There Is a Monster in Me (Rebroadcast)

Speaker 1 This show is supported by Hot and Deadly, a podcast from ID.

Speaker 2 Hot and Deadly brings you American true crime that is often stranger than fiction.

Speaker 1 Every week, dive into shocking stories of murder and betrayal, from IRS impersonators in Kentucky to a South Carolina businessman deceived by those closest to him.

Speaker 1 You'll hear first-hand accounts from investigators, witnesses, and family members as they share the chilling details behind each case.

Speaker 1 If you love true crime with a southern twist, you're going to want to check this one out. Follow Hot and Deadly so you never miss an episode.

Speaker 3 A woman's murder in small town, Texas.

Speaker 4 The killer's 200-page confession found years later. What it reveals in all new 2020 starts right now.

Speaker 6 It's not every day in a town of 12,000 that you get a violent murder.

Speaker 8 The body was draped over the tub with chest and head submerged in water.

Speaker 9 There was the sense that there was rage involved.

Speaker 6 This was a young woman who put up quite a struggle for her life.

Speaker 5 Could it have been a fantasy game that got out of hand?

Speaker 10 I knew he had killed her. I told him.
I said he could kill her.

Speaker 11 He started screaming, yes, he killed her.

Speaker 10 He killed her.

Speaker 12 He killed her.

Speaker 6 Everybody in Stevensville was damn sure they knew who did it.

Speaker 3 And who was that man?

Speaker 13 He had left terrible notes all over the house.

Speaker 10 You'd open the microwave and there'd be one in the door.

Speaker 13 You'd open the drawer in the kitchen, another note.

Speaker 14 There'd be one in her coat pocket.

Speaker 13 Lift the lid on the toilet, there's a note.

Speaker 10 There would be one in the medicine cabinet.

Speaker 9 You said no one ever got angry at Susie. You got angry at Susie.

Speaker 11 I mean, you know, as bad as we thought it was then, I mean, it was going to get worse.

Speaker 6 He finds something much darker and much more ominous.

Speaker 16 As soon as I got in the vehicle, I knew I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Speaker 7 Sometimes there are monsters that live in the hearts of other people.

Speaker 10 Kind of under your nose.

Speaker 17 Today is 66 of 06, the day we meet the devil himself.

Speaker 9 Deep in the heart of Texas, decades of unanswered questions about a murder found hidden in a trailer on the outskirts of the woods, a voice from beyond the grave.

Speaker 9 And a mystery that had lingered over a town for years

Speaker 9 was about to resurface.

Speaker 5 A friend of mine called me and he said, Hey, there's a guy out in Abilene who has some writings he's very concerned about that you might be interested in.

Speaker 15 He says it's some crazy stuff.

Speaker 5 And so he gave me all of this. Of course, I had no idea what it was.

Speaker 15 And I brought it back and started reading it.

Speaker 6 It remained this mystery. Nobody ever understood it.
A killing that has preoccupied so many of us for so many years.

Speaker 6 By God, I had become a monster. I was the devil.

Speaker 6 Stephenville has always called itself the Cowboy Capital World.

Speaker 8 It was real big on rodeos. There were a lot of professional rodeo cowboys that started here, so that was a big thing.

Speaker 19 Famous for round

Speaker 19 in my Texas town.

Speaker 6 People wear their cowboy hats and wear their boots, and it's not kitsch, it's real. This is who people are.
This is an authentic and enduring way of life.

Speaker 6 In rural Texas, livestock and livestock raising is a big part of the economy.

Speaker 9 And right there, on a pedestal in the town square, not a lawman or a local hero,

Speaker 21 a cow. Oh yeah, the Moolah cow.
It represented a really booming milk industry.

Speaker 18 It's a lot of Mulah.

Speaker 21 People go to church on Sundays and they go to lunch afterwards. A lot of people were born here, they were raised here, and they never left.
So you had generations of families who all knew each other.

Speaker 9 Author Brian Burroughs grew up in a small Texas town. He was drawn to this story of a young woman from Stephenville named Susan Jeanette Atkins.

Speaker 6 She was sincere and sweet and humble, and she was pretty much everyone's idea of an ideal young woman.

Speaker 13 Susan was a very shy, quiet person until you got to know her. She was hilarious.

Speaker 13 She didn't mind embarrassing you if she thought of something funny that would get your goat, but you couldn't stay mad at her because she was so cute.

Speaker 9 Susan was no rebel. She was raised in a church-going family of four.

Speaker 9 And that shyness meant that she only had a few close friends. One of them had been in band with her.

Speaker 10 Thelma and Louise, we could finish each other's sentence. We were best buddies.
Yeah, she was a one in a million.

Speaker 6 Friday nights were for football,

Speaker 6 Sundays for church,

Speaker 6 and on Saturday night, everybody cruised. Then in Stephenville, he was called cruising the drag.

Speaker 13 All the kids would just drive from one dairy queen to the other.

Speaker 13 And you'd stop at the parking lots and wait for people you knew to pull in and talk to. I spent a lot of time making the drag with Susan and Cindy.

Speaker 6 When she got out of school at 18, she took a job at a sandpaper factory.

Speaker 6 And her life started to change in ways that she hadn't expected.

Speaker 10 Susan was very beautiful. Every time we go out, the guys would go for her.

Speaker 9 How did she first get a look at Michael Woods?

Speaker 6 She was driving the drag one day, and she's literally crossing the railroad tracks, and she looks down in like an album cover. She sees this long-haired guy coming out of the sun.

Speaker 6 And so she pulls over and they met. She fell for Michael and she fell hard.

Speaker 13 Susan had a type and it was a kind of rough looking bad boy type and they were older than her and very macho man type.

Speaker 6 It's easy to imagine that she found Michael just a little bit exotic. You know, the long hair, he played the guitar, he played rock and roll.
Michael was her rebellion.

Speaker 9 So in a town of crew cuts and cowboys, Michael Woods was a rocker. To Susan, he looked like Bob Seeger.
To everyone else, he looked like Trouble. But that didn't deter Susan.
They had fallen in love.

Speaker 6 For a while there, every fiber of this woman's being was dedicated to this man. I mean, she was all in.

Speaker 9 Then Susan tells Michael it's time for them to get married.

Speaker 6 And Michael, with just this amount of thought, is like, I'm free tomorrow between 11 and 1.

Speaker 9 At first it was Susan and Michael against everyone, even her family. Even after they wed, Stephenville was not the place for his rock star dreams.
And at home, eventually the power ballads faded out.

Speaker 9 Michael couldn't find steady work, and they got to quarreling.

Speaker 13 He was a great guy until he wasn't when they broke up.

Speaker 6 And it it was bad. And it, of course, just got worse.

Speaker 9 Are they arguing with each other at this point?

Speaker 6 By that final year, yeah, they were fighting. He began to believe that he could have had a better life without her.
And then, out of nowhere, he leaves and he doesn't go with a whimper.

Speaker 6 He goes with a bang.

Speaker 10 She was devastated.

Speaker 11 And I can only imagine how that was. You get home in a cold house, all the lights are out, and you're wondering what happened.

Speaker 9 He's taken the car, he's taken her fur coat, and vanished in a rage. Susan is freaked out, so Cindy stays on her sofa.
Roy offers her a gun, but she gives it back.

Speaker 9 Instead, he comes over and he nails her window shut.

Speaker 13 She was afraid of Michael after they broke up because he did have a little bit of a jealous, crazy streak. She was scared.

Speaker 9 Susan asks for a divorce for Michael who skipped town and later that summer it's as if she comes out of her shell a little bit. She starts going out with a new guy, a bartender.

Speaker 10 She was really starting to become happier, a whole new chapter going to open up for her.

Speaker 6 And then there's this night in late July that everybody involved remembers. Roy and Cindy take Susan to a carnival and nobody enjoys themselves for whatever reason.

Speaker 6 So Roy says, let's all go back to Stephenville and and go Dairy Queen.

Speaker 10 We both loved hotfish Sundays too much. And Susan done something she's never done before.

Speaker 10 She looked at me and she goes, you know, I think I'm going to order me another one.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 she really got to enjoy it.

Speaker 6 Two days later, her supervisor at the factory called her dad and said we haven't seen Susan for a couple of days. And it's totally not like Susan.

Speaker 5 When we walked into the house, I just wasn't ready for what we were going to see.

Speaker 9 It's late July 1987, hot and quiet in the small town of Stephenville, Texas. Joe Atkins is worried about his 30-year-old daughter, Susan Woods.

Speaker 9 He'd gotten a call from her boss that she hadn't turned up for work in two days. No one had seen or heard from her.

Speaker 6 He goes up to the front porch and the front door is ajar.

Speaker 6 And he walks in and he finds her in the bathroom

Speaker 6 and she's dead. And when the first cruisers start showing up in a matter of minutes later, Joe's out in the front yard waiting for him in tears.

Speaker 6 It's not every day in a town of 12,000 that you get a violent murder. This is an all-hands.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 5 it was in the late afternoon. We heard on the police radio that there was a homicide.

Speaker 8 I walked in the front door and immediately I noticed there was a TV against that wall. And then across from it, there was a little table.

Speaker 8 And on the table, there was a bag of chips and a Coke can and a cigarette tray with ashes in it.

Speaker 9 In the bedroom, there are signs of a desperate struggle.

Speaker 5 When we walked into the house and saw the carnage in the bedroom, I just wasn't ready for what we were going to see.

Speaker 8 It looked like where the bed had been scooted about five or six inches towards the bathroom. Looked like there may have been a struggle and trying to pull somebody in the bathroom.

Speaker 6 There was a single pillow they found and upon studying it, it hit them, it was makeup from Susan's face. You could see tears in the makeup.

Speaker 6 And it was the type of thing that everyone involved, well, still remembers.

Speaker 14 This is a close-up of that pillow.

Speaker 5 You can see those smudge marks right there.

Speaker 5 That is mascara from her eyes. So her head would have been smashed hard into the pillow during this assault.

Speaker 12 That's like a death mask.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 9 The scene in the bathroom. It's even more disturbing.
That's where Susan was found.

Speaker 8 She was completely nude, so it looked like a sexual assault. The body was draped over the tub with the chest and head submerged in water.

Speaker 8 Her hands were tied behind her back with what looked like a tank top that had been twisted up.

Speaker 9 Her arms were pretty high up.

Speaker 8 My initial thought was that somebody had used that as leverage to keep her under the water. And if that was the case, then there's probably going to be prints on the bathtub on either side.

Speaker 9 And sure enough, there were both fingerprints and palm prints.

Speaker 18 But whose?

Speaker 8 So we got good prints on both sides of the body on the tub. We just had to identify who it was.

Speaker 6 It was pretty clear that the person who killed her tried to kill her three different ways

Speaker 6 with a pillow across the face, clearly with some type of looks like an electrical cord with a ligature mark across her neck, and then by drowning her.

Speaker 9 The scene was beyond horrific. Detectives took a close look at one detail, the six cigarette butts that were in the ashtray.

Speaker 5 You know, the question is, what is going on with six cigarette butts? I knew it was significant.

Speaker 8 Looked like somebody had been sitting there watching TV and smoking cigarettes and snacking. And she wasn't the kind that would let a person come in.
especially a man.

Speaker 8 She was very introverted and cautious that way.

Speaker 6 Well, Susan did not smoke, nor did she drink caffeine.

Speaker 6 And so the thought develops early on that there is a good chance that the killer had stayed there long enough to drink that Coke and smoke those cigarettes.

Speaker 8 Now, if we've identified who the cigarette butts belong to and the Cokes in the other room, they say, yeah, I stopped by and, you know, we watched TV for a little bit and talked and I left.

Speaker 8 She was okay then. The way I figure it, those palm prints on each side of the body are irrefutable.

Speaker 8 The handprints beside the body on the tub, you can't explain those. So I knew if we could find the palm prints, we had to kill her.

Speaker 5 Well, there's a couple of theories going around.

Speaker 17 As far as the detectives could tell,

Speaker 20 robbery wasn't a motive.

Speaker 5 It was straight up sex, from what anybody could tell.

Speaker 9 There was the sense that there was rage involved. Something really violent had happened.

Speaker 6 Well, for entirely different reasons, the police in the community were thinking the same thing, that this was someone she knew.

Speaker 11 As we drove down the road, we could see strobing lights of emergency vehicles and stuff. And we got up there close to her house and we saw

Speaker 12 the barrier tape. Yellow police staff.

Speaker 10 I knew he had killed her. I told him.
I said he had killed her.

Speaker 11 She started screaming. Yes, he killed him.

Speaker 10 I said he killed her.

Speaker 14 He killed her.

Speaker 10 And I was talking about her ex-husband, Mike.

Speaker 6 And of course, everybody in Stevensone was damn sure they knew who did it.

Speaker 3 And who was that man?

Speaker 6 Michael Woods.

Speaker 13 No doubt in our minds, all the pieces to the puzzle led straight to Michael. She would have let him in the house.
He smoked.

Speaker 13 And he had a very volatile personality. So the whole world blamed Michael from the minute it happened.

Speaker 6 Let's just say, as that impression and that conclusion spread around town, you didn't get a lot of pushback.

Speaker 11 And when the police talk to us, and that's what we tell them.

Speaker 10 There was no other enemy.

Speaker 5 You go from the victim and start working your way out, spiraling out.

Speaker 18 So, you know, he was a rightful

Speaker 22 first suspect.

Speaker 9 But Detective Donnie Hensley, who has taken the lead on the case, he has no evidence to link Michael to the scene.

Speaker 6 Or even being back in the town, or even being back in the state of Texas. So he does what he has to do, which is he starts to look at the other possible suspects.

Speaker 9 And at one man in particular, a guy who'd been spending a lot of time with Susan after Michael had left. And some of that time in that very same bathtub.

Speaker 24 She would have a beer while I'd have two or three Coca-Cola.

Speaker 8 When you're investigating a case like this, you don't want to get tunnel vision and miss the obvious. I want the person that did it and nobody else.

Speaker 24 If I was them, I would be looking at me too.

Speaker 9 As Stephenville residents wake up to the news of the gruesome murder of Susan Woods,

Speaker 9 local police begin to canvass the neighborhood. Turns out the man they want to talk to is someone that Susan met 30 miles from here.
His name is JC Bowman.

Speaker 13 JC was a bartender at a club in Granberry that I had taken Susan to, and I had introduced them and they were casually dating.

Speaker 6 He was basically just seen as a guy who had stumbled into Susan's life at a point. It was one of the last male relationships she had before she was killed.

Speaker 24 I was bartending at North Fork in Granberry.

Speaker 24 This cute little lady came in one night wearing this shirt. Einstein, sticking his tongue out.
And I had the poster at the time and she was wearing this and I said, I like that shirt.

Speaker 24 That's how we broke the ice.

Speaker 24 And the next time she came in, she gave me that shirt.

Speaker 13 I don't think it was a real hot and heavy romance, but they had fun together. It was kind of a distraction for both of them.

Speaker 6 And JC Bowman was apparently passably cute and he started coming by her house at night.

Speaker 24 Neither one of us wanted a serious relationship. We just wanted friends with privileges.
She would call me when she was in the mood to have company.

Speaker 24 We'd sit there and watch the movie and snuggle and a lot of black and white. We both liked Tarzan, the original Johnny Weisemela Tarzan movies.

Speaker 24 I'd drink my Coca-Colas and she'd drink a beer.

Speaker 5 In the crime scene photographs, there was a picture of six cigarette butts that were collected. Then there was a beer can and a Coke can.

Speaker 9 And police learned that JC had made one of those visits to Susan's house. just days before Susan was murdered.

Speaker 24 She and I had taken a bath in the bathtub together. My fingerprints were all over the place

Speaker 24 and they were already on file for possession of marijuana. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I had no alibi for where I was that night. I was at home alone watching TV by myself.

Speaker 24 Yeah, if I was them, I would be looking at me too.

Speaker 6 The lead detective, Johnny Hinsley, brought in J.C. Bowman for a lie detector test and fingerprints.

Speaker 26 Can you remember precisely what you were doing on Sunday, the 26th of July? You know, I sure can.

Speaker 27 I'm not going to lie to you, I realize.

Speaker 26 You are a suspect. And you're going to be a suspect until I resolve the fact that you're not a suspect.

Speaker 28 Indeed, I didn't. And I couldn't do something like that.
I couldn't do something like that and labeled myself.

Speaker 26 Well, that's between you and your guy.

Speaker 24 I said, am I clear now? Did the lie detector test come out positive? How did it do? He said, well, it was inconclusive. He said, you're still on the list, but you're not on the top of the list.

Speaker 9 Police then turned their attention to the report of a man who was seen lurking outside Susan's home around the time she was murdered.

Speaker 6 So after JC though, things get a little bit interesting because first off, one of the neighbors did think that they saw a large guy in the neighborhood that night, maybe near Susan's house.

Speaker 5 It was a red pickup truck and a guy, a large frame man, probably 9 or 10 or 11 o'clock at night, was seen leaving her house, got in that truck, and they took off.

Speaker 5 So based on that, the suspect would have been a large frame big guy. That's Roy Hayes.
And, you know, Roy was a friend, so, you know, his leaves zeroed in on him.

Speaker 6 When Susan was by herself in those days and weeks after Michael left, she feared for her safety.

Speaker 6 It was Roy who came in and nailed the windows shut. It was Roy who briefly lent her a pistol.
So Roy had access.

Speaker 11 I got a call from the police department asking me to come in and they wanted to ask me about, you know, Susan Wood's death.

Speaker 11 My fingerprints were all over the house because I'd nailed all the windows shut. So I mean I'd pretty much a given.

Speaker 11 What was your relationship with Susan?

Speaker 11 Mainly 370 but I did know I you know sit down there and crack a couple beers with her. No, I don't know that she wouldn't have felt comfortable.

Speaker 11 You don't think she'd been comfortable sitting on the couch with you and drinking Coke. No, I'm sure she wouldn't have.

Speaker 6 But the thing that really made him

Speaker 6 odd was that Roy played Dungeons and Dragons.

Speaker 6 You know, it's a game where you have a bunch of characters, elves and mystics and things. And, you know, in a Bible-fearing place like Stephenville, it did bear a whiff of the satanic.

Speaker 9 So back in the late 70s and early 80s, Dungeons and Dragons set off a moral panic around the country, thanks in part to shows like the 700 Club.

Speaker 23 Dungeons and Dragons creates a world of fear and death. The most thoroughly researched introduction to the occult in man's recorded history.

Speaker 9 And some critics went on to make false claims that the game caused players to take their own lives or even commit murder.

Speaker 5 A lot of people here thought it had satanic overtures. The question was, could it have been a fantasy game that got out of hand?

Speaker 11 Because I play Dungeons and Dragons and that maybe

Speaker 12 under

Speaker 11 my sway or me under their sway or whatever, that we as a group had gotten together and done this.

Speaker 6 So Donnie takes Roy down to the Texas Ranger office, Dani Waco, to give him the lie detector test.

Speaker 11 And he asked me a whole bunch of questions. And when I got out and got done, they came in there and finally unstrapped me.

Speaker 6 Roy gets up, takes a deep breath, and Donnie meets him at the door. And Donnie says, you did it.
And Roy's like, what?

Speaker 6 You flunked the test.

Speaker 11 He said, you might as well go ahead and confess.

Speaker 11 You failed this test.

Speaker 4 You killed this girl.

Speaker 6 And Roy turns around with this look of horror, thinking that he's about to go to jail when the guy the ranger who administer it came out and says you passed you're fine it was a misunderstanding

Speaker 11 he accused me three times on it when he knew i'd pass the test but i guess you know in his mind anything justified his actions to try to get somebody it didn't just put his heart in his throat it stayed in his throat for days weeks months and maybe years although jc bowman and roy hayes were both eventually cleared, for both of them, it was a real white-knuckle experience.

Speaker 11 Well, I was worried that I'd end up being convicted and being sent to prison for a crime that I didn't commit.

Speaker 11 You know, the guy who actually did it, that I felt did it, was Mike Woods.

Speaker 9 And Roy wasn't the only one. Five months after Susan's murder, it's Christmastime, and Stephenville is convinced that no more investigation is even needed.
Many didn't want to hear any other names.

Speaker 28 At the end of the day, everybody in town thought that it was Michael.

Speaker 9 Those close to Susan know even more about the couple's breakup and angry messages Michael had left for Susan to find.

Speaker 6 The cassette tapes and these little notes change everything. He's all but threatening her.

Speaker 6 She feared Michael.

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Speaker 9 Days after the murder of Susan Woods, Stephenville turns out to mourn the unfathomable loss of one of their own.

Speaker 9 And for investigators, it wasn't so much about who showed up, it was about who didn't. And one man's striking absence would inflame suspicions, that of Susan's ex-husband, Michael Woods.

Speaker 20 A whole lot of people showed up.

Speaker 11 She had a lot of friends in the community and everything. And Mike doesn't show up at all.

Speaker 10 Police were everywhere.

Speaker 9 So it's said that suspicions about Michael Woods dated back to the late 70s. Remember, Stephenville was 10-gallon hats and country music to its core.

Speaker 14 Michael had long hair.

Speaker 9 He had a motorcycle. And he had an anti-authority chip on his shoulder.
Kind of like a rebel out of the 60s movie Easy Ryan.

Speaker 6 Michael came to Stephenville in 78 or 79 when a family friend in El Paso was moving here and asked him could he move her things in a truck. Then he stayed.

Speaker 9 More than 40 years after he first came to town, Michael Woods returned to Stephenville for 2020.

Speaker 34 It was a drastic switch. Anytime I ran into somebody new, they were like, whoa, you're kind of odd.

Speaker 34 I think people very much looked at me like an outsider because I didn't sound the same. I didn't look the same.

Speaker 34 I certainly didn't act the same.

Speaker 9 What made him stand out in this town?

Speaker 6 What didn't? Everything about Michael Woods not only stood out in Stephenville, he was the anti-Stevenville. But more than anything, Michael had an attitude.

Speaker 34 I was a child of the 60s, and I wasn't about to cut my hair just to get along with a bunch of stuffed shirts.

Speaker 6 He presented as a very tough front, such that people were a little scared of him. When inevitably he would get insulted by somebody making a comment, he just popped him in the mouth.

Speaker 34 So the police would pull me over and be like, you know, who are you? You know, what are you doing in our town?

Speaker 9 Michael Woods, when I first met him, he was a pretty cool guy, very confident.

Speaker 13 Michael was a live wire and I think that's what Susan saw in him is there was never a dull moment.

Speaker 34 Susan was a bit of an outsider herself. She didn't like cowboys and pickup trucks and I clung to her.
I was different than them and she clung to me. We just kind of became our own unit.

Speaker 9 Michael Woods brought a defiant attitude to everything he did, including when he met Susan's parents. Let's just say good first impressions were not Michael's strong suit.

Speaker 34 When I went to Susan's house the first time, it was hot, so I was wearing a pair of cutoffs and that was all.

Speaker 34 And her mother answered the door and just about had a heart attack because here's this half-naked man at the door asking for my daughter.

Speaker 6 I was raised in a small southern town and when you went over to meet the girl's parents, let's just say you wore something nice.

Speaker 9 He's feral on the doorstep.

Speaker 6 I would say he had a feral quality.

Speaker 6 Michael just can't stay in Stephenville. Out of nowhere, he tells Susan that he's got a job offer back in El Paso where he grew up in an auto repair shop.

Speaker 6 And she takes a deep breath and says, sure, it's an adventure. She's never lived anyplace else.
She was all in.

Speaker 10 These pictures were made the day that she left Stephenville. Her green lagoon is right there and she was pulling a little U-Haul, small trailer with her stuff in it.

Speaker 10 Her mom told us to do something silly, so we did that with the legs. We didn't know what else to do.

Speaker 9 They'd get themselves to El Paso and they'd wed there. But for Michael and Susan Woods, there would be no honeymoon of any kind.

Speaker 13 When they moved to El Paso, they didn't last but a few months. They were starving to death.

Speaker 11 Then it wasn't working anywhere towards the dream that Susan had.

Speaker 10 She was pretty miserable.

Speaker 11 She was having to eat bacon bit sandwiches.

Speaker 10 Bacos in a jar.

Speaker 11 Sprinkled on bread.

Speaker 34 My family grew up really poor. Susan didn't grow up poor.
She just couldn't stand living like that.

Speaker 6 And before long, she drew the line and said, this isn't working. I have to go back.
We're going back.

Speaker 9 They come back to Stephenville. Yeah.

Speaker 10 She got her job back at the sandpaper factory and even working overtime. and he's at home watching TV.

Speaker 11 Sunbathing.

Speaker 10 Sunbathing outside,

Speaker 10 playing his guitar.

Speaker 9 People would see you as you remember, sort of outside sunning, and they thought, he doesn't want to work.

Speaker 14 What was the story?

Speaker 34 Well, I wanted to work, but I couldn't find places that would hire me or keep me. And I had a bit of an attitude.

Speaker 9 What does that feel like? to come back to a place where

Speaker 9 you can just sense the hostility and the rejection.

Speaker 6 I I felt trapped.

Speaker 34 No way out.

Speaker 6 And then one day Michael just ups and leaves. He vanishes.
Susan was at work but she comes back and the car is gone, the yellow Mustang, and he's gone back to Indianapolis.

Speaker 13 Susan was a basket case, crying, couldn't stop crying.

Speaker 5 He had left.

Speaker 13 taking things that belonged to her, crystal prisms that she collected, just what he considered his half of everything they've got.

Speaker 9 He takes the Mustang. He takes the only car they have.

Speaker 6 Yes, it's one thing to take a Mustang. We all like Mustangs.
It's another thing to take the one in which the only one of them that works drives to work.

Speaker 9 Michael leaves without ever saying a word to Susan's face, and yet he gets the last word in anyway. Why? Because he tape recorded a 30-minute angry diatribe.

Speaker 9 It's laced with profanity, and he leaves the tape for Susan on her kitchen counter. The B-word.

Speaker 6 A lot of bad words. He tells her that everything is her fault.
The fact that they have no friends, the fact that he couldn't get a job, everything.

Speaker 13 And to add insult to injury, he had left terrible notes all over the house.

Speaker 10 You'd open the microwave and there'd be one in the door of the microwave.

Speaker 34 You're a bitch.

Speaker 9 You know, it's all your fault.

Speaker 13 You'd open the drawer in the kitchen, there'd be another note.

Speaker 12 You'd lift the lid on the toilet there's a note she found them for weeks there'd be one in her coat pocket there would be one in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom you know all these little surprise

Speaker 6 traps or minefields to to destroy your self-esteem the cassette tapes and these little notes change everything they take a nasty breakup in which one spouse took some stuff to oh my god he's all but threatening her she feared michael

Speaker 9 That seething rage in Michael's words to Susan, it's not lost on police investigators.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry. Any detective in the world identifies Michael Wood as the prime suspect.

Speaker 5 A lot of things didn't help him. He didn't fit in.

Speaker 28 Nobody liked him.

Speaker 14 He left in a huff.

Speaker 5 He has become a number one suspect.

Speaker 8 He was a suspect, a good suspect. and he wouldn't cooperate.
So

Speaker 8 we had to keep going after him.

Speaker 9 Now, detectives would track him down to Indiana, and they were about to pay him a visit.

Speaker 9 The investigation into the murder of Susan Woods starts to reveal new leads.

Speaker 9 Police learn of that angry profanity-laced tape and notes that Michael left for Susan before hightailing it out of town.

Speaker 8 Michael Woods had taken a Mustang that she had bought

Speaker 8 and gone to Indianapolis, Indiana.

Speaker 28 At the end of the day, everybody in town thought that it was Michael.

Speaker 5 That's what all the family thought.

Speaker 5 That's what her friends thought.

Speaker 14 They were afraid that he was going to come back and hurt her.

Speaker 6 Any detective in the world identifies Michael Wood as the prime suspect.

Speaker 8 He's the focus right now.

Speaker 9 Stephenville investigators reach out to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, asking them to find Michael Woods and bring him in for questioning.

Speaker 6 On a Wednesday morning, the day after Susan's kill,

Speaker 6 he's in his front yard and police drive up.

Speaker 34 And I said, well, is this about the parking dispute? Because there was a parking dispute at the house. And they said, yes, if you'll come downtown, we can wrap this up.

Speaker 6 So Michael goes on downtown. He's led into a conference room and there's a bunch of cops in there.

Speaker 33 As a matter of routine, it's necessary for us to establish an alibi for you where you were at and so forth. I'll assist you anyway I can.

Speaker 6 And as Michael tells the story, they began to accuse him saying, we knew you did it.

Speaker 34 They said, well, Your wife's dead and we know you killed her, so you might as well confess now so you don't get the gas chamber.

Speaker 34 And that's how I found out my wife was dead.

Speaker 34 I had to take a break from that. I went to the restroom and threw up.

Speaker 34 It was such a shock.

Speaker 34 In the back of my mind, I was thinking they must have made a mistake. It must be somebody else.

Speaker 9 Michael also tells police that he was in Indiana when the murder was committed, and that the last time he spoke with Susan was a couple of weeks before she died.

Speaker 33 When was the last time you spoke with your wife? I spoke to her, I think, a couple weeks ago. Would you say that was a friendly conversation on both ends?

Speaker 33 It was friendly, but not as friendly as I would have liked. Did she indicate she was seeing anybody? She indicated that she was seeing other men and was glad to see men that didn't have my problems.

Speaker 33 It was refreshing.

Speaker 34 At one point, the police officer wrote out a confession and asked me to sign it. And I said, no, I'm not not going to sign that.

Speaker 25 I think I want a lawyer.

Speaker 5 And so they let me go and I had to walk home.

Speaker 9 Michael would say later that he took the Yellow Mustang and some of the stuff in the house because he and Susan shared ownership of those things.

Speaker 9 And as for that rage-filled tape and those notes he left for Susan, well, Michael says he was angry, but he never intended to threaten her. You said no one ever got angry at Susan.

Speaker 26 You got angry at Susan.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Do you regret that now?

Speaker 34 Of course I regret it now.

Speaker 34 If I had known something was going to happen to her, I would have never left.

Speaker 27 What do you mean by that?

Speaker 34 After I left, I kind of felt like she got murdered because I wasn't there to take care of her.

Speaker 34 I couldn't even come to her funeral because I didn't trust the police not to shoot me.

Speaker 9 You thought you'd be gunned down as you tried to attend her funeral?

Speaker 34 I thought they would arrest me and find some excuse for shooting me.

Speaker 9 Michael is in the crosshairs of the Stephenville Police Investigation. They suspect that Michael drove back to Texas, committed the murder, and returned to Indianapolis.

Speaker 9 Lead investigator Donnie Hensley just needs Michael's fingerprints and palm print to connect him to the crime scene. So they get on a plane and head to Indianapolis.

Speaker 8 Sergeant Hensley and I drove by the house where Michael Wood was staying just to get the lay lay of the land. Later on, we came back with the surveillance van.

Speaker 8 You drive by vans like that all the time and you don't pay any attention to them. So innocuous just sitting there.

Speaker 6 As luck would have it, they actually spy Michael and his brother in the front yard. And they're starting to put out items for what looks like a yard sale.

Speaker 6 And Donnie notices a number of crystal figurines being sold in this yard sale and says, aha, those have got to be crystal figurines that he stole, took, purloined from the house.

Speaker 6 I bet you we could swoop in and get him for theft.

Speaker 5 They used that to get a search warrant to go grab Michael.

Speaker 6 The Indianapolis police not only saw the figurines, they found some marijuana and they arrested him.

Speaker 5 And that's how they got his fingerprints and palm prints.

Speaker 9 Michael is never charged with marijuana possession, but the lawmen from Texas get what they came for.

Speaker 6 Donnie walked back to the Indianapolis airport the next day going, aha, on this card, I've got his prints, we've got the bastard.

Speaker 5 So they're thinking, okay, we nailed him.

Speaker 6 Donnie was so confident that they had now broken the case. They're on the airplane back to Texas.
He's already filing out the extradition papers for Michael to come back to Stephenville.

Speaker 9 But what happened then?

Speaker 6 They sit down and they compare those fingerprints to the fingerprints at the crime center. And Donnie told me he has never been more surprised in his entire adult life.

Speaker 6 And they find something much darker and much more ominous.

Speaker 9 No one could have imagined is that here at this secluded rest stop just off the highway, a hideous crime had taken place. It would cast new light onto the murder of Susan Wood.

Speaker 16 I couldn't scream because it would make the beating worse.

Speaker 12 This is the same person who killed Susan Woods.

Speaker 16 He told me, he goes, I've killed before and I'm not afraid to kill again.

Speaker 6 This was a young woman who put up quite a struggle for her life.

Speaker 9 It's like a death mask.

Speaker 34 I needed a case solved and I owed owed it to Susan to find her killer.

Speaker 11 I think this might be it.

Speaker 16 As soon as I got in the vehicle, I knew I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Speaker 6 And in Shannon's telling, suddenly Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr.
Hyde.

Speaker 9 Why were you leaving items of clothing around the campground here?

Speaker 16 Because no one knew I was down here. He got on top of me and he pushed my head into

Speaker 16 the water.

Speaker 16 He said, I've killed before and I'm not afraid to kill again.

Speaker 13 It was like hearing that Beaver Cleaver had killed Susan.

Speaker 5 Nobody ever suspected him.

Speaker 9 Nobody. Once you hear Shannon's story, each one of these pictures connects somehow to what happened to Susan Woods.

Speaker 13 Susan let him in her house because she felt he was as harmless as we did.

Speaker 6 I was, without without any doubt evil to my entire core.

Speaker 7 A monster if one was ever born.

Speaker 34 Gotcha.

Speaker 9 It's July 1987 and in the small town of Stephenville, Texas, 30-year-old Susan Woods is found brutally murdered in her bathtub.

Speaker 10 She didn't deserve what she got.

Speaker 10 That was pure torture and hell on her.

Speaker 9 As they investigate, police zero in on her estranged husband, Michael Woods, whose bad boy biker attitude had made him a town pariah and who'd had an angry bust-up with Susan just weeks earlier.

Speaker 13 She was afraid of Michael after they broke up.

Speaker 13 Every window was nailed shut. Every door was deadbolted.
She was scared.

Speaker 9 But when detectives in Stephenville obtain Michael Woods' fingerprints and compare them to those at the crime scene, they get a Texas-sized surprise.

Speaker 8 The prints didn't match Michael Woods. His prints and palm prints did not match the ones that are lifted from the tub beside the body.

Speaker 9 No match, no murder charge. Yet, Michael Woods knows he's not off the hook.

Speaker 34 They were still after me.

Speaker 34 They didn't care if the prints matched. That was a minor detail to be dealt with in court.

Speaker 9 Susan's parents learned that their murdered daughter had an $11,000 life insurance policy. And guess who's the beneficiary? Michael.

Speaker 6 When they became aware of this life insurance situation, they were just apoplectic.

Speaker 6 So they brought suit against him to eliminate the payment, but also to have him declared legally responsible for Susan's death.

Speaker 34 Susan's parents said that I had killed her and that it was a wrongful death. I had no way to fight it.
I couldn't afford lawyers. And they sued me for $700,000 plus interest.

Speaker 9 The court decided in favor of Susan's parents. But up in Indiana, Michael doesn't have $700,000 or anything like it.

Speaker 6 So long as he didn't go back to Texas, which he was never going to do, they could not, you know, seize any of his meager assets.

Speaker 9 But that cloud of suspicion over Michael's head never goes away. And it's not just Susan's parents.
Even complete strangers seem to believe that Michael had killed her.

Speaker 28 Everybody in town thought that it was Michael.

Speaker 34 At an actual performance while we were on break, I had a guy came up and say, hey, man, didn't you kill your wife?

Speaker 4 It's like,

Speaker 34 no, I didn't kill my wife. Why are you asking me this?

Speaker 34 I tried to put it out of my mind as much as possible, but it weighed heavy on my mind.

Speaker 9 Can anybody who hasn't gone through what you went through understand what you felt like in those days?

Speaker 34 When I should have been grieving for my wife, I was trying to fight for my freedom.

Speaker 34 You know, I had to constantly watch over my shoulder.

Speaker 34 My life just fell apart.

Speaker 34 I guess the music was the only thing I had left.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, the criminal investigation into Susan's murder is at a standstill.

Speaker 13 And the years went by, 88, 89, 90, all the way through the year 2000.

Speaker 13 And everyone knew it would never be solved.

Speaker 13 We'd learned to live with that.

Speaker 9 After a gig in 2005, Michael pours out his heart to a friend about Susan, about her murder, and about his life in the shadow of suspicion.

Speaker 34 It was around the time of year that Susan had died, and I just kind of broke down after we played.

Speaker 9 That single conversation changes everything. His friend emails the Stephenville police and begs them to help Michael, says he's been really suffering about all this.

Speaker 14 I thought, well, this is interesting, so I called her.

Speaker 12 And I said, okay, have Michael call me because if he'll cooperate with the police, then we'll reopen the case.

Speaker 20 I didn't hear anything for six months.

Speaker 9 Still, Detective Miller sees an opportunity here thanks to DNA testing, which was not available when Susan's murder was first investigated. Remember those six cigarette butts from the crime scene?

Speaker 9 They had a male's DNA on them.

Speaker 19 But whose?

Speaker 34 Don Miller wanted to get my DNA, and I was pretty weary of cops.

Speaker 14 And first he said yes, and then he called back and said, no, don't come.

Speaker 5 Someone up there anyway.

Speaker 6 Suddenly, after 19 years, Michael Woods is face to face with a Stephenville police officer.

Speaker 23 What did he say that caused you to open the door?

Speaker 9 You could have shut that door and never seen him again.

Speaker 34 I needed a case solved and he was at the door

Speaker 34 and I owed it to Susan to find her killer. We stood out on the porch while him and his partner got my DNA.

Speaker 5 The DNA came back. It's not his DNA.

Speaker 28 So 100%

Speaker 28 now, there's no question in my mind, Michael Woods is clear.

Speaker 25 And I call him.

Speaker 5 He just started crying and he said, thank you, and he hung up.

Speaker 9 I don't think any of us can know what it's like to get the phone call you got that you had been cleared in the murder of the woman you loved. What does that feel like?

Speaker 6 I couldn't think clearly for a few days.

Speaker 34 It's like it's finally over.

Speaker 34 You know, they're not going to put me in jail. I'm not going to die in prison.

Speaker 6 All of this kind of put Don Miller in a tough position. You know, good news for Michael Woods that you're not a murder suspect.
But bad news for Don Miller, he's just freed up his only suspect.

Speaker 9 That leaves Don Miller with almost no remaining leads, except for those original fingerprints from the crime scene.

Speaker 5 I take them to DPS in Austin. I ask them to run these fingerprints through an automatic fingerprint identification system.

Speaker 6 So a few days later, there's a call from a trooper down in Austin. He says, got a match on those prints for you.
When Don reads the DA's file, he finds something much darker and much more ominous.

Speaker 16 He told me, I've killed before and I'm not afraid to kill again.

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Speaker 9 It's 2006 now, and Stephenville detective Don Miller is back to square one after finally clearing Michael Woods in the murder of his wife Susan.

Speaker 9 So, he takes the existing fingerprints, you know, from the crime scene, and he runs them in an FBI database system, one that did not exist back in 1987.

Speaker 9 And finally, after all this time, there is a match.

Speaker 9 The fingerprints belong to a man named Joseph Scott Hatley, who was arrested for armed robbery in 1988 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Speaker 6 So he calls the district attorney and says, do we know a Joseph Scott Hatley? And he says, We sure do. Want to come read the file?

Speaker 5 And so I opened the file and I started reading this report about a 16-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted.

Speaker 9 She is Shannon Myers. And in 1988, one year after Susan Wood's murder, Shannon told police that she'd been sexually assaulted by Scott Hatley.

Speaker 9 So what's Hatley's story? He comes from a well-known family in town. He'd gone to Stephenville, High.
And his sister, Regina, lived next door to Shannon.

Speaker 16 In 1987, I met Scott Hatley when I was over there visiting Regina

Speaker 6 and he began to ask her questions and express an interest.

Speaker 16 One night I was over at Regina's and Scott and I had already been heavy flirting and he reached over and kissed me. We started you know having sex.
I was a teenager and I just wanted to have fun.

Speaker 16 I'd go out party with my friends, come home and meet up with Scott.

Speaker 9 But Shannon says 20-year-old Scott grew increasingly testy and aggressive.

Speaker 16 He became very controlling. He wanted to know exactly who I was with, where we were going, how long we were going to stay there.

Speaker 16 Anytime he and I would have intercourse, it was always by water. It was always in the bathroom.

Speaker 9 One night Shannon recalls Scott demanded sex. She said no.

Speaker 6 And in Shannon's telling, no stop, suddenly Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr.
Hyde.

Speaker 16 And he pulled out a knife and he held the knife to my throat.

Speaker 6 And he raped me.

Speaker 9 After the assault, Shannon and her mother go to the police, but Hatley is never charged. And Shannon ends the relationship.

Speaker 9 Ten months later, Hatley asks her to meet to explain himself.

Speaker 16 And I wanted to know why did he betray the trust that I instilled in him. As soon as I got in the vehicle, I knew I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Speaker 6 And ultimately, he pulls up in this roadside park in the middle of nowhere, about three miles south of town.

Speaker 23 It was like a little baby picnic area park, and it was pitch black.

Speaker 6 And she knew she was in trouble.

Speaker 9 So did you come over here? Is that what happened?

Speaker 14 You walked.

Speaker 16 We got out of the vehicle. We came over here and sat down.

Speaker 16 He kissed me passionately and he wanted to have sex immediately and I told him no. And then that's when he released his rage on me.

Speaker 16 As the car is going by, I'm thinking,

Speaker 28 help. Somebody help me.

Speaker 3 And I couldn't scream.

Speaker 16 I was screaming inside.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 16 I couldn't scream because it would make the rape worse. It would make the beating worse.

Speaker 16 I always had to stay naked. I couldn't put my clothes back on.

Speaker 16 And he would drink.

Speaker 16 And he would smoke a cigarette.

Speaker 16 And then the cycle of abuse would happen again.

Speaker 6 They were out there all night long. And the violence nearly really led up.

Speaker 6 At some point she got up and ran.

Speaker 9 Go ahead and show us if you'd like.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 14 I ran this way and I got right along where the

Speaker 16 where the creek was at.

Speaker 16 That's when he caught me.

Speaker 16 He got on top of me and he pushed my head into the

Speaker 16 into the into the water

Speaker 16 He said, I've killed before, and I'm not afraid to kill again.

Speaker 16 When Scott said, I've killed before,

Speaker 16 I really thought that I was going to be his next victim.

Speaker 16 I started leaving pieces of me behind, clues.

Speaker 16 I left my bra behind, my hair clip.

Speaker 9 Why were you leaving items of clothing around the campground here because no one knew i was down here

Speaker 16 i ended up i stopped fighting him i started manipulating him

Speaker 12 what sort of things did you say to him then that i loved him that

Speaker 16 i want a future together that still

Speaker 16 It just

Speaker 16 sends shivers through my spine, even saying it today.

Speaker 16 It was probably around two to three in the morning when we started getting into the vehicle and Scott turned on the light

Speaker 16 and I believed what saved me was because I did like this and I hid my face.

Speaker 16 He really could not see the bruises and he goes, okay, I'm going to take you back home. He goes, don't you tell or I'll come back and I'll finish.

Speaker 12 And I believed him.

Speaker 16 As soon as I got home, my stepfather walked out of the bedroom and I fell into his arms and I said, Scott did this.

Speaker 9 Her parents take her to the hospital and once again, Shannon reports a sexual assault at the hands of Scott Hatley to the police.

Speaker 9 And with photos of her injuries and rape test kits to support her account, Shannon is convinced that this time, Hatley will be charged with rape.

Speaker 9 Hatley is so sure he'll be arrested that he flees to Vegas and there he gets picked up for armed robbery, where those crucial fingerprints are taken.

Speaker 16 The case went to a grand jury and that went on deaf ears. The grand jury didn't indict Scott because of lack of evidence.

Speaker 6 This was back in the day in the state of Texas, where if you could show a young woman was promiscuous, you could undercut a rape charge. That's exactly what happened.

Speaker 16 I'm still mind-blown by that. You had pictures of bruises, of him choking me.
You had the rape kit. You had everything.

Speaker 16 To me, the justice system that day raped me.

Speaker 16 It was a lot worth a 16-year-old me to take.

Speaker 9 For Detective Miller, Shannon's story is a roadmap that leads directly to Susan Wood's killing.

Speaker 9 Now, time to put the heat on Scott Hatman.

Speaker 19 Why are they going to straight up ask me, did you kill him?

Speaker 6 So Don is going down into the reports, and there in Shannon's report, she talks about being raped violently.

Speaker 6 And Hatley said, you mind me, because if you don't, I'm going to kill you. And then Don read the words that changed everything.
This Hatley said, I've killed before.

Speaker 6 And Don leaned back, he thought, gotcha.

Speaker 9 So to make it clear, this all took place in 1988, and you're looking at these pictures in 2006, isn't that correct?

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 9 Once you hear Shannon's story, each one of these pictures connects somehow to what happened to Susan Woods.

Speaker 27 My mind is going back to Susan Woods' crime scene because everything is matching now.

Speaker 27 Up to and including the cigarette butts.

Speaker 5 Just the sheer violence, the manner in which she was sexually assaulted, the fact of he would, you know, beat her senseless and she'd come back around and he'd do it again.

Speaker 5 And in the meantime, be smoking and drinking.

Speaker 5 That explained why I had six cigarette butts in the ashtray.

Speaker 9 Here's another shot of that creek you were talking about and this is a this is an important moment in Shannon's narrative isn't it?

Speaker 27 Very important in Shannon's narrative when she said there's the indention of my body. There's the creek that my head was held under as I was being assaulted.

Speaker 27 Then I knew that This crime scene is the same as Susan Wood's crime scene.

Speaker 9 Because that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 5 That's exactly what happened to Sue.

Speaker 9 Yes, sir.

Speaker 9 Shannon's assault took place in 1988, a year after Susan Wood's murder. No one thought about connecting the two cases back then.

Speaker 9 And had Hatley's fingerprints from his arrest in Vegas been available on a database, detectives might have put the pieces together.

Speaker 5 I mean, Shannon was the key all along.

Speaker 6 You know, so at this point, things begin to move really fast. Hatley turns out not to be hard to find at all.

Speaker 6 He's in the phone book down in Round Rock, Texas, just outside Austin, where he worked as a supervisor at a warehouse.

Speaker 5 So, my partner and I, Russell Ford, we get in the car, and as we're headed down the Round Rock, Texas, I looked at Russell and I said, Today is 6-6 of 06,

Speaker 5 the day we meet the devil himself.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 12 we did.

Speaker 6 So the Round Rock police have brought him in for questioning.

Speaker 6 And Don

Speaker 6 is absolutely convinced that he's the guy.

Speaker 19 Did the police ever interview you back then? No, they didn't back then.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 5 In my mind, it's not alleged. It's not a matter of, I wonder if Hatley really did this murder.

Speaker 12 He did it.

Speaker 35 Can you think of any reason why someone would say that you were responsible for this?

Speaker 19 Somebody's saying I'm responsible.

Speaker 35 Well, I just want to know, if you can think of any reason why somebody would say that you killed Susan Knights.

Speaker 19 I certainly wouldn't.

Speaker 19 There would be no reason I would.

Speaker 25 He's calm, cool, and collected.

Speaker 5 You know, I mean, an innocent person would be pinging off the walls.

Speaker 15 He knows while we're there, Stephenville P.D.

Speaker 5 And I know that he knows.

Speaker 35 How do you feel about being interviewed about this?

Speaker 19 Well, it's just

Speaker 19 25 years too late probably but

Speaker 19 I mean personally I had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 5 What I'm hoping for is him to say I was never in the house but unfortunately that's not what we got.

Speaker 19 Did you ever go into the house yet?

Speaker 12 A bunch or

Speaker 12 I don't bunch.

Speaker 19 You know, it was a place we'd party sometimes.

Speaker 6 Did you ever have sex with Susan at any time?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 19 So there wouldn't be any reason why your DNA would be anywhere around her body? I wouldn't think so.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 5 So I've got palm prints on either side of a dead body that I know is going to be Hatley's. In my mind, it was a formality.

Speaker 19 Would you mind if we took a sample of your DNA

Speaker 19 today?

Speaker 19 Because I don't know.

Speaker 19 if I should talk to an attorney.

Speaker 9 Then, Detective Miller cuts to the chase.

Speaker 19 Well, they're going to straight up ask you, did you kill her?

Speaker 19 I didn't kill her.

Speaker 9 But then Hatley starts to change his story. He backtracks a little bit and reveals that he knew Susan a little more than he first let on, all while keeping us cool.

Speaker 19 Okay, did you have sex with her?

Speaker 19 You know,

Speaker 19 like I say, a lot of the times it's just a murder. And

Speaker 19 we all hung out. Do you think you might have had sex with her? It's possible.
I had sex with one of the people.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 I would say we might have fooled around, but it wasn't

Speaker 19 nothing heavy.

Speaker 19 It was usually too high or not to be anything real heavy.

Speaker 9 So at the same time Hatley is being interrogated, there's this startling new development.

Speaker 9 Round Rock police are simultaneously interviewing Hatley's wife, and she's alleging a harrowing story of domestic abuse.

Speaker 5 She describes an event that happened on Christmas Eve of 05, where she was physically assaulted.

Speaker 9 Hatley's spouse, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, says he pulled her hands behind her back and sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 9 It's a vicious attack, and she even notes it on her calendar for that night. It reads, Scott beat the hell out of me.
Nosebleed, black eye, could barely breathe.

Speaker 9 And she claims he did this on a number of occasions.

Speaker 19 All right, sir. We'll have a.

Speaker 18 Go ahead and come on guys.

Speaker 9 Back at the Round Rock police station, Hatley consents to giving a DNA sample and he's sent home.

Speaker 9 So will those DNA test results finally confirm the identity of Susan's killer?

Speaker 9 Or will Scott Hatley walk away again?

Speaker 10 It was very, very hard to take, but the evidence was there.

Speaker 9 18 years after the town of Stephenville, Texas was rocked with the news of the brutal death of Susan Woods, her murder has remained unsolved.

Speaker 9 Susan's family, they'd started to lose hope that they would ever get justice. Then, a dramatic development while Joseph Scott Hatley and his family are out to dinner.

Speaker 5 They went to eat supper and when they left the restaurant, the SWAT team arrested Hatley.

Speaker 9 Hatley was arrested for domestic violence charges tied to his wife's graphic allegations of abuse and that gave Detective Don Miller time to run Hatley's DNA for the murder of Susan Woods.

Speaker 9 The DNA from the cigarette butts are a match for Joseph Scott Hatley.

Speaker 9 The first person Detective Don Miller tells is Susan Wood's father, Joe Atkins.

Speaker 5 I said, Mr. Atkins, the guy who murdered your daughter has been arrested.
And he said, well, I'm glad you finally got old Michael. I thought he was going to get away with it.
And I said, no, sir, Mr.

Speaker 5 Atkins.

Speaker 5 It's a guy named Joseph Scott Hatley.

Speaker 5 And he looked at me and he said, well,

Speaker 12 I don't believe it.

Speaker 13 To hear that Scott Hatley was who had killed Susan was like hearing that Beaver Cleaver had killed Susan.

Speaker 9 For Susan's friends Cindy and Roy, the news is even more shocking. They know Scott Hadley.
They're related to him.

Speaker 11 My initial reaction was...

Speaker 6 Oh boy.

Speaker 12 There's no way he did.

Speaker 10 He was my first cousin that I was raised with.

Speaker 10 He was like a brother to me. It was very, very hard to take.

Speaker 10 But the evidence was there, and I did believe Don.

Speaker 14 I did believe him.

Speaker 14 Hatley was a chameleon.

Speaker 5 Nobody ever suspected him.

Speaker 25 Nobody.

Speaker 9 It gets even worse. Hatley would talk with Susan's unsuspecting friends about her murder.
He even attended a birthday party with Susan's friends just weeks after her death.

Speaker 13 Susan was the main topic of conversation at this birthday party. It's all anyone talked about, including Scott wanted to discuss it.

Speaker 13 He did have a fascination with the case, but we all did at that time.

Speaker 9 Michael Woods, he'd spent decades as an outcast, scorned, under constant suspicion for his wife's murder. Now, her real killer had been found.

Speaker 34 I was shocked.

Speaker 34 It was her best friend's cousin. A monster if one was ever born.

Speaker 13 And I can't imagine what Michael went through all those years, knowing that everybody blamed him for something he didn't do. There was a lot of hatred toward him.

Speaker 34 DNA tells a story

Speaker 14 and it doesn't lie.

Speaker 34 The proof is there that I didn't do it.

Speaker 34 And I would have never hurt Susan for anything.

Speaker 34 When they arrested Hadley, I felt like, you know, he's going to go to jail for what he's done now

Speaker 14 and

Speaker 34 that Susan's going to be able to rest a little easier in her grave.

Speaker 6 Everybody saw that they got Scott Hatley. Cool, great.

Speaker 6 Go justice.

Speaker 6 But there was no concurrent announcement that Michael Woods is free and that we wronged him. There is no concurrent announcement.

Speaker 6 that, by the way, that crazy 16-year-old girl, by the way, oh, she was right too.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry, I get a little angry about it.

Speaker 13 In retrospect, just like Michael, she was a total victim. Everyone rallied around Scott while this poor girl suffered.

Speaker 13 There was a lot of injustice in this case.

Speaker 9 After Scott Hatley was charged with the murder of Susan Woods, Shannon says she was looking forward to facing her attacker in court.

Speaker 9 But Susan's parents, they don't want a public trial. So instead, Joseph Scott Hatley pled guilty to murder.

Speaker 16 I was hoping to go to trial and to stand before him and say, look at me now, and to show him that I don't fear you anymore.

Speaker 9 Scott Hadley never actually goes on trial.

Speaker 6 I think there are a lot of people that followed this story that would like to have seen

Speaker 6 justice disclosed.

Speaker 9 Hatley is sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Speaker 6 And the deal was only for the murder. He was never prosecuted for the domestic charges in Round Rock or the rapes of Shannon Myers.
The reason he let Shannon live

Speaker 6 is he knew no one would believe her. He knew the town.
If Susan talked, she was a Stephenville girl. People would listen.
They would know. Shannon is only alive today.

Speaker 6 because Scott Hatley knew no one would believe her.

Speaker 6 And the awful truth is, he was right.

Speaker 9 Stephenville was a town that kept its secrets well hidden. But there was one more shock still to come to light, a discovery that would shed light on how Hatley became a monster.

Speaker 13 Susan let him in her house because she felt he was as harmless as we did.

Speaker 6 There's no way he could be dangerous.

Speaker 9 Secrets revealed in Joseph Scott Hatley's own words.

Speaker 6 I had become a walking demon. I was his servant, his slave.
I was the devil.

Speaker 31 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.

Speaker 29 Jonas, brother, you got it.

Speaker 31 It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 27 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.

Speaker 31 If they can only make it home. What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No.

Speaker 6 We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 32 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 31 Homely.

Speaker 31 You won't be alone this trip.

Speaker 29 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 31 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right? A very Jonas Christmas movie now streaming on Disney Plus and Mulu with a TVPGDL.

Speaker 36 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 13 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 36 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 36 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 29 Is there any way you can get out of the building?

Speaker 31 I don't know without waking him and I'm scared.

Speaker 36 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 31 We've got something big going on here. The first thing you hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 36 A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 9 For all of Joseph Scott Hatley's evil deeds, he only spent 11 years in prison.

Speaker 10 When I found out he was being released for killing my best friend, I'm thinking, gosh, drug dealers get more prison time than that.

Speaker 6 He moved into a trailer near his daughter outside of Abilene, Texas, was diagnosed with cancer. And in December of 2021, his landlord found him on the floor of his trailer dead.

Speaker 10 There is a God.

Speaker 13 Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Speaker 9 Unknown to all, in that trailer on the outskirts of the woods, where he'd spent his final days, there were answers to the mystery of his depravity just waiting to be found.

Speaker 6 So not long after Hatley was found dead, Detective Don Miller gets this call.

Speaker 6 Somebody had just bought the trailer where Hatley died and while cleaning it out had found all sorts of disturbing stuff that really creeped him out.

Speaker 9 Pages and pages of a handwritten account of a life of crime and murder. He shares those surprising findings with writer Brian Burrough.

Speaker 6 The killer, in his own words, it answers all the things that nobody ever knew, the whys and the hows and the insight into the mind of Joseph Scott Hatley.

Speaker 13 Scotty was just a goofy, kind of chubby kid that didn't quite fit in at school. He seemed utterly harmless.

Speaker 6 There's another story of Scott Hatley, though. It's a story of a kid who was able to keep those violent fantasies at bay with the help of booze and pornography until he couldn't anymore.

Speaker 9 His violent fantasies kicked in as early as age eight, he writes. He thinks about how cool it would be to shoot up his school, but how he'd have to kill his parents first.

Speaker 9 You know what I was struck by in this was his description of what he said his mother did to him.

Speaker 5 His mom would hit him upside the head and it would make his ears ring and every time that he got mad his ears would ring.

Speaker 6 He writes, I grabbed my mom, wrapped my hands around her throat and whispered to her I would kill her. I saw it in her eyes.
Fear. I had found a new drug, fear.

Speaker 9 That slap of his mother's and what it triggered in him, it would reverberate for years.

Speaker 11 After we graduated, I didn't see him until he had kind of got out of the Air Force and come back, and he was drinking a whole lot.

Speaker 6 He writes, smoking and drinking beer out on the drag, man, I felt like a rock star.

Speaker 9 He writes about how from the age of 13 onward, he craved the feeling of being intoxicated. But it was with a cold, clear mind that he began to plot his hideous crimes.

Speaker 5 He said, everything that I ever did, I thought about doing when I was sober.

Speaker 9 Attlee writes that it was at a weekly roundtable gathering of friends organized by his sister Regina that he got his first look at Susan Woods. He'd come to drink and play cards that summer night.

Speaker 9 In his drunken state, he thought Susan was flirting with him. A week later, he was still thinking about her.

Speaker 6 You must understand, I did not set out that night to hunt anyone. I was lonely, drunk, high, and looking for a good time.

Speaker 10 There was no reason for him to go to her house. She probably let him in because of me, because she knew he was my cousin.
That's it.

Speaker 6 She let him drink a Coke, and they talked. At one point, I overstepped my bounds, and Susan slapped me.
What happened next is a blur. By the time I came out of the fog, I had brutalized her.

Speaker 6 She was alive. I could have stopped, but I didn't.
She said she would not tell anyone if I just let her go. I found it interesting that she thought any of that mattered.

Speaker 6 I asked her if she believed in God. She said she did.
I told her then, you need to pray.

Speaker 6 He actually writes, by God, I had become a monster.

Speaker 9 Given the state Susan's body had been found in, police were never able to discern exactly how Susan had been killed. But Scott Hatley knew, and he wrote about it.

Speaker 6 It was not death by drowning in the bathtub, but suffocation by a pillow that would tell the tale of murder.

Speaker 9 Immediately after killing Susan and leaving her house, Hatley drives past the police department and he claims in his writings, thinks about turning himself in.

Speaker 9 What he actually did days later was go to Susan's funeral, sign the guest book, and silently taunt the police as they watch the crowd.

Speaker 6 I did not cry. I did not grieve.
I was, without any doubt, evil to my entire core.

Speaker 6 And then he finishes. I wish with all my heart that I could tell you I've mourned for what I'd done, but that would be a lie.

Speaker 9 No one suspects him. And Hatley writes that when he sees his crimes in the paper, he experienced an unbelievable thrill.

Speaker 6 My sister had a round oak table in her kitchen that for years our group would sit around, drink, and talk the nights away. We spent many hours discussing Susan's murder.

Speaker 6 My cousin's boyfriend was a suspect, so she had inside information.

Speaker 34 Scott would be sitting at the table.

Speaker 12 We would fill them in.

Speaker 6 Scott had no serious concern that they were any longer going to get him because they were so fixated on Michael Woods who Hatley actually calls my other victim.

Speaker 5 He was right there. Nobody ever suspected him.
Nobody.

Speaker 6 How could they know that the answers to the question sat right across the table?

Speaker 7 You don't realize that sometimes there are monsters that live in the heart of some other people.

Speaker 10 Right under your nose. Right under your nose.

Speaker 9 Towards the end, Hatley sums up his life with another final chilling realization.

Speaker 6 I've spent hundreds of pages writing about my two sides, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde. Those men in the mirror, are they still there? Can I see them? To say I don't would be a lie.

Speaker 6 They have always been there and always will.

Speaker 9 But what about Shannon? What words did Hatley have for her from beyond the grave? What was her message back?

Speaker 9 When Joseph Scott Hatley's handwritten autobiography was revealed after his death, the murder of Susan Woods was not the only thing he wrote about. He also wrote about Shannon.

Speaker 6 Shannon had no idea who I was, what I was.

Speaker 6 I told her I would give her something to file charges on. Once I was done humiliating her, I drove her back to her neighborhood.
I had become a walking demon.

Speaker 16 I know Scott knew that he was guilty. I know Scott knew that what he did to me was terribly wrong.

Speaker 9 That night in the park has haunted Shannon for 35 years.

Speaker 5 When I first met her, her eyes were sunken. Anytime a pickup pulled up next to her with loud pipes, she would have a panic attack.
Anytime she took a shower, she'd have a panic attack.

Speaker 5 Anytime any water got around her, she had a panic attack.

Speaker 16 The fear ended one day while I was at work. I get this phone call from Donnie.

Speaker 9 When Don Miller told Shannon that Scott Hatley had died, the news changed everything for her.

Speaker 16 I felt happiness

Speaker 16 that I could, you know, that I could live again. I had to learn how to live again without fear.

Speaker 10 We were more

Speaker 16 up in this way.

Speaker 9 Shannon felt compelled to face her demons and to revisit that park decades later.

Speaker 9 Could you ever have imagined that you would survive this and stand here today as someone who had endured and prevailed what was done to you?

Speaker 18 Never.

Speaker 16 I never thought that I could be strong enough to stand here today

Speaker 16 and tell my story.

Speaker 9 You're a hero, shit.

Speaker 16 I don't see myself as a hero.

Speaker 16 I also don't see myself as a victim.

Speaker 16 I do feel a connection with Susan because she lost her life and I'm here. I still feel like, you know, we're bonded by that strangely.

Speaker 9 Michael Woods, he's still writing and performing his music today, but he remains haunted by his memories of Susan.

Speaker 34 I love Susan. I love her to this day.

Speaker 34 I think about times with her driving around, laughing, having a good time.

Speaker 34 She had quite a sense of humor.

Speaker 34 I just miss her.

Speaker 10 I miss her every day. I do.
But she did come to me in a dream.

Speaker 10 She was walking along the road,

Speaker 12 and

Speaker 10 I put my hand on the glass, and she put her hand on the other side of the glass. And she looked at me, and she had the most angelic smile on her face.

Speaker 10 I never will forget it.

Speaker 10 But I'm going to see her one day.

Speaker 10 I will see her, hopefully.

Speaker 3 Even with Susan Woods' case closed, Detective Don Miller thinks that Joseph Hatley likely had other victims based on his writings.

Speaker 4 In fact, Miller now plans to look at other unsolved cases with similarities to Susan Woods. In the meantime, that is our program for tonight.
Thanks for watching.

Speaker 3 I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.

Speaker 8 Good night.

Speaker 30 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 31 I know there's going to be a twist, won't they? A massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 30 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.