Speaker 1: School of Humans. That's what he said today, and he
Speaker 1: said he didn't strangle her. Yeah, I don't understand, and
Speaker 1: I mean, look again, glad justice was served, but I
Speaker 1: don't understand why they can't get some of these contradictions.
Speaker 2: This case sitting here right now, we know less about
Speaker 2: what happened to Repbecker's you two and afters.
Speaker 1: Ago, after the news broke that Billy Miller was convicted
Speaker 1: of Rebecca Gould's murder, I had some mixed feelings. It
Speaker 1: would have been so much easier for me to believe
Speaker 1: that justice had been done and to celebrate. After consuming
Speaker 1: my life for so many years, as it has so
Speaker 1: many other people, this case would finally be over. And
Speaker 1: I am happy about Billy Miller's arrest and conviction. Given
Speaker 1: the fact that Billy Miller is a dangerous sexual predator
Speaker 1: who I absolutely believe participated in Rebecca's murder, I definitely
Speaker 1: consider this a good thing. I also want to give
Speaker 1: credit to the Arkansas State Police. I am thrilled that
Speaker 1: Mike McNeil took over the case because for me, this
Speaker 1: was never about being right or wrong. Remember, I had
Speaker 1: no access to the police case file, so what I
Speaker 1: was trying to do with Helengn was to go out
Speaker 1: and talk to anyone I could, anyone who I believed
Speaker 1: could have information to share. My hope was that after
Speaker 1: the podcast aired, Dennis Simons would someday be off the
Speaker 1: case and someone knew a fresh pair of eyes would
Speaker 1: be put on the case. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: I think that Mike McNeil has done excellent police work
Speaker 1: and has been much more open minded than his predecessors.
Speaker 1: But as with so many things in this case, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like it's over yet. It feels like that
Speaker 1: moment in the horror movie where you think it's all
Speaker 1: done and everyone is starting to feel relieved, and then
Speaker 1: the monster lunges out for that one last scare. I'm
Speaker 1: Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone. In Billy Miller's confession,
Speaker 1: he called himself a monster. This was during his interview
Speaker 1: when detectives were asking him why he did it, why
Speaker 1: he killed Rebecca. He said that there was no sexual motivation.
Speaker 1: But I find that very hard to believe. I talked
Speaker 1: investigator Jennifer Buckle about her impression of Billy. How do
Speaker 1: you feel about William Miller? I mean his history.
Speaker 3: You know, a monster, she's a predator. We know he
Speaker 3: you know, sexually assaulted other women. We know he had
Speaker 3: a pattern of getting women overly drunk at bars and
Speaker 3: taking them home to have sex with them, I eat,
Speaker 3: rape them. He would take photos of them when they
Speaker 3: were unconscious. We joke about killing prostitutes. You know, was
Speaker 3: the suspect and a sexual assault in two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: according to Mike. So, I mean, he obviously has a
Speaker 3: pattern in a history. And like George and I talked
Speaker 3: about this the other day, but George is like, what
Speaker 3: do you think the chances are that this is Williams
Speaker 3: filmy murder? And I'm like, I think the chance is
Speaker 3: pretty low. But clearly he has these sexual compulsions or whatever.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't like the word normal and abnormal,
Speaker 3: but like his sexual preferences are abnormal, and knowing this
Speaker 3: other stuff about his history, I just don't see. Unfortunately, Rebeca,
Speaker 3: it's probably not his only murder victim.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's hard to find information because he was
Speaker 1: in the Philippines for so long exactly who knows what
Speaker 1: one on them.
Speaker 3: You're never yep, you're never going to be able to
Speaker 3: find the victims over there, and that sucks.
Speaker 1: I went to see Rebecca's dad, doctor Larry Gould again
Speaker 1: near Mountain Home. It's been over two years since I've
Speaker 1: last seen Larry, since the podcast happened, and then the
Speaker 1: arrest and then COVID made travel so hard it was emotional.
Speaker 1: I gave him a big hug before I went into
Speaker 1: the house. Larry has had some changes in his life.
Speaker 1: His two younger daughters have grown up into young women.
Speaker 1: His oldest is getting ready to start college. I gave
Speaker 1: them both hugs too. The last time I was in
Speaker 1: this kitchen where were poring over autopsy diagrams and countless
Speaker 1: piles of letters to the prosecutor, to the district attorney,
Speaker 1: to the police, Larry was basically begging for help in
Speaker 1: finding his daughter's killer. This time, the mood is different.
Speaker 1: We're happier because obviously Rebecca's killer has been caught and
Speaker 1: will be sent to prison for what amounts to the
Speaker 1: rest of his natural life. So in some sense it's
Speaker 1: a celebration. Larry finally has some answers about what happened
Speaker 1: to his daughter. Larry first saw Billy Miller in August
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two at the Suppression hearing where Billy's confession
Speaker 1: video was played.
Speaker 4: As a man and as a father, I really wanted
Speaker 4: to size up this guy. I wanted to see what
Speaker 4: type of person could do this to my daughter.
Speaker 1: At that hearing, Larry sat right behind Billy and he
Speaker 1: spent the hours of confession watching Billy, hearing the graphic
Speaker 1: details of the man he would confess to brutally murdering
Speaker 1: his daughter, watching her die, cleaning up her blood, and
Speaker 1: throwing her body off the side of the road like
Speaker 1: a bag of trash. And through it all he maintained
Speaker 1: his composure because he said of a promise that he
Speaker 1: made to Rebecca that someday he would find her killer.
Speaker 4: I found that his body language was his entire demeanor
Speaker 4: was highly offensive. He's a very unattractive man. And that's
Speaker 4: a loaded statement because a lot of what you learn
Speaker 4: about William Miller is that a good portion of his
Speaker 4: life was predicated on some forms of perversion and things
Speaker 4: that just were not what you would consider normal behavior. First,
Speaker 4: he didn't have to be there, he wasn't subpoenaed, and
Speaker 4: they told him many times you could get up and
Speaker 4: leave any time he wanted to. By the end of
Speaker 4: the day, your thought on who William Miller was, by
Speaker 4: his own statements, was this is an arrogant, pompous, egotistical
Speaker 4: man who drew pleasure out of making people feel foolish.
Speaker 4: And those were his exact words many times in the film,
Speaker 4: was that he had made fools out of all of
Speaker 4: these people, and he took a lot of pride in
Speaker 4: that that in itself is a sickness. The man is sick,
Speaker 4: and the man has a lot of problems and his
Speaker 4: own egos what defeated him. He reminded me of what
Speaker 4: you typically associate with people that are arsenists. They light
Speaker 4: a fire and they want to go back and watch
Speaker 4: it burn.
Speaker 1: When we were still preparing for Billy Miller's trial to
Speaker 1: begin on October thirty first, Larry learned on October fourteenth,
Speaker 1: the very last day that the defense had to present
Speaker 1: a plea deal. He learned from prosecutor Eric Hants that
Speaker 1: a deal was in the works. From there, things moved
Speaker 1: very fast over that weekend. On Monday night, Larry texted
Speaker 1: me to say the hearing would be the very next
Speaker 1: morning at eight am. The plea deal had been accepted,
Speaker 1: so it would be quick Larry was there with his
Speaker 1: two younger daughters, Rebecca's half sisters, Katie and Macy. He
Speaker 1: wanted to show them how the criminal justice system worked
Speaker 1: and for them to finally see their half sister get justice.
Speaker 1: It was an emotional day and Larry only had the
Speaker 1: night before to prepare his victim statement.
Speaker 4: That evening, I had an hour one hour to write
Speaker 4: my victim statement. So you know, when you watch these programs,
Speaker 4: you see people up there and they're spewing off for
Speaker 4: hours about different things and stuff. They told me I
Speaker 4: could only submit two type three pages. So I made
Speaker 4: notes and then I got panicky. I thought, geez, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to have this ready. And so I sat
Speaker 4: in bed at ten o'clock at night and I wrote
Speaker 4: it out and typed it and was I knew I
Speaker 4: had to get some sleep because the next day was
Speaker 4: the hearing. So it took me an hour and I
Speaker 4: wrote it out and that was that's it. And then
Speaker 4: I read it in court, and so I'd be happy
Speaker 4: to read.
Speaker 3: It to you.
Speaker 4: I'd love you did that in an hour? Yeah, wow, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's you don't know what to do. You know, you
Speaker 4: sit there and you've got eighteen years to think about
Speaker 4: your daughter and all the different things that has happened.
Speaker 4: So you go, do you what do I write? So
Speaker 4: Dot read it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Please Larry read me. It's the witness statement that he
Speaker 1: read in court, his final goodbye to his daughter Rebecca.
Speaker 1: This sentencing hearing, liked the hearings before, it took place
Speaker 1: in a tiny court room and no cameras or recording
Speaker 1: devices were allowed, so only a few people were there
Speaker 1: to hear Larry's words. So it's really important to me
Speaker 1: to play this witness statement in its entirety because I
Speaker 1: want everyone who has been following this case to hear it.
Speaker 4: Eighteen years ago, my life changed forever. Eighteen years ago,
Speaker 4: many lives were changed forever. My precious daughter, Rebecca Christian
Speaker 4: Gould was taken from us. She was taken from family,
Speaker 4: her friends, and taken from her own future, her dreams,
Speaker 4: her desires, her wants, her hopes, and all the possibilities
Speaker 4: that life at age twenty two presents to a young lady.
Speaker 4: No marriage, no children, no graduation from college, no career,
Speaker 4: no good times and bad You took away a chance
Speaker 4: for a young, tenacious and blossoming girl to dream of
Speaker 4: her possibilities in life. You took away from me my
Speaker 4: opportunity to watch those things happen. William Miller Eighteen years ago,
Speaker 4: I was working in my office seeing patients when I
Speaker 4: received a frantic call that Rebecca was missing. Little did
Speaker 4: I know then that my own world would shortly changed forever,
Speaker 4: and soon a living hell would find its way into
Speaker 4: my life. A hell you created, and now a hell
Speaker 4: you must face. No rest, little sleep, searching early morning
Speaker 4: until late at night to try to find Rebecca. Hope
Speaker 4: diminishes daily, but never went away until the day she
Speaker 4: was found, and reality set in. My daughter was dumped
Speaker 4: like trash left for the animal, left for the animals
Speaker 4: and the maggots to devour slowly each night. You were
Speaker 4: long gone. You have had eighteen years of life, family, children, money,
Speaker 4: a career, and had you not been a truly sick
Speaker 4: person at such a young age, you probably would have
Speaker 4: had a nice life. Today that ends, and today I grieve.
Speaker 4: I had no time to grieve then, because I could
Speaker 4: not rest a funeral to plan, and my child to bury.
Speaker 4: What you didn't know was at that burial site. I
Speaker 4: took my kids aside and made a pledge that nothing
Speaker 4: would ever stop us from finding the person who murdered Rebecca.
Speaker 4: And today, today I looked to heaven and simply whisper
Speaker 4: promise made, promise kept. The eighteen years of hell you
Speaker 4: put me through has cost me dearly. It cost me family,
Speaker 4: loved ones, my enjoyment of life, hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of dollars, precious time. Basically everything I had hoped
Speaker 4: for in my own life was placed on hold forever.
Speaker 4: Simply avoid or hold in my heart that could never
Speaker 4: be repaired or patched back to a healthy state until now. See,
Speaker 4: my glass is always going to be half full and
Speaker 4: never half empty. I teach my children to never give up,
Speaker 4: fight and never quit, to salute our precious American flag,
Speaker 4: to salute law enforcement above all the men and women
Speaker 4: who serve this great country. As I did. Rebecca represented
Speaker 4: that combination of beliefs. She would fight for the underdog,
Speaker 4: and at one hundred pounds of her ringing wet was
Speaker 4: the courage of a hero. You took away the life
Speaker 4: of someone I believed could have become anything she wanted,
Speaker 4: The taking of my daughter's life in such a brutal
Speaker 4: and self serving manner, And then to treat her in
Speaker 4: the most undignified way tells me everything I need to
Speaker 4: know about you. This court judges you and has sentenced you.
Speaker 4: You still have two more courts to face, the prison
Speaker 4: system itself and the ultimate judgment by God himself. My
Speaker 4: pain will never go away, but it will diminish my
Speaker 4: Lord and Savior. As stated in the poem Footprints in
Speaker 4: the Sand, never let me fall. Gave me courage and
Speaker 4: carried me through these eighteen years, only to set me
Speaker 4: down as a stronger, more faithful, more loving, more compassionate,
Speaker 4: and truly better human being. We are all victims from you.
Speaker 4: In your confession, you boastfully stated how you made fools
Speaker 4: out of everybody. I am here to tell you that
Speaker 4: that arrogance and your obvious pathology of needing to watch
Speaker 4: the fire burn you set is what special Agent Mike
Speaker 4: McNeil brilliantly used against you. In closing, I cannot describe
Speaker 4: the amount of emotional trauma you have created in so
Speaker 4: many lives. I can speak for hours regarding why you
Speaker 4: should never be allowed out of the prison. I will
Speaker 4: leave you with this one statement. Rebecca lives in all
Speaker 4: of us. She will never die. She is sitting at
Speaker 4: the right hand of the father, looking down a place
Speaker 4: you will probably never see, but that is not my
Speaker 4: place to judge. Rebecca inspires us all to better our
Speaker 4: lives and to know that love and grace are words
Speaker 4: I will always remember her by.
Speaker 3: It's rasonal, It's so beautiful.
Speaker 4: Thank you that one came from heart.
Speaker 1: I got really emotional when he read that, and you
Speaker 1: can probably hear it. As much as I try to
Speaker 1: remain impartial and detached because I want to be able
Speaker 1: to help the victims and not burden them with my pain,
Speaker 1: and also I want to be able to see things
Speaker 1: with an objective eye. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we're all human. I've gone their challenges and losses of
Speaker 1: my own over the past few years, and one of
Speaker 1: the many things that I admire about Larry is his
Speaker 1: ability to stay positive in the face of darkness. Over
Speaker 1: the years, he sent me several supportive texts, even when
Speaker 1: a lesser man would have been drowning in his own pain.
Speaker 1: I admire him and I consider him a close friend,
Speaker 1: and my friendships with George and Jennifer have been life
Speaker 1: changing as well. Rebecca's death caused so many people pain,
Speaker 1: but in her short life, she inspired so many people,
Speaker 1: and that is something that I'm grateful for every single day.
Speaker 1: But then Larry said he got a shock. After the
Speaker 1: sentencing was passed, Billy indicated that he would be willing
Speaker 1: to talk to Larry privately, and the judge said that
Speaker 1: he would allow that to take place. Larry and Rebecca's
Speaker 1: older sister, Tiffany went to a small back room where
Speaker 1: Billy was seated behind a glass barrier.
Speaker 4: I was still to size him up and understand this man.
Speaker 4: I interjected a few questions to him right off the bat,
Speaker 4: and I gave him an opportunity to tell the truth
Speaker 4: that I wanted to know exactly what happened. You know,
Speaker 4: he's already convicted, he's already in there. This is a
Speaker 4: good chance to get it all out. So what I
Speaker 4: found in this face to face approach with him was
Speaker 4: a man that was not so much wanting to talk
Speaker 4: as he felt compelled to talk, and he was willing
Speaker 4: to answer questions. But as he began to talk about
Speaker 4: what actually happened, everything changed. He sat up a little straighter,
Speaker 4: his chest came out a little bit more, his voice
Speaker 4: elevated a little bit, and he began to take control
Speaker 4: of the room. So it all changed. And I think
Speaker 4: it changed because had he been sincere, he would have
Speaker 4: wanted want of me and Tiffany was there. He would
Speaker 4: have wanted us to feel that he was apologetic, to
Speaker 4: feel that he was remorseful. He was placating. He was
Speaker 4: trying to make everything appear not a way that was acceptable,
Speaker 4: but a way that did not make him appear like he's,
Speaker 4: like I said, monster like minimizing completely. So the part
Speaker 4: that change was okay. He enters a trailer. He I
Speaker 4: think he had originally said that he wanted to use
Speaker 4: the phone. Rebecca goes back, which would have been I guess,
Speaker 4: to the bedroom. He's pacing back and forth, and the
Speaker 4: words he used there was all of a sudden, it
Speaker 4: just was building in him, and then the switch went
Speaker 4: off and then he went in and he grabbed a
Speaker 4: piano leg. He went in and he struck her twice. Now,
Speaker 4: in the actual confession he says that he strangled her
Speaker 4: with a necktie and that she was lifeless. Now he's
Speaker 4: saying that he didn't strangle her, that he actually started
Speaker 4: to perform CPR, and that every time he would pump
Speaker 4: on her the blood would go all over. So now
Speaker 4: he's making it look like he's a rescuer. And then
Speaker 4: it gets to where in his testimony basically he took
Speaker 4: her like a sack of whatever and threw over the fence,
Speaker 4: threw into the truck, threw off the truck. Now it's
Speaker 4: I gingerly put her over the fence. I eased her
Speaker 4: into the truck. It's all this appeasement. He wasn't doing
Speaker 4: it for us, he was doing it for himself. And
Speaker 4: I had had enough, so I got up and I
Speaker 4: left after that.
Speaker 1: So I agree with Larry's interpretation that there are parts
Speaker 1: of the confession where it seems that Billy Miller is
Speaker 1: trying to make himself seem more compassionate than he was,
Speaker 1: Like when Billy says he was trying to give Rebecca
Speaker 1: CPR or crying. I believe that this is his way
Speaker 1: of explaining why investigators could potentially find his DNA on
Speaker 1: Rebecca's shirt or in her facial area. And I don't
Speaker 1: believe for one second that that DNA came from attempts
Speaker 1: to save Rebecca's life or from Billy's tears. If any
Speaker 1: trace of Billy's bodily fluids are there. I believe that
Speaker 1: they would be there because he was attacking Rebecca, and
Speaker 1: Billy using words like placed her body instead of through
Speaker 1: her body. I would put that in the same category. Again,
Speaker 1: he's trying to minimize his actions. We always have to
Speaker 1: remember that every single thing that Billy Miller says has
Speaker 1: a purpose, and that purpose is serving his own self interest.
Speaker 1: He's trying to mislead and he's doing things for his
Speaker 1: own reasons, which is why I Ann, Jennifer and George
Speaker 1: and others are surprised by the fact that the ASP
Speaker 1: have relied so heavily on Billy's own words and on
Speaker 1: his confession. Because after being one of the only people
Speaker 1: so far to view the crime scene photos, I have
Speaker 1: to say, so far parts of that confession do not
Speaker 1: seem to match up with the physical evidence. Let's look
Speaker 1: at some of the other major differences in the confession. First,
Speaker 1: Billy said that he strangled Rebecca with a necktie, but
Speaker 1: he later told Larry that he didn't. What does the
Speaker 1: evidence say? In that pre trial hearing on October third,
Speaker 1: I was also able to finally hear what the medical
Speaker 1: examiner had to say about Rebecca's body Charles Cocus was
Speaker 1: the medical examiner on the Rebecca Gould case. Doctor Cocus
Speaker 1: confirmed that Rebecca's hyoid bone was intact. It was not broken.
Speaker 1: Rebecca's thyroid bone was also intact. These are the two
Speaker 1: organs that are often damaged when someone is strangled. Now,
Speaker 1: it is possible for those bones to not be broken
Speaker 1: in a case involving strangulation, especially since Rebecca would have
Speaker 1: been hitting the head multiple times and be very weak,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't have taken much force to strangle her.
Speaker 1: While this isn't definitive, it does make it less likely
Speaker 1: that she was strangled. What's interesting to me is that
Speaker 1: Billy Miller seemed to modify his story after he saw
Speaker 1: the crime scene photos and the autopsy photos in court.
Speaker 1: I know through George and Jennifer that Billy was active
Speaker 1: on their social media community Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gould,
Speaker 1: and that the strangulation theory was one that a lot
Speaker 1: of people talked about on that page. In fact, George
Speaker 1: and Jennifer and I are noticing that a lot of
Speaker 1: the terminology that Billy used in his confession was almost
Speaker 1: word for word what had been written on that social
Speaker 1: media site in Billy's original confession, he said that he
Speaker 1: attacked and beat Rebecca while she was lying down in
Speaker 1: bed in the bedroom. But remember in Helen Gone season one,
Speaker 1: we talked to a witness, someone who told us that
Speaker 1: Casey had hit Rebecca while she was standing up outside
Speaker 1: the bedroom arguing with him. Now, in the crime scene
Speaker 1: photos that I saw in the courtroom, there appeared to
Speaker 1: be a large amount of blood on the brown carpeting
Speaker 1: outside the bedroom and in the kitchen area. Billy says
Speaker 1: that he did all of this alone. So if that's true,
Speaker 1: why would he lie about where it happened. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of other contradictions. For example, Billy said that
Speaker 1: there were folded clothes on the bed, which presumably belonged
Speaker 1: to Rebecca. This matched what we had always read in
Speaker 1: newspaper articles about the case. But after seeing the crime
Speaker 1: scene photos, there were no folded clothes on the bed.
Speaker 1: There was nothing on the bed. Billy said that he
Speaker 1: struck Rebecca with a piano leg and then it shattered.
Speaker 1: So where are the wood fragments? And if he was
Speaker 1: working alone and panicking to clean up that crime scene,
Speaker 1: why were there brand new cleaning products out on the counter.
Speaker 1: Did he go buy cleaning products and bring them back.
Speaker 1: And if he did start cleaning up and took the
Speaker 1: time to put bloody clothes on a wash cycle, why
Speaker 1: would he not deal with the blood soaked carpet? Was
Speaker 1: he planning to come back? Wouldn't he worry that the
Speaker 1: stuff would be visible to Casey and others who came
Speaker 1: into that trailer.
Speaker 4: This man definitely did it, but the gray area was
Speaker 4: not answered. And the gray area is was there somebody
Speaker 4: else there?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Is there somebody else help help with this? He was
Speaker 4: He wasn't going to tell you to tell the truth
Speaker 4: and so and that's that became really obvious real fast,
Speaker 4: And that's what I was hoping for. I thought, you know,
Speaker 4: give the guy a chance. Let's see if he'll, if
Speaker 4: he will break down and really detail exactly what happened
Speaker 4: and didn't happen.
Speaker 1: So, if Billy is not telling the truth about how
Speaker 1: Rebecca died, I wonder or could he be hiding something else?
Speaker 1: I talked to George Jarrett and Jennifer Buckles about these
Speaker 1: two different confessions, and he said he placed her and
Speaker 1: he said he didn't strangle her.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I noticed that.
Speaker 6: So when he went before the judge, and the Judge's like,
Speaker 6: you know, this is we're being charguate. This is what
Speaker 6: you're pleading to Okay, now explain to the court why
Speaker 6: for what you did that meets this charge. And he said, well,
Speaker 6: on September twentieth, two thousand and four, I hit Rebecca.
Speaker 6: I can't remember if you said her last name or not,
Speaker 6: but I hit Rebecca twice and then I dumped her
Speaker 6: body off Highway nine.
Speaker 3: That's literally what he said.
Speaker 6: And I immediately noticed, like, wait a minute, what happened
Speaker 6: to the strangulation. But then when doctor Gould came out
Speaker 6: from talking to him, he's like, well, he told me
Speaker 6: he did not strangle her and instead try to perform CPR,
Speaker 6: which is why there was blood all over the house.
Speaker 5: And can't What I think happened is he found out
Speaker 5: that they didn't find the necktie and the necktie thing
Speaker 5: is for whatever reason, and it jumped out to me
Speaker 5: it just seems like a more heinous crime because he
Speaker 5: hit her in the head, she was probably gonna.
Speaker 2: Die, and then he takes the necktie and strangles her,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people see it that way. And
Speaker 2: he also told doctor Gould that he wasn't sure if
Speaker 2: she was dead when he left her on the side
Speaker 2: of the road. And so what he's doing is he's saying, Hey,
Speaker 2: I did hurt her, and she was hurt when I
Speaker 2: left her, but maybe she didn't die because of that.
Speaker 2: Why is it a TBR.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's minimizing. He's just trying to minimize what he did.
Speaker 3: Probably, Yeah, it.
Speaker 6: Was to alleviate his own guilt, is what he did.
Speaker 6: And then you're revictimizing these family members again.
Speaker 1: Oh of course because then because then they're thinking about
Speaker 1: her land on the side of the road.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And it's too totally two totally different, basically totally
Speaker 6: different confessions. So it's like, well, what are we supposed
Speaker 6: to believe?
Speaker 1: As anyone who listens to Helen God knows, I am
Speaker 1: much more interested in victimology, in understanding the victims and
Speaker 1: getting into their world, than I am into delving into
Speaker 1: the mind of a killer. I guess that could be
Speaker 1: because I don't see anything special about killers. But I
Speaker 1: made a promise to myself and to Rebecca Gould back
Speaker 1: in the very beginning that I would talk to anyone
Speaker 1: who could provide more information that would help lead to
Speaker 1: answers as to what really happened to her, and that
Speaker 1: includes Billy Miller. I'm writing a letter to Billy Miller.
Speaker 1: It reads, Billy, this is a strange letter to write,
Speaker 1: because even though we are strangers, I feel like, in
Speaker 1: a very weird way, we have been part of each
Speaker 1: other's lives for the past several years. When I started
Speaker 1: Helen Gone, I wanted two things. To find out the
Speaker 1: truth about what really happened to Rebecca Gould and to
Speaker 1: bring her killer to justice. I assumed that if the
Speaker 1: second one happened, the first one would two. But after
Speaker 1: everything that has gone down, I and our audience, which
Speaker 1: at this point, as I'm sure you know, is tens
Speaker 1: of millions of people all around the world, still have
Speaker 1: so many unanswered questions. They and I want to know
Speaker 1: who you are so that they can understand why you
Speaker 1: did what you did. All anyone is seen of you
Speaker 1: so far is the guy in the confession video who
Speaker 1: called himself a monster. Just so you'll know where I'm
Speaker 1: coming from, I don't believe life is that simple. I
Speaker 1: don't believe that anyone is all good or all evil.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in heaven or hell, or that there
Speaker 1: is a higher power with a plan who intervenes in
Speaker 1: our lives. A lot of people, myself included, have violent urges,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure is part of the reason why true
Speaker 1: crime and horror movies are so popular. I do care
Speaker 1: passionately about justice and finding answers, but I have to
Speaker 1: admit there is also a part of me that is
Speaker 1: drawn to that darkness in all of us, and that's
Speaker 1: probably the reason why I do this job. But you
Speaker 1: actually went to the next level and acted on your urges.
Speaker 1: I would like to know why, Why do you think
Speaker 1: you feel these things, and what makes you make the
Speaker 1: decision to act on them. Would you be interested in
Speaker 1: doing an interview with me, either over the phone or
Speaker 1: in person. If you agree to talk to me, I
Speaker 1: can promise you that I will put your story, your
Speaker 1: words out there in a fair way. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have tried to talk me out of contacting you,
Speaker 1: but I'm reaching out anyway because there is still a
Speaker 1: big piece missing of what actually happened to Rebecca that day,
Speaker 1: and there are answers that only you can provide. I
Speaker 1: have zero agenda beyond getting to the truth. If you
Speaker 1: acted alone, this is your chance to explain the discrepancies
Speaker 1: in the story in a way that could really help
Speaker 1: the rest of your family escape suspicion. I would also
Speaker 1: like to understand why you did what you did. I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that through that understanding, maybe someone who is having
Speaker 1: the types of feelings and urges that you were describing
Speaker 1: might be able to get help or channel them in
Speaker 1: another way. You may not be able to control what
Speaker 1: happened in the past, but you can control whether the
Speaker 1: last thing your children read about you as they grow
Speaker 1: up is that you were a monster who brutally murdered someone.
Speaker 1: You can choose what to do next. It's your call.
Speaker 1: We'll see if he gets back to me. I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 1: This is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of
Speaker 1: School of Humans and iHeartMedia. Our producer is Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley.
Speaker 1: Music is by Ben Sale Special thanks to season one
Speaker 1: producers Taylor Church and James Morrison m H. School of Humans.
Speaker 1: School of Humans