Speaker 1: School of Humans. We're in Walmart stocking up on provisions
Speaker 1: for our cabin when we get a call from a
Speaker 1: woman named Sylvia. She says that she does not want
Speaker 1: to be interviewed again because the last time she came forward,
Speaker 1: her entire life was put under a microscope. It was
Speaker 1: interesting both in that she pointed out a lot of
Speaker 1: the discrepancies, but she was explaining those discrepancies and she
Speaker 1: was insisting that she's right and that she did see
Speaker 1: what she saw. And she's reluctant to talk. But I
Speaker 1: was able to sort of talk to her for about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes and explain to her who you were, what
Speaker 1: we're doing, that we're legit, and I feel like if
Speaker 1: we get some new information or we have something she
Speaker 1: can collaborate with us on, I feel like she will talk.
Speaker 1: Sylvia is heavily featured in ABC's forty minute episode of
Speaker 1: their show called Primetime that was dedicated to Janie's case.
Speaker 1: It aired in two thousand and nine. In the program,
Speaker 1: Sylvia tells the producers that at the time of Janie's death,
Speaker 1: she was a runner, someone who delivered drugs to parties,
Speaker 1: and on September ninth, nineteen eighty nine. She said she
Speaker 1: was asked to deliver drugs to a high school party
Speaker 1: that was happening in a cabin on Zach Road in Marshall, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: She said when she pulled up to the cabin, she
Speaker 1: was looking straight at the porch and she witnessed the
Speaker 1: girl hid another girl in the face. Sylvia said she
Speaker 1: high tailed it out of there because she didn't want
Speaker 1: any trouble. She had bags of pot in her car
Speaker 1: and didn't want to risk arrest. Sylvia didn't come forward
Speaker 1: until two thousand and seven, three years into a new
Speaker 1: investigation into Janie Ward's death. She claimed she had been scared,
Speaker 1: but now she said she had a kid herself, and
Speaker 1: she felt for the Ward family and she wanted the
Speaker 1: Wards to know once and for all what happened to
Speaker 1: their daughter. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
Speaker 1: I do love the names of some of these roads,
Speaker 1: Like some of them make sense, like Nighthawk Road and
Speaker 1: Cricket Lane, and then some of them are like high
Speaker 1: Tech Road. It's gonna be almost like purposely ironic. Right now,
Speaker 1: we are going to the cabin where the party happened
Speaker 1: and where Jane fell. Whatever happened to Janey happened to
Speaker 1: turn right onto Zach Road, and we'd managed to get
Speaker 1: some directions from the Freedom Information Request and from I
Speaker 1: compared that address with the name of the person who
Speaker 1: bought the cabin afterwards, So we're gonna go out there
Speaker 1: and look for it. The cabin on Zach Road has
Speaker 1: been renovated in the thirty years since Janie's death. It's
Speaker 1: been spruced up since that fateful night in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine when Jane's cousin Jay lived there alone. The house
Speaker 1: had two bedrooms. One had a dirty mattress on the ground.
Speaker 1: The other, where Jay slept, had a mattress with stained
Speaker 1: sheets and three thin pillows on it. Three shirts hung
Speaker 1: in the closet. Another room was converted into a makeshift
Speaker 1: workspace and was filled with old food containers and another
Speaker 1: folded up mattress and file cabinet that looked like someone
Speaker 1: to toss into the room. The living room had a
Speaker 1: matching set of faded floral furniture, and there was a
Speaker 1: model of a boat on display. The cabin didn't have
Speaker 1: electricity or running water, so the appliances in the kitchen
Speaker 1: and bathroom were unusable. And the whole house was covered
Speaker 1: in matted brown carpet. The walls were unfinished. The house
Speaker 1: had two porches. The one facing the gravel road that
Speaker 1: leads up to the cabin is where Janey supposedly fell
Speaker 1: off the step, and that step was no more than
Speaker 1: ten inches in height. In December of two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: Special Prosecutor Tim Williamson was court appointed to Janey's case.
Speaker 1: At the time, he was a prosecutor based in Mina, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Governor Mike Huckabee sets aside ten thousand dollars for the
Speaker 1: investigation so that Williamson can build a team of investigators
Speaker 1: and a deputy prosecutor. The governor's spotlight on the case
Speaker 1: gets readers hooked to Mike Masterson's column, and journalists from
Speaker 1: around the state start covering the case again. One of
Speaker 1: those journalists was Jason Peterson, and in his news report
Speaker 1: that aired on KATV, he puts a cushion down where
Speaker 1: Jennie falls and demonstrates the fall himself, tumbling backwards and
Speaker 1: landing with a heavy smack under the cushion. When you
Speaker 1: sort of demonstrated the fall off the porch, what was
Speaker 1: your impression of the of the porch and how far
Speaker 1: the fall was. Well, that's what I wanted to try
Speaker 1: to convey to our viewers. You know, it's been widely
Speaker 1: thought that she I mean, it's a fact she fell
Speaker 1: off the porch. Three people witnessed her fall off the porch.
Speaker 1: What's in dispute is whether that fall could kill someone.
Speaker 1: A backward fall off the porch an fty plunges investigator
Speaker 1: Beach years later would call it. And so I thought
Speaker 1: the best way to try to show our viewers exactly
Speaker 1: what the people at that party saw was to fall
Speaker 1: off the porch myself. One of the reasons I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it was because our top three ports showed
Speaker 1: that her head had been snapped backwards. But a fall
Speaker 1: like that does not propel your head backwards if anything
Speaker 1: pushes it forwards when you hit the ground. And the
Speaker 1: physical act of falling off the porch didn't match the
Speaker 1: physical evidence of the head being snapped backwards, you know,
Speaker 1: either struck in the face or somehow pushed backwards from
Speaker 1: the face. And do you think that when you were
Speaker 1: when you were you know, when you were falling off
Speaker 1: the porch. It's widely been described as she fell ten inches,
Speaker 1: but actually then others were saying, but it wasn't really
Speaker 1: ten inches. If you count if you're going from the
Speaker 1: top of her head, it's more than ten inches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's much more. I mean, it's a much further fall
Speaker 1: than ten inches the porch. While it's true as ten
Speaker 1: inches high, you're falling from a height, and if you're
Speaker 1: falling straight back, you know, that's probably maybe a six
Speaker 1: or seven foot you know, acceleration before you hit. But
Speaker 1: I think the prosecutor one time said he had seen
Speaker 1: a case where a man in Hot Springs fell off
Speaker 1: sent made a similar fall and he was now quadriplegic.
Speaker 1: And I guess what you have to decide that the
Speaker 1: viewer is, you know, is that enough to kill someone?
Speaker 1: And ter freak accidents happened, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: the human bodies designed to live. It's pretty difficult to
Speaker 1: kill someone or you know, you can sustain a lot
Speaker 1: of injuries and still live. And would that have been
Speaker 1: enough to kill her or did something else happen either
Speaker 1: before or after that fall that contributed to her death.
Speaker 1: Peterson's report was in two thousand and five, a few
Speaker 1: months into Tim Williamson's investigation, and In his report, he
Speaker 1: brings up suspicions that he has about Jane's case. First,
Speaker 1: the fact that ron Rose, Sherry, and Kim All said
Speaker 1: they went straight to the bank parking lot, even though
Speaker 1: dispatcher Harold Young said they went by the police station. First,
Speaker 1: Peterson talked about the condition of Jannie's clothing, the fact
Speaker 1: that her clothes were wet and sandy, even though the
Speaker 1: cabin and the truck bed were reportedly dry and dusty.
Speaker 1: He also mentioned the fact that those same clothes went missing,
Speaker 1: and that the X rays the Wards supposedly saw in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine that showed a fracture were not the
Speaker 1: same one sent to them from the crime lab, and
Speaker 1: he pointed out the discrepancies in witness statements from Sarah
Speaker 1: and some of her friends. He also said that the
Speaker 1: ambulance run reports pertaining to Janie's death were stolen. In
Speaker 1: the months after Jane died. The ambulance service had reported
Speaker 1: that the building had been broken into, only one report
Speaker 1: was stolen, Janey's. Peterson reached out to twenty six people
Speaker 1: at the party. He was able to get a few
Speaker 1: people to open up to him, but he got a
Speaker 1: lot of doors slammed in his face, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people hung up on him. Most people did not
Speaker 1: want to revisit the night that Janie died. I think
Speaker 1: we did a pretty good job. I did a pretty
Speaker 1: good job contacting as many people at the party as
Speaker 1: I could now as far as what their reactions were,
Speaker 1: I thought maybe time would have loosened some lips, they'd
Speaker 1: be less fearful to talk or to tell what they know.
Speaker 1: It's suming there's something to know, But you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people as soon as identified who I was
Speaker 1: and what I was calling about or what I was
Speaker 1: visiting about, shutting down right away. Me know, it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of over and over people not wanting to
Speaker 1: talk about it at all, which kind of surprised me.
Speaker 1: Though maybe they've just they're just tired of hearing about it,
Speaker 1: are tired of talking about it, or tired of thinking
Speaker 1: about it as soon as they do. When he tried
Speaker 1: to call Gary Dn, Gary Don's girlfriend gave Peterson a
Speaker 1: number for him to reach him on That number one
Speaker 1: eight hundred fuck you. One other thing we still don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to is the route that the truck
Speaker 1: took from the cabin to the town Square. There are
Speaker 1: two ways to drive from the cabin on Zach Road
Speaker 1: to marshall'stown Square. The most direct route is turning left
Speaker 1: out of the driveway. You go a few miles on
Speaker 1: rocky roads and then hit the pavement. On this route
Speaker 1: you pass the Sheriff's offices, old location, several homes, and
Speaker 1: the community center where on the night Jane died, there
Speaker 1: was huge event going on, but the people in the
Speaker 1: truck who carry Janey in the back say they didn't
Speaker 1: stop or notice the community meeting. They say they never
Speaker 1: stopped until they got to the town square, which they
Speaker 1: went to because it was close to the only medical
Speaker 1: facility in town, the ambulance service. It was also across
Speaker 1: the street from the car wash. The alternate route, a
Speaker 1: little longer and even rockier, is a right turn out
Speaker 1: of the driveway. This route goes along the creek bed
Speaker 1: and comes out at the same place on the pavement
Speaker 1: as the first route. Five point one miles to the
Speaker 1: main road and zero point eight miles only really like
Speaker 1: point eight like around just under a mile to a
Speaker 1: good paved road. Whichever route they chose, the drive from
Speaker 1: the cabin on Zach Road to Marshall's town Square should
Speaker 1: not take any more than twenty minutes. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: It's like so many other people who worked on Jamie's case.
Speaker 1: The Wards found the special prosecutor Tim Williamson disappointing. How
Speaker 1: did that affect you and Ron the whole Tim Williamson thing.
Speaker 1: I know, he came and prayed with you, right, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what a joke he was, and the governor gave him
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars to have to investigate. He did nothing
Speaker 1: but covered that. I mean it was already covered at
Speaker 1: and all he did was helped them. I mean all
Speaker 1: he did was yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. And he didn't
Speaker 1: hear from him. Michael said, you didn't hear from him
Speaker 1: after him? You never, I mean we might ask questions,
Speaker 1: we never got anything. Nothing. Journalist Mike Masterson writes about
Speaker 1: this in his column about how much faith the Words
Speaker 1: put into Tim Williamson. They prayed together, but after this meeting,
Speaker 1: Mike said, it became harder and harder to get in
Speaker 1: touch with him. The Words contacted Tim Williamson right away,
Speaker 1: and Williamson drove to Marshall and met at a church
Speaker 1: with a family and prayed together or justice to emerge
Speaker 1: in this case. He promised the family, I will find
Speaker 1: out what happened to your daughter, you know, and if
Speaker 1: it need be, there'll be accountability. He promised them that
Speaker 1: in the church, well they believed. I wanted to believe him,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean. Ron called me and said, well,
Speaker 1: we have hope for the first time that something's going
Speaker 1: to happen. He seems like a very sincere guy. He
Speaker 1: will do the right thing. For the first week or two,
Speaker 1: Tim Williamson called me, knowing I'd been involved in it
Speaker 1: and writing about it, and he said, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to rely on you, Mike, if you don't mind
Speaker 1: this for information if I get stuck. And I said, sure,
Speaker 1: I don't have anything to hide, and I'll be glad
Speaker 1: to help because I'd like to see justice done too.
Speaker 1: So he kind of had a rapport until about the
Speaker 1: third week into it, when he called me and said
Speaker 1: he was going to the crime lab to start really
Speaker 1: digging deeper into this, all this and all the records
Speaker 1: there at the crime lab and blah blah blah. He said,
Speaker 1: I'll get back to you next week. I said, great.
Speaker 1: So I waited a week past nothing two weeks nothing.
Speaker 1: Finally about probably three weeks after, you know, I tried
Speaker 1: to reach him and couldn't get through. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like he's busy, he's tied up. Now. Who knows what
Speaker 1: happened to the crime lab. I don't, but logically I
Speaker 1: would say something happened to the crime lab, and he
Speaker 1: was told something at the crime lab and during his
Speaker 1: visit over in a little rock that maybe sort of
Speaker 1: dampened his attitude. Put it that way, because after that
Speaker 1: he would announce that he's dug into this. He's got
Speaker 1: a staff helping him do it. He's doing interviews, going
Speaker 1: to find out what happened. He spent four years total,
Speaker 1: and he amassed lots of you know, paper, stacks of
Speaker 1: paper with interviews and stuff. So when you looked at it,
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like, boy, this guy's been really busy.
Speaker 1: But when you broke it down, there wasn't anything of
Speaker 1: substance that mattered. Tim Williamson's report makes up the bulk
Speaker 1: of the police case file we got from the Arkansas
Speaker 1: State Police. It's filled with transcriptions of interviews with witnesses
Speaker 1: and a bunch of repeated material from the first investigations.
Speaker 1: Case file. A lot of the accusations against Williamson center
Speaker 1: on the fact that people didn't think he was working
Speaker 1: hard enough. In the case file, there are dozens of
Speaker 1: letters addressed to Williamson from people around Arkansas telling him
Speaker 1: to get a move on. On page three, eight hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty, I find a note from Williamson's deputy prosecutor.
Speaker 1: He says they should hold off on conducting interviews until
Speaker 1: after the Wards have concluded their civil suit. That's the
Speaker 1: one where they're petitioning to change Janey's death certificate from
Speaker 1: undetermined to homicide, and he says that they might as
Speaker 1: well hold off because the ward's lawyer is already deposing witnesses,
Speaker 1: meaning court ordered subpoenas to get the to interview. That way,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have to double up on the work. The
Speaker 1: depositions were done by the ward's lawyer, Jerry Sallings. Saling's
Speaker 1: law firm started working for the Wards when the family
Speaker 1: needed to get Janie's body exhumed before the second autopsy.
Speaker 1: What we're hoping to get from these depositions is the
Speaker 1: answer to some key questions, including how much time elapsed
Speaker 1: from the time Jannie fell to the ground to the
Speaker 1: time that she got to the bank parking lot, and
Speaker 1: did the truck make any other stops en route. I'm
Speaker 1: also interested in the depositions from Ron Rose and Kim
Speaker 1: because they were the ones in the truck. I'm also
Speaker 1: interested in Gary Donn's deposition because Richard Walter from the
Speaker 1: Vidock Society said Gary Donn told him a completely different
Speaker 1: story than the one that was in his statement. In
Speaker 1: Kim's deposition, she's cooperative, but she gives yes and no
Speaker 1: answers and doesn't elaborate. But what she says in her
Speaker 1: interview mostly matches her original statements, which were taken in
Speaker 1: the months after the incident. Do you you you said
Speaker 1: that you and Janie were good friends, who were friends? Okay?
Speaker 1: Do you know if she was having any problems with
Speaker 1: anybody at school? No? I don't don't know. No, you're
Speaker 1: not saying she wasn't. You just don't know where it
Speaker 1: was that. Had you heard any rumors about her having
Speaker 1: any problems at school with anybody? No? After Janie got
Speaker 1: in the vehicle with you, did you go straight to
Speaker 1: the party. Yes. Here Saling is asking about how they
Speaker 1: got there in case they had passed the river or
Speaker 1: the creek before going to the party. Didn't go by
Speaker 1: the river? No, didn't stop to buy anything, No, didn't
Speaker 1: go drink somewhere else or anything at all. Did you
Speaker 1: pick up anybody else on the way to the party? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: So how help me out? How long does it take
Speaker 1: to get from the square out to where the party was?
Speaker 1: I mean minutes, maybe thirty. That's just a gives Ron
Speaker 1: Rose is more descriptive in his answers. Do you remember
Speaker 1: what she was wearing then? Like a blue jeans and
Speaker 1: a black shirt? And I don't know. I pause it.
Speaker 1: That's wet. He said. He felt like it was his
Speaker 1: duty to get help for Janey. Might I say, no, won,
Speaker 1: there's a good good as friends. We was being kid
Speaker 1: and everything, and I feel like there's my responsibility to
Speaker 1: get her out of there, you know. So we try
Speaker 1: to get her in front of my truck, try to
Speaker 1: load her up. And how did you try to do that?
Speaker 1: Just about three or four, I think it's four of
Speaker 1: us there, four or five of us picked her up
Speaker 1: and tried to handle as best we kids, and tried
Speaker 1: the slider up in front of my truck in the cab,
Speaker 1: in my truck and we couldn't get her in there.
Speaker 1: She's too big and she was limp, you know, she
Speaker 1: just it was hard. We couldn't get her in there. Right,
Speaker 1: you know the back of your truck? Was it wet
Speaker 1: or dry? Pretty sure it was dry. Here Ron gives
Speaker 1: more details about the car wreck. This is the one
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the last episode. The vehicle
Speaker 1: was Ryan's. He became his hysterical after Janneye was pronounced
Speaker 1: dead in the parking lot as you were leaving. Do
Speaker 1: you remember Brian getting his truck stuck? Yes, he wrecked
Speaker 1: atop of the hill up there, had a wrecked up there.
Speaker 1: Who's in the truck with him? He was in a car.
Speaker 1: I don't know who was with him for sure, but
Speaker 1: he was in a car, a car, Yeah, all right?
Speaker 1: Did he block the He had roadblock he'd come out
Speaker 1: this big steep hill. When he come out on top,
Speaker 1: he'd lost it and nosed off in the bank and
Speaker 1: the back end was sticking all the way off the road.
Speaker 1: So how did y'all get around him? I had a
Speaker 1: friend Jimmy, come up there and yanked him back to
Speaker 1: the truck bank, yanked his car out of the way
Speaker 1: to where I could drive up on the bank and
Speaker 1: get by, and then after you got on the past him,
Speaker 1: you've got a gravel road for a while or ways here,
Speaker 1: And did y'all ever stop and never stopped? Neither Ron
Speaker 1: nor Kim said they stopped by the police station, and
Speaker 1: they both said they took a left out of the driveway,
Speaker 1: the more direct route that does not pass by the creek.
Speaker 1: Gary Donn's deposition openly hostile at the beginning, especially because
Speaker 1: during the depositions Ron and Moana Ward are in the
Speaker 1: room and you can feel the tension. You're here under
Speaker 1: the court order. Subpoena is a court order from the judge,
Speaker 1: and I get to ask you questions and it's my
Speaker 1: right and as I answer them, if I don't want to,
Speaker 1: well that's why I'm I'm about care to not go
Speaker 1: further than this right out here, right now, I understand.
Speaker 1: Let me just tell you the way this works in
Speaker 1: a deposition. If you refuse to answer the question, you
Speaker 1: can walk out of here today and I can go
Speaker 1: to the judge and I can say he refused to
Speaker 1: answer these questions, and he can force you to come
Speaker 1: back here and answer them, and then you pay for
Speaker 1: the deposition. Go for that right now, I'm paying for it.
Speaker 1: Go for it. Okay. Well, I don't want to get
Speaker 1: into confident. I don't want to fool with this. I'm
Speaker 1: this man right here. I don't care that he'd be
Speaker 1: in the same room with him, because the crap he's
Speaker 1: put me through, and I do not like to even
Speaker 1: be in the same block with the man you're pointing to,
Speaker 1: Ron Ron Ward right there. All right, well, I can
Speaker 1: tell that your your feelings are a little very very
Speaker 1: Sellings asked him to review his statement, and garyd On
Speaker 1: says he didn't say most of the stuff that was
Speaker 1: in it. To him, it looked like someone made up
Speaker 1: his answers say this in some parts, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: like it's backwards. I mean, like, I don't really explain
Speaker 1: it to you. It just it's just like I told
Speaker 1: you had like it had a mace or Somethingody created
Speaker 1: theirself how they wanted it to be. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So it's not the truth of what you said. No
Speaker 1: not no, okay, uh now it's two pages. Did you
Speaker 1: read all of it? I've read enough. That's fine. So
Speaker 1: I read enough. Somebody made that up. Okay, tell me
Speaker 1: what part of it is not true. I've never seen
Speaker 1: her filling no cut from okay, Okay, I've never seen
Speaker 1: her drinking. Let's take it one one statement at times
Speaker 1: so I can keep up with this. Okay, let's see,
Speaker 1: says I got to the party around six, Ron, Kim
Speaker 1: and Jane came in together. Is that is that what
Speaker 1: you said or not? That's about the one thing I've
Speaker 1: seen there in the first sentences that was correct. Okay,
Speaker 1: that can recall. Well, let me tell you this. This
Speaker 1: is a statement that we got from the police department,
Speaker 1: and this is supposed This is a copy of an
Speaker 1: interview that supposedly Bill Beach of the State Police took
Speaker 1: and this is his statement. This is anything I came
Speaker 1: up with. They changed there, They changed much stuff over
Speaker 1: the years in the department down there at that time.
Speaker 1: I'm not disputing it. I'm asking questions. I'm interested in
Speaker 1: what you're telling me. I understand, Okay, So I want
Speaker 1: to know what in here is not your statement. Sellings
Speaker 1: goes line by line and Gary don lists out what
Speaker 1: he doesn't agree with from his original state says, I
Speaker 1: went over to her and it was like the breath
Speaker 1: was knocked out of her. You're shaking your head. No, sorry,
Speaker 1: it's all right. And her shirt had come up when
Speaker 1: she fell, and I looked at her stomach and I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell that she was breathing. No, me, and somebody
Speaker 1: picked her up and put her on the porch. No,
Speaker 1: her eyes were open about halfway and rolled back, and
Speaker 1: she was not blinking. No. I believe she had messed
Speaker 1: in her pants too. No, I couldn't get anybody to
Speaker 1: help me. The urinating part is the only part that
Speaker 1: I remember it looked like to me. In this deposition,
Speaker 1: gary Don doesn't mention anything about the creek bad and
Speaker 1: the drowning theory that we had heard from Richard Walter
Speaker 1: of the Vedok Society. These answers are notably different from
Speaker 1: gary Don's original statement in nineteen eighty nine and his
Speaker 1: link the interview with Bill Beach in the months after
Speaker 1: Jane's death. In this deposition, he says he did not
Speaker 1: move Janeye onto the porch, and he also says she
Speaker 1: could have been lying on the ground for up to
Speaker 1: twenty minutes before he had said he had immediately gone
Speaker 1: over to her after she had fallen and moved her
Speaker 1: up onto the porch. He also doesn't remember his interview
Speaker 1: with Bill Beach and says he had to do a
Speaker 1: polygraph test basically a light detector test at the Cercy
Speaker 1: County Jail, but there is no mention of a polygraph
Speaker 1: test anywhere in the case file. In fact, Bill Beach
Speaker 1: later specifically said that he hadn't administered any polygraph tests
Speaker 1: during his investigation. On the night Janie died, ron Ward
Speaker 1: saw his daughter in the morgue at the Kaufman Funeral
Speaker 1: Home around midnight. He was there with the coroner of
Speaker 1: Sirsey County, Thomas Martin, and Ron said he had to
Speaker 1: insist on an autopsy. Sallings deposed Tom to ask him
Speaker 1: about his impressions of that night. Tell us your name,
Speaker 1: pleads Thomas W. Martin Jr. And mister Martin, I understand
Speaker 1: that you have some difficulty hearing at times. I do
Speaker 1: all right, and you know we're here today for a deposition.
Speaker 1: At the time of Jane's death, Tom had been a
Speaker 1: coroner for about twenty five years, and his role was
Speaker 1: mainly to declare someone dead and also determine a cause
Speaker 1: of death if he couldn't determine anything. He would send
Speaker 1: the body to the medical examiner in Little Rock. Sellings
Speaker 1: asked him a question about his corner report. Next to
Speaker 1: a lot of the questions on the forum, Tom left
Speaker 1: it blank or wrote a question mark. He could not
Speaker 1: tell if there were abrasions on Jane's body, He could
Speaker 1: not tell what injury there was, or if any foul
Speaker 1: play occurred. He had ruled out fairly obvious causes of
Speaker 1: death like gunshot wounds, and said he didn't see anything
Speaker 1: obviously wrong with Janey. Basically, he said he had no
Speaker 1: idea what happened to Janey. And he said he also
Speaker 1: didn't finish filling out the form because he was already
Speaker 1: intending to have the body taken to Little Rock. In fact,
Speaker 1: like I I couldn't exactly remember, he said he figured that
Speaker 1: he would have already called the medical Examiner's office by
Speaker 1: the time he met Ron at the funeral home. Did
Speaker 1: you see mister Ward that night, Ron Ward, Yes, he
Speaker 1: came to the funeral And would that have been before
Speaker 1: or after the court the medical examiner was called? Probably
Speaker 1: after he was called. No, I don't really remember the
Speaker 1: time frame that he came in of the funeral. Do
Speaker 1: you have any memory of him insisting that an autopsv done.
Speaker 1: Uh No, don't have anything. He didn't have to insist
Speaker 1: on him because he was already on the way. The
Speaker 1: investigators working on the case did conduct and record interviews
Speaker 1: from two thousand and seven to two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Sarah is a glaring omission from these interviews. They interviewed
Speaker 1: JD and Kathy, the ambulance service attendants who checked Jane
Speaker 1: in the bank parking lot. They're the ones who also
Speaker 1: said they saw debris on Janie and that her clothes
Speaker 1: were wet. They also saw swelling in her neck. And
Speaker 1: they're the ones who filled out the ambulance run reports,
Speaker 1: the ones that had supposedly been stolen in the months
Speaker 1: after Janie's death. Here's Kathy's interview with investigators. I after
Speaker 1: broken into then they thought, well, JD, who was my husband's,
Speaker 1: thought that the run sheet had gotten stolen. I found
Speaker 1: that I had put it in a different place. But
Speaker 1: Kathy clarifies the run report was just misplaced, and this
Speaker 1: has been a Misunderstandably was and it was. I found
Speaker 1: it later on. I had put it under some new
Speaker 1: run sheet and I didn't realize that I had done that.
Speaker 1: Kathy again describes what she saw in the bank parking
Speaker 1: lot and what condition Janie's body was in clothes was
Speaker 1: a damp here you're stamp and what was that inmisphere
Speaker 1: conditions at this time? It was it was dry that
Speaker 1: she was damp. Her clothes were damp, her hair was damp.
Speaker 1: The only place that there was in the dampness was
Speaker 1: between the raps. And I said, I smelled no urine
Speaker 1: or no bed. I just had a it's just a
Speaker 1: soft perfuse smell. That was all I smelled. There was
Speaker 1: leaves and twigs and sand in her hair, and you know,
Speaker 1: that was all I looked at at that time. And
Speaker 1: I did a cervical check, but I I didn't feel
Speaker 1: the spine. It it felt like it was in plite.
Speaker 1: And they said the flight the spine in her neck,
Speaker 1: the free had a whole leaf spine. I was checking
Speaker 1: the sea spine and I felt like I felt everything.
Speaker 1: But you know, I still kept tractioning on the neck.
Speaker 1: I that we'd keep tractioning when we'd moving. Mkay, let
Speaker 1: me back you up to what you said the while.
Speaker 1: Was it real? Kathy said she didn't notice an obvious
Speaker 1: neck injury when she examined Janie, nor did she see
Speaker 1: any trauma to the face. Hearing these accounts from the
Speaker 1: coroner and Kathy, neither of them could see anything obviously
Speaker 1: wrong with Jane. So if there were no obvious injuries
Speaker 1: to her face, was it possible that she was hitting
Speaker 1: the face at all. We'll be right back. We're driving
Speaker 1: to Little Rock to meet with a family's lawyer, Jerry Sallings.
Speaker 1: He conducted all the depositions and represented the Ward family
Speaker 1: for the duration of Tim Williamson's investigation, but he was
Speaker 1: also an outsider to Marshall. I don't care if we
Speaker 1: wanted his perspective on the case. What I believe is,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this case, a very small town,
Speaker 1: so you don't have resources, you don't have highly developed,
Speaker 1: intelligent police force, and you've got someone's family there who
Speaker 1: is prestigious in the community, the district judge, I think
Speaker 1: at the time, and all of those factors, But the
Speaker 1: biggest factor that I perceived as I was proceeding through
Speaker 1: the depositions is I don't think they really did a
Speaker 1: good job of investigating or trying, and I think they
Speaker 1: assumed that because this was a small town, and mister
Speaker 1: Ward and his family were not sophisticated that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about it. I think that's what happened.
Speaker 1: And then they found out differently when mister Ward said
Speaker 1: had all these questions and they couldn't answer them because
Speaker 1: they didn't do a good job in the first place.
Speaker 1: They did a really bad job. Honestly, does not share
Speaker 1: the dislike that the family had towards Tim Williamson. He
Speaker 1: said they'd worked together in the court proceedings and they
Speaker 1: had a mutual respect for each other. We'd heard from
Speaker 1: some people that they thought Ron was uncooperative, but Selling
Speaker 1: said Ron always shared all of the information he collected
Speaker 1: independently with the police and with investigators. I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody anything I had or that Ron had was kept secret.
Speaker 1: What we tried to get were specific answers, and Tim
Speaker 1: had a notebook, and I don't think I had that
Speaker 1: notebook anymore. But it was just topic by topic with
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the inconsistency was the or the question
Speaker 1: that he had that wasn't answered, and I felt like
Speaker 1: it was my job to try to answer it if
Speaker 1: I could. And the way you try to answer it
Speaker 1: is to go get the facts or the information through
Speaker 1: depositions or whatever. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: there were some questions that we couldn't answer and still can't.
Speaker 1: As an investigator, this is a feeling that I can
Speaker 1: relate to. And while you always want to give people answers,
Speaker 1: and you always want to think that there's another step
Speaker 1: that you can take or something that can be done,
Speaker 1: the reality is, once mistakes are made at the initial
Speaker 1: crime scene, it's very difficult to go back and rectify them.
Speaker 1: Can you just in general, maybe not even about this case,
Speaker 1: but just talking about the difficulty of if the original
Speaker 1: crime scene is messed up, how difficult it is to
Speaker 1: go back and if something's not done right. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there something that the police could have done early
Speaker 1: on like that would have mitigated that? I mean, just
Speaker 1: from my experience with pure crime, I was looking through
Speaker 1: the witness statements and they're very short. They're basically a
Speaker 1: paragraph a long each and they're just there's no detail.
Speaker 1: There's not much detail in any of them things like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there anything that could have done to
Speaker 1: I mean the reason that you have CSI all these
Speaker 1: police shows is because every every fact is important, and
Speaker 1: you can't say, oh, that's not important because you don't
Speaker 1: know what was there. So photographs, statements from everybody, and
Speaker 1: following up on every lead, and I don't that wasn't
Speaker 1: done here for sure. The assumption was is that she
Speaker 1: fell off, fell off and died, and so when you
Speaker 1: work from that assumption, you're not really looking for anything else.
Speaker 1: Was there anything else? I don't know. I could not
Speaker 1: get that answer to the point that I could say
Speaker 1: that was anything specifically. I mean, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of irregularities in this and that's why Ron had questions,
Speaker 1: and that's why it was pursued. But unfortunately it wasn't
Speaker 1: pursued early enough. And that's not his fault because he
Speaker 1: tried diligently to do it. But I think they assumed
Speaker 1: that he was just a uh, someone who didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was doing. I asked if Salings thought there
Speaker 1: would have been any answer that would have satisfied Ron Ward.
Speaker 1: I don't know Ron was. He was he was convinced
Speaker 1: it was more than natural causes or falling off the
Speaker 1: porch or any of a number of things. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if he would have been or not. Maybe
Speaker 1: if maybe Fuld. Maybe you felt they'd been treated with
Speaker 1: more respect, and it was an answer that at least
Speaker 1: made sense. Maybe, but maybe he was he was a stubborn,
Speaker 1: determined man. Remember that after doctor Burnell's autopsy, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people looking into Janie's death. There's Tim
Speaker 1: Williamson in his investigation. There's the family's lawyer, Jerry Sallings
Speaker 1: doing depositions, and there's Mike Masterson's column it's now published
Speaker 1: multiple times a week looking into Jannie's case. And there's
Speaker 1: a film crew from ABC. The ABC producer contacts Sylvia,
Speaker 1: the runner, who said she witnessed Jane getting hit in
Speaker 1: the face with a baseball bat. Sylvia's information could be
Speaker 1: crucial because it appears to match doctor Burnell's conclusion that
Speaker 1: Jane could have been hit with a bluntfuls object. But
Speaker 1: some people were critical of Sylvia. They point out that
Speaker 1: she'd already given a statement in nineteen eighty nine, it's
Speaker 1: included in the case file, and in this statement she
Speaker 1: told a completely different story. When Sylvia was interviewed by
Speaker 1: Tim Williamson in two thousand and six, he asked her
Speaker 1: about inconsistencies in her story. He asked Sylvia about a
Speaker 1: previous interview that she did in nineteen eighty nine with
Speaker 1: an investigator named Robert Hicks at her home. In that interview,
Speaker 1: Sylvia claimed she'd heard the story secondhand from three guys
Speaker 1: who told her as story about two girls who were
Speaker 1: mad at Janie because she was dating one of their boyfriends.
Speaker 1: Sylvia said that the injury to Janie's neck came when
Speaker 1: somebody hit her with a full beer bottle, and after that,
Speaker 1: she said, some guy in a pickup truck took her
Speaker 1: to the house to clean her up. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, Sylvia denied to Tim Williamson that she ever
Speaker 1: made that statement, but it's a part of the police
Speaker 1: case file. Some people also criticized the fact that Sylvia
Speaker 1: came forward with this new version of events after the
Speaker 1: information about doctor Bannell's autopsy conclusions became public. Ron told
Speaker 1: Bill Beach that he spoke to Sylvia and that Sylvia
Speaker 1: told him a story about three girls and an older
Speaker 1: guy jumping on Janne and beating her up by the river.
Speaker 1: But when ABC interviewed Sylvia, she said that she witnessed
Speaker 1: Sarah on the porch hitting Jane in the neck with
Speaker 1: a baseball bat in the eyes of investigators, Sylvia lost
Speaker 1: any credibility she had as a witness. Because of all
Speaker 1: these inconsistencies. We were able to reach Tim Williamson. He's
Speaker 1: no longer practicing law, but Janey's case remains vivid in
Speaker 1: his mind. Well, thank you for talking to us, Kim,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. So you ended up with this case, now,
Speaker 1: had you heard about it before you took it on?
Speaker 1: I had recalled the headlines of the case from eighty nine,
Speaker 1: and then I think I probably recalled some of the
Speaker 1: discussions around the case that made to the made it
Speaker 1: into the newsprint. Tim started investigating, but he couldn't reach
Speaker 1: any new conclusions from the investigative evidence or from looking
Speaker 1: back at the previous autopsies, and he especially couldn't see
Speaker 1: any evidence of a homicide. As we got favored into it,
Speaker 1: we were not developing additional information that was helping me
Speaker 1: to decide, well, if this is a homicide, than who
Speaker 1: did it. It got down to the point eventually, where
Speaker 1: as I had some you know, we were looking at
Speaker 1: the Thenell's findings and then going back and comparing those
Speaker 1: with the photograss and the information collected the time doctor
Speaker 1: Fane Malik for the crime that I did the original autopsy,
Speaker 1: and it became apparent to me and to my investigators
Speaker 1: that we had to get to the bottom of the
Speaker 1: forensics on this because we truly felt because we had
Speaker 1: too somewhat competing autosic reports, we had to get a
Speaker 1: definitive position as to what the medical evidence and the
Speaker 1: forensic evidence is, because inherently, you do not want to
Speaker 1: attempt to prosecute a case or you have information that
Speaker 1: is not corroborative of itself when it's in the forensic role.
Speaker 1: So we're relying on science. The science has to agree.
Speaker 1: So our only option was to do something that is
Speaker 1: extremely rare, and we did not want to do it,
Speaker 1: but we were left without choice. Much like the ward's
Speaker 1: lawyer Jerry Sallings, Tim thought that there was no way
Speaker 1: to solve the case through the investigative evidence, so he
Speaker 1: decided there was one last thing he could do exhume
Speaker 1: Janey's body again and perform another autopsy. I'm Katherine Townsend
Speaker 1: and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint
Speaker 1: production between School of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written
Speaker 1: and recorded by me Katherine Townsend, Taylor Church, and Gabby
Speaker 1: Watts are our producers and story editors. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and Els Crowley for School of
Speaker 1: Humans and Conell Byrne and Chuck Bryant for iHeart Our
Speaker 1: Field producer is Miranda Hawk. Theme and original score are
Speaker 1: by Ben Sale, available wherever you get your music. Please
Speaker 1: visit us at helengon podcast dot com or follow us
Speaker 1: on social media. School of Humans