Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

This is the story of Roger Kemp and Ali Kemp and how he solved her murder using Lamar billboards.

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That's cool, then. Marvel Studios, Thunderbolts, the New Avengers, rated PG-13. Now streaming on, you guessed it, Disney Plus. So one day, this woman, her name's Ali, she's 19, Ali is at work, and she's working her summer job. She works at the neighborhood public pool. And she's in the back finishing up her shift when this guy shows up. Benjamin, he's a local creep.

And Benjamin, he works in pool maintenance and he's looking for a gig to make some extra money. But when he sees Ali, he decides he's going to shoot his shot. So Benjamin goes over and he tries his best. But Ali is just not interested. But Benjamin, he won't let it go. And so he reaches out his hand to touch her. But Ali, she pulls away. And this pisses Benjamin off.

And suddenly, pow, he punches her. And he starts hitting her, and then he strangles her until she ultimately passes out. And when she's passed out, he tries to essay her. Then he throws a tarp over her to hide her passed out body, and he flees. And while he's walking out, a woman notices him leaving. So he pretends like nothing is wrong. and he waves at her as he makes his exit.

Sometime later, this guy shows up to the pool, Ali's brother, and he's supposed to meet up with her after work. But, as you can imagine, he can't find her anywhere. And he thinks that's weird, and he has a bad feeling, so he calls their dad, who we'll just call dad, and he asks him to come help. And so dad shows up to the pool and there, he finds Ali in the maintenance room underneath the tarp.

And she's beat up real bad, but she's, She's alive and they rush her to the hospital where she unfortunately doesn't make it. And dad and the rest of the family, they are understandably devastated. And so police, they start investigating and they're trying to figure out who would do such a thing to Ali. She doesn't have any enemies. And so far, they have no leads. It looks like the killer was just some random, total stranger.

In fact, the only lead they have is when Benjamin waved to that woman on his way out. And that woman is able to give police a little. description of him which helps them create a police sketch of the guy. But even as police show this sketch to people and send it out to people in the area via email, they still aren't reaching anyone who can identify who this creep really is. And then about a year goes by and dad he's starting to lose his patience and he decides he needs to do more to solve this case because he believes if he can just get the word out there and people can see this police sketch that then maybe they'll be a

to find whoever it is that unalived Allie. So he starts working every day to find this killer. He contacts the producers for the TV show America's Most Wanted, who had already run a segment on Allie's murder, and he asks them to run it again, because, you know, maybe it'll reach more people, and they do run it again. He offers a reward for anyone who can help find the killer for $25,000, which prompts the city to match that reward, getting it up to $50,000. But even after all this, Dad knows this still isn't enough. Then one day, he's driving along the highway, and he looks up and he sees an empty billboard. And that is when he gets an idea.

What if he puts the police sketch of the killer on a billboard? Because usually in these cases, they would put the victim's picture on it. But dad wants as many people as possible to see the killer's face. So he gets on the phone, and he starts asking around to billboard leasing companies for their prices. And he hits up this one company, Lamar. You've probably seen their billboards. And the people at Lamar, they hear this story and they hear what he's trying to do. And while they're not sure if it'll work, they admire Dad's passion.

And they donate space on three billboards free of charge. So that's nice. And they strategically place this ad of the police sketch and information about the killer's truck along busy sections of the highway so that every day about 150,000 people drive past it. And immediately, after they put these up, the tips start pouring in. And then another year goes by, and there's still no real leads. But then, one day, suddenly, bam, someone calls the hotline and they're like, hey, I think I know that guy in the sketch. His name's Ted Hoover.

And so police investigate, and they find that this Ted Hoover, he lives many states away in Connecticut. And that Ted Hoover isn't actually the guy's real name. His real name is Benjamin. And so police, they bring Benjamin in and they question him, but they don't really have any legitimate evidence against him, other than he happens to look like the guy in the sketch. So they lie to him, and they tell him that they actually have a ton of evidence against him, and they bring him into a room where they have photos of Alley all over the wall

and, like, stacks of thick binders to make it look like they have all this dirt linking him to the crime. And this works, because Benjamin panics, He confesses everything, that he wanted to be with Ali and that she wouldn't, so he beat her up and he unalived her. And so, pow, police arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And he goes to trial and he's found guilty of first-degree murder and he's sentenced to life. While dad, because of his work on helping solve this case, he's awarded the Presidential Citizens

Medal by Barack Obama in 2011. And when he passed away in 2022 at 77 years old, Lamar, the billboard company, They put up a billboard to honor him. So shout out to Dad.