MURDERED: J.B. Beasley & Tracie Hawlett

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Speaker 2 Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

Speaker 1 And I'm Britt.

Speaker 2 And the story I have for you today is about two best friends planning to close out summer with like a classic American flair at a high school field party.

Speaker 2 But when the girls never make it home, what should have been a scene out of a 90s teen flick turns into something out of a horror movie instead. This is the story of J.B.

Speaker 2 Hilton Beasley and Tracy Hollett.

Speaker 2 Back in 1999, 17-year-old J.B. Hilton Beasley and Tracy Hollett are best friends.
I mean, inseparable.

Speaker 2 So when Tracy has to spend JB's birthday working the closing shift at JCPenney one Saturday night in July, JB does the thing that any true thickest thieves best friends would do.

Speaker 2 She goes to the mall a little before nine to wait for Tracy and keep her company while she's closing.

Speaker 2 After, the two plan to head back to Tracy's house to get ready before heading out to Headland to like tear it up on their last weekend of summer break.

Speaker 2 And by tear it up, I mean like the high school version in Dothan, Alabama, which seems similar to what I know growing up in Indiana. Like they're going to a field party.

Speaker 1 I love this already. I know.

Speaker 2 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 Now, the girls are already getting a late start and Tracy's got a hard 1130 curfew.

Speaker 2 So when Tracy's shift is over, they get home, they get ready as quick as they can, and they're out the door in no time.

Speaker 2 Now, Tracy's mom, Carol, is working a double that day, so she's not there to see the girls off. But she does get home right around 11.30 when Tracy is supposed to be rolling in as well.

Speaker 2 But instead of seeing Tracy walk through the door, Carol hears the phone ring. Not the main house line, it's a second line, the one in Tracy's room.

Speaker 2 And she ignores it, figuring it's some friend calling to recap the night, whatever. But Tracy's little brother does what little brothers do, and he picks up.

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 2 Right, Because like maybe their mom doesn't want to chat with Tracy's friends in the middle of the night, but he sure does. Little brothers? Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So he's probably a little bummed when it actually is just his sister on the other end and Tracy's asking to talk to their mom.

Speaker 1 But why wouldn't she just call the mainline then?

Speaker 2 I think it was a strategic move. I know when I wanted something, I knew which parent to ask, right?

Speaker 2 And what's going on here is Tracy's trying to avoid her stepdad, Michael. So she knew by calling her phone, like how it would play out.
She knew her brother. She knew he'd pick up.

Speaker 2 And her brother goes and gets mom, who is the person she wants to talk to.

Speaker 1 Bypassing the stepdad. Yeah, this is like that delicate dance of parental diplomacy.
I am familiar as a child and now familiar as a parent.

Speaker 2 Oh, as the parent. You're on the other end of it now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like Joe is, she's not even two yet and she's already figuring out how to play the game. So like, I can't imagine what you're dealing with with an actual teenager.

Speaker 2 So anyways, Carol picks up and Tracy tells her that the night hasn't gone as planned. They got lost.
They had to stop for directions. So they haven't even made it to the party yet.

Speaker 2 This is when she's supposed to be home. And she's like, listen, mom, I know it's already past my curfew, but I just, can I have an extension just this one?

Speaker 2 So we can just stop by the party, say hi to everyone, and then I'll leave right after and I'll be home really, really soon.

Speaker 2 Oh, and by the way, is it okay if JV spends the night and comes to church with us in the morning?

Speaker 1 A call I've literally made to my parents a million times.

Speaker 1 But where exactly is Tracy calling from?

Speaker 2 Well, Carol thinks it's a pay phone. And poor Carol, man, I mean, this woman has worked a double today.
She is tired, probably kind of over it. So she's like, five minutes.

Speaker 2 You can stop and say hi for five minutes and then you need to get your butts home.

Speaker 2 So Tracy, of course, I'm thinking at least did the thing that we all did as kids that now as an adult, I hate myself for doing, which is like doling out the I love yous and the thank yous because she got the answer that she wanted.

Speaker 2 But like whether you have to kind of buy it or not as a parent, the I love you still feels good because you love those stinkers unconditionally.

Speaker 2 So Carol says, I love you too before hanging up the phone. Now, Hedland is like 20 minutes away.
So the drive plus five minutes to say hi, which in teenage time, let's be real, it's at least 15.

Speaker 2 At least. But either way, knowing that the girls will be back anytime, Carol just goes to bed.
The problem is, when she wakes up in the morning, the girls aren't there.

Speaker 2 And neither is JB's Black Mazda 929.

Speaker 2 And this triggers immediate panic for Carol. But luckily, she is a panicked mom with connections.
She's got the local police chief, John White, on like speed dial.

Speaker 2 According to a segment on the case produced by WTVY News 4, He's a family friend having worked on the force with Tracy's biological dad before he had passed away.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure Chief White can feel Carol's desperation through the phone as she tells him what's going on.

Speaker 2 But still, I mean, he's been in this long enough to know that most teenagers, most of them, show back up when they're good and ready.

Speaker 2 But to be on the safe side, he has Doth and PD put out word to nearby agencies that these two teenage girls didn't come home last night.

Speaker 2 One of those agencies is the Ozark PD, which covers the Ozark, Alabama. And that's like 30 minutes away from where they are.

Speaker 2 And that morning at like 9.30, Ozark PD finds JB's car abandoned off a remote back road. Dothan PD sends out an officer who finds that the car is unlocked with the girls' purses and wallets inside.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's even cash in the car. But interestingly, the keys to the car are nowhere to be found.

Speaker 1 Was there anything like blood or?

Speaker 2 No sign of foul play.

Speaker 2 Which I think maybe lowers the temperature a little bit for the officers at the scene because their initial thought is like, okay, maybe the girls ditched the car for whatever reason and they're going to be back soon.

Speaker 1 And left their purses? I'm sorry, no.

Speaker 2 I know, but I mean, there is nothing else telling them that something bad happened here. I mean, they even look around the car, but nothing stands out.

Speaker 2 So the morning goes by, 9.30, 10, 11, and the girls don't just show back up at the car. So by early afternoon, Chief White decides that it's time to check things out for himself.

Speaker 2 He drives out to Ozark and gets caught up with the officers on site, who, by the way, are still there, still confident that the girls are just going to show up at the car any minute. But Chief White,

Speaker 2 he's like, okay, listen, love the optimism, really do.

Speaker 2 But have you checked the trunk?

Speaker 1 They didn't check the trunk?

Speaker 2 No, and

Speaker 2 not because they didn't think of it. They're like, well, we can't.
There's no car keys. So we, we...

Speaker 1 Do these officers not have cars? I mean, there's a lever on the driver's side.

Speaker 2 Just pull the lever. I know.
Apparently, you have to be the chief of police here to think of that.

Speaker 2 So they all share this kind of like light bulb moment together. And an Ozark patrol officer hops in the front seat while everyone else gathers around the trunk.

Speaker 2 And as soon as he pulls the lever, everything they think they know changes in an instant.

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Speaker 2 Just like that, their abandoned vehicle/slash missing persons investigation becomes a homicide investigation, a double homicide investigation, because They're in the trunk of JB's car are both girls and each had been shot in the head.

Speaker 1 This is where my crime junkie brain goes, but it is where my crime junkie brain goes. I mean, those girls had been in the trunk all morning in Alabama in July.

Speaker 2 That heat. Yeah, there's no way around it.
I mean, it's a setback for them.

Speaker 2 I mean, the Ozark police chief Tony Spivey even says in that same segment produced by News 4, quote, basically about 14 hours that we're looking at.

Speaker 2 And the heat, of course, that expedites decomposition. And not to belabor the point, but it is like 2 p.m.
by now. They found the car at 9.30 in the morning,

Speaker 2 but no one can rewind the clock. So the only way to move is forward.

Speaker 2 Right away, there are some notable things about the crime scene, like the expended 9mm shell casing in the trunk with the girls' bodies.

Speaker 2 Nyibin's been around for a solid two years at this point, so that could be huge to the investigation.

Speaker 2 Maybe they can connect the gun that killed JB and Tracy to other crime scenes, maybe even to their perp when they have suspects.

Speaker 2 Another thing that they notice is that the girls are fully clothed and there are no obvious signs of sexual assault. But they do notice something weird.

Speaker 2 The girls' pants are muddy and so are Tracy's shoes.

Speaker 1 Okay, but they were at a field party. I mean, you and I have been to field parties.
Like, isn't that expected?

Speaker 2 Yeah, but except when the girls' autopsies are conducted the next day, it gets even more like red flaggier because along with determining that both Tracy and JB were shot at intermediate range and that they don't appear to have been sexually assaulted like they assumed, the ME's office notices that not only are the girls' pants and shoes muddy, the thing is they're still wet.

Speaker 2 Both girls are wet basically from the waist down. We're not just talking about like, oh, we're in a field and like got some splatters on us and stuff.
Waist down, wet and muddy.

Speaker 2 Alvin Benn with the Montgomery Advertiser reports that when Ozark mayor, Bob Bunting speaks to the press on August 3rd, he says that it was, quote, almost as if they had been standing in a pond.

Speaker 2 But it's weird to me that like no one noticed that until the autopsies were performed. Or maybe they did, but like the way it got reported just got dulled down.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, or like it wasn't noted properly. That's so bizarre.
But I mean, what pond?

Speaker 2 Great question. I think they're thinking like, find the pond and you're one step closer to answers, right? But yeah.
I don't know. My first question was like, was there a pond near this field party?

Speaker 2 To be honest, I don't know. I haven't seen that in the research, but I think that's because it ends up not mattering.

Speaker 2 Because it turns out, when they interview the kids from that field party where the girls were going, none of them report seeing JB or Tracy there at all.

Speaker 2 Not before Tracy called home around 1130 and not after.

Speaker 1 So I know we assume it was a payphone, but do we know where Tracy had called her mom from?

Speaker 2 No, I don't think her mom asked her where she was. So police don't even have a starting point other than Ozark, maybe, right?

Speaker 2 Like just because they're found there doesn't mean that's where she called from. Right.
But they do get their first tip soon and it points them in the right direction.

Speaker 2 A couple of women come forward to say that they had seen Tracy make the call to her mother.

Speaker 2 It turns out the girls were outside of a big little convenience store in Ozark when these like women pull up. Now, the women, their plan was to run in, get a soft drink.

Speaker 2 Turns out the store was closed, but while they were there in the parking lot, the girls approached them them and asked for directions which they gave them they told them how to get back onto highway 231 which is a straight shot through midland city and on to dothan and then they say they saw tracy use the payphone to call her mom so that's the call she makes where she's like yeah we just got directions did the women say anything about them being wet or muddy or no i feel like that'd be noticeable right and they said nothing about that Michelle Mann actually reported for the Dothan Eagle that when the girls made the call, at least according to these women, they were like perfectly fine, perfectly normal, nothing standing out.

Speaker 2 And it definitely didn't look like they'd been traipsing through any bodies of water.

Speaker 1 And no one else was there at the convenience store?

Speaker 2 Not when the women were there, no.

Speaker 2 But I think they took off before JB and Tracy did. So they can't say for sure that no one else showed up after them.
But you know what can? The surveillance footage from the parking lot. And it does.

Speaker 2 It actually shows a white pickup truck pulling into the lot after those two women women left. But in the truck, like there's no one getting out, no one who's pumping any gas.

Speaker 1 Okay, then I'm guessing it also doesn't show any abduction or the truck like leaving to follow the girls.

Speaker 2 It doesn't. And I got a little caught up on this.
Like, how does it only show this and nothing else?

Speaker 2 But the only sense that I can make is that maybe the surveillance camera only covered a certain area of the parking lot. Or maybe it was like a series of still shots rather than actual video.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that would make sense.

Speaker 2 So this isn't the missing piece that solves the whole puzzle, but there is no doubt that investigators are making progress.

Speaker 2 In the coming weeks, another witness comes forward, a 28-year-old Ozark local named Johnny Barentine.

Speaker 2 According to Johnny, he'd left his house either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning to grab some milk for his kids. And while he was out, he says that he witnessed the girls' shootings.

Speaker 2 But there's a little bit of a problem with this witness.

Speaker 2 According to an interview with John Lorden in that News 4 segment, Johnny ends up giving several versions of this story, as many as six different versions.

Speaker 2 And pretty soon, he's no longer saying he just witnessed the shootings. Now he's saying that he gave the shooter a ride.
And then the story just like keeps evolving. I bet it does.
Right. So.

Speaker 2 When investigators find out, I'm guessing from a live-in girlfriend or wife or could be a roommate or something, I don't know.

Speaker 2 But when they find out that this little late night milk fetching trip had taken an hour and a half and that apparently he was upset when he came home and then stayed up all night watching TV, they're like, okay, my man, like Jig is up.

Speaker 2 On September 1st, they take him into custody and they charge him with two counts of capital murder.

Speaker 2 The judge refers his case to a grand jury and orders Johnny be held without bond, citing the fact that a cellmate apparently told investigators that Johnny had even confessed to the crime.

Speaker 1 That seems a little bit weird to me using like the cellmate story as the citation for the judge.

Speaker 2 I mean, they do all the time. I just don't know how much stock you can put in it.
To me, this is like a very light case right now. Like he's a witness who changed his story.
We see that all the time.

Speaker 2 And we also see inmates snitch or flip or make stuff up all the time. Right.

Speaker 1 It just seems weird to kind of base the no bond off of that, but whatever.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe not whatever, because during this whole time, Johnny is like full on recanting everything he said, all six plus versions.

Speaker 2 Now, what he says is that all he was trying to do was cash in on the reward money, because at that point, it was like, I mean, something like $29,000.

Speaker 2 So he's like, obviously, I got myself caught up in something much bigger that I didn't intend to do. I was trying to, you know, forge my way into reward money.
And what I ended up doing was.

Speaker 2 to him forging his way into a murder charge.

Speaker 1 Right, implicating himself.

Speaker 2 But investigators aren't buying this because they think they've got a Trump card on Johnny. You see, even though preliminary results said otherwise, it starts looking like the girls, or at least JB,

Speaker 2 were sexually assaulted after all. Or maybe I should say at least that a sexual assault was attempted because they end up finding semen on JB's clothes.

Speaker 2 And by late October, they're able to pull a full DNA profile from the semen. So the judge orders Johnny to submit a sample of his own for comparative testing.

Speaker 2 More and more, the case feels like it's lining up to be a slam dunk. But when the results come back, it throws everyone for a loop.

Speaker 2 According to what the Ozark police chief tells reporter Ashley Estes for the Montgomery Advertiser, quote, John William Barrentine is not the source of DNA found during the evidence gathering process.

Speaker 2 But then the police chief says something unexpected.

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Speaker 2 In the same breath that the chief says the DNA didn't match Johnny, he also says that the investigation isn't changing course.

Speaker 1 Um, it feels like maybe it should.

Speaker 2 Uh, yeah, especially since their whole story up to this point had been that Johnny acted alone that night. And it's not even like he knew the girls either.

Speaker 2 Supposedly, again, according to their theory, it was just like happenstance that he ran into them. So, I mean, if it's not his DNA, but he supposedly met them randomly, killed them on his own.

Speaker 2 Please explain. Yeah.
I mean, they don't, but you need more than than just trust me in a court of law.

Speaker 2 And I know sometimes we've seen less than that, but at least in this instance, the judge recognizes this and releases Johnny on bond in mid-December.

Speaker 2 And then in January, the grand jury declines to issue an indictment. So not long after that, the charges are dropped.

Speaker 1 So everything just kind of dissipates then.

Speaker 2 Right. In February, the girl's case is handed off to new investigators with the Ozark PD who are also working with agents from the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and and the FBI.

Speaker 2 And later that month, investigators traveled to Mississippi to interview a person of interest, some guy who apparently left Ozark soon after the murders. But by March, this guy's ruled out.

Speaker 2 But that same month in March, they catch wind of something else in Mississippi. There is another double homicide of two teenage girls, Amanda Welborne and Kelsey Bullock.
Go on.

Speaker 2 Well, the similarities only grow. Like JB and Tracy, those girls had been out driving around the night they were killed.

Speaker 2 Not super clear if they were in their own car, someone else's car, still, whatever. Their bodies are found abandoned on the side of a rural road, and they both die from gunshot wounds.

Speaker 2 The big difference in their case is that law enforcement think they know exactly who's responsible for these girls' deaths. And it's two local men, 19-year-old Paul Evans Jr.

Speaker 2 and 18-year-old Nathan Townsend.

Speaker 1 And how far away is Ozark from where the girls were killed in Mississippi?

Speaker 2 I mean, it's like four and a half hours, which it's not happening in the same backyard, same suburb, whatever.

Speaker 1 Okay, but we've seen serial killers span the entire country.

Speaker 2 Four hours

Speaker 1 doesn't really mean anything.

Speaker 2 I totally agree. The only thing that's kind of like the catch here is that there are other little discrepancies that kind of pop up that make it seem less and less likely that the cases are connected.

Speaker 2 Like the fact that according to reporting reporting in the Montgomery Advertiser, they knew Amanda and Kelsey, but there's no evidence that they'd ever met JB or Tracy.

Speaker 2 And although all four girls died from gunshot wounds, the bullets didn't come from the same gun. I mean, they weren't even from the same type of gun.

Speaker 2 So you have that tack on the distance between the crime scenes. And by mid-March, investigators all but rule out a connection between the Ozark case and the Mississippi case.

Speaker 1 Do they compare the DNA though?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they do. So even though they didn't think they were connected, they still do their due diligence and compare both guys to their sample in the Ozark case.

Speaker 2 But it comes as no great surprise when neither man is a match for the semen found on JB.

Speaker 2 So they continue plugging away, and by the summer of 2000, they've got a pretty decent idea of what happened to JB and Tracy the night that they died.

Speaker 2 Still no idea who or why, but at least the when and the where are falling into place. And the theory goes like this.

Speaker 2 The girls had been forced into JB's trunk, probably at gunpoint, either in the big little parking lot or after someone followed them out of the parking lot.

Speaker 2 And remember, the footage from the convenience store that night supports this theory to some extent.

Speaker 1 Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but the parking lot feels like a way more likely abduction site. Like, how would this guy have gotten them to pull over if they had already safely left that parking lot?

Speaker 2 Well, here's the thing. I actually kind of go the other way because if the reporting on this case is correct, it says that they don't see the guy get out of his truck in the footage.

Speaker 2 So if you can see his truck, surely you'd see someone exit it, right? Even if you don't see that, like anything happening to the girls.

Speaker 2 So if the theory is they're in JB's car, this person would have had to get out of their truck. And wouldn't that have been mentioned? Now, maybe that wasn't released.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Maybe it wasn't visible on the tape.

Speaker 2 Right. But here's the other piece that you don't have yet.

Speaker 2 There are rumors going around town that maybe someone flashed a light or potentially a badge, like, and got the girls, again, like to pull over or I don't know.

Speaker 2 But there's a rumors, like nothing ever officially points in that direction. So again, without knowing more about the footage, you could be totally right that it happened there in that parking lot.

Speaker 2 Either way, Alvin Benn reports in the Montgomery Advertiser that Chief Spy V thinks that once they'd been forced into the trunk, they were driven out to a road outside of town, a road called Alabama 123 or State Road 123, which is just south of Ozark.

Speaker 1 Why that road specifically?

Speaker 2 Well, somewhere along the way, I don't know exactly when, which is why I didn't mention it sooner. A resident of that area reports having heard a chilling scene that night.

Speaker 2 Apparently, they heard blood-curdling screams, followed by two gunshots that rang out just after midnight. Now, I don't know if they reported that then or later or what.

Speaker 2 I mean, we know that their car ends up being ditched somewhere else before it's ever found.

Speaker 2 So even if this person had called something in that night, if someone went out, there was probably nothing to see there. I don't know.
Right.

Speaker 2 Anyway, this is how investigators think the girls got wet and muddy.

Speaker 2 Nothing says it specifically in the source material, but my assumption is that this area had to have had some kind of wet terrain that they'd been looking for.

Speaker 2 So they think that the killer took them to this remote spot, popped the trunk, and the girls, screaming and utterly terrified, took off running through the mud, through the water, through vegetation that left burrs sticking to their clothes.

Speaker 2 And somehow their killer caught them, managed to get them back to the trunk and killed them. Then he drove the Mazda back to the dump site with their bodies in the trunk and left.

Speaker 1 But if their theory is that he's in their car, how did this guy flee the scene?

Speaker 2 Well, there are a couple of possibilities. One is that an accomplice picked him up, but there's not much supporting this theory, but nothing to really disprove it either.

Speaker 2 But the other is that he just walked away into the night.

Speaker 2 And that seems likely because though the dump site is a remote area and removed from a lot of vehicle traffic, there are plenty of places within walking distance.

Speaker 2 I mean, the city center called Ozark Square is just a mile away. So dude's not exactly going to have to rough it for a whole night or hitch a ride if that's really what happened.

Speaker 2 So police have this theory. They just need evidence to point them to a suspect or a suspect to connect to the evidence.
But they don't have anyone new on their radar.

Speaker 2 And when the results from the databases come back, those are robust too. There's no bullets matching theirs in NIBIN and no hits in the CODIS database when they upload their DNA profile.

Speaker 2 On the first anniversary of the girls' deaths, the families hold a vigil where the car was found, which is now marked by two crosses.

Speaker 2 Despite the lack of progress, when the girls' case is covered on America's Most Wanted in August of 2000, everyone does feel a rush of hope. Investigators, the families, the entire community, really.

Speaker 2 And the episode does lead to a flood of tips. But Chief Spivey is quoted in the Montgomery Advertiser as saying, most of the tips were information we already had and exhausted.

Speaker 2 And so the case sits cold for a whole nother year and almost a full nother.

Speaker 2 But then something happens right before the third anniversary of the crime.

Speaker 2 It's May 2002 now, and that's when another homicide victim's car is found abandoned, strikingly close to where the girls were found.

Speaker 2 And when investigators determine that the suspect in that case was familiar with the area, even had a relative living just a quarter of a mile away from the girls' dump site in July of 1999, All signs start pointing in the same direction.

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Speaker 2 The suspect is a guy named Eugene Utsi, and he'd been out on work release when he killed his cleaning crew supervisor, a woman named Melvis Sue Johnston.

Speaker 2 He had dumped her body near the movie theater that his crew cleaned.

Speaker 1 So then she wasn't in the car, correct?

Speaker 2 No, she wasn't found in a car. But there's still like enough connections that they want to talk to this guy.

Speaker 2 But when investigators with Ozark PD and an agent from the Alabama Bureau of Investigation interview Eugene, he denies any involvement in JB and Tracy's deaths.

Speaker 2 Which, sure, I mean, take that with several large grains of salt, maybe a whole shaker. But it's worth noting that he isn't denying his involvement in Melvasu's death.
But it doesn't matter, right?

Speaker 2 We don't need a confession in this case. We have DNA, and DNA doesn't lie.
Eugene's DNA is compared to the profile from JB's clothes. And it is a giant letdown.

Speaker 2 No match. Just like that, another lead bites the dust.
Yet again, the case goes cold and it stays that way for years this time.

Speaker 2 From one vigil to the next, the families wait, praying for a resolution to the case. And they make that same prayer year after year for 16 more long, grueling years.

Speaker 2 In 2015, Chief Spivey officially retires and he is replaced by a new chief named Marlos Walker. And Chief Walker doesn't waste any time getting his officers working on the department's cold cases.

Speaker 2 In reporting for the Dothan Eagle in August of 2017, Michelle W. Forehand quotes Chief Walker as saying, When I became chief, we had four cold case files.
We have solved two out of four.

Speaker 2 And I strongly believe this case will be the next case to be solved.

Speaker 1 Kicking ass, taking names, I love to see it.

Speaker 2 I love to see it, right? Yeah, but careful who we praise. I don't know if you know the saying, like there's no one person who's all good or all bad.

Speaker 2 I couldn't find the details, but fast forward a while, Chief Walker does end up agreeing to resign over some allegations regarding his conduct. Again, question mark.

Speaker 2 I don't know what that all is about, but that's a few years down the line. And at this time, I think what the chief was doing was hopefully for good.

Speaker 2 Maybe there were other motivations, but honestly, I just think about the families in these scenarios, and they deserve answers no matter what's going on behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 And right now, Chief Walker is the one who gets those answers for them.

Speaker 2 When the Golden State killer is arrested in April of 2018 with the use of genetic genealogy, Walker's investigators assigned to JB and Tracy's case take note.

Speaker 2 So that spring, they submit the DNA evidence from JB's clothing to Parabon Nanolabs and then they wait. In early 2019, results come in and it it leads them straight to the man who killed the girls.

Speaker 2 A man named Coley McCraney.

Speaker 1 Coley McCoo?

Speaker 2 Exactly. This is a name that wasn't ever part of the investigation.
Chief Walker said that this dude had flown completely under the radar. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Now, when all this is happening in 2019, Coley is a 45-year-old Air Force veteran working as a long-haul trucker and living with his wife right in Dothan.

Speaker 2 So they bring him in for questioning and ask him if he'll submit to a DNA test. Coley complies, but he completely denies knowing or ever having met JB and Tracy.

Speaker 2 And listen, investigators aren't even showing their cards yet. They make no mention of genetic genealogy.
And when you think about it, if you weren't a crime junkie, these were early days.

Speaker 2 I don't think IgG was like dinner table conversation for most people and like most households.

Speaker 1 Right. So more than likely, if he'd never done anything to get his DNA in the system in the first place, he probably thought he was totally in the clear.

Speaker 2 Right, which is why he's like, yeah, sure, take the swab. Like I'm not in CODIS.
But what's wild is, I mean, he's right. He wasn't in CODIS.

Speaker 2 But what's interesting is that around the time of the murders, he was in the middle of a paternity suit.

Speaker 2 And Lance Griffin with the Dothan Eagle reports that Only the day before the murders, Coley had been ordered to submit DNA testing, which which still to be clear, wouldn't have ended up in CODIS.

Speaker 2 But Lance refers to this as, quote, some unwelcome news for Coley, which might be an understatement, because he basically stuck both middle fingers up and refused to give the sample.

Speaker 2 And the same thing happened when he was ordered to do it again a few months later.

Speaker 1 So the suggestion is that, what, he was amped up, pissed off about this paternity suit, so he killed the two girls?

Speaker 2 Maybe. I mean,

Speaker 2 I don't know, but when they start looking at him, like even location-wise, it all makes sense now because Coley lived in Ozark at the time and not just anywhere in Ozark.

Speaker 2 He lived a quick one-mile walk from where the girls were found.

Speaker 1 Super convenient for Coley.

Speaker 2 Makes that whole like walking away from the car make a lot of sense. Yeah.
What's not so convenient for Coley, though, is that the direct DNA comparison comes back.

Speaker 2 But this direct comparison is a match to the semen on JB's clothes.

Speaker 1 JB, who he didn't know, but somehow his semen got on her clothes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So they waste no time getting him like fully into custody.
Obviously, they couldn't like run the sample like the same time they were talking to him. So he had been let go.

Speaker 2 They go track him down, pull him over in his rig in March of 2019, and officially place him under arrest on capital murder and rape charges.

Speaker 2 And just an aside, it is reported a lot around this time that Coley had no criminal history, but I don't know where that is coming from because it's all right there in black and white.

Speaker 2 In 94, when he was in the Air Force, he was arrested on some major DV charges, including aggravated assault, assault consummated by battery upon a child under 16, unlawful detention, and possession of a concealed weapon.

Speaker 2 The only sense I can make of this discrepancy is that he was prosecuted by the Air Force since the incident took place on base and everything.

Speaker 2 So maybe it never became part of his publicly available criminal records.

Speaker 2 I don't know, but according to his wife, his first wife, not the one he's married to when he's arrested, Coley beat her with the magazine from a nine millimeter pistol, pulled out a chunk of her hair, and then locked her and her baby in a room and refused to let them out.

Speaker 2 God,

Speaker 1 did you say a nine millimeter pistol, though?

Speaker 2 I love your attention to detail. Yes, I did.
So if anyone else doesn't have Britt's attention to detail, it was the same gun that was used to kill the girls.

Speaker 1 Same kind of, right?

Speaker 2 Same kind of gun. Right.
The problem is, it actually turns out that they're not able to say that it's the exact gun.

Speaker 2 Because this is, I don't, I can't explain this, but the gun is eventually recovered, but they don't know where it is, question mark.

Speaker 1 But that's worse than just being able to say they can't prove that it wasn't the same gun.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know if I got lost, but I do know that in his possession somehow, they found the same type of ammo as the ones that matched the bullet casings in the trunk with the girls.

Speaker 2 Now, Coley's case is eventually referred to the grand jury and he's held without bond at the Dale County Jail in the meantime.

Speaker 2 In June of 2019, the grand jury indicts him on five counts of capital murder and in August, he enters a plea of not guilty. In October, the court sets a trial date for February 2020.

Speaker 2 Then Coley's defense attorney says, you know what, spring 2020 is more likely. Until, of course, it's not.

Speaker 1 I was just about to say, like, timing-wise, this doesn't look good. And of all the things the pandemic took from us, like justice really pisses me off.

Speaker 1 I feel like it happens in every genetic genealogy case. Like the timing, it's like a cosmic joke.

Speaker 1 We get this new tool, becomes widely used, but by the time these smaller departments get wind of it, start using it in their cases,

Speaker 1 getting their family trees built, arrests are made, makes its way all the way to like a trial date, pandemic.

Speaker 2 We have. We've been seeing this in, I mean, almost every genetic genealogy case, unless the person pled guilty.
But that's because it was all happening at the same time.

Speaker 2 To your point, it felt like a little bit of a cosmic joke because we're like, finally, something we've waited for for decades in most cases. And then, oh, crap.

Speaker 2 And truly, that was just the start of the problems in these legal proceedings.

Speaker 2 The trial is eventually rescheduled for August of 2022, but the judge is forced to delay it yet again when the pool of qualified jurors is too small to proceed.

Speaker 2 So it feels like there's like, for the poor families, there's all this hurry up and waiting kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Aaron Dixon with local ABC affiliate WDHN reports that in March of 2023, prosecutors and defense attorneys battle over whether the judge should issue an order prohibiting the death penalty without a unanimous sentencing verdict.

Speaker 2 The judge ends up denying that defense request. And after one final pretrial hearing in April, the case finally heads to trial, which commences on April 19th, 2023.

Speaker 2 But even the start of the trial gets delayed by a couple of hours when one of the jurors just doesn't show up.

Speaker 2 So instead of proceeding with 12 jurors and two alternates, the trial moves forward with just one alternate.

Speaker 2 Now, during the defense's opening statement, Coley's attorney argues that the semen was really no big deal because Coley had been a player back in 1999.

Speaker 2 And in this telling, they met in a parking lot of the big little store and the the girls said that they were lost.

Speaker 2 Somehow, getting directions turned into a rendezvous where they all hung out and Cole and JB had sex. No.
No.

Speaker 2 Cole's wife, Jeanette, testifies on his behalf, claiming that Coley got home that night at around 12.45 a.m., saying that his car had broken down at a nearby store.

Speaker 2 So if you're getting this, he's showing up at home without his car.

Speaker 2 And the whole time, she's weirdly insistent that it for sure wasn't later than 1245 because she wouldn't have let let him in if it had been 1 a.m.

Speaker 2 Okay. So I'm guessing that the defense is trying to rebut the prosecution's timeline, but it seems like a strange hill to remember being willing to die on 24 years later.

Speaker 1 Right. I'm like, did you turn into a pumpkin at 1 a.m.? I'm confused.
Is the prosecution's theory that it was Coley on the security cameras like driving into the Big Little store that night?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I think so.

Speaker 2 Again, I've never seen it reported specifically that that's the case, but like, that's the inference I get.

Speaker 2 Now, in a movie you don't see all the time, Coley takes the stand at his trial and he gives an interesting story. According to him, he and JB weren't strangers after all.

Speaker 2 Again, first interview with cops, never seen them, never met him. Now they're not strangers.
His story now is that they met at the Dothan Mall in June of 1999. They chatted.

Speaker 2 He gave her his mom's phone number, which isn't even where he lived at that time, but whatever.

Speaker 2 And then Coley says that on July 31st, JB called and they made plans to meet at the Big Little store at 10 p.m.

Speaker 1 Sure, Jan.

Speaker 2 Right, which is like they're there because they're lost. Like that does not even make sense.

Speaker 2 Now he says that she wasn't there when he got there at 10, but as luck would have it, later that night, Coley had car trouble on his way home right in front of the big little store.

Speaker 2 And he pulled in the parking lot, recognized JB, asked if they'd give him a ride, says he could show them a shortcut to get to 231.

Speaker 1 Oh, which they already knew how to get back to.

Speaker 2 Because the women had given them directions. And he says somehow they end up in his rig,

Speaker 2 which he had parked at a Texaco parking lot when he wasn't on the road. So this isn't the same white truck.
Again, it's like all messy. But he says he offers to give them a tour of his rig.

Speaker 2 Who wants that? They hopped inside. Sex was supposedly had.
The girls dropped him off nearby at his house at 1245, and then off they went into the dark, dark night to meet whoever.

Speaker 1 I'm I'm sorry, no.

Speaker 2 Jury feels the same.

Speaker 2 On April 25th, they come back with their verdict guilty on all counts, which, by the way, are now four counts of capital murder instead of five because the judge determined that one of the charges was just a duplicate.

Speaker 2 But I don't know that that even matters. Just a few days later, the jury recommends a sentence of life without parole.
And then on June 15th, that is the sentence the judge imposes.

Speaker 2 It took 23 long years, but the prayers of the girls' families are finally answered.

Speaker 2 They'll never get to hug their girls again, didn't get to see them graduate, will never send them off to college or walk them down the aisle, won't get to meet the grandchildren that they should have gotten to watch grow up.

Speaker 2 But at least at long last, it's over. Ever since talking to Sarah Turney after her sister's trial, I hope other families feel what she felt.

Speaker 2 She didn't even get a win, but She got a sense that she could breathe again, that every day wasn't an uphill battle where she had to wage war. She felt lighter, she said.

Speaker 2 And I've never liked closure, and we don't always get justice, but I hope that the burden for their families is lighter.

Speaker 2 And I hope we all remember that it's never too late to help lighten a family's burden.

Speaker 2 You can find find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

Speaker 1 And be sure to follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

Speaker 2 We'll be back next week with a brand new episode, but stick around for a little bit of good.

Speaker 2 I think it's time to hear some good Ash. I know, and I'm excited.
I usually get a peek at these first, but I'm going in blind today, so.

Speaker 1 No fun. So this is a submission from our website, and I'm just going to let it speak for itself.
Hi, AudioChuck friends. My name is Isabel.
I'm a longtime listener and fellow crime junkie.

Speaker 1 I wanted to write to you today to express my gratitude for all that you've done for countless families as you share their loved ones' stories and bring light to some of the injustices they've had to face alone.

Speaker 1 Because of you, they have the love and support of your listeners and the true crime community.

Speaker 1 Believe it or not, all of you at AudioChalk helped inspire the creation of a new nonprofit that I am founder and president of called Genealogy for Justice.

Speaker 1 Now, stick with me for a moment so I can tell you about how we came to be.

Speaker 1 In the summer of 2021, my mom was assigned a grant that you made to the company she worked for to a case of an unidentified male and female found together in Houston in 1981.

Speaker 1 Soon, Dean and Tina Lynn Klaus had their names back because of the grant that Crime Junkie and other AudioChuck listeners made possible.

Speaker 1 This grant changed the lives of Dean and Tina's surviving families forever.

Speaker 1 Not only did they get news about Dean and Tina that they'd waited decades to hear, By getting these answers, they realized the couple's daughter wasn't found with them when they were killed.

Speaker 1 The second blessing of the AudioChuck grant was the miraculous discovery of their daughter, Holly Marie, alive and well after 40 years of being missing from those who loved her.

Speaker 1 Upon finding Holly, Dean and Tina's family established the Dean and Tina Lynn Klaus Memorial Fund with FHD Forensics.

Speaker 1 Genealogy for Justice was established to help manage that fund and do advocacy work with the surviving families of cold case victims.

Speaker 1 Now, Thanks to the seeds planted by your generosity, we have helped fund DNA sequencing and genetic genealogy investigations for three other unidentified remains cases.

Speaker 1 Just look at the good we've been able to do with the support of AudioCheck, Crime Junkie, and its listeners. And this is only the beginning.

Speaker 1 And Isabel then added a link to Genealogy for Justice, which we will have in our show notes.

Speaker 2 I think this is amazing because this is like, I think like the ultimate goal.

Speaker 2 It's like, yeah, I want our listeners to go act, but then to build something else that's going to go on and do so much good. It's amazing.
I love it. It's incredible.
It's so funny.

Speaker 2 Someone asked me, there was another nonprofit that did funding for genealogy and DNA testing. And they're like, oh, that's what Season of Justice says.

Speaker 1 That's not competition. That's like...

Speaker 2 teamwork. Yeah, I was like, I hope 100 nonprofits like this are made and can provide funding because...

Speaker 1 Yeah, there shouldn't be one or two or 10. There should be

Speaker 2 until there are no more cold cases. Exactly.
So this is the absolute like epitome of why we do what we do. Yeah.
Good on you, Isabelle. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 I wish you all the success in the world with the nonprofit, and I hope you go on to solve all the cold cases too and give everyone their names back.

Speaker 2 Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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