Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mea podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges the
Speaker 1: traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was recorded
Speaker 1: on It's a Chilly Night in November nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: in the town of Speedway, Indianapolis, and the four teenagers
Speaker 1: on shift at the local burgerschef are starting to clean up.
Speaker 2: Hey, Mama, I was just wondering if I could stay
Speaker 2: back to help close.
Speaker 1: Danny Davis is talking to his mum Norma in the
Speaker 1: back room. He's only sixteen and state law dictates that
Speaker 1: he's only supposed to work until ten pm, but his manager,
Speaker 1: twenty year old Jane Freed, wants him to check with
Speaker 1: his parents if he can stay in extra hour or so.
Speaker 1: They agree. He joins sixteen year old Mark Flemons and
Speaker 1: seventeen year old Ruth Shelton as they go through the
Speaker 1: motions of mopping, wiping and packing away. But when their colleague,
Speaker 1: fellow teenager Brian Crane, stops by the sh shop just
Speaker 1: after midnight to pay his coworkers a visit, he notices
Speaker 1: something odd. The lights are on, the door is open,
Speaker 1: but there is no one there. Scared, he calls police.
Speaker 1: Thank you Police, emergency, but they very quickly decide it's
Speaker 1: just a case of a bunch of irresponsible youngsters walking
Speaker 1: off the job to go party for the night. It
Speaker 1: is a Friday, after all, But none of them return home,
Speaker 1: and thirty six hours later police receive a devastating call.
Speaker 1: I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations Amoma
Speaker 1: mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
Speaker 1: to the people who know the most about them. The
Speaker 1: bodies of Danny, Jane Mark, and Druth were found two
Speaker 1: days after their final shift at Bergershev in late nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: twenty miles away in a rural field. They've been shot, stabbed,
Speaker 1: and bashed, each of their murders telling its own devastating
Speaker 1: tale of the teenager's last terrifying moments alive. They were
Speaker 1: all still wearing their orange and brown Burger chef uniforms.
Speaker 1: They were all left in the positions they died. Their
Speaker 1: deaths shocked their small, tight knit community, but from the
Speaker 1: start the police investigation was bungled, and forty years later,
Speaker 1: so many questions about that night remain. Ossies Luke Rinderman
Speaker 1: and Adam came in are the co writers and directors
Speaker 1: of a new documentary drama called The Speedway Murders, which
Speaker 1: tries to unpick and unpack the various theories in this case.
Speaker 1: They've been working on this investigation for five years, speaking
Speaker 1: to families, witnesses, friends, and law enforcement about their recollections.
Speaker 1: Both Luke and Adam join us. Now, Adam Luke, you
Speaker 1: both live in Australia. This crime happened on the other
Speaker 1: side of the world. So what drew you to revisiting
Speaker 1: this crime? We'll start with you.
Speaker 3: Adam Luke's a true crime tragic to the point where
Speaker 3: I worry about him a little bit from time to time.
Speaker 3: We had just had some interest in a script that
Speaker 3: we'd written and were kind of looking for the next
Speaker 3: thing to kind of keep the momentum going. We're big
Speaker 3: fans of the period fashion music. For people who are
Speaker 3: listening that don't know the crime that films based on
Speaker 3: took place in nineteen seventy eight, that was appealing to us.
Speaker 3: We discovered that it was unsolved, the investigation was botched,
Speaker 3: so it felt like that it hadn't sort of been
Speaker 3: given the attention that it should have. So we sort
Speaker 3: of thought, well, maybe if we do a deep dive,
Speaker 3: we can uncover some stuff. So we sort of went
Speaker 3: down this rabbit hole and never really emerged.
Speaker 1: Luke, is there a reason you didn't decid had to
Speaker 1: go down a more Australian unsolved crime.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's definitely Australian unsolved crimes that we're interested in.
Speaker 2: But you know, we were looking all over the world,
Speaker 2: and you know, there was just a certain tragedy to
Speaker 2: the fact that it wasn't solved, and you know, there
Speaker 2: was four people at the center, of young people that
Speaker 2: nothing had been done about, and you know, the families
Speaker 2: not knowing, and so yeah, it just kind of like
Speaker 2: it hit us, and as Adam said, we never really
Speaker 2: come up from it.
Speaker 3: The crime itself happened on the same weekend as the
Speaker 3: Jonestown massacre, so it had always kind of gotten short shrift.
Speaker 3: It never really got the attention that it deserved, which
Speaker 3: was another thing that sort of enticed us.
Speaker 1: Before we get more into the crime, I'd love to
Speaker 1: get a bit more background on you two. You guys
Speaker 1: have known each other for a long time, haven't you.
Speaker 3: It's true we were introduced by a mutual friend in
Speaker 3: I think nineteen eighty nine, so we've kind of been
Speaker 3: really tight ever since.
Speaker 1: What's it like working on a project this big, this
Speaker 1: in depth, this kind of gruesome with your best mete.
Speaker 4: It's a great friendship tester.
Speaker 2: It can be maddening at times. I mean we do
Speaker 2: piss each other off at times, and it is definitely
Speaker 2: a tester and you know, going over and doing you know,
Speaker 2: various trips to Indianapolis and staying very closely together, you know,
Speaker 2: does test the friendship. We never fight about anything not creative.
Speaker 2: It's always creative issues. So it's never like anything about
Speaker 2: the person. It's just you know, we're both so passionate
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: The burger chef we're talking about is in a place
Speaker 1: called Speedway in Indianapolis, Adam, what's that part of America?
Speaker 3: Like? It's Midwest, so it's sort of in the heartland.
Speaker 3: You know, most people when they go and visit America,
Speaker 3: they don't tend to go to the Midwest. They go
Speaker 3: to the coasts, you know, sort of LA or New
Speaker 3: York or you know, maybe a Chicago or something like that,
Speaker 3: which actually is just kind of on top of Indiana
Speaker 3: where this is. In a lot of ways, it's the
Speaker 3: real America. Indianapolis is kind of a small town. I
Speaker 3: think there's under a million people there, and Speedway is
Speaker 3: kind of a town within Indianapolis, a suburb within Indianapolis.
Speaker 3: I guess they're an extremely hospitable people, and you know,
Speaker 3: if you sort of venture outside the city, it's a
Speaker 3: lot of cornfields and diners and that sort of typical
Speaker 3: Middle America.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned that we're talking nineteen seventy eight, and around
Speaker 1: the time of this crime, there had actually been quite
Speaker 1: a few violent incidents. Can you set that scene for us?
Speaker 4: So Speedway is this little enclave.
Speaker 3: I guess that, by all reports was kind of a
Speaker 3: sleepy little hamlet. People didn't tend to lock their doors.
Speaker 3: It was a safe place to grow up. It was
Speaker 3: an autoparts industry, you know, it was the sort of
Speaker 3: economic driver. Something happened in the late seventies. This kind
Speaker 3: of hell mouth opens in Speedway, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: we've got bike gangs, I've got drugs, we've got violent crime, murder,
Speaker 3: and a lot of these things play into the theory
Speaker 3: surrounding what happened at the Burgershev and in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways, it's quite maddening when you're trying to investigate
Speaker 3: a crime because there were so many bad actors in
Speaker 3: Speedway at the time, you know, chop shops as well,
Speaker 3: so places that would sort of steal cars and piece
Speaker 3: them out, that it's kind of hard to narrow the field.
Speaker 3: It's hard to kind of rule anybody out when you
Speaker 3: look at people that you think may have been capable
Speaker 3: of something as heinous as the quadruple murder of four
Speaker 3: kids in Speedway specifically at the time, there were plenty
Speaker 3: of people with form.
Speaker 1: How was the initial disappearance of these four young people
Speaker 1: discovered on that night or on that following morning in
Speaker 1: November nineteen seventy eight, there.
Speaker 2: Was an employee that was working there that went out
Speaker 2: on a date with another employee, and as he dropped
Speaker 2: his date off, he went back to see if they
Speaker 2: needed help closing and came in the back door and
Speaker 2: then subsequently found it open, and then went in and
Speaker 2: saw that the safe had been ransacked and some things
Speaker 2: were sort of like at place, and he rang the manager,
Speaker 2: and then the manager rang police, and then police came down.
Speaker 1: And what did they do? Did they move quickly? Did
Speaker 1: they ignore it?
Speaker 2: So in their infinite wisdom they let them reopen the
Speaker 2: restaurant the next day for business as usual, hoping that
Speaker 2: the kids had just kind of taken the money and
Speaker 2: gone off to party.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, it's hard to comprehend that revisiting
Speaker 1: that yourselves. Is that like a normal thing to do
Speaker 1: in policing in the late seventies to just kind of
Speaker 1: ignore something that looks quite sinister and a bit like
Speaker 1: a crime scene.
Speaker 4: I think everybody accepts now.
Speaker 3: It was a mistake that kind of hamstrung the case
Speaker 3: really speed made police at the time. Remember, is kind
Speaker 3: of a small town, and even though there was a
Speaker 3: lot of violent they wouldn't have had to deal with
Speaker 3: many quadruple murders. And I think they just watched it
Speaker 3: and continued to botch it from there.
Speaker 4: You know. They restaged the crime.
Speaker 3: Scene a few days later so they could take crime
Speaker 3: scene photos. The kids were taken from the burger chef,
Speaker 3: but they were actually discovered about half an hour away
Speaker 3: in a warded area in Johnson County. There were things
Speaker 3: taken from that site in Johnson County. There were police
Speaker 3: that were fired later for being drunk on the job.
Speaker 3: And the whole thing was just a complete mess.
Speaker 2: I think like originally, you know, first forty eight hours,
Speaker 2: which is obviously we know now the most important in
Speaker 2: an investigation. I think, you know, they were hopeful, you know,
Speaker 2: because it was so under resource that you know first
Speaker 2: of all, that they did just go off and they
Speaker 2: were just going to turn up again. And then I
Speaker 2: think that they were hoping then that it would be
Speaker 2: kidnapping and there would be a ransom. And then from
Speaker 2: there when they found the bodies forty eight hours later,
Speaker 2: that's when paddic set in for them that they'd done
Speaker 2: the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: Do you expand a bit on how the bodies were
Speaker 1: found and in what state what had happened to those
Speaker 1: four young people.
Speaker 2: Danny and Ruth were found very close together, almost touching,
Speaker 2: like legs kind of touching. They were both shot in
Speaker 2: the back of the head. There was I think two
Speaker 2: shots in each of them. And then a little bit
Speaker 2: further away, Jane was found stabbed in the heart to
Speaker 2: stab wounds in her chest and it appears to be
Speaker 2: that that was over the shoulder, so either she was
Speaker 2: running or someone came up behind her and surprised her
Speaker 2: and she was stabbed twice. And then even further away,
Speaker 2: which is an infinite source of conversation between me and
Speaker 2: Adam and other people. Mark was found, and he was
Speaker 2: found where his back was sort of like laid back
Speaker 2: on his legs and he actually drowned on his own blood.
Speaker 2: So either he hid a tree branch as he was
Speaker 2: running or someone with a baseball bat.
Speaker 1: I mean, all murders are horrific, but what you've just
Speaker 1: described is horrifying, Like those final moments for those kids
Speaker 1: would have been horrendous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, we've thought a lot about that.
Speaker 3: It's horrifying and it's confounding as well, because you know,
Speaker 3: you've got three different modes of death. It's hard to
Speaker 3: make sense of it. It sort of suggests a frenzied attack,
Speaker 3: but just don't know exactly what happened once they got
Speaker 3: the kids out to Johnson County. Did they take them
Speaker 3: out there intending to kill them? Did as you know,
Speaker 3: someone in our film says, you know, they went out
Speaker 3: there to buy themselves time.
Speaker 4: Something went wrong out there. We just don't know.
Speaker 3: But I think what you're describing those last few moments
Speaker 3: for the kids haunts us. And you know, we know
Speaker 3: obviously for Teresa and Norma it's the stuff of nightmares.
Speaker 3: Teresa being Ruth Shelton, one of the victim's sisters, and
Speaker 3: Norma is Danny, who was another victim, his mum.
Speaker 1: Well, let's focus a little bit more on their lives.
Speaker 1: Who were these teenagers? One of them was twenty so
Speaker 1: a young woman, Ruth, Mark, Jane, Danny. What do we
Speaker 1: know about them as people?
Speaker 2: We've read a lot about them and also like spoken
Speaker 2: to their families. So Jane, you know, from all accounts,
Speaker 2: was friendly, vivacious, loved animals, loved art, you know, was
Speaker 2: working her way up pretty quickly in the Burger chef
Speaker 2: you know other burger chefs as well. She'd come from
Speaker 2: another store called Plainfield, and you know, was ambitious and
Speaker 2: doing really well within that company. Mark was good at school, athletic,
Speaker 2: you know, popular, you know from everybody that was spoken
Speaker 2: to around, a good guy. Ruth had actually come from
Speaker 2: the dunkin Donuts next door where she worked and had
Speaker 2: only really just started at the Berger chef. She was
Speaker 2: into computers. She probably would have been a pioneer in
Speaker 2: that area, you know, because it was the seventies. Danny
Speaker 2: was into photography and also wanted to join the Air force.
Speaker 1: Your film really tries to focus on these people as people,
Speaker 1: not just victims, which is something that in the true
Speaker 1: crime genre some creators seem to have gotten a bit
Speaker 1: carried away with. Was that a big focus for you guys, Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 3: In the course of the research we became quite close with,
Speaker 3: in particular Teresa and also Normal. We felt that we
Speaker 3: owed it to them, you know, that this film wasn't gratuitous,
Speaker 3: that this film was there to memorialize their loved ones,
Speaker 3: rather than having them be kind of pawns into something
Speaker 3: salacious and gratuitous, you know, something that exploits them for
Speaker 3: the sake of entertainment. You know, that was always front
Speaker 3: of mind for us, and that's what drove us. So
Speaker 3: you know, you'll notice in the film there's really very little,
Speaker 3: I mean one sort of description of the death scene,
Speaker 3: as Luke said, and other than that, we chose not
Speaker 3: to recreate that element of the story out of respect
Speaker 3: for them, and I think Teresa says it in the film.
Speaker 3: It's so often the boogeymen in these cases that get
Speaker 3: notarized and the victims are sort of forgotten, and we
Speaker 3: really wanted to sort of flip that on its head,
Speaker 3: and that was the focus in the writing.
Speaker 1: And how do you cast and film something like this
Speaker 1: when you're both based in Australia but you're dealing with
Speaker 1: an American crime. How did that process go?
Speaker 3: We cast Australian actors, We cast them out far and wide,
Speaker 3: and we lucked out with four sort of early career
Speaker 3: actors who were just extraordinary. They worked extensively with a
Speaker 3: dialect coach. The Midwestern drawls are really sort of specific
Speaker 3: kind of accent. It's not just a straight American accent,
Speaker 3: and we had kind of built characters for them, you know,
Speaker 3: it was on the page in the script at the.
Speaker 4: End of the day. You know, it was nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: We didn't have a ton of archive family videos or
Speaker 3: anything like that, so you know, there was a lot
Speaker 3: that was left to them to fill in their mannerisms
Speaker 3: things like that. To their great credit, each of the
Speaker 3: four actors, Joe's Arta, Sie Randalls, Nya Coffee and DaVita
Speaker 3: McKenzie were just incredibly dedicated, so much of themselves, researched,
Speaker 3: worked incredibly diligently, and you know it's reflected in their performances.
Speaker 1: Does that mean you also created the Burger Chef here
Speaker 1: in Australia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we built it in Adelaide. We found an
Speaker 2: abandoned Chinese restaurant. The geography was pretty much exactly the
Speaker 2: same as the site in Indiana, and so with a
Speaker 2: lot of research and an amazing team, we were able
Speaker 2: to like gut the building, knockdown walls, put windows in,
Speaker 2: andretty much build it down to the cup.
Speaker 1: Were there any moments from filming, either with the actors
Speaker 1: or with the real people from this story that really
Speaker 1: stand out to either of you.
Speaker 4: There's so many.
Speaker 3: I think the one that sort of stayed with me
Speaker 3: the most was the day that we all interviewed Norma,
Speaker 3: who was Danny's mum. She's someone who's you to move on,
Speaker 3: sort of had to compartmentalize it, doesn't talk about it
Speaker 3: a lot, doesn't do any media. We ended up meeting
Speaker 3: her and developing a bit of a rapport and she
Speaker 3: ended up agreeing to go on camera. That was a really,
Speaker 3: really tough day, particularly given that Danny had called her
Speaker 3: that night because somebody else was supposed to come in
Speaker 3: and help close. But Danny called his mum that night
Speaker 3: and said, hey, you know, can I hang back and
Speaker 3: do a couple of extra hours because he was quite
Speaker 3: young and supposed to be home by ten thirty. He
Speaker 3: called and asked if he could stay back and help
Speaker 3: for the extra couple hours pay so he could buy
Speaker 3: Christmas presents. They were reluctant, but Danny's mum and his
Speaker 3: dad agreed that who would do that and it was
Speaker 3: the last time they ever spoke to him. So hearing
Speaker 3: her recount that story and seeing just the guilt and
Speaker 3: the trauma was a really tough day.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bass.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Luke Linderman and Adam Camian about the
Speaker 1: Speedway murders. Well, there are a number of witnesses to
Speaker 1: the night in question that you've spoken to. I want
Speaker 1: to focus firstly on the two people that gave the
Speaker 1: descriptions that ended up being widely circulated at the time. Luke,
Speaker 1: what kind of description did they give? Who were police
Speaker 1: and the public being told to look out for?
Speaker 2: So there were two witnesses that were behind the dunkin
Speaker 2: Donuts or sort of like on that there was a
Speaker 2: train line behind and they were approached by two men
Speaker 2: who told them to kind of move on. One of
Speaker 2: the men was long haired with a beard, and the
Speaker 2: other was clean shaven with shorter, blonde hair, which is
Speaker 2: basically like describing every man in seventy. Subsequently, they then
Speaker 2: did police sketches based on their descriptions, and then also
Speaker 2: these really weird busts that were made out of clay,
Speaker 2: like I think it was one of the detective's nieces
Speaker 2: who went to art school, and they're like synonymous with
Speaker 2: this case. They are really very freaky and out there.
Speaker 1: I was going to say they look like an art project,
Speaker 1: and interestingly they are.
Speaker 3: It's worth googling for people who are listening, because it
Speaker 3: really is quite wild that anyone would release these two
Speaker 3: ridiculous busts to the public, and then they were put on.
Speaker 2: Public display like in mauls for people to kind of
Speaker 2: walk past and look at and then find those two people.
Speaker 2: So that was quite unique. Actually, that was one of
Speaker 2: the first things that I saw when I was researching
Speaker 2: the case and kind of draw into it that these
Speaker 2: busts were, you know, what was given to the public Adam.
Speaker 1: One of the early prominent theories was that these four
Speaker 1: became victims of a local robbery gang. Can you talk
Speaker 1: us through who they were, what were they doing at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a crew of guys from around the
Speaker 3: Johnson County area who had been robbing KFC's other fast
Speaker 3: food restaurants, and in particular there were a few burger
Speaker 3: chefs that they knocked over as well. It was a
Speaker 3: theory that came from Indiana State Police detective at a
Speaker 3: time called Ken York, and it's a theory that some
Speaker 3: people in law enforcement and others still believe is the answer.
Speaker 3: I think if you knew nothing about this case and
Speaker 3: you kind of came to the robber gang theory, which
Speaker 3: is what we've called it in the film, it's incredibly compelling.
Speaker 3: It's very convincing. We think that there are some holes
Speaker 3: in it. People always say that the mo of the
Speaker 3: robber gang coming in through the back door at closing
Speaker 3: when somebody was taking out the trash. The reality is
Speaker 3: nobody knows that, and yes, the back door was found
Speaker 3: a jar, But how the kids were taken out of
Speaker 3: the restaurant is a complete mystery. Because this is something
Speaker 3: that we sort of try to address in the film.
Speaker 3: The hours between about eleven thirty when we believe the
Speaker 3: kids were taken and sort of roughly one thirty am
Speaker 3: the next morning when shots are heard out at Johnson
Speaker 3: County is kind of this black hole in time that
Speaker 3: you people speculate over endlessly. And the robber gang is
Speaker 3: one of the more convincing theories that you hear.
Speaker 1: Luke tell me about Donald Forrester. How did he become
Speaker 1: involved in this case?
Speaker 2: Donald Forrester was a known bad actor in the area
Speaker 2: who was in jail for a violent rape where he
Speaker 2: was serving ninety five years. He came to police attention
Speaker 2: and then subsequently confess twice, recounted twice. We played some
Speaker 2: of the second confession in the film where it feels
Speaker 2: like he's being led. You know, some of his answers
Speaker 2: don't really kind of correlate with how the bots were
Speaker 2: actually found, and you know, the talk was that, you know,
Speaker 2: he was actually shown into the war room and kind
Speaker 2: of got to see a lot of the crime saying
Speaker 2: photographs before he had his confession. So in the end
Speaker 2: recounted for the second time, and then they didn't have
Speaker 2: enough to prosecute, so it was pretty much dropped.
Speaker 1: But why would he want to confess to a crime
Speaker 1: he didn't do.
Speaker 2: He was in a pretty bad prison at the time
Speaker 2: and wanted to be moved, and I think through the
Speaker 2: kind of police leverage, they're going to move him into
Speaker 2: like a nicer, cushier prison. So you know, he felt like,
Speaker 2: you know, if he gave this confession that you know,
Speaker 2: better treatment.
Speaker 1: Adam, it's kind of obvious to look at the victims
Speaker 1: themselves and see whether there's any possible links there to
Speaker 1: see whether you know they could have enemies or anyone
Speaker 1: potentially out to get them. What were you able to
Speaker 1: find out about that? I understand that there was a
Speaker 1: bit of a focus on Mark for a second, and
Speaker 1: then a lot of focus on Jane and her family.
Speaker 3: Both Mark and Jane had brothers who had their problems
Speaker 3: with the law. Jane's brother in particular, who did kind
Speaker 3: of fit the description of the bearded man. He had
Speaker 3: a sort of shock of brown hair and a beard.
Speaker 3: At the time, he was running with a motorcycle gang
Speaker 3: called the Sons of Silence and ended up being arrested
Speaker 3: for cocaine possession I think at the time, and was
Speaker 3: associated with a lot of other bad actors, interestingly, one
Speaker 3: of whom was Donald Forrester, we believe, So he's one
Speaker 3: that comes up a lot because you often hear speculation
Speaker 3: about whether drugs were being dealt out of the burger chef.
Speaker 3: Apparently this was not an uncommon thing that they would
Speaker 3: move small amounts of marijuana through drive up windows when
Speaker 3: people would come to a lot of their food, So
Speaker 3: speculation that that was happening. If it was happening, did
Speaker 3: Jane know about it? Which kind of snowballed into it
Speaker 3: Jane was dealing drugs and ended up in trouble because
Speaker 3: of that. This is something that Luke and I go
Speaker 3: back and forth on. I'm less convinced about that. I
Speaker 3: haven't really seen any evidence that Jane was dealing drugs,
Speaker 3: nor have I seen any evidence that Mark was dealing drugs.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that people speculated about is,
Speaker 3: you know, could it have been drug related but through
Speaker 3: James's brother And you know, Charlie Gray, who was dating
Speaker 3: Jane at the time that she died, said that, in fact,
Speaker 3: she would have tried to protect her brother had that happened,
Speaker 3: if it came to that, So you know, was the
Speaker 3: debt being collected that night owed by James free Jane's brother?
Speaker 3: You know, the other one is Mark's brother, less is
Speaker 3: known about him, but he also had his issues and
Speaker 3: was in and out of prison.
Speaker 1: There was one eyewitness called Alan who gave actual names
Speaker 1: that he says he saw that night, Jeffreed and Tim Willoughby. Adam,
Speaker 1: Who were they? And what did Alan say that he
Speaker 1: saw that night?
Speaker 3: Mary and George who are the teenagers who were sitting
Speaker 3: on the tracks. They claim to have seen these two
Speaker 3: men that moved them on. But there's only one person
Speaker 3: that claims to have seen anything other than that, and
Speaker 3: that is Alan Prewitt who turns up drunk to the
Speaker 3: dunkin Donuts with a friend, goes outside to get some
Speaker 3: heir because he's feeling unwell, and says he sees an
Speaker 3: orange van pull up and he recognizes two people. They
Speaker 3: are Jeffreed and Tim Willoughby. In terms of what Alan
Speaker 3: Prewitt saw, it depends on the day that you talk
Speaker 3: to him. Unfortunately, he was, how should we put it,
Speaker 3: a bit of an unreliable narrator, to the point where
Speaker 3: in nine point eighty one he gave a statement to
Speaker 3: Jim Kramer was a detective.
Speaker 4: I had the case for the best part of twenty
Speaker 4: five years, I think.
Speaker 3: And that statement drove the investigation from the state police
Speaker 3: for a really long time. In talking to us, so
Speaker 3: many parts of his story fell apart, and we sort
Speaker 3: of gave him the opportunity. We said to him, listen,
Speaker 3: because what he claims is that he was kind of
Speaker 3: under pressure and felt like a police were going to
Speaker 3: pin the crime on him because he had been there.
Speaker 3: He was also a kind of near do well. He
Speaker 3: said that he just starts making stuff up to sort
Speaker 3: of divert their attention somewhere else. So, you know, in
Speaker 3: our conversations with him, he ends up walking back almost
Speaker 3: all of what he said in that nineteen eighty one statement,
Speaker 3: but he maintains and I think in the film he says,
Speaker 3: and I will take this to the grave that he
Speaker 3: saw that Van and Jeffreed and Tim Willoby, and that's
Speaker 3: something that he never walked back. So Jeff Freed and
Speaker 3: Tim Willerby were We probably need a separate interview to
Speaker 3: talk about Tim Willerby because that's a crazy story. Local
Speaker 3: bad actor involved with chop shops. Jeffreed was a local
Speaker 3: character who was known as the Mayor of the Snake Pit,
Speaker 3: which was sort of a turn speedway's name for the
Speaker 3: Indianapolis five hundred race and there's a turn on the
Speaker 3: racetrack that in the month of May is like a
Speaker 3: kind of party place, and that's called the Snake Pit.
Speaker 3: And Jeffreed was the mayor of the Snake Pit. He
Speaker 3: was known as a guy who could be violent. He
Speaker 3: was known as a guy who would collect debts.
Speaker 1: I know you say that Alan might not be the
Speaker 1: most credible witness, but he's not the only person that
Speaker 1: mentions Jeff. And this is potentially the biggest bombshell from
Speaker 1: your documentary. You have a mate of Jeff's who told
Speaker 1: you something quite remarkable. Tell me about what Tim told you.
Speaker 2: So Tim dropped a bombshell that Jeff came to him
Speaker 2: and had somewhat of a confession that he wanted to
Speaker 2: get off his chest. That you know, he was there
Speaker 2: that night and subsequently things got out of hand and
Speaker 2: he was forced to handle a situation and pretty much
Speaker 2: confessed details of what happened that night.
Speaker 1: So he knew kind of what happened to those kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was there and was partly responsible and
Speaker 2: felt like he needed to get it off his chest
Speaker 2: to his very good friend Tim and dropped this bombshell
Speaker 2: of a story on him.
Speaker 1: So why had Tim never gone to police with this information?
Speaker 2: I mean, he claims that the police never came to him.
Speaker 2: He's never seen the police. The police were never interested.
Speaker 2: After we filmed this segment, we took him down to
Speaker 2: the prosecutor's office and dropped him off and basically waited
Speaker 2: for him to go and tell his story. So we
Speaker 2: had done everything that we could to give everything over
Speaker 2: to the place that we had, including Tim and his
Speaker 2: bombshell story.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to want to tell a story like
Speaker 1: you guys did. You're making a film about an unsolved case.
Speaker 1: But to get information like this that is brand new,
Speaker 1: that hasn't been heard by police or anyone. How did
Speaker 1: it feel for you in that moment to actually hear
Speaker 1: something like this?
Speaker 4: It was exhilarating, if I'm honest.
Speaker 3: It's a real emotional rollercoaster when you're so invested in
Speaker 3: something like this. Sometimes it's maddening because you keep coming
Speaker 3: up against dead ends were otherwise hopeful. Some days are
Speaker 3: the days where you get to speak to someone like
Speaker 3: a Tim Boyer, And I remember I had gotten on
Speaker 3: to him and he didn't reveal everything to me on
Speaker 3: the phone because he was pretty adamant that he wanted
Speaker 3: to talk to us face to face to give us
Speaker 3: the whole story, but he gave me enough information over
Speaker 3: the phone that I remember getting off the phone. You
Speaker 3: know it's two am because of the time difference in
Speaker 3: calling Luke and saying, hey, I think I know what happened.
Speaker 4: So you know, that was pretty special.
Speaker 1: So where does that leave us in terms of an investigation?
Speaker 1: Are police still looking into this? Is it currently still cold?
Speaker 3: The reason that this case is still unsolved, it's partly
Speaker 3: because the police watched the investigation early on, but there's
Speaker 3: also very very little physical evidence, which makes it extremely challenging.
Speaker 3: We know they have tested DNA in the past what
Speaker 3: little DNA they did have, and we know that they're
Speaker 3: sort of preserving some other DNA in the hope that
Speaker 3: technology improves, because when you test a DNA sample often
Speaker 3: you destroy that sample, so that don't want to shoot
Speaker 3: their shot right now.
Speaker 4: But there's very very little physical evidence, which makes closing
Speaker 4: the case challenging.
Speaker 1: What do you think the families hope they're going to
Speaker 1: get from sharing their stories with you and from having
Speaker 1: this crime retold on such a big platform. Do you
Speaker 1: think that they're hopeful that that slim chance of actually
Speaker 1: getting a conviction or justice in any way is still
Speaker 1: what they're kind of leaning towards.
Speaker 3: They want answers, they want to know, you know, they're
Speaker 3: not knowing is the hardest part. People often sort of
Speaker 3: throw around the word closure. I think when you lose
Speaker 3: a loved one in a fashion as brutal as this,
Speaker 3: there's probably not ever really closure. But I think for
Speaker 3: some peace of mind, knowing what happened in their final
Speaker 3: moments would help. I think that's what they're desperate for.
Speaker 3: So our great hope in doing this, and really it's
Speaker 3: kind of been one of the driving factors is that
Speaker 3: someone sitting somewhere will see this and call authorities and
Speaker 3: it'll be a tip that breaks the case open.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Luke Rinderman and Adam camee In for assisting
Speaker 1: us to tell this story. True Crime Conversations is a
Speaker 1: Mumaier podcast hosted and produced by me above. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening. I'll be back next week with another
Speaker 1: true Crime Conversation