginning, it was acrimonious. What form did that acrimony take? Bruce and Johnny were just rude to Bonnie, openly insulting her. And Riley put up with that? Let it go. He just let it go. A lot of blended families have rough starts, but this newly

grafted branch of the Harkey family tree never had a chance. And I don't think Riley made a real effort with his boys to say, this is a wonderful woman. I want you to grow to love her like I love her. I think he just said, here you go. Riley seems to have been better with pecans than people. Yeah. Yeah. Soon enough, John was off to college and Bruce was shuttled off to live with his mother in Nevada for a while. That left only Bonnie's teenage daughter, Connie, at home. Riley never adopted Connie. She was an afterthought. She was just never brought into the family. This is sounding less like the Brady Bunch and more like the Ewings every day. You know, just the Ewings without the culture, you know. It was really just constant drama.

The boys took different career paths. John became a businessman. Bruce had a number of different jobs. At various times, he was a cop in Reno, a Medicaid fraud investigator for the Texas Attorney General's office, and a nursing home administrator. Along the way, he married and divorced eight, count them, eight women. Still, as the years rolled by, the brothers' feelings for Bonnie seemed to fester. There were a lot of reasons for that, but maybe the biggest one was a will

their father, Riley, had drawn up shortly before he died in 1997. Riley's will specifically said that Bonnie could live on that property as long as she was alive. And then when she died, the land would go to the boys. And then there was a small inheritance for Connie. And if Connie died, then there would be a trust for Carl. But the majority of the inheritance went to Bruce and Johnny. Though the property alone was worth more than a million dollars, for the Harkey brothers, it wasn't worth a dime because they could neither farm it nor sell it until Bonnie died. Bruce especially seemed to chafe at the thought of that. He said he was the poorest millionaire in San

Saba County. Local pecan merchant Sean Oliver says Bruce Harkey was down and out in late 2007 when he resettled in San Saba after being away for many years. He had no income coming in, and every time he drove by that property, all he could see was the millions, what he thought was millions that he was missing out on. By then, Bonnie Harkey was becoming increasingly frail. Her dementia made her vulnerable to phone scams. She was unable to manage her daily affairs, so her daughter Connie became her guardian. After Connie died in 2011, Bruce Harkey thought Carl Presley should be Bonnie's guardian. When a judge tried to appoint someone else,

Bruce and John challenged that in court. Bonnie asked the judge if she could speak, and the judge said yes. And she said, I don't want them to be my guardians. I'm afraid of them. Her step-sons. Yeah. That had to be about the last thing Bruce and John wanted to hear. It delayed any inheritance, certainly. A lawyer named Daryl Spinks was chosen to manage her business and financial affairs. Bonnie's longtime friend, Betty Ann Johnson, was asked to make sure Bonnie's daily needs were met. It was Betty Ann who'd hired Karen Johnson, no relation, the in-home caretaker who was killed the day Bonnie was kidnapped.

You felt safe with Karen taking care of Bonnie. I did. What Bruce wanted me to do was to put her in the nursing home. He told you that? Yes. And I said, as long as we can have help 24-7, she's not going anywhere. Bonnie's financial guardian, Daryl Spink,

says he also butted heads with Bruce Harkey. The best way I can explain Bruce Harkey is greedy and, for lack of a better word, just a jerk. He's just a solid jerk. According to Spinks, Bruce not only accused him of mismanaging the Harkey estate, but also tried to bully him into accepting the sale of a chunk of land to their neighbor, the actor Tommy Lee Jones, for half a million dollars. It was good for Bruce, but Spinks says not for Bonnie.

So he killed it. He wanted Bonnie to get virtually nothing. I know it was less than $50,000 is what he wanted her to get. And the rest of the money for the sale would have gone to Bruce? The rest of it would have gone to Bruce and John, yes. And so you said to Bruce, I'm not for this. And that sent him in orbit. I mean, he just became irate and cussed me out and said, I'm going to do everything I can to get at you.

Investigators were getting a pretty good taste of the river of bad blood that ran through the Harkey family. Bonnie Harkey's grandson, Carl Presley, and his girlfriend, Lillian King, were in the county jail. And now, men with badges decided to take a harder look at Bruce Harkey. Coming up... We had some questions for Bruce Harkey, too. You didn't put Carl up to it. Would you really hire Forrest Gump to commit murder? Forrest Gump? Then murder? Forrest Gump?

Then this jailhouse interview was like a box of chocolates. We didn't know what we were going to get. Because you said you wished she were dead, and then later she became dead. The final decision to kill Bonnie Harkey was made on a Friday, two days before the murder. As Carl Presley laid it out for investigators, his uncle Bruce was broke and couldn't wait any longer for his inheritance. He sat me down on the bed and says, we've got to get rid of Bonnie. We've got to get rid of her quick. We're running out of money.

Texans are generally thought to be pretty hard-nosed when it comes to business. But Carl Presley? Not so much. Bruce says, I'll give you $500. It just happens right now, this weekend. Yeah, funny guy. Funny guy. I said, you're broke, man. And I threw a number out there like $250.

He said, no, no, no. They argued for a little bit, according to Carl. They argued about the price. Bruce wanted, he was adamant he was going to pay him $500, and Carl was adamant he only needed to pay him $250. In the end, Carl says, Bruce agreed to pay him $100 down and another $150 once the job was done. We found out he stopped by his bank and made a withdrawal for $200,

which was great because that's the date and time stamped, and now I got you on video. Then he leaves there, and about 30 minutes later, he shows back up in front of Lillian King's house, and Carl runs out the door to collect the $100 down from Bruce Harkey. The idea that Bruce Harkey was in cahoots with Carl Presley seemed odd to some. Evidently, Bruce detested the fact that Carl would refer to Bruce as Uncle Bruce, but yet Carl was always seemingly seeking approval and acceptance from Bruce.

Jack Schumacher, one of the investigators on the case, believes Bruce may have used that bit of psychology to his advantage when he decided it was long past time for Bonnie Harkey to meet her maker. So when Bruce says, hey, I want you in on my murder plot, what, happiest day of Carl's life? You know, it could be that Carl thought that he was finally going to receive that acceptance he'd been seeking. A theory? Perhaps. But then investigators also knew that Bruce Harkey had never made any secret

about how he felt about his stepmother, Bonnie. Excuse my language, but this is exactly what he said. He said, that old bitch doesn't have the decency to die. Investigators didn't know if Bruce paid Carl or just manipulated him into killing Bonnie Harky, but they were sure he was involved. So two days after Carl led investigators to Bonnie's body, Bruce Harky was arrested and charged with murder. When lawmen came to question Bruce in jail, he did not mince words. Bonnie was a formidable wretch of a human being.

She didn't have two working brains to go through together anymore. I didn't go out there and say somebody needs to kill her. I said she needs to go. She just needs to go. According to Bruce, Carl Presley had his own motives for killing Bonnie Harky. That's because, a year earlier, Carl had sold his future interest in the Harky estate to the Harky brothers, for a fraction of what it was worth. But here's the thing. The brothers only gave him a fraction of the money they owed him.

Bruce says he told Carl the brothers would pay him the rest, around $55,000, once they inherited the orchards. This is how Bruce says Carl responded. How long after my memory says who I give you that money? Carl. says Carl responded. According to Bruce, the money he gave Carl shortly before Bonnie's death was gas money, nothing more. Then Bruce Harkey turned the tables on the lawmen and asked them a question that would become central to his defense. Why would he want to kill a sick old woman who already seemed to have one foot in the grave? Why would I plan on Bonnie's demise or offer to pay somebody to do what Nung Nuts did when I'm thinking, this is just around the corner anyway. Why, guys?

When we spoke with Bruce Harkey through a thick pane of glass, he insisted he was an innocent man. I had nothing to do with it. You didn't put Carl up to it? Absolutely not, sir, no. That's exactly like the first question my attorney asked me. He said, would you, he said, I have to ask you, would you really hire Forrest Gump to commit murder? I said, I wouldn't hire anybody to commit murder. So your argument is contrary to what Carl told investigators, he did this all on his own? I don't know that he

did it all on his own. I know there's at least two people involved in it, and that would be Carl and Lily, his girlfriend. Other than that, I'm not going to attest anything because I don't know. How many times in your life did you say you wished Bonnie Hark you were dead? I don't know. Several. I mean, I can't give you a number. That's one of the reasons you're in here. I understand that. Okay. Because you said you wished she were dead, and then later she became dead. But I didn't have anything to do with it. You can't wish someone dead and have it happen and then get blamed for it. It's not against the law to have wishes.

It's not against the law to make comments. Maybe not. But when Bruce Harkey's murder trial rolled around, he would have to answer for all of them and more. Coming up. I will simply say that that's a devastating bit of evidence. The past comes back to haunt Bruce Harkey. And a question haunts Lillian King.

Could she have saved Bonnie? I can't sleep most of the time. It eats at me. In the years after Bonnie Harkey took her place alongside the other Harkeys in the San Saba Cemetery, life in the Texas Hill Country got back to normal. Most people could only speculate about what really happened on the day Bonnie Harkey and her caretaker Karen Johnson were killed. But Jack Schumacher says he knows. This is where Karen Johnson was laying. She was murdered right here in this doorway. How was she killed? Choked, smothered, just bulldogged down by a car.

Jack Schumacher says he knows that because Carl Presley told him how it all went down that weekend. He also knows that Bruce Harkey wanted everyone in San Saba to know that he was going out of town. Jack Vaughn, a local businessman, says he had only a nodding acquaintance with Bruce Harkey, and yet... Bruce started telling me how he was going to be out of town all weekend long. Stressed that all weekend long. I'm leaving town early on Saturday morning. I won't be back in until late Sunday night. It might even be Monday before I make it back in, because I'm going to be gone all weekend long. By the time Bruce Harkey went on trial in April of 2014,

his nephew Carl Presley had confessed to his part in killing Bonnie Harkey and her caretaker. And Carl's girlfriend, Lillian King, had admitted her involvement. With the two of them set to testify against Bruce Harkey

in exchange for lighter sentences, Prosecutor Sonny McAfee felt confident that he had a solid case against Bruce. The facts of the crime were so horrendous that I didn't think once the jury believed that he was a party to the crime that they'd have any difficulty at all finding him guilty. Lillian told the jury she had heard Bruce Harkey and Carl Presley talk about killing Bonnie Harkey many times.

But she told us she didn't learn the plot had actually been set in motion until the Friday before the murder. That's when Lillian says she overheard a phone conversation between Bruce Harkey and Carl Presley. Because after he got off the phone with Bruce, he looked at me and said that Bruce is going to pay him to kill his grandmother. Lillian testified that while Bonnie and her caretaker were in church that Sunday morning, Carl slipped into the house and hid. Once Bonnie returned home, Lillian says, Carl sent her a text telling her to come distract Karen Johnson while he smothered his grandmother. So I rang the doorbell because the door was open, but the storm door was closed. Ms. Johnson came and entered the door.

I was in the process of stepping in and closing the storm door when I see this flash. Inside the house? Coming from the den. So coming up behind Ms. Johnson? Yes. Yes. Yes. And I saw that it was Carl. And he was yelling at me to close the door, get in here, go in there with his grandmother.

Once Karen Johnson was dead, Lillian says, Carl led Bonnie to her bedroom, where she says Carl asked her to pray. I see the pillow, and then while they're praying, he starts pushing her down onto the bed. She fought him, and she did, but the doorbell rang, and it scared Carl. So he jumped up, and he told me to go look and see who it was. Lillian says that whoever it was

left after about five minutes. It was then, Lillian told the jury, that Carl decided to drive his grandmother to Normandie. In your mind, was it clear that she knew that Carl was trying to kill her then? Yes. What'd she say? She looked at him and said, you tried to kill me. And Carl's like, no, Grandma, I wasn't doing that. Lillian says the last time she saw Bonnie Harkey alive was later that night,

when, she says, she saw Carl leading Bonnie to her death. I went to the bathroom again, and when I was coming out, I saw him and her walking into the trees. You knew what was coming. How'd you let that happen? It's hard for me. But, you know, if he didn't hurt her, he's gonna do it to me, too.

The prosecutor knew a jury would not vote to convict Bruce Harkey on the testimony of Lillian King and Carl Presley alone. So he used Bruce Harkey's own words against him. He talked about how he couldn't get his land until she was dead, and that she just doesn't have the decency to die. And he said all of these in the weeks leading up to the murder. Richard Davis was Bruce Harkey's attorney. He told the jury Carl Presley wanted to kill Bonnie Harkey because he wanted the inheritance and needed no prompting from his uncle. Davis reminded jurors how many times Carl had changed his story before telling police Bruce was part of the plot.

My theory is it's all Carl, and that was essentially our testimony and the testimony of Carl in the trial makes it clear that this guy was an erratic personality. He gave numerous different descriptions of what the events were, how he did it, why he did it, and it was... And originally that he didn't do it. Well right, I didn't do it. I did do it. And if I did do it, it was because of this. And finally, he names Bruce. Exactly.

Sort of at the point where prosecutors and police are starting to talk about the death penalty. And my question, in any case, where there's a statement from a witness who has a lot to lose, what's the most likely to be the truth? Jurors might question Carl Presley's credibility, but the prosecutor had a bombshell in his arsenal. Turns out, this was not Bruce Harkey's first rodeo. McAfee told the jurors that 10 years earlier, Bruce had done prison time for his role in another murder plot,

an unsuccessful one that targeted one of his many ex-wives. I think there's a lot of things that are extremely similar in it. And the main one is that he gets somebody else to do what he wants done, and he does it through influence. I will simply say that that's a devastating bit of evidence. Yeah, because that makes me think, well, they probably got the right guy. And just hypothetically speaking, let's say the case is purely circumstantial and looks kind of bad.

And then there's proof in front of the jury that says, and by the way, he did it before. That makes all the other evidence seem much more important. If you're a prosecutor, that's great stuff. That's the end of the story, whether it should be or shouldn't. It took the jury only one hour to reach a guilty verdict. Bruce Harkey received a life sentence, as did Carl Presley. Lillian King was sentenced to 45 years for her role in the murders. I'm not a violent person. I'm not. And I loved Ms. Harkey like she was my own grandmother. And yet?

I know. I keep kicking myself. You know, hoping I can do something different, but it's not going to change. You know, it eats at me. I can't sleep most of the time. The estate Bruce Harkey had so fervently hoped to inherit is but a memory now. In the years since our story first aired, lawyers have divvied it up, parceled it out, or placed it in trust for the next generation. Ironically, that means Bonnie Harkey's home could one day pass to her great-grandchildren, the children of Carl Presley, the man who killed her. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.