Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: On September thirtieth, nineteen ninety four, twenty year old Jared
Speaker 2: Green was scared. His sister, Shannon, who was three years
Speaker 2: older than Jared, remembered her baby brother as the kid
Speaker 2: he was always laughing and smiling, who had a mischievous
Speaker 2: sense of humor. Jared's middle name was Devlin, so they
Speaker 2: called him the little devil.
Speaker 1: I've used this expression before. He was like light and
Speaker 1: life and laughter. He was always making jokes. He had
Speaker 1: a really infectious laugh. He was always getting into trouble.
Speaker 1: My mom called him like a little monkey because he
Speaker 1: was climbing on stuff when we were kids and he
Speaker 1: jumped off the top bunk bed knocked himself out. But
Speaker 1: he was constantly doing silly stuff like that. If there
Speaker 1: was a mischief to be had, he was going to
Speaker 1: be in the middle of it.
Speaker 2: But his humor was always fun, never cruel. Shannon said
Speaker 2: that Jared was always a little bit naive. He was
Speaker 2: someone who always trusted others and someone who would do
Speaker 2: anything for a friend. Jared had a high IQ, Shannon said,
Speaker 2: genius level, so he was always smart, but as a
Speaker 2: kid he struggled to focus. Jared was diagnosed with ADHD,
Speaker 2: so their parents put him on Riddlin. Though the Riddlin
Speaker 2: did seem to help Jared focus at school, his parents
Speaker 2: believed that it was stunning Jared's physical growth, which meant
Speaker 2: that Jared was always small for his age, so he
Speaker 2: ended up being held back a year at school. Even
Speaker 2: though Jared eventually caught up physically and grew to be
Speaker 2: almost six feet tall, he always had kind of a
Speaker 2: slim build. In every picture I see of Jared, he's
Speaker 2: got this boyish face. He's got brownish blonde hair, and
Speaker 2: blue green eyes. He's smiling in every single picture, which
Speaker 2: goes with what Shannon said about him. She said he
Speaker 2: was full of life and always the life of the party,
Speaker 2: just a joy to be around. Jared graduated from Sersey
Speaker 2: High School in nineteen ninety three, and because he'd been
Speaker 2: held back a year when he graduated, he was actually
Speaker 2: nineteen years old. He continued to live at home after
Speaker 2: high school. Eventually he moved out of his parents' house
Speaker 2: and started junior college in bb He got a job
Speaker 2: at the Walmart distribution center, but then in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: Jared's problem started. He started using methamphetamines and his family
Speaker 2: says that within a shockingly short period of time, Jared
Speaker 2: was showing signs of serious addiction. Jared's dark time began
Speaker 2: some time after fall semester started at college.
Speaker 3: By the beginning of October, it was all over.
Speaker 2: I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making
Speaker 2: my true crime podcast, Talent Gone, I've learned that there's
Speaker 2: no such thing as a small town where murder never happens.
Speaker 2: I have received hundreds of men messages from people from
Speaker 2: all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
Speaker 2: murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
Speaker 2: you have a case you'd like me and my team
Speaker 2: to look into, you can reach out to us at
Speaker 2: our Hell and Gone Murder line at six seven eight
Speaker 2: seven four four six one four five. That's six seven
Speaker 2: eight seven four four six one four or five. When
Speaker 2: I announced this new podcast, multiple listeners reached out to
Speaker 2: me about Jared Green's case.
Speaker 1: I'm just calling in for justice for Jared. You might
Speaker 1: have heard podcasts before, but.
Speaker 2: There was a group of us that already.
Speaker 1: I'm calling in about the case of Jared Green. He
Speaker 1: disappeared from Sarcy, Arkansas on September thirtieth, nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: I had actually heard from Jared's sister, Shannon Green, a
Speaker 2: while back, and I knew this was one of the
Speaker 2: first cases that I wanted to cover. At first, Jared's
Speaker 2: family wasn't exactly sure what was going on with them.
Speaker 2: Shannon said they were pretty clueless because she said her
Speaker 2: parents had never dealt with that type of drug abuse before.
Speaker 2: They did not know the signs to look for, and
Speaker 2: they didn't know how quickly this kind of thing could
Speaker 2: escalate or had to dangerous.
Speaker 1: It was not long after he graduated high school, when
Speaker 1: he was about nineteen, and that's when my mom found,
Speaker 1: like I think she found pot in his pants pocket
Speaker 1: that she was doing the laundry and she found it,
Speaker 1: and it was a really fast kind of transformation when
Speaker 1: he started doing that. That was when it was this
Speaker 1: deep decline and the change in him became just obvious.
Speaker 1: I dropped out of grad school and moved back home
Speaker 1: because my parents were kind of like, we don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, and I was so upset about it.
Speaker 1: He was over eighteen. We couldn't force him into a
Speaker 1: rehab It was terrible. We didn't know the extent really
Speaker 1: of what. We were just so naive. I've said this before,
Speaker 1: but like my parent you know, we were not exposed
Speaker 1: to anything. My parents they they went to church. We
Speaker 1: didn't drink, we didn't were We didn't you know, there
Speaker 1: was all this very kind of sheltered life. We didn't
Speaker 1: even know what was happening. I certainly had no idea
Speaker 1: of the depths of the corruption and the drug scene
Speaker 1: in Sursey. We had no idea about that at the time.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety four, Jared was living at home, working
Speaker 2: at the Walmart distribution center, and going to school.
Speaker 3: He quit his job at Walmart.
Speaker 2: Shannon said that at first his family thought this was
Speaker 2: because his job was interfering with school, but the truth
Speaker 2: was that Jared was using drugs and had gotten much
Speaker 2: more heavily into them. Jared moved out of his parents'
Speaker 2: house and in with a guy who lived down the
Speaker 2: street from his family. The apartment that he moved into
Speaker 2: was across the hall from a guy named Brandon Wheeler.
Speaker 2: Now Brandon Wheeler was someone Jared knew from high school.
Speaker 2: Living with Brandon Wheeler was his roommate Robert Webb. In
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, Robert Webb was turning eighteen years old
Speaker 2: and still a senior at Sarcey High School, Jared, Robert,
Speaker 2: and Brandon all started hanging out. Brandon Wheeler was a
Speaker 2: big guy. He was white, around two hundred pounds and
Speaker 2: pretty stocky. Robert Webb was pretty much his physical opposite,
Speaker 2: a lightmail and much smaller, about five foot one and
Speaker 2: around one hundred and thirty five pounds. By the way,
Speaker 2: in case it's not obvious, I'm giving physical descriptions of
Speaker 2: these guys because they will become very important later when
Speaker 2: it becomes clear that some of the people in this
Speaker 2: case are using multiple aliases. These guys were all young,
Speaker 2: but they were already moving into drug dealing, and police
Speaker 2: suspected that Brandon and Robert were dealing drugs for some
Speaker 2: very dangerous people.
Speaker 1: Brandon was always like, he wasn't popular in school. He
Speaker 1: was everybody thought he was kind of odd. I had
Speaker 1: no idea until really when he moved into that apartment
Speaker 1: that like Brandon was involved in the drugs, And still
Speaker 1: we still didn't know what the drugs were like this
Speaker 1: was it was still a mystery at this point. My
Speaker 1: parents really still didn't know. I definitely didn't know what
Speaker 1: was going on. He didn't tell us. He would hint
Speaker 1: at some things. He would co about things, and my
Speaker 1: mom would try to talk to him, but he didn't
Speaker 1: want to tell us what would happen.
Speaker 2: Jared and his roommate got evicted from their apartment, so
Speaker 2: he moved back home with his parents. Robert and Brandon
Speaker 2: ended up renting another house together in Sirce, North, Little Rock.
Speaker 2: Brandon's parents lived in Surse, a few miles from while
Speaker 2: he was running the house with Robert. It's important to
Speaker 2: remember that when I talked to Shannon about her brother,
Speaker 2: she's telling this story in hindsight, so it comes in pieces.
Speaker 2: But one thing she does remember vividly is how fast
Speaker 2: this all happened.
Speaker 3: She says that.
Speaker 2: Once Jared started hanging out with Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb,
Speaker 2: his descent into drug use was quick and extreme. What
Speaker 2: she didn't know at the time was that Jared had
Speaker 2: allegedly moved from just using drugs into helping Robert and
Speaker 2: Brandon deal them. She later heard that he might have
Speaker 2: been possibly involved in some other way, either in selling
Speaker 2: or possibly cooking.
Speaker 1: What I've heard is that Brandon and rob claimed that
Speaker 1: he owed them seventy five hundred dollars and that they
Speaker 1: would never let him pay them back. I do remember
Speaker 1: him saying that he could never be free because they
Speaker 1: would never let it be free. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what the money was for. I assume it was probably
Speaker 1: drugs that he was supposed to have either sold or
Speaker 1: transported for him. I don't think he actually, I don't
Speaker 1: think he ever dealt I don't know for sure. All
Speaker 1: I know is what people around him have told me
Speaker 1: that he didn't, but he was connected with people that
Speaker 1: were and I think that someone had mentioned that they
Speaker 1: were trying to introduce him because he was smart, that
Speaker 1: they thought, well, he could be a cook, and that
Speaker 1: that is, you know, one of the things that I've
Speaker 1: heard that that that's kind of what they were planning
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: When Jared came back home after getting evicted, Shannon said
Speaker 2: her brother had lost lots of weight. She also said
Speaker 2: he was extremely paranoid. She said that her brother was scared.
Speaker 2: Shannon describes how her brother's life started to fall apart
Speaker 2: once he moved back home.
Speaker 1: We could tell he was really like, he had lost
Speaker 1: a ton of weight, He didn't look right. He was
Speaker 1: extremely paranoid. I remember that one time I was on
Speaker 1: my way out the door to church, I had got
Speaker 1: a runner in my hose and I had to turn
Speaker 1: back into the house to go go change. And I
Speaker 1: came in like just busted to the front door, and
Speaker 1: Jared was standing at the top of the staircase with
Speaker 1: a gun drawn and like shaking because he was paranoid
Speaker 1: about somebody coming in after him. And so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of that where we were all kind of
Speaker 1: on tender hooks, like we didn't know where he was.
Speaker 1: He would go out and stay out until all hours,
Speaker 1: and I stopped sleeping because if I didn't hear our
Speaker 1: garage store open, I couldn't be comfortable because I was
Speaker 1: afraid something was going to happen. Like we didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was into. We didn't know what he was doing.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: One of the most important questions in this case that
Speaker 2: came up later was how much of this paranoia was
Speaker 2: just the paranoia that goes with drug use, especially Matthews,
Speaker 2: and how much might have been legitimate fear for his life.
Speaker 2: That will become crucial later Jared asked his parents for help.
Speaker 2: He told them that he needed to get out of town.
Speaker 2: Then Shannon said, Jared did leave town for about a week. Now,
Speaker 2: where Jared went during that time remains a mystery, and
Speaker 2: it's something we're going to revisit. Shannon believed he was
Speaker 2: going to see about a job in Tennessee, but then
Speaker 2: after Jared came back, Shannon put a timeline together with
Speaker 2: her dad to try and track his movement, and later
Speaker 2: Shannon's dad found receipts from Jared's trip. They found out
Speaker 2: he had actually been gone longer, close to two weeks,
Speaker 2: and that he had actually visited Houston, Texas and Tuckerman,
Speaker 2: Arkansas to see family, had been around to several places
Speaker 2: they never knew about, and then one day, out of
Speaker 2: the blue, Jared said he was coming home. At that point,
Speaker 2: Shannon said he seemed to be more relaxed. He said
Speaker 2: that everything was okay. He had been telling family and
Speaker 2: friends that he owed Brandon and Robert a lot of money,
Speaker 2: But after he came home, according to Shannon, it seemed
Speaker 2: like whatever issues he had with these guys, he had
Speaker 2: worked them out and made things right. So Jared returned
Speaker 2: home after that trip out of town, but he wouldn't
Speaker 2: be home for long. So this brings us to September thirtieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, the day Jared disappeared. On that day,
Speaker 2: Shannon said, Jared woke up at around eight thirty am
Speaker 2: and left the house for a while. He came home
Speaker 2: later that afternoon and told his family that he had
Speaker 2: been shooting skeek, which Shannon said would not have been
Speaker 2: out of character for him. He brought back the skeet
Speaker 2: shooting thrower and the rifle that he used and left
Speaker 2: them at home. Then Jared made some phone calls that afternoon.
Speaker 2: He left the house at around eight pm. That night,
Speaker 2: he told his parents that he was meeting a friend
Speaker 2: at the Sarce Country Club. Then he walked out the door,
Speaker 2: out the driveway, got into his car, and drove off.
Speaker 2: That was the last time Jared's family ever saw him alive.
Speaker 2: Shannon later told reporter she has this flashback of Jared
Speaker 2: walking in front of a TV and walking out of
Speaker 2: the house, but she said that she was working at Hastings,
Speaker 2: a local grocery store, at the time, so she can't
Speaker 2: really remember whether the night she's thinking of was that
Speaker 2: night or possibly another night. Either way, Jared never came
Speaker 2: home for the next few days. His parents kind of
Speaker 2: agonized over what action to take because they were torn.
Speaker 2: They wanted their son home, but they were also worried
Speaker 2: that calling the police could bring Jared unwanted attention, maybe
Speaker 2: get him into trouble if it turned out he was
Speaker 2: holed up somewhere involved in drugs. And at that stage
Speaker 2: in Jared's life, it was not uncommon for Jared to
Speaker 2: leave for a couple days, possibly to go stay with friends.
Speaker 2: But when days went by and his family never heard
Speaker 2: from him, they began to suspect that something was very wrong.
Speaker 2: As you may know from listening to this podcast, one
Speaker 2: theme that I go over over and over again is
Speaker 2: the timeline, and in the beginning, police had very little
Speaker 2: information about Jared's timeline. We do know that he was
Speaker 2: planning on meeting his girlfriend that night. Now his girlfriend's
Speaker 2: name is also Shannon, so to avoid confusion with Shannon, Jared's.
Speaker 3: Sister, we're going to refer to his sister as.
Speaker 2: Shannon and Jared's girlfriend as s Jared's girlfriend later told
Speaker 2: police that she did talk to Jared that night. She
Speaker 2: said when they spoke on the phone, Jared seemed irrational
Speaker 2: and he wanted his girlfriend to leave town with him.
Speaker 2: She said he was disturbed because he was acting really
Speaker 2: out of character, so she told him that she was
Speaker 2: going out with some girlfriends instead. She said that Jared
Speaker 2: was super upset, crying, and that after she didn't go
Speaker 2: with him that night, she never saw or heard from
Speaker 2: him again. Over the next few days, Jared's family began
Speaker 2: to get more and more worried.
Speaker 1: So he went missing on September thirtieth, and he was gone.
Speaker 1: And like I said before, like he would he would
Speaker 1: go for overnight, go to Jonesboro, whatever, go stay with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend. He wouldn't come home. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years old, so he wouldn't always tell us he would,
Speaker 1: you know, he would usually call or he'd usually show
Speaker 1: up home the next day. So when he didn't come
Speaker 1: home the first night, we weren't we were scared because
Speaker 1: of what we knew was what was going on, but
Speaker 1: we weren't fannicked. But when when you know, the next evening,
Speaker 1: we don't haven't heard from him. And I was working
Speaker 1: at Hastings of the time, and his girlfriend and she
Speaker 1: hadn't seen or heard from him, and so that really
Speaker 1: that was really scary. It's like, okay, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: something is not right. So then we started calling people,
Speaker 1: you know, we called the Wheelers, called Brandon and he
Speaker 1: was like, no, we haven't seen Jared. Don't have any
Speaker 1: idea where he's at. The normal panic that you go
Speaker 1: through when someone goes missing, and you're like, okay, where
Speaker 1: could they be? Don't overreact, this is you know, he's
Speaker 1: an adult, He's probably somewhere. But when we still hadn't
Speaker 1: heard on that third day, the panic had started to
Speaker 1: set in. My parents were super scared because they didn't
Speaker 1: want to get Jared in trouble, and we're afraid that
Speaker 1: if they told the police what he was involved with,
Speaker 1: he would go to jail. And so they were debating,
Speaker 1: you know, what do we do. How do we best
Speaker 1: help our son? Do we call the police? But you know,
Speaker 1: they were just scared to death.
Speaker 2: Then a few days after Jared went missing, one of
Speaker 2: his friends, a guy named Mitchell Johnson, told Jared's family
Speaker 2: that he saw Jared's car at the Walmart supercenter. Jared's
Speaker 2: family had no idea that his car was sitting abandoned
Speaker 2: at the Walmart supercenter and that it had been there
Speaker 2: for days. Mitchell said that when he saw the car,
Speaker 2: he pulled up and waited twenty or thirty minutes to
Speaker 2: see if Jared would come out, but he said when
Speaker 2: Jared didn't come out, Mitchell left the parking lot.
Speaker 3: On October fifth, another.
Speaker 2: Friend of Jared's, a guy named Jason, came to the
Speaker 2: family home. Now Jason knew Jared from high school. Jared
Speaker 2: had started going to Sarcey High in the eighth grade,
Speaker 2: so he and Jason became friends. They also hung out
Speaker 2: with another guy named Greg. According to the case file,
Speaker 2: in the fall of nineteen ninety four, Jason was going
Speaker 2: to college in Jonesborough. He lived with he and Jason's
Speaker 2: mutual friend Greg, and during that time period they all
Speaker 2: hung out together. Jared would come over to their house
Speaker 2: and he would hang out with Jason and Greg pretty regularly.
Speaker 2: Jared shared with Jason the fact that he was scared
Speaker 2: of Brandon Wheeler and Rob Webb. He said he owed
Speaker 2: a lot of money to Brandon Wheeler. Now I have
Speaker 2: not seen the entire case file because technically this is
Speaker 2: still an open case. However, Jared's sister Shannon, was able
Speaker 2: to get some of the investigator's notes and she has
Speaker 2: shared some of those with me. So those are invaluable
Speaker 2: because I can see some of the steps that police
Speaker 2: took and how frustrated some of the investigators were when
Speaker 2: they were trying to make progress on this case. The
Speaker 2: investigators at the time talked to some of Jared's friends,
Speaker 2: and what they figured out was that Jared was telling
Speaker 2: people Brandon Wheeler gave him a pretty large quantity of meth,
Speaker 2: maybe around a kiloh to sell. But something went wrong
Speaker 2: with this drug deal. Either the sale got messed up
Speaker 2: or Jared did some of his own supply. Whatever the cause,
Speaker 2: the end result was that Jared owed Brandon Wheeler around
Speaker 2: seventy five hundred or eight thousand dollars and Jared couldn't
Speaker 2: pay it back. Jason said that Jared owed him money too.
Speaker 2: He said that he had given Jared around six hundred
Speaker 2: dollars so that Jared could score some drugs a few
Speaker 2: weeks earlier, but right before Jared went missing, Jason said
Speaker 2: he needed his money back. So this is interesting because
Speaker 2: we have yet another person who potentially was in a
Speaker 2: monetary dispute with the victim at around the time he
Speaker 2: went missing. Jason told Shannon, Jared's sister, that he started
Speaker 2: calling Jared and asking him for his money back. He
Speaker 2: said Jared didn't respond, and there was another crucial fact here,
Speaker 2: which is that when Jared borrowed that money from Jason,
Speaker 2: Jared gave Jason his gun as collateral and Jason was
Speaker 2: supposed to hold the gun for him. After weeks of
Speaker 2: not hearing back from Jared, Jason, who was still holding
Speaker 2: Jared's gun, said he got a call out of the
Speaker 2: blue on September thirtieth, the night Jared went missing. Jason
Speaker 2: was the friend who Jared met at the Sarce country Club.
Speaker 2: Jason later told police that he went to meet Jared
Speaker 2: at the country club because he was concerned about his friend,
Speaker 2: but also so understandably, he said he wanted to get
Speaker 2: his money back. At first, it seems like he thought
Speaker 2: Jared had called him because he wanted to return the money.
Speaker 2: They arranged to meet at the country club on September thirtieth,
Speaker 2: somewhere between around nine and ten thirty pm, but Jason
Speaker 2: told police that after he showed up, Jared admitted he
Speaker 2: didn't have his money, but he did tell Jason he
Speaker 2: needed his gun back. Jason said Jared was scared that night.
Speaker 2: He said Jared told him he was going to meet
Speaker 2: Brandon Wheeler. He knew that he owed Brandon money and
Speaker 2: he hoped to straighten situation out, but Jared told him
Speaker 2: he wanted that gun for protection, so Jason told police
Speaker 2: that he agreed to that. He said that he gave
Speaker 2: Jared's gun back to him and kept Jared's wallet as collateral.
Speaker 2: Jason said he continued to reach out to Jared over
Speaker 2: the next few days. Jason explained to Shannon that Jared
Speaker 2: told him that if he didn't have his money back
Speaker 2: in a certain amount of time, that he Jay could
Speaker 2: go to Jared's parents and ask them for the money.
Speaker 2: So he said, on October fifth, that's what he did.
Speaker 2: He showed up at Jared's family home and went in
Speaker 2: to talk to his parents about getting that money back.
Speaker 2: That same day was when Jared's father got the tip
Speaker 2: about Jared's car being the Walmart parking lot, so Jared's
Speaker 2: father drove over there to Walmart, and that's when he
Speaker 2: found Jared's car. The door was unlocked and there was
Speaker 2: no sign of foul play, but Shannon said her family
Speaker 2: knew immediately Jared never would have left his car just
Speaker 2: unlocked like that and walked away from it voluntarily. Over
Speaker 2: the next few days, Shannon said she and her family
Speaker 2: looked everywhere for Jared. They called all his friends, they
Speaker 2: called the Arkansas State Police, and they called the FBI.
Speaker 2: It turned out they had a relative who was in
Speaker 2: the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA. He told them the
Speaker 2: DEA authorities would not be looking very hard at a
Speaker 2: twenty year old who was a legal adult and had
Speaker 2: the right to voluntarily disappear. And unspoken in all this
Speaker 2: is the fact that because Jared was known to have
Speaker 2: a drug habit, that also played a role in the
Speaker 2: authority's decision not to look for him as hard as
Speaker 2: they would perhaps some others. Shannon described, while Jared sometimes
Speaker 2: would drop out a site for a couple days, he
Speaker 2: would never sever contact with his entire family. Jared also
Speaker 2: took pride in his car, so it made no sense
Speaker 2: the car would be left there abandoned like that.
Speaker 1: That is not like him. He did not walk away
Speaker 1: from that car, didn't leave it there like that. But
Speaker 1: of course that's when the police were like, whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: they really didn't. That's when the non investigation started.
Speaker 2: Just hearing this set of circumstances in which Jared's car
Speaker 2: was found. My instinct as an investigator is that someone
Speaker 2: probably staged this crime scene, that someone else drove the
Speaker 2: car there. Otherwise, why would Jared's keys be left there
Speaker 2: under the seat of the car. Do you think the
Speaker 2: car was driven there by somebody else?
Speaker 1: I think so, because number one, my brother would never
Speaker 1: ever leave his windows down his son news open. Ever,
Speaker 1: he didn't even do that in front of our house.
Speaker 1: Certainly weren't going to do that in the thing.
Speaker 2: But we don't know who whoever did wanted that car
Speaker 2: to be found in that parking lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm certain, or they wanted somebody to take it.
Speaker 2: If Jared met someone in that parking lot and got
Speaker 2: into a car with them, either voluntarily or otherwise, the
Speaker 2: keys would not be stashed under the seat like that.
Speaker 2: They would be on him. And then after that, even
Speaker 2: stranger things started to happen after Jared's family found his car,
Speaker 2: Weird things started happening. On October ninth, Shannon's family got
Speaker 2: a strange phone call. A few days after Jared went missing.
Speaker 2: Someone called the police and pretended to be Shannon and
Speaker 2: Jared's dad. Shannon says the mystery caller told police they
Speaker 2: should stop investigating Jared's disappearance. This mystery caller said the
Speaker 2: family wanted to try and investigate on their own. Shannon
Speaker 2: said this never happened. She stresses her father never gave
Speaker 2: up on looking for Jared. She said her dad was
Speaker 2: constantly calling police to ask for case updates, as well
Speaker 2: as bringing in any new evidence that he found. By
Speaker 2: this point in the investigation, according to Shannon, pretty much
Speaker 2: everyone police talked to about the case mentioned these two names,
Speaker 2: Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb. Police talked to Greg, Jason
Speaker 2: and Jared's mutual friend. He admitted that the story police
Speaker 2: had heard from some other people was true. He said
Speaker 2: he and Jared had gotten a kilo of meth from
Speaker 2: Robert and Brandon. Also, the name Mitchell Johnson came up again.
Speaker 2: Now remember he was the guy who found Jared's car
Speaker 2: abandoned at the Walmart supercenter. He told police that he
Speaker 2: had taken Jared to North Little Rock, supposedly to pick
Speaker 2: up a large quantity of drugs. He also said that
Speaker 2: he knew about the death. Jared had talked to his
Speaker 2: dad about Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb, so Jared's dad
Speaker 2: told police the same thing. A lot of other people
Speaker 2: said that Jared was scared of these guys. He said
Speaker 2: Jared had told them a sort of cautionary tale about
Speaker 2: another guy who owed Brandon and Robert a lot of
Speaker 2: money and couldn't pay it back. Jared told his father
Speaker 2: that this person who owed the debt had been kidnapped
Speaker 2: and blindfolded and taken to a remote location and basically
Speaker 2: been beaten and tortured. Eventually, Jared said that person was released.
Speaker 2: I've gone through some of the case file documents that
Speaker 2: Shannon shared with me. I can't share everything, but with
Speaker 2: her permission, I'm going to go back through the events
Speaker 2: that followed September thirtieth, nineteen ninety four, the day when
Speaker 2: Jared went missing. I would invite Helen Gone listeners to
Speaker 2: listen closely because there are a lot of names here.
Speaker 2: We're going to move away from Jared and his family
Speaker 2: and go to North Little Rock to try and figure
Speaker 2: out what was going on with Brandon Wheeler and Robert
Speaker 2: Webb around the time when Jared went missing. On November ninth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. I can see from these case file
Speaker 2: notes that one of the officers from the task force
Speaker 2: was interviewing people connected to the house that Brandon and
Speaker 2: rob were renting together in North Little Rock. In my opinion,
Speaker 2: I think that that house is key to this case.
Speaker 2: The officers talked to a woman named Becky Alston, the housekeeper. Now,
Speaker 2: what she had to say was very interesting to me, because,
Speaker 2: as many of you might know, I really think that
Speaker 2: people who clean someone's houses are definitely clued into a
Speaker 2: lot of their darkest secrets. Becky had only been doing
Speaker 2: that job for a couple months. Robert Webb and Brandon
Speaker 2: Wheeler rented that house from their landlord, a guy named
Speaker 2: Larry Williford and North Little Rock. They asked their landlord
Speaker 2: if he knew of any good housekeepers, and he was
Speaker 2: the one who recommended Becky. At the time, this seemed
Speaker 2: like a win win for both parties. The guys got
Speaker 2: a good housekeeper at a very reasonable right, and for
Speaker 2: the landlord it's probably reassuring a trusted housekeeper can kind
Speaker 2: of keep an eye on the property and also make
Speaker 2: sure that two young guys living there won't completely trash it.
Speaker 2: Becky charged seventy five dollars a week, and she said
Speaker 2: Brandon and Robert would always give her a tip. Typically
Speaker 2: they would give her one hundred dollars, always in cash.
Speaker 2: Becky said she had a good relationship with these guys.
Speaker 2: She said Brandon and Robert were always very cordial and
Speaker 2: nice to her, But they were in an odd situation
Speaker 2: because two very young guys. Remember Robert Webb was only
Speaker 2: seventeen or eighteen years old, a senior in high school
Speaker 2: at the time when all this was going down. With
Speaker 2: a pile of cash would raise a lot of red flags.
Speaker 2: The story that Brandon and Robert told their landlord and
Speaker 2: Becky was that they were from wealthy families and they
Speaker 2: were studying to be lawyers in Little Rock. But then,
Speaker 2: of course Becky started to notice that Robert and Brandon
Speaker 2: never seemed to go to class, so she kind of
Speaker 2: was figuring out that their cover story wasn't true. This
Speaker 2: is all, by the way, pretty much verbatim from the
Speaker 2: investigative report from the case file. It was around August
Speaker 2: or September of nineteen ninety four when Becky said things
Speaker 2: were starting to change. She said that there was a
Speaker 2: crawl space in the upstairs area where the guys would
Speaker 2: throw dirty clothes in. She said sometimes she would get
Speaker 2: into that crawl space to pull the dirty clothes out
Speaker 2: so she could try to wash them, and when she did,
Speaker 2: she found a stash of guns up there, she told police.
Speaker 2: During this time, she was noticing more and more guns
Speaker 2: which the guys were obsessed with. Apparently they would sit
Speaker 2: around and watch videos of guns and people shooting all
Speaker 2: the time, and not just hunting guns. These were things
Speaker 2: like uzi's and semi automatic weapons, including one that Becky
Speaker 2: said had a silencerr Now, we don't know what they
Speaker 2: were doing with these guns, or whose they were, or
Speaker 2: if they were planning to sell them or keep them
Speaker 2: for that matter, but just using common sense, if a
Speaker 2: gun has a silence on it, that's not something these
Speaker 2: guys are going to use for deer honey.
Speaker 3: Becky said that.
Speaker 2: They always dressed very nicely, not like college kids. They
Speaker 2: were wearing suits that looked expensive. She said they would
Speaker 2: always carry concealed weapons when they left the house. There's
Speaker 2: something else that's a little bit unusual here. Becky said
Speaker 2: that she was the one who paid Brandon and Robert's
Speaker 2: utility bills for them, the electricity bill, the phone bill,
Speaker 2: the water, et cetera. Becky said typically the guys would
Speaker 2: give her cash and she would make the actual payment.
Speaker 2: From the interview with Becky, it seems like around September,
Speaker 2: Robert and Brandon started to become a little bit quieter,
Speaker 2: a little bit more paranoid. Both Robert and Brandon had
Speaker 2: cell phones. Remember this was back in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: That was also something that was very unusual for a
Speaker 2: teenager to have at the time. They also had a
Speaker 2: landline phone. When Becky was discussing how paranoid they were
Speaker 2: with the pl she said, every time the landline would ring,
Speaker 2: they would look at the caller ID and then never answer.
Speaker 2: Then they would call the person back and demand to
Speaker 2: know who they were and why they were calling. It
Speaker 2: was just a very paranoid atmosphere. Then another really odd
Speaker 2: thing happened. In late September of nineteen ninety four. Becky
Speaker 2: said that she was cleaning the apartment and she saw
Speaker 2: a California driver's license with the name of Lance Wells,
Speaker 2: but it had Robert Webb's picture on it. She said,
Speaker 2: when she went back a few days later, the ID
Speaker 2: was gone. At this point, I should back up and
Speaker 2: we should explain a little bit more about what was
Speaker 2: going on at the time with methamphetamines in the state
Speaker 2: of Arkansas. At the time, meth was exploding in Arkansas
Speaker 2: and around the South and the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: A lot of the myth at the time was coming
Speaker 2: from these super labs in California. They were controlled mainly
Speaker 2: by the Mexican cartel In the earth only nineties, the
Speaker 2: drug selling operations in Arkansas were evolving. According to a
Speaker 2: report by the Department of Justice. Instead of drug dealers
Speaker 2: using eighteen wheelers and these really elaborate operations, they started
Speaker 2: using a lot of regular passenger cars that had hidden traps.
Speaker 2: They would put the drugs in gas tanks or they
Speaker 2: would have these hidden compartments. Then the dealers would use
Speaker 2: regular people to transport the drugs from California to Arkansas
Speaker 2: and beyond. So, thinking about these scenarios, Brandon and Robert
Speaker 2: would definitely fit the bill. Two young, ordinary looking guys
Speaker 2: who probably looked like they were on a road trip
Speaker 2: would be the perfect people to carry these drugs. When
Speaker 2: police were putting all this together, they showed Becky a
Speaker 2: picture of Jared Green, and Becky said she recognized Jared.
Speaker 2: She said she had seen him there in the apartment
Speaker 2: with Brandon and Robert at least three different times. Becky said,
Speaker 2: when Jared was at the house, and this is an
Speaker 2: exact quote from the statement, she said, quote observed numerous
Speaker 2: needle marks on his arm and stated that he was
Speaker 2: wearing blue jeans and a short sleeved shirt. He appeared
Speaker 2: to be very strung out and looking bad.
Speaker 3: End quote. So we know that.
Speaker 2: Jared Green owed Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb money, potentially
Speaker 2: a lot of money, and that these guys, according to police,
Speaker 2: were drug dealers. But again, we have to go past
Speaker 2: local rumor and we have to figure out exactly what
Speaker 2: everyone was doing around the time Jared Green went missing.
Speaker 2: And this is where the timeline gets very interesting. On
Speaker 2: September twenty second, just over a week before Jared Green
Speaker 2: went missing, Becky said, Brandon Wheeler told her he and
Speaker 2: Robert Webb were leaving town. That they were going to
Speaker 2: check on Robert's father, who they told her lived in
Speaker 2: California and was really sick. Then, on the twenty seventh
Speaker 2: of September, Robert contacted Becky again. He said they were
Speaker 2: back in Little Rock. He asked if she could come
Speaker 2: over and clean the house. On the twenty eighth, of September.
Speaker 2: She went there on the twenty eighth and said neither
Speaker 2: Brandon or Robert were home at the time. On September
Speaker 2: twenty ninth, at around six am, Becky said she got
Speaker 2: another call, this time from Brandon Wheeler. He asked her
Speaker 2: to take care of their two dogs. Becky said that
Speaker 2: this was not uncommon. Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb had
Speaker 2: two large dogs. When they were out of town. They
Speaker 2: kept their dogs in the garage. Normally, when the guys
Speaker 2: would take a trip, which normally they told her was
Speaker 2: to California, they would ask her to come in and
Speaker 2: give food and water.
Speaker 3: To their dogs.
Speaker 2: So presumably, if they're asking Becky to feed their animals
Speaker 2: on September twenty ninth, they were making a plan to
Speaker 2: leave town. Of course, we know September thirtieth, the next
Speaker 2: days when Jared went missing, and after that day, Becky
Speaker 2: said she never saw Brandon or Robert again. Becky also
Speaker 2: described the atmosphere at that house. She said she would
Speaker 2: see young women there, a lot young women who appeared
Speaker 2: to be from around late teens to early twenties. She
Speaker 2: said the guys would sit around and watch videos about guns,
Speaker 2: which they seemed to be obsessed with and that she
Speaker 2: saw other evidence of what could reasonably be construed to
Speaker 2: be drug use, things like alcohol paths with drops of
Speaker 2: blood on them. Police also talked to Larry Wilford, Robert
Speaker 2: and Brandon's landlord. The landlord said that when they wanted
Speaker 2: to become tenants, they gave him a similar story to
Speaker 2: the one they'd given Becky. They said they went to
Speaker 2: the University of Arkansas Little Rock, that they were going
Speaker 2: to be lawyers. They were from San Francisco, California, and
Speaker 2: they had wealthy parents. They wanted to pay in cash.
Speaker 2: Larry agreed to rent these guys the house for eleven
Speaker 2: hundred dollars a month, plus a fifteen hundred dollars deposit.
Speaker 2: He did get a little suspicious because when he went
Speaker 2: to do the tenantcy agreement, he wanted to talk to
Speaker 2: Robert's parents.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 2: When he drew up the tenancy agreement, he faxed it
Speaker 2: over to someone who he was talking to, someone who
Speaker 2: was claiming to be Robert Webb's father. But the landlord
Speaker 2: said when he called that person back later with additional questions,
Speaker 2: he said he was never able to contact them again.
Speaker 2: So of course we can't be sit, but it seems
Speaker 2: almost certain this was not Robert Webb's father. Much more
Speaker 2: probably it was either Brandon or Robert or one of
Speaker 2: their friends pretending to be his dad so they could
Speaker 2: get into this apartment. I found something else on the
Speaker 2: report that may or may not be interesting, but I
Speaker 2: think is worth bringing up. So the landlord said Brandon
Speaker 2: and Robert paid two thousand dollars to have the pool repaired.
Speaker 2: They also had a satellite dish installed for around twenty
Speaker 2: two hundred dollars. They only ended up staying at the
Speaker 2: property for a few months, so I think the fact
Speaker 2: that they put all this money into it right away
Speaker 2: maybe should have been a red flag. The landlord said
Speaker 2: that things seemed to be going well for a while
Speaker 2: until late September. That's when the electricity got cut off
Speaker 2: because Brandon and Robert hadn't paid their bill now around
Speaker 2: that point, the landlord told police. Once the electricity got
Speaker 2: cut off, and because they were all so late in
Speaker 2: rent at that point, he started to get more concerned.
Speaker 2: In the first week of October, Brandon and Robert came
Speaker 2: to the landlord's house. They gave him a cashier's check,
Speaker 2: for twenty two hundred dollars and said that was to
Speaker 2: cover the rent for October and November. But at that
Speaker 2: point something seemed to have unsettled the landlord and he
Speaker 2: told them he was not going to rent to them anymore.
Speaker 2: The next time the landlord said that he heard from
Speaker 2: Robert was on October twenty first, when Robert called the
Speaker 2: landlord to say that he and Brandon were moving out
Speaker 2: and returning to California. Then the very next day, on
Speaker 2: October twenty second, nineteen ninety four, police raced to the
Speaker 2: scene of that rental house because it turned out that
Speaker 2: just hours after Robert and Brandon were evicted, the house
Speaker 2: was on fire. We'll have more on Jared Green's case
Speaker 2: next time on Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder
Speaker 2: Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
Speaker 2: by Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Solee, and this
Speaker 2: episode was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers
Speaker 2: are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowling. If you
Speaker 2: have a case you'd like me and my team to
Speaker 2: look into You can reach out to us at our
Speaker 2: Hellingonge Murder line at six seven eight seven four four
Speaker 2: six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four
Speaker 2: four six ' one four five
Speaker 3: School of Humans