Who Killed Jennifer Judd? - Ep.5: Maria

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

When the Sheriff’s Office first processed the dead body found along Interstate-10, they identified her as Maria Martinez - not Renée Bergeron. This was not a simple clerical mistake. Turns out, Renée lived much of her life under the alter ego Maria. So who exactly is Maria? And why did Renée use her name? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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You know she had a black baby and sold it? No, I didn't know that. Yeah, she had a black baby and sold it. Now when did that happen? So, like, just the weird things that they put. Like, Renee Michelle Bergeron of Marrero, wild, rebellious, and hell-bent for trouble since she was 12, didn't seem to consider the possible consequences of her lifestyle, her parents said last week. Like, I'm sure my grandma didn't say that.

It doesn't matter what you heard. The lease was in her name. That was her house. She wasn't living off of anybody. I think it's important to recognize that there were a lot of tales about her at the time that were not accurate. There are three theories that circulate in the public whenever a case has gone cold.

The first is, it was human trafficking. Or, as it was known in the 80s, white slavery. The second, the victim was killed for snitching. And the third, of course, the police actually did it. These lores, these theories, these urban legends, whatever you want to call them, they persist despite whatever the facts are, because they are both more interesting and more satisfying explanations as to why there are no answers.

Often, the truth is far more boring. Cases go cold for all sorts of mundane reasons. So, typically, law enforcement takes these theories with a grain of salt. That is why I am taking a different approach to this case, a victim-oriented approach, as opposed to jumping straight into the theories. In order to understand this case, I am getting to really know Rene Bergeron, bit by bit, certainly more than the original investigators did.

That is so important, knowing the person, who they are beyond their role as a murder victim. But remember, when Renee's body was first autopsied and identified after her death, she was not ID'd as Renee, but rather as Maria Martinez. I don't know who Maria Martinez is. This woman whose fingerprints the police believed they had on file, the woman who most people in Mobile believed Renee to be. So even though it's Renee's murder I'm investigating, there's a distinct possibility that the killer had only ever known her as Maria. So who was she?

What secrets was Renee hiding behind the facade of Maria? So Laura Morris wrote out to me on June 25th, 2020. And she said, hey, do you remember me visiting you after this happened? I got someone you need to talk to. This is Amanda, Renee's daughter. We continue to keep in touch throughout the investigation. She calls me because she says she received a message from someone named Laura Morris.

And she says, you know, you may have a brother. And I said, I've heard that, but no confirmation. And she said, well, he contacted me. If this rumor sounds familiar, that's because it is. David mentioned this in a phone call with Matt. You know, she had a black baby and sold it. No, I didn't know that. Yeah, she had a black baby and sold it. Now, when did that happen? That happened, I don't know, maybe a year or two before she got took out.

Now, Laura is telling Amanda similar theories as David's, that Renee had another kid, one unknown to the Bergeron family. When I ask about whether the family had any inkling that Renee may have had another child, they rebuff the idea. They say they saw Renee enough during that time that they would have noticed if she was pregnant. And not only that, Laura is doing so the day after our phone call with David. But Laura isn't just some random person.

She has someone David has already mentioned to us. He said Laura was his girlfriend back in 1993. Could Laura and David still be in touch today? Amanda replies to Laura and tells her to reach out to me. So Laura does. We message back and forth, nothing too interesting. But we eventually hop on the phone, and it is while talking that Laura says something

that stops me in my tracks. I ask her to come in for a formal interview. I want her to tell this story again, this time on the record. She agrees. I also want her to come in because I hope she can give insight into David. After all, she seems to have known him for a long time.

And given that she was around Theodore Alabama at the time of Renee's murder, she also may provide more clues to help us figure out the full scope of what Renee was involved in. But first, I want her to tell Matt what she told me on the phone, what made me insist that she come in. But I am really curious, and I've been really hung up on, and I want you to tell Detective Peek what you told me about seeing her in that last weekend, the weekend that she was killed. So if you want to start from the beginning on that and explain to him what you explained to me because you'll do a better job of explaining it.

I'm being filmed, aren't I? Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, but don't worry about it. Just don't put me on TV. 100%, I promise. She came by David's house the night before. Did you catch that? Laura is saying that Renee was at David's house the night before. Did you catch that? Laura is saying that Renee was at David's house

the night before she was killed. In fact, that makes this now the last proof of life. The last time Renee Bergeron is seen alive, she is standing on David Young's porch. This is a striking revelation from Laura. David had told us that he had not seen Renee in months before she was killed. At one point, he said maybe five days before. Now there's someone else saying that David had seen Renee hours before she was found dead.

Matt doesn't dig into this right off the bat, though. It's important to get this part exactly right. So he asks Laura to rewind and explain how she knows David. Give me a little backstory first between you and David. We were just friends. He picked me up all the time

to ride around in his car with him. So y'all were friends, no dating relationship or anything? No, we were just friends. How long? Oh, sorry. Long time. How did y'all get introduced to one another? I mean, yeah, we didn't have Facebook or anything back then, so I was pretty much friends with everybody in the neighborhood. I can probably sit here and just name them a half, I can give them to you. How old were you when you met David? Oh, probably 16, 17. I was young. Okay. I'm just curious.

I'm just trying to piece together the timeline. It's not yet. Don't worry. It's fine. That's interesting. When we interviewed him, David referred to Laura as an ex-girlfriend, but she is saying they were just friends so you're at David's house one particular afternoon and Renee shows up yeah it was dark it was the night before the night before okay so this would have been Saturday night that I couldn't tell you

so wait yeah now remember Renee is found on a, so the night before could be either a Friday or a Saturday. It's reasonable that Laura does not know for sure which day it is between the two. But again, she knows it is at night and shortly before Renee is found dead. All right, so she comes over to David's house. Mm-hmm. Who is she with?

She was by herself. So she comes over just to hang out or just randomly shows up or tell me? She did that a lot. I mean, I don't know what they had going on. I don't know, but I mean, I was there and the two started talking and I'm listening to the conversation and she was beat up pretty bad. Her whole face covered in black eyes and stuff. She said her boyfriend had done it. Okay. So, you know, like this whole 20-something year, I've been thinking he was the one that did it.

Laura says that Renee was beat up and that Renee said Maurice was responsible. How long was she at David's house with you guys? Probably less than an hour. Okay. And did she stop by just to tell David that she had gotten beat up? I'm not sure. That's fine. I mean, I'm just trying to help refresh the memory.

I wish I had, you know, said something back then when all this happened. Because, I mean, I'm 52. My brain's not working too good anymore. So she leaves there? Mm-hmm. And then you and David just continue to hang out that night or afternoon?

Yeah, a little bit longer and then I went home. About what time at night do you go home? It was dark? Sometime between 10 and 12, I want to say. Yeah, it was late.

Laura later says she left when it was still dark, sometime between 10 and midnight. We continue to ask Laura about David. Where did he live? What cars did he drive? What was his relationship to various people? We just want to understand David better, and Laura seems to have been close to him back then. She hopefully can help us out. And his relationship with Renee, how would you describe that?

Close. He probably spent as much time with her as he did with me. I mean, they used to ride around all the time and do things. Yeah, and I get kind of the same feeling that I think he wanted more. Probably. Maybe she wasn't interested or just didn't care for David, liked him as a friend. But did you get that same kind of inclination with David and Renee? I can't really tell. I mean, whatever they had going on was over me. I didn't know everything David did.

Did he ever hit on you or make any advances on you? On me? No. I don't know. I'm sorry for asking. No, it's fine. It's fine. So no sexual advancements or touching or anything inappropriate? No. No. When's the last time you smoked with David? Okay, so no sexual advancements or touching or anything inappropriate? No, uh-uh. Okay.

When's the last time you spoke with David? It's been more than 10 years ago. Okay, so Laura is saying that she and David have not been in touch. Interesting. What did he say to you, I guess, in the months or years after Renee's death? Not a whole lot. He was just really upset. But he took you out to meet her family?

Yeah, well, I didn't really meet them. I rode with him, you know, God, that's a three, four-hour ride to New Orleans. So we rode out there the next day or day after or something. Well, you know what, it had to be longer than that because he took me to the cemetery too. That was it for the funeral or was it after that? It was after, it was after the funeral. So we might've went twice. See, there I go again. Oh no, it's okay. It's okay. It's a long time ago. It's a long time ago. It's okay. It's okay. It's a long time ago. It's a long time ago. It's understandable. It was. Yeah. So did you meet, like, her mom and Amanda? Yeah. You did.

Okay. But so Amanda was still a kid. How was his interacting with the family? Like, it was his mom. He was just real close with them. I'd assumed, you know, he'd been that way quite a while. So I hope y'all aren't seriously thinking he had anything to do with this. I don't know.

I don't know who he has. God, no. No. You know, I don't know. I would bet my life on that he wouldn't. We're looking at anybody and everybody who knew her, associated with her, spoke with her, talked on the phone with her. Everybody. Hence the reason on the phone with her. Everybody. Hence the reason we're talking with you.

Uh-huh. Hence the reason we're talking with David and everybody. Have you found him? Mr. Young? Yeah. You did? Yeah, I've spoke with him several times. Recently?

Uh-huh. Where is he? In Mobile. Oh, I was so worried about him. He's all right. What's that? I don't know if he was dead or what. It's funny you say that because Renee's parents...

That was the same thing that Renee's mom said. We haven't talked to him. We thought he was dead. He fell off the map. This Laura interview offers a few pieces of information that altogether I'm not sure how to make sense of. First, and most importantly, she says that David might have been among the very last people

to see Renee alive. This contradicts what David has told us, and it definitely further raises suspicion on him. Second, she says David and Renee were definitely close. This is another thing that David has contested at times in our interviews with him. But third, Laura does not seem to think that David would do this. She's adamant on that point. That does give me pause.

I can't help but wonder if she might be trying to get as much information out of us as we are trying to get out of her. Has she really not been in touch with David

for years? Does she really not know much about David and Renee's relationship or what happened to Renee? Is there more to the story of what was said

on David's porch that night? I can't tell. Nature is a dangerous place. On I Was Prey, the podcast, listen to the life or death experiences of people who have survived animal attacks, natural disasters, and deadly parasites alike. Featuring audio from Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Animal Planet. From hit shows like Thank you. It's clear that we need to continue to look at Renee's life in Mobile, at her life as Maria. I know that in order to understand Renee's story better, I need to begin by learning about who she was as a kid

and at what point her life started to veer away from New Orleans. A little bit about Renee. This is Joyce, Renee's mom. Today, she is 81 years old and still lives in the house where she raised six kids. If any of the detectives had sat in this home, had chatted with Joyce and her husband Raymond at this kitchen table,

seen these walls covered in family photos, they might have had a very different view of the woman whose murder they were tasked with solving. The detectives might have seen a sweet, beloved daughter, funny and fierce and imaginative. You know, she was a quiet girl, had a very good imagination. Pretend she was on the phone. She had an imagination boyfriend named Shorty. And she would get on her phone

and bust Shorty's mother for interfering in their affair. And it was funny to watch that. Joyce remembers young Renee having an imaginary boyfriend, Shawnee, who was so fully fleshed out in her mind that he had a fake mom who interfered in their phone calls. She was the life of the party, let's put it that way. You couldn't be sad with her. She just had a way with it.

She said what she wanted. Joyce calls Renee the life of the party, someone it was impossible to be sad around. But Joyce says that one day, when Renee was around 13 or 14 years old, it seemed like a switch was flipped within her. She went from training bar at the beginning of seventh grade into a C, a 36C at the end of the year.

So like the doctor said, she was developing too fast for her mind to keep up with it. All of a sudden, Renee no longer looked like a little kid, but instead like a little adult. That happens in puberty. It's scary to any parent. But to Joyce, it seemed like a little adult. That happens in puberty. It's scary to any parent. But to Joyce, it seemed like her little girl was eager to begin acting like an adult,

running around with older kids and eventually going off to Mobile, Alabama, a full two hours away. At this point, Renee's life would get, well, complicated. She entered into a serious relationship with a 19-year-old named Clay. She left high school at 15 to move to Mobile permanently. She got pregnant and married,

but soon after becoming a mom, tragedy struck. Clay died very suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Renee, still a teenager, put her 11-month-old baby Amanda into her parents' care, and then she disappeared, just fell completely off her parents' radar. Thankfully, that only lasted for a year or two. But when she reentered their lives,

she seemed to be living two lives of her own, one in her childhood home in New Orleans with her daughter Amanda, surrounded by their big extended family. And another outside of it, where she was now known as Maria Martinez. And that was a life that Joyce only knew about insofar as Renee let her know about it. She chose her life. And it wasn't the way she was born. She was raised. That was the life she chose. You can pretty much control your kids until they're out of high school,

and when they go on their own, what they do with their life, you have no control over. Throughout Amanda's childhood, Renee wrote letters home to her parents. Amanda still has them today. I know Mandy doesn't understand too much. Parents, please tell her when she gets about 12 or when you feel she can understand that her mom loved her very much. And I only left because I had no other choice. I gave her to you on my own will so you could give her a real home, a real life. I want her to have all the love she can possibly get.

Try and make her understand that I love her and miss her very much. It is difficult to put together all the pieces of Renee's life. Obviously, I can't talk to Renee. I wish I could, but I can't. And this case is almost 30 years old. Many of the people who knew Renee best have died,

including her dad, Raymond, and her best friend, Leanne. And those who do survive are remembering things that happened three, even four decades ago. Even someone with a good memory struggles with something that long ago. Plus, the people I do have access to, like Renee's family, have their own questions, like

what work did Renee do exactly? And what was up with this whole Maria Martinez thing? So, I decide to go through Renee's personal belongings, her letters, her receipts, her meticulously kept address book, to try to get any clues that I can. It's this address book that interests me most, at least at first. I figure if I can go through every name and number, I might find some people who knew her and maybe something about her life outside of New Orleans.

So I search every number in the address book. There are hundreds of them. I call some. Rebecca Miller is not available. Record your message at the tone. When you are finished, hang up or press pound. But more often than not, the calls don't go through. When I try Googling the names in the address book,

or even searching them in specialized databases, I still struggle. So many entries are just first names, making it hard to discern who exactly each person is and where they might be today. When I am able to find them, so many are dead or in jail or don't remember anything. Still, even with fragmented bits of information, here is what I am able to piece together.

Renee appeared to travel all over the country, usually for a few weeks at a time. There are ticket stubs for planes and trains. There are phone numbers with area codes all over the country. There are specific appointments in cities far-flung written in her date book. She followed professional conventions like for pharmaceutical reps or trade unions, real estate agents, you know the type. She copied each day's income into her date book.

Her address book logs contacts at different gentlemen's clubs You know the type. She copied each day's income into her date book. Her address book logs contacts at different gentlemen's clubs where she'd set herself up to dance for a few days. She also had contacts with madams, infamous madams, and would escort in some of these cities. She made her money on the road working these conventions, and then she came back to her home, to Mobile. But there are no clues in there as to where the name Maria Martinez came from. Joyce thinks that maybe it came from a guy named Tony Martinez.

Is that Tony? Tony. Tony Martinez. Okay. And she met up with Tony. And where she stayed with Tony, I don't remember. Now, here's what I find out about Tony Martinez. Not one single thing.

I mean, it is a common name. Renee never mentions Tony in any of her letters or in her address book. The original detectives had heard a bit about him. Someone claims that maybe Renee shot him in Texas. There's no record of that. And at some point in the months before her death, she came back from a trip to Houston with a broken arm.

But detectives can't find any trace of Tony. I can't either. I speak with Amanda to see if she remembers anything. She doesn't. But she does have one photo of the two of them. This is my mom and one of her, like, her boyfriend at the time, Tony Martinez in New Orleans on Canal Street in May of 1985. In it, Renee and Tony are facing the camera,

clearly posing for a photo to remember the moment or the day. Sadly, we don't know what they were hoping to commemorate, but it for a photo to remember the moment or the day. Sadly, we don't know what they were hoping to commemorate, but it's a nice picture. It's very, very 80s. Renee's hair is big. Her v-neck shirt is striped. Her jeans are two-toned, dark blue and acid wash. Tony is in a sleeveless button-up and gray jeans. He wears a chunky gold watch. They are holding hands and smiling. In the background is the New Orleans skyline of the 1980s. Still, Joyce remembers this guy named Tony Martinez. So does David.

They both say that Renee claimed that she went to Texas for a short period of time, back when she disappeared for a year or two. But no one is really sure whether Tony was the cause or the effect of Renee going to Texas. Apparently, Renee also told her mom and friends that she later traveled with Tony to Puerto Rico, and that it was there where she became Maria. Apparently, a family member of Tony's gave her a birth certificate so Renee could get an ID under a fake name. I don't know why Renee wanted an alias.

No one else I've spoken with seems to have an idea. Here is my best guess. After she starts going by Maria, she starts traveling around the country. Chicago, Jackson, Daytona Beach, Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, all over. At this time, she also starts engaging in illicit activity, mainly sex work. She also struggled with drug use.

She talks about it in her letters to her parents. Mom and dad, I don't know where or what I would have done with my life. I know I waste a lot of time on drugs and running around with the wrong people. But one thing I can say is thank you so much for loving Mandy and the way you do. I never realized before how important motherhood is.

I see that now. No one can love you like a mother can. I feel this in the bottom of my heart. I say all this because I really want my baby girl to know her mommy was not just a junkie. But Amanda suspects that her mom may have also been involved in drug trafficking. Thanks. I love you all very much. Love, Renee. I hope to see y'all soon. But Amanda suspects that her mom may have also been involved in drug trafficking. My mom's best friend, Leanne, her daughter, Carmen, we were only a couple months apart. And me and Carmen were playing in the back in her bedroom. And then I walked up to the front room to get something to drink or ask my mom something.

So when we came down the hall and they were all there, and it was Leanne, my mom, Leanne's husband, Earl, all sitting around a kitchen table, and they were sipping Ziploc bags of weed. And they had a whole bunch of bags on the table and a whole bunch of stuff in the middle. It's kind of like if you were playing cards, how the cards are in the middle, and then everybody's sitting around it. It was like that, and they were all just taking a little bit of whatever was in the middle and putting it in a bag, and then putting the bags on the side. And, you know, at eight, I didn't know what that was.

So she just hurried and rushed me out, rushed me out to go back to the room. And then when we got home later that night at my grandma's house, I asked her what that was, and she said, oh, it's just some stuff I need to bring back with me. Maybe the Maria alias allowed her to do this without sullying her real name. And of course, it protected her family from any of the less savory elements with which she worked. I would say psychologically, this probably freed Renee up to take bigger risks than she might have otherwise. But it's hard to measure beyond that. We have heard so many rumors about Renee's life.

Snippets. Maybes. But the thing about rumors in the course of any investigation is you have to at least make note of them, keep track of them. Because in almost every case, there is at least one seemingly useless rumor that turns out to not only be true, but makes a real difference in our ability to solve the case. So just to recap, this is what I know about Renee's life, the life after she first left home at 14.

She dates a guy in Mobile, Alabama, even runs off to be with him. She marries him, gives birth to Amanda. Then when he dies, she struggles. She is still a teenager, so she asks her parents to care for Amanda. After that, she disappears for a year or two. Later, she will tell her mom that during that time,

she went to Texas and dated a guy named Tony. They go to Puerto Rico together. In Puerto Rico, someone gives her their real birth certificate so that she can get an ID under a fake name, Maria Martinez. And once she returns from Puerto Rico, she begins traveling around the U.S., doing high-end escort work while living in Mobile, Alabama. And maybe she was involved in trafficking weed, too.

But there's still so much I don't know about Renee. I don't know how she met Tony. I don't know whether her time in Mobile is connected with her time in Texas. I don't know how she got involved in escorting or trafficking in the first place. I just don't know. Listen to the life or death experiences of people who have survived animal attacks, natural disasters, and deadly parasites alike. Featuring audio from Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Animal Planet. From hit shows like This Came Out of Me, Nature's Deadliest, Still Alive, and Monsters Inside Me.

There are countless organisms that make a living off of us. Listen to I Was Prey wherever you get your podcasts. As we continue our investigation, Matt and I want to speak to a narcotics detective to see if we can get a better understanding of what the drug operations in Mobile were like at the time. If Renee was involved

in trafficking weed, maybe he would know something about the kind of characters she might have interacted with. So Matt calls up a retired detective named Richard Caton. So myself and another lady are working on this cold case from 93 where that girl was found off the mcdonald's service road beheaded cookie estes was um working it was a lead officer they found the head the very next day yes yeah yeah so she was an informant for me are you serious yeah she called me two days before that about setting somebody up. Really?

She didn't give much, but I was in archivist at the time. And she was just, I don't know, flaky. Yeah. Holy shit. I can't believe Renee actually was a snitch. Now, obviously, you cannot hear facial expressions or physical reactions. So I'll tell you that as Matt and I sit there on opposite sides of his desk, the phone between us, we look at each other in total shock, mouths agape. It never even occurred to us that this was a possibility.

I knew she was a prostitute. Yeah. She's more of a high-end prostitute, though. Yeah, I want to say she's Puerto Rican, maybe. Well, yeah, long story short, she had stolen identity and went by the name Maria Martinez, but that wasn't her real name. But that's the name I knew her by. Yes, everybody knew her by that name.

Okay. Who was she supposed to be setting up? Do you remember? Hell, that's 30 years ago. That was 89? 93. 93.

93 is when she got killed, but probably, all right, well, there was a couple of them of 93 at the time. Yeah, November 14th of 93, her body was discovered. Yeah, all I remember is they found the body. They had to go back the next day because they forgot the head. That was kind of embarrassing to the sheriff's office. Yeah. because they forgot the head. That was kind of embarrassing to the sheriff's office. But maybe three days to a week before that, she called me about some drug dealers.

But I don't remember anything about it. Was it black guys, white guys? Don't have a clue. She mainly messed with black guys. Yeah. We know that one of the girls she was running around with the week prior to her murder was a little short black female named... Oh, ****. Don't ring a bell. Okay.

And there were some rumors circulating around that she was working for... Working as an informant well we couldn't ever verify that or knew who she was working with or anything like that big. Now, Shannon Poole couldn't. He was around at that time. Yes. And, um, hey, he was known for chasing young women. Younger women than him. Yeah.

Shannon Poole was a deputy at the Mobile County Sheriff's Office. According to some detectives I spoke with, he had a reputation for bending the rules. Well, I'm looking at a guy, very, we're looking real hard at this one particular guy who was Shannon Poole's brother-in-law. We've interviewed him a couple different times, but he's a shady son of a gun, guy named David Young. And yes, at one point, Shannon was married to David Young's sister. David Young. Was he the client Young's?

I don't know. I know he had two brothers who went to prison and died about 10 years ago or so. He grew up over off... He was in Crichton. In Crichton off Hayes and Ogden. Tall, skinny guy. Tall, skinny white guy. He's in Crichton. In Crichton off Hayes and Ogden. Okay. Tall, skinny guy. Tall, skinny white guy. Some Youngs.

Two different sets of Youngs. How to describe the Youngs. According to Caton, they are one of the most important drug trafficking families in that region. So much so that there's an area on the map called Young's Neck that not even police dare to go into, even to this day. Caton tells me that the Young family fed their cows weed. And when the feds busted the family in the early aughts,

one of several major raids on the Youngs over the years, they found a field full of stoned cows. Many family members are now behind bars, or dead. But like the mythical Hydra, it seems that new operations eventually spring forth after each one is struck down. It could be the David Young that lived up in Centronelle. Clyde Young, I think he may have had a son the David Young that lived up in Centronelle. Clyde Young.

I think he may have had a son named David Young. Our cousin. They were in the drugs and everything. And guess what? Right from where Marie, whatever her real name is, got killed. You go straight down that dirt road going west. You cross over March. Yeah.

And then go about a block on the right. There was people named Junior Banks. Uh-huh. They were getting dope from Houston. That's Casey Banks' dad, right? Oh, my God. What Richard Caton is saying here is that the Red Dirt Road in the middle of nowhere,

the one most people in the area didn't even know existed, was actually a key base of operations for a drug trafficking conglomerate, the Young family, the Banks family, and an American arm of a Mexican cartel centered in Houston. But anyway, I was introduced to them as a bad guy. I did hit the house a couple of times, and they were part of the Youngs. That's how he knows what he's drinking.

From Roll to Mez. Remember, the I-10 service road, which was all dirt in 1993, was entirely obscured, almost impossible to find unless you knew it was there. It ran alongside I-10, but with a wall of trees between the two. Just a few homes scattered

here and there down a stretch of dead-end road less than two miles long. Nothing but woods, fields, and creeks where the houses weren't. Dude, I'd love for you to come in and feed me information. Tell me all about what you know about all this stuff, man,

and these people and their names. Yeah, because this is dropping some pins into place on stuff that's just been kind of floating around. This is a remarkable set of developments. A phone call we make on a whim, not even really about any of this, has cracked open a part of this case that had been stored in a vault, completely untouchable until this point.

Renee was potentially a threat to a serious drug operation based on that very dirt road where she was found. And all of it might have been connected through family business ties to the individual who seemed to have the most personal investment in her murder. The thing about developments like this is that even though they help you see the case more clearly,

they often lead to more questions than answers. So now we know how these pieces are all potentially connected, and we can see a better, bigger picture. But we now have to begin the much more arduous process of proving those connections solidly enough to close the case. Matt and I want to connect with the district attorney's office to update them on our progress and see how we might best proceed

if we are to eventually have them on board with a prosecution. Matt calls the lead prosecutor in the homicide division, a guy named Keith Blackwood. We both talk to him over speakerphone. What y'all got going on? Matt, I'm sitting here with Sarah.

We're working on that old cold case from 93, the beheading and mutilation. And I was going to see if you were available Monday morning to ride over for a few minutes so we could kind of brief you on the case. For a beheading and mutilation, I'll clear my schedule. Yeah, we're trying to work some stuff up on it, man. For a beheading and mut Yeah, the man is so weird. So we wanted to catch you up and see if you had maybe 30, 35 minutes. Keith agrees to meet with us the next working day, a Monday. He comes over to Matt's office

in a button-down with a tie, dress pants, what you'd expect from a lawyer. His looks are boyish, but serious. Young, probably just a kid back when Renee was killed. We explain the case to him and its intricacies, particularly when it comes to the physical evidence we have on hand. But, you know, like we said, so in there, there is a rape kit. And there is what I think is going to be the money shot is fingernail clippings.

And that's what we need to get tested why don't we do the why don't we send the right kit and the clippings to DFS with the cocaine before doing the genealogy I think to be honest I don't think we should send I'm nervous about sending it to a lab that has told everybody to fuck off for this test multiple times I I you know and Paul seems to feel the same way. And I don't want to question you guys, you know. Well, my concern with them, they're not capable of producing a genealogical profile. But if it's him, we've got his DNA. There you go. If it's not him. Well, and the other thing, too, is the backlog.

That lab in California will turn it around in under a month. So DFS is the Department of Forensic Sciences, the state lab here in Alabama. Now remember, there are two pieces of physical evidence available to us. Renee's fingernail clippings, which had been collected and preserved but never tested, and a rape kit, which had been tested for the presence of semen. The test was negative. Remember, this is the 90men. The test was negative. Remember, this is the 90s. DNA testing was in its infancy.

When we reopened the case and first reached out to DFS asking them to now test the rape kit for DNA, DFS declined since it had already been tested once before. We finally got DFS to agree to test the nail clippings and the rape kit, but they said it would be at the back of the line for the entire state. Who knows how long that could take? Because of all of this, I want to send these samples off to a private lab in California, one of the best in the country. We only have a little bit of physical DNA that we can send,

so if we mess this up, we risk missing our only opportunity to corroborate a potential suspect. Plus, our case is moving quickly. I want that evidence sooner rather than later. But even then, there's still the likelihood that the DNA could prove to be inconclusive or send us in a totally different direction. So here's a fun little red herring for you. Two hours away in Baton Rouge is a convicted serial killer who his first known killing was in 94, and he's had a couple of decaps, which is... I was about to say, don't tell me he likes to cut off girls' heads.

He does like to cut off girls' heads. And he drains their bodies at his house and then dumps the bodies someplace else, including on I-10 for one of them. Oh, wow. He is convicted and credited with eight out there. He was arrested in 2004. It's in Sean Gillis.

Strangely, there's no DNA profile in CODIS for Sean Gillis, that serial killer who I already looked into. He's currently incarcerated in Louisiana. A defense attorney could use Gillis as an alternative theory of the case, especially if the DNA proves to be inconclusive. Keith advises us to keep investigating and to keep him updated on what we find.

All right, so you're leaving Wednesday. Today or tomorrow, I'm going to either come back over here or send somebody to get this and make copies. They'll all be here. Okay. All of us open file on our end. With this new information, there's a tremendous amount of work ahead of us. In a way, it's like we're starting almost from scratch again.

But this time, we have so many more signs and landmarks to work with. On days like this, I feel like the road ahead is long, but the way is clear. That map I knew I had to create is slowly coming together, and I believe there's a real, reachable destination at the end of this journey. Next time, on Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom. That's what you said to the detectives at the time was that Ronnie flat out told you

that he sort of described in pretty graphic detail some of the things he was doing to her before the knife got involved. But there was talk of the Christmas tree knife. And there was one thing he told me. He said, he just outright said, I don't know why. He just said, he says, if they don't catch you in the first 30 minutes, they ain't gonna catch you. I'm like, really? When did he say that?

That's what he told me. Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom is produced by Arc Media for ID. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it if you would take a second to subscribe and leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.