Bodies of Evidence

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Speaker 8 Lying for eternity beneath a Texas live oak tree.

Speaker 10 Or so everyone assumed.

Speaker 7 Until one dark night, a grave yawned open and told a ghoulish tale.

Speaker 2 A story of obsessive love and treachery.

Speaker 14 Some sick people out here.

Speaker 15 I've never experienced anything like this before.

Speaker 16 Along the way, so many people would be injured.

Speaker 18 She hurt a lot of people.

Speaker 19 So many had to turn their eyes away from what the lovers had done.

Speaker 22 It's ludicrous.

Speaker 23 It's the last thing you would expect. It's still unbelievable.

Speaker 2 An outrage as big as the Lone Star State.

Speaker 4 It began as simply as a car leaving the road in rural Burnett County, Texas.

Speaker 27 It plunged down an embankment and ended up in a ravine in a ball of fire. Inside the burned-out vehicle, they found a single body, but little more than cinders remained.

Speaker 27 Had the driver maybe fallen asleep at the wheel, it had all the earmarks of a grisly highway accident.

Speaker 27 By the time William Telemantes, then a corporal with the Texas Department of Public Safety, got to the scene on the morning of June 18, 2004.

Speaker 27 All that was left of the Chevy Cavalier was a burned-out shell.

Speaker 14 It was burned up. I couldn't even tell what color the vehicle used to be.

Speaker 30 Didn't even know make the ball.

Speaker 14 The wheels were melted, the tires were gone.

Speaker 32 And the person inside, just 12 pounds of ashy stump remained.

Speaker 14 I didn't see a head, and both the legs were gone.

Speaker 30 You've seen bad stuff. Yes, sir.
Where does this fit in?

Speaker 14 This is the worst. I've seen burned bodies before.
I worked accidents like that, but never this bad.

Speaker 26 Authorities quickly traced the car to a young married couple, Molly and Clayton Daniels.

Speaker 16 When investigators called, Molly told them that Clayton had driven his car to his mother's house the night before and still hadn't come back by morning.

Speaker 36 It was up to the medical examiner in nearby Austin to confirm that those 12 sad pounds of human remains were those of 23-year-old Clayton Wayne Daniels.

Speaker 34 The ME ruled that they were.

Speaker 19 Amy Birkenfeld, one of Molly's friends at the home remodeling company where they worked together, got a glimpse of the gruesome autopsy report.

Speaker 30 Did you see the name Clayton Daniels on it?

Speaker 40 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 18 It was right across the top of the page. Clayton Wayne Daniels.
Went from head to toe of what everything looked like. It was charred.
It was...

Speaker 30 Boy, some hard reading, huh?

Speaker 18 It was really tough.

Speaker 21 Immediately after the accident, friends and family rushed to comfort Molly at her home in Leander, Texas.

Speaker 42 How was she?

Speaker 18 Pretty distraught.

Speaker 43 I mean, she...

Speaker 20 She was a mess, huh?

Speaker 40 Yeah.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Molly's younger sister, Melissa, coming down from Abilene, was all jagged nerve-endings, spent.

Speaker 44 I was pretty hysterical myself. I cried the majority of the way down there, just thinking, what am I going to say to her?

Speaker 17 Or maybe even tougher.

Speaker 13 What to say to Molly's two young children, a boy from another relationship and the little girl she'd had with Clayton.

Speaker 44 The person that my nephew called dad, you know, and my niece was never going to have a father, I just thought I was devastated.

Speaker 36 A memorial service was held in Burnett, Texas, where Clayton grew up.

Speaker 13 No dusty old hymns for Clayton.

Speaker 31 His favorite song, Leonard Skynyrd's Freebird, Freebird, filled the funeral home as a hundred mourners signed the guest book.

Speaker 48 Co-worker Amy Birkenfeld certainly thought that Clayton and Molly had been a love match.

Speaker 49 He was the love of her life.

Speaker 50 Vice versa.

Speaker 18 She felt comfortable around him and he loved her for who she was.

Speaker 35 Clayton, an auto mechanic, hadn't worked much lately.

Speaker 26 Mostly, he stayed home to care for the two kids.

Speaker 16 But if anything competed for his love of Molly, it was motorcycles.

Speaker 8 Loved bikes so much, he named his daughter Harley, as in Harley Davidson.

Speaker 26 She was just a year old, too young to understand.

Speaker 11 But not her half-brother Caleb, who was four when told of his father's sudden death.

Speaker 33 On happy news, it fell to Molly and her mother to break to the boy.

Speaker 44 And they told him that he,

Speaker 44 daddy had gone to heaven.

Speaker 44 And Caleb asked about the car. He wanted to know where the car was.
And

Speaker 24 my mom told him that he needed the car to get there.

Speaker 44 To get to heaven. To get to heaven.
Yeah.

Speaker 13 Clayton and Molly had been living week to week on her paycheck.

Speaker 13 So it was a godsend to the young widow when her co-workers raised $1,000 cash to help with the bills until Molly could get back on her feet.

Speaker 41 It was understood it would be some time before the $110,000 life insurance policy on Clayton paid off.

Speaker 44 Her job, they paid for her utilities for a couple months, put groceries in the house. Even while I was there, I watched them carry in loads of groceries.

Speaker 28 Without Clayton at home, childcare was looming as both a worry and a big expense.

Speaker 13 Neighbor Jenna Panis noticed a flyer Molly posted on a fence near the community mailboxes.

Speaker 11 Newly widowed mother of two needs help.

Speaker 22 Jenna, with a young boy of her own, felt sorry for Molly, even though she'd never met Molly or Clayton before.

Speaker 35 Jenna agreed to look after Caleb and Harley in her own home for a cut rate fee of $120 a week.

Speaker 23 It's your neighborhood, it's your neighbor, and you could potentially be in that situation someday and you kind of want to help.

Speaker 30 And you get a little bit of angel wings for helping somebody else.

Speaker 22 Exactly.

Speaker 23 You know, I'm going to go to heaven someday.

Speaker 8 But while friends and perfect strangers were going out of their way to do the decent thing for Molly Daniels, investigators, including none other than the legendary Texas Rangers, were starting to poke about in the accident, and they were asking some pointed questions.

Speaker 48 How could one car end up so damaged?

Speaker 51 Was it really an accident at all, or just perhaps something much more sinister?

Speaker 56 After her husband and car exploded in flames in June of 2004, Molly Daniels, with two young kids and bills piling up, had little choice but to get on with her life.

Speaker 30 Did she seem like a good mom?

Speaker 35 Yeah. Jenna, the babysitter, admired her grace under pressure.

Speaker 23 And I thought she was handling the loss of her husband really well.

Speaker 54 And in Molly's first days back as the receptionist for the home remodeling company, her friend Amy was pleased and a little surprised that the young widow was as efficient as ever despite her ordeal.

Speaker 30 You thought she was smart.

Speaker 18 Oh, yes.

Speaker 30 You had competence, you told her to do something, that it'd get done.

Speaker 18 Oh yeah, I always got done.

Speaker 13 Molly was settling into a new routine, but the investigation into the death of her husband was going down quite a different road from what most people had expected.

Speaker 17 Remember the car leaving the road, plunging down the embankment, ending up in the ravine in a ball of fire.

Speaker 45 But now investigators didn't think they had a grisly accident. They thought they had a deadly crime.

Speaker 13 The first arriving trooper from the Texas Department of Public Safety had doubts early on.

Speaker 14 This was not an accident.

Speaker 38 Corporal William Talamantes had seen more road wrecks than he could count in his years as a trooper, and this one looked fishy from the get-go.

Speaker 3 Take the road.

Speaker 26 There were no telltale skid marks or other usual signs of a high-speed crash.

Speaker 13 Like the car itself, the dents in it weren't consistent with missing a curve and sailing down an embankment.

Speaker 32 And most of all, the fire itself seemed suspicious.

Speaker 14 I really thought there was a murder.

Speaker 13 The trooper had more theory than hard evidence. He speculated the victim had first been killed and stuffed in the Chevy, then rolled over the cliff.

Speaker 11 But who might want to kill Clayton Daniels?

Speaker 13 As it turned out, getting people to say bad things about Daniels wasn't all that hard.

Speaker 32 People like his sister-in-law.

Speaker 44 I got the worst feeling from him. I just did not trust him.
I didn't like him.

Speaker 44 Gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Speaker 30 What do you think she saw in him?

Speaker 44 I think she saw the first person who showed interest in her i don't think that it was him i think it was the fact that somebody liked her his wife's co-worker thought daniels was a loser plain and simple i always thought she could do so much better

Speaker 17 i mean he just seemed like he could be the troublesome type amy the co-worker remembered the time she treated molly and clayton to dinner out and as a bonus agreed to babysit their kids till they got back.

Speaker 55 But when the children were dropped off, Clayton, she says, made a scene with the upstairs neighbors, complaining they were making too much noise, daring them to come out and fight.

Speaker 42 Did he have kind of a hair trigger anger, did you think?

Speaker 22 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 24 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 44 Several scenarios played out in my head. You know, I thought maybe somebody was tailgating him.
And, you know, Clay was the type to pull over and, you know, confront the person.

Speaker 13 But there was another investigator, a private investigator, who also thought something bigger than road rage had ended Clayton Daniels.

Speaker 33 Maybe something premeditated.

Speaker 58 My biggest thought at the time was possible homicide.

Speaker 22 Clark Dickenscheit was a private investigator working for the insurance company that had sold Daniels a $110,000 life insurance policy a little less than two years before.

Speaker 37 Like the Department of Public Safety officers, the private investigator had written up lots of road wrecks, and this one just smelled bad.

Speaker 58 Just sounded a little strange that he would just drive right off the road and burst into flames.

Speaker 35 And his suspicions grew when he conducted what he figured would be a standard interview with Molly Daniels, the beneficiary of Clayton's policy.

Speaker 58 I had never in my career interviewed a wife who had lost a husband in such a manner, or even anything close to it, and showed absolutely no emotion.

Speaker 30 So that put up red flags for you.

Speaker 58 Very much so.

Speaker 13 It was premature to think the wife might have done in her husband for the insurance money.

Speaker 32 But still, something he thought was off here.

Speaker 58 Not suspecting the wife per se, but obviously she would be the number one suspect.

Speaker 59 Even her friends, her sister, said Molly could be sweet and affectionate for sure, but they knew not to cross her.

Speaker 44 You'd think you were having a conversation, everything was going well, and you would say something that she just didn't like. And it was, oh my goodness, you know, you set off a time bomb.

Speaker 13 People did notice how quickly Molly seemed to get through her period of mourning.

Speaker 18 We went out one night. She even asked me and another coworker when an acceptable time to start dating was.

Speaker 24 We were like, wow,

Speaker 18 already. It's only been about a month.

Speaker 22 Was it suspicious that Jenna, the babysitter, was hearing about a new man in Molly's life from Molly's own son?

Speaker 28 Who was this Jake character?

Speaker 23 He'd talk about his friend Jake, and Jake was so much fun, and they'd wrestle, and they'd go to races.

Speaker 13 Molly told the babysitter that Jake was nothing more than a family friend.

Speaker 35 Until that is, one morning Molly's car needed a jumpstart and all became clear about Jake.

Speaker 23 Here we are two gals.

Speaker 23 Can't figure out how to hook those cables up. And out comes Jake in his boxer shorts.

Speaker 24 And I went, oh, oh,

Speaker 23 oh goodness, what a fool am I.

Speaker 62 Of course he's not a family friend.

Speaker 30 Jenna, if first impressions do matter, what were your first impressions of Jake?

Speaker 23 It's a terrible class bias, but I mean, just trailer trash.

Speaker 22 While Molly's neighbors quickly began buzzing about the widow's new man around the house, other whispers would soon draw the attention of Texas Ranger Garth Davis.

Speaker 16 Ranger Davis would be nursing his own suspicions about what was happening inside Molly's house.

Speaker 22 Would he be investigating a lethal love triangle with the dead husband Oddman out,

Speaker 20 or was it something even more twisted?

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Speaker 63 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 63 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 63 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 63 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 2 The slogan warns don't mess with Texas.

Speaker 53 But most people here would agree you really don't mess with the Texas Rangers.

Speaker 33 They are lawmen descended from tough ombre gunslingers of the 19th century frontier.

Speaker 28 Got a civil disturbance in your town?

Speaker 48 No problem.

Speaker 40 The lore goes, one riot, one ranger.

Speaker 26 So whenever the Texas Rangers ride into a case, the investigative ante is raised.

Speaker 48 In late June 2004, Sergeant Garth Davis of the Texas Rangers was called into the Clayton Daniels affair, and he'd testify later there was evidence of foul play.

Speaker 15 The pathologists found that there was no soot in the lungs of the victim.

Speaker 15 That caused us to become involved in the investigation.

Speaker 13 Smoke-free lungs meant to investigators that the victim was already dead and possibly murdered before the car fire ever started. But the nature of the fire may have been the biggest clue of all.

Speaker 46 Deputy Fire Marshal Janine Mather found that the hottest spot of the inferno was the driver's seat.

Speaker 40 Why?

Speaker 10 Someone had doused it with charcoal lighter fluid.

Speaker 33 Ranger Davis now knew he had a bona fide criminal investigation, giving rise to a whole new set of questions.

Speaker 27 So he took his case back to basics and asked whether the medical examiner had gotten his autopsy ID right in the first place. Was the body recovered here in fact that of Clayton Daniels?

Speaker 27 To be scientifically certain, Ranger Davis decided to get a DNA match analysis, a sample from the body in the burned-out car, compared to a DNA sample taken from Clayton Daniels' mother.

Speaker 27 The body, you remember, had been reduced to a stump of ashes. To extract some viable amount of DNA, the Ranger performed an unusually macabre task.
He opened the remains of a hip bone with a hacksaw.

Speaker 27 Later, he would recollect the moment in a courtroom.

Speaker 69 Was that something you usually do? Did that have an effect on you?

Speaker 70 I've never done that.

Speaker 37 I hope I never have to do it again.

Speaker 17 On TV shows like CSI Miami, DNA lab work comes back by the third commercial break.

Speaker 17 In real life, it can take months. And that's what happened with the comparison samples from the body in the car and Daniel's mother.

Speaker 33 An agonizing wait for investigators.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, back at the split-level ranch, Molly's new man, Jake, was still topic number one among family and friends.

Speaker 46 Her sister got the lowdown, sort of.

Speaker 33 Spare of much detail.

Speaker 44 She said that he was somebody she had met at the bar that she met Clay in, the same bar, and that he was also a good friend of Clay's.

Speaker 47 Molly's sister hadn't met Jake yet, told he was a truck driver constantly on the road.

Speaker 8 but she heard lots about him from her nephew.

Speaker 44 And everything was Jake. Jake this, Jake that.

Speaker 18 You know, with Caleb.

Speaker 33 The sister did get a peek at Molly's cell phone one day, and the text messages stored there were more than platonic.

Speaker 44 One of the text messages said, I love you. And I thought, whoa,

Speaker 50 that's a little scene.

Speaker 35 At work, Amy hadn't met the new boyfriend either, even though he'd occasionally pick up Molly in the parking lot.

Speaker 25 She never really

Speaker 18 talked a whole lot about this person. to me because at that point in this whole thing, I had started getting suspicious.

Speaker 18 She was always on the internet a lot in her office, and I had noticed that because every time I'd walked up front to see her, she would minimize the screens really quick.

Speaker 33 Jenna the babysitter was also picking up on changes in Molly.

Speaker 13 Her getting back into the dating game for one, a rebound that disgusted Jenna.

Speaker 23 Screwing around that soon just kind of set my teeth on edge.

Speaker 15 And with the guy she was with.

Speaker 23 You're not screaming family man.

Speaker 28 And all the while, Molly's boy Caleb's behavior was deteriorating, according to the babysitter.

Speaker 23 He's trying to push children down the stairs. He's trying to hurt our animals.
You know, he's just really out of control.

Speaker 13 Jenna said she tried to convince Molly that Caleb's problems were very serious.

Speaker 23 The first couple incidents I brought to Molly's attention, you know, he's

Speaker 23 have problems.

Speaker 45 Yeah, he's a grieving mother, you know.

Speaker 23 He's just not quite there. He's not right.

Speaker 23 um these behavior problems have reached the point where it's not normal little boy acting out being a little aggressive as little boys tend to be this has reached kind of epic proportions mom you need to get him into some counseling you need to get counseling for him there's something wrong did his mother get it jenna i mean what you were trying to tell her no did she see the behavior she said he was fine at home That was that was her, he was fine at home.

Speaker 23 She didn't understand.

Speaker 23 And we'd tell her things like, well, he, you know, he urinated on the walls in the bathroom. This is kind of my trigger.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 23 I just don't want the walls in the bathroom to be urinated on. You need to talk to your son.
Can we get something?

Speaker 23 And she just turned to him and pretty much said, you know, you're just going to get it when you get home. And apparently he got spanked when he got home.
And that was that.

Speaker 32 By early December 2004, on a Thursday, Jenna had become so frustrated with Molly's casual parenting that she planned to give her an ultimatum the next day.

Speaker 33 Get counseling for Caleb or find yourself another babysitter.

Speaker 23 And on Friday, I got a knock on my door, and the whole world fell apart as far as I was concerned.

Speaker 13 It was Texas Ranger Garth Davis at the door, and he had both questions and some stunning answers.

Speaker 45 After a five-month wait, the Texas Ranger finally had his DNA work back from the lab, lab, and it told him definitively who the charred body found wasn't.

Speaker 20 It wasn't Clayton Daniels.

Speaker 13 There had been no DNA match between the sample taken by Ranger Davis from the body in the car and the one compared to Clayton Daniels' mother. Whose body was it in that car?

Speaker 21 And how did that person come to be dead?

Speaker 22 Texas Ranger Garth Davis filled in some of the other lawmen working the case with him.

Speaker 48 One of them who got the shocking news was the Burnett Police Department's chief investigator at the time, Captain Paul

Speaker 72 He asked me if I was sitting down. Of course I was.

Speaker 72 He stated that he got the DNA results back and that

Speaker 72 the DNA was not of Clayton Daniels.

Speaker 13 The police detective had had run-ins with Clayton Daniels before, serious ones, and believed there was little the local man could do that would surprise him anymore.

Speaker 8 It's good you were sitting down.

Speaker 72 Yes, sir.

Speaker 35 If the body in the car wasn't Clayton Daniels, where was he?

Speaker 11 And who was Jake?

Speaker 13 On Friday, December 3rd, 2004, the city detective and the Texas Ranger divvied up a plan.

Speaker 16 Captain Nelson would stake out Molly at her house while Ranger Davis eyeballed her workplace.

Speaker 35 About noon, the Ranger radioed the detective that Molly had left work, joining up with a male companion.

Speaker 13 Davis tailed the pair to a Taco Bell in North Austin. Captain Nelson then met with Ranger Davis at the restaurant.

Speaker 17 They went in with backup and guns drawn.

Speaker 72 When I I walked through the front door, the first person I seen was Clayton eating a burrito.

Speaker 60 He looked at me and I looked at him and

Speaker 72 he pretty much stated, oh,

Speaker 28 the jig was up.

Speaker 55 For a dead man, Clayton was looking pretty good.

Speaker 33 All that changed was his sandy hair had been dyed black.

Speaker 30 No rubber nose or glasses or...

Speaker 72 No, he still looked like Clayton Daniels to me.

Speaker 13 Though his fake driver's license identified him as Jacob Alexander Gregg, or Jake as he'd come to be known to Caleb, his wife's bewildered and lately emotionally troubled young son.

Speaker 33 The Texas Ranger and the city detective cuffed Clayton Daniels and placed him under arrest.

Speaker 72 I told him welcome back.

Speaker 39 Now, what's Molly doing all the while?

Speaker 72 She was yelling profane language. I don't know what all she was yelling.

Speaker 72 She made the mistake of telling Ranger Davis that he couldn't arrest her,

Speaker 72 at which time she was placed under arrest.

Speaker 10 Clayton was charged with violation of probation and later indicted for arson.

Speaker 35 Molly was charged with hindering apprehension and later indicted for insurance fraud.

Speaker 36 It was hours after the bust at the Taco Bell that Jenna Panis got that surprise visit from Texas Ranger Davis.

Speaker 16 Remember, she didn't know Clayton Daniels.

Speaker 28 The Ranger had photos to show her.

Speaker 23 Does this look like Jake? Is this Jake? I don't look at it.

Speaker 1 Sure enough, yeah, sure is. That's Jake.

Speaker 23 No problem. Takes his hand off the name and and it's Clayton Daniels.

Speaker 7 And I'm looking at the name, reading it.

Speaker 1 That's her husband.

Speaker 23 Her boyfriend is her husband, her dead husband. I was so stunned and so horrified and so angry, I couldn't speak.

Speaker 55 Why did they do it?

Speaker 31 In large part, authorities believe for the money, a big, fat, $110,000 insurance payout.

Speaker 14 Clayton and his wife wanted to start a new life together, and they needed some money.

Speaker 14 So what better way to do it than fake his own own death, get the insurance money and go live somewhere else?

Speaker 34 But the even more fascinating question, ghoulish really, was how did they do it?

Speaker 59 A car, a body, a fireball.

Speaker 30 Do you get surprised what human beings will do sometimes?

Speaker 30 Or have you seen so much that you're hard to surprise?

Speaker 14 No, sir, I wouldn't say that.

Speaker 14 But I was surprised by this.

Speaker 31 In jail, Clayton wasn't talking to the cops, but he was blabbing to a cellmate, a would-be snitch, who in turn spilled the beans to the authorities on Clayton and Molly's repulsive and deeply creepy scheme.

Speaker 20 They were body snatchers.

Speaker 7 Investigators confronted Molly about it and she confirmed, yes, Clayton had dug up a grave way out in the country, someplace with a utility works or gas pipeline nearby.

Speaker 33 She was vague about details.

Speaker 22 Corporal Talamantes, the trooper who'd responded to the initial report of a fatal accident, recalled coming upon a similar sounding cemetery while working another case.

Speaker 34 It was in a remote part of the county where they buried the paupers and indigents, a place called Pebble Mound.

Speaker 14 I went by that cemetery and I found the grave.

Speaker 20 Pretty secluded, yes, sir.

Speaker 22 And you just walked in and looked around?

Speaker 14 I just drove up to the fence and I saw one of the plots there right by the fence that was disturbed. And you could tell somebody had messed with it.

Speaker 8 Days after the trooper's discovery, February 2005, a funeral director with a backhoe was joined by a large team from law enforcement at the Pebble Mound Cemetery.

Speaker 17 They dug for two tough hours until they finally hoisted up a damaged and drenched casket.

Speaker 30 So the seal had been broken, huh?

Speaker 22 Yes, sir.

Speaker 30 And when you pried open the coffin, what'd you find?

Speaker 3 Lifted it out.

Speaker 14 We opened up the coffin. There was nothing in there except the pillow.

Speaker 21 After that, it became a matter of tying up loose ends.

Speaker 20 And Molly's work computer proved to be a treasure trove of evidence.

Speaker 54 The hard disk tattled on her fevered internet searches.

Speaker 17 How-to questions, how to fake a death, how to come up with a new identity.

Speaker 19 Texas Ranger Garth Davis explained it all later in court.

Speaker 15 There were numerous internet searches done for

Speaker 60 burning up bodies, car fires, how hot bodies have to burn.

Speaker 26 And still more solid stuff for a jury at the Daniels home.

Speaker 46 Phony state records, dummied up school transcripts, credit reports for the fictitious Jacob Alexander Gregg.

Speaker 13 And there was reason to believe that Clayton Daniels was thinking bigger than just dyeing his hair.

Speaker 15 These documents were in a folder titled Mexico.

Speaker 15 There were searches to locate plastic surgeons in Mexico and also dental surgeons in Mexico.

Speaker 46 The whole sorted business.

Speaker 41 The car off the road, down the embankment, into the ravine in a ball of flames.

Speaker 45 We know now that that was a hoax as big as the state of Texas. Authorities said that she did it for greed, but Molly Daniels, as you're about to hear, says she did it for love.

Speaker 27 And now you're going to meet Molly Daniels.

Speaker 4 Curious?

Speaker 27 We were too. She didn't look like a body snatcher so much as a woman swiping barcodes at a big warehouse store checkout counter.

Speaker 27 We sat down with her in a a Texas jail in 2006, where she'd been serving a 20-year sentence, the maximum, after pleading guilty to insurance fraud and hindering apprehension.

Speaker 30 Molly, my first question is, what could you have been thinking, huh? I mean, how did this whole deal come together?

Speaker 69 It was crazy, really. My husband was in prior trouble, and it was just going to change our life dramatically.
And I guess one day watching CSI,

Speaker 69 one of those shows that just got our minds to thinking, and we both sort of came up with the idea.

Speaker 37 Look, let's talk a little bit about Clayton.

Speaker 30 What did you see in Clayton? Because there had to be more there than other people seeing him.

Speaker 69 He was a really wonderful person. Yes, he had a reputation for being bad.
Yes, he had a reputation for being

Speaker 69 just a pain in the butt in general. But he actually has a very good heart.

Speaker 8 You fell for him, huh? Yes, sir.

Speaker 69 Hook line and sinker.

Speaker 11 But Clayton was far more than just the local bad boy rogue.

Speaker 27 He'd He'd been charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child for raping his seven-year-old cousin when he was 16.

Speaker 27 The girl came forward several years later, confiding in Captain Paul Nelson, then the chief investigator for the Burnett Police Department.

Speaker 48 The detective brought Clayton down to the police station for a talk.

Speaker 33 He denied his cousin's allegations.

Speaker 72 He asked me what made it

Speaker 72 aggravated.

Speaker 72 And I told him that when he sexually assaulted her, that he beat her up real bad, and that's what made it aggravated. And at which time he got real upset and stated,

Speaker 72 I didn't beat her up when I raped her.

Speaker 30 So you fed him a little story, and he took the bait, huh?

Speaker 8 Yes, sir.

Speaker 30 Yes, sir. I didn't beat her, but I did rape her.

Speaker 72 And once he said that, he just put his head down, and

Speaker 72 I asked him if he was ready to confess his sins, and he said, yes, he was.

Speaker 13 In June 2004, seven years after that sexual assault, Clayton Daniels pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation and 30 days in jail.

Speaker 47 Molly claims she didn't know about the sex charges pending against Clayton when she married him a few years earlier.

Speaker 69 But I'm the type of person who takes all the information given to me, analyzes it, and makes my own decision, regardless of what other people think.

Speaker 46 Molly says she convinced herself that Clayton wasn't a sexual predator of children, just a hard-luck guy who had been unfairly railroaded into accepting a guilty plea.

Speaker 52 Now with Clayton about to go away to serve 30 days in jail, her single-minded plan to keep her family together at all costs shifted into high gear.

Speaker 21 His conviction meant Clayton would be registered as a lifetime sexual offender.

Speaker 35 More than just a shameful scarlet letter.

Speaker 22 It would be an earthquake, altering every aspect of their lives as parents, husband, and wife.

Speaker 43 It would even dictate where they could live, not across from a school as they were now.

Speaker 69 We'd lose our house. We were going to have to move.
We'd lose a lot of different things that had to do with our kids. kids he wouldn't be able to stay be a stay-at-home dad anymore

Speaker 69 he wouldn't be able to take the kids to school pick them up from school

Speaker 13 the grave back

Speaker 30 so what did you all decide Molly how we're gonna get out of this we decided to give him a new life

Speaker 69 he was going to go away become somebody different and I was going to start over again, get back on my feet, and we would meet in the future if that was the way it was supposed to be.

Speaker 56 How are you going to do that?

Speaker 69 We created a new identity for him and we faked his death.

Speaker 30 You had to kill Clayton Daniels to pull this off, huh?

Speaker 69 We faked it, yes, sir. I admit now that it was absolutely crazy idea.
It wasn't something I should have done, but hindsight is 2020.

Speaker 30 Did you come up with the ideas?

Speaker 69 I think I probably came up with the majority of them. I pretty much came up with the idea to get rid of Clayton Daniels.

Speaker 30 Now, this is where it really gets ghoulish. You've got, the two of you have got to come up with a body, am I right?

Speaker 24 Yes, sir.

Speaker 30 Either have to kill somebody or find a corpse.

Speaker 56 Yes, sir.

Speaker 69 And killing somebody was never on our list to do.

Speaker 24 Was it? No.

Speaker 69 From the get-go, we had thought about obtaining a corpse through a mortuary or a grave.

Speaker 30 Do you realize now how creepy this all sounds?

Speaker 3 We're talking about very ghoulish things, Molly.

Speaker 51 Molly said they drove around looking for out-of-the-way grave sites and came upon the remote Pebble Mound Cemetery and searched for a candidate in the headstones.

Speaker 69 The body had to be, you know, a certain amount old. If it was too old, it wouldn't work.
If it was too new, it wouldn't work.

Speaker 7 It wouldn't work out.

Speaker 69 Too old, it wouldn't probably be feasible to get the body out of the grave. Too new, it wouldn't burn the way it needed to.

Speaker 30 You'd done some research on what happens to bodies in fire, didn't you? Yes, sir.

Speaker 30 You went into your computer and you did search on stuff like how hot does a body have to to be to be unidentified in a fire, huh?

Speaker 69 I went to crematory websites.

Speaker 30 You went to crematorium websites?

Speaker 69 Mortuary websites.

Speaker 41 The plan was in place.

Speaker 13 On the night of June 17th, 2004, the Thursday before the Monday Clayton Daniels would be sent to jail, Molly said she stayed home while he went to the dark of the Pebble Mound Cemetery.

Speaker 51 to dig up a corpse.

Speaker 30 Did he tell you anything about that night, Molly, about going out there, what he felt, what he was thinking, digging the body up, driving across the countryside with this

Speaker 69 corpse in the car? We never talked about that, sir.

Speaker 69 It wasn't a subject he wanted to dwell on, and I never asked him.

Speaker 13 Clayton sped away from the fiery scene on a motorcycle that the couple had hidden in the bushes.

Speaker 30 So

Speaker 30 what do we get to? The next morning, Molly, or how's this go together?

Speaker 69 The next morning, about six o'clock. approximately,

Speaker 69 he called me

Speaker 69 and let me know it was done.

Speaker 30 How do you say it? What were the words?

Speaker 69 Just done.

Speaker 30 What did you say to him?

Speaker 24 Nothing.

Speaker 69 Hung up the phone.

Speaker 69 Composed myself to become, I guess, an award-winning actress for the day.

Speaker 30 You could put some tears on and be the grieving widow?

Speaker 69 The tears were real. The grieving widow part was not.
I used other emotions for it or the hardship we were going through, the fact that we actually went through this.

Speaker 46 And what about the friends and family who grieved, put themselves out, and supported her with time and money?

Speaker 69 I didn't want their money. I didn't ask them for it.
And though I took it, which was the wrong thing to do,

Speaker 69 it was upsetting. I shouldn't have done it.

Speaker 34 Molly, the events that happened later, were they driven by that insurance policy?

Speaker 42 No.

Speaker 30 We need to pretend that you're dead in order to get the money, and that's mainly why we're doing this?

Speaker 69 No. The reason behind it was to get him a new life.

Speaker 24 Did you want the money?

Speaker 69 No, sir.

Speaker 30 It have been nice to have. $110,000 payoff, huh?

Speaker 69 It would have helped, sir.

Speaker 69 But it wasn't about the money.

Speaker 26 Molly insisted killing off Clayton and replacing him with Jake was a roost to keep their family intact, even though her own child would be tortured by their harebrain scheme.

Speaker 30 Molly, inside your house, Caleb.

Speaker 30 He has known Clayton as his father.

Speaker 30 In comes Jake with a little hair color on.

Speaker 30 It's the same man.

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 30 How confused did your little boy get?

Speaker 69 He is a little confused at first.

Speaker 3 A little?

Speaker 69 I know that he acted out a little bit, but he was four years old. All four-year-old boys act out, regardless of their circumstances.

Speaker 30 You know, of all the crazy things that you two did.

Speaker 69 That was the worst.

Speaker 30 The jury said they wished they could have given you more than 20 years for what you did to your boy.

Speaker 30 Messing with his head like that.

Speaker 69 And I believe that to be very ridiculous. My crime was not hurting my son.
My crime was insurance fraud.

Speaker 30 You're telling him his daddy's dead? You say, here's Jake.

Speaker 30 Yes, sir. That's not being very destructive to your own child?

Speaker 69 It was hurting him, yes, sir.

Speaker 30 Why would you do that, Molly?

Speaker 69 To get on with the plan, sir.

Speaker 16 In the plan, Molly and Clayton were supposed to stay apart, assume new identities, and later find a new place to restart a life together.

Speaker 28 In fact, Molly was set to move to Florida in mid-December 2004, except for one small detail.

Speaker 13 She'd been arrested at the Taco Bell two weeks before.

Speaker 16 Their best-laid plans had been undone by some dogged investigators, but undone also because Molly hadn't moved away and because the scheming lovebirds just couldn't keep their hands off one another.

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Speaker 24 I pleading guilty.

Speaker 2 Pleading guilty.

Speaker 77 Are you pleading guilty simply because you are, in fact, guilty of that offense?

Speaker 35 Yes, sir.

Speaker 13 In January 2006, in a court in Burnett County, Clayton Daniels acknowledged guilt for the felonies he committed, arson and desecration of a cemetery.

Speaker 27 In sentencing Clayton to 10 additional years on top of the 20 he was already serving for probation violation on the aggravated sexual assault, the judge said the evidence.

Speaker 77 It allows the court to see deeply into the heart and soul of this defendant, and the court does not like what it sees.

Speaker 54 Mostly what repulsed the court was the ghoulish ransacking and incineration of the human remains, which turned out to be those of an elderly woman who deserved to rest in peace.

Speaker 40 Her name, Charlotte Davis, and in an awful irony, she had but one wish before dying, not to be cremated.

Speaker 30 Why would you pick the body of an older woman to be

Speaker 30 supposed as the body of a young man?

Speaker 69 There wasn't supposed to be anything left, sir.

Speaker 35 Charlotte, who died in 2003 at the age of 81, had been a mentally handicapped woman.

Speaker 8 Her favorite song in the memory of those who tended to her reflected the joy she found in each new day.

Speaker 21 Charlotte, a fundamentally happy person despite a lifetime spent in a wheelchair and group homes.

Speaker 78 Charlotte just hit my heart.

Speaker 62 So special.

Speaker 62 So I wanted the world to know that Charlotte meant something to someone. I wanted her to go out of this world with dignity.

Speaker 13 When Charlotte passed away, her caretaker, Laura Lovelace, had her buried in a special dress in a donated burial plot at Pebble Mound Cemetery.

Speaker 78 Her spot was behind the gate because Charlotte was always the type person. She always wanted to see what was going on.
Charlotte looked so peaceful and so at rest and so dignified in her confid.

Speaker 62 But it don't happen anymore.

Speaker 31 Not since Molly and Clayton Daniels cooked up their scheme to let him, a convicted sexual offender, be born again by violating Charlotte Davis in her grave.

Speaker 69 Those people out there who are upset with me about it are supposedly God-fearing Christian people.

Speaker 69 And they need to understand it was just a body.

Speaker 30 Just a body? You were body snatchers.

Speaker 69 She was in heaven, like they said. She was a good woman who went with God.

Speaker 69 It was just a body.

Speaker 30 When humans put their loved ones and people who passed away in the ground in a cemetery with rituals, they usually let them stay there. Yes, sir.

Speaker 30 They don't dig them up a few years later to have this greedy little scheme come together for them.

Speaker 24 No, sir.

Speaker 30 You don't seem to show much remorse about all of this.

Speaker 30 Do people look for something in you that they're not finding and

Speaker 30 get disappointed?

Speaker 69 I can tell you that being locked up 13 months has made a great impact on my life and

Speaker 69 I don't feel

Speaker 69 right now. There's a wall up and I wish people could actually see how I feel on the inside.

Speaker 30 What do people not know about you?

Speaker 69 That I care about what I did, that I'm sorry for what I did, that I want to be a good mom, that I can't believe that I did this.

Speaker 27 Molly's sister couldn't believe it either. And when we spoke to her, wasn't ready to forgive Molly for the emotional damage she caused her own son.

Speaker 44 What they did to Caleb,

Speaker 44 convincing him that Jake was not his daddy.

Speaker 44 This is your dad, but you can't call him dad.

Speaker 23 I mean,

Speaker 44 that is where my anger comes from.

Speaker 30 How much did she mess with your nephew's head?

Speaker 44 Enough that within about a month of having Caleb at the house with us,

Speaker 44 I had gone and had my hair done, cut it, and had it colored.

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 44 he was not happy. He did not.

Speaker 30 I made a change. You didn't look like Aunt Melissa to him anymore?

Speaker 44 I made a change with my hair, with my parents, and he, when is it going to grow back?

Speaker 44 I want it back the way it was. I don't like it.

Speaker 11 He didn't like it.

Speaker 44 And it took some convincing, you know, that it's just my hair. It's not

Speaker 44 me. It's my hair.

Speaker 23 How can you expect a four-year-old who fully trusts? both his parents because he has nothing in him to not trust them.

Speaker 23 You're not taught to not trust your own parents. You have full love.
You have full trust. Those are the anchors of your universe.

Speaker 23 To have your mother sit there and lie to you on such a grand fashion and completely change reality for you.

Speaker 23 How can you lie to your kid in such a fashion and expect them to even come out of it slightly normal?

Speaker 27 Her supportive co-worker Amy felt betrayed, but also a little sorry for her former friend.

Speaker 30 She really messed up her life royal, didn't she?

Speaker 18 Yeah, she did.

Speaker 69 And it's sad.

Speaker 24 Wrong guy syndrome? Or what do you think?

Speaker 18 I think so. She really could have gone somewhere with her life.

Speaker 22 Was it really love?

Speaker 24 What was it all about, do you think?

Speaker 30 Why would you make such a mess of your life for such a mess of a guy?

Speaker 69 Because I like to fix things.

Speaker 62 I like to make things better.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 30 You fixed yourself good.

Speaker 5 And I did.

Speaker 69 And I made a mistake.

Speaker 27 A mistake for which she has now paid.

Speaker 27 Molly Daniels Daniels pleaded guilty to her remaining charges and was sentenced to 15 years in prison for arson and 10 years for desecration of a cemetery, to be run concurrently with her sentences from Williamson County.

Speaker 27 She was released in 2016.

Speaker 27 Molly Daniels' mistake still haunts the people who love Charlotte Davis. Her remains were returned to the plot at Pebble Mound Cemetery just inside the gate, back again under a live oak.

Speaker 27 The innocent with a cruelly interrupted eternity.

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