Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
Speaker 1: From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my experiences and life lessons. This country Life is presented
Speaker 1: by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
Speaker 1: the best outdoor podcast the airwaves had off. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
Speaker 1: stories to share. Thievery and miscommunication, skullduggery is afoot, and
Speaker 1: I'm on the case of a missing game camera and
Speaker 1: a ransacked bar bait barrel. Just when I thought I'd
Speaker 1: retired from investigating crimes, they pulled me back in. I
Speaker 1: cracked this case with the help of a friend, and maybe,
Speaker 1: just maybe I made some who ones too. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you all about it, but first I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you a story the Church Burglars. I'm dipping
Speaker 1: back into the old law enforcement case files for a
Speaker 1: lesson about thievery and believe it or not technology On
Speaker 1: this week's episode. It involves a couple of ne'er do
Speaker 1: wells that operated in three adjoining counties in southeast Arkansas
Speaker 1: back in the mid nineties. These cats went on a
Speaker 1: Christs free where nothing was all limits. They met in
Speaker 1: a reform school in Saint Louis, Missouri, whereas juveniles they
Speaker 1: served time together, each having been sentenced for stealing, but
Speaker 1: because of their ages, instead of going to prison, they
Speaker 1: were sent us to a few months of what was
Speaker 1: described as refined and supervisious. They were admitted as wards
Speaker 1: of the state of Missouri, and they couldn't leave the
Speaker 1: grounds and had to attend daily classes and such. But
Speaker 1: it was actually only slightly above being grounded and sent
Speaker 1: to your room, now, a punishment I always thought was
Speaker 1: kind of dumb. My room was where all my stuff was,
Speaker 1: all my books, my hunting magazines, my knives, and games.
Speaker 1: A far more legitimate punishment would have been to sent
Speaker 1: me to the utility room. There wasn't anything in there
Speaker 1: I was interested looking at, or place to sit down.
Speaker 1: In my room, there was also a window that I
Speaker 1: could slip out of, and I did on multiple occasions.
Speaker 1: I know y'all are shocked, but you shouldn't be. My
Speaker 1: adolescence was an exercise and feudal attempts to thumb my
Speaker 1: nose at authority, resulting in a litany of consequences. And repercussions,
Speaker 1: all of which I learned valuable lessons from Eventually. Now
Speaker 1: I told you this before, but it bears repeating. Miss
Speaker 1: mary Anne Mobley, my sixth grade teacher, a lady that
Speaker 1: was in her first year as an educator and got
Speaker 1: me and a fellow sophistic get equally determined to stick
Speaker 1: it to the man every chance we got in her
Speaker 1: home room as students, And when she'd heard that I'd
Speaker 1: become a police officer, she always said, I always figure
Speaker 1: Brent would be involved in law enforcement, but I thought
Speaker 1: it would have been from the other side. Well, she
Speaker 1: had plenty of reason to believe that. Anyway. Back to
Speaker 1: the bulls from Saint Louis. They were each released on
Speaker 1: the same day, and as eighteen year olds, they were
Speaker 1: free to go where they wished. The money they were
Speaker 1: released on got them a bus ticket each and they
Speaker 1: wrote it to Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Pine Bluff they
Speaker 1: bummed around for a while, sleeping where they could lay
Speaker 1: their heads and paul in anything they could steal for
Speaker 1: a little, spending cash for essentials like cigarettes and maybe
Speaker 1: a little food. These two were presentable young men and
Speaker 1: were well versed in manners in etiquette, and they could
Speaker 1: put the biggest cynic of all at ease with simple conversation.
Speaker 1: Neither one of them was over five seven, they had
Speaker 1: no facial hair, and you could stick both of them
Speaker 1: in a toasac together it wouldn't have weighed two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty pounds. There were a couple of runs, and
Speaker 1: they used it to their advantage. They talked to an
Speaker 1: older fella into letting them test drive a little compact
Speaker 1: car he had for sale in his yard. Several hours later,
Speaker 1: when he called the Sheriff's department in Pine Bluff, it
Speaker 1: wasn't even to report his car stolen. He was worried
Speaker 1: that they broke down somewhere and needed help. That part
Speaker 1: of the store still makes me mad, and it's been
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. They took advantage of him. They headed south,
Speaker 1: and it didn't stop until they found an old deserted
Speaker 1: house in Drew County where they could get in and
Speaker 1: out of the weather and hide their little crime move
Speaker 1: the car house, neither of which were visible from the
Speaker 1: main road. It had been deserted for years and was
Speaker 1: owned by descendants who lived out of state and never
Speaker 1: visited the property. There was no local caretaker, And if
Speaker 1: you didn't know there was a house there, it would
Speaker 1: have been hard to know there was one even standing
Speaker 1: in the front yard. It was that grown up, and
Speaker 1: these clowns were lucky enough to have stumbled upon it.
Speaker 1: They started making round stealing everything they could get their
Speaker 1: hands on, and they specialized in rural churches. Now you
Speaker 1: have to understand that a lot of small rural churches
Speaker 1: don't employ his staff or even have a full time preacher.
Speaker 1: The pastor could be the local fire chief, or a
Speaker 1: school science teacher, a farmer, or a full time preacher
Speaker 1: that works on a circuit holding church services at different
Speaker 1: locations throughout the month. Each Sunday they'd meet at a
Speaker 1: different small community church, leaving some of the church buildings
Speaker 1: unchecked for two to three weeks at a time. They
Speaker 1: also didn't have alarm systems or security devices any kind
Speaker 1: outside of you know, maybe having a night light that
Speaker 1: shined outside at night. Now, these knuckleheads that found the
Speaker 1: absolute easiest way to steal things and not have it
Speaker 1: reported as missing until way after they'd gone. Also, who
Speaker 1: steals from a church? Even though I was in the
Speaker 1: business to witness the terrible things people would do to
Speaker 1: one another. There were some things that folks just didn't do,
Speaker 1: and stealing them from a church was one of them,
Speaker 1: or so I thought. Now, that's a bob sled straight
Speaker 1: to the home of the original eternal flame. As far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned, they were hitting one rural church after
Speaker 1: another in a three county chrimes free that was driving
Speaker 1: us all nuts. There was no pattern to what they did,
Speaker 1: and they were doing it mostly during the middle of
Speaker 1: the week, when the call volumes were normally slow and
Speaker 1: the fewest deputies were on duty. Now, these counties wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had more than one or two cars patrolling to
Speaker 1: cover the whole county. You get one disturbance or an
Speaker 1: accident somewhere, and that left no churches out in the
Speaker 1: county getting checked until the call was cleared. You're bound
Speaker 1: to be asked, well, what in the world could they
Speaker 1: have been stealing from these little old churches out in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. PA systems. Nearly all of them
Speaker 1: had some type of public address system or musical instruments,
Speaker 1: or freezers with food that was kept on hands for events,
Speaker 1: the latter being something that the church would have given
Speaker 1: them had they asked for it. But they didn't ask
Speaker 1: anybody for nothing. They took it, and what they didn't
Speaker 1: take they tore up. Nearly every church they broke into.
Speaker 1: They did some kind of damage where there was the
Speaker 1: damage from kicking the door in, knocking out windows, busting
Speaker 1: up sinks, and not to mention the water damage that
Speaker 1: was done because of it. Now, the one thing we
Speaker 1: did have was fingerprints, So did the surround the counties
Speaker 1: on several of the burglaries. But with the state crime
Speaker 1: lab backlog with more serious and crimes that were of
Speaker 1: higher priority than a burglary, getting identified then was more
Speaker 1: of an arduous task than it is today. What they
Speaker 1: did wasn't funny. How we caught them was mcfarlin's Grocery
Speaker 1: in the small community of Banks in Bradley County. My
Speaker 1: county was the only grocery store for about twelve miles
Speaker 1: in either direction, sitting almost exactly between Warren and Hampton, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: My grandfather delivered chickens and eggs of this old country
Speaker 1: store that had been there for way before I was
Speaker 1: ever a glint in my daddy's eye, and probably before
Speaker 1: he was a glint in my grandpa's. It was an
Speaker 1: old store over, but with the advent of do it
Speaker 1: yourself security cameras, they bought a camera and they hooked
Speaker 1: it up to a VCR, both of which were obvious
Speaker 1: to anyone that walked up to the counter. It came
Speaker 1: with a motion detector, and even in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: when all that was just getting to be affordable to
Speaker 1: some small store owners, it still looked out of date.
Speaker 1: The store owner discovered that they'd been broken into where
Speaker 1: they were getting ready to open one Saturday morning. The
Speaker 1: store owner was walking around taking the inventory after they
Speaker 1: called us and we got there and he was looking
Speaker 1: and making a list of everything that was missing, and
Speaker 1: I asked him about the security camera. He said they'd
Speaker 1: cut the wires from the camera that led to the VCR.
Speaker 1: I looked on the counter and there laid a pair
Speaker 1: of wire cutters that the burglars had taken off a
Speaker 1: shelf of the store that hung right behind the counter.
Speaker 1: Right in front of the camera. Was the camera in
Speaker 1: the VCR working, I asked him. He said, yeah, as
Speaker 1: far as he knew, but they cut the wires. Well.
Speaker 1: Asking if they'd taking the tape, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't check with a gloved hand I pushed the
Speaker 1: e jeck button and out popped a VHS tape, and
Speaker 1: we took it back to the Sheriff's office, put it
Speaker 1: in a VCR, and watched as two want to be
Speaker 1: cat burglars walked up to the counter with ski mask on,
Speaker 1: staring at the camera and both of them raising their
Speaker 1: mask revealing their faces to get a better look at
Speaker 1: the security system, before one of them grabbed the wirecutter off.
Speaker 1: The shif smiled at the camera and waved goodbye as
Speaker 1: he clipped the wire to which the video fit stopped.
Speaker 1: Apparently they thought that was all they needed to do.
Speaker 1: It was not. We sent their pictures out to the
Speaker 1: surrounding counties and lo and behold, they were already in
Speaker 1: jail for shoplifting and Drew County, the county just east
Speaker 1: of Hours. Several stores and twenty some odd churches had
Speaker 1: been burglarized by these clowns over three counties, and when
Speaker 1: I interviewed them, I asked them, how do you boys
Speaker 1: sleep at night? One of them looked toward the floor
Speaker 1: or the interview room before he answered. I thought, Yep,
Speaker 1: his conscience was finally catching up with it. I could
Speaker 1: tell he was putting some thought into his answer, and
Speaker 1: then he looked up at me and said, well, if
Speaker 1: it was raining, we slept in the car. That roof
Speaker 1: of the old house we broke into leak like I
Speaker 1: saelv and the only room in there that didn't link
Speaker 1: we had full of the stuff we stole from all
Speaker 1: them churches. Well, at least he was honest. They went
Speaker 1: away for a long time. That trip that they took
Speaker 1: to the penitentiary wouldn't be described as refined supervision. And
Speaker 1: that's just how that happened. So what in the world
Speaker 1: has me talking about thievery and miscommunication? I'll tell you
Speaker 1: someone stole my game camera and wrecked the bear bait.
Speaker 1: I had been counting on that spot to give me
Speaker 1: an opportunity to poke a hole and let all the
Speaker 1: air out of a big old Arkansas black bear. But
Speaker 1: it won't happen in that spot, not this year anyway,
Speaker 1: And it was all one big misunderstanding. I spent the
Speaker 1: last two weeks traveling for work, going back and forth
Speaker 1: to Montana to host the Media Radio Live show, and
Speaker 1: to Northwest Arkansas for the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. Now
Speaker 1: all of that left little time for me messing with
Speaker 1: the bear bait I had going in the north central
Speaker 1: part of the state. I was relying on my cell
Speaker 1: camera to keep up with my bait, and I had
Speaker 1: just enough time to get it set up in the
Speaker 1: barrel out right before I left for the meat eater
Speaker 1: office and bonesmen started getting pictures of the day I left
Speaker 1: and had a small bear coming in. No worries. Small bears,
Speaker 1: just like big bears, get the set of bait on
Speaker 1: their feet and when they walk away, they leave a
Speaker 1: cent trail that leads right back to the barrel for
Speaker 1: all the other bears in the area to investigate. I
Speaker 1: was getting coon picks at night, and after the second
Speaker 1: return to the small bear of the day after his
Speaker 1: first pictures, all the pictures stopped. Now no bears coming in,
Speaker 1: isn't that unusual? But no coon's coming in night after night?
Speaker 1: That is I figured something had happened to my camera
Speaker 1: since I didn't have it in a bearproof cage. I
Speaker 1: assumed a curious little bear or maybe a different one,
Speaker 1: and knocked it off the tree. The signal was weak
Speaker 1: at best in that hollow where my bait was, and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't take much at off to lose it, especially
Speaker 1: if a bear knocked it to the ground or chewed
Speaker 1: it up. It's happened to me before in that same
Speaker 1: area a few years ago. Now, this was my first
Speaker 1: time coming back, and I had high hosts for a
Speaker 1: good bear, since it was an area no one else
Speaker 1: hunted and I was the only one with permissioned the
Speaker 1: bear hunt there. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one with
Speaker 1: permission to be there. I got home from the nine
Speaker 1: days away and as fast as I could, I made
Speaker 1: the two hour drive up through the mountains, check the
Speaker 1: camera and see what caliber bear I had coming into
Speaker 1: the bait, I didn't think i'd ever get there. When
Speaker 1: I finally did and unloaded my side beside, the last
Speaker 1: couple of miles into the base seemed to take the longest.
Speaker 1: The old cable that was stretched across the lane where
Speaker 1: I'd gone in with my host had been moved before.
Speaker 1: When we were in there, it was barely above the ground.
Speaker 1: I had driven over it easily at the urging of
Speaker 1: my host, who had permission to hunt there. You'd been
Speaker 1: hunting there for several years and got permission from absentee
Speaker 1: land On. Now this was different, but there was no
Speaker 1: phone service to contact my friend unless I drove back
Speaker 1: two miles of my truck, or if I crossed the
Speaker 1: cable and walked on up the mountain to my bait
Speaker 1: where I had sent a text out to my brother
Speaker 1: Tim today. I set the bait out almost two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: From there I could get an answer. But now, had
Speaker 1: I known what I was about to find, I absolutely
Speaker 1: would have went back to my truck, but at that
Speaker 1: time I was still under the impression I could be there.
Speaker 1: I stepped over the cable and up the mountain. I
Speaker 1: went every step I took, reminding me why I love
Speaker 1: the river bottoms and flat ground so much, but also
Speaker 1: knowing I was getting closer to checking my bait and
Speaker 1: see what happened to my camera. Finally, to the top
Speaker 1: and over the other side, I walked down the trail
Speaker 1: to my bait, and my barrel was what I saw first.
Speaker 1: It was on its side, with the lid removed and
Speaker 1: nearly all the bait gone. I left it strapped with
Speaker 1: ratchet straps topping bottom to a gum tree. It's not
Speaker 1: unusual for bear to pull a barrel off a tree,
Speaker 1: but they don't usually toat the straps off when they do,
Speaker 1: and the straps were nowhere to be seen. Oh, I
Speaker 1: immediately smelled a rat and I looked over to where
Speaker 1: I'd hung my moultree. I saw that it was gone,
Speaker 1: something else bears don't usually do. I've had them chew
Speaker 1: on cameras and absolutely destroy them, but seizing them for
Speaker 1: evidence and taking them back to their bear office, well,
Speaker 1: that ain't ever happened, not to me anyway. So what
Speaker 1: do you do in a case like that. Well, Brent
Speaker 1: from back in the day would have been mad as
Speaker 1: a mashed cat and declaring war on any and everything
Speaker 1: I could kick, punch or cuss at until I found
Speaker 1: what was going on, and maybe even more so afterwards.
Speaker 1: But that wouldn't have done any good. It would have
Speaker 1: been different if it had been on public land. Anything
Speaker 1: you leave laying around, hung up, parked, or even locked
Speaker 1: on public land as subject to disappear. Like my dad
Speaker 1: always told me and I repeat to my kids, a
Speaker 1: lock keeps an honest man honest. It doesn't matter to
Speaker 1: a thief like the two I talked about in the
Speaker 1: story at the beginning of this episode. A lot to
Speaker 1: those folks is merely a hurdle to get across to
Speaker 1: get what they're after, which is anything of value the
Speaker 1: lock is supposed to protect. But this wasn't public land.
Speaker 1: It also wasn't in a place where a lot of
Speaker 1: folks had permission to be, so the suspect list was
Speaker 1: going to be pretty small to begin with. Now you
Speaker 1: add the fact that someone had raised the cable to
Speaker 1: keep me out, had my spider sense tingling from the
Speaker 1: get go. Maybe I was the one trespassing. I called
Speaker 1: my host to granted me his past to bait the
Speaker 1: spot and explained what had happened, and he was floored, embarrassed,
Speaker 1: and like me, he lived more than an hour away.
Speaker 1: He vowed to find out what was happening in the
Speaker 1: following day, and I drove the two hours back to
Speaker 1: the house more disappointed than mad. I was hoping I
Speaker 1: hadn't done anything wrong, and I also felt bad for
Speaker 1: my friend who so graciously invited me to hunt there.
Speaker 1: He's an absolute pillar of his community, in a well
Speaker 1: respected career professional who retired from education with an exemplary record.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I had met some random guy at
Speaker 1: a gas station and he offered to take me into
Speaker 1: a place that had no history with and said go
Speaker 1: get him. He was also a landowner in that vicinity
Speaker 1: and had been hunting those hills for years. And the
Speaker 1: next day, after he drove up there and talked to
Speaker 1: some locals made a few calls, he in turn called me, Now,
Speaker 1: y'all want to guess who was trespassing? Go ahead, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a second to the side. Times up. No
Speaker 1: one one was trespassing, and he had my camera. Now,
Speaker 1: I didn't see it the day before when I was there,
Speaker 1: but the person who removed it from where I'd hung
Speaker 1: it at the bait side hung it on the opposite
Speaker 1: end of the cable from where I'd driven across it
Speaker 1: when I first established that bait. It was there when
Speaker 1: I tried to go in, I just didn't see it.
Speaker 1: The person that dumped my barrel and moved my camera
Speaker 1: leased the land from the landowner they had hunted it before,
Speaker 1: and quit, moving off to another property. Afterwards. My friend
Speaker 1: was given ridden permission. The landowner didn't tell the least
Speaker 1: folks about my friend, and my friend didn't know the
Speaker 1: old crew had moved back and just leased it again.
Speaker 1: They came up to the property the scout for deer
Speaker 1: season found a fresh bear bait and camera that wasn't theirs.
Speaker 1: Now I'd had probably done the same thing. My friend
Speaker 1: explained our side of the story. They invited me to
Speaker 1: bear hunt there. Now I thought it was very gracious
Speaker 1: of it, and I'm gonna take them up on it
Speaker 1: next year. Now, some may call this hunt a bust
Speaker 1: if you score it by the bear, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to hunt this year, and I'd have
Speaker 1: to agree if that was the criteria. But I ain't
Speaker 1: looking at it like that. I was granted an opportunity
Speaker 1: to make a decision on how I reacted to something
Speaker 1: that went against what I had set out to do.
Speaker 1: Even cost me some money. Very bait ain't exactly cheap.
Speaker 1: And I may not live to see another bear season
Speaker 1: to use what I'm gonna have to store up from
Speaker 1: this hunt. I may not live to see Breakfast. You
Speaker 1: may not have lived here this podcast. Nothing is guaranteed.
Speaker 1: But I've come to the part of my life that
Speaker 1: smart folks arrive at sooner. But it's come upon me
Speaker 1: in the last few years that everything is a test
Speaker 1: and you have the capacity to pass it. For film
Speaker 1: and any opportunity to pursue the things I would like
Speaker 1: to do and make new friends in the process. That's
Speaker 1: a win for everybody. They invited me to come back
Speaker 1: and hunt, and I'm going to. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: to know those guys a little bit better. Thank y'all
Speaker 1: so much for listening to this country life and bear Grease.
Speaker 1: It is truly a blessing to hear from so many
Speaker 1: who enjoy the content, and I do my very best
Speaker 1: to respond to all the messages. Keep sending those stories
Speaker 1: into my tcl story at the meat eater dot com,
Speaker 1: and remember they can be about anything related to your
Speaker 1: country life, even if it happened in the city limits.
Speaker 1: The Meat Eater Radio live show I hosted the last
Speaker 1: two weeks are available on the YouTube podcast channel, and
Speaker 1: there's a new one coming out every Thursday the twelve
Speaker 1: pm Central Time, with different hosts each week until next week.
Speaker 1: This is Brent Reeves sign it off. Y'all be careful