Speaker 1: Place your left hand on the bay Bible and raise
Speaker 1: your right hand and repeat after me. I do solemnly
Speaker 1: swear the jury find a defendant not. Protests continued this
Speaker 1: weekend at Ferguson and around the country. Resisting makes no sense.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't fit, you must have quit. Judge, you
Speaker 1: are the last line of reason in this casey, every
Speaker 1: one of us took it all the sapotas, and we're
Speaker 1: sworn to uphold the Constitution. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: this is sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. Is this
Speaker 1: Mason Lindsay, Yes, this is Don't ever call me about this.
Speaker 1: I don't like your brother, don't like you, and I
Speaker 1: don't know a god damn thing about the murderit case
Speaker 1: you asked me about. But I do to know about y'all.
Speaker 1: What a bunch of swine you are, So don't ever
Speaker 1: call me. Okay. After decades of working within the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system, I've seen that I've experienced firsthand the told
Speaker 1: the job takes on those who dedicate their lives to
Speaker 1: public safety, whether you're a sheriff or a local police officer,
Speaker 1: and a heinous crime takes place in your town. You
Speaker 1: want that case to be solved. You need it to
Speaker 1: be closed, and quite frankly, you want the right person
Speaker 1: behind bars. You've sworn to protect your community. But what
Speaker 1: happens when a case starts to slip away? What happens
Speaker 1: when you still can't find the answers after a year,
Speaker 1: after two years, three years, ten years, fifteen years? What
Speaker 1: can the criminal justice system do to keep these cold
Speaker 1: cases alive? When responsibility for solving a case changes hands
Speaker 1: time and time again, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: who really does bear the burden of Solider kids? On
Speaker 1: today's episode, we'll explore all this through the framework of
Speaker 1: the Wideman Kids still unsolved after fifth teen years. Hello,
Speaker 1: Mr Wise, ye hi, this is Philip Holloway from the
Speaker 1: Sworn podcast. How are you doing good? If you have
Speaker 1: just a minute, do you mind speaking with me about
Speaker 1: the Wideman case. I have a minute to speak with
Speaker 1: you about it. It's my understanding you were one of
Speaker 1: the first people to arrive on the scene. Is that correct, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I was the first one to get there. I was
Speaker 1: actually a fire powder for the County Powder Corfet turn
Speaker 1: the Carty Macnya, so I was a volunteer you. So
Speaker 1: that morning we had a had a fire. I responded
Speaker 1: to in my personal vehicle, called inside a fire department,
Speaker 1: and another guy was picking up the fire truth so
Speaker 1: I got to the scene before. So you were actually
Speaker 1: the first person to arrive, Yester, I was the first
Speaker 1: one to arrive at a m on March twenty second
Speaker 1: two thou and two, a truck driver passing through Rebecca,
Speaker 1: Georgia saw a large fire from the highway. After the
Speaker 1: driver called the Turner County Volunteer Fire Department responded and
Speaker 1: James Wise was the first one at the scene. When
Speaker 1: I got into that place, I always up the driveway.
Speaker 1: I backed all the way just about out to the
Speaker 1: highway where they had some double gates, and I parked there.
Speaker 1: It was a real dark night sometimes you have those freeeding.
Speaker 1: I walked up to that house and it was dark
Speaker 1: and just had a bad feeling that morning. Once I
Speaker 1: looked around and I've seen all the cars there, I
Speaker 1: just had a feeling those people was in the house.
Speaker 1: Because always the home the property belonged to the Wideman family,
Speaker 1: and the house there was engulfed in flames within minutes
Speaker 1: of the firefighter's arrival. The roof of the one story
Speaker 1: home had collapsed. The Whiteman's vehicles were parked around the property,
Speaker 1: but the Widen family was nowhere to be found. When
Speaker 1: I got there, the whole house. You could see the
Speaker 1: whole front of the house. It wasn't burning. Burning at
Speaker 1: the end of the house would but it was a
Speaker 1: very windy morning. It was. It was real windy that morning.
Speaker 1: It was just crushing the fire. Actually it prushed the
Speaker 1: fire all the way from one end of the house
Speaker 1: out the other end. That they had a big field
Speaker 1: of pine trees there, and it actually called trees on
Speaker 1: fire out there. I went to the front door, and
Speaker 1: I didn't not from the front door. The front door
Speaker 1: was shooting. And I can steal a memory real good
Speaker 1: that it's a solid white front door. And so I
Speaker 1: made it to the door, but I wasn't never able
Speaker 1: to make the entry into the home. I called on
Speaker 1: the radio and informed them that on the cards the day,
Speaker 1: and I felt like that they possibly was in the house.
Speaker 1: Actually called and told him they was probably home. If
Speaker 1: I can remember properly, it seemed like we were on
Speaker 1: the outside of the house and could look in one
Speaker 1: of the fig rings. When we first distubored one of
Speaker 1: the bodies. Fifty one year old Tommy Joe or T. J. Wideman,
Speaker 1: forty eight year old Devor Wheeler Wideman, and the twenty
Speaker 1: two year old pregnant daughter Melissa were found dead inside
Speaker 1: of the decimated home. They were very bad. They was
Speaker 1: like their legs. It was just like the torsos and
Speaker 1: Leo if burnt. If they was burnt, pretty bad. We
Speaker 1: put the victims then body bag. They loaded them up.
Speaker 1: They took him to have to the crime now I
Speaker 1: think where they took them. But when they lay them,
Speaker 1: it didn't take them long. They called the Stack We
Speaker 1: were still on the scene to share. He found out
Speaker 1: when we got back these people been shot. It started
Speaker 1: as a terrible and inexplicable house fire, but when the
Speaker 1: fire ended, a more disturbing mystery began. The fire hadn't
Speaker 1: been the cause of death for any of the Wideman's.
Speaker 1: All of them had been shot, and the fire that
Speaker 1: was deemed the result of person It wasn't immediately apparent
Speaker 1: that they had been shot. It took some further examination
Speaker 1: to figure that out. That's why I actually they was
Speaker 1: just kind of treating it like it wasn't like they
Speaker 1: hadn't been shot. Ory, it's not like that. After they
Speaker 1: called back, everything has changed. Right after the g P
Speaker 1: I got there and started talking. They weren't to interview.
Speaker 1: He asked me. He said, what made you feel like
Speaker 1: stare is wrong here today? I feel well, I said.
Speaker 1: The first thing. Every who called, they wasn't here at
Speaker 1: the house when I got here, and they said a
Speaker 1: struck driver rocket, So it raised my speak. It's just
Speaker 1: phrase without the ordinary. I said. So I just down
Speaker 1: here and I've seen all the cars here, and I
Speaker 1: felt like the people get home. I did not know
Speaker 1: that being shot or anything like that, but things just wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Time I got I said, well, something's wrong. There ain't
Speaker 1: nobody here, because nine times out of ten, if a
Speaker 1: person calls, they wait till we get there. If they're
Speaker 1: sitting there. There was no one there when I pulled up.
Speaker 1: It's about twelve thirteen miles Master. Like people responding to
Speaker 1: the fire, most of them had to come all the
Speaker 1: way from Master. I knew the sheriff got there pretty quick,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be honest, I kind of luke the
Speaker 1: round and watched stains, and I know that, uh, I
Speaker 1: can't remember him going to Mr Charles Henry's, which was
Speaker 1: the guy that was deceased in the house's brother, because
Speaker 1: we had him had the fire full extinguished, and I
Speaker 1: remember him pulling up out front. He got out and
Speaker 1: looked and you know, and he left. He didn't say
Speaker 1: you along. But after it got daylight, there were several
Speaker 1: of my officers here, and like I said, they called
Speaker 1: a g b I mean they came to see because
Speaker 1: he interviewed me after seeing it was the same day.
Speaker 1: So then it seems that the sheriff brought the g
Speaker 1: b I in pretty much right away. Yes, sir, who
Speaker 1: was the sheriff at that time, Randy Kendrick. Was it
Speaker 1: your impression that the g b I took over the
Speaker 1: case from the very beginning yesterday? They took over the case.
Speaker 1: Did anybody at the g b I or anyone in
Speaker 1: law enforcement ever talk to you about any potential suspects
Speaker 1: that they might have or they may have been looking
Speaker 1: at that They never talked to me after that day.
Speaker 1: After the gp I talked to me, I know what
Speaker 1: everything contact. What was the coroner's role in this, you know,
Speaker 1: him being the corner, he just wanted, you know, pronounced
Speaker 1: them to be and he comes out and get them.
Speaker 1: Anyone that made the call back after he took the body.
Speaker 1: Do you remember who the coroner was at the time,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty do you know what Edgar Perry's normal job
Speaker 1: was his brother, So he's not a medical trained person.
Speaker 1: He's not a physician. He's a funeral home owner or
Speaker 1: a funeral director who also was the elected coroner. Is
Speaker 1: that right? That's right, that's right, So he would have
Speaker 1: had to have some medical professional help him determine that
Speaker 1: they had been shot. For clarification, the coroner, Edgar Perry,
Speaker 1: is an elected official, not a physician, but a funeral
Speaker 1: homeowner in Turner County. He wouldn't be the sole voice
Speaker 1: in determining the cause of death for the wideman's but
Speaker 1: he would be the one to certify their death within
Speaker 1: his area of jurisdiction. The incident took place in the
Speaker 1: small town of Rebecca, Georgia, which is part of Turner County,
Speaker 1: roughly two and a half hours south of Atlanta. Rebecca
Speaker 1: is a quiet place without a lot of devious crime,
Speaker 1: least of all a triple homicide. Firstly, Rebecca is really
Speaker 1: really small, only about point eight square miles, not exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of place you'd think of as a hotbed
Speaker 1: for crime. According to the latest census records, there's a
Speaker 1: population of under two hundred people. The next biggest town,
Speaker 1: about twelve miles away, is Ashburn, with population under four thousand.
Speaker 1: Farmings still probably the main income, but there's no factories
Speaker 1: or anything done in Rebecca except some little communience stores.
Speaker 1: That's Patti Jones, whose mother and her whole family were
Speaker 1: from Rebecca growing up. Patty spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: there and new t J. Wideman personally because his family
Speaker 1: on the local hardware store. We were all shocked because
Speaker 1: t J was loving, kind person. He would never hurt anybody.
Speaker 1: He was always helpful. He had a great sense of humor.
Speaker 1: He was disabled. I don't know if it was by birth,
Speaker 1: but he had a hard time getting around and walk
Speaker 1: were the kane, so he could ever really hurting one.
Speaker 1: It was just a great guy to be around, always cheerful,
Speaker 1: even though he was in a bad disposition. When I
Speaker 1: saw t J at the Mark, we started talking because
Speaker 1: we were trying to catch up, and he told me
Speaker 1: that he was the tax commissioner of the county, and
Speaker 1: you know that that job a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: like you because of that, and so we laughed about it,
Speaker 1: and uh, he talked about his daughter, Melissa was pregnant.
Speaker 1: You know, I was like, wow, that's great. And he
Speaker 1: didn't tell me that she wasn't married, but I really
Speaker 1: didn't know how old she was or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But they were all excited about her gonna have the baby. So,
Speaker 1: you know, speculation. Everybody was like, Okay, well, it could
Speaker 1: have been somebody that didn't like him because he was
Speaker 1: a tax commissioner, or because maybe Melissa something's about the baby.
Speaker 1: And then there was always speculation that maybe because his brother,
Speaker 1: this was a rumor that his brother was not in
Speaker 1: the wheel or something like that, so people speculated that
Speaker 1: maybe his brother had had something to do with it.
Speaker 1: I know he and his brother weren't real close. Of course,
Speaker 1: everybody has their own theories, so I hate to jump
Speaker 1: to one because I don't really know Charles either. That
Speaker 1: was just hearsay. Everybody was just floored because everybody loved
Speaker 1: t J. And he was very verbal and great guy,
Speaker 1: you know, had a happy attitude and just devastated. Everyone's
Speaker 1: floored that something so terrible could happen to such a
Speaker 1: good guy and in his family. He was in the
Speaker 1: center of the town, so everybody that needed anything at
Speaker 1: the hardware store New T j. And the fact that
Speaker 1: they weren't in their own house that night, they were
Speaker 1: staying at his mother's house. And how would someone know
Speaker 1: that that right there? Makes you wonder. You'd have to
Speaker 1: make an effort to get to it. You'd have to
Speaker 1: look for it. That night, the white mens were staying
Speaker 1: in Tommy Joe's mother's use. This is something they did
Speaker 1: whenever Tommy Joe's mother went down to her second home
Speaker 1: in Florida. Reportedly, they stay there on and off for
Speaker 1: extended periods of time. Her house and Rebecca is secluded,
Speaker 1: not someplace you'd easily stumble upon down there. You don't
Speaker 1: have a police there's no police station, there's you have
Speaker 1: to rely on Ashburn. They don't have the facilities like
Speaker 1: a big city. I mean, I'm sure the g b
Speaker 1: I came in, but never heard anything about what they found.
Speaker 1: It's a small town gets passed over. It's becomes uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just part of being in the small town atmosphere.
Speaker 1: People probably just keep wandering and I know that nothing's
Speaker 1: ever gonna be done about it, and hopefully the podcast
Speaker 1: will bring out some more information, get things started, I hope,
Speaker 1: but people Rebecca will come out and start talking about
Speaker 1: it again. This is something I've heard before. Smalltown crime
Speaker 1: does get passed over, sometimes simply because it affects a
Speaker 1: smaller number of people in a place like Rebecca. We're
Speaker 1: talking about minimal government services. We're talking about volunteer fire departments.
Speaker 1: We're talking about law enforcement with longer response times. We're
Speaker 1: talking about sheriff's departments that are spread very thin, and
Speaker 1: perhaps a state trooper who passes by every now and then,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it's in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Local law enforcement, particularly the Sheriff's office, responded first along
Speaker 1: with the corner but ultimately it was the Georgia Bureau
Speaker 1: of Investigation that was called in and was handed control
Speaker 1: and responsibility for investigating the widen emerged. I know a
Speaker 1: thing or two myself about cold cases and what it
Speaker 1: takes to investigate them, but I don't want you to
Speaker 1: have to take my word for it, So I reached
Speaker 1: back out to my friend John Dawes, who is a
Speaker 1: subject matter expert in the field the cold case investigation.
Speaker 1: He currently works for the Cobb County District Attorney's Office
Speaker 1: in Marietta, Georgia. Before that, John was a very good
Speaker 1: homicide detective who I've faced in court many times, and
Speaker 1: so I know that he knows his stuff. What experience
Speaker 1: if any of you had with a murder or a
Speaker 1: homicide or a killing where the perpetrator used a fire
Speaker 1: to destroy evidence of how someone was killed. I've been
Speaker 1: involved in some cases like that. It's a person's attempt
Speaker 1: to tamper with evidence to cover their trail. Does it work? Seldom?
Speaker 1: When you bring in fire into a scene, yes, it
Speaker 1: burns evidence in many aspects. But if you're not schooled
Speaker 1: in how to start a fire and allow it to raise,
Speaker 1: then sometimes it works against you. If you're using that
Speaker 1: to cover your crime. Arson investigators come in, they can
Speaker 1: determine the origin, They can determine whether or not an
Speaker 1: accelerant was used, and then if you have a suspect
Speaker 1: quickly enough, you can test them for the accelerant their clothing.
Speaker 1: You and I stopped to get fuel in our car
Speaker 1: on the way to the house. We're gonna have some
Speaker 1: gas on us somewhere when we get home. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: works against the bad guy. If fire started and doesn't
Speaker 1: fully in golf a structure, then you can still get
Speaker 1: fingerprints because the oily substance left by the ridge impressions.
Speaker 1: If it's a fully engulfed fire, then yes, it's very
Speaker 1: challenging to get any evidence out of that scene. This
Speaker 1: is a small town. Rebecca probably has two or three
Speaker 1: hundred people living there, some related, some are as close
Speaker 1: as relatives. Everybody knows everybody, and in all likelihood many
Speaker 1: members of the law enforcement community are are well aware
Speaker 1: of all the residents as well. I think that people
Speaker 1: who are intimately close to a major crime like this,
Speaker 1: the longer it goes unsolved, the more they just accept
Speaker 1: that it won't ever be solved, and eventually, unfortunately, they
Speaker 1: just stopped talking about it and just deal with it
Speaker 1: as best they can. But rumors always abound in cases
Speaker 1: like this that can be beneficial to the case, and
Speaker 1: it can also throw the case off track. You really
Speaker 1: have to spend a lot of time dusting off the case,
Speaker 1: focusing yourself back into the facts of the case. You
Speaker 1: don't want to get to a point where you don't
Speaker 1: remember whether something is a fact of the case or
Speaker 1: whether it's someone's opinion or theory about the case. So
Speaker 1: our biggest author unknown phrases, keep it simple, stupid, and
Speaker 1: go back to the facts of the case, the circumstances
Speaker 1: of the case, and the physical evidence of the case.
Speaker 1: In order to get someplace a small agency like this
Speaker 1: sheriff's office, which I don't know. Turner County is probably
Speaker 1: eight or ten thousand people. Small shaff's office, and it's
Speaker 1: probably a widespread area, so their numbers would be probably
Speaker 1: challenge men powerwise, but they may not see that much
Speaker 1: violent crime like in other areas of Georgia. Regardless of that,
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office desire to do the best that they can do.
Speaker 1: Regardless of their ability to do the best that they
Speaker 1: can do, they're gonna face challenges because of the closeness
Speaker 1: of the community. You bring in uh the g B I,
Speaker 1: I would suspect they came in from Perry, and those
Speaker 1: gb agents are not known by the local people. They're
Speaker 1: not seen in the area all the time. They don't
Speaker 1: go to school with them, they don't go to church
Speaker 1: with them. They don't know him as well, and they
Speaker 1: may not be as free within their mind to talk
Speaker 1: to a GBI agent where they might have Shaff's office. Yes,
Speaker 1: you get more resources when you bring in the state agency,
Speaker 1: and that's obviously good when it comes to getting the
Speaker 1: postmortem examinations done and getting evidence processed, but it may
Speaker 1: make the case more difficult to work for the GBI
Speaker 1: because they don't know those people like the sheriff's office stuff.
Speaker 1: Is it possible for a local era of to keep jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: if you will, for being the lead on the case,
Speaker 1: but still utilize bits and pieces of state resources. My
Speaker 1: understanding is that you want to and you're kind of
Speaker 1: permitted to work alongside them. Like the sheriff's office likely
Speaker 1: had an investigator assigned to the g b I to
Speaker 1: keep things rolling and keep things between the two agencies.
Speaker 1: I've been involved in some cases where the g b
Speaker 1: I came in to assist and they took leads on
Speaker 1: certain part of the cases. I kept leads on certain
Speaker 1: part of the cases, and it was just kind of
Speaker 1: communicated between us to keep everything on the same page,
Speaker 1: make sure that we knew where each other was going.
Speaker 1: But the state agency comes in as a request from
Speaker 1: that sheriff to come in and head up the investigation.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that there was some working together on
Speaker 1: the case after fifteen years, what would you expect that
Speaker 1: an investigator, whether it's the sheriff's officer or the gb I,
Speaker 1: what would you expect them to be doing other than
Speaker 1: waiting around for hopefully for some phone call. There are
Speaker 1: a number of answers that I would want to gain
Speaker 1: for myself through this investigation if I were assigned the
Speaker 1: case today, And I would think that any investigator who
Speaker 1: picks this case up and begins a thorough, methodical review
Speaker 1: of the case would come across some of the same thoughts.
Speaker 1: There are any number of things that that may have
Speaker 1: been done back in the day with say cell phone records,
Speaker 1: home phone records, the difference back then and I don't
Speaker 1: know whether they got any cell tower information. Today we
Speaker 1: can get cell sites and it's a very very minimized
Speaker 1: area and attracts every tower that you hit. There are
Speaker 1: a lot more towers now. In two thousand two, you
Speaker 1: were looking at a very very different potential with cell phones.
Speaker 1: They were gonna exist, but you only hit market areas
Speaker 1: of towers. There were probably three in the state of Georgia,
Speaker 1: so North Georgia, Brown Dalton and Atlanta and down near
Speaker 1: Tifton or Videlli, and there may have been three market
Speaker 1: areas for cell phones, So I don't know how much
Speaker 1: research was done on those phones and the numbers that
Speaker 1: were calling them talking to them, but that's something I
Speaker 1: would want to know. I would want to know who
Speaker 1: the biological father of this unborn infant was, and I
Speaker 1: would want to talk to him and find out where
Speaker 1: he was at that night. I would want to talk
Speaker 1: to her family, the surviving family, and see what she
Speaker 1: had been talking about about her relationship with the biological
Speaker 1: father of this unborn baby. That would be my first
Speaker 1: thought that comes to mind in my first area that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to focus on. Back in uh the
Speaker 1: early days, when I first started working murder cases, back
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, there were a lot more domestic murders,
Speaker 1: and then crime trends have changed. Drugs have changed, gangs
Speaker 1: are more and so there is more stranger on stranger crime.
Speaker 1: But when you're looking at a situation where you have
Speaker 1: three people a man, a wife, and a child in
Speaker 1: a house who were all murdered and then there was
Speaker 1: an attempt to cover the evidence, then you you want
Speaker 1: to focus on somebody that's known to those people, absolutely absolutely,
Speaker 1: because if this is a stranger on stranger crime, why
Speaker 1: would they try to burn the evidence. That makes no sense.
Speaker 1: They're going to commit the crime and leave. I want
Speaker 1: to know if there is any attempt to ransack the place,
Speaker 1: if there's anything of value missing. Sometimes that's hard to
Speaker 1: see in a fire scene, but my understanding from a
Speaker 1: couple of articles I read that their vehicles was there
Speaker 1: and there was nothing obvious that had been taken from
Speaker 1: the house. So I've got to look at at a
Speaker 1: domestic situation. You've got three people that are all at home.
Speaker 1: It had to have occurred late at night because the
Speaker 1: fire was seen at what three thirty in the morning,
Speaker 1: So you're probably looking at a midnight crime time when
Speaker 1: all the parties were known to be at home by
Speaker 1: someone who knows them well and intends to take their lives.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at somebody close. I'm looking at somebody
Speaker 1: if if these people were awake at the time they
Speaker 1: were shot and looked in the eyes of the killer,
Speaker 1: they knew exactly who it was. How helpful is it
Speaker 1: for an investigator, though, to be aware of a motive
Speaker 1: for a crime when it comes to helping solve that crime.
Speaker 1: It directs you. Identifying a motive directs your investigation. You're right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be proven by prosecution in the court.
Speaker 1: That's not a requirement under the law. But when there
Speaker 1: is a motive, you separate out who probably did a
Speaker 1: crime compared to who probably didn't. Greed is an underlying
Speaker 1: cause nearly every time, whether it's a drug murder, an
Speaker 1: armed robbery murder, a domestic murder because somebody. There was
Speaker 1: a case in Gwinette not long ago where a man
Speaker 1: was charged five years after his wife was discovered dead
Speaker 1: just down the road. Some people choose to kill their
Speaker 1: spouse rather than getting divorced because they're saving money. In
Speaker 1: their mind, it's agreed thing. So money is involved in
Speaker 1: nearly every murder case that you could mention. People get
Speaker 1: greedy enough to cause death. The first thing that I
Speaker 1: would want to do is open this case up and
Speaker 1: do a complete methodical review of the file as it exists,
Speaker 1: to see what was known. Then then I want to
Speaker 1: interview those first people that went to the scene, the
Speaker 1: first rescue people, the first shar's office people who arrived
Speaker 1: on the scene. I want to get their feelings about
Speaker 1: what they saw and what they thought. I want to
Speaker 1: talk to the g b I agents who headed up
Speaker 1: the initial case. I want to get their ideas on
Speaker 1: it and where their mindset was headed in it, because
Speaker 1: that's not always relayed on the paperwork, that's not always
Speaker 1: in report form. When I look at the interviews, I
Speaker 1: don't want to look at a type summary of an interview.
Speaker 1: I want to listen to the recording. I want to
Speaker 1: know every word that was said and what the context
Speaker 1: of those words were. And then I want to look
Speaker 1: at evidence that was collected in the case. Was their
Speaker 1: sexual assault evidence collected during the post morning examinations? Was
Speaker 1: there any latent print evidence lifted? What did they find,
Speaker 1: what did they collect, and what do they still have.
Speaker 1: Anything that's been tested in two thousand two by the
Speaker 1: g b I certainly needs to be considered for a resubmission.
Speaker 1: Because the DNA protocols have changed. There's a difference in
Speaker 1: how latent princes can be run. It's all very different now.
Speaker 1: Technologies come a long way. But as to motive, the
Speaker 1: thing that concerns me is that Mr Wieman was the
Speaker 1: county tax guy. Two thousand two was a boom year.
Speaker 1: Maybe somebody was upset about their property appraisal not being
Speaker 1: more or or something that he had to do with business,
Speaker 1: although that's not likely. I think it's something that means
Speaker 1: louis that. But what screams out to me is that
Speaker 1: their twenty year old daughter is eight months pregnant and
Speaker 1: she's at home with them, not with biological father. So
Speaker 1: I don't know what that situation was, and I need
Speaker 1: to find that out. It was likely someone close to
Speaker 1: the wideman's who committed the murders, perhaps even a relative.
Speaker 1: Another takeaway was that we really need to know who
Speaker 1: the father was of the baby. And finally, most of
Speaker 1: the time, the motive in murder cases is either greed
Speaker 1: or money or both. During last d railroad stream, that's it.
Speaker 1: A little bit further, for everything we've read and heard,
Speaker 1: this house was not a place you'd happened upon. We
Speaker 1: looked up the address on the GPS website and headed
Speaker 1: down there to see for ourselves. This street next is
Speaker 1: see this way turned nor railroad streets over there, this
Speaker 1: is it. When we pulled up to the property the
Speaker 1: side of the tragedy, we weren't sure we were even
Speaker 1: in the right place. We crossed reference to the address
Speaker 1: with what we had on the GPI website. We were there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's locked. There once was a house here. It looks
Speaker 1: like might be just someone's farm. Now that's Mason, a
Speaker 1: producer on sworn. You could tell that's really dark out
Speaker 1: here at night time. Oh yeah, there's no lights, no lights.
Speaker 1: It all started to make sense the story we've been unraveling.
Speaker 1: The road was not a busy thoroughfare during our visit.
Speaker 1: It was the middle of the day and still only
Speaker 1: one car past us as we walked outside. Mostly it
Speaker 1: was very, very quiet, except for the sound of cicadas.
Speaker 1: The land looked like it was being actively used as
Speaker 1: a pecan orchard, and there was no longer any foundation
Speaker 1: left standing where the Wideman home used to be. We
Speaker 1: made not to ask when it was cleared and who
Speaker 1: currently owned the property. Then we left Pleasant Hill Baptist Church.
Speaker 1: On our way back from the property, Mason spotted a
Speaker 1: graveyard from afar. We stopped by the church to see
Speaker 1: if maybe there was a Wideman family plot, and there was.
Speaker 1: Marge Turny second two. During our visit to Rebecca, we
Speaker 1: knew we had to stop at the local newspaper, The
Speaker 1: Wiregrass Farmer. We wanted to get the perspective of the
Speaker 1: local media outlet, one that had covered the case multiple times,
Speaker 1: right in the thick a pit. Next time on Sworn,
Speaker 1: there are some people that swear they know who did it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ask him. They'll tell you an individual's name. Well, how
Speaker 1: do you know this? He's just that kind of a person.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of Sworn, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a deeper look into the unsolved triple murders of the
Speaker 1: Wideman family. We're going to talk to some locals. We're
Speaker 1: gonna dig deeper, we're gonna sift through old leads, So
Speaker 1: be sure to stick around for part two of the
Speaker 1: Wideman Merkety