Ep.7: Theories - Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom?

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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.

This podcast contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of violence.

Please be advised.

I'm going to say something that you're not going to like.

Okay.

I'm getting mixed feelings on him now.

And let me explain why.

He's almost over-cooperating.

Now, he has a lot, but I'm wondering if we're looking at the wrong guy.

For ID and ARC Media, I'm Sarah Kalin, and this is Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

Since 2019, I've been investigating the 1993 murder of Renee Bergeron in partnership with the Mobile County Sheriff's Office, and I've pursued multiple leads, active serial killers.

There are a variety of indicators that you have a sexual homicide here, even without the presence of evidence of that.

A boyfriend.

I would get upset or with it, but not enough to kill her or nothing like that.

Yeah.

It'd be like cutting my own throat.

A drunken braggart.

But all I can remember is him making a gesture

towards his neck, you know, like cut.

And he says, and I remember that those words cut their head off.

Really?

I swear to God, yes.

And a good friend of Renee's, who the original detectives never really looked into.

I was always scared for her life, man.

I think that's why I was so concerned about her.

I tell you what, man, I wish I could

swap my life for hers and bring her back.

Here's what I know.

Whoever killed Renee is filled with rage towards women in general, very likely, but most certainly towards this woman in particular.

And it is a rage specifically about her womanhood and her sexuality.

You can see this in the object rape of her body and the cut from her pubis to her navel.

It's also clear that the person or people who killed Renee likely have a history of violence and are comfortable with it to a significant degree.

And they had a disgust for Renee, personally.

The injuries to her body are sadistic, even for a murderer.

I'm honing in on two separate theories of this case, and with those theories, two separate primary suspects, Ronnie Parker and David Young.

At the time of Renee's death, Ronnie is a manual laborer at a Christmas tree farm just a few miles from where her body was found.

He comes onto the sheriff's office radar when a friend of his named Mike informs the police that Ronnie bragged to him about picking up a drunk woman at a bar and trying to rape her, first with a beer bottle, then with a knife, before dumping her on the side of the road.

But I have not yet found Ronnie.

I've spoken with people who know him, but not Ronnie himself.

He's no longer in Mobile.

I need to find and interview him so I can learn more and maybe even collect his DNA to compare it against our small sample.

The other suspect I am pursuing is David Young.

This is part of an entirely different theory of the case.

David was a close friend of Renee's who seems to be obsessed with both her life and her death to a shocking degree.

Plus, he was among the last people to see her alive.

We are able to collect his DNA surreptitiously, so now we can test that against the newly acquired sample we have from Renee's body.

But David keeps trying to lead us in another direction, or more accurately, many different directions.

He claims Renee's murder must have been related to organized crime.

Then he claims it must have had to do with illegal baby selling markets.

Then he claims it was just black people, you know, in general.

Sometimes he'll claim all of these nefarious entities are responsible for her death in a single conversation.

Is he trying to hide something?

Or is he just an overly concerned friend?

My partner, Detective Matt Peake, and I regularly debate this case.

Which of these two suspects seems like he could be the killer?

I mean, as much as David hates to hear it, this just looks like white man shit to me.

Oh, yeah.

What's done to her?

And that's why I keep going back to

Mr.

Young.

Yeah.

Here's the thing.

David creeps me out.

But being creepy is not a crime.

I keep going back and forth.

Is he just a weird, sad old guy who knew Renee well and is genuinely upset and deeply affected by her death?

Then I think of his evasive answers, his contradicting stories, his visits to the family, the fact that he had so many personal items of Renee's, or the fact that even to this day, he regularly visits the spot where her body was found.

Not her grave.

That would make some sense.

This is essentially returning to the scene of the crime, and that is impossible to ignore.

I to put my money on this guy,

but if I had to make if I had to make a decision right now,

I'm kind of torn.

I'm like a 60-40 Davis.

Yeah.

Because the problem is

it's somebody out of that Parker nonsense.

I just don't know who it is, right?

Because for a long time it seemed like it was Ronnie, but now it's like all of a sudden it's like this sort of like the cobwebs are falling away, and it's like they were all pointing pointing at Ronnie.

See, that twists things with if they're doing this to get reward money now.

Well, and the thing is,

I don't think from the beginning they were because the reward money wasn't even announced until after Mike Musgrove came in.

Musgrove made his statement to the police on November 23rd, and the reward money wasn't even announced until later in the month or even into December.

We have two viable theories, two serious suspects.

Our job isn't to prove one of them did it, but rather to work to eliminate them.

When a suspect becomes impossible to eliminate, only then will we begin to move towards proving his involvement.

Can we find any more physical evidence to link either of them, or anyone for that matter, to this murder?

It's a Friday morning.

And David is scheduled to come in for another interview.

The case against him is heating up, and Matt and I agree we need an arrest warrant soon.

But as of now, we still don't have any physical evidence linking David to this murder.

And oh, that was the other thing I was saying, depending on how it goes today.

If we walk out of this and we're like, oh, he's lying even worse than we thought,

then I think we should probably

bring Keith up to speed because without physical evidence, we need to know what does he want?

What do we need to get him to agree to say, yeah, I think it's time to make an arrest?

Because we're just not, we're really probably not going to have physical evidence for this case.

You remember Keith Blackwood, Assistant District Attorney?

He's really who we need to talk to in order to get the ball rolling on an arrest warrant.

But like, what is going to be his standard for saying, yes, I would move forward and prosecute this?

Because I think in a case without physical evidence, we're going to be hard pressed.

I mean, if we get in there today and David says, fuck you, I want an attorney, then it might be time, you know, and then we we build the rest of the top.

I don't think so either.

But we don't know because we've never confronted him with a single bit of

conflicting right, and now we've got a bunch.

Yeah, we won't call it a lie.

Amen.

I don't know if you're intentionally misleading us or what,

but we've checked your stories and your alibis out, and they're not accurate, not true.

Where the fuck is he?

This doesn't like him to be late.

I mean, I guess you said 9 or 9:30, right?

Watch if he doesn't show today.

Matt and I are still waiting.

No sign of David.

We give him a call.

All right.

David.

Yeah.

Hey, you coming in or what?

Yeah, I had to go by and get my sister.

She wants to listen in.

She's called her attorney.

Uh-huh.

She's going to talk to him

and see if he can advise her

about what's going on.

Looks like we're wrong.

David might want that attorney after all.

What's more, he tells us that his sister wants to join the interview.

He's a little ornery on the call.

We remind David that this is all voluntary.

He can, of course, bring a lawyer.

But his sister will not be joining.

This is an active homicide investigation.

Random civilians cannot sit in.

Yeah.

She just cares about one.

This is the third interview.

Yeah.

Well, because you're very close friends with her and we just like to keep talking to you about her.

I know.

I told her that, but I don't see no reason why she can't sit in and listen.

You know.

Well, what we talk about

is, well, I

don't like it because this is what we talk about stays confidential because it's an active investigation.

That's what I told her, you know, but she's my sister and she's concerned.

Yeah, well she got nothing to be concerned about.

You haven't done nothing wrong there.

You got nothing to worry about.

The DNA ought to prove that.

Yeah.

Yep.

You know,

the DNA ought to prove it.

I agree.

No nobody has in this world

has ever seen me touch my finger on a nay's finger.

Yeah.

Nobody in this world.

that we hadn't seen each other in a long time, like when she came back from

a couple of years.

Well, y'all were close friends.

Did you catch that?

David just claimed he hadn't seen Renee for a couple of years before her death.

He says it again and again.

When me and her went to New Orleans,

because I hadn't seen her since then, up to the time she died,

I can't tell you how long it was that she died after we went to New Orleans.

Yeah, and I hadn't seen her since then, period.

Since she died or anything, huh?

Yeah, I remember you telling me about that.

Yeah, I hadn't seen her since that day.

Now, this directly conflicts with the information we'd got from Laura Morris that places Renee and David together the night before she was killed.

Okay, so

you're at David's house one particular afternoon and Renee shows up

the days before she's murdered.

It was dark.

It was the night before.

The night before, because who is she with?

She was by herself.

We need to get David into the office to confront him on this.

Now,

all right, well, we'll see you in a few minutes, man.

Okay.

Her sister's not coming in.

No.

I'm not.

He sounds like he's getting defensive.

He's getting real defensive.

Well, his sister's making him think that way, though.

Yeah.

His sister's.

Why do they want to talk to you?

you about that?

His sister's making him aware of the fact that

she's not rocked there.

Yeah.

I honestly am not sure why he didn't see that before.

I'd have figured I was a suspect the first time we rolled up and knocked on his door.

Because he, and I think, here's the thing.

I think he is aware.

Well, we're going to call him out on some of his lies.

Yeah.

And I think we need to make him aware that we have at least one witness who places him being the last last person to see her alive.

Laura Morris puts her at his house on Friday night.

David finally arrives with his sister, but we interview him alone.

His sister waits downstairs in the lobby.

I know I ain't got long left.

I'll be 66

in December.

66 years old.

My birthday is in December too.

And it would really hurt me if I had to to go to my death without finding whoever killed her.

Yeah.

And that's what it's looking like.

So I don't know.

Well, I don't know, man.

We've made a lot of headway.

A lot.

Like I told you.

We've had some setbacks, but we've made a whole lot of headway.

I'd get on my knees and hit off if I could.

Well, you have been a tremendous help.

Indeed.

He has been a help.

Now, David seems to respond better to Matt.

He's dismissive towards me, hostile even.

That's fine.

I'm used to it.

Comes with the territory being a woman in this line of work.

He's not the first and he won't be the last suspect to be

offended by the idea of answering to a woman.

So it's clearly best for Matt to take the lead on this line of questioning.

So some of

the timelines and things that you've told us since we talked to you at your house and then you came up here and spoke with us again.

We've looked into some of those things you told us.

Yeah.

Where you were, what you were doing, some of the people you told us about.

We've interviewed those people.

We've sent DNA off for testing.

We've done, man, we've done a whole lot of stuff.

So that's what I wanted you to come back down so

we can get some more clarity because some of the things aren't making sense to us.

You know what I mean?

This is part of our larger strategy.

Given that this case is decades old, we have a lot of circumstantial evidence, but considerably less physical evidence, especially since the DNA results have not yet come in.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

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

He went on his way, always 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.

We're not going to

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

We believe that our best bet at solving this case is if we can get the killer to confess.

Of course, that is not going to be easy.

However, if we can emphasize how much investigative work we've done, then if David is the killer, maybe he will understand how serious this is.

And if he is responsible in any way, maybe he will feel compelled to confess.

Well, it's possibly it could have been a white psycho.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

I said it's possibly it could have been a white psycho that did it.

Yeah.

Now, like Esther's told me, he said, they ride up and down the interstate.

all day long looking for somebody to kill.

And they splash money and drugs in front of a woman, and they go anywhere they want to go.

Yeah, my gut's telling me this is somebody who knew it.

This isn't just a random person,

you know.

Renee was somebody view that area out there.

How are you going to find that non-service road?

You're right.

That's exactly right.

It's like a needle in a haystack.

Somebody.

Are you related to the Youngs out that way?

Yeah, sure am.

Which ones?

Clyde?

Clyde and Patricia.

Yeah.

Remember the Youngs?

Drug trafficking, busted by the feds, stoned cows.

David is not part of the immediate Young family, but he's part of the broader extended family.

He's named after one of the patriarchs.

And David's father was a Young's neck Young.

Is Renee moving marijuana for them?

Was Renee moving marijuana for them?

I did not know.

How are you kin?

Like, are you cousins?

Show us the family tree, right?

So, like, we know Clyde and Patricia, Clyde Sr.

and Patricia.

You can ask anybody out there if they know Albert Shea Young.

He was my dad.

That was your dad.

It was Albert Young.

Okay.

Well

part of the reason that we're looking at that and that we're asking about it is because

they had part of their operation was at the dead end of that of that service road.

I mean that's what we wanted to ask if Renee, if she had ever mentioned selling or dealing with those people out there.

Oh God, man, they cut you up.

I mean that sounds like something that they possibly would do if you ripped them off to hurt.

They were some mean suckers, man.

So David denies any regular contact with that side of his family, but does know about their reputation for drug trafficking and retaliatory violence.

Interesting.

It's time to bring up the story that Laura told us.

about seeing Renee right before her death to see how David reacts and whether he remembers this at all.

So, what we have found, and maybe your mind just slipped or something, okay?

I'm not saying that you misinformed us, maybe you just need to think about it, right?

Is that you were in Creighton at your mother's house

and you were with.

Mother was dead at that time.

Mother died in'86, I think.

Correct, but you were

staying at the house and you were dating a girl at that time.

You remember her name?

Laura Morris.

That's right.

I just want to interject here, to say that Laura says that she and David never dated or hooked up.

But David says Laura was his girlfriend at that time.

Just an interesting difference of opinion between the two.

Laura Morris, the weekend that Renee was killed, was at your house in Crichton when you were living.

Not being.

Because I remember me and her was in there, me and Laura was in there doing the thing,

and Renee knocked on the door.

That's right.

Renee shut up, middle of the night.

And Laura puts that as Friday night before Renee turned up on Sunday.

I don't know about that.

But

she automatically let Renee in and

Laura running, you know, in the bathroom or something, put her clothes on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What did Renee want

that Friday night?

A couple of minutes now.

I don't know what the hell she even come by there for

because she just came out of nowhere.

I hadn't talked to her or been expecting her.

She just knocked on the door.

Just in case you didn't catch that at the beginning of his answer, when he mumbles to himself, this is what David says, quote, I don't know what the hell she even came by there for.

And that's the way Laura described it as well.

She drove up Friday night.

Yeah.

Well, it could have been.

I thought it was during the day.

So y'all timelining it the Friday night

laura timelined it the friday night she was very explicit well she's smart she's got a good keen mind remember in our very first conversation david said he had not seen renee in months before she was killed and on the phone earlier today he said he had not seen her for years was adamant about it But here he is agreeing with Laura's account that they both saw Renee shortly before she was killed, even if he is not sure whether that was during the day or or the night.

It had to be something about some drugs or something, man.

Maybe was she selling pills to you?

Yeah, that's all.

Pills was all.

I mean, I don't want to speculate to what she was doing there.

Maybe she was coming to you for help.

I don't know.

No, if it had been that, I'd have known it.

I'd have been all over that shit because I carried a gun all my life.

There are a lot of facts here that are not adding up.

David has previously told us he was living in a motel the weekend Renee was killed.

He also said he found out Renee was dead by reading the local newspaper.

Now he's copying to the fact that he was at his deceased mother's house in Crichton that weekend and probably saw Renee then.

Laura told us that Renee looked beat up when she saw David.

But David is saying Renee's visit must have been something to do with her selling him pills.

If Renee had been beat up, he says, he would have done something about it.

I'm less concerned with why you stay the night with a friend in a motel

than I am with

why

you would be so sure you hadn't seen her in months.

It feels like it would have been for Laura the way that she was really jarred by the fact that she saw as well that this woman had been murdered and she had just seen her.

And I'm struggling to understand how if she's one of your closest friends,

Renee,

if you open up a paper on Monday morning and you say, oh my God, she was brutally murdered.

I know, I know, I've looked at the papers.

Why you would forget that you saw her two days earlier?

That Friday night.

When she came over to the house.

Well, I can't.

I'm going to have to think about that.

I can't put together me being at the motel.

Me and Laura being at the house and Renee comes in.

I can't put the timeline together on that.

Y'all are trying to say it out and back to back.

We're just that Laura was pretty clear that it happened, you know, that it was less than 48 hours from when she showed up at the house to when the guy sees her on the service road.

And that's where it got confusing for us was you told us that you hadn't seen her in a long time.

Well, but that wasn't accurate because you told me the truth.

I'm telling you, God striked me dead right here in this chair.

God, it's so hard to interview David.

I go left, he goes right.

I try to spin him, he tries to spin me.

It's frustrating.

And what's even more disturbing is how he speaks about Renee.

Like at one point, early on in the interview, while I am asking him a totally unrelated question, David just offers this, unprompted.

She didn't really love nobody, I guess, but maybe her people,

you know, were mom and daddy and stuff.

She didn't love nobody.

What makes you say that?

Oh, she just, she was a wild runner, you know?

Doesn't mean she didn't love her.

Well, she left her, she left her baby.

That's because she was on crack,

you know.

What I want to say to David, what I want to point out to him is this.

Renee loved lots of people.

She loved people very deeply.

Maybe she just didn't love you.

And I think maybe you hated her when you realized that was never going to change.

I toy with the idea, deciding if it will be productive or just shut him down entirely.

I choose to err on the side of caution because we do still need him to keep talking to us, which he does.

In total, we talk to David for about an hour.

We thank him for coming in.

Then Matt accompanies him out of the building before returning to the office to discuss the interview.

Man, he wouldn't fucking answer a question again.

Again, like he just wouldn't answer anything.

He just

shocked that one, we talked to Laura and two, now we're putting Renee at his house Friday night.

Yeah, well, and he said, what are you getting at?

I'll tell you the other thing, too, that I just was like, fuck you, was when he goes, she didn't love anybody.

And that right there, that's damn near motivation.

If she, you know.

Well, he followed it up with, because

you responded of, what?

How dare you say it?

Yes, she did.

He was like, no, I didn't say that.

I said, what makes you say that?

Yeah.

And he goes, well, she didn't love anyone.

She left that baby.

Left her kid.

Which I can understand that.

I've got feelings like that as well.

You might, I mean, you're a piece of crap if you leave your child.

Or you recognize that you are 17 years old and the child is better off

with you as a visiting frequent family member rather than in your care.

Looking at David Young's perspective of this girl's prostitute, drug user, and she's left her kid.

Sure, if he then didn't flip that by saying, I don't want to die without knowing who did it, I go see her grave all the time.

Like, that's what I'm saying.

It's this flip with David that strikes me.

The complete concern for finding out who killed Renee with making a show of cooperating, even sharing funny anecdotes and warm memories, all mixed in with saying just flat-out, ugly, hateful things about Rene.

But there's another dimension to David that gives me pause beyond his personal relationship with Rene.

And it gives Matt pause too.

How close is he with the Young's Neck Youngs?

After all, we've learned that Rene was was a confidential informant for the sheriff's office.

It's hard to dismiss that that could have played a role.

I wonder if we could ever make the connection that David was moving marijuana for the other youngs.

Right.

And that she was moving through him or

through David, okay?

Or that he knew it.

Renee did something stupid.

Yeah.

Either lost the money, smoked the money, whatever.

And the family was like, David, you better do that.

That's what I've been saying.

That to me would be the link between those two.

Because he was conflicted now.

I really like her.

I love her.

Well, but here's what's interesting.

Now I've got to kill you.

I've got to kill you, but there would be a sexual component.

Right.

Because he was into her.

I've always wanted to sleep with you.

So I'm going to put this knife in you instead.

And that's then the curiosity and maybe hesitation marks.

And also why she would have gone with, you know what I mean, like somebody she trusted and she's alone with that night.

We don't know what our suspect's motive would be to kill and mutilate Renee beyond personal animus and sadism.

So if David is responsible, what was the tipping point?

Could it be something to do with his family and drug trafficking?

After sleeping on it for a few days, I want to bring David back in.

Matt disagrees.

What else are we going to ask David?

He said he wanted to talk to us again.

Remember, like, I think he wants, I mean, unless you think it's a total waste of time.

We've got him backed into a corner really good.

Because a lie is almost better than the truth.

100%.

Because you can disprove that.

So I don't know what else to get at with him.

I just, yeah, I know.

He had wanted to come in

without the pressure of the sister.

Yeah.

And I just feel like he,

I feel like he wants to say it.

He thinks she deserved it.

And he thinks if he just explains it right, everybody else will think so too.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, I get it, but I don't think

without.

I'll tell you what.

You're right.

I think you're right.

I think if we interview Musgrove, we interview Parker, and it sheds new light towards David, we can go back at him again.

But I think

we're beating the dead horse if

we're going to stop.

Yeah, there's the chance that we get lucky and he slips up.

I don't even think he's going to slip up.

I think he's like...

I don't think he's going to just outright confess.

You don't think so?

I don't get that.

I didn't after the first time, but I did by the end of the last time.

Let's say we're right.

Let's say that he did do this.

And

he likes the game.

He's been playing the game for a long time.

Yeah, but nobody's been playing with him till now.

Correct.

So he likes the game.

Why would he want the game to end right now?

I'm going to say something that you're not going to like.

Okay.

I'm getting mixed feelings on him now.

And let me explain why.

He's almost overcooperating and telling us.

Now he has lied, but I'm wondering if we're looking at the wrong guy.

So my response to say that.

My response to that is every time we talk to him, whether on the phone or in person, with the exception exception of the Friday before the storm,

I walk away with the same feeling.

And then it kind of fades as I evaluate the other stuff.

I don't

evaluate his statements, evaluate kind of all the other stuff pointing at it.

And evaluate the fact that overcooperation is indicative

of guilt.

I agree.

But there is something about him where you feel like,

I just don't know.

I totally just don't.

I get that.

It's not.

a perverted old man, he's a perverted man, but he's also like all the stuff he was just talking about.

Whether it was,

I mean, you know,

the stuff about what he would do, the stuff about the judge, what here's what the judge is going to do.

This man has a deep, rich fantasy life.

Like, that's all he hyper-focuses on things, and that can just be a weird person, so I, or it can be dangerous.

I wasn't raised around the most outstanding people.

So

I take that's not the right verbiage.

I saw some things when I was a kid and got exposed to

people as very similar to him in his mentality.

And I kind of understand his thought process of

and why the way he is.

And

black's bad.

Oh, totally.

I don't think that that is what makes him

southern line of thinking that

you couldn't beat that out of him.

I totally

think that influences his thought process with everything.

100%.

And I roll my eyes at that, but that stuff isn't why I think that

he's capable of this or that the stuff he says.

It's not the she got with the blacks that makes me think that.

It's the need to punish her for that.

If you know what I mean.

I get it.

Yeah.

so i know i'm i'm i am also right there with you i don't i don't dislike you saying that because i i go through that i cycle through that and then i think you know there who else could it be who else who else could it be that's what happens to me anyway is i you know whenever we talk to him i'm like i don't think he did it and then a couple hours later whatever that human reaction is yeah I'm like

I mean maybe he's just pulling the wool over my eyes or something I don't know but I'm usually pretty good.

I think so.

I think you're also a decent person, so your empathy reaction is strong, you know?

But I'll just be surprised if you don't change your mind again.

Yeah, I've just, I've never,

I've never seen a case like that.

You know what Accum's razor is, right?

Yeah.

Simplest explanation is usually the truth.

That's right.

But David is not our only suspect here.

It's beyond time for me to interview Ronnie, the man at the center of Mike's 1993 tip to the police.

Remember, I learned that Ronnie scares a lot of people in his life, so much so that most people only speak to me under the condition of anonymity.

And his arrest records show that he has been convicted of drunken disorderly conduct and, more importantly, domestic violence.

It takes me a while, but I finally find Ronnie.

He's living out in the boondocks between Muscle Muscle Shoals and Moulton, Alabama.

This is about six hours away from Mobile.

Those who know Ronnie tell me that he can be seen in town driving his tractor to get his errands done.

Here's my strategy.

I expect Ronnie to be quite surprised.

Whether guilty or innocent, he will likely be essentially stunned into an honest reaction.

To be clear, An honest reaction is not the same thing as honest answers.

It does not mean someone is telling you the truth with their words, but their demeanor and how they interact with you will be organic.

This point is very important.

This is not about junk science or gut instincts or declaring how someone should react in certain environments or situations.

It is about my nearly 25 years of experience and a pretty solid track record, an innate ability to read people and interpret reactions to stimuli.

At the end of of the day, that's really all psychological profiling is, whether you're working with a suspect or a crime scene.

Reading stimuli and response, understanding the minutiae of human reaction to very specific events and circumstances.

I make arrangements with the local sheriff's office to provide backup support for the initial contact, as well as an office at their station in which to conduct the interview.

As I drive up to North Alabama, I can't help but notice how different the terrain is.

Just 25 miles south of the Tennessee border, it feels much more like Appalachia than any place you'd think of when imagining Alabama.

There are rolling hills, forests, actual mountains just a short drive away.

Ronnie's house sits alongside a winding country road, so I park in the grassy roadside a couple hundred yards away.

I want to see what I can suss out about him before making my approach.

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Coach, Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

Neighbors pull up to me and ask if I need any help.

This is code for, what the heck are you doing here, stranger?

Then I see Ronnie saunter out to his mailbox.

Ronnie Parker is much smaller than I'd expect.

He only stands about 5'8 ⁇ or 5'9,

same height as Renee.

He's wearing denim overalls and a bare Bryant hat.

It is Alabama, after all.

He is weathered, clearly a man who has spent much of his adult life laboring outside.

He strains to look down the street as inconspicuous as possible to catch a peek at my car.

No doubt his neighbor alerted him to my presence.

I decide it's time to make my approach.

I call local dispatch.

I am not approaching anyone's door alone and unarmed.

Never mind the home of a homicide suspect.

But as I wait for a deputy to come meet me, Ronnie takes off in a little sedan with an enormous American flag attached to the roof, flapping furiously as he speeds away.

He just took off like 12 minutes ago.

He's driving a little silver Corolla with like a big flag on top.

The deputy arrives and we don't have much to do.

We drive around on country roads hoping to find Ronnie.

No luck.

So we park at an intersection near his house and wait.

I was sort of surprised you got here as fast as you did because I was like, most rural counties I know is only a couple of deputies out at a time.

I mean, he's, you know, I don't see him going too far.

And now there's a hurricane coming in, so we keep losing time.

His little sedan creeps by on a side road.

A local deputy spots him, then runs his sirens to try and pull him over.

Ronnie keeps driving for a short moment, then pulls over.

It's not a thrilling chase, but Ronnie definitely hesitates.

I roll up behind the deputy as Ronnie gets out of the car.

I hear the deputy explain to him, this lady has some questions she needs to ask you.

I got somebody in these talk places.

Who's Matt?

This lady right here.

Hey, how you doing, Mr.

Parker?

How about you?

Good.

My name is Sarah Callan.

I'm a special investigator with Mobile County Sheriff.

Ronnie's little chihuahua runs around in circles, barking furiously, protesting the entire scene.

But Ronnie agrees to join us at the nearby station.

All right, great.

Thank you, Miss Parker.

For this interview, I don't have Matt with me.

It's just Ronnie and me.

Meaning, I have to be the good cop and the bad cop.

I think the best thing to do is

you

obviously remember the case to some degree, and you remember talking to the investigators and stuff.

So I would love it if you would start from the beginning what you remember about the case and what you remember about what they talked to you about and what, um you know just any anything you remember from the time about um maybe what made the investigators think that you were that you were involved that they sought you out that's man

i gave best best i gave

ronnie describes the police pulling up to his workplace the christmas tree farm and questioning him they did this twice actually

i told y'all i don't know nothing about it I said if I was guilty, you're gonna think I would have been running some words when y'all pulled up the second time?

Because I know that's what y'all kind of like for.

Clearly, Ronnie remembers being investigated for Renee's murder.

But I am curious if he remembers or ever actually knew why he was investigated.

So that's kind of what I'm getting at, too.

So

I've got audio, I've got a bunch of written notes, and I have audio recordings of no fewer than five people, possibly six, depending on how you read

one of the notes,

claiming that you said that you did it.

And

a lot of people will say stuff like that after a crime, especially one as gruesome as this, right?

But the reason that I'm here now coming up on 27 years after her body was found

was that the stories that people came forward with of you telling them that you had done it included details that were not known to the public that were true.

Well, like I said, that's a lot of that stuff is like

you're going out here and people go picking at you, you know.

Right.

But so these people

don't all know each other, Mr.

Parker.

The person may be picking at you doing this.

He points his finger as if poking someone.

Are they going to accuse people of raping and murdering a woman and cutting her head off and slashing her breasts off?

Some of them will.

Really?

Some of them sick and tell you down there.

Some of them bad hoe.

Okay.

They'll do it to make a joke out of it.

It may not even be done to it, but they'll do it to spike you, you know, if there's a way they can do it.

Right.

If you figure it bothers you bad enough, they'll do it.

They're going to let you take the fall for a brutal rape and murder.

Yeah, they don't care.

They ain't damn.

They don't care a bit.

Now, but here, so here's the problem with this.

One, yeah, you obviously should probably pick better friends because you've got a number of people coming forward.

Part of the problem with this, though, and again, why it's hard for me to just like walk away and not talk to you at all, right?

Is that some of these people don't know each other?

So, what were the odds that two people who never met

would both reach out to the police and say, Ronnie Parker told me he did it.

Here's what he said in detail.

There were details involving a Budweiser bottle,

details involving that Christmas tree knife.

I wanted to tell that.

He never told anybody that.

No.

It would have showed up before a lot of detectors damn when I went and took all this and this was all so.

Ronnie is defensive, that's for sure.

But there are holes in the case against him.

Like, for instance, when I look into that friend group, I can't verify that Ronnie individually told multiple people he hurt Renee.

What I can verify is that that there was a rumor that went around, one in which each new iteration attributed the story to Ronnie, but always as second or third hand hearsay.

No one but Mike Musgrove ever claimed to have heard it directly from Ronnie.

And Mike, by the way, now denies ever making that tip to the police, even though we have a recorded interview of him doing so.

It's all a little convoluted.

Maybe Mike thought he could get reward money.

Maybe Ronnie was right and Mike and the rest of the group were picking on him.

I'm not sure.

But Ronnie believes he's cooperated fully, both back then and now.

When I signed that paper, cleared myself up there.

That meant I was clear.

The rest of these people can talk whatever they want to talk, you know.

But I cleared myself when he said when that paper got signed.

But the problem is, again, like I said, I keep coming back to two things.

The two people who don't know each other telling the exact same story down to the Budweiser beer bottle, raping her with a beer bottle, okay, which matches

the autopsy.

You know.

And stabbing her in the vagina with a knife, which matches the autopsy, and then the Christmas tree knife being a matching weapon for the decapitation.

See, that Christmas tree knife that long last year.

Oh, I know.

No matter which direction I take it, what angle I try to come at him, Ronnie's responses are natural, even the defensive ones, always keeping with the stimuli in that moment.

He is clearly suspicious of and angry at Mike Musgrove, that's for sure.

But Ronnie's story never wavers.

It matches up exactly with what John told us, that he did not see Ronnie with any woman that weekend.

Even the people we spoke to who were afraid of him, what they had to say about this specific allegation seems to corroborate Ronnie's version.

When we again look at it with that term we discussed a few episodes ago, the totality of the circumstances, a picture comes into focus.

Do I think Ronnie is someone capable of violence, possibly even extreme violence in his younger days?

Yes, I do.

Do I think there's a strong enough chance he committed this particular act of extreme violence?

No, not really.

Not enough to continue to pursue these vanishingly plausible leads.

I ask Ronnie if he will submit to a DNA test.

Yes, he says, without missing a beat.

The local deputy hunts down a bucle swab kit and I take the sample myself, a swipe of DNA from inside the cheek.

I bag it for transport to the Mobile County CSI team.

Then I wrap up the interview.

I'm going to let the deputy run you back home.

Mr.

Parker, I really appreciate you coming in willingly.

All right, Mr.

Parker, I really appreciate it.

I show please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I now have interviews with both of my lead suspects, and I now have both of their DNA samples, too.

But already, I'm honing in on the one suspect whose story just does not add up.

I'll give you any kind of DNA you want.

Whoever's DNA they got is never going to come back to me because I wasn't there.

Did you witness it?

That's how you prove somebody's guilty is the DNA.

You're watching too much TV.

Yeah.

Too much law and order.

You can't ask him questions about it.

You can't convict an honest man.

You can't do it.

It ain't going to happen.

Statistically, she is 80% chance that she's killed by somebody she knows.

The odds of it being anybody else.

I agree.

Our me thinking outside of the box is why would you run to your murder?

Because she trusted him up until the end.

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

Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom is produced by Arc Media for ID.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.