Helen Moore

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Speaker 13 After losing her husband to cancer, Helen Moore was suddenly the sole support for her four kids.

Speaker 14 Helen felt totally alone.

Speaker 15 She wondered how she gonna raise these children by herself.

Speaker 10 But then the widow met a local cowboy named named Casey Elliott.

Speaker 4 We just ended up dating. We went to rodeos, rode horses, and worked cattle.

Speaker 19 I think it was more of a rebound.

Speaker 21 But after almost five years together, their relationship came to a sudden and dramatic end.

Speaker 4 I just told him to get out. I just don't want you in this house anymore.

Speaker 22 She indicated to us that Casey left in a huff.

Speaker 16 And he'd never be seen again.

Speaker 11 At least, not alive.

Speaker 23 We got a call that a body had been found out on Possum Kingdom Lake.

Speaker 24 To have someone murdered and their body dismembered, it was beyond comprehension.

Speaker 22 It was missing the head.

Speaker 15 It was something like out of a horror movie.

Speaker 25 But where was the rest of Casey?

Speaker 24 The other pieces had to be out there somewhere.

Speaker 18 How had he died?

Speaker 23 When they did the toxicology, they found it morphine.

Speaker 22 23 times what would be considered a lethal dose.

Speaker 27 And why is Helen changing her story after more than 20 years?

Speaker 30 I'm not going to live in fear anymore.

Speaker 16 January 21st, 1996, Possum Kingdom Lake.

Speaker 31 A man-made reservoir more than an hour west of Fort Worth, Texas.

Speaker 10 For the most part, Possum Kingdom Lake lives up to its name.

Speaker 5 It's the center of a scrubby wilderness full of prickly cactus, white-tailed deer, and of course, possums.

Speaker 24 It is very rugged. It's always been a favorite place for people to build cabins and go fishing and swimming and hunting.

Speaker 18 Whether they have permission to be there or not.

Speaker 15 Landowners had a lot of trouble with poachers and trespassers.

Speaker 39 So when a local landowner saw tire tracks leading into his woods that Sunday morning, he assumed that poachers had been at it again.

Speaker 23 They had had problems with deer hunters in that area, so he walked up in there to investigate.

Speaker 41 And his suspicions appeared to be confirmed as he neared the lake shore.

Speaker 15 From a distance, he thought he saw a butchered deer carcass.

Speaker 38 But once he got closer, the landowner realized that the bloody object half hidden in the tall grass grass wasn't a dead deer.

Speaker 22 It was part of a human body.

Speaker 23 The body of a male with the head missing, the hands missing, and the legs missing.

Speaker 42 Horrified, the landowner rushed back home and called 911.

Speaker 43 And when deputies from the Palo Pinto County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene, They faced what appeared to be an almost insurmountable task, establishing the dead man's identity.

Speaker 24 Normally you can check for fingerprints, dental records. When you dismember a body, you remove the normal sources of identification.

Speaker 37 However, there was one thing about the dead man that the dismemberment couldn't disguise.

Speaker 23 He was a large man, obviously very heavy.

Speaker 28 And when the Palo Pinto deputies looked into it, they discovered that a missing person's report had been filed barely 24 hours earlier in neighboring Young County concerning a man named Casey Elliott.

Speaker 22 Casey Elliott was described as a Caucasian male with a very large frame approaching 300 pounds.

Speaker 16 If the two cases were connected, investigators would have a mystery on their hands.

Speaker 8 How did the cowboy who had disappeared five days earlier end up dismembered?

Speaker 18 And could his live-in girlfriend, 41-year-old Helen Moore, help them solve his murder?

Speaker 35 Born in 1954, Helen Hardin grew up outside of Graham, Texas, an hour and a half west of Fort Worth in the heart of cattle country.

Speaker 4 I was raised on a farm ranch. We did a little bit of everything, taking care of cattle.
We raced horses, I trained horses, we did everything.

Speaker 19 She's been around horses, animals all of her life.

Speaker 16 And by the time Helen finished high school, she had a collection of barrel racing trophies and had even been crowned rodeo queen.

Speaker 22 She was just a country girl typical of small-town Texas.

Speaker 27 Her relationships were pretty typical for small-town Texas, too.

Speaker 19 Her and her first husband was married very young, right out of high school.

Speaker 16 The marriage didn't last, though.

Speaker 39 And a second short marriage also ended in divorce.

Speaker 19 They got along real good in the beginning.

Speaker 19 And then he got to running around on her.

Speaker 15 Helen's very unlucky in love. She couldn't find a man

Speaker 15 to love her and to stick around.

Speaker 48 So by the late 70s, Helen was a single mother of two working to support her family.

Speaker 4 I worked at the livestock place for the auctioneers.

Speaker 4 And then I helped do the cell barn. I helped run tickets.

Speaker 39 But then in 1979, the struggling 24-year-old's life took a very different turn when she met a hardworking landscaper named Terry Moore.

Speaker 4 He was a very good Christian man, godly man, and he doted on Helen's four-year-old daughter and infant son.

Speaker 15 He treated Helen's kids like his own.

Speaker 45 After the couple married in 1988, Helen and Terry had two more boys.

Speaker 40 She started working in his landscaping business and she joined Terry's church.

Speaker 4 We were youth directors. We was very involved in our church.
It was a family church. It was family-oriented, a very nice church.

Speaker 5 But in 1990, after 11 years together, the devoted couple received devastating news.

Speaker 4 Terry had melanoma.

Speaker 39 And it was terminal.

Speaker 15 There was nothing the doctors could do.

Speaker 24 Her husband was sent home.

Speaker 22 in a hospice situation with morphine and instructions to the family on how to administer dosages.

Speaker 26 For the next few months, Helen stayed by Terry's side, doing everything she could to make him comfortable.

Speaker 15 Helen was essentially his round-the-clock nurse.

Speaker 16 And in November of 1990, Terry passed away in her arms.

Speaker 14 After Terry's death, Helen felt totally alone.

Speaker 15 She wondered how she was going to raise these children by herself.

Speaker 18 Only 36 years old, with her future uncertain and her husband gone, Helen fell into a deep depression.

Speaker 4 We quit going to church and quit going to church. They didn't know what to do with the widow and four children.

Speaker 29 And since she and Terry had given up their landscaping business when he got sick, she was soon struggling to get by.

Speaker 22 She did odd jobs, yard work, worked cattle for herself and for other people.

Speaker 34 But less than a year after Terry's death, Helen would have the chance to make a fresh start.

Speaker 16 It was 1991 when Casey Elliott came knocking on Helen's door and asked if he could use her bathroom.

Speaker 52 Casey Elliott was the local cowboy.

Speaker 19 The well went out at the ranch where he was working at.

Speaker 31 And Helen, with typical small-town friendliness, said yes.

Speaker 40 After that, Casey stopped by regularly for the next few weeks, even after his well was repaired.

Speaker 4 He was always around my boys and always doing wanting to do stuff with them.

Speaker 54 Helen was more than happy to have a father figure in her sons lives.

Speaker 23 He was a good guy, really likable.

Speaker 22 More than one person referred to him as being a gentle giant.

Speaker 29 And the more Casey came around, the more Helen realized that she and the gentle giant had a lot in common.

Speaker 22 He had at least more than a casual interest in rodeoing and involving children in rodeo activities.

Speaker 39 And before long, Helen and Casey had become an item.

Speaker 4 I don't know, we just ended up dating.

Speaker 19 I think it was more of a rebound than anything from Terry.

Speaker 16 It may have started that way, just a fling to take Helen's mind off the loss of her husband, but it quickly turned into something more.

Speaker 19 One thing led to another and he just started staying more and more at her house. He ended up just staying.

Speaker 39 Although Helen was almost 13 years older than Casey, he filled the hole that Terry's death had left in her life.

Speaker 4 We went to rodeos with the children, rode horses and worked cattle. We roped.

Speaker 4 My kids showed goats, show goats, steers. They showed horses.

Speaker 21 Casey, Helen, and her two older kids competed in local rodeos too.

Speaker 15 They even built a place in their backyard so they could train for competitions.

Speaker 40 It was their life.

Speaker 44 And much like Terry before him, Casey all but adopted Helen's children, especially her two young sons.

Speaker 44 Over the next several years, he taught the boys to ride, shoot, and raise animals.

Speaker 24 He seemed to be like just a good old hardworking cowboy type. He exemplified some of those typical traits.
It's a salt of the earth folk living here in Young County.

Speaker 5 He didn't always work as a cowboy, though.

Speaker 17 To help support Helen's kids, Casey took a job with a steadier paycheck.

Speaker 4 He was an 18-wheeler truck driver.

Speaker 56 He drove across the country.

Speaker 24 The company that he worked for principally was a cattle-hauling business.

Speaker 12 And while Casey was often on the road for days at a time, Helen stayed home and looked after the kids, the couple's small ranch, and their herd.

Speaker 4 We had animals, we had horses.

Speaker 36 But just like her first two marriages that ended in divorce, Helen's new boyfriend was about to go astray.

Speaker 17 Coming up, was Helen the last person to see Casey alive?

Speaker 22 She indicated to us that Casey left in a huff.

Speaker 9 And investigators soon realized the true challenge may be confirming whether they found him.

Speaker 23 There were no hands, no teeth, nothing.

Speaker 5 On January 20th, 1996, the Young County Sheriff's Office received a call from the father of a local cowboy and trucker named Casey Elliott.

Speaker 18 He told the deputies that he hadn't seen or heard from his son in about five days.

Speaker 24 He was a long-haul trucker, didn't come back home for a few days. You know, that's not that uncommon.

Speaker 42 However, Casey's father told the deputies that his son's rig was currently parked on the trucking company's lot.

Speaker 22 He wasn't on a long-haul truck ride because his truck wasn't missing.

Speaker 40 And according to his father, Casey didn't appear to be anywhere else either.

Speaker 23 Nobody had seen him for a while. His father knew for sure that he was missing because the truck was sitting there.

Speaker 44 So the next day, January 21st, investigators with the Young County Sheriff's Office contacted Casey's girlfriend, 41-year-old Helen Moore.

Speaker 23 Helen Moore was living with Casey Elliott at the time.

Speaker 22 The investigators and law enforcement authorities first made contact with Helen after the missing person's report was filed.

Speaker 16 The deputies knocked on Helen's door, hoping to get some information on Casey's whereabouts.

Speaker 23 Helen was very cooperative the first time we went out there.

Speaker 29 Not that she could tell them much about where Casey was.

Speaker 30 I didn't have a clue.

Speaker 4 I mean, I was wondering why I never heard from him.

Speaker 20 And according to Helen, the reason he left explained why she hadn't reported him missing.

Speaker 48 According to Helen, the beginning of her relationship with Casey had been good, but things had quickly deteriorated.

Speaker 4 I can look back now and see there wasn't anything positive in it.

Speaker 40 Helen said that between what she made off their small ranch, and what Casey brought in driving a cattle truck, money had gotten tight.

Speaker 15 They were having trouble making the rent and keeping the lights on.

Speaker 42 And according to Helen, that led to trouble between her and Casey.

Speaker 22 She indicated that they fussed about finances. They had some money problems.

Speaker 26 Problems that had apparently reached a breaking point on January 15th.

Speaker 16 Helen said that when Casey came home that Monday, she'd confronted him about their growing stack of unpaid bills.

Speaker 27 and he'd blown up in response, shouting that he worked hard while she stayed home home and did nothing.

Speaker 22 He had had some unkind remarks to make about in the house.

Speaker 15 According to Helen, he said he'd never seen the place so filthy.

Speaker 36 Casey's insults had made Helen furious.

Speaker 4 I just told him to get out, but I told him don't care what happens where you go. I just don't want you in this house anymore.

Speaker 48 And when Helen returned home from work the next day, Casey was gone.

Speaker 23 She said that he had just walked off and left.

Speaker 18 And despite the fact that no one had seen or heard from him in more than five days, Helen wasn't all that worried.

Speaker 22 She indicated to us that when Casey left, he was in a huff.

Speaker 23 She was telling us that he had walked off, but that he would be back.

Speaker 14 Or would he?

Speaker 12 Five days was a fairly long huff.

Speaker 40 But the deputies had no real reason to doubt what Helen told them.

Speaker 23 Her reputation was okay in the community. She seemed to be be a likable person, a normal person, and not have a lot of problems.

Speaker 38 And she didn't appear to have anything to hide.

Speaker 23 She told us to come on in. I and a couple other deputies looked around and we really didn't see anything.

Speaker 40 But even as the deputies were getting ready to leave,

Speaker 42 they got some unexpected news over the radio in their patrol car.

Speaker 23 We got a call that a body had been found out on Possum Kingdom Lake.

Speaker 44 Possum Kingdom Lake was a remote reservoir a half hour away in neighboring Palo Pinto County.

Speaker 24 It's a very popular recreational lake. There are places down there where you could kind of get lost if you wanted to.

Speaker 42 But earlier that day, a rancher on the reservoir's western shore had found a dismembered corpse on his property.

Speaker 23 The torso itself had nothing to identify. There were no hands, no teeth, nothing that would get anything from it.

Speaker 40 However, what the authorities did find was enough to suggest that the headless and limbless torso could be Casey.

Speaker 23 Casey was over 300 pounds and it was very obvious that this body was of

Speaker 23 over a 300-pound man.

Speaker 12 Had the missing man been found?

Speaker 10 The investigators drove out to the lake to see for themselves.

Speaker 23 It was quite a shock when we pulled up and that pasture out on Possum Kingdom and the torso was there.

Speaker 21 Whoever the dead man was, it appeared that he had been killed elsewhere.

Speaker 15 There wasn't a lot of blood on the ground. It didn't look like he had been killed at the scene.

Speaker 37 However, there was a set of fairly fresh tire tracks leading from the road to where the body lay half hidden in a grassy clearing.

Speaker 52 The tracks made a circle back and came out. And then during that circle is when they dropped and unloaded the body.

Speaker 27 Although there were bits of manure and hay scattered around and clinging to the dismembered torso, suggesting it hadn't been lifted out of the trunk of a car or from the bed bed of a truck.

Speaker 52 I saw dried animal manure, you know, from livestock, cat manure. As far as I know, there wasn't any cattle in the area.
We suspected that the body had been hauled there in the horse trailer.

Speaker 42 Of course, in West Texas, practically everyone had a horse or cattle trailer.

Speaker 39 However, there was at least one clue that could narrow things down a bit.

Speaker 23 The cow manure, horse manure around him, had red flanks of paint in it.

Speaker 34 But while the red paint might help identify the trailer, positively identifying the body as Casey still presented a challenge.

Speaker 58 Not having dental records or fingerprints to possibly or potentially identify this individual, DNA was the next viable option.

Speaker 33 Although in 1996, the technique was still in its infancy.

Speaker 24 I remember Sheriff Pettis saying that they were going to send off some skin samples or something, going to do this DNA testing.

Speaker 24 And I was going like, what?

Speaker 14 What?

Speaker 24 What is DNA?

Speaker 25 The test results could take weeks.

Speaker 58 Testing the early 90s. It was very laborious.
It took quite a bit of time to develop profiles.

Speaker 29 So while technicians from the coroner's office loaded up the torso for autopsy, the young and Palo Pinto County deputies began searching the lake shore.

Speaker 22 You have this dismembered torso, so naturally you want to look for other body parts. We had

Speaker 23 cadaver dogs coming in. We had people on horseback searching.

Speaker 10 They even brought in a dive team.

Speaker 22 Their thinking was, well, let's see if we can find more body parts in the water.

Speaker 26 And while the search continued, news of the gruesome discovery spread.

Speaker 24 How do you conceive of something like that happening, especially here in our peaceful little town? It's just, it was just shocking. Murders are relatively uncommon in this part of the world.

Speaker 40 But while the public struggled to process the horrific crime, the investigators had a few theories about what might have caused it.

Speaker 23 Our assumption was there's probably some kind of dope deal where they were trying to hide the body.

Speaker 16 However, cross-border drug cartels weren't the only ones who might butcher a body and dump it in the wilderness.

Speaker 5 Another theory had the investigators wondering if the murder could be the work of a serial killer.

Speaker 22 There were, oddly enough, in a small rural jurisdiction, a couple of missing persons reports.

Speaker 16 Were there more victims hidden away in the wilderness around Possum Kingdom Lake?

Speaker 23 We just started searching and looking in the searching pastures, looking in creeks.

Speaker 5 Or would new evidence lead the search for Casey's killer closer to home?

Speaker 32 Coming up, the autopsy leads to a surprising discovery.

Speaker 15 It was enough to kill a man, even a man the size of Casey.

Speaker 29 And the investigators connect the dots.

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Speaker 45 By the end of January 1996, it had been more than a week since Casey Elliott's father had called the Young County, Texas Sheriff's Office to report the 28-year-old cowboy and trucker missing.

Speaker 16 And it had been two weeks since he'd apparently walked out on his live-in girlfriend, 41-year-old Helen Moore.

Speaker 23 Helen told us when we first started the investigation that the reason he got mad and left, walked off was that they were fighting about money.

Speaker 12 The investigators suspected he was never coming back.

Speaker 27 A day after the 300-pound cowboy was reported missing, the dismembered torso of a large white male was found near Possum Kingdom Lake in neighboring Palo Pinto County.

Speaker 22 It didn't take much of a leap, even missing the head, the hands, and the legs, to assume that that torso probably matched Casey Elliott.

Speaker 21 Although official confirmation would require DNA testing and time.

Speaker 58 In 1996, we were using a high molecular weight DNA process. It was much more time consuming.
It also required a larger sample of a biological fluid or a sample to produce a DNA profile.

Speaker 22 An effort was made and was successful in obtaining DNA

Speaker 22 for comparison from family members.

Speaker 8 And while the DNA testing had yet to confirm that the remains were Casey's, the autopsy of the torso did have some interesting things to reveal.

Speaker 14 First off, whoever had dismembered the body had done an expert job, severing the head and limbs cleanly at the joints.

Speaker 15 Whoever killed Casey knew how to butcher an animal.

Speaker 39 However, that wasn't the most interesting thing the autopsy revealed.

Speaker 23 When they did the toxicology, they found morphine.

Speaker 38 And they found a lot of it, too.

Speaker 22 Toxicology report indicated as much as 23 times as much as what would be considered a lethal dose.

Speaker 15 It was enough morphine to kill a man, even a man the size of Casey.

Speaker 10 Although, while the torso showed no injuries beyond the dismemberment, the medical examiner couldn't determine an exact cause of death.

Speaker 22 It's possible due to the missing body parts that his throat could have been cut.

Speaker 49 Due to the dismemberment, the investigators couldn't really confirm if that was how he died.

Speaker 44 But they had identified a suspect.

Speaker 22 They were focused on Helen Moore.

Speaker 20 And the reason had to do with the morphine found in the dead man's system.

Speaker 24 Mrs. Moore's previous husband was a victim of cancer.
He died at home and the doctors treating him prescribed morphine to control his pain in the final days.

Speaker 12 The doctor had prescribed the morphine, but it was Helen who administered it.

Speaker 15 She knew how to inject morphine. The doctors showed her how to use it.

Speaker 40 And the investigators didn't think it was a coincidence that a body fitting Casey's description had turned up with a lethal dose of the drug in his system.

Speaker 23 We were pretty sure at that time that she had probably given him morphine. And that's probably what had killed him.

Speaker 35 The question was, could they prove it?

Speaker 40 While they waited for the results of the DNA analysis, the investigators paid another visit to Helen's ranch.

Speaker 23 She gave us access to her property. I and a couple other deputies went out there several times and looked around.

Speaker 40 And searching the barns behind the house, they noticed something interesting about Helen and Casey's horse trailer.

Speaker 52 It just so happens that the floor of the trailer was red.

Speaker 52 That was just one more piece of evidence to put together with everything else that we got that was pointing toward her.

Speaker 22 One of the law enforcement officers discovered red paint flecks. in the manure droppings at the dump site.

Speaker 10 The paint wasn't the only thing connecting Helen's trailer to the pasture at Possum Kingdom Lake, where the killer had left Casey's body.

Speaker 23 The body was dumped in a prickly pear patch.

Speaker 23 We found prickly pears in the tires that indicated that that trailer had been out there where the body was found.

Speaker 28 While the paint and the prickly pear spines put the trailer at the dump site, proving it had been used to haul the body might be difficult.

Speaker 52 Everything was washed and kind of clean.

Speaker 12 But had the person who had hosed out the trailer been thorough enough?

Speaker 16 Because when the investigators took a closer look, they made an important discovery.

Speaker 23 Deputy Martin went in and cut planks out of the bottom of that trailer and turned them over and they found blood. That blood was sent to the lab for DNA purposes.

Speaker 40 And while they didn't yet know if it was Casey's blood, what the investigators found was enough to bring Helen in for questioning.

Speaker 23 I interviewed her in my office at the Sheriff's Department here.

Speaker 55 During the questioning, Helen told the investigators that she had used her horse trailer recently, and she admitted that she had hosed blood off of the floorboards.

Speaker 40 But Helen calmly explained that it wasn't human blood that the investigators had found on the underside of the trailer.

Speaker 23 She said her pet pig had been attacked by a dog when it was in such bad shape that they had to kill it.

Speaker 4 They said they found blood in the trailer and that's how it was in there.

Speaker 48 And since for the moment, the investigators had no way of proving otherwise, they let Helen go.

Speaker 23 We didn't really believe it all

Speaker 23 that much, but it was feasible.

Speaker 12 However, on February 9th, the investigators would confirm one of their suspicions once they got the DNA results for the dismembered torso found near Possum Kingdom Lake.

Speaker 58 From the torso, we were able to

Speaker 58 develop a DNA profile and compare it to the biological mother and biological father of Casey.

Speaker 58 And the DNA actually was able to identify him.

Speaker 22 It was, in fact, Casey Elliott.

Speaker 25 Three weeks after he disappeared, the missing cowboy had finally been found.

Speaker 24 It was hard on the community, coming from a small community like this where everybody kind of appreciates everybody else.

Speaker 25 In addition to the DNA, the lab also tested the floorboards taken from Helen's trailer.

Speaker 58 The boards of the trailer tested preserved pasta for blood, for pig blood.

Speaker 12 But pig's blood wasn't all that the tests revealed.

Speaker 58 One of the samples did test pasta for human blood.

Speaker 29 And not just any humans, according to the DNA analysis.

Speaker 52 The blood that was on the boards, the underside of the boards of the trailer was proven by DNA analysis to be Casey Elliott's blood.

Speaker 32 It wasn't quite a smoking gun, but it was close enough for the authorities.

Speaker 22 A very strong circumstantial fence just gradually closed around Helen.

Speaker 57 And on March 19th, 10 days after Casey's closed casket funeral, the investigators placed her under arrest.

Speaker 23 Helen showed no emotion when we put the cuffs on her.

Speaker 33 She wasn't answering any more questions either.

Speaker 4 They started questioning me. They were saying, well, you did this, you did that.
I just, I didn't do it, so I never thought I would go to prison.

Speaker 4 If you didn't didn't do something, you're innocent until proven guilty. That's not the way it is anymore.

Speaker 35 But was her decision to stop talking too little, too late?

Speaker 54 Because the day after her arrest, the investigators descended on the ranch one last time with a warrant to search inside the house.

Speaker 23 When we searched the house, we found morphine.

Speaker 22 The morphine helped to tighten the ring of evidence closing in on Helen Moore.

Speaker 51 Coming up, is the evidence as airtight as the prosecutors believe?

Speaker 24 There was a pretty wide discrepancy between her size and his size.

Speaker 25 Or will the case take an unexpected turn?

Speaker 22 I expected it to be a war in the courtroom.

Speaker 36 By the end of March 1996, it had been almost two and a half months since Casey Elliott's dismembered torso had been found dumped at a rural reservoir outside the small town of Graham, Texas.

Speaker 25 And it had been almost two weeks since the authorities arrested Casey's girlfriend, 41-year-old Helen Moore, and charged her with murder.

Speaker 22 There was forensic evidence, there was circumstantial evidence, and all of it pointed to Helen Moore.

Speaker 47 Still, Helen swore she was innocent.

Speaker 23 She was telling us that she didn't do it, that he had walked off.

Speaker 19 Something else had to be behind the whole thing.

Speaker 19 Because it's not something

Speaker 19 that Helen would do. It just, it wasn't in her

Speaker 19 to do something like that.

Speaker 29 Not that her claims of innocence had any impact on the investigators.

Speaker 52 I was convinced that she committed the crime. There was

Speaker 52 a lot of evidence collected and statements given that just continuously pointed toward her.

Speaker 35 And they hadn't given up on finding the rest of Casey's remains either.

Speaker 24 They'd found the torso, but they knew the other pieces had to be out there somewhere.

Speaker 23 We sent deputies and teams out to look at all the bridges and all those places that she could throw things off.

Speaker 20 And on March 31st, while checking a bridge just a few miles from Helen's Ranch, the investigators may have finally caught a break.

Speaker 23 The sheriff and I, we saw a black bag down in the bottom of the creek.

Speaker 24 Policeman's intuition, I suppose, and he said, let's go down there and check that out. He reached out into the creek and the bag ripped slightly and it revealed a human ear.

Speaker 23 And of course, we knew then that we had found his head.

Speaker 24 He was, you know, taken aback. Even though they were basically looking for body parts, I don't think he really expected to find a human head inside that bag.

Speaker 34 And digging into the couple's troubled finances had revealed another surprise.

Speaker 43 Helen had never hidden the fact that money was a problem for her and Casey.

Speaker 23 Helen told us that she and Casey had fought over money.

Speaker 40 But despite what appeared to be a a very tight budget, the couple had made one purchase that caught the investigators' attention.

Speaker 23 She had taken a $150,000 insurance policy out of him within the last few months before he passed away.

Speaker 24 She was listed as the sole beneficiary of the life insurance policy. So if her intent had been to collect on that, that would be pretty strong motivation.

Speaker 22 We had a financial motive, direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, and of course forensics. I was convinced that it was an extremely strong case.

Speaker 39 One that just might cost Helen her life.

Speaker 22 Texas law at that time only offered two possible punishments, and death penalty was one of them.

Speaker 46 But would a jury hesitate to send a mother of four to death row?

Speaker 18 Not if the mood around town was any indication.

Speaker 15 People in Graham wanted Helen to get the same lethal injection that she had given Casey.

Speaker 24 We're not that far removed from the days of public hangings.

Speaker 17 Or was there still room for the defense to make a case for reasonable doubt?

Speaker 24 There was a pretty wide discrepancy between her size and his size.

Speaker 22 How are jurors, how are lay people going to deal with this notion that she was too small to to pull this off with such a large man.

Speaker 55 As spring turned to summer with Helen's trial date rapidly approaching, the prosecutors fully expected a fight.

Speaker 22 Her lawyer had been very aggressive, very thorough, very confrontational, and I expected it to be a war in the courtroom.

Speaker 40 But then in August of 1996, the prosecutors received an unexpected call from Helen's defense attorney.

Speaker 22 In the days immediately before the trial was scheduled to start, discussions developed about perhaps Helen was willing to plead guilty.

Speaker 37 Helen's sudden reversal caught the prosecutors and investigators entirely by surprise.

Speaker 23 Up until that point, she denied that she had done anything.

Speaker 22 That realization of the death penalty was still an option. That's what, if anything, led her to confess.

Speaker 25 That and her belief that the prosecutors would get it, according to Helen.

Speaker 4 I knew I couldn't get justice from where where the trial was held because of all the publicity on it.

Speaker 42 However, while Helen was convinced that a conviction was all but guaranteed, the authorities weren't so sure.

Speaker 23 You never know what a jury's going to do.

Speaker 29 So after conferring with Casey's family, the prosecutor agreed to make a deal on one condition.

Speaker 22 I took the capital count off the table.

Speaker 22 and recommended that if she would plead guilty and elocute, tell us how it happened and what she did with the rest of the body parts, that I would recommend to the court a conviction for murder with a life sentence.

Speaker 29 At the end of August, Helen sat down with the investigators and prosecutors and proceeded to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear.

Speaker 22 She not only confessed to the killing, but she provided certain details of how she gradually administered morphine to him.

Speaker 22 He had been sick with a cold or flu-like symptoms, and she was the one taking care of him, and that she had administered dosages of morphine.

Speaker 25 Slowly, over several days, she had poisoned him.

Speaker 41 And on the morning of January 16th, Casey lay unconscious in their bed.

Speaker 22 She indicated that she administered the final dose to him, then took the young children who resided in the home to school.

Speaker 39 According to Helen's confession, Casey was dead by the time she returned home.

Speaker 51 And while the children were in school, she tackled the most difficult part of the job, moving his 300-pound body.

Speaker 22 She secured a tarp and laid it next to the bed and rolled Casey's large body off of the bed onto the tarp.

Speaker 22 And then she took a lariat rope and ran the lariat rope out of the bedroom around the corner through the little kitchen and out to the back porch stoop.

Speaker 22 She backed the horse trailer up to the back door,

Speaker 22 unhitched it, ran the rope through the horse trailer,

Speaker 22 and tied the end of the lariat rope to the trailer hitch, and then gradually drove away from the horse trailer, thereby dragging Casey's body.

Speaker 22 out of the bedroom, around the corner, and out the back door, ultimately into the horse trailer.

Speaker 31 And then once Casey's body was was securely in the trailer, the truly gruesome part began.

Speaker 22 She indicated that she used a bow saw, if you can imagine, and proceeded to cut Casey's body into eight separate pieces.

Speaker 15 Helen cut up his body at his joints just the way you would slaughter a cow.

Speaker 17 The body dismembered.

Speaker 21 Helen said she'd driven the trailer out to the lake to dump the torso, stopping on the way there and back to dispose of the other body parts.

Speaker 24 Those body parts are scattered in different locations.

Speaker 22 She couldn't really specify where the other five body parts were.

Speaker 25 And according to Helen, she couldn't remember exactly where she dumped the rest of Casey's remains because of what she'd done to get through the grisly business of butchering him.

Speaker 22 She had been taking pills, Percadan was her description, and drinking vodka straight.

Speaker 34 And the next day, once she'd sobered up, Helen said she'd slaughtered a pig in the trailer to help cover her tracks.

Speaker 58 If she slaughtered a pig there, then theoretically, most of that blood would be pig blood.

Speaker 29 Helen said she'd also poured bleach in the bloody trailer and then hosed it out.

Speaker 24 She did a pretty good job of trying to hide everything.

Speaker 42 Just not quite good enough to outsmart the investigators.

Speaker 24 They

Speaker 22 tied this case together just as well as big city detectives can do.

Speaker 5 Once they had Helen's story, the prosecutors held up their end of the bargain.

Speaker 8 On August 30th, 1996, Helen formally pled guilty to the murder and dismemberment of Casey Elliott.

Speaker 23 She got a life sentence, so she'll be there probably until she passes away.

Speaker 55 Even if the 41-year-old was technically eligible for parole.

Speaker 22 She couldn't even ask to be considered for parole until after serving 40 years.

Speaker 21 For Casey's family, it was the end to a seven-month-long nightmare.

Speaker 22 They were happy with the outcome and felt like the person that killed their son was brought to justice. So I feel good about it.

Speaker 13 And around Helen's hometown, most people were pleased that the brutal killer would probably be spending the rest of her life behind bars.

Speaker 24 You could almost feel a big sigh of relief in the community knowing that

Speaker 24 this has brought it to closure.

Speaker 12 That closure has lasted more than 20 years.

Speaker 53 But now, will a shocking new claim reopen the case?

Speaker 11 Coming up, Helen changes her story.

Speaker 30 I'm not going to live in fear anymore.

Speaker 9 Could it explain everything?

Speaker 19 She was trying to cover up for someone she loved.

Speaker 39 By 2016, Helen Moore had spent two decades behind bars for the murder of her boyfriend, Casey Elliott.

Speaker 34 In 1996, 1996, she pleaded guilty to killing Casey, dismembering his body, and scattering his remains across Young County, Texas and neighboring areas.

Speaker 23 We were pretty pleased that she pled out and took the deal.

Speaker 11 But was Helen?

Speaker 46 Now serving a life sentence, the 61-year-old says that a guilty plea was her only option.

Speaker 4 I decided it the night before I pled guilty because they were, my attorney told me that they was going to go for the death penalty if I didn't.

Speaker 10 But now, Helen says it's time to tell her story.

Speaker 37 According to Helen's news story, her boyfriend wasn't the gentle giant people believed him to be.

Speaker 4 He was abusive, verbal at first, and then it became physical.

Speaker 12 And she claims that for almost five years, she'd essentially been a prisoner in her own home.

Speaker 4 He did a lot of mental abuse, like, nobody wants you. You couldn't find anybody else.
If you try to leave me, I'll either hurt you or one of your children.

Speaker 19 There's no way Helen could have fought back on Casey because he was just so much bigger than her.

Speaker 45 Despite the abuse, Helen said she had nothing to do with killing Casey or dismembering him.

Speaker 4 I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that to a human being.

Speaker 31 But if she didn't do it, who did?

Speaker 37 According to Helen, one of her teenage children killed Casey.

Speaker 4 He was sexually abusive to him.

Speaker 53 And according to Helen, rather than see one of her children suffer in prison, she'd sacrificed herself instead.

Speaker 19 She was trying to cover up for someone she loved.

Speaker 4 I didn't want to put their lives in jeopardy or

Speaker 4 fear at that time.

Speaker 34 But now, after two decades in prison, Helen says that she's tired of suffering for someone else's crime.

Speaker 30 I'm not going to live in fear anymore.

Speaker 35 It's an incredible story, but is it the truth?

Speaker 47 Her friend Petta Canceler has always believed in Helen's innocence.

Speaker 19 I would hope that Helen could get out and get a new,

Speaker 19 get a trial, and be able to tell her side of the story.

Speaker 10 But the prosecutor who put Helen in prison remains convinced that her original 1996 confession was genuine.

Speaker 22 To my knowledge, she was not coerced by anything other than the tightening noose

Speaker 22 as the day of reckoning, beginning of her trial, crept closer and closer.

Speaker 16 And the fact that Helen had turned on her own children and accused one of them of murder.

Speaker 37 To some, it's not much of a surprise, especially considering what she had already done to Casey.

Speaker 24 How could one human being do that to another human being? It was almost like the definition of evil.

Speaker 25 Helen Moore will be eligible for parole in 2026 when she's 71 years old.

Speaker 46 The rest of Casey Elliott's remains were never found.

Speaker 3 Did you see that? That was crazy. I love this.

Speaker 59 How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

Speaker 59 When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Speaker 8 Are we really safe? Is our water safe?

Speaker 60 You destroyed our top.

Speaker 24 And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

Speaker 56 We call things accidents. There is no accident.

Speaker 7 This was 100%

Speaker 24 preventable.

Speaker 59 They're the result of choices by people. Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.
These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Speaker 59 Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Speaker 59 Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 59 You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wonder Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.