Speaker 1: It's been a long difficult search. Hello, but with the
Speaker 1: help of my private investigator, I found Drusilla Merita. How
Speaker 1: can I help you. We're working on a podcast about
Speaker 1: about Ron Thomas, and she was alive, not in prison,
Speaker 1: not buried somewhere, and not in any trouble. It's clear
Speaker 1: Dick Weston's former girlfriend knows details about what happened to
Speaker 1: the Stevenson's that no one else does. She could give
Speaker 1: Carol Thompson and her daughter Shannon answers at least some
Speaker 1: answers that have escaped that family for the past four decades. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'd rather not talk about that right now, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. At this point, I've done all I can
Speaker 1: to get Drusilla to talk, phone calls, messages, even a
Speaker 1: door knock, but you won't, Budge. I can understand why
Speaker 1: Drusilla doesn't want to talk. She wants to forget about
Speaker 1: all of this move on liver heal life. The problem
Speaker 1: I have with that sort of thinking is Stevenson family
Speaker 1: members deserve answers, and Drusilla undoubtedly has plenty. Yet, because
Speaker 1: there is no statute of limitations on murder, I can
Speaker 1: also see why she wouldn't want to say the wrong
Speaker 1: thing and wind up with the FEDS standing at her
Speaker 1: front door. Previously on Paper Ghosts, this right, he said,
Speaker 1: this friend and his run at the FBI was looking
Speaker 1: for him. Wait, I figured, if he is involved in
Speaker 1: a shootout, I guess he was, and you know I
Speaker 1: had something to do with him. Him and that Ron Thomas.
Speaker 1: Why do you think Dick protected Roy money he paid Dick?
Speaker 1: You think, well, yeah, you get paid too. If you
Speaker 1: had two grocery bags slept full of money, that was
Speaker 1: your tire to do. But cover up his set of
Speaker 1: the deal? I said, Oh my god, he wants to
Speaker 1: kill me. He wants me on. My name is m
Speaker 1: William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and author of forty
Speaker 1: four true crime books. This is season two of Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 1: Burned cases like the Stevenson murders are generally not too
Speaker 1: difficult to unpack, the challenges, providing families with the resolution
Speaker 1: they have been searching for, realizing they may not be
Speaker 1: ready to accept what you find. Did Billy become entangled
Speaker 1: with the wrong people? Was his family collateral? Damn image?
Speaker 1: Was family friend Ron Thomas involved? And what's more, did
Speaker 1: Ron hired Dick Weston to help him settle a personal
Speaker 1: and or monetary debt. These questions have plagued me throughout
Speaker 1: the years I have been involved in this case, and
Speaker 1: the hardest part. By asking these questions, you are, to
Speaker 1: some extent, blaming the victim. Yet it is an unavoidable
Speaker 1: facet of mass murder investigation, one you hope to come
Speaker 1: away from with an answer that won't hurt the family
Speaker 1: more than they have already been. So at times you
Speaker 1: find yourself facing an uncomfortable dilemma. Does the family actually
Speaker 1: want to know what happened when it's clear there are
Speaker 1: disturbing details within that reality, because that truth can be
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot uglier than one could have
Speaker 1: ever imagined. I grew up here in my mom's story.
Speaker 1: I think she had this fear that they were going
Speaker 1: to be forgotten, and Ron's name was never tied to it.
Speaker 1: You might recall Shannon Group, Carol Thompson's daughter from a
Speaker 1: previous episode. Shannon was just three and a half when
Speaker 1: her mom pulled her out of bed in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night after learning their family's house was on fire.
Speaker 1: I remember standing there and watching them bring the bodies
Speaker 1: out of the house. Of course, I was devastated. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what was going on in there. There's fire
Speaker 1: trucks and there's people, and there's police, and you know,
Speaker 1: then I see the bodies coming out, and and it
Speaker 1: was It's pretty devastating for you know, that's my first
Speaker 1: you know, I have minor memories of a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: just seeing things, but that's my first real memory. That
Speaker 1: just always stuck with me, you know what. I had
Speaker 1: nightmares for years. I thought about it for years. Within
Speaker 1: all of this, Shannon has remained her mother's rock. One
Speaker 1: might think she lives with some sort of secondary PTSD,
Speaker 1: having been there weathering the aftermath of watching family suffer
Speaker 1: for decades while dealing with the loss herself, But Shannon
Speaker 1: has remained steadfast and finding answers, taking on the all
Speaker 1: consuming task of digging in and over the course of
Speaker 1: twenty years, actually uncovering information so as you grow up,
Speaker 1: what's going through your mind about this case and what
Speaker 1: is driving I was a strange kid. UM didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of friends in school. I was very quietly reserved.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of anxiety, you know, when it
Speaker 1: came to people. Um, you know, my mom was kind
Speaker 1: of paranoid, and I was, you know, I think it
Speaker 1: just kind of rubbed off on me because you know,
Speaker 1: I saw firsthand what you know, a friend is capable of.
Speaker 1: So I think that kind of just screwed me up.
Speaker 1: And as I was growing, you know, I thought a
Speaker 1: lot about this case and the fact that Ron got away,
Speaker 1: and it always broke my heart that, you know, my
Speaker 1: mom would watch over her shoulder for the longest time.
Speaker 1: Ron Thomas, that friend Shannon mentions became like a recurring
Speaker 1: cant her on this family. Carol Thompson remains terrified to
Speaker 1: this day, even after forty years, because of a possible
Speaker 1: threat still existing in their world, and that fear she
Speaker 1: has passed down to her daughter Shannon is exacerbated by
Speaker 1: not knowing what happened and most importantly, who else is responsible.
Speaker 1: Fear feeds on itself. I remember this man came to
Speaker 1: the door one day knocking, and I opened the door
Speaker 1: and he said that he had gotten something in his
Speaker 1: eye and could what I let him in to go
Speaker 1: rinse his eye out. Me being this native eight year old,
Speaker 1: you know, I let this man into my home and
Speaker 1: now I'm home alone. I was all by myself, Mom Daoud,
Speaker 1: probably at work or something. So you know, Mom got
Speaker 1: home and I told her about it, and I just
Speaker 1: remember her reaction. She freaked out so bad, she was
Speaker 1: so scared because it could have been wrong. To this day,
Speaker 1: we don't know who it was. It might have been wrong,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, just her reaction and just everything
Speaker 1: growing up, and it just ate it even more that
Speaker 1: this man is free. You know, who knows who else
Speaker 1: he heard after that? Who knows what he went on
Speaker 1: into it after that. As I have come to learn
Speaker 1: throughout my investigation, I can say with certainty that Ron
Speaker 1: Thomas wasn't a family friend as Carol had thought. He
Speaker 1: was a cunning sociopath who had masterminded the murder of
Speaker 1: her entire family. Every single law enforcement source I have
Speaker 1: spoken to has confirmed this Ron was the man behind
Speaker 1: the curtain from the very beginning, telling Dick Weston what
Speaker 1: to do and when to do it. This became clear
Speaker 1: to Carol and Shannon as they tried to move on
Speaker 1: with their lives in the decades that followed. I wanted
Speaker 1: my mom to have peace. You know, yes, it would
Speaker 1: help me too, But me and my mom boys been very,
Speaker 1: very close. She was very close to her mom. Me
Speaker 1: and her are very very close. We're like best friends.
Speaker 1: My mom. You know, she was so scared and it
Speaker 1: bothered her so bad. So it kind of turns you
Speaker 1: into an armchair investigator, if you will, as I love
Speaker 1: to investigate, love it. What do you first do? And
Speaker 1: so I contacted UM Records here and the Sheriff's office here,
Speaker 1: enquiring if the files were still around, if you know,
Speaker 1: because I knew that the files we do not destroy
Speaker 1: because they told me on the phone. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: how can I get access to these? I know it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be public records. So you're beginning to look
Speaker 1: into this, and your main goal is to get ahold
Speaker 1: of the records so you can find out exactly what
Speaker 1: I wanted to torture on I did. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: My goal was to find her on get these records,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to send him crime scene photos, newspaper
Speaker 1: artists and stuff to make him think about it every
Speaker 1: day for the rest of his life. I want him
Speaker 1: to get these in the mail once a week, just constantly,
Speaker 1: constant reminders I wanted to torture the man. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: far I've learned all I can about Ron Thomas's life
Speaker 1: before the Stevenson murders, but I need to dig into
Speaker 1: what happened to this so called family friend after. I've
Speaker 1: come to understand there is one man who knows more
Speaker 1: than most about Ron Thomas's life after he ran from Bethel, Ohio,
Speaker 1: A detective who has never spoken publicly about any of this,
Speaker 1: and who has been hard to track down. In fact,
Speaker 1: once I found him, I sensed a bit of trepidation
Speaker 1: in his voice about sharing his story, and he chose
Speaker 1: to remain quiet. Yet, after some time and a bit
Speaker 1: of discussion, one day in early spring, he decided it
Speaker 1: was time to talk. Dave. How you doing? M William Phelps, Hey,
Speaker 1: how you doing? You're doing all right? I'm doing all right.
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right. I get I gotta say, I
Speaker 1: can't complain much. You know, wouldn't do any good if
Speaker 1: it did. Anyway. That's so true, That's so true. How's
Speaker 1: the weather? David Bell is a former Columbia, South Carolina
Speaker 1: detective who began his law enforcement career in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two as a line deputy with the Richland County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Office for I Love Beautiful Division because I loved the
Speaker 1: connection with the people, you know, because you know, I
Speaker 1: just like trying to help people if I could. And finally, uh,
Speaker 1: they said, come on, man, you know, we really need
Speaker 1: your you know, your experience and uh, investigation division. So
Speaker 1: I went ahead and transferred to investigation division. And I
Speaker 1: didn't major crimes in a particular area that I patrolled
Speaker 1: as a uniform division, and I was you had a
Speaker 1: lot of actions and contacts of that area. You know,
Speaker 1: the people we come to me and give me information
Speaker 1: on certain crimes and so forth. Those connections in the
Speaker 1: community are priceless the cops who lead to become detectives.
Speaker 1: The trust is established and for a detective there is
Speaker 1: no better information than what he or she can develop
Speaker 1: on the street. Ron Thomas's name did not cross David
Speaker 1: Bell's desk until the early two thousand's, after Bell had
Speaker 1: been assigned to a brand new cold case unit, and
Speaker 1: of course that opened up the big can of worms.
Speaker 1: That's when we learned about the Stevenson murders, the gold
Speaker 1: buying business, nemafia connection, you know, Richard West and all
Speaker 1: these all these people you know, connected to all this crime,
Speaker 1: from robberies and murders and lower those wardels. Now what
Speaker 1: kind of guy did Ron Thomas strike you as when
Speaker 1: you began to look into this cold case and look
Speaker 1: at his background. Ron Thomas was a scum bay. If
Speaker 1: there was something dirtie, he has hands in. It turns
Speaker 1: out Ron Thomas left behind his wife in Ohio and
Speaker 1: fled the South Carolina, where he owned and operated a gold, silver,
Speaker 1: and jewelry exchange. This was the main location where he'd
Speaker 1: been running off to each time he evaded the police
Speaker 1: looking into his involvement in the Stevenson case. And yet
Speaker 1: there was another reason for Ron's frequent visits to South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Ron Thomas had a mistress there for what had amounted
Speaker 1: to the past fourteen years, a woman named Irene Floyd,
Speaker 1: who first met Ron when he was her foreman at
Speaker 1: a manufacturing company in nineteen sixty eight and continued to
Speaker 1: work for him at his store in South Carolina. To
Speaker 1: understand this case, we have to take a few steps
Speaker 1: back before the Stevenson murders, because to really know Ron Thomas,
Speaker 1: you have to look at Irene Floyd. Irene was no
Speaker 1: common middle aged woman living the cozy life in a
Speaker 1: warm South She had quite the checkered past, starting with
Speaker 1: her first husband, her high school sweetheart who had died
Speaker 1: tragically in nineteen sixty six. They had a bad relationship
Speaker 1: from the get go, and uh they got a real
Speaker 1: bad domestic dispute one night, so she called the Clubia
Speaker 1: police department on him. So they were looking for his car,
Speaker 1: and when she happened to see the car, and so
Speaker 1: she went to go find a police officer to tell
Speaker 1: him where he was at. And while she was talking
Speaker 1: to the police officer, he actually drove drove by and
Speaker 1: she goes there, he goes now, So the police went
Speaker 1: to stop him and he took off running from the police. Well,
Speaker 1: he got just a couple of blocks and read there
Speaker 1: in the middle of Clubia, we have these trains that
Speaker 1: come to Clubia, and there was a train coming and
Speaker 1: he tried to beat the train and he lost in
Speaker 1: his train. His car got hit by the train. He
Speaker 1: was killed instantly at the accident. Actually, Irene made a
Speaker 1: lot of money on his insurance plus from the train company.
Speaker 1: Irene Floyd sued everyone involved after her first husband was
Speaker 1: killed by that train. I've been told she was awarded
Speaker 1: life changing money, yet nobody could give me an exact figure.
Speaker 1: So she uh learned real quick how easy she could
Speaker 1: come about money with insurance policies and sue the person's
Speaker 1: you know, responsible for the death. So that day is
Speaker 1: the husband number two. Not long after, Irene married her
Speaker 1: second husband, a Kentucky born transplant named William Floyd. The
Speaker 1: following year, Irene met and began working for Ron Thomas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was a secretary in the photo speak you and
Speaker 1: they started having an affair while she was married a
Speaker 1: Willyam Floyd. But William says, well, you know, I'd rather
Speaker 1: have you share you that lose you. I love you
Speaker 1: that much. Even though William Floyd knew his wife was
Speaker 1: having an affair with Ron Thomas, William decided against divorcing Irene,
Speaker 1: but at some point it became too much to bear
Speaker 1: and William filed. The divorce was finalized in July. They divorce,
Speaker 1: and then what happens. What happened was we employed never
Speaker 1: removed Irene is being beneficiary on residenturance policy. And Irene
Speaker 1: found out about this. So Irene kind of let him
Speaker 1: along and implied that she wanted to remarry him. So
Speaker 1: I renehatched a plan. She convinced William that she had
Speaker 1: left Ron Thomas for good and wanted to make their
Speaker 1: relationship work, you know, give the marriage a second try.
Speaker 1: After a few months, she set up a rendezvous at
Speaker 1: a Tennessee motel. William Floyd, still in love with Irene,
Speaker 1: agreed to meet and talk. When Irene got to the myths,
Speaker 1: you know, she got him drunk because she met him
Speaker 1: up there with the pretense of getting remarried. And uh so,
Speaker 1: when she got him set up in the motel, she
Speaker 1: was supposed to call there's other motel and h and
Speaker 1: asked for a gym, and she was supposed to identify
Speaker 1: herself as Linda and uh and that was to uh
Speaker 1: satan that she told them what room he was in
Speaker 1: and that the door was unlocked. Ron Thomas was on
Speaker 1: the other end of that call. He had been waiting
Speaker 1: in a nearby motel, ready to receive word to set
Speaker 1: his next course of action in motion and get this
Speaker 1: Ron's so called bodyguard, Dick Weston. He and another man
Speaker 1: Ron had hired were not too far away waiting in
Speaker 1: the wings for Ron's direction. And Richard Weston and a
Speaker 1: guy from Indiana across the state line within there with
Speaker 1: baseball bats and beat Bill Floyd's severely with baseball bats
Speaker 1: in the head and the pre torso and left him
Speaker 1: for dead. You know, I mean they beat him unmercifully.
Speaker 1: Here again was Ron Thomas ordering others to do for
Speaker 1: him what he did not have the guts to do himself,
Speaker 1: and Irene Thomas at for an alibi. She drove herself
Speaker 1: as she made the boat goal to a hospital and
Speaker 1: says she was having a severe migraine headache to give
Speaker 1: herself an alibi. William Floyd did not die from that
Speaker 1: motel beating it. He was left severely deformed, with nearly
Speaker 1: all of the skin on his face beaten off and
Speaker 1: parts of his skull caved in. She called Ron Thomas
Speaker 1: and told Ron Thomas that Bill was still alive, and
Speaker 1: Ron Thomas as well, Uh, I doubt uh, don't worry,
Speaker 1: He's not going to live. There's no way he could
Speaker 1: survive that assault. Ron was so certain William Floyd wouldn't
Speaker 1: make it, he instructed Irene to call him when that
Speaker 1: time came to pass and say this the Lincoln has
Speaker 1: been sold. According to police reports, several men posing as
Speaker 1: preachers even showed up at the hospital to inquire about
Speaker 1: William Floyd's condition. The hospital staff became immediately suspicious and
Speaker 1: would not allow them into the room. So he was
Speaker 1: put in a facility that cared for people that were
Speaker 1: like vegetables. Bill Floyd's family would not allow her to
Speaker 1: see him, and so she could get to him. William
Speaker 1: Floyd was confined to a wheelchair, incapable of walking, talking,
Speaker 1: bending for himself. The guy was left blind in one eye,
Speaker 1: deaf in one ear, and would suffer multiple seizures every
Speaker 1: single day. All this man did, mind you with She
Speaker 1: forgiveness to his cheating wife by agreeing to talk about
Speaker 1: moving on and getting back together. And this is how
Speaker 1: she repays him. William sat idly all day inside the
Speaker 1: rehab facility and staring into space, a shell of the
Speaker 1: caring and loving man I have heard he once was.
Speaker 1: I don't know how she did it. I could never
Speaker 1: did was able to figure it out. But she was
Speaker 1: able to sneak him out of this facility, and she
Speaker 1: drove him to a probate's office in South Carolina. And
Speaker 1: that even though that he was in that condition, that
Speaker 1: judge married her and Bill remarried. How she finaggled the
Speaker 1: system to be able to remarry him, and his condition
Speaker 1: is beyond my imagination. So she immediately took him out
Speaker 1: of that facility and took him home to her house
Speaker 1: here in glub You to take care of me because
Speaker 1: that he still had that internce policy, Shannah. The day
Speaker 1: before I planned to leave Ohio, I got a call
Speaker 1: from Carol Thompson's daughter, Shannon Group, asking to meet up.
Speaker 1: Shannon had a sore close to Ron Thomas, who she's
Speaker 1: been messaging with on Facebook, and over time she had
Speaker 1: collected close to fifty pages of information about the guy.
Speaker 1: A treasure trove if there ever was one. How's it
Speaker 1: going really good? Brought those documents you requested? She doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be in this at all. She doesn't want
Speaker 1: her name in it. Why do you think that beer?
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. I really don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: till many years of past. I don't know why anyone
Speaker 1: would you know? And it could be hard on her
Speaker 1: to given her relation to the people involved. I know
Speaker 1: who this sources, and the information I've been given is
Speaker 1: highly credible. Like others who have been hesitant to speak
Speaker 1: or prefer to use an alias, I understand and respect
Speaker 1: the need to keep a distance. Shannon handed me a
Speaker 1: quarter inch thick stack of documents to go through all
Speaker 1: of it dealing with Thomas and his relationship to Irene Floyd.
Speaker 1: Information no one would be able to find out through
Speaker 1: public records while I was looking into Juicilla Merita's whereabouts.
Speaker 1: I handed the material off to my producer, Christina Everett
Speaker 1: and asked her to find out what she could break
Speaker 1: down the social media conversations included in the documents and
Speaker 1: determine what we could learn from it. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to go through. This woman is really complicated and knows
Speaker 1: a lot more than we imagined. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: read through everything and did some digging. What do you
Speaker 1: think what did you come up with? Well, what's interesting
Speaker 1: is the timing of everything, Right, So William Floyd is
Speaker 1: attacked in May, and Irene marries William for the second
Speaker 1: time in August, and you know what happened between those months,
Speaker 1: the Stevenson murders. Right, So she ends up talking to
Speaker 1: the FBI, and we know now that she was still
Speaker 1: carrying on her affair with Ron during this time. So
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because we get to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what Ron was going through during the
Speaker 1: months that the murders happened. Um She says that she
Speaker 1: talked on the phone with Ron at one point on
Speaker 1: June and said that she wanted to come visit him,
Speaker 1: but he was adamant and said that under no circumstances
Speaker 1: was she to come to either Indiana or Ohio to
Speaker 1: visit him, because the next weekend he was carrying off
Speaker 1: some big deal that he needed to be there for.
Speaker 1: That next weekend would be the fourth of July, and
Speaker 1: that big deal turned out to be the Stevenson murders.
Speaker 1: We look back and we see that she spoke to
Speaker 1: him on the phone about five weeks earlier and at
Speaker 1: the end of May, and she's telling Ron that she
Speaker 1: doesn't have any money and he doesn't have any i her,
Speaker 1: but suggests to her that if money is an issue,
Speaker 1: that he could arrange to have her house burned down
Speaker 1: for ten thousand dollars and she can just collect the
Speaker 1: insurance money on it. So Ron said that he didn't
Speaker 1: have any money to lend her, but he was going
Speaker 1: to be working on a deal that would really set
Speaker 1: him up financially, but was complicated. He said that the
Speaker 1: deal would involve several people. He mentioned the name Steve
Speaker 1: and Linda in relation to this deal that he was
Speaker 1: going to be doing um And according to Irene, Ron
Speaker 1: said quote that s ob had more money than he
Speaker 1: could ever spend, but yet he wanted to steal everything
Speaker 1: that he could from everybody else. So there's a second
Speaker 1: call between Ron and Irene that happens July tenth, after
Speaker 1: the murders um and the tone of this one is
Speaker 1: far different. Ron says the FBI had the goods on him,
Speaker 1: that his house was surrounded, the phone was tapped, and
Speaker 1: he was going to go prison for a long time.
Speaker 1: So Irenes and tears. She's crying. She's asking, are you
Speaker 1: in trouble? He says yes. She asks what did you do?
Speaker 1: And he says, you wouldn't believe it if I told you. Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds there to me like Ron's basically admitting his
Speaker 1: involvement in this. There was enough talk beforehand during their
Speaker 1: phone calls for Irene to figure out that this was
Speaker 1: not a spontaneous attack. This was a planned thing. It
Speaker 1: was something that Ron had thought of for weeks at
Speaker 1: least before he carried it out. It was not in
Speaker 1: the heat at the moment. But Irene did say that
Speaker 1: Ron was waiting for somebody else to get out of
Speaker 1: prison to help him carry out this deal, and so
Speaker 1: Irene figured that that person he was talking about was
Speaker 1: Dick Weston, because she knows that Dick had just gotten
Speaker 1: out of prison a few months earlier in February for
Speaker 1: bank robberies. Considering how long they worked together at this point,
Speaker 1: it's puzzling why Irene Floyd would suddenly flip on Ron
Speaker 1: Thomas and ran them out to the FEDS. Around the
Speaker 1: time when Irene married William Floyd, there was a bump
Speaker 1: in Irene's relationship with Ron, and it had to do
Speaker 1: with a bankruptcy issue on Ron's behalf um and it
Speaker 1: was messy and it involved Irene and her assets. So
Speaker 1: it seems like they were on the rocks for some
Speaker 1: time and they weren't talking, and maybe Irene thought that
Speaker 1: was the end of it, because then she went to
Speaker 1: the FBI and ratted him out. That rough patch didn't
Speaker 1: last long, though, because Irene and Ron continued their affair
Speaker 1: in According to Detective David Bell, Ron continued his business
Speaker 1: affairs with Dick Weston all while Dick remained in prison
Speaker 1: on suspicion of the Stevenson murders. Do you think Ron
Speaker 1: Thomas was involved in running guns and drugs? I don't
Speaker 1: know about the the gun, but now if I remember right,
Speaker 1: the FBI was looking and this came from Irene that
Speaker 1: they suspected Ron and Uh smuggling drugs into prison where
Speaker 1: Richard Dick he worked with Dick. I so him and
Speaker 1: Dick had a scam going where Ron would get the
Speaker 1: drugs into Dick and Dick would sell them. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: may not have been actually burned, but that was what
Speaker 1: he was suspected. Two years had gone by since Irene
Speaker 1: married William Floyd the second time. With Ron Thomas lying
Speaker 1: low from the police and Dick Weston still in jail,
Speaker 1: Irene had to find someone else to do her dirty work.
Speaker 1: Yet again, we got a statement from her I who
Speaker 1: knew had connections Uh Irene Irene got to shoot Bill
Speaker 1: Floyd and the head was the shotgun and make it
Speaker 1: look like a suicide. The name of the person mentioned
Speaker 1: is bleeped because although Detective Bell is certain based on
Speaker 1: his investigation, nobody was ever arrested for that murder. Now, Irene,
Speaker 1: she had convenually left the house that morning and went
Speaker 1: some place to give herself an alibi, and while she
Speaker 1: was gone, supposedly now her husband and wheelchair pulled down
Speaker 1: this attic stairwell under the body stairs, crawled up into
Speaker 1: the attic, got a twelve game shotgun, brought it back
Speaker 1: down the stairs, went into a bathroom, put the shotgun
Speaker 1: in his mouth, and pushed the trigger with the big
Speaker 1: toe of his right foot that was paralyzed, and blew
Speaker 1: his head off. That's what they expected you to believe.
Speaker 1: That what that's what they ruled it. They will actually
Speaker 1: ruled it a suicide. And you go back and you
Speaker 1: look at the cold case, the autopsy reports, the crime
Speaker 1: scene reports, et cetera, and you find it it's not
Speaker 1: a suicide. Well, you know, here is here is our problem.
Speaker 1: Those records only kept so many years, and those records
Speaker 1: are destroyed. We did not have a file copy uh
Speaker 1: Floud's suicide because it had been destroyed. The only information
Speaker 1: I could get on his suicide was from the Corners
Speaker 1: office and you reinterviewed everybody. Yeah, well wherever we those
Speaker 1: that we can find, Yeah, yeah, But so that's the
Speaker 1: only way that we were able to get the information
Speaker 1: on Floyd's led suicide. And it still blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe because I knew the investigators that responded
Speaker 1: to the scene of Bill Floyd, and apparently they were
Speaker 1: lied to on the real condition of Floyd when they
Speaker 1: got there, or they would have never ever signed off
Speaker 1: on Oh yeah, that's okay, suicide, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: if they knew he was confined to a wheelchair, they
Speaker 1: would never you know, I mean, that would just ludicrous anyway. So,
Speaker 1: so Bill Floyd was death and was ruled a suicide.
Speaker 1: She eventually was got his shed away a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: She got the insurance me Ron Thomas happy. William Floyd's
Speaker 1: death conveniently paved the way for Irene and Ron Thomas
Speaker 1: to ride off into the sunset together with a fat
Speaker 1: insurance payout to celebrate with nine dollars to be act.
Speaker 1: The only problem was Ron still had a wife back
Speaker 1: in Indiana, and Irene, well, unless we forget she had
Speaker 1: two dead husbands in her past. In the next episode
Speaker 1: of paper Ghosts, let's try to at him. How's he
Speaker 1: done it? And I didn't What kind of look did
Speaker 1: he give you back? It weren't nice? It was evil.
Speaker 1: If Lukes and guilty'd kill him so I decide that
Speaker 1: I am going to take a gun to court the
Speaker 1: next day, and I'm going to kill Ron on the
Speaker 1: courthouse steps. We were looking into Ron Thomas when we
Speaker 1: got familiar with Irene Compash. The Black Widow Paper Ghosts
Speaker 1: is written in exact, produced by me Am William Phelps
Speaker 1: and I Heart executive producer Christina Everett, with script consultant
Speaker 1: Matthew Riddle, Audio editing and mixing by a Booze Afar
Speaker 1: thanks to Will Pearson at I Heart Radio. Series theme
Speaker 1: number four four two is written and performed by Thomas
Speaker 1: Phelps 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.