Small Town Murder - #6 - The Best & Brightest Murdered in Hawkins, Texas

Episode Date: February 22, 2017

This week, we check out the tiny, straight-laced town of Hawkins, Texas, where the murders of 3 beloved teenagers made the local people begin locking their doors. The suspect's attempts to literally escape justice are as brazen as his life of wreaking havoc. Along the way, learn about an odd rule involving time off of sentences for good behavior, the value of a good, shaded seat at the park, and we try to figure out exactly what goes on at a depot. Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman New episodes every Thursday!!Please subscribe, rate, and review!Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!Head to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder!For merchandise: crimeinsports.threadless.comCheck out James and Jimmie's other show: Crime in Sports Follow us on social media!Facebook: facebook.com/smalltownpodInstagram: instagram.com/smalltownmurderTwitter: twitter.com/MurderSmall Contact the show: [e-mail] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week, we look at Hawkins, Texas, where the 1986 disappearance of three local teens drives the town into a frenzy. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I am Jimmy Wissman. Guys, thank you so much for joining us again. We really, really appreciate it. Hope everybody enjoyed last week, the lovely town of

Eaton, Ohio. It was a weird place. Weirdness that went on there. Don't trust your foster brothers or sisters apparently is the lesson there. I want to thank everybody for their iTunes reviews this week especially. Thank you so much. That is the best way to help the show. If you'd like to just help the show

at all, if you like the show, that's the way to do it. Get on iTunes. Please give us five stars. Again. Tell them you like us. Thank you. Another week we haven't fallen off the charts, and that's because of you guys. So keep that shit going.

Keep us on the charts and keep us in people's eyes. This is growing bigger every week, and it's because of you guys. Thank you guys so much. We don't have a big network pushing us, buying time or anything like that or buying spots on iTunes. We don't know anybody. We're just putting out a show that we hope is good. So we really, really hope you guys like it. Thank you for enjoying comedy also.

Thank you. Yes, we have a lot to get to this week. Before I do that, I just want to set out our usual disclaimer that we do every single week. I just want to tell you guys, please, we are comedians, okay? We're comics. We're stand-up comics. The research that we're doing here is real. We're looking at everything.

The facts are the facts. We're not making stuff up to make a comedy show, but there's some dark stuff in here, and we make jokes. And sometimes that dark shit intertwines and makes an even darker thing that the only way to look past it is to laugh with it. Exactly, and we do not, and I can't stress this enough, we never intend to denigrate or disrespect the victims or the victims' families or anything of that nature.

Our jokes come from most of the time it's the stupid people involved. There's a prosecutor that bumbles or the criminal himself is a complete moron. Or the cops use some fucked up hilarious tactic to make somebody. Yeah, see last week in Eaton, Ohio for that one. to make somebody... Yeah, see last week in Eaton, Ohio for that one. But I'm telling you guys, we do our best to bring it to you

in a respectful way, in a way that's still funny because this stuff is dark and we don't want to hear just... Me personally, listen to something, I get tired of just hearing and then he cut her head off.

I don't want to hear that. Like, let's lighten it up a little bit. And that's what we do here. So if you like that, please come aboard. We love you. If you don't think that true crime and comedy

should ever go together, I would suggest unsubscribing now. Put your phone back in your pocket and go listen to something else. And thanks for giving us a shot. Go find Oprah's podcast or Nancy Grace. I'm sure they have one. Well, Nancy Grace's would be way more offensive than ours anyway, because at least we're not wet for the crime like she is, like you've said in your jokes in the past. It's true. We don't like Nancy Grace and we're not trying to be exploitive. We're not excited about this. This is just it happened, and we're going to talk about it.

So let's do this here. Let's start this week off. I can't wait. We are in the town of Hawkins, Texas. Sounds like it's in the middle of nowhere. Well, it is. You are not off at all there, Jimmy. What's there?

Hawks and what? What did's there? Hawks and what? What did you say? Hawks and it's called Hawkins. They have woods there. That's what they have. Trees. They have trees and they have some nothing else, really. It's a little bit.

That's it. Hawk ends. That's it. That's all that's here. It's in the northeast corner of the state. It's about 100 miles from Dallas. It's in Wood County. So Wood, it's just because that's what they had there, as we'll get into the state. It's about 100 miles from Dallas. It's in Wood County. So Wood, it's just because that's what they had there, as we'll get into the history here in a second.

Oh, is that right? Yes, the zip code there, 75765, as we like to do that to place it, area code 903. Watch out for phone calls from Hawkins, Texas. It's a very small town in size, actually. It's only 2.3 square miles. It's a very small little town. They show the downtown, and it's basically a building. That's the downtown. Just one building?

That's the depot. Not the Home Depot, just the depot. I don't know. The food depot. We keep things there. We got the grain. We got the cars. We got everything there. It is population 1,291. That is a very small town. Is that the smallest town so far? That is population 1,291. Oh, my God. That is a very small town.

Is that the smallest town so far? That is our smallest town so far. Less than 1,300 people. Yeah, Manistique was close, but this is not. This is, that is very small. When you look on, it's so funny, if you look on the Wikipedia page just to get general information of Hawkins, which I always start just to get an overview so I don't miss anything of the actual town.

Under the history segment of that page there is one line it says the post office was established in 1873 and that's all history of the town period history done that's it that's all we've done here that's we have nothing else erected a post office but you think I stopped there no I looked for a little more and apparently in the 1880s it was, the population was 400 back then. They used to ship lumber and cotton and livestock out of Hawkins. That was the big boom thing of Hawkins was lumber and livestock. And then the population would wane a little bit until October 1940 when a former middleweight boxer named Bobby Manziel, just like Johnny Manziel, the football fuck-up, found oil.

It is his family, isn't it? I believe it's his family. It's got to be. That's why I said that. Because their family comes from oil. Yes. I'll bet it's them. And the former middleweight boxer, he's about the size of a middleweight boxer.

Now he's a little bigger than that, but an athletic family. Yeah, it seems like it. Those bastards produced a Manziel. He finds a wildcat oil well just north of town. He's the first one to find oil, and it becomes a boom town after that. Once you find oil, hey, funny, people don't think it's that bad around there. Like, I wouldn't want to live in that piece of shit town. They're like, wait, there's oil there?

All right, well, hey. Load up the Chrysler. We're moving. Yeah, by the 1980s, there was a big Exxon refinery there, and that was the main work in town. It was built around that. Exxon was giving money to the school system. It was basically a town built around Exxon. It should have been called Exxon, Texas, basically.

Are there, like, monuments to the Manziel family there yet? Not yet. That was north of town, so maybe in another town. They found it, I think it was like 30 miles away, but it made the whole area an oil boom. They're like, if there's oil there, there's probably oil here. It made this shithole matter. like 30 miles away, but it made the whole area an oil boom. They're like, if there's oil there, there's probably oil here. It made this shithole matter. Yeah.

The population of our, like we said, our low under 1,300, it's actually down about 3% since 2000. So people are moving out of there. The oil business isn't as booming down there as it used to be. And when they go through lulls, the town kind of depresses a little bit when it comes to that. Starting to dry up. Odd town demographically a little bit. There's way more females than usual in town, which is great for the guys, I guess, or girls if you're into that.

But 56.35% female and 43.65% male. It's usually 51% to 49%. That's the average. That's how many people there are in the country. So that's way out of whack, as out of whack as I've seen for one of these small towns, actually. Again, the age is way off, too. The median age is 24.5. Wow.

The median age average in the country for a town is 37.4. Wow. So that shit's not even close. No. Like, that's way younger, the median age. As soon as people realize that they can get a better job somewhere else, they move. Kind of, but it's very weird. That's kind of, they move when they're young, and then they seem to come back later when they're old it's very uh it's easy it's every age group

under 20 is high more represented than average every age group under 20 way less 21 to 44 year olds so like they go to like in their peak money making years they're like i gotta i gotta get out of here i gotta try something else then when they give up they're like fuck it i'll just go back to texas maybe i'll shoot a hole in the ground and some oil comes shooting up like i'm jed clamp it They're like, I got to get out of here. I got to try something else. Then when they give up, they're like, fuck it. I'll just go back to Texas. Maybe I'll shoot a hole in the ground and some oil comes shooting up like I'm Jed Clampett. Whatever. It doesn't matter. I feel like that's when they give up.

The commute time there, this is a thing that you have to think about. Everyone must be angry in this town for this reason, if nothing else. The commute time there, average commute time is 43 minutes. To where? 43 minutes. 25 is average in the country it's my god and 20 percent of the people that live there travel more than 90 minutes for their commute i assume to dallas all right yeah yeah just somewhere else to work and then they go back home if you look at the commutes they're either short like they work in town or they're two hours or they work in dallas

that's so weird it's a very strange thing because it's a small town they don't have there's no jobs there yeah you got the depot and that's it. We'll get into that. There's the depot. You don't work at the depot? What are we depoting? I don't know, stuff. All right, then I guess we'll go there. It's about 10% less married people than average there. It's about 10% more single people, which I would think with oil jobs, it would drive young men there, but then there's more females than average. So my thought process is completely screwed up on this. More divorced people than average. 24% of the people are single with children.

Wow. That's 17% is average. So that's way out of whack for way more single with children people. That's very strange there. Politically, wow, 82% Republican there. Surprise, surprise. 82% – I've never seen anything like that before. You're shocked.

It's Texas, man. Yeah, but we were in Mississippi. Yeah, that's true. And it wasn't that out of whack. Like this is 17% Democrat. Wow. 17. The average is 51% Democrat, 47% Republican.

That's the average. But it makes sense because this is kind of a hotbed of grassroots conservatism in a way. This is the dumb way, by the way. And if you disagree with this, I don't care because we're going to get into why. I'm not talking about politics. I'm talking about schools. This is where conservative, they call themselves conservative monitors, Mel and Norma Gabler started their fury against public school books.

If you hear about the Texas school book scandals, this is where this started. Two idiots at their kitchen table saying they can't be teaching my kids science. And I don't care. You know what? If you're religious, if you're whatever, that's fine. I respect that completely. But you're listening to a true crime show. And if you listen to true crime shows, you know what comes up a lot?

Forensics. And science. Lots of science. So if you like that, you should think these people are fucking assholes because they don't want science taught in schools. And that's one thing. So we stay out of politics on both of our shows. We stay completely out of it.

Never mention a word. Schools is where I draw the fucking line. Teach the kids science. That's not political. That's just common sense and dumb. Educate your goddamn children. Educate your fucking kids. Because my future depends on it, goddammit.

When I'm 80, I'm going to need a doctor. And I don't want my doctor going, well, we're going to pray to Jesus about it. No. Yeah, we can pray, too, but can you fucking give me medicine, actually, too? Cut this shit out, too. Yeah, we want science taught. Jesus. So the race and religion here, 69% white, 62 is average, 15.76% black.

So that's actually over the average by about 3%. It's our first town with more black people than average. 0% Asian. None. They still don't put up with them. Not even a restaurant. Right. We got the depot.

There ain't no room for one of your Chingy Chong things. Get them on out of here. I don't want no noodles. I don't want your goddamn rice. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. 5% is average for Asians. 10.4, about 10.5% Hispanic. 17's the average. So you expect that, Texas.

58% are religious as compared to 49 average. Wow. 33% Baptist. Wow. So that's what I mean. This is these people, the people sitting at the dinner table. The motherfuckers. Railing about science.

Yeah. That's those people. You bet. Sorry if you're a Baptist. I hope you believe in science. If you do, then we're clear and it doesn't matter. I don't care what you believe in. If not, you're a lunatic I hope you believe in science. If you do, then we're clear and it doesn't matter. I don't care what you believe in. If not, you're a lunatic.

0.0% Jewish, 0.0% Muslim. We have not had a Jewish person or a Muslim in any of these towns ever. There's no Bernsteins or Ahmeds in town. What the fuck? As we are going to find out, and as you know, every time if we're doing a town, a murder happened there. And one thing they have, and this is just anecdotal, whatever, but there's every one of these towns with murders, no Jewish people. So just saying, maybe get yourself a couple of Jewish people and maybe your murder rate will go down. I think it was 0% Muslim on

everything else too. It is 0% Muslim also. Yeah, I did. So we don't know here. The economy in this place in Hawkins, Texas is 5.5% unemployment, even though they haven't had very good job growth. They're still around average in the unemployment rate. That's really strong, 5.5%. There's no income tax in Texas, state income tax anyway. Is that right? No state income tax. I had no idea.

Texas, Florida, Nevada, I believe. So they just do like high sales tax and property tax. It's a little high. It's about a percent higher than the rest of it is just they let people die in the streets. That's it. It's like, well, no money for it, so sorry. No it start praying to jesus oh well yeah dr so-and-so said to pray to jesus he came up in the hawkins school system so uh yeah uh no income tax average house now we're making fun of hawkins texas sorry guys but it's there's 1200 people there and it's fun

like i said we're going to get to my town eventually and jimmy's also and they're horrible shitholes that we're going to make fun of way worse than anywhere else we do. And you're going to see Dr. Simpson because there's no Dr. Goldstein in this town, and you're not going to be surviving very well. The average household income is about $47,000, which is pretty close to the 53,000 national average. Most people make between 30,000 and 75,000 there. It's a middle-class town. There's very few people. 0.00% make over $200,000 a year. Wow.

So it's blue-collar. That's it. Wow. Because, I don't know, some guy probably makes 180. He's the guy that owns the depot. Right. Nothing else. There's no other way to make it there.

And here's a hot tip. Start educating people. Yeah. Maybe that'll help. you know what i mean i think they teach science there now because the the gables moved to uh the gabblers moved to longview texas to launch this i guess hawkins was too small of a platform they needed to move to longview there's only 1300 people here maybe these 1300 people were goddamn were half decent in the brain and they ran those assholes out of town. They're like, you know what? Fuck you. We want our kids to learn science.

Take a hike. Now, twice the engineering and computer and science jobs is average. It's about 11%, which makes sense for oil, oil refinery. There's a lot of technology. The engineering for that, yeah. This is interesting. 7% farming, fishing, forestry, which is a lot of forest land around there. 30% sales jobs.

30% of the jobs are sales jobs, which is way higher than normal. More than twice the construction and repair jobs than normal. It's about 19%. Jobs where there is 0.00%. Social services, legal. There's no lawyers in town. The arts, health care, and law enforcement slash fire, all 0.00%. So I assume they use county.

I assume they get their fire and medical. Yeah, they get it from the county, I would assume. But none of those things exist in this town. No room for a lawyer's office unless he wants to sit next to the grain in the depot. They don't allow Jews. Yeah, that's the other thing. That's not helping either. Cost of living there, 100 being the average cost of living, just using that as a plain spot. That's zero.

Hawkins is 89. So it's pretty close. Healthcare is way more expensive there, probably because there's no goddamn doctors. You have to go somewhere else. Housing, super low there. Of course. 57 out of 100 in housing. So yeah, let's see here. Almost half the national average? Yeah. Median house price there is $105,000. $185,000 is the average. Wow. So that tells you a lot.

Last five years, the home appreciation is way less. Houses are not appreciating in value as much as they are everywhere else. 20% of the homes are vacant there. That's probably why. Wow. That'll drive prices down a little bit. That's worse than Detroit, man. That's terrible.

Good. 20% of the houses are vacant. 20% are vacant. So you can probably negotiate a little bit there. But you don't even want that house anyway. Have you seen a vacant house before? They are disastrous. I would say so.

Nothing taken care of. The pipes are all a mess. The electricals. Oh, my God. It's terrible. You can get a two-bedroom apartment in Hawkins for $711. And the average is $1,027. But you've got to do some electric work.

You're going to have to do something. But there's a lot of people doing construction and repairs in that town. Just hope you don't need a lawyer for anything. Very few homes valued at over $200,000, only 4%. Well, that's good because nobody has that kind of money anyway. Exactly. Most homes are between $80,000 and $150,000. They built a lot of homes between 1970 and 1990 when the oil boom was going well,

and then it dipped after that when things kind of got a little whatever. If you're looking to move to Hawkins, Texas, if we have convinced you that this is the spot for you, the garden spot. You hate science and love Jesus. This is the place. The housing report there. Let's see what's available. Three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,300-square-foot house on Francis Road, only $64,900. A three-bedroom, four-bath house, and this is a big brick, beautiful house, 2,700 square

foot on Autumnwood Trail, $199,500. My God. And that's like the best house in town pretty much. And for your bargain shopper, we have a four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,100 square foot house for $75,500. My God. So I'm sure that needs some work. Yeah. But that's so cheap.

Yeah. Education. They have an average graduation rate. It's weird there. They only have 11.4 students per teacher. That's way less than the average of about 17. When I was in school, it was about 34, if I remember, in my classes. We had kids sitting on the heaters on the side.

You can get away with a lot of shit. Kids didn't have desks when I was there. Chairs. They were like, well, you got to sit over there. About half the average of four-year grads as normal there. So like you said, people leave when they graduate college. On the things to do section in Hawkins, pretty much nothing, basically. This is their things to do.

This is what they're saying, everything they got. They have the Hawkins City Park, which one of the reviews, somebody reviewed a park. It said, quote, lots of good shaded seating. That's how barren this place is for entertainment. If you're 80 years old, they have shaded seating down at the park. There are places to go sit. In the shade. Because it's hot down there.

It's Texas hot and humid in the summer and pretty damn cold in the winter, too. It's a horrible climate altogether. And also, too, the other thing to do that was listed, the Holy Spirit Catholic Church. Oh, boy. I feel like they just go there and they're like, look at them. Some kind of Italians or Irish or something in there. I think that's where the Mexicans go, too. And they just look through the window.

They're like, look at them lighting candles. Look at them in there. Look at them with their hairy chests. Get away from the fire with your hairy chest. They're pretending that's wine. Look at them up there. I don't like that at fire with your hairy chest. They're pretending that's wine. Look at them up there. I don't like that at all. They just drank after that guy.

That's gross. Yeah. What's he putting in his mouth? I've seen the hippies do that with acid. The crime rates there, because then we're going to get into the crime here, as we all know. It's always the last thing we talk about with the town, the crime rates. Nice segue. The property crime here, burglary, larceny,

theft, etc., is slightly higher than the national average, which we always find with property crime in small towns. I don't know if it's crackiness or just kids or what. Violent crimes, murder, rape, robbery, assault, are about half the average of national, which most of our towns, that's what it is. You live in a small town

like this, you're about half as likely to be raped or murdered or robbed at gunpoint or all this stuff. It shouldn't happen to you by statistics. By statistics. But if we're talking about it on this podcast, it fucking happened. Absolutely. Now, let's shift our time period to 1986. Okay.

We're 1986 Hawkins. How old were you? At this time, we're going to say early 86, I was seven years old. I was five. Okay. And I had just blown up my hand. I was sitting in a cast thinking about how much of a dumbass I was. Well, that's miserable shit. You and your half a missing finger here. Well, there was another guy hanging around Hawkins then.

You weren't in Hawkins, luckily for you. There was another guy hanging around Hawkins. We're going to get into his history a little bit. He is Jerry Walter McFadden, and he is known as, this is a self-given nickname, which anybody who self-gives a nickname is an asshole. And this guy, way beyond the nickname, is the biggest piece of shit we've encountered so far, in my opinion, anyway. You can make your own judgments on who's worse than who.

It's arguable. It's debatable. This guy's an asshole. It's not going to be a debate, I don't think, by the time I get done. Let's see. He nicknamed himself The Animal, which is a stupid nickname big uh big big muppet fan he's no he's an actual animal all right like literally he's a horrible person he was born march 24 march 21st 1948 uh he's he ends up he's a big guy he's five nine he's over 200 pounds his weight fluct. But he's stocky. He's powerful.

He's a maniac. He's the type of guy. He's bushy-haired, blonde hair, beard, covered in tattoos, Satan tattoos on his arm. And whatever, people get dumb tattoos. But he's the type of guy who you'd look at. Like, when you see his picture, you go, that's not a guy. You just, like, if you're at a bar and you saw that guy going around, whatever, you would move away from him as he moved towards you. You'd go, that guy's an animal.

Yeah. He literally, like you just don't get a good vibe on this guy at all. Just even by his picture, never mind what he's done. Well, at 5'9", he's probably pissed that he's not taller with that kind of attitude. Well, we'll see. Yeah, he's dominance in this sort of thing is a big deal for him. And yeah, we'll get into this here. He's a seventh grade education, dropped out in the seventh grade.

They're always smart people. Definitely. You know he's brilliant, obviously. He's from Haskell, Texas, originally. He grows up. By the time he's 18 years old in 1966, he's already convicted of burglary. Yeah. Two years later in 68, he's convicted of destruction of property.

So he's starting to go burglary, is breaking in somewhere, stealing something. So he'll escalate, as we'll find out here. He worked on and off in the oil fields at that point when he was being arrested and around his late teens. At age 19, he was married to a 15-year-old girl. Perfect. That's illegal, bud. Maybe not in Texas in the 60s. I have no idea. I'm sure they got their parents to sign off on it. Jerry Lee illegal, bud. Maybe not in Texas in the 60s. I have no idea.

I'm sure they got their parents to sign off on it. Jerry Lee Lewis was married. What does he think? He is a celebrity in the 50s? You're only allowed to marry teenagers if you're a celebrity back in those days. He gave himself his name The Animal. The Animal, yeah. He kind of deserves to marry whatever he wants.

So now he's a seventh grade dropout with a burglary conviction and a destruction of property conviction and a 15-year-old wife. What a fucking peach, isn't he? And Satan tattoos. What parent lets their daughter at 15 go get married? I don't care what year it is. Never mind get married to this guy, especially. To the animal. Yeah, it's not like he is Jerry Lee Lewis and it's like, oh, he's famous.

He's a piece of garbage. Hey, Dad, I'm going to get married. This is my boyfriend, the animal. I'm no. Get back in your room. I don't think so. Go back, do your homework. He has two kids because you've got to reproduce, obviously.

You can't possibly. With her? Yeah, of course, with her. They divorce after a few years. Don't worry. He completely abandons those kids and family. Surprise. Surprise, he's not a good dad.

Shocker. She's an 18-year-old divorcee with two kids. Yeah, exactly. And this is her ex-husband, that guy. Jesus. 1972, he encounters, he steps his game up a little bit. It's not his game. He steps his crime game up a little bit.

Does a completely repulsive thing. 1972 in Denton, Texas, he pleads guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl. Oh, God. Yeah, pleads guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl. In his defense, he could have thought it was his ex-wife. Yeah, really. He probably thought it was his wife. He was really missing having a teenager to be in control of or whatever this weirdo does.

What a terrible person. But the funny thing is, nothing funny, but the weird thing is about this, he rapes a 14-year-old girl. So you would think, okay, we're not going to hear from him for a while because he'll be in prison. Not so much, though, because in 1973, he's out of prison, and out of prison to the extent that he can rape a middle school teacher back in his hometown of Haskell, Texas. Texas. How'd you let him off the hook? It's unreal. He receives a 15-year

prison sentence for the two of these. I guess this was added on to, I don't know if he was on probation or parole or whatever. Maybe he was going through the trial. So a 15-year prison sentence. How would that guy get out? You're not getting out on your own recognizance if you rape a 14-year-old and you're an oil field worker with previous convictions. Your nickname is the animal that you gave yourself. Yeah.

Some shorts tattooed on him somewhere. Ridiculous. He can't even get away from it. So you would imagine he's 15 years, 1973. So you're like, all right, we don't have to worry about this guy. You figure he does 10 at least, right? He's going to be in the early 80s, 83 before we even have to worry about this guy. Maybe he'll serve at all.

Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, the full 15 get out in, you know, 88. Maybe he'll have reconsidered. Maybe he'll have, you know, slowed down a little in his life. No, 1978, he is released on parole. What? 1978.

Under five and a half years he served for two pretty strong rapes. Jesus. They weren't, I don't know if there was a strong rape and a bad, but they were not like... He ruined a 14-year-old girl's life. This is what I mean. These were like forcible, terrible, horrible acts on unwilling participants, which is what rape is. One was a child. And one is a child, which is

insane. Yeah, so they just release him, 78, send him back into the streets. So maybe he's rehabilitated. It's been five years, right? You know, he gets some time out here to think about it. I'm sure he thought about it. He said, you know, these tattoos I have, you know, maybe they don't represent the way I feel like I thought they did before. Maybe I'm not the animal. Maybe I'll change my mind. Maybe I'll be the, you know, the rosebud from now on. I met a man in prison. He told me all about Jesus. I now hate science.

I'm the daffodil now. Yeah, get those textbooks out of the classes. What are we doing here? Instead, he kidnaps a Shackleford County secretary, 18-year-old woman, and drives around three counties robbing and pillaging through the whole day with her as a, holding her as a hostage and raping and sodomizing her when he gets bored. He thinks he's a pirate. He thinks he's a pirate. He thinks he is a pirate.

This is what I mean. This is a guy that you would look at and go, ooh, trouble, and walk to the other side of the street because he's clearly trouble. And this is insane. He was born way too late. He should be a Viking. This man is a terrible human being. Luckily, he was arrested for this. What he did to this secretary is so horrible that the six other charges from that day and his robbery and going around three counties and doing shit, they didn't even try those charges.

They said, we got to figure out what we're doing here with this. That's how bad it was. So in 1979, it goes to trial. He's sentenced to 15 years in prison again for the 78 thing with the secretary. Again, 15 years. He's convicted of aggravated sexual assault. Texas, get your law shit together, would you? I mean.

Well, now they've gone the other way. The pendulum swung the other way. Rather than being too lenient, you know, if you jaywalk, they'll put you in the electric chair. Even if you're 14 and retarded, they'll be like, you shouldn't walk across that street, boy. Flip the switch. That's what it is.

It's different. They're taking all their missteps of this guy out on people nowadays. Yes, they are. Let's just fucking get the right guy and put him in jail for a long time. This guy changes laws. Laws change because of this guy. Because of him. Because of him, yes.

He spends, you would hope now, he's been in prison. He's been sentenced to 15 years. He got out in five and a half, got out, did the exact same thing, but worse. Now he's kidnapping people and rampaging and everything. And taking them with him as he goes and commits crimes. He's like James Brown with a hostage now riding around counties pillaging like a lunatic, right? Oh, Jesus. So you would think that now they're not going to – he's not going to get out early.

He would be the guy where you'd go, yeah, I don't think you're getting parole, asshole. I'll be back in the cage with you. Not so much because Texas has a program, and we've spoken about this on our other podcast, Crime and Sports. A little plug there. You don't have to like sports. It's true crime and comedy just like this, so listen to Crime and Sports. But we discovered a while back that Texas had a program in the 70s and the 80s that gave convicts, it gave them prisoners way, way, way huge amounts of time off for good behavior. It's like if you had one year of good behavior, they'd knock two years off your sentence type

of thing. It's so silly. Insanity. Right. Because it was a budget issue because they have no state fucking income tax. Right. That's where state income tax comes from. Maybe start doing that, you guys.

Yes. Get some money. Give 2%. Get some social services like we saw in some healthcare in a fire department and also keep your rapists in prison. Okay? This is a cost-cutting thing. This is all it is, like I said. So anyway, he's paroled on July 17, 1985.

He serves less than six years. Less than six. So he's been sentenced twice to 15 years. That's 30 years total. And he's out before the first one is even up. Exactly. He should have been getting paroled for the first one when he got paroled for the second one.

That's how insane this is. But there's people are suffering because of it. Unbelievable. Yeah. So he's released on parole. Obviously, there's caveats of the parole where they say you have to do this and you have to do that. Of course, he's going to say, yeah, sure.

No problem. Of course, he's going to say, yeah, sure, no problem. He's going to do that stuff too because he's a law-abiding citizen now. Well, he's good now. He's fine. He's served his debt to society, I'm sure. He must keep a job, obviously, and visit his parole officer and et cetera, et cetera, all that sort of thing. Not kidnap women and rape them probably would be one of the chief tenets of the agreement, I would imagine. McFadden tells the parole board that he intends to live in the Hawkins area, which is why we're discussing him.

Gotcha. Sheriff Frank White at the time, this is the sheriff at the time, said, quote, I wrote the parole board and asked them not to parole him to this area. I asked them to parole him back to West Texas where officials there knew his habits and could better keep an eye on him. So he said, I don't know this fucking guy. I have no resources. I'm in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not watching this asshole. Put him back in his hometown. Let them watch him. That's what he said, basically. We don't want him around here. That's what it is. It's that sheriff knows. That sheriff can say he doesn't know all he wants, but he can see twice convicted of brutal rapes and decide, I have 1,300 people here, 60% of which are females.

I want him nowhere near here. I want him nowhere near here. Plus, it's more work for him, basically. Right. He's like, I spend a lot of my time sitting on the side of the road drinking coffee like Jackie Gleason and smoking the Bandit. So I can't really get out there and keep an eye on a rapist. And by the way, I've got a family, and I'd like to spend some time with them. I don't want to have to spend every waking moment keeping an eye on this fucking lunatic.

Watching the animal. You watched the animal today. The legitimate animal. Not just his name. That's exactly what he is. So after he's paroled, he works for a storage tank company. What the fuck he did with the storage tank? I picture him just sitting inside of it, just cleaning shit with a toothbrush maybe because he's useless in every other capacity

storage what to the storage tank company i don't know what that is that's on the court documents that's how it had researching how to get rid of the victims now i got this from a lawsuit that we'll get into later and it's it's interesting but he works for this uh storage tank company but he largely neglects the terms of his parole. He is fired for absenteeism from his job at the storage tank company. You would think that would put you right back in the pokey, right? You would think so. At that point, nope. Can't even keep a job.

Nope. And he's fired for not showing up. It's not like they didn't like him or they didn't think he had a good attitude or he didn't do his job well enough. He just didn't show up. He wasn't there enough for them to know. Yeah, it's the number one thing you have to do on parole is show up for your job. Whether you're good at it or not is another issue. So he's wandering around Hawkins, Texas right now.

Not safe for anybody, obviously. The sheriff should be literally just sitting outside his house the whole time. Just keeping an eye on you. We've got 1,200 people. You're the worst one. So pretty easy to figure out what we're looking at. 1,200 people. You're the only one that everybody, that all 1,200 are scared of.

We're all afraid of you. So if you want to call that profiling, we're profiling Jerry. Like a motherfucker. Guys named Jerry we're profiling, okay? That's you, buddy. So let's get into some other people in this story. Gina Turner is a 20-year-old girl. She's 20 years old at the time.

Really, she's like a pretty bright type of girl. She graduated in 1984. We're in 1986 right now. She graduated in 1984, was a valedictorian of her school, was voted Miss Hawkins High. So she is like the queen of the small town. Picture her in a blue dress, sitting on a white horse with a cap and gown at the fucking homecoming dance. That's the she's picture in a blue dress on a white horse with a cap and gown and at the fucking homecoming dance. That's the thing, man. And 17 year old boys just tugging away and thinking about her at night.

If they have a parade discussed with the VFW people throwing candy at children, she's sitting on the back of a convertible with like two veterans up front to 80 year old guys with Shriner hats on tossing candy. That's her. That's the girl with the fucking sash. Miss Hawkins. She is attending Tyler Junior College at this point and is planning on becoming a nurse. She's 20 years old. Of course she's planning on being a nurse. She's too nice.

She's the beautiful sweetheart. She's an amazing person. She's an amazing person. And all of the people I'm going to tell you about now, they're all, as described, they're all really, really nice people and really amazing kids with bright futures. Suzanne Harrison she's hanging out with. Gina Taylor and Suzanne Harrison. Suzanne Harrison's 18 years old.

She's just about to graduate high school. And this is May. We're talking early May of 1986. She is going to graduate that year in June. So, I mean, right about to graduate. She's a cheerleader for the football team. She wants to be just like her friends. Absolutely.

And she's National Honor Society, Future Teachers of America. She's in the band. She has a job at a pharmacy. She wants to be a teacher. She wants to be a teacher. A teacher and a nurse. Unbelievable. They want to help people.

They're very nice small town girls. Small town girls. And she's known as happy and nice. Like every picture of her, she just looks like she's just bright and happy. And she's known as like the sweetest girl in town, basically. Not to whatever, call her a girl and sweet is a bad thing. She's a nice, she's 18. She's a nice girl.

She's what you want your daughter to turn out to be. Exactly what you'd want your daughter to turn out to be. Just a great kid. Now, on May 4th, 1986, Gina and Suzanne meet up at Suzanne's house. And they are going to head out to Lake Hawkins for the evening. They're going to go hang out, drive around. It's like an early summer night. It's a little bit cool, but still warm.

An 18-year-old and a 20-year-old going to the lake at night. They're going to drink beers with the boys and be the cute girls. That's right. They have a guy they go hang out there with. That's their buddy. They usually go during the day. The lake is 1,200 people and the thing to do there is the Catholic church. Stare at the Italians. That and the thing to do there is the Catholic Church. Stare at the Italians.

That's the thing to do in town. Look at all those horns on their necks. Look at them, them weirdos. I smell garlic. You smell garlic? So they go to Lake Hawkins a lot and sit in the sun and tan, and they're teenage girls. Real quick, James is Italian, so it's so much fun to listen to James make fun of Italians. I'll make fun of Italians a lot, and if you don't like it,

go fuck yourself, because my last name is Petrogallo, so if you have to spell that your whole goddamn life, you can say whatever the fuck you want. It's so funny to hear you badmouth Italians. I love it. This is mainly the Texas people staring at them. But anyway, yeah, they think we're weird. I've been down south, and that's

way bigger than black or white or anything else. They're like, you ain't from around here, are you, with that last name. They don't like that shit. Which one you think they call Don? Yeah, exactly. So anyway, they go to hang out at Lake Hawkins for the evening, and they go to meet Brian Drew Boone, who's a friend of theirs, 19 years old. He graduated last year from Hawkins High School. Was he the quarterback?

He was the captain of the football team, my friend. Yes, he was. What a guess. Captain of the football team. Yes, he was. What a guess. You know it. The two beautiful girls in town hanging out with the stud in high school, of course. He's 19. He's going to Tyler Junior College. He was a great student and athlete also in high school.

Like I said, played basketball and was captain of the football team. He lived on Lake Hawkins with his uncle at the time, which is a perfect place. He's just there to receive the teen poon that's going to be coming at him. Absolutely. You know, that's where they want to come hang out. He's like, well, that's half the battle.

I got him here. He's the southern boy that every boy wants to be. He's got it made in the shade. This is like the town that Kevin Bacon went to in Footloose. Absolutely. And he's the captain of the football team. That's what we're doing here. It's exactly the same thing.

And he's got Chris Penn sitting there like, is this how you do it? So they meet up. The three teens meet up to drive around the lake for the evening. They're going to drive around. It's a little community around the lake. They're going to hang out. They're going to sit, probably drink a few beers, whatever. You know, what kids do.

Whatever. Make out with each other. Get their feet in the red clay. You said ffff, and I was like, you're going to say their finger in each other, aren't you, Jimmy? Let's not go there. But that too. But that too. But that too. Now, the lake, like I said.

You know me so well. I know you so well. I heard a ffff, and I'm like, oh, God. Don't say it, Jimmy. Don't say it. Come on. It's on my face. So the lake was a place the kids liked to hang out.

All the kids. There's nothing to do there. They go to the lake. It's known as the point. Every town has a the point where the kids hang out and make out. Of course. Like we said. So Suzanne, they're out. They go around. Parents, they go out all the lake. It's known as the point. Every town has a the point where the kids hang out and make out. Of course. Like we said. So Suzanne, they're out.

They go around. The parents, they go out all the time. No big deal. Curfew comes around. No Suzanne at home. Uh-oh. She's a high school student. She's got a curfew.

Yeah. And the parents are very worried, obviously. But they're thinking, who knows? Maybe they're, whatever. She got caught up with something. Yeah. They're hoping for the best. There's no cell phones.

Right. This is 1986, so you can't call her. She's just out somewhere. Then after a while, they wait, they wait. They don't come home at all. Gina doesn't come home. Brian doesn't come home. Nobody comes home.

Nobody comes home. Everyone's like, what's going on? Yeah, family members begin to look for the three of them. They begin to panic. It's a small town, so you can check everywhere pretty quick over here. You check the lake. You check the church, you check the park. That's it. At this point, the best case scenario is that Brian is fingering both of them. That's the best case scenario at this point. Now, about three hours after they are missing,

Brian's brother finds his truck. He finds Brian's truck. It's abandoned about a half a mile from where a couple, Clifton and Denise Phillips. They were at 745 p.m. that night. They were at the lake. This couple and a wild haired tattooed man pulled a gun on them and demanded money and sex from the woman. Oh, my God. Somehow they convinced him that they didn't have any money and were able to get away. We don't have any money or sex. We have no sex. Yeah, I'm sorry. How did they convince him they have no sex left? I don't know. I think he wanted money

and sex and if he couldn't have the money, I think he was like, I want, yeah, exactly. So he wanted to get out of there. He left when they didn't have any money and they took off and they saw him, the couple here, the Phillips couple, saw him standing by a blue and white Ford Bronco and even

got the first five digits of the license plate of it. So they call the police on him for the robbery. Now, the truck is found, Boone's truck, Brian's truck is found half a mile from this spot of this robbery. Now, they still don't come home. They don't come home the whole night. They're gone. Everyone's wondering where they are. May 5th, 1986, which is the next day, Barnwell Mountain Park.

This is about 30 miles from Lake Hawkins. In the Barnwell Mountain Park region here, maintenance workers in the park find a body. And it's Suzanne Harrison. Fuck. They find her. This is horrible. She's been beaten, raped, sodomized, and strangled with her own underwear, which is disgusting and horrible. And, yeah, this guy is a huge – this one made me angry, and I've been making everybody angry out there, but this guy pisses me off a lot.

Obviously, all these people piss me off, but this isn't even like a – this is – you have to be – This is just such a potential of a life that could have been something amazing, and this one snuffed out already. For nothing. For nothing. For nothing. For this piece of garbage who should be in prison anyway. Unreal. So they find her. They still don't find Gina and Brian, though.

They only find her alone up there. And they have Brian's truck, though. They found Brian's truck, but that's it. Now, May 6, 1986, police stop a blue and white Ford Bronco and arrest Jerry McFadden for the robbery. Gotcha. He also fits the description, like I said, of the man who robbed the couple. A wild-haired, 5'9", muscular man named The Animal? That's the guy, a fatter guy, yeah.

He's also a man, he's also been, was seen, there's other witnesses that saw him with the three kids before they disappeared. Oh, shit. Also, we have witnesses to that. Now, McFadden is arrested and held just for the aggravated robbery for now. He's held on a bond of $100,000 because he can't pay that shit being an unemployed storage tank worker. Now, May 10th, 1986, two decomposing bodies are found in a ditch off of a farm road in Ore City, which is about 15 miles from the lake.

They find out. They do forensic fingerprint tests. It's Gina Turner and Brian Boone, they find. Thank God for science. Absolutely. Thank God for textbooks. They were both shot in the head execution style with a.38. And, of course, Gina Turner had been raped, too.

So, obviously, this guy can't pass up the chance to rape somebody. McFadden is charged with murder in the course of an aggravated sexual assault. This is a death penalty charge. Good. This is aggravated murder. This is in Texas reinstated the death penalty in 82. And this guy is prime suspect. Because they connected him to all three.

Yeah. They know that he was with them. We're working on this. Now, guys, I have to say this. I don't know where you stand on this, Jimmy, but I'm not a huge death penalty proponent. I'm not a guy that's like, strap him in, kill him, because we fuck have to say this. I don't know where you stand on this, Jimmy, but I'm not a huge death penalty proponent. I'm not a guy that's like, strap him and kill him because we fuck it up a lot. Now, granted, if we had 100 percent certainty, I'm not against it. It's not that.

But we don't ever have 100 percent certainty and we fuck up a lot. The other part is that it's not a deterrent. It doesn't stop people from doing it because it still happens. Well, Texas had the death penalty and look what he did. Exactly. So that shows you that right there. That's my point. But the thing about it is when there's people like this and when we get into the evidence

of why we know he did it and there's people like this, fuck him. These are the people where I'm like, no, no, no. They should let this girl's dad beat this guy to death. That's what they should do. Beat his balls until he dies. Don't touch anywhere else on his body. The three of these people's families. Yeah.

They should be able to cave his sack right into his chest cavity until he bleeds out. That's it. Into mashed Gerber bananas. That's what they should make them. I'd love to see that. Strained peas. And I would watch. I would watch and I would laugh my balls off.

Someone who does something this horrible is ridiculous. What a horrific man. Prosecutors are going to seek the death penalty on this. Prosecutors are going to seek the death penalty on this. Now, David Lee Marsh, who is a Lake resident, said he saw McFadden drive by the house at the Lake a couple of times that night. And so he IDs him in a lineup as the guy in the area with the truck that ties him to the robbery. Good work, sir. Absolutely.

Now, July 9th, 1986, he's in jail. He's awaiting charges. He's in isolation in jail. awaiting charges. He's in isolation. Okay. In jail. He's the only prisoner in isolation. Maybe the only prisoner in the jail. No, there's other people. Okay. He's the only one in isolation. We're like, keep him because people want to kill him too, by the way.

Oh, really? Good. Well, yeah. This is a small town and he's a teenage girl rapist and killer. And everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows everybody. So they all know her. This is a big deal.

And even the guards are like, that's the guy that did that. I mean, you can't help but gossip about this. It's the biggest thing that ever happened in this town. So he's being watched in isolation by a guard named Sergeant Kenneth Mayfield. He is in charge of keeping an eye on McFadden. I don't like when we have the name of the guard. You know, there's bad stuff happening here. Now, McFadden, Jerry, asks Mayfield, the guard, if he can use the phone, which for some reason he was permitted to use.

They had to let him use the phone. I don't know what it was. I don't know. He said it was to call his wife. I could see if they couldn't refuse an attorney call. Right. Or it might have had something to do with his case. Whatever it was, they had to let him use the phone.

Okay. That I know for a fact. Now Mayfield opens the cell to get him out, obviously, to have him come use the phone. And the animal goes animal? Which is in the cubicle office. McFadden hits him with a piece of steel that he pried off the window. What the fuck? Hits him in the mouth with the thing.

The guard goes down hard. He's out cold, bleeding all over the place. He goes down. McFadden takes his keys off of him. He's been scoping this out from the cell the whole time. Takes the guard's keys, runs into the office, and takes the gun out of the locked drawer because he has the keys and he knew which key it was. He takes it.

Now he's got a handgun in a prison. And he's a lunatic. A lunatic who is facing capital murder charges. He has nothing to lose. Nothing. At all. So he forces another guard, Rosalie Williams, and another guard with her,

Rosalie and another guard to push Mayfield into a cell and lock the door. The guard who he assaulted. So Jerry McFadden puts the gun to Rosalie Williams' throat and says, you know, forces her to take him to the elevator that she has keys for. He scoped everything out. He said, you have keys to that elevator which leads

down to the parking lot. Oh, my God. Takes her with the gun at gunpoint to her neck, you know, under her chin. Yeah. Drags her out. They go down. They head out to the parking lot. Now they're outside in the parking lot.

This is not good. This is not great. He takes Williams to her car, a 1979 Datsun. This poor lady's a prison guard with a piece of shit 79 Datsun. She's making no money at all. That's what I mean. Like, this poor woman, she's got's got kids yeah because they made a note i remember in this article they made a note to say that uh she she saw their her son's uh toy on the passenger seat when she got in jerry mcfadden gets in the driver's seat makes her get in the passenger seat uh he's a fucking complete idiot though

because he can't even drive a stick so he love it start the car he's trying to start it and you have to have no idea to put the clutch he doesn't know so he's getting super pissed off and he's like waving the gun around screaming so she's telling him to calm down relax relax relax like we'll get it started it's fine uh he gets frustrated with the car makes her start the car and then he gets in and drives even though he doesn't drive a stick. He's jerking it around. So it must have been a – if it's not scary enough to be taken by a murdering rapist at gunpoint from a jail, now we can't drive too. Now you're in a car with this guy, which is maybe as dangerous as being anywhere else with him. I want to see the security footage with the Benny Hill music playing. Jesus Christ.

I'm telling you, man. So they're driving. They drive a little bit out of town. At 7.30 p.m., they hear helicopters above them because they're in a massive search. Of course. As soon as the guards came to, they were calling the dispatch desk, which is what Rosalie Williams worked at. No one's answering. They go up there.

They're like, oh, shit, there's a problem. Where's Rosalie? He's knocked out, locked in a cage. She's gone. The gun's missing. We've got issues. Where's the out, locked in a cage. She's gone. The gun's missing. We've got issues. Where's the animal that belongs in that cage? Where's the animal?

Yeah. Where's George the Animal Steel over here? So, yeah, they hear the helicopters. Nick Fadden panics, drives off the road, and hits a tree because he's an idiot. And he can't control a stick. And he can't control a stick. He's like, how do you downshift this thing? He's freaked out.

Yeah. So they get out of the car because it's destroyed. He drags Williams into the woods with him. Oh, no. Where they hid until 3 or 4 in the morning. They were behind a church in the woods, which they didn't know they were behind a church. They eventually end up coming. They're in Big Sandy, Texas, which is a town about the size of Hawkins.

There's about 1,200 people there. Very small town. They end up coming upon a boxcar in like a railroad worker area. And the boxcar had toys around it too. Like kids had been playing there like outside of it. And McFadden told her, better hope there's no kids here because they're going to be in trouble if there is. Like he was telling her, like I will kill fucking kids. I don't care.

Brace yourself because you're going to see something horrible. I'm not going down basically. He forces her into the boxcar, forces Rosalie into the boxcar where they hide. They hide for a whole day in there. They're gone for 28 hours. Unbelievable. But he's gone for 28 hours. She's gone for about 19.

That is the worst 19 hours she's ever experienced in her life. He tells her they're going to give him the needle for something he didn't do. He keeps saying that, like, I didn't do it. And he says, quote, I've been through a hard life. I've done a lot of things, and I didn't do what they're accusing me of is what he's telling her. Whatever. They stayed in the boxcar the whole, like, the next day. She heard workers, you know, going around her, and she was hoping they'd open the boxcar and find her.

Nobody ever opened the boxcar. Wow. So she's stuck in the boxcar. By the night, they're dehydrated as shit. It's July in Texas. Jesus. It's mid-July in Texas. It's 100-something degrees outside. They haven't had water

since they left the prison. None. So they're dying. She said she's seeing spots. She can't stand up. She's weak and she can't stand up and everything. So she starts screaming that she can't swallow. She's about to be useless to him. So yeah, so she's saying, so he said, calm down. I'll go get you some water. I'll get

us some water. Fine, fine. So apparently he opened the boxcar door and he went to get some water. Rosalie said immediately a stray dog attacked him out there. What? A stray dog attacked him. Amazing. Because he's in a boxcar. Hobos and stray dogs have a contentious relationship.

This is amazing. So he watched. Well, it doesn't get quite as funny because then he beat the dog unmercifully. So she's watching him beat the dog unmercifully. So she's watching him beat this dog unmercifully. And like this guy's an animal. She knows what he's capable of. She's seen the charges.

She says she somehow gets the strength to bolt out of the box. Good. She runs off. She said she looked back and still saw him fighting with the dog. So he didn't even notice because he was fighting with a stray dog. He makes it to a home. She does. Rosalie makes it to a nearby home where she knocks on the door, falls into the living

room, and right away they go, that's the guard from TV. Holy shit. So they're like, you're safe. You're safe. Call the cops. It's the guard from TV. Get her inside. Get her some water.

Good. They help her out. Thank God she knocked on the right door. Well, they were just sitting in their living room. I remember the heroes. There's nothing to do but a shady park bench. She's a hero. But they're just like, they did a normal thing that anybody would have done unless they were a complete fucking animal.

So, yeah, they find, they end up doing a massive, massive, massive manhunt for him. There's 700 cops looking for this guy in a 1,200-person town. That has zero cops. It's cops from everywhere. There's more than one cop per half a person going on right now. So they are searching this town. It's the largest manhunt in Texas history for him because he's a dangerous guy that kidnapped a guard. He's the worst Texan ever.

He's a horrible person. He really is. Outside of maybe Jerry Jones. But we'll get into that. Sorry, Cowboy Finn. Giants fan. I don't know what to tell you. So he goes without a struggle when they find him.

They find him in a vacant house. Well, he's got no water. No. He's got no energy. This is July 11th they found him. So he was out a day and a half. I wonder what he did with the gun. They didn't find the gun, actually.

He goes with the- Probably had no bullets in it. Wouldn't that be hysterical? Probably. He was like, shit, what am I going to do now? Ends up going without a struggle because they had him surrounded. I mean, there's no, what are you going to do? I'm surprised he didn't say, fuck it, I'm going to go out.

This is the way to go out. I'd rather do this than go back to prison. Just walk out the front door with the gun out. They would have mowed him down no problem. No problem. I have a feeling those guys would have really taken some gusto in gunning his ass down. Each guy gets one shot, 700.

Let's go. Let's do it. So he's convicted of armed robbery in 1986 in August for the guard abduction. Good. So they convict him of that, and he's given a life sentence for that also. Fantastic. He's got a life sentence on the books already before we even get into the murder. And they've got him packed away, so now we've got time to research a case and put this guy

down forever. Yep. The trial has moved to Bell County due to the publicity. They had to change the venue, which makes sense. Everybody's heard of it by now. The testimony at the trial, the the, the testimony at the trial, the Phillips, the couple who were robbed,

told of the robbery. And they testified that he had a blue 38 or three 57 handgun. Jerry Boykin and Levita pace testified that to seeing McFadden drive by paces lake house twice on May 14th, between once at seven 20 and once at eight o'clock. The second time at 8 PM, they testify that they saw Brian Boone in the truck with him and they waved to Brian Boone and he didn't wave back. So they were like, that's weird. And they said there was at least two other people in the car, in the truck.

They were on their way to die. They were on their way to die. Imagine what she sees, that still shot in her mind of waving at the kid and him just like having a weird look on his face and then they're all dead. That's horrible. That's horrible. That's terrible. He knew what was coming. And he couldn't wave.

And he couldn't wave. Maybe that was his way of trying to be like, if I don't wave, maybe he'll think something's weird. And that's all he could do, really, I guess. I don't know. I don't even know what to do in that situation. The panic that must have been in that kid's body is unbelievable. It's unreal, man. It's haunting thinking about the image.

It really is. It bothers me. Tim Emerson testified that he returned home near Orr City at about 3 a.m. after a party and said he heard two gunshots, a pause, and then a third gunshot. If we remember, Boone and Gina Turner were both found off a ditch in Ore City on a farm road. His father, Maynard, also testified to hearing the shots, and he said a few minutes later he heard a vehicle speed by also. So they were there for that just to kind of corroborate that. McFadden's girlfriend, he has a girlfriend, this Jerry McFadden. Jesus.

Some woman is with this guy. Willingly putting up with this guy. Unbelievable. She says, her name's Debbie West, she said that she kept. So if you're single, I'm sorry about that. Yeah. Someone out there for everybody. No pity for you, man.

Get off your ass and go find somebody. Yeah, hopefully not a rapist. Right. She kept a.38 revolver in her car, and it went missing the day before, on May 4th, 1986. So that's where the gun was. She gave some spent shells that she had that the gun had used to the police so they could do some forensics. And they said, yes, it's the same type of gun. They couldn't match ballistics.

Nice. But they said it's the same type of gun, revolver. Everything matchesistics. Nice. But they said it's the same type of gun revolver. Everything matches for all the guns. She's got a little bit of a redeeming quality about her. At least she's helping out. I don't think she wanted him to be a murderer. She wanted him to be a nice guy who was reformed and just misunderstood maybe. Just crazy hair.

I just wanted to tame his hair. That's what I wanted to do. So forensic specialists also testified, science, testified that hair samples taken off of McFadden matched Suzanne Harrison and also fiber samples matched the sweater she was wearing that night. Fiber samples on him. His attorney, Jerry McFadden's attorney, Bernard Solomon, calls only one witness, and it's McFadden's 17-year-old daughter, Rhonda. And she pleads to the court, which is sad because I feel bad for her. She's a 17-year-old girl. She wants her dad. Yeah. Even if he is a piece of shit, it's still her dad. She doesn't want to see court, which is sad because I feel bad for her. She's a 17-year-old girl. She wants her dad.

Yeah. Even if he is a piece of shit, it's still her dad. She doesn't want to see him as a piece of shit, though. No. Well, she says, quote, I want to ask you not to give him the death penalty. That's murder. No man has the right to commit murder. He's on trial for that.

How can you do that? So she's trying to, like, 17-year-old logic them into not going to work. You guys are being hypocrites. That's your logic, honey? Really? Three of them. So his attorney, Bernard Solomon, tried to sell the jury that they have the wrong man. He said sloppy police work caused it.

Just that. He cites a hitchhiker who was seen in the town of Hawkins that day. One hitchhiker. So no crimes happened here. There's nobody there. Just a coincidence that there's two psychopaths in the town on the same day? Don't think so. Some shady character blew into town and blew

out as soon as he committed three horrible murders. Meanwhile, this asshole is a piece of shit convicted of rape three times, and we're going to say we totally have the wrong man. No, no, no, no. Absolutely. Now, also out of the witnesses, a couple of the witnesses had

slightly differing descriptions of the car in the dark of a car, which happens all the time. One of them had a goddamn license plate. That's fucking accurate. Five numbers. Right. And those match. Pretty good coincidence.

On July 14th, 1987 is verdict day. Jury takes only four hours to reach the verdict. That's a bad sign for him. They find him guilty of rape and murder of just Harrison. They do not try him for all three. They only try him for Harrison right now. I'm not sure why would they try him only for Harrison. That's smart because sometimes they can –

Don't clog it. I think they didn't want to clog the jurors up with more evidence and forensics and all that. Let's just – he killed her, period. And they still offered the evidence of the other stuff in there. Like, oh, this happened too. So, like, don't think this is all that happened. Don't think he either raped her or he didn't. No, he killed them also.

Now for the penalty phase, they have to decide the penalty. Also the jury, the jury takes 35 minutes to decide on the death penalty. 35. They went in. That's as long as it takes for them to fill the papers out for that. They were like, yeah, we're killing this asshole. Gina's aunt, Gina Turner's aunt, Ginny Persons said, quote, it's not revenge, it's removal. It's not worth the mental torture to go through this again.

Even though a part of us is missing, it's over and we need to move on. So the family is just trying to put their lives together, these poor people. Glindia Lane, who's Suzanne's aunt, and we'll hear from her later, said, quote, at this point we're starting to get well. We're going to try to put this behind us. Also, McFadden's mother, Dorothy, was there. She was shaken up but didn't give any kind of anything. He has several appeals. May 26, 1993 is his first major appeal. That's denied. On November 3, 1993, the conviction and sentence are confirmed. Good. On another appeal, he's denied a rehearing on the state level. So now he takes it federal because it's a death penalty. 1995, Marianne Harrison, Suzanne's mother, sues the Texas State Parole Board of Pardons

and Parole, saying that McFadden should not have been on the street to kill. She's a genius. And it's smart, too, because she's not just saying you shouldn't have let him out. She's saying that when he was fired from his job for absenteeism, it wasn't properly reported through the channels to his parole officer. They should have locked his ass up. And he should have been put away. And they didn't do it based on not enough people, resources, state taxes, people.

Come on. Just a couple percent. Get it up. Pay $500 a person a year. Yeah. And she claims negligence in Suzanne's death for this. The court fines for the board on the court and the appeal of it. They do not fine for Marianne Harrison because that would open everything up to examination of everything.

Everybody's suing everybody. Which is fair, but the state's not going to go for that. If they don't have enough money for resources, they damn sure don't have enough money for lawsuits. No. Twice in 1997, he's denied his petition for habeas corpus relief in federal district court. Good. Another petition for relief denied in 1998. January 29th, 1999 is his final appeal.

His final appeal is on grounds that two of the jurors on his trial were dismissed because of their objection to the death penalty. And I saw they have the transcript of everything of what was said in this and the court documents, because I got deep into this. And basically, these people were asked, like, OK, so you couldn't give a conviction if the penalty was death. And they said no. They said, even if you're given a preponderance of evidence and it's clear that this happened, you still wouldn't convict if death penalty is on the table. And they said no. Wow. And so they were dismissed as jurors. Those are some God-fearing people. They're like, I can't kill a man. They were just dismissed. Or obviously, it might have been the opposite. Either way, they're dismissed as jurors. And he's saying that you should have let them on, which is a federal case with a precedent, actually.

So basically, that was all during the wadir of the witnesses now. The appeal is found to have no merit at all. The court affirms the decision of the previous court. The appeal is found to have no merit at all. The court affirms the decision of the previous court to deny everything, citing the Witherspoon v. Illinois case from 1968. I love it. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports, guys. We get on this shit, man. It was a couple bucks. I love what you're doing, James.

I'm proud of you. Now, on the murders, Glidia Lane, Suzanne's aunt, who we spoke with before, we didn't, somebody did, said, quote, It seems like yesterday and always will. You never get over it. You just learn to live with it. I think this is the worst thing to ever happen in Hawkins, Texas. They were all good kids.

They were the cream of the crop. They were amazing kids. They were amazing kids. Amazing kids. They were fantastic. And, you know, it took them 35 minutes to convict him and to decide on, it took four hours to convict him and 35 minutes to decide on the death penalty. and to decide on, it took four hours to convict him and 35 minutes to decide on the death penalty. When they convicted him and went back in

for the penalty phase, I have this feeling inside me, 35 minutes, it took them five minutes to say, let's kill him. And they were like, what's on TV? And then they watched a half hour fucking, they watched a sitcom. He-Haw for a half hour. Yeah, they watched He-Haw for a half hour.

Let's see what Andy Griffith is doing on TV. Absolutely, absolutely. What's that Opie getting into this week? So October. I hope that's what happened. I think so. I would imagine so. They're like, fuck this guy. So October 14th, 1999, McFadden has his last meal because this is death day for him.

His last meal is a BLT with pickles and onions, white trash to the very end. Jesus. French fries, one pint of peanut butter, butter pecan ice cream, and a Coke. So just a white trash last meal. I love butter pecan ice cream. And now I can't eat it ever again because this scumbag just ruined it. He declines to make a final statement. So he's such a piece of shit, he's like, whatever.

He doesn't even make a statement. He doesn't even apologize. He doesn't even try to just something. Doesn't even make a statement. Doesn't even apologize. Doesn't even try to just something. Have some shred of humanness to say, I just want the family to know that I'm sorry and I'm paying for this. Something.

Anything. Jesus Christ, man. I hope he brushed his hair for this, too. He is injected in his arm, which happened to be where they put the needles right above Satan's head. Really? He had a big Satan's head right above Satan's head, which I think Satan would be okay with, honestly, if there was a Satan. He's pronounced dead at 6.16 p.m., which, yay. Good. Fuck you, asshole.

Nobody else is going to get raped, finally, or killed. Craig Harrison was there, the brother of Suzanne. He watched the execution. They said he got as close to the glass as he could to see her. Nice. And he said he's gutless, was his quote about him. That's awesome. Harrison's mother ran out of the chamber.

She couldn't take it. She couldn't deal with it. Meanwhile, her brother's on the glass like in a hockey game, like pointing at her. He literally was. He said he was trying to make eye contact with her. Talking shit the whole time. I love it. Harrison's mother ran out.

She was freaked out. She said, he looked at me. He took our children. So she was just, she couldn't be in the same room, which I don't blame the poor lady. Now, the town has never been the same since then. This is the biggest thing that's ever happened in this town. And they're still feeling the effects of it. They really are.

There's still people, as we'll get into the quote of how this changed the town. This is the last thing on this. Former Wood County Sheriff Deputy David Barber said, this is recently of this, when they did like a retrospective 25 year ago thing. He said, quote, it was one of the first times we had a major crime in the area. Before that happened, you never locked your doors. You left your keys in the car and your shotgun in the window. At the time, we'd never had anything happen like that here before. So it just it destroyed the whole town. It was this nice town where everybody was, you know, they said, like,

you'd leave your purse in the car at night and just never even think about it because no one would ever steal. You leave your kids unattended. You let your teenage kids go to the lake and drink beers and act crazy out there because they're going to come home. That's what you think is going to happen. I'm telling you, man. And they fucking didn't because the scumbag's a piece of shit. That is Hawkins, Texas, and the case of Suzanne Harrison, Gina Turner,

and Brian Boone, and asshole Jerry McFadden, who fucking got what he deserved. So that's that, guys. Hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please, please get on iTunes. Give us five stars. It's very, very important. It helps us on the business end of things so much and really, really helps us do better research and a better show.

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It all goes to us, so it doesn't matter where you put it. Also, too, if you want to make a one-time donation, not a recurring one like Patreon, you can do crimeandsports at gmail.com is our PayPal. You can PayPal us them. Help me get James some gmail.com is our paypal you can paypal us them otherwise just help me get james some health insurance that's why that's my plea to you guys i'm trying to get him fucking taken care of because we've been doing this for a year and you've gotten sick twice and it was miserable i just want to get him some antibiotics that'd be nice to get some antibiotics but uh or if you you can't, iTunes reviews will make my spirit soar, so we can do that. I might be sick on the inside, but I'll be feeling great. If you want to get a hold of me personally, I am at JimmyPIsFunny and James Petrogallo.

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In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment. While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit, but would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more. Every week, hosts Erin and Justin sit down to discuss a new case, covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, Thank you.