Speaker 1: The crushing uncertainty of a family not knowing is what
Speaker 1: drives me most. In this case, Carol Thompson's mother, stepfather,
Speaker 1: and little brother are buried together, side by side, in
Speaker 1: a cemetery about fifteen miles from the Stevenson's farmhouse. Her uncle,
Speaker 1: Eddie Dowell is interred in his home state Michigan. During
Speaker 1: my trip to Ohio, I paid a visit to the
Speaker 1: cemetery to stand in front of three marble hearts, two
Speaker 1: larger stones book ending a smaller one in the middle. Billy, Linda,
Speaker 1: and Billy Jr's names etched across the front, with the
Speaker 1: date of their deaths the same. In my line of work,
Speaker 1: this is as sobering and distressing as it gets. Three
Speaker 1: days after the fire, a private memorial service was held
Speaker 1: for the Stevenson's friends and family. Billy Stevenson and five
Speaker 1: year old Billy Junior's caskets were open for viewing. Linda
Speaker 1: Stevenson's body was so badly burned that the family decided
Speaker 1: to have hers closed. Carol Thompson had asked a friend
Speaker 1: to sew a little satin pillow that she could place
Speaker 1: in her little brother's casket. As she explained to me,
Speaker 1: there is no way to escape the bizarre thoughts that
Speaker 1: haunt you after losing your family to homicide. I didn't
Speaker 1: tell a story for a long time when it first happened,
Speaker 1: you know, when it happened, I didn't tell because I've
Speaker 1: thought people would think I was kind of crazier just
Speaker 1: looking a bit now, you know, I'm just so I'm young,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm dumb, and I've never been around
Speaker 1: de body, and I'm scared, you know. And so I
Speaker 1: walked to the front where the caskets going down the
Speaker 1: mont Moms was closed, and I had little Billies on
Speaker 1: one end, Moms in the middle, and Steves on the
Speaker 1: other end, so that two opened in one clothes. So
Speaker 1: I got the little Billy's casket and I go to
Speaker 1: toss the pillow then and when I did, my hand
Speaker 1: brushed the little bill and that hit him. It was
Speaker 1: like a joel And all of a sudden, I felt
Speaker 1: weird and I could see white coming through my pores,
Speaker 1: like yellow like now, I'm not I know, I know
Speaker 1: it sounds crazy. What I'm like, what you know, I
Speaker 1: yang back and I'm like what the hell? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is breaking crazy, and I don't want to tell
Speaker 1: anybody else because I don't they might think I'm totally nuts.
Speaker 1: So the I'm like, well, what don't happen if I
Speaker 1: touched Stephile I get the same thing. So I go
Speaker 1: over to Steve's casket and I do Stephen. I get
Speaker 1: the same kind of reaction. So then I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I gotta try the mom. So I go to her
Speaker 1: her casket. It's closed, right, I can't feel it, but
Speaker 1: I can almost feel it's like right there almost. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't quite get it, and damn it, why can
Speaker 1: I get to Mom? You know? But I knew it
Speaker 1: was there, get sense of it was the weirdest thing
Speaker 1: ever ever previous Sleean paper ghosts. He said, if I'm
Speaker 1: not home by in the morning, he said, turning TV up,
Speaker 1: well and behold by here's a man that's a two
Speaker 1: time convicted bank robber, as anand federal prowl, and they're
Speaker 1: all scared to death of us man. So I picked
Speaker 1: up phone. I called Ron and said, hey, Ron, did
Speaker 1: you hear what happened at Mom's house. He's like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, Carrol says, sorry, oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I heard my herd, I said, Ronna, I you know
Speaker 1: the place, are gonna know what time he left last night?
Speaker 1: So what time's relief? I left eleven thirty. Immediately I thought, what,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. What my name is M. William Phelps.
Speaker 1: I'm an investigative journalist and author of forty four true
Speaker 1: crime books. This is season two of Paper Ghosts Burned.
Speaker 1: Seasoned investigators rely on instincts they've developed over a period
Speaker 1: of time from their experience on the ground, talking with
Speaker 1: and studying people, and as we've learned criminals, they will
Speaker 1: do just about anything to stay out of prison. At
Speaker 1: this point, Detective Cooper and the Sheriff's Department's investigation was
Speaker 1: in flux. Much of it focused on that mystery man,
Speaker 1: Dick Weston, and yet when it came down to it,
Speaker 1: they still didn't have that one concrete piece of evidence
Speaker 1: tying Dick directly to the murders. But Cooper had been
Speaker 1: here before with other cases. The thing to do whatever
Speaker 1: it takes on any homicide, if you don't have a
Speaker 1: smoking gun, for lack of better words, you always go
Speaker 1: to the funeral coature one. You want to watch people's reactions,
Speaker 1: and sometimes people don't come up to the casket, and
Speaker 1: I will say something like, uh, this is what you
Speaker 1: give to you a little rotten. Uh So, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's something you really gotta watch. So you put
Speaker 1: a mike on the casket. Oh yeah, I've done that
Speaker 1: on a couple of them. Put the mic down the
Speaker 1: casket and sit back here and recorded, because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's a crime and passion, you might
Speaker 1: give him say I'm sorry I did this to you,
Speaker 1: you know, do it in a low voice nobody else
Speaker 1: can hear. But but no, we was at we was
Speaker 1: at corepreneural. We'll see what the reactions were. Cooper and
Speaker 1: his team never got what they were hoping for a
Speaker 1: funeral confession. Yet something did stand out to investigators. Where
Speaker 1: was family friend Ron Thomas. Up until this point, the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department had spoken to Ron once, under the pretense
Speaker 1: of Dick being their soul killer, something like, Hey, Ron,
Speaker 1: can you help us out here? Do you know anything
Speaker 1: about this guy Dick Weston? That tone eventually changed, so
Speaker 1: with Ron returning for his second interview, now with the
Speaker 1: FBI involved, the conversation was going to be centered on
Speaker 1: Dick and Ron conspiring to carry out the Stevenson murders together.
Speaker 1: Unlike the first meeting, in which Ron stated that an
Speaker 1: unknown white male was still at the Stevenson's house by
Speaker 1: the time he left, Ron now admitted to being acquainted
Speaker 1: with Dick Weston, but said they didn't have a close relationship.
Speaker 1: One thing about that day. We showed him a picture
Speaker 1: of limb to Stevens of purse and the man liked
Speaker 1: to swallow his tongue, his body language, and how you
Speaker 1: reactive with just I was like, how then did you
Speaker 1: find that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this this wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to happen in those FBI reports. Ron became extremely nervous.
Speaker 1: When Aiden's brought up the handbag in the Whitewater River.
Speaker 1: He said he didn't have any idea how the bag
Speaker 1: could have gotten near his house. Quote, it looks like
Speaker 1: somebody is trying to set me up. The agent asked
Speaker 1: the obvious question. If someone had been trying to set
Speaker 1: you up, why would they toss the bag in the
Speaker 1: river and hide it. Studying this interview, something became clear
Speaker 1: to me he was putting in place the information he
Speaker 1: needed to cover for himself. That traffic stopped by the
Speaker 1: Amelia cop leaving the Stevenson's before the fire and murders,
Speaker 1: and not knowing Dick Weston all that well, Detective Cooper
Speaker 1: and his team dug into Ron's association with Dick. They
Speaker 1: knew damn well what he had told the FBI was bullshit.
Speaker 1: He and Dick were close friends and business partners and
Speaker 1: had been for years. We find out that Dick worked
Speaker 1: for Ron at a car lot for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and that he had been seen in his house several times,
Speaker 1: and that they had seen each other a little bar
Speaker 1: up in Brookville. So I mean, it wasn't like they
Speaker 1: were glued together. They weren't consulate together, but there was
Speaker 1: an association there. I asked Cooper where Ron Thomas's name
Speaker 1: was at this point in the investigation. I mean, why
Speaker 1: wasn't Ron by then wearing handcuffs and being perp walked
Speaker 1: in front of the media. Ron seemed to be up
Speaker 1: to his eyeballs in this and had just skated by
Speaker 1: with no one seemingly interested in going after the guy.
Speaker 1: He still would not, so no, I don't have anything
Speaker 1: to do with it. And he threw Dick underneath the
Speaker 1: bus without any hard evidence implicating Ron's involvement and Ron
Speaker 1: now pointing a finger at his shady business associate. Cooper's
Speaker 1: focal point had to remain on Dick Weston. But Cooper
Speaker 1: knew Dick Weston was dangerous and he needed to do
Speaker 1: something quick to get him off the street. We were
Speaker 1: to start looking at Dick and come to find out
Speaker 1: what we found. Discovered a Dick and violated his parole violation.
Speaker 1: He had a pro violation, and we got ahold of
Speaker 1: his federal Prouser explained to him what was going on,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, yeah, well are you going to violate? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can do that. Such an important maneuver on Cooper's part.
Speaker 1: Violate Dick's parole, get him off the street behind bars.
Speaker 1: Not only might it make Dick more willing to talk,
Speaker 1: but the people in town, many of whom Cooper knew
Speaker 1: had valid, helpful information, would breathe a sigh of relief
Speaker 1: that this volatile, tough dude who took pleasure and threatening
Speaker 1: people was in jail and could not hurt them. The
Speaker 1: pro Sir met Dick up in Brookville and Dick. I
Speaker 1: think Dick had an idea something was gonna happen to him,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know what. So pro user inter beauty
Speaker 1: and his took Weston's coming back into Brookville. He gets
Speaker 1: the traffic light in middle of Brookville and stops the
Speaker 1: traffic light and we took him down. I made it
Speaker 1: between us and the FBI and all everything. Ever, how
Speaker 1: did that go? Oh? It was one person in Brookville said,
Speaker 1: I've never seen some many guns out at one time,
Speaker 1: you know. So we took him out. He's by himself
Speaker 1: and and middle of town and we just descend on
Speaker 1: him like it was just unreal. And so we get
Speaker 1: him out. We're arresting were on the pro violation. What
Speaker 1: did he say? Did he say anything? No? And I
Speaker 1: don't think he was really surprised. He was very common cool.
Speaker 1: We took him to the Sheriff's office right there in
Speaker 1: Brookville and Captain Painton I interviewed him. We questioned him
Speaker 1: about the homicide and uh, he said he didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with it and didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: And he was very very cool, calm and cold. Numerous
Speaker 1: homicides I've investigated. I've probably spoken to three cycle paths,
Speaker 1: and he's one of them. Because you could just look
Speaker 1: in his eyes and tell I'll kill you if I
Speaker 1: get a chance. Because he had to remain in lock
Speaker 1: up under that federal parole violation, there was very little
Speaker 1: chance Dick Weston was going to be back on the
Speaker 1: street anytime soon. Dick was the key to the Stevenson murders.
Speaker 1: That was clear to the Sheriff's department at this point.
Speaker 1: So as Detective Cooper in the FEDS began to build
Speaker 1: a case against Dick on four counts of aggravated murder,
Speaker 1: they're investigative aim stared toward the two women who alibied him.
Speaker 1: Dick's girlfriend, Drusilla, remained tight lipped. She maintained that Dick
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the murders, and they were
Speaker 1: both at her friend Tanitha's house all night, where Drusilla
Speaker 1: had rented a room. After all, Tanatha had allibied them both.
Speaker 1: The police were looking to get Tanatha to cooperate with them.
Speaker 1: Drusilla was living in her house. Tanathan new Drusilla's comings
Speaker 1: and goings, and Drusilla was now paying visits to Dick
Speaker 1: Weston in prison quite often. The Sheriff's department decided to
Speaker 1: bring Tonathan in and put the investigative squeeze on her.
Speaker 1: She was scared, and I think she realized we took
Speaker 1: Dick off the streets. I think she realized that if
Speaker 1: I don't fare away out of this, I'm going to
Speaker 1: jail too. I'm gonna lose my kids. So she gave
Speaker 1: us a very detailed statement. At that point in time.
Speaker 1: Come to find out, Tanathan Barger was more than just
Speaker 1: a bystander caught in the middle of a homicide investigation.
Speaker 1: She found herself in a position where she was in fear,
Speaker 1: not only for her life that of her children. Because
Speaker 1: of that, she agreed to become an FBI in Weren't It.
Speaker 1: From that point on, Tanatha's life seemed to be ripped
Speaker 1: from the pages of a spy novel. She'd meet with
Speaker 1: agents for secret rendezvous by a big oak tree off
Speaker 1: the highway or in the woods, out of sight from
Speaker 1: any civilization. So you sit down with them, and how
Speaker 1: are you feeling when you sit down? Really, I couldn't
Speaker 1: even tell you how I felt because I've never done
Speaker 1: nothing like that before in my life. I didn't know him.
Speaker 1: My life was going to be changed. It was a
Speaker 1: white out from my shoulders to know that I could
Speaker 1: get talk to them and let them know what happened.
Speaker 1: I didn't wan't know about it to know what I was,
Speaker 1: what I was doing, because if they didn't, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: a lay up till next day. Tanatha was fearful of Dick.
Speaker 1: She did not want to become murder victim number five.
Speaker 1: Her friend Jusilla helped ease the tension and convinced Dick
Speaker 1: that he could us Tanitha. Once that groundwork was established,
Speaker 1: Dick told Tonath the details she would never forget, as
Speaker 1: you can hear in one of her tape statements to police.
Speaker 1: Tanatha was a wealth of information when it came to
Speaker 1: what Dick did the night of and after the murders.
Speaker 1: He said that he had went over back to the
Speaker 1: Stavenson's house, and in the meanwhile when he went in,
Speaker 1: he had time Miss Davidson that Carol Thompson maintained that
Speaker 1: her mother Linda was tied up on the night she
Speaker 1: was murdered, though Detective Cooper remains adamant that no such
Speaker 1: thing ever occurred. Said Alan was going to do was
Speaker 1: take the money and like jewelry or whatever that was invadable,
Speaker 1: and said when he'd done that that these other two
Speaker 1: guys come in and started shooting by other two guys
Speaker 1: Dick meant, Billy Stevenson and his brother in law, Eddie
Speaker 1: dow What's interesting here to point out is that Dick's
Speaker 1: retelling of the events put him in a position where
Speaker 1: he claimed he had no other option but to retaliate.
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure how everything happened, but in
Speaker 1: the way he talked, he was standing one saturn and
Speaker 1: they come in and started flowing. Eddie and he started
Speaker 1: pouring back at him, and he killed her and them too,
Speaker 1: and said that a bullet had went through the wall
Speaker 1: and hit the little boy. Dick Weston was essentially minimizing
Speaker 1: the cold blooded murder of a five year old child
Speaker 1: by shifting the blame onto Eddie and Billy for starting
Speaker 1: the shootout. As you heard at the end of the
Speaker 1: last episode, Tonnathan said she saw Dick return to her
Speaker 1: house the morning after the murders wearing a shirt covered
Speaker 1: in blood. Did he explained having the boat on his shirt,
Speaker 1: He just said the one guy I guess it was
Speaker 1: Mrs Staviston I had when he shot him. It didn't
Speaker 1: phase him. He just kept coming towards him, and then
Speaker 1: then after he kept coming towards en. What did he
Speaker 1: say happened and he fell into him? God, Mr Stevenson,
Speaker 1: Belly and Richard Laverne Western Keep in mind that in
Speaker 1: these tapes, she'll sometimes hear the investigator referred to Dick
Speaker 1: by his legal name, Richard Laverne Weston. When Dick was
Speaker 1: telling a story about the shootout, and he said who
Speaker 1: was with him? Or elaborating on note from the way
Speaker 1: he was talking, he was the only one that done
Speaker 1: in and the shooting the son's other two guys said,
Speaker 1: he and I went into in one hand in the
Speaker 1: thirty eight and at the two and the thirty eight,
Speaker 1: both calibers used in the quadruple homicides. Quick note, as
Speaker 1: you hear how the officer asks his next question, Tanathan
Speaker 1: had already given police this information during their secret meetings.
Speaker 1: They just now needed her to say it on tape. Okay. Subsequently,
Speaker 1: after Richard Laverne Weston making a statement about how how
Speaker 1: the robbery and the killings went down, did he know
Speaker 1: also make some kind of a statement that he had
Speaker 1: rearranged the bodies to make it looflected than two people
Speaker 1: involved in the shooting. Would you can lighten me on that.
Speaker 1: He didn't say right out how he done it, but
Speaker 1: he says, uh, they was put in a place to
Speaker 1: where they think that they are two or three and
Speaker 1: the shootings instead of this one. That question by the
Speaker 1: investigator produced an interesting response because if Tanatha's story was true,
Speaker 1: that would mean Dick used two different caliber weapons himself,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, it would absolve Ron Thomas of any
Speaker 1: direct involvement. Okay, did you observe anything, Elpso on the
Speaker 1: sixth there was a gun um along severalone and he
Speaker 1: had two grants in his hand. He pulled out his
Speaker 1: pocket and showed to us at bark. Cooper believed that
Speaker 1: forty four caliber weapon was possibly the gun Billy Stevenson
Speaker 1: was holding at the time of his death, a gun
Speaker 1: from Billy's collection that was incidentally missing from the crime scene.
Speaker 1: You recall a kind of jewelry. He was showing you
Speaker 1: rings and so is a big cluster and then there
Speaker 1: was one small one. Can you describe the ring it
Speaker 1: was you're referring to as a cluster for me? Okay,
Speaker 1: it was something like a dinner ring on it was larger,
Speaker 1: about fifteen sixteen diamonds in the top, and there was
Speaker 1: a si. Among the jewels Dick allegedly had in his
Speaker 1: possession was a diamond ring worth approximately four to six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which would be worth nearly triple that amount today.
Speaker 1: Carol Thompson had told Cooper and later showed me photos
Speaker 1: of a unique, expensive diamond ring that her mother, Linda
Speaker 1: always wore. If they were the same, that would mean
Speaker 1: Dick or somebody he knew, took that ring off Linda's hand,
Speaker 1: either dead or alive. Tonathan said Drusilla was instructed by
Speaker 1: Dick to hold onto it in case she ever needed
Speaker 1: the money. Okay. Then later on on July eight, the
Speaker 1: following day, did you observe Richard Laverne Weston with a
Speaker 1: brown paper bag for him when he'd come out to
Speaker 1: the car, And he had a brown paper bag out
Speaker 1: of the car. But when we come back from picking
Speaker 1: up the girls, he had money at laying on the
Speaker 1: bar to paper the truck, and which was five thousand
Speaker 1: top on the dollar. Okay. When you returned to the house,
Speaker 1: you saw that he had laid out five thousand five
Speaker 1: in the dollars and cashman, it was that cash payment
Speaker 1: Dick made on his truck just days after the Stevenson
Speaker 1: murders that initially caught Cooper's attention. Where in the hell
Speaker 1: had a guy like Dick Weston gotten fifty five dollars
Speaker 1: in cash? What's more, Dick wasn't the only person to
Speaker 1: suddenly come into extra money. Tanathan also revealed that following
Speaker 1: Dick's arrest, she accompanied Drusilla to Ron Thomas's house on
Speaker 1: several occasions. The first it was to pick up one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and take it to a lawyer in Indianapolis.
Speaker 1: During the second visit, Tanathan said she witnessed Ron's wife
Speaker 1: and Drusilla a brown envelope containing three thousand dollars in cash. Ron,
Speaker 1: overseeing the transaction, allegedly asked, how long will it take
Speaker 1: you to get that money to a lawyer? According to Tanatha,
Speaker 1: Drusilla went on to launder the money, going to the bank,
Speaker 1: purchasing a cashier's checking her name, and writing it out
Speaker 1: to a lawyer in Missouri. Except she only sent two thousand,
Speaker 1: Tanathan said, Drusilla pocketed the rest for herself. Why would
Speaker 1: Ron Thomas, a good friend of the Stevenson's, foot the
Speaker 1: bill for Dick Weston's lawyer, what state did Ron have
Speaker 1: in this? As for the rest of that money stolen
Speaker 1: from the Stevenson home, depending on which person you speak to,
Speaker 1: there was upwards of two hundred thousand or as little
Speaker 1: as forty thousand still missing. And based on what Tanath
Speaker 1: the Barger told the officer, they had a good idea
Speaker 1: what happened to all that money? Just as uh the
Speaker 1: yon show us his now he said, what do you
Speaker 1: know any nights here? Question that that can get a show?
Speaker 1: You can get one off upon us? It's no lot
Speaker 1: don't And he says, well, he says Alius after bottle one,
Speaker 1: and he asked if there was a store open it
Speaker 1: with sale hard were early in mploying, and I told
Speaker 1: it the author was one open at seven o'clock. Tannathan said.
Speaker 1: Dick left early the next morning and returned hours later
Speaker 1: with a shovel in hand. He gave it to her
Speaker 1: and said she could use it for um gardening work.
Speaker 1: Tanathan then recalled the day when she and Drusilla went
Speaker 1: out for a drive not too far from where Lynda
Speaker 1: Stevenson's purse was found in the White Water River. She
Speaker 1: took me out through their later own and was pouring
Speaker 1: it out that that was the road. And she got
Speaker 1: out of the car out there and went up into
Speaker 1: the wooded area on the route of the road, and
Speaker 1: she turned real white to pay all and she looked
Speaker 1: back over her shoulder back into the wooded area. And
Speaker 1: I used her on the way out and later on
Speaker 1: about it, and she said that was where the mono
Speaker 1: was buried. This area where Tanatha is talking about, it's
Speaker 1: about a seventy minute drive from the crime scene. Don't forget.
Speaker 1: And those days before cell phones and sell towers which
Speaker 1: could easily pinpoint your exact location. Not mentioned DNA analysis
Speaker 1: connecting a suspect directly to a crime scene. This might
Speaker 1: as well have been in another country. The Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: was working under the theory that Dick Weston committed the
Speaker 1: murder sometime after Carol Thompson made that PM call to
Speaker 1: her mother. What was still unclear, though, was Ron Thomas's involvement.
Speaker 1: Did Dick act alone where his actions premeditated? Could he
Speaker 1: have seized on an opportunity he saw while at the
Speaker 1: Stevenson's that night and returned later on with an accomplice.
Speaker 1: Detective Cooper was not leaning one way or the other. Still,
Speaker 1: the crime scene had the feel of two or more shooters,
Speaker 1: as there were two different caliber weapons used and two
Speaker 1: different heights measured as far as bullet location on the bodies.
Speaker 1: With reliable information coming in at a fairly good clip,
Speaker 1: it was becoming more and more obvious how fear Dick
Speaker 1: Weston was in that Brookville community. Time is the levant
Speaker 1: and in the end of time, President myself got taken.
Speaker 1: Sorry Cooper. Going back to those cassette tapes, I found
Speaker 1: an interview police conducted with a juvenile source who spent
Speaker 1: time inside Tanatha's house in the days following the murders,
Speaker 1: And what is hard to ignore is the inherent fear
Speaker 1: you can hear in the child's voice while describing what
Speaker 1: she witnessed in the conversations she had, She okay, was
Speaker 1: that well Dick was still there? Did you see Dick?
Speaker 1: Question with the gun in your house? The focus of
Speaker 1: the interview then shifted to interactions the child had with
Speaker 1: Drew se La once Dick was in prison. When you
Speaker 1: and Drew were riding around in her truck, did you
Speaker 1: and her have occasionally talk about anything? Just wrote around? Yeah,
Speaker 1: about to telephone. We're about to tell phone, She said,
Speaker 1: if she can't get on because everybody's don't. The young
Speaker 1: girl was hugging the phone talking to her friends, as
Speaker 1: kids often do, and so with only one land line
Speaker 1: in the house, no one else could use it. Drusilla
Speaker 1: was pissed about this. She says, she can't talk that
Speaker 1: because the boys on. But you wan't think she ever
Speaker 1: hard at you do well? She said, if I tell
Speaker 1: her that Mary wasn't to film, it's difficult to hear,
Speaker 1: but it's worth repeating that. The child said, if I
Speaker 1: told anyone where the money was, Drusilla was going to
Speaker 1: kill me. She said that if you told where the
Speaker 1: money was, how would you know where the money? Background road?
Speaker 1: According to the child, Drusilla told her that the money
Speaker 1: was somewhere on the background road. Drew told you that
Speaker 1: she had the money. Very no, no, she didn't say
Speaker 1: there she had an on the background road? And what
Speaker 1: did the child mean by background road? It was becoming
Speaker 1: clear that there was a large sum of money, likely
Speaker 1: stolen from the Stevenson home, that Dick and Drusilla hid
Speaker 1: somewhere so law enforcement could never find it. Oh, she
Speaker 1: said she she was saying about being buried. She just
Speaker 1: said she had the money. What money was she talking about?
Speaker 1: I don't know. She told you could say anything about it.
Speaker 1: She Drusilla Merritta wasn't playing. She was doing Dick's bidding
Speaker 1: for him, which, as she told the kid, could include
Speaker 1: murder if the situation called for. We knew Dressille was
Speaker 1: involved the point she seen the stolen property. She was
Speaker 1: involved in burying the stolen property and taking possession of it.
Speaker 1: We didn't know whether she was involved directly in a
Speaker 1: homicide or not. Dick became more incense while in jail
Speaker 1: as the days passed and the noose tightened. On the
Speaker 1: phone with Drusilla, he warned or rather threatened her specifically
Speaker 1: about going anywhere near that money. Turns out that background
Speaker 1: road the juvenile source mentioned went by another name. We
Speaker 1: knew that they took the money out and buried it,
Speaker 1: and from what I could tell us from what Drew
Speaker 1: that told her and Dick, they buried it on what
Speaker 1: was called tunnel road. And we couldn't find a tunnel
Speaker 1: road nowhere. Well, come to find out, the locals up
Speaker 1: there they call it tunnel road because the trees are
Speaker 1: grown over so much. That's always dark when you drive
Speaker 1: down through there. So yeah, we we knew it was
Speaker 1: buried out their own tunnel road somewhere. They didn't know
Speaker 1: exactly where. However, in response, Cooper in the Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: devised an extraordinary plan. Well, we started twenty four hour
Speaker 1: surveillance of Drusilla, and that was interesting. At that point
Speaker 1: in time. We had the FBI and went cooperation with
Speaker 1: the in the state police. We had an airplane setting
Speaker 1: through airport, and we had a pilot setting their two seven.
Speaker 1: On top of that, Cooper's boss had a connection with
Speaker 1: a local car dealership, so he and Cooper would literally
Speaker 1: change vehicles every day and follow Drusilla wherever she went
Speaker 1: with minimal risk of being noticed. Remember Tnatha had begun
Speaker 1: working for them. She was also watching Drusilla's every move.
Speaker 1: When Drew left the house, Nathan called Cooper and relaid
Speaker 1: that information. She would get the phone and call us
Speaker 1: and say she's leaving seven in the morning, where she's
Speaker 1: leaving in the next fifteen minutes, and the minute that
Speaker 1: would happen, we would get the plane in the air
Speaker 1: day and night, and we would start a surveillance. They
Speaker 1: needed Drusilla to lead them to the money. But Drusilla
Speaker 1: was very street smart. She knew they were following her.
Speaker 1: She had no clue, however, that every time she left
Speaker 1: the house a plane was in the air with eyes
Speaker 1: on her. Well, and behold, she went out of Tongue Road.
Speaker 1: She got out, walked into the woods, and and the
Speaker 1: I don't remember the agents or the state troopers watched
Speaker 1: her go over by this tree, and she has sort
Speaker 1: of walked around and look and got back on our
Speaker 1: car and left. Well, we then we knew, okay, we
Speaker 1: know it's in this area, so we kept waiting for her,
Speaker 1: hopefully she'd go out and dig it up. Well, she
Speaker 1: never didn't do that. She just went by it a
Speaker 1: couple of times. After figuring out the general location of
Speaker 1: whatever Drusilla kept visiting in the woods, law enforcement went
Speaker 1: out and started digging. So we got a metal detector
Speaker 1: and went out by the the tree and went around
Speaker 1: with the metal detector. Well, it didn't pick nothing up
Speaker 1: an FBI agent. I don't know where they got it
Speaker 1: at or where it came from, but they come back
Speaker 1: with a military mind sweeper. Yeah, a big one, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, Like he using World War
Speaker 1: two or the sweep roads from mines and we went
Speaker 1: over there and they hit that and boy, that thing
Speaker 1: just went wild, you know. So we knew something metal
Speaker 1: was down there, so dug it up. And when we
Speaker 1: dug it up, there was a I garhead Dick Wesson's
Speaker 1: name on it had an ID number and side was
Speaker 1: like twenty eight thousand dollars in cash. A forty four
Speaker 1: melt them Wesson a bunch of jewelry it was. It
Speaker 1: was a treasure troue crime scene evidence. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: It put the question right there all down. The Feds
Speaker 1: in the Sheriff's department went back to Dick. They didn't
Speaker 1: give away specifics, They simply told them they had evidence.
Speaker 1: Did he want to say anything? At this point, Dick
Speaker 1: willingly spoke without his lawyer present, but minimized his role,
Speaker 1: pushing the blame once again on the victim. He said
Speaker 1: that Stevenson tried to shoot him, and when Stevenson fell four,
Speaker 1: he couldn't shoot him because gun wouldn't fire. Well, this
Speaker 1: is a revolver. Revolvers don't malfunction, so that was a
Speaker 1: little hard for us to believe. So we took the
Speaker 1: forty four all thos we sent to the FBI lab
Speaker 1: and come to find out the forty four did have
Speaker 1: a malfunction that when you're laying on the ground and
Speaker 1: you're trying to shoot up, it wouldn't fire. So that
Speaker 1: kind of corroborated what Dick had said and the position
Speaker 1: we found Billy's hand in with the pistol, because Billy
Speaker 1: probably come out there was forty four, wanted to defended
Speaker 1: this family and he was met by whoever you know
Speaker 1: right there and shot in four holes and then on
Speaker 1: the money on one of the rappers on the money
Speaker 1: and found Dick Weston's thumb print, And so do you
Speaker 1: take this now to Dick and say hey, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and said hey, you know, we know you're involved. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be charged. Well, I'd say he do it all
Speaker 1: Ron Thomas in Well, if you can get me out
Speaker 1: of jail, I'm sure I can prove that Ron Thomas
Speaker 1: did this, and he had the money somewhere around violin
Speaker 1: And you know, I can really help you guys if
Speaker 1: I can get out of prison. So then he started
Speaker 1: really throwing wrong or at the bus. This minds you
Speaker 1: coming from a guy who claimed the events of that
Speaker 1: night were a burglary gone wrong. And remember in his
Speaker 1: first interview with the FBI, Dick said he was the
Speaker 1: only one involved, so why would he changes to now
Speaker 1: Cooper's checkmate move paid off, and it would now be
Speaker 1: safe to say from that point on any loyalty between
Speaker 1: Dick Weston and Ron Thomas was officially over. In the
Speaker 1: next episode of Paper Ghosts, we went to the filling
Speaker 1: station to get guys and just all at once were
Speaker 1: surrounded by ever beyond cop that was don't basically tell
Speaker 1: me what you told down. He said that people have
Speaker 1: a lot of money. This karate guy that you know
Speaker 1: this got a black failed karate showed him creep pase
Speaker 1: for money and that he's sad he was involved in
Speaker 1: a hell of a shoot out. There. I stood and
Speaker 1: looked at that man that night, I stood and looked
Speaker 1: at this mass murder. Talk to him. Paper Ghosts is
Speaker 1: written and executive produced by me and William Phelps and
Speaker 1: I Heart executive producer Christina Everett, with script consultant Matthew Riddle,
Speaker 1: audio editing and mixing by a Booze Afar thanks to
Speaker 1: Will Pearson at I Heart Radio. The series theme number
Speaker 1: four four two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps
Speaker 1: and Tom Mooney. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.