Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Devil in the Ditch | 3. It Was a Nightmare

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

For decades, gossip about Presh’s murder has centered on her nephew. Larrison returns to Greenville for his side of the story. And she finds new questions: Could a sibling rivalry nearly a hundred years old have anything to do with the killing? Unlock all episodes of Witnessed, ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Campside media. Binge. In Mississippi, the driving age used to be 15. I was old for my class, so I got a full driver's license when I was in the eighth grade. It's been a lot of time. Just driving around town. They changed the driving age to 16 the next year. I guess insurance companies discovered giving cars to middle schoolers was kind of risky,

but it was fun while it lasted. And I've logged a lot of miles driving on Greenville streets, but it's always fun to see them through someone else's eyes. This time in March 2022 searching for information with the producer Johnny. These trees are beautiful. They really are. We're here to talk to my great aunt Charlotte and her son, my cousin Richard. Remember, we're not using their real names. Some people, including in my own family, believe Richard murdered my grandmother. But there's no evidence of that. And Richard has never been charged with any crime, let alone murder.

Johnny Lives in Atlanta grew up in Indiana, but this is his first time in Mississippi. So I find myself trying to cram as much personal and greenville history as I can into these drives. On the way to Richards, we turn on to the beautiful tree line part of Main Street towards my grandmother's house, the scene of the crime. Like anybody else we should see while we're in here? So that house of the corner is that where it happened? Yeah, that's where it happened? Yeah, that's where it happened, out on the Sun porch. Precious old house is a classic Georgian,

red brick, black shutters, white eaves on its pitch-droof. She lived all but a handful of her 85 years there. Her parents built the house back when this part of Greenville was rural enough that the family kept a cow in their backyard. About a minute later, we arrive at my great aunt's. The first thing I see is we park the car in front of the house, is her son Richard. There he is. He's outside waiting for us on the front steps, leaning against the iron railing for support.

And I realize I haven't thought about whether I'm going to hug him hello. Most people in the family would just nod if they greeted him at all. But not hugging a cousin, I've come over to spend an afternoon with is an obvious slight, especially if I'm coming at this interview the way I want to with an open mind.

Wow, these waiting for us at the front door is standing there. This block looks so different. There were just like trees and everything standing there. This block looks so different. There were just like trees and everything over there. It's kind of crazy. Richard's a huge part of my childhood memories. I spent a lot of time with him as a kid. He and my parents were roughly the same age,

but when the family would get together, he wasn't chatting or drinking with the grownups. At Thanksgiving, he had a place card at the kids' table with me and my older cousins. After lunch, he'd join us out in the yard. There was tag and freeze tag, occasionally hide and seek, but the game I remember best is Devil in the Ditch. Richard does, too.

When I show up for our interview, it's the first thing he mentions, before he even says hello. Can you say that again? This was Larison's Neville and the Ditch as a child of the Sidewall. Johnny and I are walking across my devil in the ditch, he says, as he points out the cement walkway, leading up from the street to his front steps.

If you didn't grow up in the deep, deep south, you've probably never heard of this game. What can you explain the game? You had to try to run across the sidewalk without getting touched. That is, tagged by the designated devil who guarded the sidewalk in this case. Charlotte didn't have an actual ditch outside, so we made do. If you were tagged, then you became the devil. They used to be a whole group up the side of your plane.

As Richard talks, I study his face. He bears little resemblance to the guy from my childhood. He's thin now and stooped. He's lost several teeth, and there's a tinge of gray to his hair, his skin. When I was a kid, I couldn't believe he was as old as my parents. Now it's hard to believe he's as young. I end up giving Richard a hug. It came naturally.

Part of me felt like I was being disloyal. Then I followed him into the house, where I would sit with him in his mother's charlotte for the next two days. It was a chance for me to ask questions I've held on to for 20 years, and it was a chance they'd never had either, to tell their side of the story, to someone in the family who wanted to hear it. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to Witnessed, Devil in the It was a nightmare. I'm Lairson Campbell. So, I was a little different. Oh, look at him!

What wonderful trait! I'm going to get in here and give you a hug! Oh, no! Is that a trait? It is wonderful to see you. This is Johnny. Where would be most comfortable? I would have been.

You'd have 101 at this point. At the time of our visit, Charlotte is 101. Her mind is sharp. And she's fairly mobile, though she relies on a walker just to move from the couch to a chair. Happy as I am to see her, it's hard being in this house. In the last decade, as Charlotte's gotten less physically able, the upkeep has fallen on Richard.

And Richard, while Richard does not throw things away, when I was little, one of my cousins and I would sometimes spend Saturday nights here. Charlotte would make us a palette of quilts in the middle of the living room. Now, the floor is covered with garbage bags, stacks of newspapers, mail. Watching Charlotte navigate these piles on her walk through is terrifying. Every room feels like a hazard. When I try to open a cabinet a little bit later, magazines and papers just spill onto the floor. Oh, this is Better Hums and Gardens telling you

how to raise your baby in 1952. Time magazine, the push to impeach with Nixon on the cover. In the din, Charlottes put a side album put aside albums of photos she wanted to show me. When the piles of things made it impossible to get into Charlotte's bedroom, they set up the hospital bed she now uses and here by the door. It's cozy though. Charlotte's home is small, but it's well-appointed, crown molding at a fireplace in the living room. In the den, the walls are covered in warm brick-colored grass cloth.

And she's got these Florida ceiling bookshelves lining the whole back wall. Those shelves are a shrine to our family. 30-40 frame photographs of me, my cousins, my sisters, my aunts, my parents, at all stages of our lives. There's my cute little kid phase and a sailor dressed with the Ollin Mills signature wagon wheel backdrop, a class picture and hot pink overalls, my awkward teenage years which we absolutely do not need to dwell on. And that's just what's on display. Next to Charlotte's red arm chair, she's had Richard stack up albums and boxes of newspaper clippings. She's excited. Ever since I got

to town, she's been talking about taking this walk through her life. She takes out a newspaper clippings from 1952. In the picture, her husband leans over their stove in an apron and hookah-dot tie. He trained as a chef before they met, and she tells me everyone wanted an invitation to their dinner parties. Charlotte met him right after the war at Greenville's Army Air Force Base. Another thing that's no longer there. On their first date, he took her to a movie theater in downtown Greenville. After the movie, oh, it was Dracula, that we saw it. I was scared to death, oh, and when we left the theater, that was so crack. He was straight, and I fell.

I thought, no, this is just making a good impression. After eight years of marriage, they adopted Richard. Can you tell me what's in this picture? That's what we first got him. He was so adorable. Can you describe what he's wearing, or maybe not wearing? He should wear a diaper there.

He's just wearing a diaper. We just never wore a diaper to have a child, so we adopted. A friend had connected them to a hospital in New Orleans. Then one afternoon in 1954, Charlie got a call. They had a child for her. We got there, and he was just a newborn baby. They handed me the baby and I said thanks and we were gone. She held him on her lap the whole five hour drive back to Greenville.

What do you remember? Can you close your eyes and tell me what he felt like and what he smelled like? Pure joy. Pure joy. Pure joy. We went through these old pictures for hours. And this was when he was a Baptist. Birthday parties?

This is a parade. A newspaper clipping of Richard's score and a tennis tournament. Yeah, he's excellent. And another of him with a plus one who came to town for the Debbie Tom Ball. Charlotte said she hoped he'd marry her. Why do you think he has never had a serious relationship? Oh, I have said, I'm sorry, you're not married because you'll be alone when I'm gone. I said, I hate to think of you being alone. That bothers me.

When I was a kid, and Richard was in his 30s, Charlotte still talked about his getting married, That was the truth. talks. I find myself wondering how much of her life is real and how much is fantasy. She'll praise Richard for working so hard or taking good care of her. And it's just an odds with what I see. Empty cans of Coca-Cola, bags of trash. This house used to feel so warm and so safe. But now nearly half a century after he graduated from college and moved back to his childhood bedroom, even Charlotte seems to have let go of Richard's marriage prospects. She knows she's his last companion. Richard has his own baby, the city of Greenville. I feel comfortable here. It's always been my home and I anticipate it'll forever be my home that

regardless of many hard times the community's gone through. Although Richard's career never took off, he did spearhead a local festival in the 80s. The spirit of Greenville have been on the decline. We had started to lose our manufacturing base here. So let's look at the history of Greenville. And let's celebrate us as a community. In 1989, he created a two-week-long event, which commemorated one of the worst disasters in US history. The 1927 flood that killed more than 1,000 people

along the Mississippi River. And once again, nearly wipe Greenville off the map. But being a festival, I didn't dwell on the catastrophe. I think I saw the flying wylindas at the levee. We had live music. We had art on display. We had theatrical productions. We had witnesses to the 1927 flood talk. Richard says they also got the 60s R&B group, the impressions to perform.

the impressions to perform. It went kind of like this. It's all right to have a good time. Oh, it's all right. Yeah, it's all right. Richard had intended to make it an annual event, but it kind of fizzled out in the mid-90s. He thought he might be able to translate his love for Greenville into a city council seat,

but he didn't win. Greenville to me is like a marriage. I'm married to a till death do us part. There was one other person in my family who shared Richard's devotion to the calls of Greenville. My grandmother Prash. She worked to make it a better place. She and I never worked on civic activities together, but we both did our own thing. But that may have been the only way they saw eye to eye.

After Charlotte's husband died in the late 1980s, Richard and Charlotte's relationships shifted. She'd always done his laundry, made his lunch, helped and pay his bills. But now he became her companion, her day to weddings and parties, and the Debbie Tumpall. As we've learned, this was a big problem for Prush, though Richard and Charlotte seem to content with the arrangement. Ironically, that just made Prush more convinced that she would have to be the one to get Richard out of the house.

But of course, she died before that could happen. Uncover from CBC podcasts brings you award-winning investigations year round. Infiltrate an international network of neo-Nazi extremists. Grant it with racist language. Discover the true story of the CIA's attempts at mind control. Their objective was to wipe my memory. Or dig into a crypto king's mysterious death and a quarter billion dollars missing. There are deep oddities in this case.

With episodes weekly, uncover is your home for in-depth reporting and exceptional storytelling. Find uncover wherever you get your podcasts. ¿Por qué los vostésos son contagiosos? Pero, MeliCimp, no. MeliCimp analiza los datos de millones de correos electrónicos para ofrecer recomendaciones personalizadas para mejorar el contenido de tus correos electrónicos se segmentar tu público, entre muchas cosas más, adivina menos y vende más con Intuitimale Sim, la marca número 1 en Imelie, marketing y automatización. Empiezo hoy mismo en MailSimple.com, más saben de a tus públicos de marcas competidoras en número globales de clientes en 2021-2022. We ended up sitting with Charlotte and Richard in the living room that first afternoon. It's a different vibe from the Danmore Charlotte-Shadme photos, cooler. More traditional old lady with portraits of 19th century relatives and cloth-footed antiques.

I sat on a curved back couch, the blue silk worn down to the stuffing. From there, you can look through that big front window to the yard in the street. Before coming to visit, I had told Richard and Charlotte I was working on a podcast about Greenville and our family. I was nervous. I'd gone to the photos center at a Walgreens earlier that day and printed out a picture of my kids to give Charlotte. As though she'd be so thrilled by a frame photograph that she wouldn't notice all the recording devices and microphones and prying questions. But as we spoke, the conversation naturally shifted towards Prash.

I wasn't sure they'd want to talk about her at all. It's a delicate enough topic that we'd avoided it for 19 years. But they were a big part of each other's lives. I was surprised though when they told me Richard was always helping pressure on the house. I never heard this. She'd call me to come over there because her sink was backed up so I'd plunge the sink or plunge the commode or her radio wouldn't work. Yeah, I had to lock myself out of the house. And I can't tell you how many munders he hadn't clapped through. To let her back in the house. Bless her.

You don't need to be from the South to know that bless her heart from a Southern woman is rarely an expression of empathy. And Charlotte freely admits she and Presh had a complicated relationship. One that dates back to when they were kids. Press was three years older. As a child, I was on the way. You were in the way. What was that like?

She was not tolerant of me as a child, I know. I was just somebody that didn't need to be there. I don't want to give them pressure that we didn't get along. We did. But the older she got and the older I got, the closer we became. Now as young people, we were not close. But there was a nature difference. We spent every summer in Kentucky, the two of us.

That loved you. Kentucky was where Tommy, the two of us. That loves you. Kentucky was where Tommy, their first cousin lived. Tommy's a sheep, by the way. And their love for her was probably one of the earliest things Charlotte and Prussia shared. Charlotte told me she'd wanted Tommy to be her maid of honor. I'm a came in before my wedding. She said, now we've got to talk about your wedding. Who do you want for your maid of honor? I said, and I would have got to talk about your wedding. Who do you want

for your maid of honor? I said, I want Tommy. She said, well, you're having a sister. You're having pressure as your maid of honor. Well, well, she wanted she got. Um, how did that make you feel? Oh, I expected it, really. I grew up with it. Charlotte says, Presh. It was number one. I knew that. What was that like growing up?

It didn't bother me too much. I just, I learned to live with it. I want to pause on this for a minute and give some more context here. It's important to understand that for Charlotte, this resentment went really deep and frequently bubbled up to the surface, often as casual as sides or put downs about pressure to everyone in our family. My mom, who married Anne, remembers as well, she says Charlotte. Resented, fresh, massively. She was very obvious about it. I mean, she would say things like,

well, I worked one time in the school office and I went into the files and I looked up, precious grades, and they really were not perfect, like we'd always believed. She talked about that a huge amount. But Charlotte, she came by that resentment so honestly. Remember that cow they kept in the backyard of their childhood home? Well their father named that cow after Prash. It was a compliment. See Prash was his favorite. Meanwhile, their mother doted on their older brother.

And Charlotte, well, she slipped through the cracks. Even when her dad was introducing her to people. He'd say, this is my beautiful daughter. Only when he was introducing pressure, my mom says. He just energy's Charlotte, a Charlotte. This imbalance seemed to keep playing out even in their adult lives. Impresuous house, the one that she and Charlotte

had grown up in with the cow, was sort of the physical reminder of it. In the early 1950s, my great-grandparents decided to sell the house they'd raise Prash and Charlotte and their brother-in. So Prash and my grandfather bought it from them, and then raised their kids, my dad and his sisters there. But as my aunt speculates, Charlotte never really stopped

seeing it as her home, too. I think she was always resentful that she didn't have that house. A few years after Precipought the place, Charlotte and her family moved about two blocks away. They weren't neighbors, technically, because two churches divide the neighborhood in half. As a kid, walking between their homes was quick, but annoying.

You cross a busy street, a grassy field, my preschool playground. My dad says this was about the only boundary Prash had with her younger sister. Charlotte would check in every day. First thing in the morning, I can remember the phone ringing early. I can promise you that she either phoned during supper or she showed up during supper,

at least two out of every five nights out of the week. She flinged the door open and just marched through the house and she would yell for whomever she was trying to reach. And it was remarkable because she never, never got a warm reception. Same when I was a kid. No boundaries. Like Prash, I'm an older sister. And when I was a kid, Prash would go on

about how proud she was of me for being sweet to my little sisters. Prash was generous with compliments. But this one she said all the time. I mean, being sweet wasn't that hard. Charlotte told me that their dynamics shifted as they got older, that they became friends. And if we were visiting from college,

pressure would bring us to Charlottes for lunch. In church, she'd quietly slide down the pew so Charlotte could sit next to one of us. As a kid, I loved it. More adults paying attention to me. When I look back now, I see Presh trying to help level the field, right another injustice.

She couldn't give her sister the grandchildren she wanted, but she could share. I think that Presh saw that, and always felt like she had to take up for her, and make sure that she was okay. I'm not sure Charlotte really appreciated that. Whatever she wanted she got. Queen of the cream now, tell you that. Which was fine, she deserved it. She deserved it.

But of course the tragedy was fine to know, day and. As Charlotte and I spoke that week, she often referenced the tragedy. At first, I assumed this was my tragedy too, precious murder. But I've wondered sense if the real tragedy for her wasn't just losing pressure, so much as losing pressure's family too,

which is what happened when a lot of people started to suspect Richard. Richard knows what people think, that people in his own family believe he killed Prash. And he was eager to tell me they're all wrong. Do you remember the day that Prash died? Yeah. So you were sitting here with, well actually can you tell me you were hurt? I'm not exactly what I meant.

I worked as a radio station the night before. I got all afternoon night because we go off the air at midnight. He had straight home. The next morning, Friday, June 13, he rolls out of bed around 10, his usual time. During my regular morning routine, I had straight to a fridge where poor my glass RNGs, grabbing

the storage section of the state news paper. Richard puts on CNBC, checks in on XM satellite radio where he says he's heavily invested. How's it going today? I mean, I got down on the ground floor of it. Charlotte, his mother, is out shopping. Remember, she was scheduled to meet up with Presh that afternoon. She buys the shirt, runs by the grocery store, is back an under an hour. She and Richard eat lunch together, and Charlotte calls Presh a few times. But Presh never answers. Richard says he and his mom just kind of waited around for a few hours until 330,

when Presh was supposed to pick her up. When pressure is officially 15 minutes late, Charlotte says she's going to drive to her house. Maybe something's going on. After she gets there, she finds her sister's body and calls for an ambulance. Her next call is to Richard, but in her panic, she says she missed dials and gets her friend Ruth. So Charlotte asked Ruth to call Richard and tell him to come to Precious House. She thinks Precious dead. When her friend Ruth calls Richard right after, he doesn't answer the phone.

Meanwhile, inside his house, Richard says he's starting to hear sirens. I can hear it coming from down here and I go outside when I go to the front door and I hear it getting closer and it took right down here in the corner. He says he watched the ambulance drive down his street and turn in front of the church. After it's gone, he says he can tell from the direction of the sound that the ambulance is heading right to precious house. And it stopped right over here.

And with that I said, man, sometimes God we got trouble. I think she must have fallen and heard herself. So you could tell by the sound where it stopped? Oh, I could tell. Because they cut the siren off and had to pee. And I grabbed my shoes. The phone rang, but he didn't pick it up in time. Ruth, that friend Charlotte had called by mistake

who had just called Richard. She decides to get in her car and drive over to Richard's and tell him in person. It's quick. About a minute, she lives across get in her car and drive over to Richard's and tell him in person. It's quick, about a minute, she lives across the street from Prash. Ruth knocks on the door, Richard opens it. She says, your mother needs you and I said, Ruth, I'm already on my way over there. Richard drives over to Prash's, runs up the steps of her back porch and opens the door to the kitchen. I got halfway through the kitchen and a white guy in a uniform.

He's walking towards me and he says, Sir, I need you to stop and go outside because this has become a crime scene. He goes back outside and sees his mom. She tells him, Prash. He's been murdered. And I go murdered. I'm Adam McCay, director, writer and most importantly, podcast host.

In the first season of our show, Death at the Wind, we explored a series of tragic deaths from the wild world of 80s basketball. This season we're going back further to the 50s, the aftermath of World War II, and a series of tragedies in Hollywood. We'll tell stories of trailblazing actors who lived fast and died young.

I hope you'll join us on death on the lot. The thing about talking with Richard about this day is that this isn't the first time he's told this story. There were the police interviews and lie detectors, all the questions from family. He'll even repeat the same stories to me on the same day. He knows his details cold. Like what time he drank his arms, choose that morning or which stocks he checked on

CNBC. My ex-empsed light stocks been doing well lately. I had thousands of dollars in my snaka account on a candle said like radio. Boom. By the way, I check this. And I'm not sure boom is the right sound. In the middle of June 2003, XM Stock was around 1131 a share,

down from its initial public offering price of $12 a share in 1999. And it's high three years earlier, of $45 a share in 1999. And it's high three years earlier of $45 a share. Then there was this one moment that seemed to throw Richard off. For the most part, the producer Johnny and I stayed together during our conversations. But when I went into the den with Charlotte to look at those old photos, Johnny asked if he could chat with Richard in the living room. If you're sweet to it. Oh, of course I'm gonna see. Do you want to have a sweet, seem like a sweet guy? I don't know, let's go to where I went, people on nice to it.

I like it. Oh, me. So under the condition that he'll be sweet, Johnny sits down with Richard in the living room. Johnny on a small bench, Richard and his old wooden rocking chair. As they talk, Richard rocks back and forth. Johnny asked Richard to walk him through the day of the murder one more time. I'd stuck my head out here that morning and I mean it was so hot.

Oh man, we got a scorcher today. I don't know I probably was out here in my room. I was doing a lot of reading back then So I'd take a this cooler out there in that room That was probably out there All day just reading and I reading and I don't know. I've got to talk to some friends in town. I don't know. It's just a normal day. How would you have talked to friends in town? That's ridiculous. What you just say has me. How would I talk to? I don't know.

I mean, did you call or did you? I don't know. I just say it's just a normal day. Now I feel like I'm being interrogated. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be that. I apologize. I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to make you feel that way. Yeah. I'm sorry. Because look at. So what else do you want to ask me, or you just stretching the things to ask me now, as to how would I talk to my friends? I don't know. I'd call them up and see how their day is going.

I don't know why you call them up and see how their day is going. I don't know. You're giving me an impression. Oh, I'm impressed. Oh, this is going on too far about something that happened 19 years ago. And everybody's got everything on the record as to what happened. Good. and everybody's got everything on the record as to what happened. And I'll bluntly tell you that it's all on the record that neither me or my mother had anything to do with her death

as to, I want you to understand it. This is where you're confused. No, you've made that very clear. You've made that very clear. I'm just, I'm just trying to understand, I haven't seen all these things that are on the record. So I'm just trying to understand that, and I'm done.

I don't have any more questions about that, so we can move on. Yeah, you want to. I had been so worried walking into Charlotte's house that day that neither she nor Richard would want to talk about the murder. Maybe it wouldn't be something they'd want people outside the family to hear. Or maybe talking about it would just be too hard.

It was hard. But not for the reasons I'd assumed. Listening, I was struck by the fact that Charlotte is the one who brought it up. And she did it on day one, three minutes after I first mentioned pressure's name. And then again and again, that visit. I think she wanted to talk about it. What reminded you of the day that pressure died? I hate to bring it up again, but since you mentioned it,

when you brought it up, what made you think about that? That couch. She motions toward the couch I'm currently sitting on. The one she says she and Richard were sitting on all afternoon, waiting for Prash that day. It never came. What? We were sitting on that couch. Each time she told the story, I'd find myself closing my eyes and picturing Richard.

Not the Richard who greeted us on that visit, but the Richard I imagined Charlotte sees. The grinning toddler from the black and white pictures, the one who smelled like pure joy. You know they blamed him for it. I didn't have time to mourn because the police came in and the police searched my house. They did all that stuff they do to you, you know. Wash your mouth out and all that kind of junk." The police swapped their cheeks for DNA. And I went through all that.

The whole time, every member of the family were blaming him. Every member of the family was blaming Richard, she says. And he wouldn't have touched it with a 10-foot pole. But it was hell. I was trying to save myself. So I cannot imagine how hard that was. Oh, it was, it was a nightmare. It was my child. And I could not believe that they would think that I could rear a child that could heal my sister. I couldn't comprehend it. I was so hurt that they would think I could do such a thing as that. She tells me accusing Richard is accusing her.

I just feel like he's part of me. And he was just crushed. He still not got nowhere, but he does the best he can. Did you ever have a moment where you thought, my gosh, what if he did do this? No. No. He would not.

Heaven had me go over to the house. Would it ever have been an accident? Like they had an argument? No. She slipped? No. I asked Charlotte and Richard about this theory my dad and aunt slayed out.

That Richard was upset over having to pay for the wedding brunch, which amounted to a couple hundred bucks. Charlotte says, yeah, Presh messed up the bill for the brunch. She had it all mixed up. She was charging people more than they really are. I couldn't figure out. Well, 20 people gave the party.

You know what you're saying? She's only divided it by 12. Something, something, I don't understand this. Richard says he did the math and gave pressure call. Hey, I've got a question. And with that, the first words I had her mouth to me were, where you would have to call. And I'm just stunned as to, first words out of her mouth to me were, where you would have to call.

And I'm just stunned as to, I wanted to tell you, you've made a mathematical mistake. She explained to me. She said, well, couples are considered to be one person. And yeah, Charlotte and Richard were annoyed, but it wasn't worth arguing over. You wasted your breath, you go make a angry, because whether she's right or wrong, you agree with her,

because you'd like a win. But... he said, my mom, I'm right. And I'm not going to let us do this. Well, it made her mad. Charlotte and Richard have told me it wasn't either of them who stayed mad. It was pressure alone, and that people like my aunt blew it out of proportion, linking this to my grandmother's murder.

She and I, she consider that to be a major argument as to you don't question my mother on anything, but that's how the whole thing started with the family, which it was all unnecessary, and it hurt my mom. Truth be told, Richard and Charlotte were a unit, but precious murder turned them into an island, physically even more so now, because when I visited them in March, there were two of the last three relatives I had left in my hometown.

I don't think I understood how much this eats at Richard, like he and Charlotte, not Greenville, or what everyone left. So hell, I'm proud of what we're doing because we stayed at home. We didn't leave. But as to what happened to Greenville, you are a part of the problem. You left. The problem for Richard about being among the last of our family in Greenville

is that when Preshdod died as far as he's concerned It made him an easy target. Why me? Yeah Look at all None of her family members lived here anymore and I only lived the block away What he's saying is of course people are blaming someone and press his own family And I'm gonna tell you this, I bet you have been rich, meaning if I had been a green below you,

I bet they would have approached me. We had nothing to do with murder, and it was just a trying time for us, and for everyone who had heard death was a detriment to us. It was not a benefit to us. What would have been my motive? I'll say it this way. People are absolutely out of their fucking minds.

If they think I killed somebody over my losing my source of gift money over the years, that every Christmas she give me $50. And on every birthday she give me $25. So I would have killed her to cost me money because I didn't have my aunt who would not only give me money and always be available if mama needed to and she always said borrow some money though she never wanted to pay back. You don't go and kill the goose that laid the golden egg and that was our relationship with her."

Richard is saying the theory that he'd kill Prash over money makes no sense because, well, every birthday, Prash became the goose that laid $25 checks. This isn't a one-off line. He brings it up other times when we're talking. It's not logic I can relate to, so of, it makes me suspicious. He's also had 20 years to think of every possible reason he wouldn't have committed a murder. He's never been charged with. I'm sure he's got a bank of defenses that he pulls from to prove these, as we know, unsubstantiated accusations, are outlandish. And as possible, this isn't just a weird excuse.

It's possible that he means it. It's a loss that occurred. There's nothing that can be done about it. And even if first murder was ever found, I have told people before I doubt I'd even go to the courthouse to look at the person because it's not going to bring my beloved aunt back. Richard and Charlotte have their own ideas about who may have killed Prash. Charlotte points to the volunteer work that Prash did.

With other privileged children. And some of them are pretty rough. So I'm sure that's who killed her. Prush created a school at the county juvenile detention center, and she taught there several days a week until she died. Charlotte's theory is that one of those kids killed Prush. You know, she used to do this telling them what to do, and that's a no-no. Can you describe what you're doing right now? You're shaking your finger back and forth.

Right in somebody's face, I guess, yeah. I said, this is so dangerous. You have no business doing that. Of course you paid no attention. But that's what happened to her. Richard's theory follows the same lines. In the weeks after Precious murder, Richard says he began to gather tips from friends

and people around town, trying to piece together his own investigation. The timeline, he says, began about a month before Preci was killed. Charlotte called him late one night at the radio station to ask if he could go over to Precious House. Her alarm had gone off. Well, the police said, well, the wind must have said it all rather than thinking somebody was jiggling on a wind that had tried to get in. And about that same time on WBHQ radio station, we used to run a crime stopper's report.

We were running a report of a woman who had been attacked by a black male. The woman was not killed, but she was attacked. We tried to confirm this, but the radio station doesn't keep records of reports from 2003. However, a 2008 newspaper article about precious murder mentions a similar attack around the time pressure was killed.

In a nearby neighborhood, a woman had been burglarized three times and sexually assaulted during one of the break-ins. So a month passes. Precious attack killed. You go to October of that year and the man over in that same neighborhood. Richard says that someone hit this man in the head but didn't kill him. Later the man's son came to Richard. We feel like whoever hit daddy is the same person who killed your aunt. But all of this was going on during that time period. And I had a Greenwood policeman tell me, He said, there are three bad dudes and the Greenville Police Department,

meaning his employer, they have not interviewed any of them. I reached out to the man's son, the one who had the conversation with Richard. He said they spoke, but it was Richard who called him up and speculated that this robbery and attack were related to precious murder. Richard maintains he remembers them agreeing on the attacks being related, but says maybe it was that the attacks could have been related, not that they for sure were. I also talked to the officer Richard mentioned Al Peecock. He likes Richard, he said. But he also says that because of their friendship, he made a point to recuse himself from anything

having to do with Prussia's case. So he doesn't think he would have known who police were looking at. Richard says the officer's mention of the three bad dudes was just a passing comment rather than a full conversation. I've gotten my mind that and in no way was neighborhood that it was some black guy who went on to her grounds and struck her. I mean isn't the black guy kind of like a standard sort of excuse or trope in? It's 80% black population here.

That's important why it is. Greenville is 80% black. It was 70% when press died. But the demographics have nothing to do with the fact that blaming black men for violence against white women is a long and ugly tradition in the South. And that's a lot of what I hear when he says this. Nothing numbers, not the probabilities, but this history. I don't know who is, whoever killed her, he or she or the group of them is still out there.

If we'd been willing to stay all night, Richard would have talked all night. He was still talking as Johnny and I got in the car and shut the door. I didn't hug him goodbye. How are you feeling emotional? I'm not. This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I think the talk really really upset me a lot more than I was expecting that it would. That feeling stayed with me for months.

I couldn't put my finger on what exactly it was. Sometimes I'd find myself angry at the smallest slight, or sad for no reason. Richard and Charlotte were the first people I really sat down and interviewed for this podcast. Up until that point, the idea that Richard could have killed Prash was just that, an idea, a theory. And to a degree, so was Prash's murder. Yeah, she was gone, and I let myself miss her. But I didn't have enough information about what had happened to her,

to make what had happened to her real. My feeling was always, I'll process this one I learned more. And here I am, learning more. Next time, unwitnessed, Devil in the Ditch. We're working on a story about something that happened a really long time ago. What about this robbery theory? They're not going to release the case. I'm not even murderous, we got going on around here.

No, no, I'm being so. Unlock all episodes of Witnessed, Devil in the Ditch, Add Free, right now by subscribing to the Benj, our new podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get Benj access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All Add Free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand-new series. That's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listing now by clicking subscribe.

At the top of the witness, devil in the ditch, show page on Apple Podcasts, or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Witnessed as a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, Devil in the Ditch was reported and hosted by me, Larison Campbell. Lindsey Kilbride is the senior producer, and Shiba Joseph is the associate producer. The story editor is Sean Flynn. Studio recording by Ewan Lai Trumuen and Shiba Joseph. Sound design mixing and original music by Garrett Teediman.

Additional music by APM and Blue Dot Sessions. Additional field recording by Johnny Kaufman and Ambreel Crutchfeld. Fact checking by Ben Kalen. Special thanks to Emily Martinez and our operations team Doug Slaywin, Alia Papers, Destiny Dingle, Ashley Warren and Savina Mora. The executive producers at Campside Media are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregorioides, Adam Hoff and Matt Share. you