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your first month. A

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note before we get started, this

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episode contains descriptions of sexual

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assault.

0:39

Texas Monthly.

0:49

It was a cold winter day in Indianapolis

0:52

in early 2006 when Don

0:54

Miller arrived along with his partner, Russell

0:57

Ford. They'd just flown in from

0:59

Dallas and they were there to try and see Michael

1:01

Woods, the estranged husband of Susan

1:04

Woods, the man Susan's friends and

1:06

family believed had killed her.

1:09

They found their way to Michael's

1:11

address and pulled up in front of a worn

1:13

two-story home in a working-class

1:15

neighborhood. They took a deep breath

1:18

and stepped onto the front porch.

1:21

You know, we're a couple of Texas boys. We weren't

1:24

ready for how cold it was going to be. And

1:27

so we go up dressed in our summer attire.

1:31

I might have had on a sport coat and knock

1:33

on the door and not

1:36

thinking Michael was going to answer. But

1:38

he did. He answered the door. He

1:40

cracked the door open. And I told

1:43

him who I was and he said, Miller,

1:45

I told you I wasn't going to cooperate. And I said, I understand.

1:48

But I just started talking. They

1:51

weren't

1:51

the first police officers who'd made this

1:53

trip from Texas, hoping they could charm

1:56

Michael into cooperating. The last

1:58

two who tried it, Michael was the last.

1:59

Michael says he invited them to try their luck

2:02

in a gunfight in his front yard. He

2:04

didn't trust the police, and that would double

2:06

for Texas police. He suspected

2:08

they would do just about anything to blame

2:11

him for Susan's death. But

2:13

things were different now. Michael was different.

2:16

Worn down by nearly 20 years of drugs

2:18

and booze and broken dreams, the

2:21

ever-present suspicion that he killed

2:23

his wife, the certainty when he opened

2:25

his eyes almost every morning that this

2:27

would be the day he got hauled off to a Texas

2:30

prison. All this time,

2:32

Michael had never been told he was no longer

2:34

the focus of any investigation into Susan's

2:37

murder. But he hadn't been arrested for

2:39

it either. He'd lived almost 20

2:41

years in limbo. Don sensed

2:44

Michael needed a resolution, so

2:46

even though Michael had told him not to come, Don

2:49

knew that Michael needed him.

2:51

He was Michael's only hope of

2:53

ever clearing his name. So

2:55

he just kept talking. You

2:57

know, I just went through the, through the, I said, look,

2:59

Michael, I gotta have your DNA. And

3:02

if you don't give me your DNA, Michael, if you don't cooperate

3:05

with me, then I'm gonna turn around and

3:07

I'm gonna leave, and this

3:09

case is gonna go nowhere. You've

3:12

got to help me.

3:14

On summer night 19 years earlier,

3:17

somebody had murdered Susan Woods in her

3:19

home. And whoever did it had

3:22

also smoked six cigarettes and drank a

3:24

can of Coke left on a living room table.

3:27

Don Miller had DNA from the cigarettes. He

3:29

just needed someone to match it to.

3:32

Don explained all this there on the porch.

3:35

Proving that Michael's DNA didn't match was

3:37

the only way he could ever be fully clear

3:39

to the murder. And somewhere

3:43

during the conversation,

3:46

he opened the door, he stepped out on the porch,

3:48

he said, get my DNA and then get off. Michael

3:52

just wanted to be done with Stephenville and

3:54

get on with his life. But Don

3:56

needed to draw this out a little longer. He

3:59

had to buy some time.

3:59

for his partner because neither

4:02

of them actually knew how to use the cheek

4:04

swab kit they brought to collect

4:06

his DNA. Before they left

4:08

Stephenville, their plan had been to grab

4:10

two kits from the police department, then

4:13

open one and learn how to use it during their

4:15

flight to Indiana.

4:17

Well, on the way up there, Ford

4:19

told me, he said, Miller, we only have

4:21

one buccal swab kit. And

4:24

he said, I've never used one. And I

4:26

said, okay. He

4:28

said, I don't know what I'm doing. I said, well, I'm sure there's

4:30

instructions on the inside. And he said, yeah, there

4:32

is. I said, okay. So look,

4:35

when we get up to Michael's front

4:37

door, I'm just going to start talking to him. And

4:41

the minute he gives us consent

4:43

to get his DNA, I want

4:45

you to open the package,

4:48

start reading the instructions. I want to stand there

4:50

and talk to Michael. And I said, when you

4:52

know how to do it, you step up, I'll

4:54

get out of the way. You get his DNA.

4:58

So as Don and his partner shivered

5:00

in the cold and as Michael's patience began to thin, Don

5:04

just stalled. Russell

5:06

read the instructions on how to get the DNA. He stepped up next to

5:09

my right shoulder.

5:11

I moved over. He got Michael's

5:14

DNA. Michael said, no, leave. And we did.

5:18

From Texas Monthly, this is Stephenville.

5:22

I'm your host, Brian Burra. This

5:24

is episode three. Don.

5:32

When Don Miller flew back to Texas, he

5:34

carried a sample of Michael Woods' saliva

5:37

with him, ready to test it against the evidence

5:39

gathered at the crime scene.

5:41

And in that moment, as he looked out the window,

5:44

he might have felt an echo of his friend Donny Hensley,

5:46

who'd made the same trip 18 years earlier,

5:49

carrying a card with Michael's fingerprints. After

5:52

all, the only reason Don was even on

5:54

the case was that Donny hadn't been able to solve

5:57

it. Back then, in 1988, Donnie

6:00

had been convinced that he finally had Michael,

6:03

but when he got back to Stephenville, he

6:05

ran smack into one of the rudest surprises

6:07

of his entire career. The prints

6:10

didn't match. Nothing matched.

6:13

Whoever left those prints in Susan's bathroom,

6:16

it was not her husband.

6:17

Prince didn't match, Paul Prince didn't match.

6:20

So guess what I did? Mike

6:23

goes on a back burner.

6:27

I was totally, I mean, I was out of gas. It looked

6:29

like a dead end. Michael Woods

6:31

looked like a dead end. There

6:34

had to be an explanation, but

6:37

Donnie racked his brain and couldn't think of one. In his bones, he

6:40

knew Michael had done this. Everyone in Stephenville did. Donnie

6:43

wasn't ready to

6:44

call Michael and tell him he'd been cleared, but there was no

6:46

way to time to the crime. And

6:49

Donnie was also peeved that it had taken almost

6:51

a year just to get to this point. He

6:54

couldn't fathom how the last two officers, a

6:57

Texas Ranger and a Stephenville officer, had

6:59

flown to Indianapolis and come back empty-handed.

7:02

Dude,

7:02

you know, I ain't talking about

7:05

dead people, but they're both

7:07

dead now. But wouldn't you thought

7:10

a crack-ass, jackass investigator

7:13

that from Dallas to P.D. walks

7:16

into a small town with

7:18

all this expertise, don't

7:21

you think? Hey, dude,

7:23

maybe we ought to get some press. John,

7:25

what do you think? Now, this takes

7:27

us pretty much up to the summer of 88. This is

7:30

a year after the case. Not many murders

7:32

are getting actively worked a year afterwards. You've

7:35

been on it six, nine months.

7:37

At that point, there's not much left to do, is

7:39

there? No. Pray

7:42

and hope.

7:44

At one point in desperation, he grabbed

7:47

the crime scene photos and drove an hour

7:49

and a half to Lamb Passes, where a former

7:51

FBI profiler was teaching a class. And

7:54

I asked him, but I had him look at it. And

7:58

he looked at them and everything.

7:59

else. You

8:02

see, can I show the class? I said, I don't care. I

8:04

need all the help I can get, dude.

8:07

And suddenly the class is a

8:09

female officer. Can't

8:11

remember her name, don't know where she's from. She said,

8:14

did you ever look at autoeronica? I said,

8:18

no, I have not. In other

8:20

words, this other officer wondered if

8:22

maybe Susan died during some kind of elaborate

8:25

sex game. Someone threw such autoeronica

8:28

in about an average of four

8:30

people at that time period

8:33

per year was they were restricted to

8:36

the accident on death by autoeronica.

8:38

And a lot of that

8:41

included self-suffocation.

8:45

This represented a hard left turn, and

8:47

Donnie kind of knew it, but it's a sign

8:49

of his desperation that he considered it for a

8:51

time before dismissing it. Everyone

8:54

wanted the case resolved. Not

8:56

long after, in fact, Donnie was at work

8:58

when he was stopped in the hallway by one of his

9:00

superiors. He wanted an update.

9:03

I said, I looked at everything, even autoerotica.

9:06

He said, well, that worked out, I said no. He

9:08

said, well, you need to tell

9:10

the dad that it was an autoerotica,

9:13

and let's close this case.

9:17

In other words, Donnie says his boss

9:19

wanted him to embrace a far-fetched theory

9:22

that neither of them really believed in, just

9:24

to make the whole murder case go away.

9:27

But Donnie had grown close to Susan's father.

9:29

He felt an intense loyalty to the family.

9:32

He had sworn to them he would find Susan's killer,

9:35

and he still intended to do it.

9:37

And given the violence evident at the crime

9:39

scene, judging by the photos I'd seen, to suggest

9:42

this was an accident was just absurd.

9:46

And your response was? Fuck

9:48

you. Well,

9:50

if I'd never had him stop me walking down the hall,

9:52

I would have killed him.

9:56

Whatever happened, it's clear Donnie wasn't

9:59

getting along with his son.

9:59

superiors, and soon after, he

10:02

was reassigned to patrol duty, a serious

10:04

demotion. And so, barely

10:06

a year after Susan's death, there was

10:08

no longer anyone actively investigating

10:11

it.

10:12

The case haunted Donnie for years.

10:15

In 1993, he resigned from the Stephenville

10:17

force and went on to train international

10:20

police for an arm of the United Nations.

10:22

He helped investigate atrocities in East

10:25

Timor and in Kosovo.

10:27

I had a nightmare to do. I

10:30

was on a mountain top in Cominica. I

10:32

had one officer grieved and she wounded,

10:35

one dead. The first Kosovo

10:37

police officer killed a line of dude.

10:40

That didn't haunt me. Susan

10:43

did. I

10:46

mean, I'm sorry,

10:48

but every time I talk to Joe Atkins,

10:50

my heart broke. And

10:53

I'm a terrible cop, I mean, you know. I

10:57

thought I was.

11:02

In my experience, small towns don't

11:04

often embrace bad news and

11:06

usually don't mind when it goes away. So

11:09

when Susan's murder went unsolved for a year

11:11

or two, and then another year, and another

11:13

and another, there actually wasn't a ton

11:16

of people in Stephenville clamoring for closure.

11:19

Susan thought they knew who had done it anyway,

11:22

and the prevailing point of view seems to have been that

11:24

justice would find Michael Woods eventually.

11:26

I heard about this from Susan's friends

11:29

Cindy and Roy Hayes. So

11:31

a couple years go by. Three,

11:33

four, five years go by. Does

11:38

this get talked about on the anniversary? Oh,

11:40

yeah. I mean, is it something

11:42

that... Well, not by us in the police

11:44

department. No. I mean, we talk about it. It

11:46

just becomes this local mystery? Yeah, it just pretty

11:49

much falls off the face of the earth. You know,

11:51

we all... Is it something that people would come up and

11:53

ask about? Or is it considered

11:55

not cool to talk about? Pretty much either people

11:57

forget about it because they're not associated with it.

11:59

or everybody thinks Mike Woods did it, and he

12:02

fled off to Indiana, and that until

12:04

the police can get him back down here, no charges are ever

12:06

gonna be filed. That's where it seemed to stay.

12:10

Sarah Vandenberg, the reporter who

12:12

showed me around town, came to Stephenville

12:14

in 1990, just three years after

12:16

the murder. And she spent more than a decade

12:19

working at the local paper. She says

12:21

that in all that time, she never once

12:23

heard about the murder. Okay,

12:25

so that kind of bag was one of

12:27

the questions I was gonna ask you. So you had

12:29

lived here for 15 years,

12:32

and had never heard of it? Never heard of it, no,

12:35

never. It's the weirdest thing, and it may just

12:37

be because Stephenville is too big to be a

12:39

classic small town. This

12:41

isn't a town with 600, where everybody knew this

12:43

woman who'd been horribly killed. This

12:46

is a town with a small college that

12:48

was changing a lot, and I didn't get the sense

12:51

that this was some type of murder that loomed

12:53

over the city's memory. No, no, I

12:56

never got that sense either. By 2000

12:58

or so, 13 years after the killing, most

13:01

folks in Stephenville had all but forgotten

13:03

it.

13:04

The town was growing fast in those years. Newcomers

13:07

like Sarah were flowing in, and Stephenville

13:09

began to change, slowly, sure, becoming

13:12

a little more diverse, a little less insular,

13:15

a little more welcoming.

13:17

Then in 2005, the police

13:19

chief and the district attorney noticed that Stephenville

13:22

had a backlog of three unsolved

13:24

murders, a lot for a town this size.

13:28

The first one, of course, was Susan's. The

13:30

chief called in Donnie's friend Don Miller, a

13:32

garrulous good old boy, popular around town,

13:35

and asked if he might try and clear them in his spare time.

13:39

One day last October, I met him for lunch in Stephenville

13:42

to hear how he came to investigate this case. Hey,

13:45

how are you? I got on parole. I just

13:47

made parole. Oh, did you?

13:49

I did. Yes, sir. We met at Jake and Dorothy's Cafe,

13:53

a diner that's been in downtown Stephenville since 1948. I

13:57

absolutely love small town diners.

13:59

the best. Didn't mean dinner right? Well,

14:02

actually, I didn't mean dinner right. We'll get you on

14:04

the tape. Yeah. Oh,

14:06

no. You kind of look around this restaurant

14:08

now. The people,

14:11

how they're dressed, would have been the exact

14:13

same in 2006 or whenever

14:17

in Well,

14:20

sitting here, it's easy to imagine

14:23

that, you know, you

14:26

got the wonderful vinyl seating,

14:28

wonderful Formiga. I mean,

14:29

this is prime Texas

14:32

diner stuff. You don't want to change this stuff.

14:35

Don had come to Stephenville from Galveston in

14:37

the mid-70s. In the late 80s,

14:39

he was mainly working on a drug task force,

14:42

but he happened to be one of the first officers to arrive

14:44

at the scene of Susan's murder.

14:46

When the call came through, my partner

14:48

and I did go up, and

14:52

we did enter the crime scene and

14:54

saw Mrs. Woods or,

14:58

anyway, we

14:59

saw her. She's been over the bathtub. We

15:02

glanced into the bedroom, saw the bedroom

15:04

was a disarray, and then

15:06

we left the crime scene, and we

15:09

waited for the detectives to

15:11

show up. So

15:13

once the police got there, we released everything

15:16

to them, and we left.

15:19

All these years later,

15:21

Don figured he couldn't do much with the case,

15:23

but he did have some strange new tools

15:26

to work with. For one thing, DNA

15:28

testing was now available. Don

15:30

took the six cigarette butts from Susan's

15:32

living room and sent them in for testing.

15:35

The problem is, at that

15:38

particular time, there was no

15:41

matches in the computer for

15:43

the DNA. So I did have

15:45

male DNA, unknown DNA. I

15:48

submitted it through a program called the

15:50

CODIS files. There was absolutely no

15:52

hits, so I was at

15:55

ground zero.

15:57

And that's pretty much where Don was

15:59

when he heard... from Michael Woods's friend Barbara

16:01

Gary asking him for help, pleading

16:04

for his help actually because of how

16:06

Michael was falling apart. Don

16:09

knew that Donnie Hensley and Susan's

16:11

family remained absolutely certain

16:14

Michael was the killer,

16:15

but given that Michael's prints didn't match

16:17

those at the scene, a fact that no

16:20

one had actually ever told Michael, Don

16:22

wasn't so sure. Barbara Gary

16:25

had said she'd asked Michael to call Don,

16:27

but after six months Don still hadn't

16:29

heard from him.

16:31

Finally in early 2006 Don

16:34

got Michael's number and called him up.

16:36

This time they talked. Michael was

16:38

still skeptical, still nervous,

16:41

but when Don pushed to come interview him, Michael

16:44

relented

16:45

and then changed his mind.

16:47

That's when Don decided to go anyway and

16:49

ended up shivering on that Indiana porch. And

16:52

then he started doing a real investigation.

16:55

He started, you know, questioning me on the phone

16:57

and all that. And I'd been

16:59

told not to talk to the cops, you know,

17:02

Don't talk to him for any reason. I told him I didn't want

17:04

to talk to him.

17:05

Michael says he went back into counseling

17:08

just to handle the pressure of talking with the police

17:10

again. It all seemed like such a huge

17:12

risk. He was still certain that if

17:15

he cracked that door open for them, he'd

17:17

somehow wind up in prison.

17:18

And he came up and

17:21

started talking to me and he's asking me all these questions.

17:23

I was like, look, I've been told not to talk to

17:25

the police. I don't know what you think I can

17:27

do to help you. And he said, well,

17:29

Michael, everybody's

17:32

kind of over this, you

17:35

know, it's a cold case. It's over

17:37

with. I've talked to everybody else.

17:39

If you don't help me, we're never

17:42

going to find who did it. And I

17:45

couldn't live with that. It was

17:47

kind of putting myself at

17:48

risk. But what

17:51

can I say? I was younger. Sometimes

17:56

you got to take chances in life.

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19:18

All right. So you've now

19:21

got Michael Woods

19:23

DNA on a swab. You

19:25

take it back to Stephenville. Can you walk me through

19:28

what happens now?

19:29

Well, from Stephenville,

19:31

you know, I hand delivered. I

19:34

never used the mail on big

19:37

evidence, but I hand delivered the

19:39

DNA to a lab. I think it was in Waco,

19:42

Texas.

19:43

Because Michael's fingerprints didn't match

19:45

those at the scene, Don was fairly

19:47

certain his DNA wouldn't match, but

19:50

it was a first step just ruling him out as

19:52

a suspect.

19:53

And I know in my mind,

19:55

I know that that DNA is not going to

19:57

match the cigarette butts. I know that.

19:59

for a fact. But also

20:02

know that because

20:04

everybody in town thinks

20:07

that Michael Woods killed Susan

20:09

Woods, I had a great

20:11

deal of

20:14

burden to get him cleared

20:16

out of it where everybody would accept

20:19

it. And so, you know, I waited

20:21

several months and then eventually

20:23

we got the results back

20:25

that it was not a hit. It

20:27

did not match. So

20:30

I called Michael and I said, Michael,

20:33

this is Lieutenant Miller and you

20:36

are officially 100% cleared

20:38

from the case. Your fingerprints

20:40

don't match, the DNA doesn't match, you're

20:43

no longer a suspect.

20:44

And Michael

20:46

started crying and he said, I thank you. And

20:49

he hung up on me.

20:52

I had a hard time trusting him even after

20:54

that because we had a lot more conversations to

20:57

have and I felt like, you know, this

20:59

could be some big ploy to get me. I'm

21:02

trying to figure out how this ended for you. I

21:05

mean, because there isn't any Christmas

21:07

morning for you, you know, I mean,

21:10

you get a nice phone call, but that's between

21:12

you and one cop. Certainly all

21:14

the people in Stephenville, but nobody there

21:16

is what running around saying, you know, we really should

21:19

raise a glass

21:21

to poor Michael Woods. We were

21:22

such jerks to him. Nobody

21:25

is. I mean, is there anything that

21:27

you might have looked for? I mean,

21:30

wanted from Stephenville?

21:34

No, there's nothing in Stephenville

21:37

I care about except Susan. Don

21:42

knew it would take a lot for Michael to ever

21:44

trust him, but he still needed him.

21:47

I needed a dialogue with Michael

21:49

Woods because I

21:52

had a feeling that whoever

21:55

killed Susan was

21:57

going to try to tell me something that she

21:59

was involved in.

21:59

in weird kinky

22:02

sex that she liked crazy stuff in the bedroom.

22:06

Remember, officers knew from the crime scene that

22:09

Susan had been the victim of a violent sex crime.

22:11

And I needed Michael, who was her estranged

22:13

husband, to counter that. And he did counter

22:15

it, but also

22:18

knew that I just couldn't start asking him straight

22:22

up questions about that until he knew for a fact

22:24

that he was cleared. So

22:27

even before you formally cleared him, you're

22:29

already thinking ahead to using him as

22:33

a source of information and almost a de facto

22:35

ally? That is correct.

22:41

You know, I had known through

22:44

the previous statements that she was

22:46

a quiet, conservative,

22:49

Stephenville girl. And

22:52

intuitively, by looking at the

22:54

bedroom for the few

22:56

minutes I was there, I knew

22:58

that a horrendous fight had happened in that

23:00

bedroom. And I also knew that

23:03

something horrible had happened in the bathroom.

23:06

And I knew whoever did this to her was,

23:09

you know, in my mind, as

23:12

alibi would be, she liked kinky

23:14

weird sex that got out of

23:17

control, and that was what happened. I

23:20

had to have Michael Woods to counter all

23:22

that. So I

23:24

waited a couple of days and called

23:26

him back, and then just as I had suspected,

23:29

Michael said that she was completely

23:32

straight. There were

23:34

no fantasies going on in her mind. She

23:36

wasn't in the bondage, wasn't

23:38

into kinky

23:40

sex, wasn't into rough

23:42

sex. And he,

23:44

you know, he laid it out for me.

23:47

So now Don had what he needed to

23:50

argue against anyone who tried to say Susan's

23:52

death was an accident. But while clearing

23:54

Michael was great for Michael, he was

23:56

not so great for Don.

23:58

Now he was out of suspects.

24:00

Don figured his only hope of finding one

24:03

was the fingerprints lifted from Susan's bathroom,

24:05

mirror and tub. In 1999,

24:08

the FBI had unveiled a national fingerprint

24:11

database. A department could submit

24:13

unidentified original prints and

24:15

have them compared against thousands of others.

24:18

All

24:18

right, let me stop you there then, and let's address

24:20

that. I think a lot of people who are listening to this

24:22

are going to say, well, why wasn't that done 10 years before?

24:25

The problem was when the case went dead for 10 years,

24:28

nobody was working it. Technology

24:32

had evolved, but nobody

24:34

was working it. When I started working

24:36

it, I had 10 years of technology

24:39

advances that I really needed to catch up with

24:42

myself. I had asked the chief

24:44

before if I could hand a liver, the

24:47

fingerprints to Washington,

24:48

DC to the FBI lab,

24:51

and I was told, no, you can send

24:54

them by mail. In my mind, I

24:56

thought, well, if I send them in the mail and

24:58

they don't ever get there, then I've lost the key

25:00

to the case. So I didn't do it.

25:03

Then Don heard that the Texas Department of Public

25:06

Safety had gotten access to the FBI

25:08

database. Now we wouldn't have to fly

25:11

anywhere with the prints to get them checked. So

25:14

one day in May 2006, Don

25:16

made the three-hour drive down to Austin

25:19

and handed the fingerprints to a DPS

25:21

officer.

25:22

Today, fingerprint databases are

25:24

so common, this would have been a routine thing.

25:27

But to Don, back in 2006, it

25:29

almost smacked of science fiction.

25:31

He'd never tried it before. No one

25:33

in Stephenville had. He wasn't really

25:35

expecting much, certainly nothing like a breakthrough,

25:38

but it was worth a shot.

25:43

Few days later, you get a call back. Walk

25:45

me through what happened. And

25:47

so Brian Strong calls me back

25:49

and he says, hey, we got a hit on

25:51

your fingerprints. And

25:55

he said, we got a match on the mirror,

25:58

and we got a match off of a Coke can.

25:59

And I said, okay, who are

26:02

they? Who do they belong to? And

26:04

he said, they belong to a guy named Joseph

26:06

Scott Hadley. I said, who's

26:09

he? And he said, Brian said, I don't

26:11

know.

26:13

Joseph Scott Hadley.

26:17

The name meant nothing to Don.

26:19

And then things got stranger still. So

26:23

he said these prints originated

26:26

in Las Vegas, Nevada.

26:29

And he said he got arrested for armed robbery. I

26:31

said, okay. All right, he

26:34

said, that's all the information we have. I

26:36

said, okay.

26:38

Don put the phone down slowly. Las

26:41

Vegas?

26:41

The prints in the database were from an entirely

26:44

different crime in an entirely different

26:46

part of the country, a robbery

26:48

in 1988, three states away.

26:49

He crossed

26:52

Don's mind this newfangled database might

26:54

not be all it was cracked up to be.

26:56

And if this Joseph Scott Hadley could be

26:58

their man, if he had any link

27:00

to Stephenville,

27:01

Don knew who would know. So

27:04

I called the district attorney. His name was John

27:06

Terrell. I called the DA and I said,

27:09

do we know who Joseph Scott Hadley

27:11

is? And actually the DA said, I know exactly

27:14

who he is. He said, come

27:16

down here. I'll have the file ready.

27:19

The file Don was given, it turned out,

27:22

was about yet another seemingly unrelated

27:24

crime, an old investigation

27:27

into the rape of a 16 year old

27:29

girl there in Stephenville. It

27:31

happened about a year after Susan

27:35

Woods had been killed. And this

27:37

little 16 year old girl in her statement

27:40

talks about this horrendous rape. She

27:43

thought she was going to die. And

27:45

she names the assailant as her on

27:49

again or off again boyfriend. And his name

27:51

was Joseph Scott Hadley. Hadley

27:55

had been 23 at the time and

27:58

Don read that before he could be questioned

28:00

he had fled town and ended up in

28:02

Las Vegas. That's where

28:04

he robbed a hotel clerk,

28:06

gotten arrested, and gotten himself convicted

28:09

of armed robbery. And then, after

28:11

serving his time, poof, he

28:14

seems to have vanished. But

28:16

he was a Stephenville boy. Don

28:18

saw that Hatley came from a well-known local

28:21

family. His father had owned a diesel

28:23

repair shop, but it since died. Hatley's

28:26

mother and sister still lived in town.

28:29

At a glance, though, there was nothing tying Hatley

28:31

to Susan Woods. But then, scanning

28:34

the files' yellowing pages,

28:35

down deep in the long, gruesome, single-space

28:38

statement from the teenage rape victim, Don

28:41

found what he was looking for.

28:44

The statement said the attack happened in

28:46

a roadside park along the

28:48

highway south of town. At one

28:50

point, after the girl had already been raped several

28:52

times, she got up and ran.

28:55

She said Hatley chased her, caught

28:57

her, and fell on top of her. And

28:59

the report quoted her statement to the investigators.

29:03

She said, quote, he laid on

29:05

top of me and told me if I didn't mind

29:07

him, he would kill

29:08

me. And that he

29:11

had done it before.

29:14

And as

29:17

I looked at the file, I

29:19

knew for a fact that

29:21

we had the right guy. Next

29:27

time on Stephenville. I

29:29

drove 85 miles an hour down

29:32

to the sheriff's office and

29:34

said, Scott is back, Scott is back. I was frantic.

29:38

And they were like, no, he's not, no, he's not. Yes,

29:41

he was. And they

29:43

didn't even know that he was back in town. Stephenville

29:49

is a Texas monthly production. The show

29:52

is produced and edited by Patrick Michaels

29:54

and produced and engineered by Brian Standifer,

29:57

who also wrote the music. Additional

29:59

production is by Jackie Ibarra, story

30:02

editing by J.K. Nickel, Paul Knight

30:04

is our fact checker. Additional field

30:06

recording in this episode was by Zorik

30:09

Sia, artwork is by Emily

30:11

Kimbrough and Victoria Milner. I'm

30:13

your host and writer, Brian Burra.

30:16

See y'all next week.