The Binge Crimes: Night Shift - Friendly Fire | 6. Carson County

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

A Carson had been sheriff in Scott County for 22 of the previous 30 years— until Marty Carson’s father loses in a landslide. His successor gives a behind-the-scenes look at how the sheriff’s department had been run under Carson’s leadership, and the effect of John John's killing on the community, including the Carson family. Lori learns a staggering theory that could turn her case upside down. A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Campsite Media County sheriffs are, first and foremost, cops. They're the top law enforcement officer in the county, the same way that a police chief is a top officer in a city or a town. The sheriff has some extra responsibilities, like running the county jail and providing security for the county courts. And the sheriff has a wider jurisdiction, the whole county, as opposed to a

particular city or town. But the job, the meat and potatoes of it, is roughly the same as running a police department, to protect and serve, maintain civic order, catch the bad guys. The difference, though, is in who the sheriff works for. The police chief is hired by the mayor or the town council, which means he or she has a boss to whom they are accountable. Because they can be hired, they can also be fired. The county sheriff, on the other hand, is elected. He or she answers only to the voters. And so a sheriff can behave, and to some extent has to behave,

as much like a politician as a law enforcement officer. In many states, including Tennessee, they can hire friends and family or anyone who might pay back a favor. They can deputize untrained volunteers, like, say, John John Yancey back in the day. And there's no real check on their authority other than the voters and the law, which they're in charge of enforcing. Here's Ben Barton, the law professor at the University of Tennessee. The sheriff in all 97 Tennessee counties is an elected office, and it's frequently, as you can imagine, the most powerful person in that county,

more powerful than the county executive. They just have a lot of leeway to do things. And in a little tiny county like Scott County, in a pretty poor county, the sheriff is sort of king of the road for sure. So when Barton heard that the shooting of a deputy involved the son of the sheriff... I was like, oh, that's no good. That's not off to a good start. It's going to be bad for sure. See, there's a history with sheriffs in this part of Tennessee. There's a history more sheriffs in this part of Tennessee. There's a history, more particularly, in Scott County.

In 1985, the sheriff in Scott County had been in office for almost a decade, been re-elected twice. And he did seem to have an awful lot of power, or at least he thought he did because he bragged about it. That fall, one year into his third term, the sheriff told some drug smugglers that they could fly a load of cocaine into the tiny Scott County airport, and he'd make sure no one gave them any trouble. And yes, for those who listened to season one of Witness, Borderlands, this is probably giving you deja vu. The sheriff in Scott County even arranged to have one of his own deputies escort the courier and their cocaine to the county line. That's the sheriff talking to those smugglers. He also said that if one of his deputies turned rat, he'd, quote, take him out behind the barn and beat him to death. He also said, again, quoting,

I've been in this business 13 years, and I've always had a man that I can just pick up the telephone and call him and tell him what to do. And by God, he'll do it. And what sort of things might that man do? If I told him to kill you tomorrow, the sheriff said, he'll kill you tomorrow. That's all on tape.

Those smugglers weren't really smugglers. They were undercover FBI agents. The feds were mighty busy in East Tennessee back in the 80s. They arrested eight county sheriffs on drug and gambling charges. The Scott County sheriff in the spring of 1986 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, but he died after only five. His name? Marion Carson.

But that wasn't the end of the Carsons in Scott County law enforcement. Eight years after Marion pleaded guilty to federal drug charges, his brother Jim, who was not involved in those charges, was elected sheriff. Jim, in turn, hired his own charges, was elected sheriff. Jim, in turn, hired his own son, Marty, as a deputy. And after a while, Jim promoted Marty to drug officer in charge of drug investigations. And it was during one of those investigations that Marty shot John

John to death. And then his father gave him a promotion. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Season 2 of Witnessed, Friendly Fire, Episode 6. I'm Sean Flynn. Hey, Witness listeners. This is Josh Dean, your host of the season Fade to Black. And I'm here to tell you about a new mystery mobile game to give you something to do when you've finished the latest season of Witnessed. Everyone loves a good family mystery,

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Ryan, Nikki, Mark, and Penny, the four people at the mobile home the night of the shooting, all had their charges reduced and mostly got probation. Mark knew, the guy who had nothing to do with anything but got hunted by all those cops, he was gone. He'd moved across the state line to Kentucky. By 2006, Lori's of course still working on her case, but she's got

a year until trial. She'd started dating someone, and it was getting pretty serious. There's also a local election coming up that August. Paul Phillips, the DA, was running unopposed, again. Donnie Phillips, the deputy who backed up Marty's story, was getting into politics. He was running foropposed. Again. Donnie Phillips, the deputy who backed up Marty's story, was getting into politics. He was running for clerk of the circuit court. They'll both win. And then there's the sheriff, Jim Carson. He was running for a fourth term. John John Yancey had been dead for almost three years at this point, so he obviously wasn't around to challenge him. But three other people did. In the normal order of things, that probably wouldn't matter. A Carson, first Marion, then Jim, had run the Scott

County Sheriff's Department for 22 of the previous 30 years, despite Marion going to prison. The office seemed to be theirs for the taking, a job they weren't so much elected to as entitled to. But Jim Carson loses by a lot. That was a huge relief for me. Lori Yancey. I actually felt like, you know, I could call the sheriff's department if I had an issue, you know, at home or anything like that. So that made me feel a little bit more safe that we had a new sheriff.

I had already thought if they got reelected that I was probably going to have to move, that I could not continue living in this county with that sheriff's department. I thought, you know, that's going to make life much more difficult here to be able to live here. Jim Carson was beaten by a 29-year-old former state trooper named Anthony Lay. He lost by quite a bit, so I think that led me to think the people in the community believed as I believed. Lay won with more than 50% of the vote in a four-way race.

Jim Carson came in second with about 26%, which Lori saw as sort of a referendum on her belief that the Carsons were no good, that Marty intentionally killed her husband. That was not the platform that Anthony Lay ran on. After a lot of back and forth with our producer, Lindsay, he agreed to talk to us. Hello? Hey, we missed the exit, but we're turning around now, so we're about...

Five minutes. Ten minutes away... Five minutes. Ten minutes away. Five minutes. Okay. Be there soon. Bye. You had to say we missed the exit. Sorry. That's embarrassing. Leigh would have a good read on the sheriff's department in the years after John John was shot. After all, it's the department he inherited, and he was there while Lori's suit was going to trial. She was alleging basically a

murder and a cover-up. He should know, or at least have a good sense, of whether anyone was capable of that. If not, he'd know if anyone believed Lori, if within the department itself deputies thought it was possible. He's a captain now at the police department in Jellicoe, a little city to the east of Scott County. We met him at a Dunkin' Donuts off the interstate, about 45 minutes south of there. When we show up, it's pouring rain. You want to just do a car interview?

Is that okay with you? That's fine with me. You're okay. All right. So we decide to talk in our rented Kia. We start at the very beginning. September 1st, 2006. Lay's first day as the newly elected sheriff of Scott County.

I had a departmental meeting at 12.01 a.m. And ironically, we're talking about this, the sheriff the sheriff's son Marty Carson he was the chief deputy and I remember about two minutes to 12 I stepped up to the office door and Chief Carson at the time stepped to the door and I'll never forget his words. He said, Dad laid you a bunch of keys on his desk. And, you know, they'll go to all the doors to the jail. He just named off a list of things the keys went to. And he looked at his watch, and it was kind of funny. He kind of smiled at me, and he had some keys in his hand. And he handed over the keys, and I took them in my hand.

And he said, well, it's 12 o'clock. I'm going home and going to bed. This is your show now. And I thought, I'm the sheriff. You know, it kind of set in, you know, a 29-year-old man, I'm the sheriff now. It's time to do this. Lay was young and he looked it. He still looks it.

Baby-faced and clean-cut. He's got a cleft in his chin and giant arms. The guy's totally jacked. He says he used to be a bodybuilder, which is not one of the stereotypes that typically pairs up with a Southern sheriff. But despite that youthful appearance, he had a decent amount of experience. Even back then. He'd gone to work straight out of high school as a dispatcher in the local police department.

And a few months after that... Sheriff Jim Carson, actually, who we're talking about today, gave me a job. Carson hired him as a corrections officer, working in the jail. He was 18 years old at the time. He went on to be a state trooper and to work undercover drug investigations. And then he ran for sheriff. So what was that like running against the guy who gave you one of your first law enforcement jobs? It was very sad.

A lot of people don't understand that. I didn't run against Sheriff Carson because I disliked him or anything like that. A small town population, less than 23,000 at the time. Basically, if you had a bad incident or something of the nature that happened, you were just beat. And, you know, 9.9 chances out of 10, you were beat. The way Lay sees it, Jim Carson was going to lose no matter what, and all because Marty shot John John. It made that big of an effect. I'm going to go ahead and tell you on the record right now, and I don't care who hears it.

Jim Carson was unbeatable until that happened. He could be the sheriff right now at an older age. Fair enough, though bad incident seems to be a generous euphemism. A man doesn't go from unbeatable to toast because of unfortunate happenstance, because of an accident, no matter how tragic. He loses badly because voters have lost faith in him. But again, Lay did not run on the fact that Marty killed John John. I just didn't want the wrong person to get the job up there. I saw the place really needed some change in a positive direction in a modern law enforcement change way. So what was your platform? Modern day change. Okay. I think my slogan was a professional change. That by implication suggested that the sheriff's department

wasn't professional. No, no, not saying they weren't professional. Sheriff Carson was a very professional man. You know, times change in law enforcement. If you don't keep up with the modern techniques, times change. You know, sometimes you need new modern ways to fight modern-day crime. You know, there's new drugs developed every day that hit the street. You have to stay up on those things. If you don't, you're behind. Scott County was way behind.

Before Lay could get to modern crime fighting, he had to provide basic equipment. In 2006, deputies had to buy a lot of their own gear, including their guns. I remember when I went to work there, I had to buy my own pistol, my own portable radio, my own little doodads for my uniform, my collar brass, you know, all those things. The county didn't have much budget money. I think I'm the first sheriff to issue the whole department guns. You know, the pistols, I think we put them in a Glock 45 Gap and an AR-15 rifle and a 12-gauge pump shotgun. And we actually put mounting devices in the car to hold the rifles and the shotguns in place.

He also got rid of the unpaid volunteers. I demolished that program. It was scary. There were untrained people working. And he squeezed the county for more money. When I took over as sheriff, I think a deputy sheriff was making $19,100. And I went to the county commission and it was like pulling teeth with some of them to get a pay raise for these guys. And what I'm about to tell you is not

something to brag about, but I was able to get them, I think, to around 23.5 starting. And then if you had an associate's degree, an extra 500, you know, if you had a bachelor's degree, a thousand dollars, a master's 1500, you know, extra add on to that 23.5, you know, you had to do it in baby steps. I'm probably the first person in the history of Scott County, to my knowledge anyway, that re-interviewed every single employee there and gave anybody who wanted to work a fair chance to stay on, you know, under my administration. Most all reapplied. Marty didn't. And you have to understand, Sheriff Jim Carson was his father. There was a loyalty there. I have utmost respect for what Marty Carson did. He represented his father. We've been told that Jim Carson ran the Sheriff's Department

as a family business. Well, you know, I can't deny that. I don't know if we'll call it a family business, but I wrote an article in the paper talking about a family affair. Family affair, family business, tomato, tomato. There were a lot of Carsons on the payroll. There was Marty, of course, and two other sons. One a sergeant, the other a mechanic.

Jim's brother was the assistant chief. His cousin ran the jail. Two of his daughters worked dispatch. And a third was a part-time bookkeeper. And we might have missed a couple. There's just a lot of Carsons in Scott County. If you want to run for office, you better look and see how long the phone book is, you know, with the person's last name in there,

because that's going to probably control some of your fate. And that's not a joke on that part. That's really true. And that's the tell. That's how he knows that John John being dead cost Jim Carson his job. Voters in Scott County, including all those Carsons, put him in office three times in a row and then dumped him for a kid named Anthony Lay. If you look in the phone book, the Lay name's not that big. I might be the exception to what I said. You know, if I would

have been the sheriff when that happened, it would have been the same thing. People liked him. People loved him. You know, he would do anything, help you any way he could. A person doesn't get elected three times if people don't like him. On the other hand, we talked to a lot of people who did not like the Carsons, neither Jim nor Marty, people who said they were scared of them and the power they seemed to wield. In fairness, many of those people, not all by any stretch, but many, had been arrested by Marty or one of the other Scott County deputies. Still, it's a different perspective. Jim Carson was very good to his family, was very loyal to his family.

You know, if one of his kids needed help, if one of his cousins needed help, if one of the cousin's cousins needed help, Jim would help them. If there was an opportunity to work them and help them, he would do that. And they liked Marty, too. Marty was just a deputy. And a good deputy. A very nice guy, always laughing and cutting up and joking. Smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee. Just an ordinary guy. And you couldn't keep from liking Marty. He was the guy that everybody, you know, you just liked him. He was basically a smaller version of his father, Jim, who was a very well-liked man. Scott County's a very rumorful town, you know.

The rumors can run wild like wildfire. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder. I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast, The Dinner's On Me. And whether you're a-time wine drinker or a wine aficionado, you're guaranteed to like America's number one luxury Cabernet. Since 1981, Justin's Vineyards

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JESSE20 to receive 20% off your order today. That's JESSE20 for 20% off. It took a while to get Anthony to lay on tape. For a long time, I think he wasn't all that sure he wanted to talk to us. There was a lot of phone tag and text tag before he finally agreed to meet us. And he did so because he wanted to make sure that the Carsons, Jim and Marty and even Marion, had someone speaking up for them. Someone who knew them and understood them and liked them. But he was still wary. Sean, can you pass me a pen?

Yeah, it's getting work. After we talked for an hour or so, we asked him to sign a release. It's a standard form, basically just acknowledging that he knows we recorded him. We have a release. Do you mind signing this? Sure, no problem. It's just general saying we're agreed to be recorded. Now listen, I'm going to say something to you back, and I respectfully say this. I too recorded this because I just don't want miswords put out.

Okay. You know, I trust you, but you've got to trust me on that. We've just got to look out for each other's well-being on that, okay? Absolutely. I don't blame him. There's a lot of nuance in what Lay is trying to explain, some complicated social dynamics in these rural politics. He learned that when he ran for sheriff in 2006

and was knocking on doors to pitch himself. I said, I'm Anthony Lay, and here's my campaign spell I gave him. When I got done, this older man said, well, you seem like you'd be a good sheriff, but you'll never be as good as Marion Carson. Nobody ever will. I said, sir, I hear this a lot, and I want to understand because Marion went to prison. You know, all of these things happened. And he said, well, because Marion would come by and give me some green beans and tomatoes out of his garden. He was that guy, and everybody liked him. And I made a joke and said, well, I guess I'd better grow a really big garden then.

And we laughed it off. But that's a true story. I believe that story, too. My wife's family goes back a couple generations in East Tennessee. She grew up south of Knoxville, but her father had a pretty good feel for how things worked in the rural counties. He hunted and he fished pretty much that whole half of the state but more importantly he was a lawyer, a country lawyer like his father before him. He represented a lot of people out in the hills and the hollers

and later he became a state judge and then in 1984 he was appointed to the federal bench. His name was Jim Jarvis, and as it happens, he was the judge who sentenced Marion Carson to prison. He was decent enough about it. He gave Carson 60 days to tie up any personal business before he reported to prison, and he recommended Carson do his time at the federal prison in Lexington. There was a good alcohol rehab program there,

and Carson had said in court that his heavy drinking was one of the reasons he got mixed up with the drug smugglers. I didn't know any of this until years after both Carson and the judge were dead. I stumbled across it in some old newspaper clippings and just thought, huh, small world, ain't it? Later, when we were back nosing around in Scott County for this podcast, we found an odd little Facebook post laying out some more of the backstory.

Marion Carson was indicted along with a bunch of other people as part of a larger federal investigation into drugs and gambling. And according to this Facebook post, one of those other people, not Marion, put out a hit on Judge Jarvis. I have no idea if that's true. I talked to people who worked with my father-in-law back in the day, and they have no memory. My wife and her sisters remember a federal marshal showing up a couple of times and staying around the house for a few days, but not why. And a friend from the courthouse remembers a sniper being posted near the judge's cabin for a bit, but again, not why. Apparently it's not unusual for people to threaten federal

judges. In any case, if there was a hit, nothing ever came of it. But I thought it was something I should mention. And really, small world, ain't it? For the first year of Lay's term in office, from September 2006 until the fall of 2007, Lori's lawsuit hung over the county like a dark cloud. Or, if you were Lori, like a tiny ray of light poking through that cloud. Did it have much of an effect inside the Sheriff's Department? No, not really. No. No, we moved forward under my administration. You know, we moved forward in a positive way. We put all negative things in the past and moved forward to try to make a positive outcome. Now, I'm sure there were some people that had personal feelings, but it was never really openly discussed.

Lay left near the end of a four-year term to take a job with the U.S. Marshals. But during those years, John John's death, Marty shooting John John, was nothing he ever fixated on. But he can understand why others might have thought something fishy was going on. There were things about that incident that was handled properly and things that were not. And I think some of the things that put doubt in citizens' minds in Scott County, and probably even, you know, officials' minds, is, you know, there was one incident that was told to me where Marty sat in the car with his father and maybe a detective. True. The night it happened, Marty and his father and a detective sat in a cruiser, though for how long is a matter of some dispute. And I think when people heard that because of the amount of time they were accused of sitting in the car, they started formulating these thoughts

about cover-up stories. I don't think it was that way. I reached out to Jim Carson. He'd already answered in court testimony or depositions, the specific questions I had, like how long he sat in that cruiser with Marty. He said it was about 10 minutes. Mostly, though, I wanted him to tell me about the dad stuff, what Marty was like, and how he had to reconcile those two roles,

father and sheriff, especially the night Marty shot John John. I called all the numbers I could find, left messages where I could, had some people in Scott County reach out to him, though I'm sure several already had. We sent him a letter, too, but never heard back. I get it. Put yourself for a minute in his shoes. What good can come from talking about all of it again? Anthony Lay gets it.

He's got a lot of sympathy for the Carsons, Jim and Marty. People in the county, they don't understand the rumors that hurt you and your family. Marty took himself out of public view after this happened. I can only, I told a friend once, I said, I can only imagine this happening and having to walk out in Walmart in the public. Because everybody is going to look at you like you're a stone cold killer, whether you are or not, okay? okay I got a little teary-eyed because I know what Sheriff Carson and Marty and his family's been through I didn't go through anything to the severity that they did where someone buddy was shot and killed but I can tell you what I went through just with rumors will drive a perfectly sane person insane almost.

You've got to be strong and thick-skinned, and luckily I was, even at an early age. Most people couldn't have dealt with that. It's incredibly rough. This is where Lay does a little semantic jujitsu. He's convinced Jim Carson lost because Marty killed John John. But he says that doesn't mean people believed Marty did it on purpose, that it was anything more than an accident. It just kind of tainted everything. It's not that anybody believed or disbelieved. Basically, if the situation hadn't have happened,

but you would have put the right rumor out there on somebody, in Scott County, you can beat them. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons, two scientists, one movement disorders coordinator, 58 answered questions, two focused ultrasound procedures, one specially developed helmet, thousands of high-intensity focused ultrasound waves. Zero incisions. And that very same day, two steady hands. From innovation to action, Sunnybrook is special.

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Lori and her attorneys are pushing ahead with her lawsuit. They're interviewing witnesses, taking statements, gathering evidence, trying to build an ironclad case against Marty. And now Lori has someone to come home to and lean on, a man she'd been dating and eventually married, Howard Ellis. We met through mutual friends, a girl that babysit it for me, also babysit it for him. Even John John's sisters knew Howard. They'd went to school with him. And so everybody's just trying to fix this up. You know, I had dated John John since I was a freshman in high school,

so I really couldn't say I've really dated anyone other than John John. I was just really sick about it. I was nervous and really was going to change my mind because I thought this is not worth it. This is just too emotional. It's just a difficult situation. But I went through with it, and he showed up at the door. And the first thing I told him that I am a nervous wreck.

And it was kind of funny because he goes, I am too. They went on another date and then another. And it was a little awkward because Howard at the time was a prosecutor. He worked, in fact, for Paul Phillips. He ended up leaving the DA's office because I'd already sued the sheriff's department. I think it was going to be a conflict for him to continue working at the DA's office. Lori and Howard got married in the summer of 2006, just before Anthony Lay was elected. I bring all of this up not because it's a love story, which it is, but because of Howard's role

in Lori's lawsuit. Because he'd been a prosecutor, and because he's now a defense attorney, he knows a lot of people who've been on the wrong side of the law in this little county. He knows how to find those people and how to talk to them. That's an asset for Lori's team. When Howard joins, they're still trying to figure out their best strategy, particularly what to do with the theory that Marty killed John John to stop him from running against his father. It never made a whole hell of a lot of Marty killed John John to stop him from running against his father. It never made a whole hell of a lot of sense. John John hadn't announced anything, and he definitely wasn't talking to the sheriff's son about it. I mean, why would you kill someone just because they're going to run for sheriff? It doesn't

mean he's going to win. But at that point, that's all I knew. That's the only motive I knew of at that time. Did you imagine any other motives? Did you run any theories through your own head? No. I know John John had mentioned, you know, on and off that, you know, at different points in time that he had heard that Marty was taking bribes. I guess this comes from confidential informants. You know, we'd heard this stuff, but I really didn't know why he would be killed over something like that. But it's all they had to go on. Until one day, a few months before the trial, Lori was working her shift in the ER taking care of a patient, a man she'd seen a few times in the hospital. That was Rick Babb.

Rick Babb is someone I had taken care of in the ER on and off didn't really know him very well reddish hair a little scraggly probably like five seven or five eight and the first thing he told me that he was an outlaw he was the type of person i could see him being probably as he called himself an outlaw he just came across that way he was kind of i think proud to be an outlaw. He just came across that way. He was kind of, I think, proud of being an outlaw. That was just the way he came across. And he told me that he had, you know, drug problems himself. And that, I mean, he was very upfront about that. And that he knew John John and Marty. She didn't remember why Rick was in the ER, and she probably couldn't tell us anyway.

And then when I go back in to discharge him, he just calls me my name. He calls me Miss Yancey. He goes, you've got this all wrong. And I really didn't know what he was talking about. I've had his health care information all mine. I said, what are you talking about? He said, why your husband was shot. He said, you've got this all wrong. He said, it's not because he was running for sheriff.

And, you know, I was just shocked and surprised. He told me that him and another family member met Marty Carson in a cemetery. And I think that was Carson in a cemetery. And I think that was located in Onoda. And that it was one night. And that he offered Rick Babb money. And I think he also had a handgun he was going to give him to kill John John. I thought, does this person know what he's talking about?

I mean, I have no idea. He said he couldn't talk to me then, but there was more to the story that he needed to talk to me about. He just brought this information up to me, and I don't know, I just thought, I believe him because he brought this out of nowhere. I didn't ask him any questions, didn't even know who he was. And I thought he seemed very credible. Lori calls her lawyer's office.

And I told him what this guy had told me in the ER. And from that point, they set up, you know, to talk to him and get a statement from him. And this is what Rick Babb said. He said John John was killed because of drugs. Rick Babb said that he'd been a CI, a confidential informant for Marty Carson, for six years, told him who was cooking and who was selling. He said it was Marty's delivery boy, or runner, who could make drug buys for Marty, ostensibly so Marty would have evidence,

the drugs, to make an arrest. Except Rick said that after a lot of those buys, 65 or 70 of them, Marty didn't arrest anyone or even file a report. He just kept the drugs. And if he did make an arrest, Rick said, if Marty did lock up a cook or a dealer and confiscate a bunch of meth, he would only turn in a little bit. Marty, again according to Rick Babb, was deep into meth. He used it. Rick said he snorted lines with Marty, thick as a pencil, right off the hood of his cruiser. He said Marty had people cooking for him and even helped two guys break out of the county jail so they could go make more meth for Marty. He said that if Marty, and we're quoting here, found out about a meth lab that was not his,

he would shut it down. Rick Babb also said that it was his fault that John John was dead. He said that in the fall of 2003, he bought a bag of meth at Marty's direction. For some reason, John John came to pick it up. And Rick, assuming John John was as dirty as his partner, said something like, you boys have fun with that. He asked Rick what he was talking about, and Rick told him all of it. John John said he was already on to Marty, and he had been for a long time. That he was investigating his own partner. And then Rick Babb went and told Marty. He told Marty he'd screwed up.

And Marty agreed. And then Marty tried to give Rick and his nephew a gun and a pile of money to kill John John. Rick refused. He said that was three weeks before Marty shot John John. He said, I knew Officer Yancey was going to get killed, and I knew Marty was going to kill him. That's what Rick Babb said. And then I thought, finally, maybe there is more to this. Maybe there is a brick in this case. Next time on Witnessed Friendly Fire. He said, but Marty thought it would be funny to ask me if I wanted to kill John Yancey.

You know? I wasn't trying during that time to get involved with law enforcement. They'd bury me. Was Marty a dirty cop? Could any of this be true? I said, if I know anything on Marty Carson, it's not to be said out here in public.

It's not to be said to nobody. There'll not be nothing told that I know. I think when they stabbed Rick, somebody, I'll say somebody, was trying to send a message. © transcript Emily Beynon Witness is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. Friendly Fire was reported and hosted by me, Sean Flynn. Lindsay Kilbride is the senior producer, and Callie Hitchcock is the associate producer. The story editor is Daniel Riley. The series was sound designed

by Shani Aviram with mixing by Ewan Lytramewin. This episode was fact-checked by Alex Yablon. The theme song is Booey by Shook Twins. A special thanks

to our operations team, Amanda Brown, Doug Slaywin, Aaliyah Papes, and Allison Haney. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher. If you enjoyed Witnessed Friendly Fire, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.