Ep.9: Anonymous Tip - Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom?

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

What a performance by Team California.

The power is ours.

Picture yourself alone in the middle of nowhere, and there's somebody following you.

He went on his way, we so thought, and then we went on ours.

But in reality, he really followed us up there.

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You rattle dope dealers, you're gonna get killed.

She was with David Young for quite some time.

if I had been involved in that, she never would have been found.

Friends don't do that.

Mad, crazy lovers do that.

From ID and Arc Media, I'm Sarah Kalen, and this is Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

Five years ago, I was asked to reopen the unsolved murder of a woman named Renee Bergeron.

It was important to me that her daughter, Amanda Campos, agreed, and she did.

In December 2019, I met with Amanda.

When she would come visit and we'd take bike rides, she would say how she was planning to come back and how she was looking for a house and how she was trying to get her life back together.

And as a kid, you want so bad to believe that.

You know, and I did.

I truly believed it.

It's like, she really was trying to get it together.

Like, she was, she had a plan.

She knew what she wanted.

Yeah, there were steps in the city.

Yeah, like in the process had been taken.

And it's like, she just needed another week.

And now I guess I feel more like

one week.

And my whole life could have been different.

And one week.

Renee Bergeron never got that week.

On November 13th, 1993, a passerby found her body by the side of a remote dirt road.

Amanda was 10 at the time.

The police police mishandled the case from the start, and no one has ever been charged.

Despite tremendous efforts by Renee's mom, Joyce, and her daughter Amanda, the case went cold, and it's left Amanda wanting to know.

Why can't we talk about what happened to my mom?

And so, for the last five years, that's what I've tried to do.

With anyone who might be able to help us solve this horrendous crime, I've talked about what happened to Amanda's mom.

We've made progress, and we have more to share.

Before we do, let's look back at what we know.

On November 13th, 1993, the body of 26-year-old Renee Michelle Bergeron was found on a remote dirt road.

She'd been mutilated and decapitated, then thoroughly washed and disposed of in some bushes near the road.

She was initially identified as Maria Martinez, an alias she'd been using for several years.

In combing through Renee's letters, date books, and journals, several key theories of the case emerged, and with them, a handful of suspects rose to the top of the list.

Several were viable, serious contenders, each with their own possible motive, and each requiring intense attention and allocation of investigative resources.

But there was one who stood out in the crowd, one who seemed to go almost completely unnoticed by the original investigators.

William David Young.

Just David to those who know him.

Over time, we were able to eliminate the other suspects.

We've tried to eliminate David Young, but he lies about things that matter only if he's trying to put distance between himself and Renee.

He offers cooperation, but then withdraws it when we accept.

He asks us why we suspect him, and we give him an actual itemized list, but he shrugs shrugs at each item and simply says next

we surreptitiously collected a dna sample and it did not match traces of partial dna profiles found under her fingernails but that does not rule him out as a suspect because remember her body had been thoroughly washed before it was found someone removed any traces of himself

At the very end of season one, we shared that a recent anonymous tip pointed to a new suspect, but we had not yet vetted the tip, so we weren't ready to say more about it.

At the end of all of it, we were left feeling sure that David had some knowledge or involvement.

We just didn't know exactly what it was.

So that's where we were the last time we were in Mobile.

In December 2023, I called Sergeant Matthew Peake to fill him in on recent progress and to begin preparing for my next trip to Mobile.

I cannot get over your beard.

You like that?

Matt has been my partner in this investigation practically since day one.

Matt isn't even assigned to homicide right now.

He's working with a completely separate unit.

But we will remain partners in the Renee Bergeron investigation, both by assignment and by choice.

I want to say the last time we spoke, it was about a new person of interest that a leaf had turned over.

Yeah, yeah.

So you tell me what you want me to fill fill you in on how this lead was generated how this person's name came about in the investigation who he's connected to if anyone any other persons that we've already spoken with or have interviewed in the past several years or was this just a cold tip out of nowhere from previous podcast

so it was kind of a cold tip out of nowhere it was not out of the podcast there were a couple of key points that were 100 accurate.

And given that the podcast had not come out yet and that a lot of the details as to the condition of Renee's remains, when they were located and stuff, had not been in the public, it made the tip seem at least worth exploring more deeply because there definitely was a measure of credibility to the tip.

The tip started with a banger, quote, a lady was found decapitated near our home.

I always thought my father was involved, end quote.

The new suspect is a major development.

We also have new information on our existing primary suspect, David Young.

The first is from Laura Morris.

So you, of course, remember the witness who placed Renee at David's house.

Right.

And then you could corroborate that after.

Yes.

And even though, you know, she accepted that he, you know, she and he may have been the last people to see her alive, other than her killers, she was pretty adamant when she spoke with us in 2020 and 2021 that she still didn't believe he could do this.

He wasn't capable of this, that kind of thing.

She has reached out to me since the podcast aired.

There were things she learned from the podcast, because we had not been in a position to share them with her at that time in the investigation, that like she heard other things, other statements that he made to us that were played during the podcast that she says were baldface lies.

And she said she now believes he probably did do it based on some of these statements.

The last time she talked to me, she said she was going to his house to confront him because she full-blown thinks he did it and thinks he needs to fess up.

Wow.

Laura Morris didn't lose her confidence in David because of what I said, but because of what David said.

She caught more lies he told us that we never could have known were lies.

In addition to this call from Laura, there are a few things about David that I've worked through since we aired episode eight.

Two in in particular from our last interview with him.

So let's look back at July 14th, 2021.

We had an interview scheduled with David, one he had originally requested, but then he went dark on us.

For more than a year, this man had actively inserted himself into the investigation.

He called, he offered to speak.

He asked us countless questions about the case.

But suddenly he'd started ghosting us, not showing up at the agreed-upon times, not answering his phone or returning calls.

That day in July, when he hadn't shown up at 9 a.m.

as appointed, we waited a few minutes just in case.

At 9.15, Matt looked at me and said, let's go for a ride.

When we got to his trailer, David opened the door and sat down on the couch to put on his shoes.

As As he did, he also made a phone call.

David says, a friend of mine.

We asked who, but he didn't want to say.

David made this call to inform someone that he was getting questioned by police again, implying someone in his life was in touch with him throughout this investigation.

Who could it be?

David wasn't saying.

But as we drove to the sheriff's office, he was talking to Matt in the front seat.

I was in the back seat listening and recording.

It was a typical conversation.

And then out of nowhere, David started talking about a dream he had recently.

I had a dream about her, man.

I'm crazy with her at night.

Really?

Yeah.

What was that about?

Just a random dream?

Yeah, just I was thinking about it, and then all of a sudden at night I had the dream about three o'clock in the morning.

It woke me up after it was over with.

They were in there, they had to dig, they was digging their grave up, and there was a girl out beside her that had been murdered too.

They dug both of them up, and I could see her and they, you know, where they done dug up the

grave.

You know, I could see her and the other girl.

And all of a sudden, I woke her up.

The conversation moved on as though he hadn't just given us something we'd want to investigate further.

See, dreams can play a big part in criminology, but I didn't want to give that away in that moment in the car.

So I stayed quiet.

We got to the station and we conducted our third interview.

So

from the times that we've spoken with you,

we've got a lot of conflicting information and we want some clear clarity.

We spoke for almost three hours.

He talked in circles.

He changed his story about Laura Morris being at his house, but otherwise he gave us nothing.

After the interview, I couldn't stop thinking about the two things that had happened on the way to the interview.

David's story about his dream was chilling, and it was completely unprompted.

Honest statements by offenders told through dream narrative are significant and common.

The reason this dream is chilling is less about routine detective work.

It's more about criminal psychology and investigating serial crime involving extreme violence.

I called to discuss this with my mentor, Dr.

Ann Burgess, a pioneer in crime scene analysis and treatment of trauma victims.

Dreams are ways that people bring forward information.

That is not unusual for someone to talk about doing something as a dream.

And it could have been even if you want to get psychiatric about it, it's a dissociative state that he goes into and he thinks it's a dream and he's not really sure and it's his way of still confessing without having to actually confess.

It's very incriminating, I think, yes.

Can you actually, let's elaborate on that a little bit?

Because I think that the general public would be very surprised to learn because we see that in movies, right?

We should be asking.

We should be telling mental health people or even law enforcement to ask about dreams.

And we don't do that.

And that's a good outcome for this.

And it can be prefaced with, we know that people think of things and they think that they're kind of dreaming.

They're not sure it's really happening.

And that could be a way to get them to confess.

I never thought of that.

Yeah, I think the dream in it certainly has some implication in this case.

The dream stuck with me.

So did the phone call he made while Matt and I waited for him.

Less than a minute long, just a couple dozen words.

But it proved to us he has been talking to someone else about the details of this investigation.

David wouldn't tell us who, but if we could find this mystery person, maybe he or she could tell us what they've talked about.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Dialed in on the thermostat.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

Clutch move by the home team.

What's the game plan from here on out?

Laundry?

Not today.

Dishwasher?

Sidelined.

What a performance by Team California.

The power truly is ours.

During a flex alert, pre-cool, power down, and let's beat the heat together.

Picture yourself alone in the middle of nowhere, and there's somebody following you.

He went on his way, we so thought, and then we went on ours.

But in reality, he really followed us up there.

On Deadly Nightmares, the true crime podcast from ID, listen to real stories of ordinary people stalked by serial killers and attackers.

Listen to Deadly Nightmares on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I spent weeks thinking about that quick call.

I wanted to know who David spoke to, so we subpoenaed the records.

We waited almost a year.

The records eventually came through, but I was at a loss interpreting the data Verizon sent us.

That's why I need a full team on any investigation.

Our forensic researcher, Jen Leahy, got to work piecing together David's phone records, and being the saint that she is, she was able to nail down the number David called that day.

In August of 2022, we set up an interview with the person whose number David had called that day.

I'm the special investigator with the sheriff's office.

This is Josh.

We're going to be talking to you today.

I really appreciate you coming down.

And have a seat in here.

Since I got here first, I took the squishy chair.

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

All right, I appreciate you coming down so much.

Detective Josh Grimm is filling in for Matt.

That's right.

You take the other comfy chair.

So,

I know Corporal Gazir was a little bit like vague on the phone.

Do you have any thoughts on what we're talking about?

The man shakes his head.

No, you got no clue.

Okay.

We settle ourselves into the tiny windowless interview room at a remote substation of the sheriff's office.

We have an 8x10 photo of Renee with us in case this person knew her by another name.

It only takes a few minutes to realize this isn't who we need to talk to.

The person on the other end of David's call was this man's wife.

He tells us she's at home and offers to go pick her up.

About 20 minutes later, he's back with his wife by his side.

Hi, come on in.

I'm Sarah.

I'm

nice to meet you.

That's Josh.

There's Renee.

He's going to sit there.

She is soft-spoken, and the way she says Renee's name when she sees the photo of her signals to everyone in the room this is still a deeply personal issue.

Because of her role in an active investigation, we're going to anonymize her.

We'll call her Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has a close history with the young family, going all the way back to her childhood.

She was around the same age as Renee when Renee started spending time in Mobile, and she knew Renee and David very well.

I don't even need to tell her what we're here to discuss.

She knows, and she seems genuinely frightened.

I mean,

when he called you last July and said, I'm going down there to talk to them, prior to that, when had he spoken to you?

Because there's another phone call to the same number that afternoon after we dropped him off after the interview.

So a longer call.

So he would have had to have called back.

He had just told me like y'all had been talking to him about Renee's case.

Why do you think he called you, though?

Well, we were just after we reconnected.

Oh, you mean that dad?

I don't know.

Well, look, I can tell you.

He's probably the, she's probably the closest thing he's got left to survive.

Did he say to you one way or the other, I didn't do this?

Or, like, did he ever flat out say to me?

He did this?

He ain't done it.

He did.

Has he said that directly to you?

He said, I don't know why they keep messing with me because I didn't do it.

What do you think he did I don't know that's the only one that knows that is him and God

Elizabeth is being cautious with her answers still she strikes me as honest

okay

what kind of person is Dave

um

he would

hurt my feelings with his words when you say that like he would hurt you with his words like what kind of stuff I remember one time we went fishing

and it was a cat.

The fish wasn't big enough.

It was my first time going.

So it was like a catfish and I wanted him to put it back in the water and he wouldn't.

You know, I couldn't stand it because it was too little.

What's happening in this moment doesn't really come across in the audio.

Elizabeth is laughing, but her body language says she is not enjoying this moment.

She's wringing her hands, and then she freezes.

Elizabeth clearly remembers this story as if it just happened, even though it would have been more than 40 years ago.

The story stuck with her for a reason, and yet in retelling it, she stops suddenly, seemingly afraid of what the ending of the story might mean to the investigators in front of her.

Something happened to that fish.

Something that left an indelible memory for Elizabeth, stamped in her brain, visible in her her mind's eye at a moment's recall.

And I can only speculate because Elizabeth completely shuts down when the vision hits her.

But what I speculate is that something terrible was done to that fish, a harmless creature, hurt or killed in some way that a 12-year-old girl found so distressing, she never really got over it.

Much of what we know about criminal psychology comes from the behavioral science unit at the FBI, the so-called so-called mindhunter studies.

Decades of rigorous scientific research have undone a great deal of what we knew from those early days.

But one thing remains consistent.

Abuse or torture of animals by an offender means, or even predicts, future abuse and torture of humans by that offender.

I want to know what happened to that fish.

But Elizabeth is clearly worn out, even from a relatively short, gentle interview.

She is scared scared or sad or both, and I don't want to press her or add any more trauma to her load.

She's holding something back, but nothing can be gained from pushing in a witness interview, so I ask if it's all right to reach out again sometime in the future, and she agrees.

One thing I definitely want to follow up on is her perception of David and Renee's relationship.

When we started speaking with David, we wondered if he and Renee were ever romantically or sexually involved.

David said they were not, and we largely accepted his answers on the matter.

Elizabeth remembers things differently.

Every time I seen them together, they were laughing and happy.

You know, I never seen them ever not talking and stuff.

Okay.

You think that she felt the same way about him that he felt about her?

A little like it.

Yeah.

To me.

Do you know if they ever had a relationship or was it just a friendship?

I'm pretty sure they had a relationship.

When you put your hand on somebody's butt and they're standing up there, you know.

Was that him on her or her on him?

Both.

It was obvious.

I got you.

It wasn't just friends.

Elizabeth is now the second person to tell us David and Renee dated, even lived together as a couple.

We also heard it from Renee's mom, Joyce.

And yet, this is something David has denied throughout our investigation.

More than once, we asked him point blank if there was ever any sexual relationship between them, and he was adamant that there was not.

He's told us he loved her, insisting that he meant that as a friend, and then reiterated that a friend wouldn't do what was done to Renee.

And what I think is someone was close and loved her and was sick and tired of doing

things that was going on.

Friends don't do that.

Mad, crazy lovers do that.

Sometimes they can be the same person.

Was David a friend or a mad, crazy lover?

Why does it matter?

Why do I care so much about whether they dated?

Because it would change the entire lens through which we view the degree of violence and the entire calculus of his potential motive.

If If David and Renee were ever a couple, this shifts from a case in which we are trying to determine if obsession is enough to lead to this kind of explosion, to one in which we are simply looking at a particularly horrendous but all too common end of intimate partner violence.

Renee's body was found in a state that implied her killer felt aggression towards women in general and towards this woman's sexuality in particular.

There was object rape and mutilation of her sexual organs.

Both elements, Dr.

Burgess warned, were signs of this sort of thing.

Well, we certainly know that rage was a part of that.

Anger, rage, there was such intensity, if you will, of injury to this young woman that you automatically think was conflict, argument, what happened, or why was she being targeted?

You always want to know why.

And then she was killed and then she was moved into a vehicle of some type and and just thrown.

I felt just discarded.

So the uh not only was it the rage and the anger but it was the um

uh misogyny maybe.

Some somebody was really angry at her.

Maybe that somebody was David.

We don't know.

What we do know is that they met under suspicious circumstances when Renee first arrived in Mobile.

She was 14 years old.

Initially, we were led to believe that Renee met David through her former husband, Clay,

but then David said something else.

And she met Clay, and bam, that was it.

David made this admission accidentally.

Let me explain.

David was 26 when Renee came to Mobile.

She was 14, but Clay was only 19 or 20.

The first time we sat down with David, I asked him.

I mean, I know it was a different time, but did it ever strike you as

maybe potentially problematic that she was so young, the age difference?

I mean, at that point, technically, it would have been statutory.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Even with Clay, I think it was still.

That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

What are you talking about?

No,

that's all I was talking about.

Okay.

When she got with him, that was the end of it.

Him and her got an apartment out there on Isaiah Road.

The end of what, David?

In that moment, I think we're talking about Renee's relationship with Clay.

What relationship was David talking about?

As he said this, he physically pulled back from the table in front of him.

This was the first time I saw David's tell.

When he seems to be pushing something away, his entire body moves back so forcefully, his arms come up to his chest.

In that first interview, I made a note of it for myself.

But it was clear he was done with the subject, and we didn't think it was a good idea to push too hard.

But it was enough to make me wonder about David's intentions with Renee when he first met her, before Renee met and fell in love with Clay.

It made sense that she'd choose Clay over David.

He was younger, he was incredibly handsome.

Big warm smile that softly feathered Adie's hair.

And every story I've ever heard about Clay at that time was one of a warm, funny guy.

These were, as it would later turn out, not at all the stories told about David in the 80s and 90s.

When we realized we were wrong about how they met, that they did not meet through Clay, we asked David, How did you meet?

Wish you really lived with Ace Saber.

You ever hear of him, Ace Saber?

Ace?

Ace Saber.

The engine gives the teen brother.

Ace Sager?

Yeah.

We couldn't quite make out the name.

We were both pretty sure he was saying Ace Sager, Ace, like an Ace in a deck of cards.

David kept mentioning Ace.

He'd say we should talk to this person.

He'd say he met Renee through this person.

He even said he met a fairly recent girlfriend through this person.

But whenever we asked him to clarify, he'd say, yay, Ace Sager.

We couldn't find anyone with that name anywhere.

Obviously, Ace was a nickname, so we needed to get a real name if we were ever going to talk to this guy.

We called people who lived in the area around the time Renee arrived, hoping they could help us.

Eventually, we found someone from David and Laura's old neighborhood who was willing to speak with us.

What about a guy named David Young?

You all know David Young.

You know David?

I knew all the young kiddie and Teddy.

And what about Clay Beard?

Yeah,

Norman Clayton Beard.

Yeah.

He and I grew up and we were real tight.

It's great to find someone basically neutral who can tell us about the neighborhood in the early 80s, the groups of friends hanging around each other, all those interpersonal dynamics.

Again, we're just trying to find more witnesses really more than anything else.

Ace Sager?

Yeah, I remember Ace.

So is he still around?

Do you know?

And is Ace his real name?

Or?

Do you know what?

I think it was AC or Acer.

Like AC, like the letters AC.

A-C-E-R.

Acer.

I believe.

Okay.

Yeah, I knew him, but heck God, I ain't seen that man in 40 years, been 50 years.

I bet you.

So he knew Ace, but he still doesn't know Ace's real name.

I'm starting to think that Ace is a ghost and we are never going to nail him down.

But I can't shake the sense that he could be a key player in all this.

No one can give us enough to figure out who this guy is or how we can reach him.

From the beginning of my work on this case, when I wanted to find details like this, I'd go through the intelligence unit at the sheriff's office.

For a while, that meant going through a deputy.

Well, since I was last in Mobile, I've been deputized.

I can now make my requests directly.

The bulk of my requests are handled by a woman in the unit named Rebecca Miller.

Rebecca is a lot like Jen Leahy, brilliant, dogged, and resourceful.

She has the added advantage of full access to criminal records, pertinent life history details, all the stuff that comes with access at the highest levels.

Rebecca is now as invested in Renee's case as anyone else, and she is determined to find the elusive Ace Sager.

Well,

here's what I know.

I don't know if this guy having such limited information,

the Ace, the AC guy thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I found a guy, and his name is Robin Ace

Sager.

With only a nickname for a first name, a last name with multiple possible spellings, and absolutely no idea where the mysterious Ace lived, she found him.

I'd been looking for two years, but in two days, Rebecca Miller, goddess among mortals, found Ace Sager.

We now have a full name, a criminal history, a list of associates, and a complete address and phone history.

With these, we may actually be able to turn this ghost into a real live man we can talk to.

Rebecca determined that Ace ran in the exact same circles as David.

And like David, he has a pretty substantial record.

If you run, there's definitely, there's a Robin Asa Sager in our area that has an ID card.

And he's still alive?

As far as I know, now I wanted to, before I did a whole lot of figuring out how to contact this person, I wanted to make sure that it even sort of was on the same path you were going down.

Yeah, it's 100% on the same path.

This is him, Robin Asa Sager.

As Rebecca told me about him, puzzle pieces started to lock into place.

Suddenly, I can see exactly how Renee got to Mobile.

There's something Joyce told me in August of 2022 that I couldn't fully vet and didn't know what to do with.

Now, hearing about Robin Asa Sager, it all clicks.

First of all, Sager isn't from Mobile.

He's from Kenner, Louisiana, just a few minutes from the Bergeron family home.

And then he was local here, I think, in Grand Bay and also in Wilmer.

That's, I mean,

that tracks the early 80s is when Renee was picked up at the skating rink by somebody who wasn't David, but who then gave her to David.

I'm going to summarize Joyce's story because it's a bit complicated.

Essentially, one night when Renee was 14, Joyce gave her permission to go roller skating with a friend and said she had to be home by 10 p.m.

10 p.m.

came and went, and Renee never came home.

At 10.15, Joyce and her husband called the other girl's house and spoke with her.

This friend said Renee got into a car with some guy.

The guy asked if the friend wanted to join, but she said no and ran straight home.

Joyce spent the next few months searching for Renee.

The cops considered her a runaway.

It is the 80s after all.

So Joyce became an investigator herself.

A damned good one.

She at last tracked Renee to a house in Mobile, Alabama.

She went to that house with the Mobile City Police in tow and finally took her daughter home.

When Joyce brought her home, she and her husband immediately put Renee into a therapy program.

They didn't know exactly what had happened in Mobile, but they knew Renee needed care and support.

At the time, teenagers who left home without being dragged kicking and screaming were often labeled as runaways.

But we have different names and legal definitions today for what happened to Renee in 1981.

Abduction and possibly even trafficking.

Before Joyce shared this story, all we knew was that during that time in Mobile, Renee met Clay and fell head over heels for him.

Not too long after she got home, Renee left again, this time completely on her own, deliberately heading back to Mobile to be with Claybeard.

We know she was originally taken to David.

And with the pieces we're starting to put together, I think A.

Sager was the guy who picked her up at the Roller Rink.

This all helps drop some pieces into place, some area of Renee's life and her connection to David's world.

It's becoming a more complete picture.

Still, even as we develop this clearer understanding of David and Renee's past relationship and David himself, we're keeping our minds open to other potential suspects.

And as of a couple months ago, we have one, a new suspect.

I had mixed feelings about the tip we received in November 2022 from someone saying they believed their father killed Renee.

There seemed to be an element of armchair detectiving going on, but there was something in the details that felt really important to explore and understand.

We tried to track the IP address on the tip.

Unfortunately, it came back to a public park.

This was really frustrating because it looked like the tipster hadn't intended to remain anonymous.

They'd just run out of characters allowed on the website tip box.

The very last line simply read, quote, my name is.

Well, lucky for us, a couple months later, in January of 2023, the tipster reached out completely out of the blue.

As I prepare to head back to Mobile in early 2024, I filmed Matt in.

I spoke with her a number of times via like text and

email, and then actually had about a two-hour long remote interview with her.

The very long and short of her version of events is that she did know her as Maria, but that when she was about 10 years old, she knew Renee, like knew her as an acquaintance of her parents who would come to the house sometimes.

Renee traveled to places around the country for work, sometimes driven by the tipster's father, who was indeed a trucker.

And the places the tipster remembers them going,

they do match up with details in Renee's own calendars and date books.

It's like super, super in the weeds.

So within Renee's address book and like her date books and stuff like that, there are mentions of trips to Chicago.

And nobody in the world right now living in 2023 would have a reason to know that, that Renee was frequently going back and forth to Chicago, either for escort work or, you know, whatever dancing stuff like that that was going on up there.

And so when she said sort of out of the blue, Matt's looking looking at me with some surprise but he's excited too yeah i know it's kind of weird like a couple times she rode with him when he was on trucking routes to chicago

and that to me obviously stood out as like okay this is definitely something we really need to explore because clearly she did know this woman the other thing that she said that i found really interesting

was she was with her dad in their truck and her dad said, I got to go meet somebody for work.

and they met up with renee on the service road back there on the service road down by where the banks' property was

this is a moment the tipster was there for with her father there are other moments she's only heard about

so some of the information she was sharing was that her dad has largely within their family circle, like even extended family uncles and cousins and stuff like that, has claimed responsibility for Renee's murder from day one.

That when, you know, when the news went out the Monday or Tuesday after her remains were found, that he started telling people he was the one who killed her.

What years was this that she's talking about she

93.

Oh, so she saw, yeah, she saw her at least during the course of 1993.

And of course, Renee is murdered in November, like the end of the year.

And it may have gone back as far as 92.

I would have to go back and either check my notes or ask her for more detail.

Now, her dad was an over-the-road trucker, because of course he was.

He was also, he did oyster deliveries out of Biola Battery.

To keep all of us on the same page here, hauling oysters out of Biola Battery was a real thing.

The shrimping and oyster harvesting are huge industries there, just like Bubba explained to Forrest Gump.

But in the 80s and 90s, there was something else being hauled out of there for a very different kind of industry.

In this context, in this conversation, it means this man was most likely moving drugs for the Youngs and the Bankses.

Remember?

Stone cows?

Yeah, those guys.

I said, is there anything that would give you the impression that maybe he was also moving any kind of drugs or contraband out of Bilobatry?

And she said, oh, yeah, no, he carried weed in there.

There was more weed than oysters in the truck.

And, you know, kind of corroborating that with some of the, you know, the guys who were working drugs at the time, they said, yeah, absolutely, an oyster truck moving stuff out of bio battery would have absolutely been.

So, given the area that he was living,

and given some of the names that she gave as his like immediate superiors in terms of marijuana trafficking, it's pretty clear that she was working for the Youngs and the Bankses at the time.

Probably the last thing in this that you really need to note is that he has told people over the years,

sort of like laughingly, that he,

the quote was that he rode around with Renee's head in a cooler for three days before he decided what to do with it.

We know that's not accurate.

Exactly.

We know that's not accurate.

But what did jump out at me is the last time she's seen alive is Friday.

And it's entirely possible that he rode around with all of her in a frozen truck because her body was was not, she had certainly not been out there in those bushes.

Right.

You know, the condition of her body, she had clearly just been placed there.

Her whole body had been cleaned.

And so, you know, we have often wondered where could she have been kept or was she held alive for a certain amount of time?

Because 18 to 36 hours was the time of death.

Yeah.

That his oyster trucks were refrigerated.

There's one more thing that the tipster shared that's really important.

She said, if this woman, if Maria had cuts in her abdomen or anywhere, no, she said anywhere a wound would be, then I guarantee you my father did it.

So she said that because apparently the reasoning he told people that he killed her was that she claimed she was pregnant and that it was his.

And what he has said to people is, I wasn't paying for no more fucking kids.

Clearly, there was a lot to look into here, and that first conversation with the tipster convinced me to do so.

I need to know if he's just another in a long line of drunk talkers, or if there's real meat on the bones of this tip.

It's pretty clear he definitely knew Renee, but did he kill her?

If so, was it entirely personal?

The tipster says she only saw them interacting in business deals or at home with the tipster's mother.

She doesn't know the extent of her father's personal relationship with Renee, only that he later claimed to have killed Renee because she was pregnant.

So, was he one of the ones she promised to snitch on?

Could he be linked to David in a way that might explain all of David's lies and strange behaviors while allowing us to eliminate David as a suspect?

Now, when we look into

legal past, there isn't a ton, There isn't as much as you would hope to find for somebody who's maybe a multiple murderer.

But

there are some interesting points, one of which is that just under a year before

contacted us,

there was the remains of a sex worker found murdered and mutilated

in not a dissimilar fashion to Renee were found about a mile from where she lives now.

Really?

Very interesting.

Yeah.

How How old was the female?

Early 20s.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

And they don't have any suspects in that case.

I can't start looking into that case, at least not right now.

But I can look deeper into Jimmy.

That's the name we'll use for him.

Preserving the integrity of the investigation at this moment means we can't use his real name.

Looking through records, I started to understand more about his criminal past.

The most glaring of his crimes fell into a very specific breed of robbery.

Home invasions, in which two or three guys selected a home deliberately, sometimes even that of a fellow criminal.

They kick in the door, they go in, they beat the shit out of the guy, steal whatever they're going to steal, and they leave.

You know who else was involved in this type of home invasion in the Mobile area around that time?

David Young and Ace Sager.

In 1990, a person was killed in a home invasion and police later arrested Ace.

They charged him with homicide, but shortly before it was to go to court, the 16-year-old witness recanted, I would imagine out of fear.

David, Ace, and Jimmy.

Could all three be connected?

I want to follow all of these threads.

I want to talk to the tipster and eventually to Jimmy himself.

There's a lot to do to prepare for an interview like that.

And the first step is to get back to Mobile, where all of this transpired 30 years ago.

This will be my first trip to Mobile in nearly a year.

Between following this new lead on Jimmy Williams, figuring out Ace's role in Renee's life, and trying to tie up loose ends on David Young, Matt and I have a lot to juggle.

What do you want to prioritize while I'm there?

Doing some light case review and then setting a to-do list, if you would, for lack of a better word, an itemized list of things that need to be done while you're here, the people that need to be spoken with.

And I think we'll have to utilize some of the newer guys that are in homicide or major crimes to accomplish all of those goals to get as many people interviewed as possible.

while you're down here.

Do you anticipate roadblocks?

Do you think that there's anything anything?

Is there anything specifically that jumps out at you?

I know, obviously, we constantly run into roadblocks and dead ends.

Right.

I don't.

We always anticipate roadblocks.

You know,

it's been said before that you can plan for war or plan to do something, but there's, there's all, that never happens.

What you think is going to happen never truly happens the way you think.

So you have to be flexible.

You need to kind of be able to roll with the punches and be quick on your feet with your thoughts and the investigation.

So

yes, there's going to be roadblocks.

Yeah, there's going to be hiccups and things that we didn't think of.

But I feel very confident that when the time arises and when we find the right person, we'll know it.

We will absolutely know without a shadow of a doubt that this is the person or persons responsible for Renee's death.

Improvise, adapt, and overcome, right?

Isn't that what they teach us at the Academy?

To the list of priorities, I add one more.

I want to talk to Elizabeth again.

In our first conversation, I got the sense she was holding something back.

Not for nefarious reasons, but out of caution or even fear.

I'm hoping she will open up a bit more about whatever that is.

And I really need to know what happened to that fish.

Obviously, it's exciting when you get new leads that may be fruitful.

This has been a very, very long investigation, very frustrating investigation.

There's been ups and downs.

You know, people that we thought at one point in time were 100% responsible for this.

And it turns out,

I don't think they are anymore.

So

it's more of a roller coaster ride.

And anytime you get

somewhat credible information, like from what

was telling us about our father, that's exciting because it's new information that we haven't vetted yet and it's the unknown, the surprise of the unknown.

What else are they going to tell us when we sit down with them?

Things have changed in the past year and now the clock is really ticking.

I've learned that David is terminally ill with lung cancer and he doesn't appear to be seeking treatment for it.

I want to talk to David again.

I want to finally find Ace Sager and see what he has to say.

And I want to get a better understanding of this new suspect's role in all of it.

All of these men are getting up there in age, especially when you take into account living a pretty hard life all those years.

I'm running out of time to get answers for Joyce and Amanda.

Was it David?

Was it Jimmy?

Is there anything connecting the two of them that further reveals the truth of Renee's death?

I'm headed south to find out.

Next time on Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

Like Robin Ace Hussager, who goes by the nickname Ace.

He's my uncle.

Did you ever hear the name J?

I just ain't never wanted to be around him my whole life.

That's next time on Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

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