Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Devil in the Ditch | 5. The Shade Tree

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

The idea that the court of public opinion can be more accurate than the actual courts isn’t new. But it’s still pretty jarring to hear it from a judge. Is acting odd the same as acting guilty? 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. The last time most people in my family saw Prash was at my cousin's wedding. The one I keep talking about with that luncheon and the argument over Richard Paying. That luncheon had been for out of town guest, like Diana Hay. Last time we saw her actually was the night before we'd left from the wedding when we were there, which was just a couple of weeks before she died, I guess. Diana driven from North Carolina. She'd married into our family in the late 1990s, so she'd only met Prash a few times before that night.

It's a big reason I find her perspective so interesting. She wasn't familiar with much of the family history or drama, but she picked up on the dynamics real quick. I mean, she never got off that dance floor out there. And I remember I sat down. Diana needed a rest and took a seat next to Prussia's sister Charlotte. She goes, I don't know when she became such a dancer. I was the one that was a dancer.

When we were young, I was known for my dance. It was kind of picked up that sibling rivalry. You know. After press died, my dad actually found a receipt for the shoes she'd worn at this wedding on it. She'd written, danced all night. Diana spent a lot of time with Richard on that trip. Diana's a writer. And she'd wanted to do some research into the big 1927 Greenville flood. The one Richard had memorialized with an entire

festival. So what better person than him to give her a Greenville history tour? By the time the wedding rolled around that Saturday, Richard was still chatting up Diana. I knew it was odd. He was very nice to me. And I couldn't understand why everybody else came off to me. Why are they acting so rudely towards him? That they didn't like him. They didn't want anything to do with him.

It was Y'all's family. It was standing over there. And y'all were looking and we were about to wear where we were being talked about. Well, I found out later what it was, was they were feeling sorry and trying to figure out how to rescue me, kinda thing. She says Richard starts explaining. And left me with the impression that they all thought

they were better than him and, you know, and he started expressing all this jello-seath stuff. And it went on for a couple of minutes and then he told me He said, well, it's not gonna be like this forever. He goes here very saying things are gonna completely turn around And at the time I felt then I let I felt really creepy about the whole thing at the time It was very uncomfortable Richard says he doesn't remember this and says he'd never say anything negative about the family. I'll never forget when we got the phone call that she'd been killed. The first thing I said, first words out of my mouth when he hung up the phone was he did it. And I said, oh my god, I think that's what he was thinking.

I'd heard a lot of stories like this over the years, and I'd soon hear many others. But have these stories stuck around for 20 years because they're clues or because they're good stories? From campside media and Sony music entertainment, this is Witness, Devil in the Ditch, episode five, The Shade Tree. I'm Larrison Campbell.

I went to Mississippi for a couple of weeks back in July. I'd baked in a little family time in Jackson. I had my six-year-old twins with me, and my parents take their role as free childcare, just as seriously as Prussia did. It was also an opportunity to get back to Greenville. This is actually the same trip where I went door knocking, looking for the people police questioned, spoke to a lot of other people then too.

But I wanted to use this whole trip to get a better handle on the dueling theories about who could have killed Prash. Everyone seemed to have their own ideas about what happened. When I come to town back in the spring, I talked to Richard and Prash's sister Charlotte. In Charlotte shared her theory that Prash must have been killed by one of the kids she knew from her work at the Juvenile Detention Center. As far as I could tell, none of the people police interviewed about Prussia's murder

had fit that profile. But I wanted to better understand the kind of relationship Prussia had with the kid she'd worked with there for so many years. And I wanted to understand why Charlotte stuck to this theory for two decades. I had a few people in the docket to interview. Another investigator, family, a youth court judge

she'd worked with Prussia. And of course, Charlotte. But in the middle of lunch on the day I was supposed to leave my kids with my parents and drive up to Greenville, I got this voice mail. Larrison, happy fourth July. My cousin Richard. Mama fell this morning and broke her hip. She's going to have surgery tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock or a partial hip replacement. And the surgery should last about an hour. So keep her in your prayers. And mom and I, wanted you to know since you were going to be coming to Grimble dad, your plans for meeting her at the house are now gone because she'll be in the hospital

recovering from her surgery. Just one of life's tough breaks, so to speak. Surgery, that's risky for someone in their 80s on a woman who's 101. But Charlotte is a survivor, literally. Two rounds of cancer, double pneumonia. I can't remember twice looking for flights home to say goodbye,

only to have her rebound healthy as ever before I could book him. I recently asked her the secret to longevity, and she told me she'd never had a drink in her life, which means I'm probably not gonna live 201. At any rate, this trip wasn't going to be a good time for an interview, but it did open up space to talk with another family member, Greg, who knew Precious' work at the Juvenile Detention Center better than almost anyone, because that's where he'd met her. Greg was Precious Foster's son. He came into our family in the

mid-80s when the rest of her kids had been out of the house for at least a decade. I was six years old when Precious told us to come by the house one Saturday to meet him. He was 16. Lanky, polite, with a sandy brown mullet. Greg instantly vived with Preci's all-feet sense of humor and her willingness to go all out 100% on everything she did. There was a Halloween where I had to be her hunchback assistant. She would come to the door. She had this white flowing robe in this weird wig and like fake blood on it and she would come to the door and pull it and say,

who dares disturb my slumber? I remember being a child's cast for the Ghost Mask, which was a child's cast for the ghost mask, which was so scary. And it was like bent and like mischapen. I don't think she understood how utterly terrifying the whole effect was. I mean, but if she had, she would still go on top of that. Pressure met Greg at the juvenile detention center where she tutored.

But unlike most kids there, Greg hadn't broken any laws. He just didn't have any other place in the state of Mississippi to go. My life from the very beginning was chaotic. Greg was sent to a series of foster and group homes. He ran away from each one, and Tully ended up in Greenville's detention center where running away was an option because, you know, it's jail for kids. He met Prash on his very first day there, Christmas Eve.

Uh, I guess I got her to laughing about something I can't remember what. A few weeks later, Prash told him to pack. He shoved what Little E had into two trash bags and pressure bought him to her house, which became his home. He stayed the rest of high school. I mean, what made you not run away from Prash and D's house? They were the first people who were kind to me. She even told me one morning before going to school.

She said, I was frustrated about something. She said, Greg, she said, I just want you to know that I love you. She said that, and that's not something Preci says very often. And you know, that really got me. I didn't even know how to answer. And all of this time,

pressure-folded teenage Greg into her life, just like she did the rest of us. But she gave him room to be himself. I would get these cassettes of like Judas Priest, Slayer, like the clash. She was like punk and metal. And she would drive me to school. And I would pop one of those cassettes in. And the music would start pounding. And her fist would be

flailing as she held on to the steering wheel. This surprised me. Press was a total prude, especially about music. But she seemed to know that Greg needed a level of grace, her own kids and grandkids did not. And she brought that grace to her work with kids in the group home and juvenile detention center. When Greg would come home from college and later when he was serving overseas, pressure would sometimes bring him back to the center, I think is inspiration. So Greg spent a lot of time there with Prash. She had set up this school inside the detention center which she called the Greg School and named after me, yours truly.

And sometimes people like these educators would come to see the Greg School and they thought Greg was some method of teaching like the Greg approach or whatever. And I really think the kids liked her, because she was not, she was not there to judge them. If hers was the only smiling face they were gonna see, then she was gonna have to provide that smiling face. At any given time, pressure had her hand in like a dozen community projects.

But for the last 15 years of her life, the Greg School got her most consistent attention. Pressure learned that kids didn't have access to formal education when they were in the detention center. In fact, they'd get marked absent from school during their sentence. It started out as a pretty rag tag operation. During one spring break, I found myself teaching English lit,

but the instruction became more formalized with the help of a new youth court judge for Nita Johnson. While they were in detention, they needed to be educated. Judge Johnson is still the youth court judge today. I have been in this position for 23 and a half years and believe it or not, I'm going to run for it again. Since we spoke, she won re-election by a landslide. She'd met pressure at the detention center back before she'd been elected the first time. And I was telling her that I was going to run for the office and telling her about myself. I already knew exactly who I was.

She already had my history and just briefly told me about myself. And she went on to talk with me about the school for the juvenile's. It was her dream that should I be elected to make sure it became a four-time school. It actually did. In four years after Prashdad, Judge Johnson tells me the state passed legislation that she and Prash had worked on, mandating that every juvenile detention center in Mississippi have its own alternative school attached. She would have loved that. But I was curious about more than just precious relationship with the school. Given Charlotte's theory that a student from the

Juvenile Detention Center had angrily murdered Prash because she scolded him, I wanted to understand Prash's relationship with the kid she tutored. This was something both Judge Johnson and Greg had seen up close. Something both Judge Johnson and Greg had seen up close. Did she ever get stern with the kids? She would get a little stern with the children, but you know, and maybe raise a voice a little bit, but that was it. I explained Charlotte's theory to Greg for his take, that it must have been a kid precious worked with from the detention center.

Despite having no evidence of that, because Prash would often get in their faces and wag her finger. That is not true. That is not how Prash treated anybody in the youth court. She never wagged her finger in my face, and I used to irritate her. So yeah, she would say, I'm gonna ring the neck.

But no, this business about her getting in somebody's face and wagging, that is just, that is not her. How do they even know that they never saw her interact with juvenile detainees? They weren't interested in that. But it's still the story, Charlotte's held on to. But it's still the story, Charlotte's held on to. Uncover from CBC podcasts brings you award-winning investigations year-round. Infiltrate an international network of neo-Nazi extremists. Ranted 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. There's this local story, legend actually, I heard growing up. The story goes that in the late 1940s, just outside of Greenville, society-matron Ruth Thompson Dickens lived a few doors down from her elderly mother. Unfortunately, her mother was tough as nails, especially on Ruth.

Ruth was at the end of her rope. So one day, she picked up the garden sheers she'd been using to prune the rose bushes and hacked her mother to death. Off she went to parchment, Mississippi's notorious state penitentiary. But don't worry, Ruth didn't lose her society status. As the legend goes, the governor granted her furlough so she could leave prison and attend her daughter's Debbie-Ton Ball. My mom's favorite part of this story was that every Sunday, Ruth's friends in the Guarding Club took turns bringing her lunch with linens and fine china, so she could dine in the manner to which she'd become a custom.

That's likely a myth. True or not, people love to talk about Ruth. During Ruth's time in prison, newspapers breathlessly reported on her health, even her weight. Six years into this circus, the governor granted Ruth an indefinite suspension of her sentence, and she was sent home, where she resumed her role teaching Sunday school at the Baptist Church. After all, who could really blame her?

Everyone knew her mother was a total pill. In this telling, Ruth is our Lizzy Borden, with feminine garden shears instead of a brutal axe. And the comedic twist that indulged a society, it's perfectly acceptable to kill members of your own family, as long as you were born into the right one. What I didn't hear about until I dug into the newspaper archives was the part where Ruth had tried to blame a black man

When she could neither name nor even describe and that all of this week tip Police had launched a massive manhunt tailing innocent black men interviewing all the gardeners who worked nearby Even after her conviction support for Ruth remained strong enough that while she was in prison Police continued to investigate Black men on her behalf. After all, she was a white woman, the Southern Gentry's favorite symbol of virtue. So when I hear a theory like Charlottes, that a kid from the detention center who she can't name or identify must have killed Prash, the parallels are impossible to mess. There are countless

stories like this, especially in the South. And 70 years wasn't that long ago. Here's Judge Johnson. Let's just say that our conviction rate or our delinquency rate does not match to community. Traditionally, white people get more of the reasonable doubt. It starts with low enforcement, an example. And this is one that has bothered me and still bothers me. You can have a group of white kids in the mall parking lot at 1030 at night, laughing, talking, maybe drinking beer and the police officer comes and says, okay, let's break it up, go home, takes the beer, pull us it out, everybody leaves.

You have a group of black kids in the mall at 1030 at night, drinking beer and the police come. All right, break it up, y'all going to jail. And what happens then? Like what happens next to the kids, you know, who were sent home versus the kids who were sent to jail? Well, they're in the system now. They're in the system. Greg, precious foster son, wasn't in the system.

Even though he was sent to the Juvenile Detention Center, his circumstances were different. Many of the other kids had families to go back to, Greg didn't. And the Juvenile Detention Center was meant for kids who'd been arrested, and Greg hadn't. So, it makes sense that he's the one kid that's brought into her home. But there is another way he was different from many of the kids he was with. You know, she brought you into her home and, you know, there weren't a whole lot

of other white kids at the detention center. Do you think it seems so? Do you ever think about that? I have thought about it. And I honestly think that if I weren't white, I wouldn't. It would have been, and it's not because, it would have just been too much social

pressure. She would have never heard the end of it. I just think the social contacts would have been so difficult for them. Greg is probably right. People would have lost their minds. Pressure's neighborhood was all white in the 1980s. A neighborhood were 15 years later on the day after pressure's murder. Neighb neighbors would still report Black men to the police for being seen walking around outside. Which is a big reason Judge Johnson is skeptical that he could from the center or any random Black man would have been Prussia's killer. I would not think it would be legitimate at all. First of all, the juveniles in the detention center would not even know how to find her. And back at that time, they would not know how to get into the area where she lived.

I've debated this point a lot since she said it. Pressure's neighborhood was in the center of Greenville, that is, the center of my Greenville. But pressure's neighborhood would have been just as unfamiliar to these kids as theirs had been to me. Still, Greg did tell me he remembered at least one kid pressured mentor visiting the house. He would come by not too frequently, but once every couple of months or something he would pop his head in and they would talk for a minute and he always left with a little bit of cash.

I remember one other kid who did some yard work but never came back. But to Judge Johnson's point, the kid probably would have stood out. You just did not have a lot of blacks going into the area where Miss Campbell lived. Actually, the only time I went in the area was when I went to her home at her invitation to work on the grant. A young black male or black male period

would stand out in that area. So it's not like a black male could just walk in there and quietly go into the house. That was not the way it was at that time. And even now, it's not that way. I just never thought it was a true robbery. If that were the case, then other things would have been taken from the house.

case, then other things would have been taken from the house. Things that could easily be sold by a black male. Things such as TVs, such as silver, or things that appear to have value. There are a number of problems with Charlotte's theory of who killed her sister and why. The main one being that it's less an actual theory than simply a racist trope she decided to believe. It's a guess. Nothing more. When I was a municipal judge in Holland, there was a big treat and a group of guys would sit under that tree and they pretty much knew everything that went on in

Hollandaire. So I started to refer to them as the Shaytree group. They would come to court, I guess in small towns, with nothing else to do, would come to court. And after court, they would come to me, judge you hit that right on the nail. Because let me tell you what's really going on. Or they would tell me, you missed out one. And 95% of the time, they were right. Shade Tree knew what was going on.

Most of the time, you can't prove it, but it's normally right. What is, when going back to my grandmother, what is the shade tree talk on that case? That I heard was that it was someone close to the family. The idea that the Court of Public Opinion might be as accurate as, say, the courts isn't new, though it is surprising to hear it from a judge. Still, I'm skeptical of the shade tree, especially when it comes to my grandmother's

murder. Sometimes stories persist not because they're true, but because they're fascinating. And sometimes, like in this case, certain stories persist because police don't provide evidence or suspects, so rumors all you have. Of course skeptical or not, the shade tree is why I'm here. Because after Prussia's murder, as detectives hit dead ends, stories about Richard proliferated. Little things he did or said about Prussia's death, interactions people had with him in the days after she was murdered.

I ran many of these stories by Richard. I'm going to include some here, along with his responses, not because I think they paint a picture of his guilt. They don't. This is gossip, distorted by two decades. But these stories do paint a picture of how Green Bull's Court of Public Opinion works. Like the one I heard from Amanda, the caterer who loves a gen cocktail and a good wedding crusher story.

A day or two after precious murder, she and her husband dropped food off for Charlotte and Richard. We did not stay very long, but we visited with her for a short amount of time. She says Richard walked them out. And as he walked us out, he just totally, out of the blue, said, you know my fingerprints are probably all over that house. I go over there all the time. Precious house. And it was not a prompted statement. It was not we did not ask anything about the, I mean, we asked no questions. We had strictly gone to console your aunt and to offer a little supper.

At the reception for Prussia's funeral, Richard made one of my sister's cry when he called Prussia quote, stupid, forgetting her sink clogged, and forgetting to lock her doors. During a sympathy visit to Charlotte the weekend that Presh died, a friend of hers told me she'd had to ask Richard to stop describing what had happened to his aunt. When I asked Richard about this, he told me his mother had told him everything she saw, and he just couldn't get it out of his head. Richard says he doesn't remember the fingerprint's comment, but things that must have been made in a quote, lighthearted way,

same with the comments about Prash being quote, stupid. There's a pattern here, of course, which is Richard saying things that make people uncomfortable. It's not new. But without a murder accusation hanging over his head, would these kind of comments seem sinister or just awkward? The police weren't oblivious to these rumors. They interviewed Richard and even Charlotte multiple times that summer.

But as the official investigation slowed down, the stories kept circulating. Late one night, about four years after Prash died, a childhood friend who still lived in the Delta called me up. She was a little giddy. She'll never guess what I did today, she told me. I saw Richard at church and I walked right up to him, pointed my finger in his face and said, we all know what you did. Wait, what?

You do? I remember asking her? No sé lo que haces. ¿Qué haces? ¿Estás pensando? ¿Por qué no? Porque no sé. están contento al trastero, a mover una bicicleta a rastrar dos cajas de libros y levantar un ordo microondas, para coger una chancla. Ah, vale, vale. ¿A dónde vas? ¿Tú con ese chancla, eh? ¿A dónde vas tru? Llega el mejor momento del año, llegan tus vacaciones. Este uno de Julio sortió extraordinario de vacaciones de Lotería Nacional con 20 millones aún de cimo.

Lo terías de recuerda que juegas con responsabilidad y solo sierres mayor de edad. a part. No, this isn't a reality TV rewatch. I'm Dan Jones, your host, and this is one of my all-time favourite true stories. Join me on a trip to the Middle Ages to meet history's most dangerous dynasty, the Plant Adjunents. This season, the plots are thicker, the ambitions greater, and the betrayals are even more devious in the epic saga of the family that shaped our world. From something else in Sony Music Entertainment, this is History, a dynasty to die for, season 2. Listen and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a standard rule in detective work that the first 48 hours after a murder are the most crucial time for a homicide investigation.

For the first two days after Prussia's murder, police told reporters that robbery was the primary motive. On day three, the chief of police said there was a possibility that Prash had known her killer. And at the end of that week, police brought Richard in for an interview. This was around the same time they were interviewing others for information. Richard's interview was about 30 minutes. Calvin McKenzie, who was a homicide detective at that time with the Washington County Sheriff's Department, sat in on that interview. He told me he was brought in because the sheriff was friends

with Prash and one of my lawyer cousins. They had talked and they asked me, I was asked to come in and assist in the investigation. Remember, the murder was technically under the jurisdiction of Greenville police, but because my grandmother had been so well-known. It was kind of high profile. I mean, it was who she was. The Sheriff's Department came into assist. At this time, Ricky Spratland, the Greenville police detective who processed the scene,

was very much in the camp of, it was likely a robbery, but we just don't have a suspect. As a reminder, here's what he said. I think there was, followed up in the house and she was going to know, I'll give you a few dollars and my own and that's when she dropped the purse and they got what they want, whatever they got. Kelvin remembers this. Initially, that's what we've, it was looked at as a robbery. He tells me it took them some time to start looking at Richard. He was not the main conversation that initially.

That was after talking to some people that he came up in the conversation. From talking to people, interviewing people, we found out that they had had heated conversations. That is Richard Impresh. So it was a prevalent suspect because of that. I want to pause here to say that while Richard's name shows up frequently in the investigation documents, my aunt collected, police never referred to him as a quote suspect.

We really want a clarification on this. What was Richard? But Greenville police declined to answer any of our questions about the investigation. Back when I went down to the police station, an officer there who had worked on the investigation referred to Richard as a person of interest, which means he could have information that leads police to a suspect or that he could turn into a suspect himself. Unfortunately, Sheriff's Detective Mackenzie wasn't able to look through the file before

our interview, so he doesn't remember all the details. It's the same issue we had with Greenville Police Detective Spratlin, but Mackenzie clearly remembers his theory on why Press was murdered. He says Press had been on Richard's case. About getting out of Mama's house, sponging off Mama, and I think they got into it, had been into it several times before that day. And that was the thought that that day that they had probably got into it again, that she had probably got on him about it again. And he got upset about it and struck her.

And the thought was he struck stricker with a candle stick holder that was in there. I don't remember anything being stolen. Everything that was in there was all silver. And why, why? Well, when you take that, if you were actually gonna rob a house or steal something, you know, I think their theory was she come in and surprised them

or whatever, stigling, but there was nothing missing. I mean, if you, if you kill somebody, would you then just be freaked out and leave without taking something, or would you then... Wow, would you, if you went to the extent of killing somebody, would you walk out without anything? I don't know. Would you take the time to turn up,

to turn the purse upside down? But still not take anything? I mean, I actually don't know. I don't know what I would do in that case. But now if you were trying to stage a scene, so you can look like a robbery or a burglary going bad, then you would turn stuff upside down. Here's what I do know about the investigation into Richard. Greenville police interviewed Richard at least once down at the station, six days after

pressure's murder. That week they collected one pair of tennis shoes from him to compare against the two shoe prints they'd found at the scene. No matches. About three weeks after the murder, Richard and Charlotte let detectives search Richard's car and their house. Nothing connected him to the crime.

Later, they'd collect his and Charlotte's DNA and fingerprints. Richard also voluntarily took two different polygraphs that summer. I think we did one first, and it was inclusive. And then we got him to do one and show deception. This is true. A disclaimer though. Light detector tests aren't reliable enough to even

be used in court. Investigators mainly use them as an intimidation tactic to pressure suspects to come clean, which is what McKenzie said he thought Richard was about to do during his second test, the one he failed. And he was just about to come to break, I think, and he stopped and you just sit there for probably a minute. And he said, I'm ready to go. And he wouldn't say anything else after that. Richard remembers this a little differently. He said he was tired, he felt like he did his part and just told the officers to take him home. This is just strictly

years of doing what I did and that gut feeling that he was a one. I just never could prove it. So it got to a point where they wouldn't do anything. They meaning the investigators. And so it was kind of stalled. I didn't say that wasn't doing anything. I guess they had run out of all their leads or exhaustive everything that they had. And I didn't have anything else to go with. So new things come up every day. Something else comes up and you have to move on. And it just came to a point to where it was a greenville case. I mean I had to move on to other things. Greenville case, meaning greenville case. I mean, I had to move on to other things.

Greenville case, meaning greenville police, not the Sheriff's Department's case. Detective Mackenzie also brings up another point that Ricky, the Greenville police detective, had told us about. That towel that had been placed over Prussia's face, well, to Mackenzie, it's a signal that the killer didn't just know Prash, but possibly cared about her. He feels bad because he done it. And then he can't look at her.

So you take a towel and you cover her face because you can't stand to look at her. I've been hearing this over and over. The towel over Prash's face was key. It meant her killer knew her. I reached out to a criminology and criminal justice professor at Florida State. She told me it is a common perception among investigators, though there aren't statistics to back it up.

All evidence is either anecdotal or based on case studies. So it's a reasonable supposition, but it's not evidence that points to any particular person. We know the pool of people who cared about Prash was deep and wide. And none of the other evidence from the DNA, to the shoe prints, to eyewitness accounts from neighbors, ever tied Richard to the murder scene. How common is it for somebody to commit a murder in somebody's house

and leave no trace at all? To leave no trace at all. To leave no trace? Well, if you go in, if you go in a house, you take something with you. And if you go in, you got to leave something behind. That's always a common rule. From the interview transcript I have, Detective Simhung up on how he described his relationship with Prash. Richard said they

had a loving relationship, and police kept challenging that. I asked Mackenzie why the theory that Richard killed Prush is the theory that resonates with him. I just years have got Finland and just and talking to him. Richard's attitude and expressions Mackenzie says. Remember, this isn't the official stance of the Sheriff's Department. Richard's attitude and expressions, Mackenzie says. Remember this isn't the official stance of the Sheriff's Department. It's just one detective's opinion as someone who worked on the case. I repeated this back to Richard. He told me, quote, these investigators, they need to concentrate on evidence and not presumptions. Their job is to operate in fact. He's telling them consistent stories

so you talk to the family, the other family members, what kind of relationship did they have? And what was his alibi again? He was at home. Well, who can test to find out that? Or who can give him an alibi? Well, his mama. Well, come find out.

His mama was at the grocery store next door, somewhere else. She was going 45 minutes. They got to bring us back to how long it took to walk down here and back. So, so was there a sufficient time to go down here and back? Like I said, you put all this together. You piece it together. Since no one remembers seeing Richard's car leave his driveway, one theory is that Richard walked from his house to

precious and back. Spratlin from the police department even timed the walk. So it took me three minutes. Took me three minutes. And that was when I had to have knee operation. So, you know, you had time, you know, but I was specifically told by family members that he did not walk. But, you know, he was fully cooperated. He did everything we asked. He was signed any consent that we ask. We took his shoes. We everything. Never, never once. Then he said, no, y'all get out of here. I ain't.

See, he wasn't totally against the idea that Richard could have done it. He just wasn't convinced. The evidence wasn't there. I always considered the dual system that Richard could have done it. He just wasn't convinced. The evidence wasn't there. I always considered the dual system. It could have been, we could go with the family member or the nut just walking in up that driveway. And as I'm talking to both detectives, I'm realizing they agree on most of the details, like the facts of the case.

What they don't agree on is how to interpret what those facts mean. He never got mad at us. He never cussed us out. He never shoved a door in our faces or nothing. And I see him to this day. I know him now, but he'll speak and he's just like, and it's like he's just, if he had anything to do with it, he's hiding it really well. I asked McKenzie the same thing.

Just real, no emotion to him really. You asked him a question, I don't want what you're talking about, right into it or I wasn't there. I don't want anything to do with it, but really no emotion. What does that mean to you? The no emotion.

Well, if you accuse me of doing something, I'm probably going to get a little pissed or a little hostile, you know, or it's very least I'm going to be a little upset because I've lost a family member. You don't have any of that. She's just no emotion. It's funny, where he Spratlin actually told us the exact opposite. He said he believed that because he was so calm and so emotionless that he believed that was a sign of innocence. Well, people read things differently.

Our interpretation of events says a lot about who we are. Kelvin McKenzie, the former detective with the Sheriff's Department, admitted as much to me. McKenzie is a white man who now lives in Madison, a mostly white suburb of the mostly black city of Jackson, Mississippi. Back in 2003, when he was a detective, Greenville was 70 percent black and segregated by race. And he told me that influenced how he did his job. We didn't abuse anybody, but we did take any crap off nobody.

You know, you went out and you policed a community and you worked with a community, community policing as they call it. They came up with a name for. Oh, that's, we've done that for years. You go out and you mingle with the people because I didn't have a crystal ball You know when I first started at Grimble Get out of this parking lot. Then we're all the kids congregated out there, right? They're all wrong because they're doing I was there drinking, you know, but I wasn't hauling them off to jail I was building a rapport with them and they learn one important deal

You could ask them to go to the road you don't lie to Mac you lie to Mac you go to jail and When things would happen I'd get a phone call Something happened. I need to know something about call one of them And that's how I built started building that deal and over the years you stopped somebody for a little nickel bag You put on the ground that kills the worst thing you think. Taking the jail, then they mad at you. But, you know, you're done with favor. I didn't take them to jail.

Those groups of kids who are out there drinking race-wise, what do they tend to be? White. Ha, ha, ha, ha. We were talking to a judge a couple of days ago and she was talking about how, you know, oftentimes in Greenville, you have two groups of kids drinking. One of them is a white group of kids, one of them is black group of kids, and the white kids do get talk to and get their drinks poured out and they get sent home.

And the black kids often get hauled in. Well, no. So let's put this in perspective. drinks poured out and they get sent home. And the black kids often get hauled in. Well, no. So let's put this in perspective. I've got a group of white kids is up here this drinking. You make sure somebody's going to drive them, this driving, it's not drinking. You just don't let them go.

But you build a rapport. Now let's go to Strange Park. Do you remember Strange Park? It's a park near downtown. You go down there and they got lookouts on the corners and they're shooting dice in the bottom. So, we would all storm in there and jump out on them. And do we hold them to jail?

Yeah, because you grab at them as they go because they're all gambling and drinking and everything else. But they're running and they're all black. Yeah, this is really hard to listen to. When we're talking about presumptions of guilt and innocence, whether it's Richards or Ruth's or an entire race, I think it's important to look at how the people in charge operate.

I mean, would you be able to get that report though if you said, hey guys, like I can haul you in right now, but let's talk about it and, you know, here's my card. Hi, yes I could. That's how I built CIs. That's how I solved what I solved. I told you, I didn't have a crystal ball. No crystal ball. No physical evidence either.

Just that good feeling. Do you think there's a way it could have been solved within a year or two? Um, I probably had it been a higher case. He tells us he never would have left Richard alone. He would have always kept an eye on him. I would have saw me every day until something happened. So, if I knew I was my main man and I was looking at, I would have stayed on to him, like butter on rice or whatever you want calling biscuit on a great gravy on a biscuit, whatever. I mean, look, we all rely on gut feelings. Lots of times

they're right or at least compelling. Like some of those stories about Richard I'd heard from friends and family. But private citizens are allowed to go on gut. I'm not sure about investigators. I spent more than two hours with Mackenzie. Toward the end, I was so overwhelmed and frazzled. And then my phone started buzzing. It was my dad. He keeps blowing up.

Um, Charlotte went into cardiac arrest last night. She's still alive and I see you on a ventilator. He says, let's talk when you have a chance. I'll just let him know. Next time I'll witness devil in the ditch. You look for evidence and then try to find the person. You don't find the person and then look for the evidence. Where did the evidence lead? What you ended up having was basically three different

investigating files. I have a lot of unanswered questions myself. I felt like it was solvable. 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 getthebenj.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Witness is 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 Tremuen and Shiba Joseph. Sound design mixing and original music by Garrett Tiedemann. Additional music by APM and Blue Dot Sessions. Additional field recording by Johnny Kaufman and Ambreel Crutchfeld. Fact checking by Ben Kaelin. 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 Gerberiades, Adam Hoff and Matt Scher. Descubre la Escuela de Ciberseguridad y MF del Oite y J.K.A. Tu futuro profesional en el sector con mayor índice de empleabilidad. Tanto si poses un perfil técnico como sino, tenemos un irinerario online o presencial, adaptado a ti. Formación práctica y acceso a las herramientas de los expertos de de loite entra en emf.com