Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in
Speaker 2: an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come
Speaker 2: forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated
Speaker 2: by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and
Speaker 2: community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and
Speaker 2: point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases.
Speaker 2: We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven
Speaker 2: guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast
Speaker 2: is intended to state or imply that anyone who has
Speaker 2: not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: On Friday, December twelfth, nineteen eighty, at approximately six forty
Speaker 3: five in the morning, the Mississippi County Sheriff's Department got
Speaker 3: a call about a female body lying on the side
Speaker 3: of the road. The location of the body was on
Speaker 3: Highway one't eight one, just south of Highway one fifty eight.
Speaker 3: The caller was a man named Arbora dal Watkins who
Speaker 3: lived nearby in Manila, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: He told police he had.
Speaker 3: Been en route to his job at the brown shoe
Speaker 3: factory in Osceola when he turned south on the highway
Speaker 3: and saw the body lying in the edge of a ditch.
Speaker 3: He went to a nearby business, the Reese Wholesale Furniture Outlet,
Speaker 3: in contacted the Arkansas State Police in Jonesborough, who then
Speaker 3: called the Mississippi County Sheriff's Office because the body was
Speaker 3: in their jurisdiction. Officer Richard Nash from the Mississippi County
Speaker 3: Sheriff's Department arrived at the scene at.
Speaker 1: Six fifty six am. He came to meet.
Speaker 3: The guy who had called police and to start processing
Speaker 3: the crime scene. The woman was dressed in a striped
Speaker 3: red colored dress and velveteen jacket. She was five foot five.
Speaker 3: She weighed around one hundred and fifteen pounds. The woman
Speaker 3: was carrying a reddish brown clutch bag under her right arm.
Speaker 3: Detectives were able to go into that bag and find
Speaker 3: her ID. That's when they knew who this woman was.
Speaker 3: Barbara and Bryan, a thirty year old mother of two
Speaker 3: from a Pontou, Arkansas. It was not hard to figure
Speaker 3: out the cause of death. Barbara had massive holes blown
Speaker 3: into her body by a shotgun. The shots were so
Speaker 3: violent that pieces of her hair and skull were found
Speaker 3: twenty feet away. So once again in rural Arkansas, we
Speaker 3: have a woman whose body was found in a ditch
Speaker 3: near a highway and her car was found several miles
Speaker 3: down the road. And just like in Amanda Tussing's case,
Speaker 3: which we discussed last week, there were suspicions that a
Speaker 3: police officer may have been involved, and Barbara's murder is
Speaker 3: also still unsolved. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five
Speaker 3: years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I
Speaker 3: have learned that there is no such thing as a
Speaker 3: small town where never happens. I have received hundreds of
Speaker 3: messages from people all around the country asking for help
Speaker 3: with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and
Speaker 3: their communities. If you have a case you'd like me
Speaker 3: and my team to look into, you can reach out
Speaker 3: to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six
Speaker 3: seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's
Speaker 3: six seven eight seven four four, six one four or five.
Speaker 3: This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Police had responded to
Speaker 3: a murder scene along the shoulder of the road. From
Speaker 3: there things happened fast. The county corner was contacted at
Speaker 3: seven fifteen am arrangements were made to move Barber's body
Speaker 3: so that it could be tested. At seven twenty one am,
Speaker 3: Sergeant J. C. Brewer arrived on the scene. He noted
Speaker 3: the position of Barber's body. It was facing the west
Speaker 3: side of the road shoulder, her feet were facing the highway.
Speaker 3: She had what appeared to be a large shotgun wound
Speaker 3: to the chest and part of her left hand had
Speaker 3: been shot off. They found casings and shotgun shells scattered around.
Speaker 3: They also found buckshot, the casing from Barbara's watch, and
Speaker 3: some her parts of the watch were found several feet
Speaker 3: away from the body as well. In all, police found
Speaker 3: five shotgun shells and powder dividers, and two separate locks
Speaker 3: of blonde hair. All of the hairs they found were
Speaker 3: positively identified as Barbara's. Barbara had a large bloodstain and
Speaker 3: brain material under her head. It was obvious that these
Speaker 3: were catastrophic injuries. Police also noticed something else. They noticed
Speaker 3: a ring. It had a black center mounting with eight
Speaker 3: surrounding clear settings. The interesting thing about the ring was
Speaker 3: that it appeared to investigators that it had been cut
Speaker 3: into and peeled open. From the way they describe it,
Speaker 3: it's not totally clear, but it seems like someone used
Speaker 3: a tool or something to try and remove the ring
Speaker 3: from Barbara's finger, and in the end they couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: I can't be sure because the way the report is
Speaker 3: worded is slightly odd. In my opinion, it makes it
Speaker 3: sound like the center stone may have been missing. Now,
Speaker 3: this would be very interesting because that ring was on
Speaker 3: Barbara's ring finger, the fourth finger of her left hand,
Speaker 3: the finger that's traditionally used for engagement rings and wedding bands.
Speaker 3: The body was taken to the Chickisa Album Morgue at
Speaker 3: the request of the coroner, and then the investigation continued.
Speaker 3: Investigators figured out Barbara had been shot at least twice,
Speaker 3: possibly with a twelve or sixteen gage shotgun, the type
Speaker 3: of shotguns that are used for hunting. Both of these
Speaker 3: gun sizes, by the way, are used for hunting deer
Speaker 3: and for hunting other types of game. The twelve gage
Speaker 3: is slightly larger, but both of these weapons packed serious firepower.
Speaker 3: Barbara was shot at least twice at very close range.
Speaker 1: From the position that she was in.
Speaker 3: It seemed as though she was shot in the chest
Speaker 3: from behind on the left side. This severely damaged her
Speaker 3: lungs and would have been fatal. Then she was shot again.
Speaker 3: From the description of the autopsy report of the powder
Speaker 3: burns on Barbara's hands and the fact that part of
Speaker 3: her left hand was missing, it seems as though she
Speaker 3: may have had her hand near her neck when she
Speaker 3: was shot. The state medical examiner Dan Cook did find
Speaker 3: more wounds on Barber's head, but he said that they
Speaker 3: were most likely the result of the shotgun pellets rather
Speaker 3: than direct shots.
Speaker 1: So when people go hunting deer or other animals, they often.
Speaker 3: Do it with buckshot. That's literally what the ammunition is
Speaker 3: named for. The male deer, the buck. There are several
Speaker 3: large pellets that are packed into a shotgun shell. Now.
Speaker 3: According to Field and Stream, buckshot is ideal for quote
Speaker 3: close ranges inside fifty yards. Buckshot is lethal on thin
Speaker 3: skin targets from bobcats to coyotes, to leopards to people.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: When you use a shotgun and buckshot, it comes out
Speaker 3: in a burst rather than a single shot. Forensic testing
Speaker 3: determined that the bullets had entered Barbara's left shoulder at
Speaker 3: a forty five degree angle, so it would be reasonable
Speaker 3: for police to consider the possibility Barbara knew her killer.
Speaker 1: She was standing there talking to them.
Speaker 3: Then she might have turned around to walk away before
Speaker 3: her killer shot her. Remember, she had her purse under
Speaker 3: her right arm. Police found a chalky white substance on
Speaker 3: the front of Barbara's dress, just below her breast. They
Speaker 3: never really explained what that was. Now, this is just
Speaker 3: a guest since I'm not a gun expert. I do
Speaker 3: know they use buffering powder inside shotgun shells made of polyethylene.
Speaker 1: So that might have been what it was.
Speaker 3: It could have been something totally different, like a deodorant stain,
Speaker 3: for example, So I can't say for sure, but a
Speaker 3: buffer powder is more likely in my opinion, because the
Speaker 3: medical report did point out one of Barbara's wounds had
Speaker 3: powder burnt. What this means is that Barbara's killer shot
Speaker 3: her at very close range. The autopsy also mentioned Barbara
Speaker 3: was not wearing underwear. Now, this could have been a
Speaker 3: fashion choice, but we also have to consider the possibility
Speaker 3: that it might have been removed, possibly by the killer,
Speaker 3: maybe in an attempt to camouflage DNA if the killer
Speaker 3: had any type of sexual encounter with her, either consensual
Speaker 3: or not, before her murder. There were two shots fired,
Speaker 3: so It seems as though either Barbara's killer shot her
Speaker 3: in the back and then turned her over and shot her,
Speaker 3: or shot her and then fired the fatal shot as
Speaker 3: she tried to run away. Either way, this was an
Speaker 3: execution and it was brutal and judging by the way
Speaker 3: that her killer tried to wrench the ring from her finger,
Speaker 3: this was very personal. Barbara Brian's murder happened in the
Speaker 3: same general area as the murder of Amanda Tussing, the
Speaker 3: case that we discussed in a previous episode. As we mentioned,
Speaker 3: Amanda Tussing was making a forty mile drive from her fiance,
Speaker 3: Matt Irvin's home in Jonesboro to her parents house in Dell, Arkansas.
Speaker 3: It was raining hard that night and Amanda never made
Speaker 3: it home. Her car was found part just off Highway
Speaker 3: eighteen near Monette. Her body was found days later in
Speaker 3: a ditch near Lake City. Like Barbara's, Amanda's murder is
Speaker 3: still unsolved, and even though the causes of death are different,
Speaker 3: Amanda may have been strangled and there were no gunshots involved,
Speaker 3: while Barbara was very obviously fatally shot, there are some similarities.
Speaker 3: Both women were petite, both of their bodies were recovered
Speaker 3: miles away from their cars, and both bodies were found
Speaker 3: in locations that made investigators believe the killer had to
Speaker 3: have a lot of local knowledge. A lot of people
Speaker 3: in this neck of the woods have connected Barbara and
Speaker 3: Amanda's cases over the years.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why I was.
Speaker 3: So fascinated by this case is because while there is
Speaker 3: a ton of information about Amanda Tossing, there is very
Speaker 3: little information out there about the life of Barbara and
Speaker 3: Armstrong Brian. What we do know is that she was
Speaker 3: born in Caraway, Arkansas, in Craighead County, to Fleming's Skinny
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Agnes Armstrong.
Speaker 1: Barbara's dad, Skinny, was a farmer. She grew up in a.
Speaker 3: Baptist's household, like a lot of other kids in that region.
Speaker 3: She had a brother named Gary, and again, very much
Speaker 3: like in Amanda Tussing's case, when police found Barbara's purse,
Speaker 3: it had her car, keys and all of her belongings
Speaker 3: inside it. Barbara's nineteen seventy four brown Chevy Nova was
Speaker 3: parked five miles from where her body was found. All
Speaker 3: of the doors were locked, there was no sign of
Speaker 3: foul play inside the vehicle. Police found items inside the
Speaker 3: car personal items of Barbara's that did give investigators a
Speaker 3: clue about her movements right before she went missing. Inside
Speaker 3: the car, on the middle of the front seat, they
Speaker 3: found a white cloth jacket lying on top of a
Speaker 3: green overnight case. Next to the overnight bag, there was
Speaker 3: an envelope that was addressed to Barbara.
Speaker 1: So the investigator on the case, J. C.
Speaker 3: Brewer, talked to Barbara's closest girlfriend, a woman named Joyce Langston.
Speaker 3: Joyce told police she had been super close to Barbara
Speaker 3: for a long time, but she said she had stopped
Speaker 3: running around with Barbara lately and these are her words
Speaker 3: because Barbara was dating married men. Police continued to process
Speaker 3: Barbara Brian's in nineteen seventy four Chevy Nova. They wondered
Speaker 3: about the location of the car versus the location of
Speaker 3: her body. Why, if it was in fact Barbara driving,
Speaker 3: would Barbara park her car and stop there on that
Speaker 3: deserted strip of road. They took the car to the
Speaker 3: Sheriff's department. Investigators wanted to check out the vehicle's condition.
Speaker 3: They were thinking, maybe the car broke down, Maybe Barbara
Speaker 3: encountered a stranger, Maybe she stopped to pick someone up
Speaker 3: and he pulled a gun on her, or maybe she
Speaker 3: had someone with her in the car. The car broke down,
Speaker 3: something went wrong and they got into an argument. They
Speaker 3: had to consider all different types of scenarios. They saw
Speaker 3: that the gas gauge showed that the car was empty,
Speaker 3: but that was kind of a red herring because when
Speaker 3: police started the car up, it ran fine. Later they
Speaker 3: figured out the gas gauge itself was broken, but the
Speaker 3: car had plenty of gas in it. In the police
Speaker 3: report noted the vehicle exterior had dew on it, so
Speaker 3: they weren't able to lift latent prints. The vehicle was
Speaker 3: impounded to the Sheriff's department for further processing. But then
Speaker 3: I can't find anything more in this report about what
Speaker 3: happened to the car, whether they did take fingerprints. They
Speaker 3: got into her bag. They unzipped the carrier and found
Speaker 3: Barbara's stuff inside. They found a white pair of pants
Speaker 3: and maroon blouse, her makeup, her curling iron, all of
Speaker 3: the stuff that she would need to get ready, as
Speaker 3: well as two small plaster statues and an ankle bracelet.
Speaker 3: They also found photographs of two white men. So police
Speaker 3: got more information from Barbara's girlfriend, Joyce. She looked at
Speaker 3: the photos in Barbara's bag and said that one of
Speaker 3: them was Jerry Shaw. She said that Jerry Shaw and
Speaker 3: Barbara had been dating for several months and that things
Speaker 3: were going well. They found a greeting card inside and
Speaker 3: it was also written by Jerry Shaw. But then Joyce
Speaker 3: told them something shocking. Joyce said that for the past
Speaker 3: several years, Barbara had been dating someone else, a police
Speaker 3: officer named Johnny Williams. Johnny Williams lived in black Oak,
Speaker 3: which was a small town nearby by the way. This
Speaker 3: was very close to the area where Amanda Tussing's body
Speaker 3: was found. Johnny was born in nineteen forty six, so
Speaker 3: by two thousand, when Amanda Tussing was murdered, Johnny would
Speaker 3: have been fifty four years old. He served in the
Speaker 3: Navy in Vietnam and then after that was a police
Speaker 3: officer in black Oak, and he also worked in the
Speaker 3: neighboring county at the Craighead County Sheriff's office. At one
Speaker 3: point he was an Arkansas State trooper. We mentioned that
Speaker 3: he became a suspect and Amanda Tussing's death because of
Speaker 3: his alleged behavior Apparently he had a habit of following
Speaker 3: single women around in his police cruiser. But in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 3: Johnny Williams would have been thirty four, and now we
Speaker 3: find out that he was dating Barbara. Bryan Joyce told
Speaker 3: police that Johnny was not happy about the fact Barbara
Speaker 3: wanted to end things. Joyce told police Barbara had told
Speaker 3: her that Johnny Williams flew into jealous rages. On the
Speaker 3: night Barbara was shot, she had a date with Jerry Shaw.
Speaker 3: Jerry lived in Blible. That's why Barbara had her overnight bag.
Speaker 3: She had her stuff ready for a weekend with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Joyce said.
Speaker 3: Two weeks before Barbara was murdered, Barbara called her and
Speaker 3: told her she had a violent confrontation with Johnny. She
Speaker 3: said she had told Johnny she was dating another man,
Speaker 3: and that Johnny got extremely upset and beat on the
Speaker 3: dash of his car. Barbara told Joyce, according to the
Speaker 3: incident report, that Joe was extremely jealous. Last week, when
Speaker 3: we talked about Amanda Tussing's case, we talked about the
Speaker 3: blue light rapist. The blue light rapist impersonated a police
Speaker 3: officer and committed a string of sexual assaults in this area,
Speaker 3: but of course he had already been arrested and sent
Speaker 3: to prison by the time Amanda disappeared. A lot of
Speaker 3: people at that time talked about the possibility that Amanda
Speaker 3: Tussing might have pulled over for a real police officer,
Speaker 3: and that perhaps a real police officer had.
Speaker 1: Been the killer.
Speaker 3: Johnny Williams worked for the Tyronza Sheriff's Department. Tyron'sa is
Speaker 3: a small town in the northeast part of the state.
Speaker 3: The population is only around seven hundred people and there
Speaker 3: are not a ton of jobs. A lot of people
Speaker 3: who live there commute to larger cities nearby, including Memphis
Speaker 3: and Jonesboro.
Speaker 1: George Jared, who he worked with.
Speaker 3: On the Rebecca Gould case from season one of heleng Gon,
Speaker 3: wrote about Amanda Tussing's murder in his book Whispers in
Speaker 3: the Willows, and as part of that we mentioned the
Speaker 3: theories that Johnny Williams might have been involved in Barbara
Speaker 3: and in Amanda's murders. It seemed clear from what's out
Speaker 3: there in the public that the police suspected Johnny certainly
Speaker 3: in Barbara's death, but I had a lot of questions.
Speaker 3: It wasn't clear to me how much investigating they did,
Speaker 3: whether they ever questioned him. There was just nothing written
Speaker 3: in the media about it at all. Since Amanda's case
Speaker 3: is still open, police will not release.
Speaker 1: The case file.
Speaker 3: But I hoped if we could get some information on
Speaker 3: Barber's case, maybe we could figure out whether Johnny Williams
Speaker 3: was a viable suspect in her murder or possibly in others.
Speaker 3: We did a Foyer request and we were able to
Speaker 3: get a copy of the incident report on Barbara's death.
Speaker 3: We got that from Mississippi County, Arkansas, and it turns
Speaker 3: out there was a lot more detail on record about
Speaker 3: Barbara Brin's death, enough to make me really question why
Speaker 3: Johnny Williams was never arrested. I'll get back to that
Speaker 3: in a minute. Let's go back to the crime scene.
Speaker 3: Police were trying to figure out what Barbara was doing
Speaker 3: out there on that stretch of highway. They were looking
Speaker 3: for witnesses. Now, they knew from Barbara's friend Joyce, that
Speaker 3: Johnny Williams had been dating Barbara. They wanted to find
Speaker 3: out about his movements on December eleventh and December twelfth,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty, and they pretty quickly found a lead I
Speaker 3: have actually never seen this happen before in a case
Speaker 3: that I can remember.
Speaker 1: They got a lot of.
Speaker 3: Information from a man named Clyde Eldridge. He told police
Speaker 3: that he would often sleep overnight at the Tyronsa Police Department. Now,
Speaker 3: Johnny Williams also had an office in the Tyrone'sa PD
Speaker 3: at that time. According to what I've been able to find,
Speaker 3: he was an Arkansas State Police trooper. Tyronza was in
Speaker 3: Poinsett County, not in Mississippi County. So once again we
Speaker 3: have a case that crossed county lines and all the
Speaker 3: potential complications that that entails. Police were trying to piece
Speaker 3: together where everyone was on the night of December eleventh.
Speaker 1: Apparently on that night.
Speaker 3: Clyde Eldridge was sleeping in the iron's A Police station.
Speaker 3: He told investigators he got to the police station at
Speaker 3: twelve fifteen am. Clyde said that Johnny Williams was there,
Speaker 3: that Johnny was sitting at his desk at the police
Speaker 3: department watching TV.
Speaker 1: Clyde said he sat.
Speaker 3: Around and talked to Johnny for a few minutes. Then
Speaker 3: he said he noticed a two tone leather gun case
Speaker 3: lying across Johnny's desk, but Clyde said he didn't really
Speaker 3: think anything about it, and I'm not surprised because it
Speaker 3: was super common to have guns in that neck of
Speaker 3: the woods. Johnny was a hunter like a lot of people.
Speaker 3: The report read quote Clyde had asked Johnny if he
Speaker 3: had been hunting. Johnny stated to Clyde that he had
Speaker 3: been to Brandywine Island. Clyde advised he thought brandy Wye
Speaker 3: Island was closed. Johnny Williams stated to him, if you
Speaker 3: know who to contact, you can go hunting there.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: So after they discussed Johnny's hunting plans, Clyde said that
Speaker 3: sometime around one or one fifteen am, Johnny was trying
Speaker 3: to make a phone call from the police department. Clyde
Speaker 3: said he'd he didn't exactly remember who the call was to,
Speaker 3: but he said that at around one fifteen am, it
Speaker 3: did seem like Johnny made contact with the person he
Speaker 3: was trying to call. Clyde said that after that he
Speaker 3: laid down on the couch in the office. He said
Speaker 3: he went to sleep. Sometime around two or two thirty am,
Speaker 3: he heard someone leaving the police station. He explained that
Speaker 3: when the front door is unlocked, it wakes him up.
Speaker 3: He stated he usually wakes up when someone opens the
Speaker 3: door and then gets up to see what they want.
Speaker 3: After he woke up, he walked to the front of
Speaker 3: the police department and looked outside. He noticed Johnny Williams
Speaker 3: was gone. Johnny williams jeep eagle was not parked in front.
Speaker 3: Clyde said he wasn't exactly sure of the time. He
Speaker 3: went back to sleep, and the next thing he remembered
Speaker 3: was at four forty five am, when the police chief,
Speaker 3: Floyd White, came into the police department and woke him up.
Speaker 3: This is almost like a movie about smalltown police, complete
Speaker 3: with people admitting to sleeping on their jobs at night
Speaker 3: and people crashing in the police station. Evidently, police were
Speaker 3: very suspicious of Johnny Williams because on the very next day,
Speaker 3: in December thirteenth of nineteen eighty, Johnny Williams was interrogated.
Speaker 3: Investigators gave him a lie detector test. The investigator's name
Speaker 3: was George Stewart. They administered the polygraph at the Mississippi
Speaker 3: County Sheriff's Department. The lie detector examiner said Johnny Williams
Speaker 3: had been deceptive, which means investigators concluded that Johnny Williams
Speaker 3: lied during that test. Again, I think we have to
Speaker 3: be very careful about putting too much faith into light detectors.
Speaker 3: We've talked about that a lot on this podcast. We
Speaker 3: know they're dependent on the skill of the person administering them. Also,
Speaker 3: there's a good reason why they're not admissible in court.
Speaker 3: But I do think it's really interesting that immediately the police,
Speaker 3: who sometimes people criticized for protecting one of their own,
Speaker 3: were suspicious of another officer, they do not hesitate to
Speaker 3: polygraph him. So this brings us to December fourteenth. Barbara
Speaker 3: Bryan's body has been found. Johnny Williams, who she's been
Speaker 3: dating on and off for three years, is immediately pretty
Speaker 3: much a prime suspect. On December fourteenth, they informed Johnny
Speaker 3: Williams that he had failed the light detector test, and
Speaker 3: he agreed to take a second test. This time it
Speaker 3: was administered by the Arkansas State Police, and once again
Speaker 3: Johnny Williams failed that polygraph test, So.
Speaker 1: Now he's zero for two.
Speaker 3: Police found other officers who had seen Johnny Williams that night.
Speaker 3: They found a man named James Miles, a police officer
Speaker 3: in La Ponto, He said he saw Johnny at around
Speaker 3: two thirty am on the morning of December twelfth. He
Speaker 3: said Johnny was traveling north on Highway one forty and
Speaker 3: one thirty five. He saw Johnny driving his Cheep Eagle.
Speaker 3: He recognized Johnny and he recognized the car. He said
Speaker 3: he did not see him again during his shift, which
Speaker 3: ended at three am. Investigators pulled the desklog from the
Speaker 3: Tyronsa Police department from the night of December.
Speaker 1: Twelfth, nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: They searched Johnny Williams Jeep Eagle in the back seat
Speaker 3: on the left armrest. There was a small piece of
Speaker 3: reddish orange string entangled in the carpeting. This was entered
Speaker 3: into evidence and cataloged. Investigators also found a pair of
Speaker 3: green hip boots and a pair of camouflage coveralls on
Speaker 3: the back floorboard. There was a rust colored vest in
Speaker 3: the back of the car too that had several Western
Speaker 3: number six shotgun shells inside it, as well as a
Speaker 3: plastic container of rifle cartridges. They had found Johnny Williams
Speaker 3: hunting gear. Immediately after Barbara Bryne's body was found. According
Speaker 3: to the incident report, police identified the man she had
Speaker 3: been dating a police officer named Johnny Williams as a suspect.
Speaker 1: He admitted that he had been.
Speaker 3: In the Tyronza, Arkansas area, in the early morning hours
Speaker 3: of December twelfth. He said that the chief of police,
Speaker 3: Floyd White, could verify this. The problem with that was
Speaker 3: Chief White told police that he had seen Johnny between
Speaker 3: the hours of four thirty and five am, but not
Speaker 3: before that. Floyd White said that he came back to
Speaker 3: the police station at around seven am that morning. He
Speaker 3: said by that time Johnny was gone, but his jeep
Speaker 3: was still parked in a lot. Then Floyd said he
Speaker 3: left again and came back a second time at eight
Speaker 3: thirty am. He said by that time, both Johnny and
Speaker 3: his vehicle were gone. Floyd said that Johnny did carry
Speaker 3: a gun, a separate gun, presumably from a service revolver,
Speaker 3: in a brown carrying case. Johnny admitted that was his
Speaker 3: deer rifle. Police interviewed Johnny. They asked him about Barbara's death,
Speaker 3: and he openly admitted he knew that because he had
Speaker 3: dated Barbara that police considered him a suspect in the case,
Speaker 3: but Johnny completely denied having anything to do with her death.
Speaker 3: He said he had a close relationship with her. He
Speaker 3: said they had d for three years and that at
Speaker 3: one point they were very serious. He said he knew
Speaker 3: she was seeing Jerry Shaw. He knew she had a
Speaker 3: date with Jerry on the night she disappeared. Johnny said
Speaker 3: that on Thursday night he went to Barbara's home, and
Speaker 3: he said that's when he found out she had a
Speaker 3: Friday night date with Jerry.
Speaker 1: He said that on that.
Speaker 3: Thursday evening, prior to the homicide, he had gone to
Speaker 3: Barbara's house in an attempt to catch her coming in
Speaker 3: from work. He said he wanted to talk about their relationship,
Speaker 3: but he said he couldn't find Barbara, so he kept
Speaker 3: looking for her throughout the night. But his story was
Speaker 3: that he never connected with Barbara. This seems to conflict
Speaker 3: with him telling officers that he found out about the
Speaker 3: date with Jerry on Thursday night. I'm not exactly sure
Speaker 3: what the story there is if he's mixing up Thursday
Speaker 3: night and Friday night, but it doesn't seem to make
Speaker 3: any sense. However, he does not get called on it.
Speaker 3: Police were very suspicious of Johnny.
Speaker 1: He was jealous.
Speaker 3: He was seen driving around in the early morning hours
Speaker 3: of December twelfth, He admitted that he was in Laponto,
Speaker 3: the town where Barbara lived, at two thirty am Friday morning,
Speaker 3: looking for Barbara. You also have an officer from Laponto
Speaker 3: saying that he saw Johnny driving on Highway one forty
Speaker 3: in that area, and Johnny had an alibi another woman
Speaker 3: who apparently came to the police department and picked him up.
Speaker 3: He said that he spent the rest of the night
Speaker 3: with this other woman. This other woman's name was Gay Couch,
Speaker 3: and eventually Gay Couch became Gay Williams.
Speaker 1: She and Johnny Williams got married.
Speaker 3: We requested an officer fitness report on Johnny Williams and
Speaker 3: it came back clean. There is no suggestion that Gay
Speaker 3: knew anything, by the way, and even if for argument's sake,
Speaker 3: she did suspect something, because they were married, she probably
Speaker 3: could not be forced to testify against her own husband.
Speaker 3: There's nothing on Johnny Williams record, at least publicly, that
Speaker 3: would alert anyone to his fellow officer's suspicions about him. Eventually,
Speaker 3: Johnny Williams got cancer. He was sick for several years,
Speaker 3: fought back, but then a few months later he developed
Speaker 3: heart problems. He died in twenty ten. He was sixty
Speaker 3: three years old. In George Jared's book Whispers in the Willows,
Speaker 3: George mentions that he heard that on his deathbed, Johnny
Speaker 3: was questioned again about Amanda Tussing's murder, but denied having
Speaker 3: anything to do with it. After he left law enforcement,
Speaker 3: Johnny founded a company called Williams Trucking Company. And by
Speaker 3: the way, there are rumors Johnny was fired from law enforcement,
Speaker 3: but I can't find any official record of that. As
Speaker 3: we know from this podcast, there are a lot of
Speaker 3: instances where departments choose to quietly allow an officer to
Speaker 3: leave on his own terms so they can avoid the
Speaker 3: bad publicity. But to me, it's terrifying that these members
Speaker 3: of law enforcement, who have such an enormous amount of power,
Speaker 3: are out driving around and the public is completely unaware
Speaker 3: of any of these pretty terrifying suspicions that there fell
Speaker 3: officers have about them. Johnny and Gay eventually had children.
Speaker 3: They were still married when he died. From what I
Speaker 3: can find in public records, it seems as though Barbara
Speaker 3: Brian's parents and her brother Gary have all passed away.
Speaker 3: So what are we left with? Because there seemed to
Speaker 3: be a lot of missing pieces in this case file.
Speaker 3: For example, I never saw any mention of testing those
Speaker 3: fingerprints from the car.
Speaker 1: Again. I never found.
Speaker 3: Any interviews with Jerry Shaw, the man Barbara was dating.
Speaker 3: It seems like everyone kind of forgot about Barbara's case,
Speaker 3: but we haven't. I want to see if we can
Speaker 3: uncover more information about these police officers who may have
Speaker 3: thought their.
Speaker 1: Secrets were buried forever.
Speaker 3: Barbara Bran, Amanda Tussing, and all the other victims whose
Speaker 3: bodies were found along random strips of Arkansas roads deserve that.
Speaker 3: I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen
Speaker 3: Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans
Speaker 3: and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine
Speaker 3: Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts and Miranda Hawkins. Music
Speaker 3: contributed by Ben Solee. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for
Speaker 3: her research assistance. Noah Camer mixed and scored this episode.
Speaker 3: Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley.
Speaker 3: Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the
Speaker 3: iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. You can
Speaker 3: follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod. If
Speaker 3: you have a case you'd let me and my team
Speaker 3: to look into, you can reach out to us at
Speaker 3: our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
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Speaker 3: seven four four six' one four Five
Speaker 2: School Of humans