Snapped: Women Who Murder - Debra Banister

Episode Date: February 27, 2022

When two sisters' husbands turn up dead within weeks of each other, Florida detectives investigate whether the cases are a tragic coincidence.Season 28, Episode 22Originally aired: January 31, 2021Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WsLCJWqmIebSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wonder East Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the story of OxyContin, a popular painkiller that helps spur an epidemic of addiction and drug abuse, in which prompted a broad campaign to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable. Listen to American Scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. After six years of marriage, they had the picture perfect family. They were settling into the sort of respectable life. They had two children.

They owned a nice house. They were living in the American dream. But one fateful February night, that dream comes to a screeching halt on a Florida roadside. The vehicle was still in the ditch with the lights on. You could see you might have been a man slumped over the steering wheel. As investigators look into the accident, suspicions begin to rise. We got a call from the medical examiner's office. This person did not have a car wreck.

That was the first time I had delivered a death message, and the victim's relative was upset about a note. When detectives peel back the layers of this mysterious death, they uncover a string of cold-blooded crimes with a scandalous connection. People was shot while he was lying on the sofa by a high-calibre shot. He stepped out once and shot it between the eyes. He was the only common denominator in three homicides.

A man that's in love with an evil woman can be led down past you wouldn't normally go. I can't stand this anymore. I gotta hit it here. It was just pure, unadulterated, sexual power. You could not make this stuff up. February 2, 1985 Bradford County, Florida. It's just after 11.45 pm when a 911 call comes into the sheriff's office. The caller reports that she's just spotted a worrisome scene on the side of a remote highway. She came up on a car,

straddling the drainage ditch. The lights were on, the motor was running, but the car looked like it had run off the moon. Within minutes of the call, first responders arrive on the scene. We approached the car to try to determine was anything that we need to do as far as trying to assist anyone. I looked in the vehicle and indeed you could see what appeared to be a man

slumped over the steering wheel. He was sitting behind the wheel, his head leaning over toward the steering wheel, and blood matted in his hair on the left side of the steering wheel. We were able to open up the passenger's side door, and I checked for a pulse. They find no pulse, so the two officers pull him out, lay him down on the side of the road, they attempt the CPR, there's no response. They pull out his driver's license and they identify that this is Joe Bannister. Joe Bannister was born in May of 1943. He grew up in the 40s and 50s in Gainesville, Florida.

After graduating high school, Joe attended the University of Florida, but he quickly realized that college wasn't for him. I think his dad maybe wanted for Joe to go to the University of Florida and get, you know, a degree and that wasn't what he wanted. Joe attended the University of Florida for two, and he left the University and joined Air Force. After nearly five years in the service, 25-year-old Joe returned to Northern Florida in search of someone to spend the rest of his life with. I was 20, and I met him through my brother.

They worked for Western Electric. Joe and I both had a lot going for us. He was happy with his job. They were doing installation of equipment for AT&T. Joe was attractive in a rough, manly type of way. Dark hair, dark eye. Joe and Linda fell head over heels for each other. When we were dating Joe would bring flowers and a few presents and an engagement ring.

And then a wedding ring to go with it. We had a big family wedding. But their marital bliss didn't last long. Jonah, I thought we're in love, you know, that it would be a forever thing, but it just wasn't the marriage I expected. It was kind of gradual, you know, Joe's anger started surfacing. When I tried to talk to him,

he just, you know, would shut down, would not really talk to me about the things that were bothering him. And by our second anniversary, I really did not see that we were going to have a third, so it filed for a divorce and got it. Unfortunately, Joe's struggles with love didn't end there. Joe then had a quick rebound, Marys, that ended with his wife leaving him and moving to Las Vegas. You can easily say that Joe was looking for love, but he just hadn't found it yet.

Joe then meets a 19 year old named Debbie Thiebpen. Joe was actually many years older than Debbie, and despite the age difference, they quickly connected. She had a good job and she was an attractive woman. And they dated. Growing up, Debbie had a special bond with her sister Marlene. The sisters seemed to do everything together, even in their pursuit of love. Debbie and Marlene was very close.

They both dropped out of high school and got married. But only a year into her marriage, 19-year-old Debbie had grown restless and ventured outside of the relationship. She was looking for some more excitement. Debbie started running around with Joe Bannister, so that was exciting and thrilling and scandalous. Joe was older, he could provide for her, he was a man of substance. At one point, her husband found this stack of letters from

Joe Bannister so he confronted Debbie and Debbie just moved out on him. She and Joe started living together and her divorce was final on him. She and Joe started living together, and her divorce was finalized early in 1978. And just a couple of months later, she and Joe Bannister got married. Within a couple of years, Debbie transformed from wild child to working mother. Even though their marriage sort of started out kind of in a scandal, it seemed like they

were settling into the sort of respectable life. They had two children in the first three years. Joe Bannister continued to work for Western Electric. They owned a nice house. Debbie had a really good position at Sunbank at the time in Gainesville as she was a loan officer. By the beginning of 1985, this Florida couple had built a life to be proud of. They looked good together and they were always very nice and cheerful.

Joe and Debby seemed to be very happy. They were raising their children. They were living in American dreams. But after six years of blissful marriage, their world is up ended on the night of February 2nd, 1985, when 41-year-old Joe Bannister was found dead on the side of the road. We were responding there at night, thinking that we were responding to a car accident. There was minimal damage to the front of the truck,

which indicated it didn't hit that ditch and break through on a great amount of speed. After seeing this, we know we have a traffic crash, but it certainly looks suspicious. It didn't seem like running into this strange ditch would have been a hard enough blow to kill him. The first thing we observed is a shattered window. It was on the driver driver side of that vehicle. So this caused us to

wonder why would the window break when there's been no collision. Investigators take their flashlights back up to the road in search of additional clues. As we got up the road we looked for evidence of any kind of collision prior to this vehicle being in the ditch. There was no car parts, no broken headlights, so we didn't have any reason to believe that any impact occurred prior to this vehicle running into the ditch. No collision occurred and here's a shattered window. That's kind of a quandary. With nothing left to uncover at the scene, Joe's body is sent to the morgue for an autopsy. But that doesn't mean the night is over for investigators.

That night, but one thing they knew they had to do was notify his family. I arrived at the banister home at around 120 a.m. to deliver a death message to the victims' wife. I knocked on the door, and this manager come to the door. I told her that her husband was dead, and he had been involved in an accident.

Deborah appeared somewhat shocked and somewhat emotional, and she asked me where was the body. One of the things was so weird is when he told her that they were going to do an autopsy. She'd started screaming, oh no, he'll be cut off, he'll be cut off. After finding 41-year-old Joe Bannister dead on the side of a remote highway, investigators in Bradford County, Florida have just delivered the tragic news to his wife, Debbie. She said, well, I'm not going to greet you at all times. And I informed her that was not a decision that she could make, that it was a matter of procedure. So that ended that conversation.

That was the first time I had delivered a death message. And the victim's relative was upset about a no-time scene. It did kind of bother me and concerned me that I was eagerly waiting to call from the medical examiner knowing that that would answer some questions for us. On Monday morning, just 36 hours after the mysterious crash, investigator Adderhol to get the call he has been waiting for. We got a call from the medical examiner's office and we were told the Joe Bannerster did not have a car wreck. That was now the result this person has had two gunshot wounds. One of them was a grazing type wound to the back of the head.

The second shot was a shot for the brain that calluses immediate death. There's a 22 caliber bullet in Joe Bannister's skull. It explains some things, but you would have thought we could have seen more, but seen it was a shock to me. And that's when it certainly became a completely different situation. At that point, the entire case had exploded

because now you realize he has a homicide on the scene. There was a sense of urgency to get it done as quickly as we could so we could relay the fears of the community. With Joe's death being reclassified as a homicide, investigators immediately spring into action. They tracked down Joe's wife Debbie to speak with her again and deliver the news. It was a shock. The thought of it, someone would have shot Joe,

was just unreal because he was such a nice person. It was just an unbelievable time of not understanding how this could have happened. Detectives turned to Debbie to help retrace Joe's final hours. Debbie says that on the night of the murder, she met Joe for dinner with friends. She was going to drop the kids off with her sister Marlene, so it just be the two of them with this other couple. Debbie tells investigators that her and Joe let the restaurant out the dinner at about 10

30 pm in separate cars. But Joe never returned home. Debbie says that she called the police to report Joe missing. Debbie is unable to offer any clues as to who might have gunned Joe down. And investigators can't cross her off the suspect list just yet. Investigators have no idea what could have explained this guy getting shot. And I think the most important next step was they got a phone call from the Glialatio County Sheriff's Office in Gainesville. On February 5th, the call comes into the Bradford County Sheriff's Office from investigators Charlie Sanders and Farnel Cole who are working a murder case of

their own in the neighboring county. We've been working this case since the first week of January. This guy named Cecil Beatty was murdered in the early morning hours, January 6th. Cecil was shot while he was lying on the sofa through a picture with him about a high caliber shotgun. Cecil's murder was all over the news. And so it was a shot too, I think, the community. Because you would not see this normally in games though.

The detectives tell Bradford County investigators that they're calling because they've found an eerie connection between the murders of Cecil Bady and Joe Bannister. Cecil Bady was Marlene's ex-husband. The link connecting the two was the two sisters, Debbie and Marlene. Investigators from both murder cases meet in order to compare notes. Everything that we obtained on our case,

we shared immediately with them. Unfortunately, we had no eye witnesses. We did not have anyone, a place of vehicle or person in the yard at the time of Cecil Sheet. What investigators learn is that Marlene and Cecil had divorced, and it was not without its battles? Cecil and Marlene were going to a custody battle

and I could see it was stressful on him. He told us he was not gonna let her have those kids. Cecil was Marlene's high school sweetheart. They were married for five years and had two kids together. People who lived over in the area were Cecil and Marlene lived. They think that it had to do with the custody hearing. Speculation was that Marlene had something to do with it.

But with no evidence pointing toward the shooter and Marlene having a solid alibi, the investigation had reached a standstill. Marlene having a solid alibi, the investigation had reached a standstill. That is, until the murder of Joe Bannister. That was such a red flag when Marlene's husband was killed in January and her sister's husband died was killed. That's just not a coincidence. is. Investigators now zero in on Debbie and Marlene as their main suspects. We had two sisters who within a period of weeks had their husbands murdered and that's enough of a coincidence that we immediately started to look at it as a single person

being involved. The same day that these cops are meeting together, they subpoenaed Marlene to come in for an interview on February 8th. But the day before their scheduled meeting with Marlene, investigators catch a break. The plot thickens on February 7th when Ralph Smith, who was Marlene's live-in boyfriend, voluntarily comes to the cops and tells him he's afraid

for his own life. Because we've got Joe Bannister dead, we've got Cecil Bady dead. Ralph Smith figured, I'm the next one on my list. Ralph explains the connection between Joe and Cecil's deaths is not lost on him. Ralph Smith, he had convinced herself he was going to be killed to be killed.

And Ralph doesn't think Marlene and Debbie are plodding alone. So he comes in and tells the cops that there's this suspicious guy who's been hanging out with Debbie. Ralph says that a man by the name of John Wayne Herne first showed up just days earlier. Debbie introduces him as her long-lost cousin from South Carolina, who she hasn't seen in five years, but they're not acting like cousins. They're all over each other. People were thinking something is wrong here. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could hang out with celebrities living a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean with all your best friends and have it be 100% paid for?

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and fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Bankman Free. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts, hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. On February 7th, 1985, five days after the homicide of Joe Bannister, investigators receive a tip from Ralph Smith, the estranged boyfriend of Joe's sister-in-law, Marlene. Ralph Smith, he was actively trying to get information,

and he talked about the strange guy. The guy that's always with Marlene's sister, Debbie Bannister. After learning about this mysterious man in Debbie's life, detectives wonder if Joe Bannister's death could be tied to some sort of affair, and they hope Debbie's sister Marlene might be able to shed some light on the matter. So on February 8th, Marlene comes in for her interview to the Elatua County Sheriff's Office, unexpectedly Debbie Bannister shows up with her. Investigators question both Marlene and Debbie separately. They start by asking Marlene about the

night of Debbie's husband's murder. One of the things in question was a timeline of which One of the things in question was a timeline of which Debbie had left her children the night of the panister homicide with her sister. When the two of them were independently interviewed, there was basically an hour difference in the time allegedly that the children were picked up. By Debbie, there was a definitely a problem with the two of of not telling the same story. As detectives press Debbie in the other interrogation room, she finally admits that John Wayne Hurn isn't actually her cousin.

Debbie said it's platonic. We met several years ago when she was living in Alabama, and John Wayne Hurn was driving a truck in Alabama, so they just early on insisted that the whole thing was put on. At a certain point, Debbie pretty much refused to answer any more questions. After getting stonewalled by Debbie and Marlene, detectives are certain the sisters know more than they are letting on. But with no evidence directly tying them to the murder, detectives follow up on their only other potential lead. They wanted to find out any information that they could about John Wayne Hurnt.

We have several different people come forward and say they don't know who he is or what he has been sure is a lot of places nowadays and a lot of times in the company of that match. Investigators discover that 39-year-old John Wayne Hurne is a war vet with a home address in Atlanta, Georgia. John Wayne Hurne did three tours of duty in Vietnam. He was a weapon specialist. During the war, he received a purple heart, which is very remarkable. But investigators are surprised to learn that Mr. Hurne's military experience

has in hot water with another agency. The cops got in touch with the Georgia Bureau investigation. And they were aware that John Wayne Hurne was running an ad in Soldier of Fortune magazine, offering to do high-risk assignments like Bodyguard work. Soldier of Fortune magazine was mainly geared toward people who were ex-military veterans and thrill-sickers.

They sold anything in the world that you can imagine. They started running classified service ads. One such ad was one that John Wayne Hurne had saying he would do things for money and gave a list of his military experience, said he would do dirty deeds. He became a large target at that point of our investigation. On February 13, investigators contact John Waynene, and he agrees to an interview. They start off by asking him about his ad in Soldier of Fortune. The buddy of his told him that you can get paid $200-$300 a day as a bodyguard to protect celebrities,

oil executives, rock stars, and maintenance. So they decided to run a classified ad in Soldier Fortune magazine. When the conversation shifts to Debbie, John denies any romance with the young widow. John Wayne Hurntel's investigators and his relationship with Debbie is strictly poshami. John claims he was with his mother and young son in South Carolina when Jill Bannister is killed. After the interview, investigators follow up on John's alibi. We went to South Carolina to interview Mary Watson who was John Wayne hermts mother and at that point in time she was adamant that John and his

child were with her, and there was no way he could be uninvolved with anything, the fairy tale. But investigators sense that Mary is holding something back. She was stonewalling that, she didn't know Debbie Bannister. Growing more frustrated by the minute, Detective Cole steps out of the interrogation realm. I walked down the hall, and John Sun was sitting there coloring at the table, and I walked by and said, hey, you live inside Carolina, don't you?

And he said, yeah. So I live in Florida, down by Mickey Mouse. He said, I just saw Mickey Mouse. I said, yeah, when? I said, last week, me and my new sister, so my new mama and my daddy went to see Disney. He pulled out a photograph of Debbie Vanister and said, do you know her?

And the boy said, yeah, that's my new mama. Detective Cole returns to the interrogation room and confronts John Herne's mother. I walked back in and cussed her again, threw the picture down. So I said, well, you might be telling me the truth, but your grandson's lying because you say he was in the Disney Land with this woman last week. And that's when she broke down and she told us she had lied about his alibi. But revealing that John wasn't with her on the night of Joe's murder isn't all Mary has to offer.

John Wayne Hurnt's mother realized that her son had been caught and realized that the best thing she could do for him to lessen what he had to face. She needed to cooperate with us. She had evidence that we desperately needed and had no idea even existed. Mary explains that she installed a recorder on her phone years ago and realized recently that it had recorded conversations between Debbie and John Wayne Hurne.

Mary had actually set up her answer machine and she recorded every call she got on cassette. She had boxes at the set. At that point she turned over cassette tapes. We're in there were phone conversations between Debbie, Bannister and John Wayne Hearn. Hello. How you feeling? Good morning.

I felt like coming so far. The one more day. A majority of the tapes were about their budding love life. At the same time, there was discussion about her husband and things that would become. I thought it'd be an accident. I just got to check the road there. You'll be leaving early Monday and Taze, you're right.

So I hope you don't be able to go with that after the flight goes down. I could recognize him as anything. I'm not gonna hit it at the end. That was the single most important piece of evidence that the cops had in Florida about Joe Bannister's murder. After being stonewalled at every angle, investigators have finally hit a breakthrough in the murder case of Joe Bannister from the most shocking source. John Wayne Ernst's mother gave us home recordings between Debbie Bannister and John Wayne Ernst concerning everything from love love to actually planning out with murder. But Mary isn't quite finished yet. She then hands over a mysterious photocopy of a cashier's check

made out to John for $1,000. He had it mailed to his mother while he was out on the road. So she was nosy enough that she checked it out and copied it. The return address on that envelope was still a man named Bob Black in Texas. Investigators are now tasked with answering the questions, who is this Bob Black and what is he paying for? They started going through John Wayne Hurne's long distance phone bills

and they find a number from Brian Texas and a local cop in Geensville calls the sheriff's office in Brian, Texas and says, I'm working on a murder case in Florida. Can you tell me whose phone number this is? And they say, yeah, it's a guy named Bob Black. His wife was just shot and killed two weeks earlier. 36-year-old Sandra Black was gunned down in her own home on February 21st.

Local police suspect her husband Bob to be involved, but the case has been at a standstill. The news solidifies investigators' disturbing theory. John Wayne Hurl was acting the character of a hard hitman. He was the only common denominator in three homicides. Investigators immediately obtain an arrest warrant for John Wayne Hurne, only to find he has disappeared. appeared. I actually sent word through his mother Mary that the sisters might want to kill him too and told him you need to turn yourself in for safety. That's what changed his mind. On March 15th, John Wayne Hurne turned himself into police in Grasso's county, Texas, and detectives immediately press him for answers. Each time we would corner him up with a question, he really didn't want to answer.

The awful would break down and cry outright. Mid-part of the next day, as I was told, he actually broke down, went through one of his long grind spills and came out and started telling him the truth. John finally admits that everything started with the ad he placed in Soldier of Fortune magazine. The day the ad came out, his phone started ringing off the hook. Nobody was asking for bodyguards work. Mostly it was killed. John says he ignored most of the messages until Debbie Bennister called in October of 1984.

He thought maybe she's young, she sounds sexy, and so he suggested a romantic rendezvous at Shoney's Big Boy Restaurant on Interstate 75. At the meeting, Debbie told John she needed help intimidating her brother-in-law, Cecil Bady. That was solely over a custody battle that was coming to a head within a week or two after that. John agreed to help, giving little thought to the work

and more thought to getting Debbie into bed. At the very end of the day, their back at Shoneys, she leaned across the table and kissed him on the end of the boat. And at that point, it was just pure, unadulterated, sexual power. You could not make this stuff up. This mama's boy with no criminal record was a goner. The week after that came to Gainesville, got a motel room. They started this Torrid love affair and fairly early on she up the ante on him, Debbie went from talking about, you need to get the kids back from Cecil Baby

to you need to get Cecil out of our life. How much would you charge to kill him? He said $30,000. She started working the price down, and then finally, she got him down to $10,000, and he said, OK, I'll do it for $10,000. But on the night of Cecil's murder, John was having second thoughts. She actually went to the scene and talked to himself out of it. The drool back, he did that a couple of times. But he talked to himself into it a third time, and this time he deliberately pulled in, got out, walked straight up to the window, and shot down through the window, and killed Cecil Bate.

So John Wayne Hurt confessed killing Cecil. But John says the murder didn't satisfy his lover. It only wedded her appetite. Debbie decided this was easy. Why not have her husband killed? Debbie knew that she was the beneficiary of Joe Bannister's insurance, and they were going to use that money. She and John Wayne Hurd to build her dream home.

He said he was always having second thoughts about it up until the time he actually killed him. John Wayne Hurne did this as much for love as he did for money. According to John, he and Debbie were together on February 2nd, just hours before her dinner plans with Joe. Debbie and Herne spent the whole afternoon making love in a motel, and they kind of talked everything through. Debbie was going to arrange for Joe to go out to dinner, and then the plan was they would

be in separate cars, and on the way home, John Wayne Herne was going to run him off the road and shoot him. That evening, Debbie left John to meet Joe and another couple for dinner. After their dinner, Joe was driving home alone when John Wayne Hearn drove up the side him. John Wayne Hearn rolls down the passenger window of his own truck, lays the rifle in the crook of the window and shoots him twice in the head. After the murders of her husband and brother-in-law, Debbie wasn't ready to call it quits with John's soldier-of-fortune ad.

However, John soon expressed his desire to end the business. Debbie said to him, what's wrong with you? You've already killed two people. You shouldn't have a conscience. On March 16, 1985, John Wayne Herne has confessed to two murders, but he doesn't stop there. John says that Debbie wanted to continue the murder for higher business. They immediately started running the switchboard at that time, setting up new jobs. Debbie and John quickly zeroed in on their first client, Bob Black. Bob Black hired John Wayne Hurrin to kill his wife, Sandra Sandra because he was having a torrid love affair. He also convinced Sandra to

sign for and pay for a new $100,000 life insurance policy. John Wayne Herndtell's investigators that he did not want to kill Sandra Black. Debbie tells him to go in and don't have a conscience. The baby tells him to go in and don't have a consciousness. John gave in to his lover, and just two weeks after gunning down Debbie's husband, he traveled to Brian, Texas. While Bob Black established his alibi elsewhere, John hid in the house until Sandra Black returned home. He stepped out once and shot her. The first shot didn't kill her.

And so she was lying on the floor, gasping for breath. And he went up and shot her between the eyes, a kill shot right between the eyes. Debbie seemed pleased with John for following through, but things drastically changed when Debbie heard that John's mother, Mary Watson, was interviewed. At that point, Debbie dropped John Wayne heard like a hot potato. She told him, you got to get out of here, you got to get on the run. He had done all this for love and she cut him loose in a heartbeat.

Based on John's statement, investigators are able to move forward with multiple arrest warrants. We may not have been able to bring charges against because of lack of evidence. He gave us what we needed. That confessional out us to add charges to the sisters. On April 15th, Debbie Bannister is taken into custody along with her two alleged accomplices. Debbie's reaction was very combative. She showed out and said that she wasn't involved,

and people were lying, and I was wrong. A few names were called, and at that point in time, then she converted it into a tearful mother. In an effort to avoid the death penalty, John Wayne Hurne pleads guilty to all three murders and agrees to testify against Debbie at her trial. In August 1985, John takes the stand. John Wayne Hurne said she'd convinced him she was

madly in love with him. He needed to get her husband out of the way so they could be together happily ever after. At the end of his testimony, State Attorney said, well, what are your feelings about never a banister man? He said, I love her with all my heart. During the trial, the attorney for Debbie Bannister brought up a theory that John, he did it because he was so upset that she would leave him.

He took it on herself to kill Joe Bannister. We had numerous phone recordings that showed a much different attitude when the two were talking after Joe Bannister's death. On August 23rd, 1985, the jury announces they have decided Debbie's faint. Debbie Bannister, I don't believe, was found guilty, a second-degree murder, and she was sentenced to 17 years in state penitentiary. Debbie faces no charges in the death of Sandra Black. But when it comes to the murder of her former brother-in-law,

she doesn't take her chances in court. For Cecil Badi's murder, Debbie pleased no contest to conspiracy to commit murder and receive 30-year prison sentence. Mauline, please no contest to inconspiracy to commit first degree murder, and she received a five-and-a-half-year sentence. John Wayne Hurne avoids the death penalty, but receives three life sentences, all in the name of love. A man that's in love with an evil woman can be led down past you with no one.

You have choices in life. We all have choices. And Debbie decided to take lives. And not only ruin her life, but a lot of people's lives. She's just a selfish individual. On May 22, 1992, Bob Black was executed in Texas for his role in his wife's murder. Debbie Bannister served nine years in prison.

She was released in 1997.