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True Crime Story It Couldnt Happen Here S03E06
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00:08If you want to know about Satan, read the Bible.
00:12That's how we know he's there.
00:15To me, he's a real person.
00:18And I believe a lot of people are evil,
00:20and you don't know it until they start killing people.
00:24I'm not afraid of the devil because I've got God on my side.
00:29But as long as God's for me, who can be against me?
00:45We are in East Texas, and we're driving through here
00:50on our way to a little town called Gilmer.
00:52We've been to Texas before.
00:54You know, we've seen the stereotypical big sky, wide-open spaces.
00:57But this is Piney Woods here in this part of East Texas,
01:02and it feels different.
01:03To me, personally, it feels, you know,
01:05a little bit more like Georgia, Louisiana.
01:08Jesus welcomes you to Gilmer.
01:11It's kind.
01:15It's very faith-based here in Gilmer.
01:17There's Christianity, there's Mormons,
01:19there's Lutherans, there's Baptists.
01:23Gilmer is also home to the Yamboree.
01:28It's a yearly festival celebrating yams.
01:32Because why not, right?
01:36During Yamboree, we crown our yam queen
01:39because we have a history with the yam crops.
01:44The Yamboree is like a big family reunion.
01:48Gilmer is a small community, very family-oriented.
01:52A lot of families have been here for generations,
01:55very tight-knit.
02:02We're in the downtown area, right on the town square,
02:06where, in January of 1992,
02:09a very popular local high school girl, Kelly Wilson,
02:13worked her job at the local video store
02:15and then never made it home.
02:17And the investigation into her disappearance
02:20got tangled up with a number of other cases
02:23that were being investigated in the area,
02:25resulting in a great deal of confusion
02:27that even 30-plus years later,
02:30the residents of Gilmer are still grappling with.
02:36Kelly worked at a local video store
02:39on January 5th, which was a Sunday evening.
02:42The store closed, and Kelly left about 8.30.
02:47And she just didn't go home that night.
02:49My name is Shane Phelps.
02:51In 1992, I was an assistant attorney general
02:53handling cases all over Texas.
02:56The stepdad and her mom didn't think immediately
03:00that there was anything to be alarmed about.
03:02But when it got well into the morning
03:04and they hadn't heard a word from her,
03:05and that's when the stepfather went to the video store
03:08and found her car.
03:09He discovered one of her tires had been slashed,
03:12and she left her purse behind.
03:14But there was no Kelly.
03:15Kelly was nowhere to be seen.
03:19That's the last known picture I have of her, yeah.
03:24This was 10 days before she disappeared
03:26with me in New Orleans.
03:28I'm Robbie Wilson.
03:29I am Kelly Wilson's dad.
03:32I was living in Louisiana at the time.
03:35Her mother had since remarried again,
03:37and they were living in Gilmer.
03:40My first thought was her mother and her
03:43had gotten into an argument and had blown up or whatever,
03:46and, you know, you could easily see where she might have just said,
03:48heck, I'm going to dad's.
03:52Kelly was kind of torn between her parents.
03:55And so there was some sense that, well, maybe this is a runaway.
03:59The police officer who responded was a Sergeant James Brown
04:02of the Gilmer Police Department.
04:04First question you're going to ask is, who saw her last?
04:07Who had the last communication with her?
04:09So police talked to the manager of that video store.
04:13He said, and it was 8.30.
04:15The store closed, and he went home.
04:18He also said Kelly was responsible
04:20for taking the day's deposits to the local bank.
04:24Sergeant Brown went to the bank, looked at surveillance,
04:27and, unfortunately, this video surveillance,
04:31very grainy, very difficult to make anything out.
04:34But we do know that the deposit was made.
04:37Sergeant Brown actually wrote in his report
04:38that there was evidence, he looked at the tire,
04:41that it had been driven after it was flat.
04:44There was probably credible speculation
04:47that she drove her car to the bank,
04:50deposited the money,
04:52realized that her tire was slashed,
04:55and drove back to the video store.
04:58Maybe she walked home and was abducted on the way.
05:01We don't know what happened at that point.
05:06Kelly Wilson is a teenage girl
05:08who has never seen justice,
05:11and it's been over 30 years.
05:14We're going to go meet with Jennifer Dean,
05:16who's one of her girlfriends from high school.
05:19And I would love to know from her, you know,
05:22not only what this did to the community,
05:25but for all the other teenage girls
05:27that were friends with Kelly.
05:30How are you? I'm Hillary.
05:32Good.
05:32It's nice to meet you.
05:33Thank you so much for having us.
05:35Welcome to East Texas.
05:37Hearing that Kelly, of all people, is missing,
05:41what do you do when you get that piece of information?
05:44At first, it was just disbelief.
05:47I literally heard it in the hall from another friend,
05:49and I was like, there's no way.
05:51I called her mom, I believe,
05:55and she confirmed that it was true.
05:57And one of the first things she's saying is,
06:00you know, Jennifer, they think that she ran away.
06:02She's like, she didn't run away.
06:03I mean, here's her coats, here's her shoes,
06:06here's her bag that she would have taken.
06:08A teenager doesn't run away with nothing.
06:11Right.
06:12What did Kelly want for herself?
06:13Did she talk about what her goals were?
06:17She really wanted to return to Louisiana,
06:19which is really where she was mostly raised,
06:21and go to LSU.
06:24The agreement we had made was to finish the term in Gilmer,
06:29and then after the break, she would move to Louisiana.
06:33With me, that was kind of the plan.
06:35She was a smart girl.
06:37She did well in school.
06:39She had lots of friends.
06:41She liked to have a good time, for sure.
06:46Well, tell me about your last conversation with Kelly.
06:49Do you remember?
06:50Yes, we'd gone out Saturday night.
06:52Well, nothing stands out about that night in particular,
06:55but the next morning, another friend of ours
06:57and I went to volleyball practice.
07:00Kelly said, hey, when y'all come back from practice,
07:04I want you to stop by the video store.
07:05I have to tell you something.
07:07Yeah, did she make it sound like it was something serious
07:10or something silly?
07:11I can't say, but we had practice, we left,
07:15and we just, we were tired, so we went home.
07:18And that was the night that she went missing.
07:22So it's always been a mystery, you know.
07:25If that was something significant that she wanted to tell us,
07:29it's always plagued me.
07:31I think Sergeant Brown's investigation
07:33was fairly thorough at the beginning.
07:36Started looking at her friends,
07:37and particularly, in a bit of a cliche,
07:40you look at boyfriends, ex-boyfriends,
07:43people who might have some issue with Kelly.
07:46Chris Denton was an obvious suspect at that point.
07:49He was the boyfriend close to Kelly.
07:52There was a rumor that her ex-boyfriend
07:55had returned home for the holidays,
07:56and Chris had caught wind of that,
07:59and had gotten angry, supposedly.
08:04His friend Brent Ward was questioned.
08:07Brent was Chris's alibi.
08:09Chris was Brent's alibi.
08:10They were actually in the town square
08:1415 minutes before she disappeared.
08:18So that obviously fueled speculation
08:21about Chris Denton's involvement.
08:23And after investigating, Sergeant Brown found that
08:27even though Brent Ward and Chris Denton
08:29said they were at work that day, they weren't.
08:31Then the question is, why are you lying?
08:36Chris Denton, he had a little bit of a reputation
08:38as being kind of hot-tempered.
08:40But I never saw him be nasty or mean or ugly
08:45towards Kelly or any other girls.
08:47I never felt threatened by Chris, I can say that.
08:51Brent Ward, Chris Denton consistently denied
08:56having anything to do with Kelly's disappearance.
08:58And frankly, there was no physical evidence
09:01that they were involved at that time.
09:04For the lack of any kind of evidence,
09:06any real evidence of what happened to her,
09:09it's like she vanished from the face of the earth.
09:12All we really know is she deposited the money
09:15and her tire was slashed.
09:17And she disappeared.
09:23It was a big deal when she went missing.
09:26In a small town, you've got gossip.
09:29The rumors got pretty wild.
09:31Everything from cannibalism to devil worshiping
09:34to you name it.
09:36I think that just about everybody
09:38but Donald Trump and Joe Biden
09:39have been implicated in this thing
09:40at one time or another.
09:44Gilmore was a small town.
09:46Things like this just didn't happen.
09:48We had a grainy video from the bank.
09:50And that's all we had.
09:52That and we didn't have Kelly.
09:56Talk to me about the tire slashing.
09:58That's scary.
09:59If I came outside today as a grown-up woman,
10:01that would be a scary thing.
10:02That was the second time her car had,
10:04her tire had been slashed.
10:06That's a malicious act, cutting somebody's tires.
10:09And so, yeah, you think maybe that's got something
10:11to do with an abduction.
10:12That would be not an unreasonable thing to think.
10:17In a small town like Gilmore,
10:19there are going to be a ton of rumors.
10:21There are going to be a lot of people contacting the police
10:23and saying, hey, I think I know where she is.
10:26The police department then was pretty much
10:28a one-man show, and that was James Brown.
10:31He called in the FBI.
10:33He was working with the sheriff's department,
10:35other local law enforcement agencies.
10:38A lot of the community got involved in the search,
10:40you know, we were looking in fields and ponds.
10:43I even hired a psychic,
10:45and everything leads to a dead end.
10:49There was a billboard that was put up
10:51at the edge of town.
10:53It's just a reality check.
10:54You were always cognizant
10:56that this crime had occurred
10:58in this quaint small town.
11:06Kelly Wilson disappeared right after I turned 12
11:09and had been the biggest story in town.
11:13My name is Wes Ferguson.
11:14I'm a writer and journalist.
11:16I grew up in East Texas,
11:17about 20 miles down the road from Gilmore.
11:19Many years later, when I graduated,
11:21I became the crime reporter
11:23for my hometown newspaper.
11:25I'm like, now's the time.
11:27I really want to find out
11:28what really happened to Kelly Wilson.
11:32I found out that the first break in the case
11:35is when they find out
11:37that there were some skateboarders
11:39on the town square that night,
11:40and one of those skateboarders,
11:42this guy named Michael Bybee,
11:44was the one who slashed her tire.
11:48Apparently, he was just skateboarding
11:50with some friends on the square
11:51and just felt like slashing her tire.
11:55Michael Bybee was not involved
11:56with Kelly's disappearance,
11:57so it was a very inconvenient distraction.
12:04Nothing was really adding up
12:05to a clear picture at that point,
12:07and within a year of Kelly's disappearance,
12:09the case has gone cold.
12:11But the whole time this search for Kelly
12:14is going on,
12:15there is a completely unrelated
12:16criminal investigation
12:18ongoing into a local family
12:21called the Kers.
12:23The Kerr family lived
12:25on this family compound
12:27on the outskirts of town,
12:29kind of out in the woods.
12:31They were not sophisticated people.
12:33They were not educated people.
12:35I think everybody kind of
12:36had some sense of who the Kers were,
12:39especially when allegations
12:41started surfacing
12:42about potential abuse
12:44in that extended family.
12:46Unfortunately,
12:47that investigation collided
12:49with the Kelly Wilson investigation
12:51in some pretty ugly ways.
12:57There have been so many sensational stories
12:59surrounding this case.
13:01So, we're meeting with Shane Phelps,
13:04and in the early 1990s,
13:05he was an assistant attorney general,
13:07and he was brought into Gilmer
13:09to take a look at what was going on
13:10with this investigation
13:11into Kelly Wilson's disappearance.
13:17Hi, Shane.
13:18Happy to meet you.
13:20My pleasure.
13:20My pleasure.
13:21I have to imagine,
13:22you probably talk about this case a lot.
13:24Yeah, quite a bit.
13:25Yeah.
13:26It was probably one of the most interesting
13:29and kind of tragic cases
13:31I ever had as a prosecutor.
13:32Well, so, Kelly goes missing January of 92.
13:36I understand there was another big case
13:39going on at the time,
13:40just in a totally different jurisdiction
13:42than what James Brown was doing.
13:44Yeah, totally different.
13:45There was this kind of extended family,
13:48the Kers,
13:49and there were a number of allegations
13:51about members of that family
13:53sexually abusing their children.
13:55And so, there were children
13:56taken into custody, CPS custody,
13:58placed in foster homes.
13:59Do you know how many children were taken?
14:02I know it was a number of them.
14:04Seven, eight children.
14:05Oh, wow.
14:06So, you had this kind of group
14:08of foster parents and CPS workers,
14:11Van Gore and Debbie Minshew.
14:13They were the principal CPS workers
14:15who were working with the foster kids.
14:18And what do they find?
14:19That the kids had said
14:21that they were sexually abused and tortured
14:23by a number of the people who were involved.
14:26That's horrifying.
14:28Oh, absolutely.
14:29It was pretty monstrous.
14:33The CPS case workers
14:35team up with the foster moms
14:36to find out what was happening to these kids.
14:39And it just became more complex and scarier.
14:43The kids say they've been taken out
14:44to a dungeon in the woods.
14:46They're talking about sacrificing girls,
14:49eating babies,
14:50and all this horrific stuff.
14:53They started talking about having these ceremonial rites
14:58at the back of the Kerr's property around the witching circle
15:03with a lot of people in their robes,
15:06with their torches,
15:07with their victims strapped to a tree.
15:10CPS develops this hierarchy with Eugene and Geneva Kerr at the top,
15:16with Wendell Kerr and other Kerr offsprings
15:19and their wives and children involved.
15:22A lot of the Kerr men were truck drivers,
15:24and the kids say they were picking up girls along the routes,
15:28and then they were sacrificed and eaten by the members of the family.
15:34As they're interviewing all of these little kids,
15:37and they're trying to put all of those pieces together,
15:40what is the story that CPS lands on?
15:44That there was a satanic coven led by the Kerr's
15:48that were kidnapping, torturing, raping multiple young women.
15:55If there were Satanists in Gilmer, we were completely unaware.
16:00Everybody was Baptist or Mormon.
16:02So, it's a bizarre notion.
16:05But, they plugged into the story in a way
16:08and filled in some of the gaps of maybe what happened to Kelly
16:12that you had to consider.
16:14And that's what made it scarier.
16:21In the summer of 92,
16:24like six months after Kelly Wilson goes missing,
16:27these children have made these claims
16:29to everyone involved in the CPS investigation.
16:31There's ritualistic abuse going on.
16:34I can't imagine Gilmer CPS has the resources to handle something this seemingly big.
16:42They don't. I mean, not even close.
16:44The CPS workers reached out to the Department of Public Safety for help.
16:48That's when Steve Baggs comes into the picture.
16:50He kind of professed to be this ritualistic abuse expert.
16:53Steve Baggs brings in Brooks Flagg, who is a reserve deputy sheriff in Louisiana.
17:00Okay.
17:01Brooks and Flagg and this group of foster parents and CPS workers,
17:07Ann Gore and Debbie Minshew.
17:08They start looking for evidence to support what they know has to be happening.
17:22Cherokee Trace is a really old and winding road that leads outside of Gilmer into the countryside
17:27and through some of the woods.
17:29It's also where the Kerr family lived.
17:31The investigators have been told that there was some of the abuse had been happening in a shed.
17:37And so they go out there.
17:40They find all these like chains and like straps, a cat of nine tails and some stuff that they think
17:49is blood.
17:51And then they also, it's like their number one piece of evidence was this bone that they said that they
17:57had found that was nearby.
18:01Pretty much all the adults in the Kerr family get arrested, been thrown in jail.
18:06Do any other families get swept up in this?
18:10Yes.
18:11Tammy Smith and Don Holman, who were just peripherally associated with the Kers,
18:17they had their children taken from them and were then arrested.
18:22So a family that was not a Kerr family.
18:25Yes.
18:26But just in proximity to them?
18:28Yes.
18:29Don Holman and his common law wife, Tammy, lived together there in Gilmer
18:34and Don was helping to raise her son, Raymond, as a stepson.
18:39And then Tammy and Don had a newborn son, Luther.
18:43Being from a small town, Don, he did know a couple of the Kerr people.
18:48So at some point, the Kerr kids say that Raymond had also been abused.
18:55And so the CPS caseworkers and some of the foster parents are trying to ask Raymond questions.
19:02Raymond had not said that he was abused.
19:03But eventually, after some prodding, Raymond says, yeah, I was abused.
19:09My mom abused me. My stepdad did.
19:11And he also mentions that Kelly Wilson was also one of the victims of the Kerr family.
19:18He blurted out Kelly Wilson's name.
19:20And that's how the initial investigation and the sexual abuse charges
19:25and the satanic stuff they were talking about converged with the disappearance of Kelly Wilson.
19:40The Leiford team, as it comes to be called, they're not just looking at the child abuse cases anymore.
19:45They're really zeroed in on what happened to Kelly Wilson.
19:50And they're convinced that the Kerr family killed Kelly Wilson.
19:55And that one of the Kerr members, Wendell Kerr, had been the ringleader
19:58who was helping out with her ritual sacrifice.
20:02So when James Brown found out that they were looking into the disappearance of Kelly Wilson,
20:07he went and talked to Wendell Kerr, who was in jail at the time.
20:11Okay.
20:11And Wendell said, yeah, none of that happened.
20:15I'm a truck driver. I was gone the whole time.
20:20How does he prove he was gone?
20:21Because James got bills of lading, gas receipts,
20:25all of which had Wendell Kerr's signature on them.
20:28Mm-hmm.
20:29So he was in New York.
20:30The opposite side of the country.
20:32Yes. He was outside of Texas the entire time this is supposed to have happened.
20:37So Sergeant Brown takes this information back to Scott Leiford.
20:40Leiford told him they're master Satanists.
20:42They could easily cause these things to be forged.
20:45Don't interfere with my case again.
20:48Brown probably thought these kooks were coming to him with this outlandish allegations.
20:52So Brown and the team totally disagree on the direction of this case.
20:58The Leiford team, they just brush Brown aside and go full throttle in their investigation.
21:03And so they questioned a couple of the women who had married into the Kerr family,
21:08Connie Martin and Wanda Kerr, their sisters-in-law who had lived out at the Kerr place.
21:16January the 6th, in the multipurpose room at the Harrison County Jail.
21:21First up is Connie Martin.
21:23Through these interviews with Wanda and with Connie, they developed this scenario
21:28in which Wendell Kerr and maybe somebody else picked up Kelly in the town square
21:36from where she worked at the video shop.
21:40All right, so you drove up there and picked up Kelly at the video store.
21:46Is that right?
21:47Yeah.
21:49Came straight back to the Kerr place on Cherokee Trace.
21:56Is that right?
21:58Yeah.
21:58And that's when they started this 10 days of daily torture, rape, satanic rights at the
22:08back of the property.
22:09Listen to me for just a minute, Connie.
22:12Would you just tie it up?
22:13My wife would tie it up or hand it up.
22:15All right.
22:16Where are you now?
22:18I'm in one door the night.
22:20Because your neighbor told me to get one door the night.
22:22Connie, was all the robes exactly alike or are they different?
22:26Just your neighbor's is different.
22:28Hers had a star on it.
22:30She called it the devil's star.
22:32Well, everybody's out inside the circle now.
22:34Don Holman, Tammy, everybody's there.
22:38What did they do to her?
22:39They just beat her and had sex with her and used electric shock on her.
22:44It was huge because we all wanted to know what happened to Kelly,
22:46and it was worse than we ever could have imagined.
22:51Who raped her first?
22:53James.
22:55Which James did you talk about?
22:57James Brown.
23:00James Brown was in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Kelly Wilson.
23:06And now they've got James Brown implicated as a member of this satanic cult.
23:19Sergeant Brown, the guy who had been leading the investigation in the search for Kelly, is now suddenly accused of
23:26participating in her ritual sacrifice.
23:29I think everybody kind of believed it.
23:31The search had been going on for a couple of years, nothing to show for it.
23:35And I think at that point, people began to say like, oh, is this case not going anywhere because Sergeant
23:41Brown doesn't want it to?
23:42I still remember like the big, you know, bold headline across the front page.
23:46And like you turn on the news like every night, it's like Sergeant Brown has been busted.
23:58The cult thing, the satanic rituals and all that, I mean, it'd be a hard sell for me to buy
24:05any of that.
24:06But when you have so little hard evidence or knowledge of anything, you can't rule anything out.
24:12You just have a friend that's gone missing.
24:16And now it's turned into she's been ritualistically sacrificed and the lead investigator is involved.
24:26It just, it leveled everything.
24:29People say that she was sacrificed for a Satanist ritual.
24:34It was just sensational in a small town of 5,000.
24:39If that can happen here, it can happen anywhere.
24:42At this point, I think a lot of people are getting swept up in the hysteria.
24:47Suddenly accusations are being lobbed against local politicians, the local bigwigs, different people in town.
24:54We started getting phone calls at the attorney general's office saying, you got to step in and do something about
25:02this.
25:02And I remember as we were flying up to Gilmer, we had this document that we believe that Scott Leifert
25:11had put together.
25:11And so I'm looking through it and it's got some pretty crazy stuff in here.
25:15Bones that are being recovered, things that they said were used to bind her.
25:19And when you land and come into town, what's the first thing you guys do?
25:25Scott and his team took us out to the Kerr house, showed us the shed, walked with us out to
25:31the witch's circle.
25:33And I remember Brooks telling me this.
25:34We had these cadaver dogs and they hit on these spots.
25:37And he pointed out a couple of spots to me.
25:38And I said, well, did you find anything?
25:41No.
25:43They never found any trace of Kelly.
25:45Did they find a trace of any missing person?
25:47They found nothing.
25:49So I asked Brooks, does it bother you that there was virtually no evidence that any of this happened?
25:57And I will never forget as long as I live because it sent chills down my spine.
26:01Brooks Flagg said, ah, these are master Satanists.
26:05The fact that there's no evidence proves that it happened.
26:08I knew at that point there was something very, very, very wrong going on.
26:14I called Scott Leifert and I said, Scott, we're taking over.
26:17We got a box full of stuff, including all of the tape recorded conversations.
26:22Connie Martin, Wanda Kerr, Raymond.
26:25Uh-huh.
26:28Connie, it don't matter to me if you spend the rest of your life in jail or if you get
26:33a deal.
26:34How old are you?
26:3627.
26:37So you'll be 80 when you get out.
26:39And they were threatening Connie with life in prison, with separation from the people she loved.
26:45And with Wanda Kerr, for instance, she repeatedly said, I don't know how many times.
26:51I've told you from the beginning, I don't know anything about this.
26:56Look at me, Wanda.
26:57You told us what?
26:59From the start, I didn't know anything about it.
27:02It seemed like when you guys were saying it, it seemed like it did happen.
27:05That is total, utter bull .
27:08It is clear that these women are under duress and they're being led into making false statements.
27:16I met with Connie Martin and she recanted to me.
27:19She just said, look, I told them what they wanted to hear.
27:21What did the Lifer team want to hear?
27:25What made them happy?
27:26What made them happy, at least from my perspective, was being able to talk to young kids and these women
27:33about the most graphic sexual things that they could think of.
27:37They were doing it because they enjoyed hearing about it.
27:41That's my opinion.
27:43But I don't think anybody can listen to those audio tapes and come to any other conclusion.
27:51Did he put his thing in her mouth or did he put it in her vagina?
27:55In her mouth.
28:04They were getting so into it, they were like commenting on their own twisted mind.
28:09They seemed to almost be giddy.
28:18And then I'm listening to the interview of Raymond and it's a horrible interview.
28:23They are suggesting everything to this kid.
28:25And then, Raymond, do you have something else to tell us?
28:28You know, James Brown was there.
28:29Click.
28:30And that was the end of it.
28:32No follow up on that.
28:34And they got Connie Martin to say James Brown was there.
28:38Unconscionable behavior on their part.
28:41And it pissed me off.
28:43It made me angry.
28:47I knew something was wrong, but I didn't have any idea how wrong things were.
28:53We had to figure out, are these people really responsible for what happened to Kelly Wilson?
28:59They said we killed Kelly Wilson.
29:01I didn't know anything about Kelly Wilson.
29:04My name is Roger Don Holman.
29:07I'm from Gilmer, Texas.
29:10Me and Tammy, we're a happy couple.
29:13We had a good life.
29:15We really did have a good life.
29:17And all of a sudden, here comes a cop.
29:20Two cops come in there and arrested us.
29:25It was scary.
29:26And they're saying all kind of wicked stuff.
29:29I mean, like a witching circle behind a house.
29:33They said we killed ten babies and sacrificed them to the devil.
29:39They said you molested your kids.
29:41It's like I'm innocent.
29:42I'm not guilty of nothing.
29:43And I don't like people to say I am.
29:47But how do you get to get people to listen to you?
29:51It was bad.
29:52Everything I worked for was just shot to hell.
29:56We were committed at that point to investigating whether a crime had been committed involving
30:01these children as well as what happened to Kelly Wilson.
30:04Sergeant Brown had a diary that he kept on a daily basis that we were able to go through
30:08and see events and then prove them.
30:10The FBI stepped in and gave statements and said, no, he was with us.
30:14This guy was working 24-7 around the clock for the weeks and weeks after Kelly disappeared.
30:22He could not have been at the KERS raping Kelly Wilson.
30:26And ultimately, every time we looked at a piece of evidence that they thought proved it,
30:31it turned out not to be the case.
30:33There was all this stuff about this, like, torture devices.
30:37Well, that turned out to be just your run-of-the-mill tie straps that anybody might have in their
30:41garage.
30:42They say they found a human bone.
30:45Shane Phelps has that bone tested.
30:47Turns out to be a pig bone.
30:49And so, the whole case just, like, went up. Just poof.
30:54The satanic panic was definitely a topic of conversation in the 80s, early 90s.
30:59It was huge.
30:59So, all of a sudden, people started popping up as, you know, believing that a satanic ritualistic abuse was occurring.
31:06And it inspired a lot of fear and panic in this community.
31:09People concerned about their kids.
31:12A lot of wild speculation.
31:14I don't know whether they come up with the Satanist stuff, but back then, they were just out there making
31:20up stuff.
31:21All I did was tell them the truth.
31:23They didn't want to hear nothing except bad.
31:26Was there satanic activity in the state of Texas in the early 90s?
31:31No.
31:32I mean, I will unequivocally say, to this day, it was nonsense that there was satanic activity going on in
31:41Gilmer.
31:47When the judge called the case, I just said, Judge, at this time, I'm moved to dismiss all of these
31:52cases.
31:53The state drops all charges against eight people in the Kelly Wilson case.
31:57The reason? A lack of evidence.
31:59Shane Phelps, the attorney general's office, dropping the charges didn't surprise us at all.
32:05We were very suspicious of all those charges to start with.
32:09I think James Brown got drug into it solely because he butted heads with Scott Lyford.
32:17Nobody, Wanda Kerr or Connie Martin or Raymond, ever said anything about James Brown
32:27before James Brown confronted Scott Lyford and pokes a giant hole in their theory.
32:34What has happened to me to date is a travesty.
32:42I have always maintained my innocence and still do.
32:46At this point, keep in mind that there are still pending charges about sexual assault of children.
32:53People who hurt kids like that should be held accountable.
32:56So, world-renowned child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Perry came into the picture to evaluate the children.
33:03Bruce Perry begins to talk to Raymond and slowly but surely Raymond begins to talk about what really happened.
33:12Bruce Perry said Raymond was coached to say the things he said because he was afraid of what they would
33:18do to him if he didn't.
33:19The holding technique is a very controversial theory that was floated around among psychologists and counselors back then.
33:25And the idea is that you have to grab onto a kid and hold them as tight as you can
33:30and not let go until they disclose what you know happened to them.
33:37And Ann Gore and Debbie Minshew and Barbara Bass who was a foster parent were involved in all of this.
33:43Barbara Bass was holding him and rubbing his ribcage with her knuckles against this seven-year-old's ribs.
33:51And Raymond said, I had to say what they wanted me to say to stop what was happening to me.
33:57Did Dr. Perry think there was any basis for the abuse allegations in Raymond's home?
34:02No.
34:04Tammy and Don Holloman never did anything to Raymond and his little brother Luther.
34:18Having them back and being safe, that was everything to us.
34:25I mean, that was their happiness.
34:30And Raymond started crying.
34:32And he said, Don, I'm so sorry, but they hurt me so bad.
34:38And he said, they got me to make up stuff.
34:41He said, I just tell them whatever they want to hear.
34:44And he said, I feel so bad about it.
34:47And I said, Raymond, I'm not mad at you.
34:52I'm proud of you.
34:53He said, I'm sorry for well done you.
35:02The Lifer team, they have become the very thing that they're accusing other people of doing.
35:09They've become the abusers with the kids.
35:12Well, ultimately, that becomes very apparent.
35:15Dr. Perry, he believed that something had happened to these Kerr children.
35:18But he said that they had become so invested in this fantastical realm of satanic abuse that they could not
35:25tell the difference between truth and fiction.
35:28And we had to dismiss all of those cases.
35:33Because this team let their imagination run wild, it allowed all these people to get away with very credible allegations
35:41of child molestation.
35:43And a lot of those Kerr kids, not only were they molested, but they also were abused by the criminal
35:50justice system who subjected them to this witch hunt.
35:55And so is that the point where the Lifer team is just allowed to go home?
36:00I was seriously considering indicting them.
36:02I believe I could have convicted them.
36:04But I ultimately decided not to.
36:07For two years, we had not been looking for Kelly Wilson.
36:11And if I had indicted these guys, that's all we would have been talking about.
36:14And nobody would have been looking for her.
36:16So I committed to trying to find what happened to Kelly Wilson.
36:26Once we cleared James Brown and the other folks, Tammy and Don, our primary focus was to try and figure
36:34out what happened to Kelly Wilson.
36:36We spent thousands of man hours interviewing everybody again.
36:41We arrived at the same conclusion that Sergeant Brown did, that Chris Denton was the prime suspect.
36:46Because there really was no other alternative.
36:50He'd passed away many years ago of cancer.
36:52He denied it until the end, that he had anything to do with it.
36:56There was never any evidence that really pinned it back to Chris.
36:59To this day, we're looking at 30 plus years and we still don't know what happened to Kelly Wilson.
37:07I think it's important to focus on Kelly in this case.
37:10But it's also important to acknowledge that so many other victims came out of this situation.
37:16And so we're going to talk to Don Holman right now.
37:19And he's going to take the time and walk us through what the fallout has been since they were accused
37:27of these heinous things.
37:29Hi.
37:30You doing okay?
37:31I'm okay.
37:32Thank you so much.
37:34Tell me about what was your family life like in 1992?
37:39Well, I was a good guy.
37:41I went to church.
37:42Yeah.
37:43Did everything I was supposed to do.
37:44Took care of my family.
37:46Just tried to do what the Bible taught me.
37:50And just one day, people started accusing me of stuff.
37:53And I was like, what in the world is happening?
37:55How did you feel being accused?
37:58I cried.
37:59I broke down and cried in jail.
38:00I cried.
38:01I sat in that room.
38:02And after we got out, I sat in there and just depressed.
38:06You're coming home to an empty house.
38:08The kids aren't here.
38:11I'm away from my daughter for just a couple days right now.
38:14It's hard.
38:15It's really hard for a couple days.
38:17I can't imagine.
38:18What if people are telling you you don't have your daughter no more because you molested her?
38:22I, honestly.
38:23You might lose it.
38:24It makes my stomach churn.
38:28It is hard to comprehend the damage false accusations do to people.
38:34I don't think any of us can appreciate what Don Holman went through and how he suffered.
38:39Or Tammy.
38:41And James Brown.
38:43After James Brown was cleared, he didn't return to the police force.
38:48And people in Gilmer to this day still, you know, accuse him of participating in Kelly's murder.
38:54He finally had to move away.
38:56From the stress from all this, James Brown suffered a mini stroke.
39:01He tried to sue the Leifert team, but his lawsuit was dropped because they had qualified immunity.
39:06You can't sue a prosecutor despite them clearly destroying his life.
39:12Did you ever see James Brown again?
39:14Raymond saw him.
39:16He did.
39:16And Raymond said, I'm so sorry that I got you in trouble.
39:21And James said, Raymond, I'm not mad at you.
39:26So, uh, kind of nice of him.
39:36There are a lot of victims here, right?
39:39Mm-hmm.
39:39Yeah.
39:40You went from having a really nice life.
39:42I mean, I was proud of who I was.
39:47And everything I worked for, they just shot it down and they just kicked me down and everything.
39:52People think I'm a child molester, a rapist, a murderer, and I'm not that man.
39:58The volume of information and theories is so vast.
40:04But really the most important thing is to remember Kelly.
40:07She was somebody's friend.
40:10She was somebody's daughter.
40:11She had goals.
40:14She had plans.
40:15Her parents need to know what happened.
40:19If Kelly were still here, she'd be 50 this year.
40:24College, weddings, kids, those are all the things you miss.
40:28If we found somebody that was responsible, I'd pull the trigger on them if they want me to.
40:34Because my life hadn't been the same since.
40:44It's been over 30 years.
40:47Not only do we not have justice for Kelly, but we don't have justice for anybody else either.
40:52Everybody studies the Salem witch trials in high school, right?
40:56That's supposed to be a cautionary tale that we take with us.
40:59But there are so many people that got swept up in the madness.
41:04I don't know if there will ever be justice for anyone involved in this case.
41:09Because a few select people decided to have a witch hunt.
41:14And they have never been held accountable.
41:39Well, that is, too, right?
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42:00You know what?
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