Speaker 1: School of Humans. Over the past week, I've been doing
Speaker 1: everything I can to get more information about Leo. But
Speaker 1: it's also extremely hard because at the time, he was seventeen,
Speaker 1: so like anyone, I mean, there might have been older
Speaker 1: people who would show up on databases and things, but
Speaker 1: if you're seventeen, like you really don't show up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's kind of true too, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: he's not gonna have any kind of credit profile, any
Speaker 1: kind of anything. Like he'd show up if he had,
Speaker 1: like maybe some criminal records, but that's about it. If
Speaker 1: he didn't have any of that, you know, as a
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, unless his parents like put
Speaker 1: them on like their credit card as an authorities user
Speaker 1: or something, which is not a common thing. You know,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be it's gonna be difficult trying to figure
Speaker 1: that out. Finally I found his current address. I did
Speaker 1: some like looking into Leo, and he is actually not
Speaker 1: even a little rock. He's in this area called Hot
Speaker 1: Springs National Park, which is like a little town right
Speaker 1: next to Hot Springs. Like the thought of going around
Speaker 1: there looking for him is like not a great one,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it's it's going to be,
Speaker 1: it would be like going into all types of like
Speaker 1: remote areas looking for him. So I don't think I'll
Speaker 1: be door knocking on him Saturday night, the night before
Speaker 1: Ebbie talked with Eric and then Trevor is still this
Speaker 1: giant black hole. But we do have a clear picture
Speaker 1: now than we did when we first started investigating. We
Speaker 1: know that Ebbie wasn't at Eric's, she wasn't at Danielle's,
Speaker 1: she wasn't with c she wasn't at her mom and
Speaker 1: stepdad's house or at her grandparents house. And at the time,
Speaker 1: Trevor had a roommate. She confirmed that she and Trevor
Speaker 1: went out of town for that wedding on Saturday night,
Speaker 1: so Ebbie was not supposed to stay at trevor Vers
Speaker 1: house either. And now we've talked to one more of
Speaker 1: Ebbie's close friends who gives us even more clues about
Speaker 1: what was going on with Ebbie before she disappeared. I'm
Speaker 1: Catherine Townsend. This is hell and Gone. We've been trying
Speaker 1: to learn more about the security guard, Guy Hooper and
Speaker 1: his son Josh, even though Guy Hooper is now in
Speaker 1: his seventies and has been doing security work for a
Speaker 1: long time, this has not been easy. Unlike in some
Speaker 1: previous cases, we've worked on law enforcement at Ebby's case,
Speaker 1: even though they haven't been able to share information due
Speaker 1: to the case being open and active, have in some
Speaker 1: cases answered questions for us. We asked them about Guy Hooper.
Speaker 1: What we were told is that he was interviewed and
Speaker 1: that he was polygraphed and cleared. Now that may be true,
Speaker 1: but this would also not be the first time that
Speaker 1: I've heard about an air tight alibi or someone being
Speaker 1: cleared by law enforcement, only for me to discover later
Speaker 1: that this was not the case. Part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that cleared is kind of a vague term in
Speaker 1: and of itself. This is a well known problem in
Speaker 1: the United States. In most cases, even when police do
Speaker 1: not make an arrest or identify suspect, they can publicly
Speaker 1: say that they've cleared the crime. That's actually the way
Speaker 1: they determine the national clearance rate, or the percentage of
Speaker 1: cases that are cleared versus those that are still under investigation.
Speaker 1: So clearing a suspect is an even more vague term.
Speaker 1: We put the word out on social media and on
Speaker 1: Ebbie's family's Facebook page. Find Ebbie Steppic, a Hell and
Speaker 1: Gone listener, reaches out. She gives me a link to
Speaker 1: an article that the Arkansas Democrat Gazette published back in
Speaker 1: two thousand. It's about a nightclub in Little Rock called
Speaker 1: Planet Earth. It's closed now, but it was on Cantrell
Speaker 1: Road back in the day. In September of two thousand,
Speaker 1: Guy Hooper was working with a company called Security World.
Speaker 1: He and another Security World officer named William Sharvinka worked
Speaker 1: with the bouncers at the club. One night, they got
Speaker 1: into an altercation with a twenty two year old man
Speaker 1: named Damon Hilton. He had come to the club with
Speaker 1: a friend. Three bouncers, Shawn Webb, Daryl Griffith, and Philip
Speaker 1: David House, along with Guy and William Sharvenka. All five
Speaker 1: of them were charged with beating Damon Hilton. Originally, they
Speaker 1: were all charged with second degree battery, which is a felony.
Speaker 1: When the trial finally happened, only Shawn Webb was found guilty,
Speaker 1: and he was found guilty of the lesser misdemeanor charge,
Speaker 1: third degree battery. The other four, including Hooper, were acquitted.
Speaker 1: According to an article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, quote
Speaker 1: Pulaski County Deputy prosecuting Attorney Melanie Martin had argued that
Speaker 1: Webb perforated Helton's ear drum when he punched him in
Speaker 1: the left ear, and that Hooper, House and Shrevenka kicked, punched,
Speaker 1: and hit Helton with a flashlight a short time later.
Speaker 1: Ende Helton was an army ranger and during the trial,
Speaker 1: according to the newspaper, he testified that it took weeks
Speaker 1: for his ear to heal and that during that time
Speaker 1: he was basically toned deaf. Damon said that it all
Speaker 1: started when he was at the club with a friend.
Speaker 1: At some point, the friend walked outside of the parking
Speaker 1: lot and then the bouncers refused to let his friend
Speaker 1: back in. He started trying to persuade one of the bouncers,
Speaker 1: Daryl Griffith, into letting his friend back in. Then at
Speaker 1: some point he put his hand on Darryl Griffith's arm.
Speaker 1: At that point, he said, Darrell basically turned on him,
Speaker 1: grabbed his throat and pushed him down to the curb. Then,
Speaker 1: he said, Sean Webb approached him and punched him in
Speaker 1: the ear. That was the punch that did the most damage.
Speaker 1: He said he tried to walk away, but Guy Hooper,
Speaker 1: Philip David House, and William Sharvinka followed him. This part
Speaker 1: is extremely disturbing, and I really don't want to paraphrase it,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to read it directly from the article.
Speaker 1: It read. Quote he said, the security guards ripped off
Speaker 1: their belts, taunting him and trying to start a fight.
Speaker 1: End quote. At that point, he testified that the security
Speaker 1: guards got him down on the ground and started beating him.
Speaker 1: He said, quote at the time, I was very threatened.
Speaker 1: I had heard about guys getting the crap kicked out
Speaker 1: of them down there, but I never thought i'd be
Speaker 1: one of them. Due at some point during this fight,
Speaker 1: another nightclub patron also threw a punch and hit Amon Hilton.
Speaker 1: Guy Hooper, his fellow security guard, and the bouncers denied
Speaker 1: that they had ever hit Damon. They said that that
Speaker 1: other nightclub patron was the only one who threw a punch,
Speaker 1: but multiple witnesses backed up Damon Hilton's version of events,
Speaker 1: and the club did have a reputation. The paper described
Speaker 1: the club as being known among police officers and prosecutors
Speaker 1: as being a place where bouncers regularly pick on people
Speaker 1: they are supposed to protect due Prosecuting attorney Larry Juggley
Speaker 1: told The Democrat Gazette at the time that he wanted
Speaker 1: to use the state's public nuisance laws to try to
Speaker 1: shut that business down. That didn't end up happening, but
Speaker 1: the club was hit with a lot of bad publicity,
Speaker 1: including civil lawsuits from people claiming that they had been
Speaker 1: injured by the bouncers, including one in two thousand and
Speaker 1: two from an Oklahoma man who sued the nightclub from
Speaker 1: one point five million dollars. He claimed that he received
Speaker 1: multiple injuries after five bouncers jumped him. Eventually, Planet Earth closed,
Speaker 1: Guy Hooper moved on to another security company and eventually
Speaker 1: onto the Channel Valley area. We'll be right back in
Speaker 1: Ebbie's case. Maybe more than any case I've ever worked on.
Speaker 1: We've had to question everything that we know, every detail
Speaker 1: of the so called official story. Cell Phone data is
Speaker 1: crucial to this case, and it also seems to be
Speaker 1: an area that has not been investigated properly and that
Speaker 1: could have been mishandled by the police. First, there was
Speaker 1: the failure to get a warrant and take the boy's
Speaker 1: phones from Friday night. If they had gotten those phones immediately,
Speaker 1: they could have verified everyone's location during that crucial time
Speaker 1: frame when every went missing. We've also been looking for
Speaker 1: more information about Ebbie's phones in general. Remember Laurie told
Speaker 1: us Ebbie had recently swapped phone owns with a friend.
Speaker 1: That friend was Kaylee. Hello, Hey, is it Kayley? This
Speaker 1: is Hey? If pepperd towns in Hi? Did I catch
Speaker 1: you at a bad time? No, you're good. If you
Speaker 1: hear my son though he's in bed with me, that's
Speaker 1: absolutely fine. I have a Chihuahua and you'll probably hear
Speaker 1: him throughout okay work at least sixth time. Kaylee has
Speaker 1: been interviewed by other news outlets before, but this is
Speaker 1: the first time her side of the story is being
Speaker 1: told on the record. There has been tension between Ebbie's
Speaker 1: family and Kaylee in the past. She believes that because
Speaker 1: there was this tension between her and Ebbie's family, a
Speaker 1: lot of the information she has said publicly hasn't been
Speaker 1: used like I didn't want to do it and like
Speaker 1: my side or like would I know, not be able
Speaker 1: to be told? If that means yeah, I understand. Kaylee
Speaker 1: met Ebbie in February twenty fifteen, they worked together playtime
Speaker 1: and pizza. Even after they both quit those jobs, they
Speaker 1: stayed friends. Ebbie got a job at foot locker at
Speaker 1: McCain Mall, and Kayley also had a new job at
Speaker 1: Big Rock Fun Park. Sometimes Ebbie would hang out with
Speaker 1: Kaylee and Kayley's co workers. After Ebbie started clashing more
Speaker 1: and more with her family, Kaylee told Ebbie that she
Speaker 1: could stay at her house. So I was like, well,
Speaker 1: you can come live with me for a little bit,
Speaker 1: Like you can come stay with me, You don't need
Speaker 1: to be in an environment like that. So I talked
Speaker 1: to my mom and she ended up staying with me
Speaker 1: for like a few weeks. And whilst she was staying
Speaker 1: with me, she was still going to school and doing
Speaker 1: what she's supposed to. Kayley says that Ebbie started staying
Speaker 1: with her in September twenty fifteen, the month before Ebbie disappeared,
Speaker 1: and stayed for a few weeks, and the whole time
Speaker 1: it was really good. She was asking normal like everything
Speaker 1: and was perfectularly sign she never hung out with guys
Speaker 1: that she didn't know, and if she did mention to
Speaker 1: do that, like while she was staying with me, Me
Speaker 1: and my older sister Destiny would always be like, try
Speaker 1: to tell her, like that's not safe, Like don't hang
Speaker 1: out with anyone you don't know unless someone you know
Speaker 1: is with you or people know exactly where you're at.
Speaker 1: You would never hang out with like any random guys
Speaker 1: like that or people she didn't know. Because Ebbie compartmentalized
Speaker 1: her life and had these different friend groups, Kayley said
Speaker 1: she didn't know any of the people who were at
Speaker 1: the party on Friday. She also didn't know Leo, the
Speaker 1: guy from the photographs. Kayley did go to Shalamant Park
Speaker 1: with Ebbie. Chalamant Park is right in front of another
Speaker 1: high school called Joe T. Robinson, the one that Kaylee
Speaker 1: and some of her friends attended. They all went there
Speaker 1: one time while Ebby was staying with Kayley sometimes, she said,
Speaker 1: in September. It was around eleven pm. So we ended
Speaker 1: up going to the park one night with two guys.
Speaker 1: I just remember one of them. But I just remember
Speaker 1: us going there one night, and that was the first
Speaker 1: time I ever been there with her, and we'd like
Speaker 1: the only time we ever went, so I didn't think
Speaker 1: she went often. It was just like that one time,
Speaker 1: but she knew where it was, but Ebie and Kayley
Speaker 1: ended up leaving quickly. We ended up leaving because we
Speaker 1: felt uncomfortable with those guys, and Eddie called him out
Speaker 1: on it because Ebbie is the type of person that's
Speaker 1: like very blunt and she'll tell you how she feels.
Speaker 1: And the guys didn't really like it because she said
Speaker 1: that she told one of them that he seems like
Speaker 1: a pedophile or rape. Its like he's just being creepy,
Speaker 1: and he didn't like that. So we ended up leaving
Speaker 1: and never talked to them again, and after that we
Speaker 1: never been to that park. I'm hoping that Kayley can
Speaker 1: help us figure out who these two guys are. And
Speaker 1: then Kayley told us about what had happened with phone.
Speaker 1: She confirmed that they had switched devices. We ended up
Speaker 1: like I ended up buying her phone and I gave
Speaker 1: her my phone, like we just switched phone and sold
Speaker 1: me her iPhone six I think it was, and I
Speaker 1: let her have my five so my I guess somehow
Speaker 1: my Apple i'd was still in that phone, so anytime
Speaker 1: she took like pictures of screenshots, I would get it
Speaker 1: on my phone. The last time that Kaylie saw Ebbie
Speaker 1: was early October twenty fifteen. She ended up saying she
Speaker 1: could go stay with her dad, so it was probably
Speaker 1: like the beginning of October. So the last time I
Speaker 1: actually got to hang out with her like that. The
Speaker 1: last time I spoke to her was that Friday before
Speaker 1: she went missing, because we made plans to hang out
Speaker 1: that Sunday. She was supposed to come back from a
Speaker 1: trip that she was going to take with one of
Speaker 1: her friends. But then after that I found out she
Speaker 1: went missing and I didn't hear from her again. Did
Speaker 1: she tell you where she was supposed to go on
Speaker 1: Saturday night? She said that that Friday she was like
Speaker 1: me and my friend. She didn't tell me what friends,
Speaker 1: but she was like, me and my friends are going
Speaker 1: out of town on a trip, like for the weekend.
Speaker 1: But apparently it went it got canceled, so she ended
Speaker 1: up not going. But I didn't know that part. I
Speaker 1: just knew she was going out of town for the weekend.
Speaker 1: I don't remember where. Kayley does not remember exactly who
Speaker 1: Ebbie was supposed to take this trip with, but I
Speaker 1: just know she said that she was going to go
Speaker 1: out of town and then that Sunday she came back,
Speaker 1: we said, hang out. We know that we can eliminate
Speaker 1: Kayley's house from where Ebbie was on Saturday night. So
Speaker 1: that means that whoever Ebbie was staying with wasn't any
Speaker 1: of the people who she was staying with after she
Speaker 1: left home. We'll be right back. After Ebbie went missing,
Speaker 1: Kayley said that she was worried that the police were
Speaker 1: not investigating, so one day, she and her mom decided
Speaker 1: to go to Chamont Park themselves. Even though Detective Tommy
Speaker 1: Hudson would later say that they could not have smelled
Speaker 1: decomposition from where they were, Kayley says she will never
Speaker 1: forget what she saw and smelled that day. We've heard
Speaker 1: this story secondhand, but here it is in Kayley's own words.
Speaker 1: So after we talked to them, we went to the
Speaker 1: park and my mom walked over there. First. She instantly
Speaker 1: with the drainage type. She was like, Kayley, no, don't
Speaker 1: come down here, like stay up there, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm comming like I want to know what's going on.
Speaker 1: So I went down there and I smelled it too,
Speaker 1: And so my mom ended up calling the cops multiple times,
Speaker 1: probably three or four, and then they finally came out
Speaker 1: and investigated it, like they just lifted it up and
Speaker 1: was like, oh, it's sewage and called it a day,
Speaker 1: which it upset me so much because I was like, literally,
Speaker 1: like you guys could have found her two weeks after
Speaker 1: she went missing and known like exactly what happened to her.
Speaker 1: Kaylee went back to the park herself to check the
Speaker 1: man hole. Me and my friend Lace at the time,
Speaker 1: I was like, can we go down there and see
Speaker 1: if we could go investigate that. We were what, like
Speaker 1: it was twenty fifteen, so I was like sixteen seventeen
Speaker 1: at the time, so not the smartness, but I was like,
Speaker 1: let's go see if we can go down there and
Speaker 1: see if like we can see anything, because obviously the
Speaker 1: cops aren't taking it seriously. But even if Ebie did
Speaker 1: want to go down there, there was no way she
Speaker 1: could have fit to shimmy herself down there and that
Speaker 1: drain Like me and my friend couldn't even pick it up.
Speaker 1: It was too heavy. There's no way she could have
Speaker 1: done it herself and moved it back. So like that series,
Speaker 1: this makes no sense. And the way that the ladder
Speaker 1: was it was like on the back side, so like
Speaker 1: if she did get in there, she would have to
Speaker 1: like stretch across to the other side of the hole
Speaker 1: to get even to the ladder thing. How would she
Speaker 1: have possibly done that? So Kaylee also does not believe
Speaker 1: that Ebbie would have gone down there herself. Whenever they
Speaker 1: told me that they found everything in her vehicle. Ebbie
Speaker 1: wasn't the type of person to leave her purse or
Speaker 1: her phone or anything like that anywhere, Like she always
Speaker 1: had to have it with her because she was always
Speaker 1: about taking pictures in videos then like all types of
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So like whenever they said she left
Speaker 1: her phone and everything like that was a red flag
Speaker 1: to me because it wasn't that type of person to
Speaker 1: just be nons a lot and leave everything and not
Speaker 1: think about it. There's been a lot of confusion about
Speaker 1: her what she might have been on the day that
Speaker 1: she called her brother. Yes, do you know what kind
Speaker 1: of drives she may have done? She only smoked wead,
Speaker 1: And even then I tried to get her to stop,
Speaker 1: but she only smoked weed. And that's the only thing
Speaker 1: I knew she was messing with. And she only did
Speaker 1: it with the people she was like hanging out outside
Speaker 1: of me because I wasn't a smoker, so I was like, Eavy, like,
Speaker 1: it's better if you don't do that because it can
Speaker 1: lead you like you could do something really hard, or
Speaker 1: like someone that you don't know could like lay something
Speaker 1: and like they can really hurt. Kayleie also heard about
Speaker 1: the towel. My mom smelt it where the car was
Speaker 1: parked and the towel was leading into the drain, which
Speaker 1: we found that out the day that we found out
Speaker 1: about her car, because they said that there was like
Speaker 1: a towel leading into the drain, which that's obviously like
Speaker 1: something like why wouldn't you want to look in there?
Speaker 1: If there's a towel leading into the drain on the ground,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you look in the drain? To begin with?
Speaker 1: It looked like a red color, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't have the red towel. Like Ebbie never carried
Speaker 1: around the towel, but apparently it was a towel from
Speaker 1: her brother's house, because whenever she stopped moving living with me,
Speaker 1: she ended up moving in with her dad and then
Speaker 1: apparently she moved in with her brother, and I think
Speaker 1: the towel was like the brothers, like she took it
Speaker 1: from her brother's house or something, and that's what they said,
Speaker 1: but that's a lie. I just know that it was,
Speaker 1: like the detective said, it was next to her car,
Speaker 1: leading like into the dream. So now we know where
Speaker 1: the towel came from. It came from Ebbie's brother's house,
Speaker 1: so it must have come out of her car. Kayley
Speaker 1: says that Ebbie was planning to give her her phone back,
Speaker 1: and that the screen was cracked, so that could explain
Speaker 1: why there was a receipt for what appeared to be
Speaker 1: a page you Go phone inside Ebbie's car. If she
Speaker 1: was planning to give the iPhone five back, maybe she
Speaker 1: bought a second phone as a backup. I asked Kaylee
Speaker 1: what happened to her phone when police first questioned her,
Speaker 1: Well after she went missing, do you remember were you
Speaker 1: still getting her pictures in your clouds? I did get
Speaker 1: like whenever I found out she was actually missing, and
Speaker 1: I had to talk to your depressive I look in
Speaker 1: like the screenshot part and whenever the last stuff I
Speaker 1: got was like, I actually have the pictures. I can
Speaker 1: look at the days I have them in my email.
Speaker 1: She says. The last screenshot she got from that phone
Speaker 1: was something that sounds like the text exchange that we
Speaker 1: saw between Ebbie and C about the video. You don't
Speaker 1: still have the phone, do you? No, the police ever
Speaker 1: gave it back to me, Like they wouldn't give it
Speaker 1: back to me, like the phone, so they took it.
Speaker 1: They tried to take the phone that I had, and
Speaker 1: at first they were like, well, you don't need we're
Speaker 1: not going to take the phone. Just give us everything
Speaker 1: you need, so like them everything that could possibly helped him.
Speaker 1: And then they tried to again take my phone. But
Speaker 1: the phone that was Ebby's was originally mine, like Ebby
Speaker 1: didn't pay for it, so I was supposed to get
Speaker 1: that back and they never gave that back. So I
Speaker 1: never got that one back. But they never actually physically
Speaker 1: took mine because my parents were like, we gave you
Speaker 1: everything you went through her phone, there's nothing else, like,
Speaker 1: there's no reason for you to keep her phone if
Speaker 1: she's cooperating and gave you everything that you guys asked for.
Speaker 1: So they never actually took it. But I ended up
Speaker 1: trading that in because it's been years, so I ended
Speaker 1: up getting a new phone. I think of twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: and I haven't had that phone since Detective Bruce Maxwell
Speaker 1: has said that he's looked through Ebbie's phone all six
Speaker 1: thousand photos that are on there. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: there could be anything still in the cloud, still in
Speaker 1: Kaylee's phone that could help us. She says she's going
Speaker 1: to give us her eye cloud log in. So now
Speaker 1: we're going to touch base with Mike and go through
Speaker 1: everything that Kaylee has. Like so many among investigations, you
Speaker 1: reach a point where it's a waiting game. So I'm
Speaker 1: playing phone tag with sources or just waiting until a
Speaker 1: source changes their mind and wants to talk. And instead
Speaker 1: of reporting any more second or third hand stories, we're
Speaker 1: trying our best to get to the source of all
Speaker 1: these rumors. There's another source who's done a lot of
Speaker 1: investigating to Ebby's death, and she just told me Ebbie's
Speaker 1: body might not have been found in the way the
Speaker 1: police reported it. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone.
Speaker 1: Helen Gone is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It's written and hosted by me Katherine Townsend and produced
Speaker 1: by Gabby Watts and Mike doubt Our executive producers or
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and Virginia Prescott. Mix and Master
Speaker 1: is by Ryan Peoples and our music is by Ben Sale.
Speaker 1: If you have any information regarding Ebbie's case, please call
Speaker 1: our tipline at six seven eight six three two six
Speaker 1: one five nine School of Humans. School of Humans