The Binge Crimes: Night Shift - Friendly Fire | 7. Pastor Golden and the Outlaw

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Was Marty a corrupt deputy? Is Rick Babb’s story true? Host Sean Flynn toggles between witnesses and investigators to get to the bottom of the story that might be the lynchpin to Lori’s case. 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. Okay. If you can just start by telling us who you are. Just introduce yourself. I'm Joseph Carter Babb. You know, nephew of Richard Earl Babb. What can you tell me about Richard Earl Babb? Long time drug addict.

Long time family member. He was like a dad to me. I was my uncle's shadow. I even went to work with him. Rode heavy equipment with him all day. I mean, he just couldn't shake me, you know. There's a lot of mean men out there, but mean didn't mess with him. If you did his family wrong, he was kicking your door in. He didn't care. He wasn't scared to go to jail. He wasn't scared of probation. He wasn't scared of death. He called himself an outlaw.

I didn't see him as an outlaw, but he had this saying. He goes, I don't want to be famous. I want to be infamous. And he was. He was. Outlaws are not giving him enough credit. He got arrested a lot. A lot.

Drugs, alcohol, assault, driving without a license, driving without a license and having an accident, fleeing the scene of an accident. Just keeps going. I mean, he was a notorious thief. He stole a bunch of fancy horse saddles that was worth about $10,000 apiece. And he used a lot of meth. Oh, you have no clue. He could pop a gram in two days. That's a lot of meth. This Uncle Joseph is talking about, this infamous outlaw Uncle Rick. This is the man who walked into Lori Yancey's workplace

and said he knew why Marty would have killed John John. Because of drugs. When Joseph was in his early 20s, this is who he'd be hanging out with, his 40-something Uncle Rick. They'd go on long drives together. We just took joyrides out in the country. He wanted to show me my roots all the time. Joseph always drove because Rick... He didn't have a license. He couldn't drive. We hung out, and I took him places, stuff like that.

That's how I got involved with this Marty Carson crap, was he needed a ride. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Season 2 of Witnessed, Friendly Fire, Episode 7. 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 especially one with as many twists and turns as June's journey step into the role of June Parker and engage

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that sets the main protagonist, June Parker, on a quest to solve the murder of her sister and uncover her family's many secrets along the way. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS or Android. The way this man Rick Babb just appeared in Lori's life was sort of a miracle for her. For more than three years, she believed that Marty Carson meant to kill her husband. But she didn't know why. Until now.

Maybe. Marty was taking bribes. He had also been seen at drug houses and that, you know, he was also doing drugs himself. And he was taking payoffs from these people. And I think John John was on to this. Marty vehemently denied all of this. But this is the story Rick's telling. And her lawyers are going to run with it.

They thought it was credible. And it just, it really just seemed like, yeah, this was more of the motive. Were you surprised? Yes, yes. Rick Babs seems to come forward with nothing to gain and everything to lose. He knows all about drugs in Scott County, who's making them, who's selling them, and everyone knows he knows. And he outs himself as an informant, a snitch,

because he says he believes it's the right thing to do. And he will swear that Marty asked him to kill John John. But there's a problem. Remember what that retired TBI supervisor said? You've got meth people there. I guarantee you they don't know what was said. He was actually talking about one of the witnesses from the night of the shooting.

But it applies to Rick, too. It's a little insight into how the TBI was thinking. I wouldn't put a bit of credibility on what they saw or what they said. I mean, cops rely on informants all the time. And a lot of those informants, just by the nature of the business, are drug users. But in this case, it might be a fair point. Rick gave a deposition a month before Lori's case went to trial. And it's, well, it's messy. The third question in, right after what's your name and

where do you live, Rick can't say how many times he's been arrested. He says it's too many to count, but a little later he gets to the real reason. He says, quote, I just can't remember anymore. I've had some real bad licks to the head in my life and my memory and drugs. It's not what it used to be. And not one specific lick to the head either. It and my memory and drugs, it's not what it used to be. And not one specific lick to the head either. It's an accumulation of licks. A lot of his answers end up being, I don't remember. And he's oddly honest about just how much he doesn't remember. But on the basic story, he's adamant. He says he was an informant for Marty and then he was an informant for John John. Marty was crooked, and he asked him to kill John John because John John was on to Marty. But when he's telling this story, it's hard

sometimes to understand exactly how Marty was involved with meth. Rick said he'd done a bunch of meth with Marty, and he delivered a bunch of meth to Marty. And at one point, he explains that some people he knew were making meth for Marty, like his personal lab. Then Marty arrested those people, which is how informant work is supposed to go. Rick says that's only because John John had caught on to that lab. Otherwise, they'd still be cooking. The lawyers asking Rick questions keep trying to sort out just how deeply involved Marty allegedly was with meth. Was Marty dealing or just using?

Was he running a big operation? It's never completely clear. All those blicks to the head. This is who Lori's going to court with. Rick Babb and some other meth people, to use the TBI agent's term. But is it possible any of this is even true? Maybe. That's why I went to find Rick Babb's shadow, as he put it. His nephew Joseph, who you just heard from, who used to drive him around. I had to take him out one night and he said, just drive him somewhere. He just told me where to go. I didn't question it. And that's the night I found out that he was Marty Carson's CI. CI. Confidential Informant. Joseph didn't know this. It's confidential, after all. Until one evening when his uncle said he needed a ride to a cemetery on the edge of town.

To a spot way in the back, hidden. Marty was waiting. So, you know, they stood outside the vehicle to talk for a while before he got back in the vehicle that evening. So that's actually how I met Marty Carson the first time. So were there other meetings where you drove? Oh, there was a few. I took Rick one night. He wore a wire. So I figured, well, it ain't none of my business. It's one less dopehead off the street. You know, that's why I was playing it up. Truth be told, I was kind of nervous about the situation. Before I go on, I want to be

transparent about something. We've mentioned several times how small Scott County is, how everyone knows everyone, and this sometimes can be useful. For instance, we really wanted to talk to Joseph, but we had a hard time tracking him down. We found him through Lori's husband, Howard. At the time we spoke to Joseph, Howard was his court-appointed public defender on a misdemeanor charge from a couple years ago. I should also mention, at the time I'm recording this, the case seems to have gone nowhere. He didn't make you do this, did he?

No. I taught him I would. Okay. Thank you. I almost didn't, because I didn't want to relive his memories either. I understand that, and I appreciate you doing it. Anyway, Joseph may have been nervous chauffeuring his uncle, but he wasn't so nervous that he stopped. CI or not, Rick was family. Joseph says he drove him back to the cemetery a few times,

until the last time, which was in the fall of 2003. I told him it's kind of late. He said, yeah, but it's kind of important. He says, I need to go meet with Marty Carson. I said, are you in trouble again? He says, no, but it's kind of important. He said, I need to go meet with Marty Carson. I said, are you in trouble again? He says, no, I'm not in trouble. But he said he wanted to talk to me about something. So I said, okay.

Give me about 30 minutes. It was getting dark when they drove out to Jeffers Road on the eastern outskirts of Oneida. It's a small cemetery, just a few dozen headstones on a wide, flat lawn with a big white cross in the middle of it. There's a small rise to it, so if you follow the gravel track from the road, you can disappear behind it down by the tree line. He says that was their usual spot. Always in the very back of that cemetery. Way off the road, you couldn't see it. It was right about sunset.

Sun was going down because you could still see the outline of the headstones and stuff like that at the cemetery where we met him. We got there, and he was talking to Marty out the window, and I was just kind of ignoring him. You know, I had the radio kind of up, and I didn't hear the first of the conversation. But I heard my uncle laughing uncontrollably, and I just kind of nodded over, and he's got like, I can't remember what kind of handkerchief it was, bandana, what have you. He was laughing, and he was looking at this gun. I said, okay, what's that? I said, it's bigger than the one I carry on me. He's like, I don't know. He said, but Marty thought it would be funny to ask me if I wanted to kill John Yancey. I was like, are you joking, right? He said, I think he's joking,

and then he continued to laugh. Marty was standing there laughing, but then it kind of turned where Marty was a worried laugh, and he said he told me he would pay me so much to kill him and you so much to drive me. I said, get that out of here. I said, y'all need to stop playing pranks on me. Because my uncle's notorious for gagging people all the time. I thought this was another one of those. Nothing ever come of it after that. Marty, for the record, denied that ever happened.

And as for Rick, he might have fancied himself an outlaw, but even outlaws have their limits. He's not a killer. He's done a lot of stuff, but he's never killed anybody. You know, you talk about a man that quote the Bible forwards and backwards and tell you every passage and every meaning that goes with it. Murder was not on his agenda. And later, John Yancey was killed. So, yeah, that's how I got involved. I just went home and told my grandma I ain't going back out no more. I'm not giving my uncle any more rides. Did you after that?

A few, but only in the daytime, and I was never alone. I always had another uncle with me or some cousins or something. Joseph says he planned on keeping his mouth shut about what happened in the cemetery, which is reasonable. If a sheriff's deputy, the sheriff's own son, tries to hire you to kill someone, who do you report that to? After he's dead, what thought was I supposed to have? You know?

I wasn't trying during that time to get involved with law enforcement. They'd bury me. But then, after the Carsons were out of office, when they could no longer arrest him, Uncle Rick went and told Lori the whole thing. I didn't want no more involvement than what was already going on. Then I get told I have to give a deposition. I didn't want to do that, but you know what?

They already got my number. They already know what I know. I just went ahead and done it because Miss Lori asked me to. Joseph was on the witness list for Lori's civil suit, but he didn't testify. He had a job with a railroad then, and not inconveniently, he was working far out of state when the case went to trial. If he had testified, though, his story of that night in the cemetery would not have precisely matched Rick's.

In the version Rick recounted in an affidavit, a deposition, and in trial testimony, he and Joseph were standing outside the car, leaning on the hood. And Marty spoke directly to Joseph, told him he would pay him $5,000 to drive Rick to the killing. And then, after Rick said that Marty must have lost his mind, that he wasn't killing anybody, Marty drove off in a patrol car and came back carrying a white towel. Marty unfolded the towel, which was wrapped around a semi-automatic pistol, and said, according to Rick,

Joseph, on the other hand, says he stayed in the car, in the driver's seat, and turned up the radio, which he usually did because he didn't want to know what Rick and Marty talked about. He said Marty came to the passenger window with the gun wrapped, not in a towel, but in something like a bandana or a handkerchief, and that Rick was laughing maniacally. Joseph said Rick asked Marty if he was serious, and that Marty didn't say yes or no. He just didn't answer. On the key details, that there was a gun wrapped in something, and Marty offered to pay them both, Rick and Joseph told the same story. It's the choreography where they differ.

Who was where, when, and who spoke to whom. And they're both stubborn about it. Rick, in his deposition, was asked repeatedly if he meant Marty came to the window with the gun. And he repeatedly said no. Both he and Joseph were standing outside. And Joseph is just as certain that he never got out of the car. By the time the trial was over, Joseph was putting some distance between himself and Scott County and his Uncle Rick. Joseph got himself a job one county to the south running a chop saw in a lumber yard, $15 an hour. So, I mean, I had a good thing going. I wasn't trying to jeopardize that. And the company was bad and notorious for drug testing, randomly.

So, I went clean. He didn't abide my rule to that, so I told him I'm walking away, and I did. It wasn't until a year or two later we got back together and what have you. I don't go to Scott County at all for hardly anything. Not since the trial, since he gave a statement against the Carson. If I have to, I'm in and out and gone. It's got to be a have-to case.

Rick Babb said in his deposition and in his testimony that he went and got help and stopped using meth. But Joseph's story is different from his uncle's there, too. He says Rick never stopped using drugs. I don't know.

Rick died of an overdose in 2011, but I met him a few years before that, in 2008, and spent a couple afternoons with him. He seemed sober. He told me he was, and had been for almost four years. He'd gotten help from a pastor, and Rick spoke very highly of him. I wondered if the pastor would speak highly of Rick.

Excuse everything, we've been remodeling. So I figured I should ask him. I wondered if the pastor would speak highly of 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 Dinners on Me. And whether you're a first-time wine drinker or a wine aficionado, you're guaranteed to like America's number one luxury Cabernet. Since 1981,

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Shop all of Justin's exceptional wines at justinwine.com and be sure to use promo code JESSE20 to receive 20% off your order today. That's JESSE20 for 20% off. We met Rick's pastor at the Lighthouse Church of God. His name is Charles Golden. The church is a small white clapboard building with a gravel lot at the edge of the road in Fentress County, which is next to Scott. Actually, the pulpit used to sit right here. The main floor is bright and open, white walls and beige carpet

and big windows in the back behind the altar. There's no stuffy piety about the place, but there are a lot of guitars and a piano and a full drum kit. He had a full band. Oh, we love music. Golden, when we meet him, is wearing jeans and work boots. We're sitting in the church that I pastor. I love working with people and encouraging people. I've been preaching for 37 years. I've evangelized for four years and been pastoring ever since. I teach martial arts. I'm licensed through State of Tennessee's fifth-degree black belt. Martial arts are part of his ministry.

He teaches kids, calls them black belts of the faith. He's got another program he calls SWAT, Students with a Testimony. He pastors a lot of kids. Sometimes I'm the last hope they have before they send them somewhere or something, and they'll put them in my program. And we've had kids that's come from busted homes, from foster children all the way up. I have kids that's completed that was failing in school that now is graduating college. We're trying to get them when they get up and graduate high all the way up. I have kids that's completed that was failing in school that now is graduating college. We're trying to get them when they get up and

graduate high school and we need to be trying to figure it out while they're still in grade school. How can we change their life? Don't mean because everybody in your family went to jail you have to go to jail. You break that. Scott County has a reputation of drugs flowing through it and one there's there's no jobs i had this lady she was 60 60 61 year old at the time in rehab she was a grandma a mom and uh she said i can make 1500 a making meth, and I can't draw but $400 a month. And they can almost justify what they're doing to feed and take care of a family, but it don't just stop there.

It keeps leading on and leading on. So we wanted to ask you about a man named Rick Babb. What can you tell us about Rick? Did you know Rick? I know Rick very well um rick was a uh i guess the best words to describe rick rick was a character rick was referred to the program that i used to do and uh the first time i met him, Lord, why have you put this fellow in my life? He was a modern Jesse James, you could say.

But, and I'll stress that, but the Rick I knew on the end was not like that. He was a good-hearted man. Man, Rick hit it off. I liked horses. Rick liked horses. You know, matter of fact, I even own a horse that Rick had. I still have it. It's an Arabian paint.

I never will forget the time he invited me to stop by his house. And Rick comes out with a 12-and-a-half-inch knife. If Rick ever made you a knife, you were special to Rick. And Rick had worked for two days making me that knife. Rick ended up at the Lighthouse Church of God because his probation officer sent him there. At the time, Pastor Golden ran a rehab program, which was mostly word of mouth and mostly funded out of his own pocket. We had it downstairs. We fed them. We listened to them. Rick could tell you some stories now that you'd look at him and think, man,

come on. But Rick told his side of things to try to help others where they wouldn't do the same thing he'd done. Did you trust him with everything i had was he honest as honest as day is long if rick told you something you could go to the bank with it now the rick i know the rick before that you know he got things straightened out i have no idea but uh rick was one if it was on his mind he'd tell you about it and uh if you asked him a question whether he got in trouble or not rick would answer you uh i'd say rick you do this well yeah if you was going to walk through the door and arrest him he'd say yeah i done drugs today or yeah i done this or i done you know something else so i mean you know there's very few people with that character

very few did you know him during the time when he was talking to laurie i sure did i just want to run something by you here. Rick told me that he had this secret that he kept from Lori. Yep. And he told her that John John wasn't killed over politics,

he was killed over drugs. Yeah. And that he worked with Marty. He was one of Marty's informants. Marty asked him if he would kill John and he said, no, hell no.

Yep, that's Rick. Okay, and that's, since Rick isn't here to repeat that, without commenting on that if you don't want to, that time in his life, Rick was honest. Absolutely. And I'll comment on it because Rick told me the same thing. And he told me, he said, if I come up missing, you'll know what happened to me. I said, okay.

Rick had no reason to lie to Pastor Golden about anything, really. Rick certainly had no reason to involve himself in the killing of a sheriff's deputy, a killing that had already been determined to be an accident. He wasn't trying to weasel out of any charges. He wasn't getting paid. And Golden, who we had to track down, had no reason to make it up all these years later. Everyone involved, John John, Martyy rick they're all dead rick told him something in pastoral confidence and golden didn't add any details he only confirmed what rick

said in court what rick told me a long time ago and only because we asked that marty carson asked him to kill john john yancey and that mart Marty was involved in meth. Not true. Former Scott County Sheriff Anthony Lay, who took Jim Carson's job. Yeah, you know, here's the deal. When I got elected sheriff, some of those things I looked into, personally looked into. I couldn't find any evidence of anything. I could never find any wrongdoings. I never could. And you know, don't take this wrong, but you know, one would want to if you were the new sheriff because that would keep competition down from a very popular man.

But I couldn't find anything wrong. And you know, if I would have ran against Sheriff Carson the next round, I couldn't have said anything wrong on him because I couldn't find anything to say. But there was this other thing that happened. And we know it happened because there's a police report and medical records and a scar on Rick's chest. The last week of September 2007, after he'd already given a statement to Lori's lawyer, Rick got stabbed. He says he was sitting on the edge of his porch, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.

It was nighttime, dark. Two men came around from the back of his house. They wore blue jeans and work boots and ski masks. One of them had a knife, and the other one, Rick said, started knocking the shit out of me. Rick fought back, but he got stabbed right below the breastbone.

The men ran off, and Rick said one of them turned and yelled, if you say one word about Marty or testify against him, we'll come back and kill you and your family. Rick collapsed and was rushed to the ER. No one was ever arrested. Marty and his dad said they had nothing to do with it. And besides, it's not odd to think some people might want to stab an informant, but the timing was odd. I think when they stabbed Rick, they was trying,

somebody, I'll say somebody, was trying to send a message, and it shook him up. We'll be right back. the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Rick Babb wasn't the only person, or even the first, to accuse Marty of being on the wrong side of the drug laws. In fact, Lori was hearing from some of those people. A lot of people, anonymous calls, they would call the house, you know, and say that they'd heard this on Marty Carson. And some of these people, you know, I don't know if it was real or not, because a lot of people like to get involved that maybe don't have facts. But I received a lot of phone calls saying that they knew more things on Marty. It was all pretty much the same thing, that he was involved in drugs. But not everyone was anonymous.

Before any of this happened, before Marty shot John John, before Rick told Lori what he knew, other people had come forward and said pretty much the same thing, that Marty was shaking down meth cooks, extorting them, making them work for him. In 2001, for instance, one of the local cooks broke out of the Scott County Jail, and a couple days later turned himself into the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. He said that he was, quote, in fear for my own safety while being held in the Scott County Jail. He said, I feel like Marty knows that I know what he's involved in, and that's why he's trying to get rid of me.

Another cook later backed him up, saying, we were cooking meth and we didn't have to worry about getting busted because Marty Carson would get 90% of it. Those two cooks were the ones Rick named later, the ones he said were making meth for Marty. Here's Paul Phillips, the former DA. I mean, the TVI investigated all of those leads, and they did not find that credible. Now, you know, Richard was probably one of the most dramatic.

Richard is Rick Babb. Phillips says he never had any indication that John John suspected Marty was crooked, or that anything was off between the two. They were in our office a lot. They were making lots of cases. They worked primarily with my assistant who handled the Scott County docket. We thought they were making good cases, and we thought they were operating as partners, and from everything we knew, they seemed to work together well.

If John John had been suspicious of Marty, that's nothing he ever brought to your office. He didn't. No, he did not. The other thing that was very clear in the investigation is that this information that night was Officer Yancey's information. The impetus to go out there and investigate this was Officer Yancey's. It just doesn't seem logical to think that if Officer Carson intended harm to Officer Yancey that this would be the occasion to do that. But everyone had an opinion on the case.

Half the people just didn't think that one would intentionally hurt the other. The other half would be more inclined to a conspiracy theory. Pausing here just for a second to note that if half the people in the county, or any sizable fraction, are more inclined to believe the sheriff's son murdered his partner, that's disturbing. But Phillips used an important term of art to describe those witnesses and their allegations. Credible. Those reports, accusations of Marty's criminal activity, were not credible in his eyes. A prosecutor, an ethical one who brings

criminal charges against the person, has to believe in good faith that he can prove those charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Even in a civil case, where the burden of proof is lower, the witnesses you call and the testimony they give has to be credible. That is difficult when so many drugs are involved. In a case like this, with a lot of rumors and people skittering about in the shadows, there's an issue of hearsay. Did you see Marty with the big pile of meth, or did you just hear about it? Only the first is admissible. Many of the witnesses in question have been in trouble repeatedly with the law in Scott County, and they're being asked to swear,

in essence, that some elements of law enforcement in the county are murderously corrupt. Perhaps not surprisingly, their stories can wobble. Take Lonnie Gunter. He's the man who shared his meth recipe with us. It's our poison. Lonnie is a tall guy with bleached blonde hair, wide shoulders, and a very narrow waist. He looks like a Disney version of Hercules, with a few more years and a lot more miles on him. And full disclosure,

Laurie's husband Howard helped us find Lonnie, too. Like we said, Howard knows a lot of people. Lonnie says he started making meth in the late 90s. He's talkative, funny, very open, tells a lot of stories from his wilder days. I broke out of the little Mickey Mouse jail. Yeah, he's one of the ones who busted out of jail and turned himself into the TBI. All I left with was that pair of shorts on my ass, like I told you. He ended up in the river trying to lose anyone on his tail.

I hit the little road, go to the water plant, cut me a left, and I'm on the river. Why are you swimming the river? To get to the other side. I mean, the beavers had cut trees, and instead of going through that, I'd swim across to the clear side, go down a ways, and if it got thick, go to the other side. Finally, I needed to be on that side of the river. He turned himself in a couple days later and gave his statement to the TBI.

In that statement, which he signed, Lonnie said he fronted some methamphetamine to this one guy and that when Lonnie asked him for the money, this guy told him he'd have to go talk to Marty Carson about that. When I started quoting Lonnie's own statement to him, I never did say that. Now, you pull that up, that's a lie. I never said that. I don't care what they put down and said. I never one time said that.

I mean, I've been honest with you since. When the DA talks about credible witnesses, he means, well, not this. In his statement, Lonnie said he believed Marty was trying to get rid of him because he knew Marty was tied up in the meth business. Now? Did anyone ever tell you that Marty Carson was involved with selling meth? Did anyone ever tell you that Marty Carson was involved with selling meth? Did anyone ever tell you that? I couldn't honestly tell you 100% to be the truth, so I'm not even going to go there.

No, nobody ever said that. I mean, I'm not opening up to get into these kin folks coming back, you know. It would just be, if I said anything, it would just be hearsay, and I can't back up hearsay. All I can back up is what I know. Lonnie didn't testify. It's probably just as well. 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. Why not say the things you know about Marty? That's just not me, man. I mean, I have very little left. And all I got is my standards. And if I can't keep them and live with them, I got nothing. Everybody's got their standards, I guess. But I want to point out again that when we're reporting this in 2021, Jim Carson hasn't been sheriff for more than 15 years. Marty Carson is dead. And yet getting people, not just Lonnie, others too, even a cop, to repeat what they swore about the Carsons years ago, it's like pulling

teeth. So we kept looking around, trying to find some of those other people whose names came up in various statements. We couldn't find any until we stumbled across one person who was mentioned in the deposition of a young woman named Ashley. Ashley was deposed because she was a witness to, as she put it, the paying off. Somebody paying off Marty Carson. And that somebody was Roger Bowling. We found him in the Scott County Jail. I've been in here since August 15, 2018. 38 months.

I'm in here for selling methamphetamine. 26 and a half grams. Okay. How long have you been selling methamphetamine? All my life. All your life? I mean, basically about 25 years, probably, somewhere around there. How'd you get involved in meth?

Well, I'd done a little cocaine growing up there, and then the meth come along, and I got on hit, and I couldn't really shake it. It was so addictive to me. So why'd you start selling? The money. Sometimes I'll get a pound at a time. 16 ounces to a pound, there's 28 grams to an ounce. So that's $4,800 an ounce. That's a hell of a profit. Yeah. Holy shit. So he was good at selling. He says he brought in meth from out of state, didn't bother with the local cooks, and that the local law didn't bother him. He says Marty had a reputation. It did a little bit of dope on the side. Was he one of the guys who would look the other way? Yeah, kind of turn his head the other way.

Do you ever leave anything for him? No. Really? No. So why would he turn his head then? He'd just, I don't know, I guess he'd know me pretty much all my life. Was he buying? Was he dealing? Was he just taking some to look the other way?

I'd say he was taking money. But none from you? No. Ever? Never. So other than Marty having a reputation for being involved with the meth business, you don't know of anything firsthand of him

ever taking any money or taking any drugs? No. I mean, he never took no money from me because he didn't know I was moving a lot. He was just after the people that was moving a lot of dope and the cooks. But you were moving a lot. Yeah, but he didn't know. I moved mine mostly in Jamestown, Morgan County. Ah, okay. I don mine mostly in Jamestown, Morgan County. Ah, okay.

I don't believe Roger. And Roger, who's being very patient with a couple of strangers who popped into the jail unannounced, knows that I don't believe him. But he's not budging. It's a little frustrating. Ashley, in her deposition, her sworn testimony, says she was with Roger for about six months. And she said that one night she was hiding in Roger's truck when he drove to a place called Billion Foods

to pay off Marty. Ashley was really, really specific in her deposition about you, her relationship with you, and being in the car, hiding in the back, and Marty never knew she was there. And you gave Marty a couple hundred bucks, and you told her that's how you keep the law off your back. Maybe I did one time. I couldn't think about it. I think it was at Phil and Foods. That, yeah, Just the one time?

Yeah. Okay. Why just one time? Maybe, I don't know. I'm just trying to find out if I can believe Ashley's deposition or not. Yeah, I'll give him a few dollars. Okay. Okay.

He'd give Marty a few dollars. Next time on Witnessed, Friendly Fire. East Tennessee juries are notoriously tight. The trial. Everybody had an opinion on Scott Gannon. Finally, you know, someone's going to hear John Johnson out of this story. For us, the jury, we wanted to feel as certain as possible. Some reaction from you on the verdict?

I have no comment. I'm sorry. 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 Iwen Laitremuen. 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.