Park Predators - The Road

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

When two beloved mothers vanish after a night out, their families quickly grow concerned. Within hours of their vehicle being spotted near a Mississippi national forest, a violent young man is apprehended but the case would never fully come to an end for several more decades.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-road Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators  | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia Diambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in Bienville National Forest in Mississippi. This recreation space is located in the central part of the state and is more than 178,000 acres in size. It's about an hour due east of the city of Jackson, Mississippi, and can be easily accessed via Interstate 20, which runs east to west across the upper portion of the forest. Historically, according to Livingnew Deal.org, Bienville National Forest has been known for logging. Back in the early 1930s, when the U.S. government was eyeing large tracts of land in the southeast to purchase for the Forest Service, the Enville was selected as a desired property.

The main stakeholders who controlled the woods at that time were lumber companies, so naturally there were a number of logging trails etched into the landscape as a result of that industry's foothold in the region. In March of 1982, something horrific happened on one of those paths that would rock central Mississippi for decades. Two women, out for a night of fun, found out in the worst way just how monstrous a young man from their area could be. This is Park Predators. You know, Oh,

On Friday night, March 5, 1982, family members of 52-year-old Velma O'Dell Knoblin and 45-year-old Katie Bell Moore were growing very concerned. The two friends had gone out earlier that evening to a local bar known as Roberts' drop-in, but it was getting late and they still hadn't returned. According to coverage by the Scott County Times, Katie was a mother of four who worked at a chicken plant and also took jobs babysitting in her spare time. and Velma had six kids of her own plus four stepchildren and 14 grandchildren. So both of them being gone for an extended period of time with all that responsibility waiting for them at home was very out of character. Roberts' drop-in, the nightclub they'd visited, was located in the city of Forest, Mississippi, which doesn't appear from the source material to have been very far from where either woman lived. So as the hours ticked by and Friday night turned into Saturday morning with no sign of the women,

Their loved ones knew something was off and notified local authorities that they were missing. That report seemed to immediately concern law enforcement because a few hours earlier, a Forest police officer named Henry Williams Jr. had pulled over a young man in the city of Forest for speeding and reckless driving. And at the time, he'd been operating a brown 1978 Dotson, which came back as belonging to Velma Knoblin. According to the coverage, this traffic. stop occurred around 140 in the morning on Saturday, so several hours before the women's missing

persons reports were filed. But even without knowing that as background, there were a few things that stood out as kind of odd to Officer Williams who pulled the young man over. First, there were two women's purses sitting on the passenger seat of the car and a black bra on the back seat. And second, the driver was covered in blood, to the point where some of the source material describes the state of his clothing as soaked in blood. However, when Officer Williams asked the driver how he'd gotten so bloody, the young man responded that he'd cut one of his thumbs with a sharp knife while cleaning a possum, and claimed that the reason he was driving so poorly was because he was trying to get to a local hospital.

Court records and articles by the Scott County Times explained that the driver asked Officer Williams to follow him to the hospital as a sort of escort. When the pair arrived around 2 a.m., staff in the emergency room quickly noted that the young man's injury was superficial at best and wasn't going to require medical attention. After that, Officer Williams called in another force police officer to assist him in interviewing the driver, who was identified as 19-year-old Bobby Glenn Wilcher. It's not stated specifically in the source material what Officer Williams' reason was for probing Bobby's story further, but I have to assume a glaring red flag might have been

the fact that Bobby had so much blood on it. And yet, hospital staff had made it very clear that the injury to his thumb was minor. So it likely just didn't make sense to Officer Williams where all the blood on Bobby's clothing had come from. At the hospital, Bobby showed Officer Williams and his colleagues a lockblade knife he owned that had blood on it, but the officers seemingly didn't confiscate that weapon or take any photos of it.

Instead, they left it with a hospital security guard for safekeeping because, according to one of the sources I mentioned a second ago, Officer Williams and his co-workers got called to another incident around that time, and so they had to leave the hospital to attend to that. Not long after they departed, Bobby left the hospital as well. But that wasn't the only time authorities had contact with him that day. Within hours of Bobby getting discharged from the hospital, a Scott County judge issued an arrest warrant for him,

but not for the reckless driving incident. The arrest warrant was in relation to him being suspected of previously stealing a cult brand handgun. Bobby wasn't picked up for that offense, though, until around 3 p.m. on that Saturday. Specific details about the circumstances related to that crime were hard to come by, but what I can tell you is that around the same time Bobby was taken into custody for that charge. The sheriff's office got word that there had been a gruesome discovery made in a remote part of the county within the boundary of Bienville National Forest.

Around 3 p.m., three teens who'd ventured down a dead-end forest service road located a few miles from a main road along the east side of the National Forest, came into the sheriff's office to report that they'd stumbled upon two women's bodies. Both victims had been stabbed multiple times, and there was no hope of saving them. That information seemed to kick law enforcement's investigation into high gear because it was quickly determined that the victims were none other than Velma and Katie. At the crime scene, Katie's body was discovered face up, fully clothed, and laying at the end of the dead-end road.

Her hands bore injuries consistent with defensive wounds. About 120 yards away from the nearest roadway in a ditch was Velma's body. She was found without her shoes on in a state of partial undress. She also showed signs of having tried to fight off her attacker. In the hours before their bodies were found, a full-skill search for the missing women had gotten underway, and during that time, authorities gathered a lot of information that proved helpful to their investigation.

First, Velma's car, which was the vehicle she and Katie had driven together to go to Robert's drop-in, and was the same vehicle Bobby Wilcher had been seen driving it, was located abandoned at an apartment complex that neither he nor the women lived at. Investigators also found witnesses from the bar who said they remembered both women hanging out with Bobby. The three of them had been drinking and dancing together all the way up until closing time, which was around midnight. There was even one witness who claimed to have seen Bobby leave the bar riding in the front seat of Velma's vehicle sitting between the two women. Other interviews revealed that Bobby's family and Katie's family knew one another because Katie had babysat him as a child and Mildred

Bobby's mother had babysat Katie's children. And to top it all off, a Scott County deputy who'd been working during the early morning hours on Saturday had clocked Bobby driving Velma's vehicle. But he hadn't initiated a traffic stop because at the time Bobby apparently wasn't breaking any laws, and the deputy, who was somewhat familiar with Bobby, had seen him driving other people's cars in the past. So him being behind the wheel of a random vehicle wasn't all that unusual. However, all things considered, it was safe to say that authorities felt pretty confident by Saturday evening that they knew who their prime suspect was for the double homicide. Court documents state that shortly after 7 p.m., Scott County deputies transported

Bobby from the jail to the sheriff's office. They read him as Miranda rights and indicated they wanted to ask him a few questions, but right away, Bobby clammed up and refused to talk. He told authorities that he wanted to go home and speak with his parents, Mildred, and Eugene Wilcher, which, surprisingly, investigators let him do. Court records state that deputies took him to his mom and dad's house and allowed him to talk with them for a little bit before eventually transporting Bobby back to the station. About two hours later, investigators read him his rights a second time, and that's when Bobby reportedly confessed to the crime.

In a verbal statement, he claimed he was the person responsible for murdering Velma and Katie. At some point during that time frame, Scott County Sheriff phoned Velma and Katie's loved ones and broke the news. By that point, people from both women's families had all gathered together at one of their residences. Coverage by the Scott County Times explained that the initial information loved ones received was that the victim's bodies had simply been found. They were not explicitly told that Velma and Katie had been murdered. That confirmation came a little bit later when, as Sam Hall reported for the Scott County Times, Katie's nephew, a man named Joe Rigby, formally identified them.

At the time, Joe was Scott County's acting coroner, and as soon as Katie and Velma's bodies were brought to his office, he quickly realized they were his aunt and her best friend. Because the women's suspected killer was already technically in custody for a suspected larceny of a firearm in an unrelated crime, it made it a lot easier for Scott County investigators to place him under arrest for the double homicide. At his arraignment, Bobby pleaded not guilty, and a judge ordered he be held without bond. On March 8th, the Monday after the crime, authorities got a phone call from Bobby's dad, Eugene, who told them there were some items of value at his house that he felt law enforcement might want to know about. That information resulted in the

sheriff's office executing a search warrant at Eugene and Mildred's place, where they found some jewelry in Bobby's room, which included two rings, a watch, and a necklace that were later identified as belonging to Velma. That same day, Velma's family held her funeral, and the next day Katie's loved ones held her funeral. The impact of the murders on their families and the community was immense. Like I mentioned earlier, Katie was a mother of four, and Velma had ten kids, plus more than a dozen grandchildren. Coverage about them explains that they were from large families and had several brothers and sisters who all seemed quite close. Two days after Katie's funeral, authorities who were trying relentlessly to get Bobby to cooperate

continued to press him for more information, and eventually he agreed to take sheriff's deputies to a rural road in Scott County where he'd tossed the victim's two purses and braw. In a ditch at that spot, the sheriff found the missing handbags and black bra and seized those items as evidence. Court records state that when Bobby and the group of investigators were return from that trip, Bobby provided another statement which further detailed his involvement in the murders. According to that confession, he claimed he'd lured Velma and Katie to the rural forest road where they were eventually found because he said it was where his parents lived, but when they arrived, he stole their belongings and stabbed them. The judge presiding over Bobby's

case appeared to take all the necessary steps to fast-track his prosecution. A few days after his arrest, the court called a special session of circuit court to discuss the case, which I think sort of acted like an expedited preliminary hearing. And that resulted in Bobby's trial date for Velma's murder, kidnapping, and robbery, getting scheduled first for late July 1982, which was just four months after the crime. His defense attorney requested a change of venue twice before that date because he felt Bobby wouldn't be able to receive a fair trial in Scott County, but the judge denied those requests. When the four-day trial got underway on July 27, jurors heard from investigators like

forced police officer Henry Williams Jr., who'd interacted with Bobby shortly after the crime. They also heard from witnesses who'd seen the two victims and Bobby together leaving Robert's drop-in, and the emergency room staff who'd assessed Bobby's thumb injury and determined it was minor. It was revealed in court that on the night of the crime, Bobby had asked Velma and Katie for a ride home, and Velma had agreed. It seems that since there was familiarity between Katie and Bobby and Bobby's mother, that the two women trusted him.

Prosecutors argued that Bobby's intention from the outset was to rob the women of their belongings and then kill them so he wouldn't be caught. The state explained to jurors how Bobby had confessed to authorities about luring his victims to the remote spot in the woods under the notion that the Forest Road led to his parents' house. But by the time trial came around, that was no longer Bobby's position on the issue, In fact, he and his attorney argued that his entire confession had been coerced. To prove that point, Bobby took the stand in his own defense.

He testified that throughout his interactions with officers and the sheriff, he'd asked numerous times to speak with an attorney, but those requests were ignored. He also claimed that officers had threatened him and made false promises of leniency if he confessed. In court, his defense attorney argued that because of that, his confession should be thrown out, and any physical evidence that came as a result of his admissions, which included the victim's purses and bra, should be inadmissible. But the court denied that request and ruled that those items of evidence as well as Bobby's confession would be presented to the jury. During Bobby's time on the witness stand, he told jurors that he was not the person who murdered Velma and

Katie. He claimed that another man named Gene Milton had been in the car with him and the women after they left Robert's drop-in. And it was that guy who'd carried out the attack. Bobby said after consuming a lot of alcohol and other substances at the bar, he'd passed out in the backseat of Velma's car and remained there in that state until shortly after the stabbings began.

He said at some point he'd come to and saw the man he knew as Gene stabbing Katie. After that, he said Gene took off to catch up to Velma who'd managed to flee. But by the time he caught up to Gene, he'd already killed Velma. Immediately following the murders, Bobby claimed he took the murder weapon from Gene

and then dropped him off at a local gas station. When prosecutors asked Bobby why he'd not gone straight to the police to report the incident, he said he'd thought about doing that, but was too afraid of Gene Milton. In the end, neither the prosecution nor the jury bought Bobby's story,

and on July 30th, it took them just under two hours or so to deliberate and find him guilty of capital murder, kidnapping, and robbery. All these charges together, especially the capital murder charge, qualified Bobby for capital punishment. And just one day after the trial concluded, jurors voted to go that route.

They sentenced Bobby to Mississippi's death row where the method of execution at the time was the gas chamber. Less than two months later, a jury in Harrison County, Mississippi, which was almost three hours south of Scott County, tried Bobby for Katie Moore's murder and found him guilty. Just like in his first trial, he was sentenced to death. He appealed his convictions in 1984 and 1985, arguing, among many things, that he should have

been allowed a change of venue, his confession should have been ruled inadmissible, and that law enforcement's actions while retrieving the victim's jewelry from his room at his parents' house violated search and seizure laws. But those appeals were ultimately denied. Sid Salter reported for the Scott County Times that Bobby's execution day, was originally scheduled for April 11, 1984. But that date was anything but firm. By November 1985,

Bobby Wilcher's execution date had been delayed several times due to him filing additional motions for post-conviction relief. He was running out of options quickly, and so he decided to grant an interview to Scott County Times editor, Sid Salter. Salter visited Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman's maximum security unit where death row inmates were housed

and sat down with Bobby. By then, Bobby was 22 years old and claimed that he'd recently become a Christian while incarcerated. He told Salter that he believed God had forgiven him for what he'd done, but he wasn't sure other people, including the victim's families,

would ever be able to. He remained adamant that his rights had been violated during the police investigation and trial, but admitted that he was getting the punishment he deserved. He said that neither Velma or Katie deserved to die the way they did, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. He remarked that he often thought about their families and would never be able to justify what he'd done. He claimed that he wasn't afraid of dying in the gas chamber,

but did express that he felt capital punishment was, at its base level, inhumane. When Salter asked Bobby point-blank why he'd stabbed Velma and Katie so many times, he stated, Let me answer your question with a question. Have you ever seen a charging bull? Salter responded, yes. Then Bobby asked, does he stop when his prey is down? To which Salter replied, no. And then Bobby immediately followed up with, that's my answer. You know how you flash a piece of red in a bull's eyes and he goes mad? That's my answer. Which to me is a response that seems to imply that Bobby knew there was something violent about himself that could not be controlled. I mean, he compared himself to a charging bull who doesn't stop when their prey is down. I don't know

why anyone would describe themselves or their actions in that way unless they knew that there was something deep within themselves that was animalistic. He admitted in the interview that the story he told during his trial about a fourth person, that guy Gene Milton, being with him and Katie and Velma during the murders, was a lie. He told Salter that he did know a man named Gene, but he wasn't present for the crime. According to Bobby, Gene was just some guy he'd been involved in other criminal activity with prior to the murders, and he'd lied on the witness stand about him in an attempt to avoid being convicted. Bobby was initially reluctant to tell Sid Salter exactly what happened between him and the women that fateful night in March of

1982, but eventually he came around to describing what he remembered of the attack. He said that after the trio left Roberts drop-in, he directed them to the National Forest and explained that the rural road they were going down was where his parents lived. He claimed he couldn't remember everything that happened once they arrived at the dead end of the path, but according to him, Velma walked a few feet away from the car and either said or did something that caused Bobby to go off. After that, Bobby said he'd killed Katie and then chased Velma who had managed to make it back to where the Forest Road met another road. Bobby explained that when Velma turned around to see if he was still following her, he was standing right behind her. It was at that location he murdered

her, despite Velma's best efforts to fight him off and scream for help. He said afterwards he stole Velma's jewelry and went to head home but was stopped by a forced police officer. It was at that point he made up the story about getting cut while skinning a possum. He claimed that the morning after the killings, he woke up at his parents' house and thought that the entire thing could have been a dream. Over the course of the next five years or so, Bobby continued to wage a post-conviction legal fight to get his death sentences overturned. In mid-June 1990, another appeal he'd filed, this time at the federal level,

was dismissed. But that didn't stop him from taking his case to an even higher appellate court. At that point, Mississippi had stopped using the gas chamber as a form of capital punishment and replaced its method of execution with lethal injection. And there were also some other major changes for death row inmates in the early 90s. According to coverage by the Clarion Ledger in Scott County Times, in October of 1993, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided to vacate the sentences of 17 people on death row in Mississippi, including Bobby. This landmark ruling came after the High Court realized poor wording and jury instructions issued by judges in those cases had technically violated inmates' constitutional rights.

Now, don't worry, it's not like Bobby was set free or anything after that, not by a long shot. He remained behind bars while the State Attorney General's office asked the Supreme Court of Mississippi for a rehearing on his case to void a previous court. decision to give Bobby a shot at being resentenced. However, in March of 1994, that request was denied. So a few months later, in June and July, Bobby was back in court again in two different counties for resentencing hearings for both murders. It took the jury weighing Velma's case less than three hours to unanimously convict

Bobby for the crime, and a verdict also came swiftly in Katie's case. Once again, both juries sentenced him to death. In response to that outcome, one of Velma's daughters told the Scott County Times, quote, Thank God for 12 good people. We've suffered for 12 years, and I hope this finally puts these appeals to rest, end quote. But unfortunately, that's not what happened. The way it worked was, as soon as you got convicted and sentenced to death, your case was automatically appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court. I know it probably seems like that wouldn't have been an option for by. since he'd already been down that road, but technically when he was convicted for the second

time in June and July of 1994, that basically reset the appeals process all over again. In March of 1997, though, I imagine much to the relief of Velma and Katie's loved ones, the state's Supreme Court denied his appeal once again. He took his case to the United States Supreme Court a few months later, but in January of 1998, the federal justices refused to hear his case. It had been almost 16 years since the crime, and still, Bobby had not been executed. Scott County Times editor Sid Salter penned a lengthy opinion piece about the case in 1998, which pointedly criticized Mississippi's enforcement of the death penalty.

The closing words of his article were, quote, Four chances to argue for his life, 16 years of appeals. That's one hell of a lot more chances than Wilcher afforded Ms. Noblin and Miss Moore, end quote. I think the implication with those words was enough was enough. And it appears the Mississippi Supreme Court felt the same way because in early October 2003, the justices ruled that Bobby had no further grounds to file additional post-conviction appeals, period, the end. By then, Velma and Katie's surviving children and siblings

were worn out by the seemingly never-ending saga of events. Joe Rigby, Katie's nephew, who was Scott County's coroner back in 1982, told editor Sam Hall that even though it seemed Bobby had exhausted all his legal options to fight his execution, Joe doubted his aunt's killer would ever be executed for the murders. One of Katie's daughters, Jody, and Velma's daughter, Nell, told the newspaper that it was somewhat relieving to hope that this would finally be the end to their nightmare, but they still had reservations. In June 2006, Bobby expressed to a federal judge that he no longer wanted to pursue further legal avenues in his case, and he said he wanted to move forward with his

execution. His defense attorneys, on the other hand, didn't want to go that route. They kept filing legal motions on his behalf, which only further delayed his execution. A few weeks later, on July 11, 2006, it appeared that the true end had come. Well, sort of. According to the coverage in this case, less than 30 minutes before Bobby was scheduled to be executed via lethal injection on July 11th, the United States Supreme Court ordered his execution be postponed. Bobby had fully resigned himself at that point to dying, and prison officials had even remarked to the press that he'd stated he wanted to die.

But attorneys against capital punishment and those opposed to the death penalty had managed to successfully file an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to hear oral arguments on Bobby's competency. As you can imagine, this was extremely upsetting to Velma and Katie's loved ones because they were literally on their way to the prison about to walk into the viewing room to watch what they felt like was justice being served when at the last minute that reality was not fulfilled. However, it was just a few months later in mid-October 2006 that the case finally ended. At 6.31 p.m. on October 18th, the state of Mississippi executed Bobby via lethal injection, and he was declared deceased at 6.42 p.m. Sid Salter reported that some of

Velma and Katie's surviving siblings, children, and extended family members attended the viewing. In his final moments, Bobby never looked at them or provided any departing words of apology or remorse. After he was pronounced dead, one of Katie's sons told the press, quote, My emotions are better now because it's finally over. We don't have to focus on it all the time. But it just looks to me like he died too peaceful a death compared to the crime he committed. End quote.

After Bobby's execution, it became publicly known that he'd developed a friendship with a former female juror who served at one of his 1994 trials. That woman's name was Lindy Wells, and according to a PBS documentary titled Lindy Lou, Juror No. 2, she'd spent several years after the crime corresponding with Bobby and re-interviewing fellow jurors about whether they felt they'd made the right decision

to sentence him to death. According to the documentary, Lindy had initially felt sure that Bobby deserved to die for his crimes, but then during the sentencing phase and over the years, her position had changed on the issue of capital punishment. The documentary explores her journey reconciling with the case and includes interviews with other jurors, many of whom believe they'd made the right decision. There were, however, at least a few people, though, who weren't sure how they felt about the death penalty.

For a brief time in the program, Bobby's background and history were delved into, and one of his former friends told the producers that what he remembered of Bobby growing up was that he'd been violent towards animals, and many of his buddies believed Bobby would likely end up incarcerated. This friend who spoke with the documentary crew also revealed that where Bobby had killed Velma and Katie wasn't very far away from the home he'd been raised in. And that detail kind of answered a lingering question I found myself asking a lot while researching the story, which was, why did Bobby pick the deserted Forest Service Road

in Bienville National Forest that he did when he killed Velma and Katie? Based on what his former friend told the documentary, it would appear that it was a place Bobby might have known about, a place maybe he'd been to before since it was so close to his childhood home. Whatever his rationale was for selecting that specific spot, if he had any rationale at all, is probably something only Bobby knew.

A former forensic psychologist who'd evaluated him in prison determined he had, quote, elements of psychopathic personality, end quote, and was of average intelligence. But exactly why he did what he did could never be firmly pinned down. At the time of the crime, he was a recent transplant from Louisiana, who'd moved into a room at his parents' place in Mississippi about a week and a half before the murders. Court records explained that he was recently separated and had a nine-month-old daughter at the time of the crime. Several articles by Sid Salter chronicled Bobby's life as a young man and explained that he was one of four siblings. He had two brothers, one of whom died as an infant

and a younger sister. He'd only attended grade school through the eighth grade before he began to get into serious trouble, which resulted in him being admitted to a reform school. A few years before Velma and Katie's murders, he'd been convicted for grand larceny and served less than two years in prison before he was back on the streets. His mother, Mildred, who later went on to have criminal convictions of her own related to drug offenses, had previously testified in court that Bobby was, for the most part, a normal child when he was young. However, when he turned 12 years old, she said he suddenly changed and became what she described as bad. When he was convicted and sentenced to death the second time

around in 1994, Mildred actually fainted in court after the verdict was read. Sid Salter reported that the first two people to run to Mildred's side and assist her were actually Katie Moore's sisters. One of those women later told Scott County Times editor Sid Salter that despite what Bobby had done to Katie and Velma, they didn't blame his family for the crime or wish anything bad against them. It was Bobby who the victim's families seemed to view as the bad seed, so to speak. And Bobby himself basically confirmed that in a second sit-down prison interview he gave to the Scott

County Times in 1988. When asked if he was responsible for viciously killing Velma and Katie, Bobby responded that he was. When asked why he committed the murders, he stated, because, quote, it felt good, it felt good, end quote. And perhaps most chillingly, when Bobby was asked if he would kill again if he were to ever be let out of prison. Bobby responded in part, quote, I hate to say it, but I think I would, end quote. Park Predators is an audio check production.

You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpreditors.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. I think Chuck would approve.