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Kellye, the true crime enthusiast, and Kyler, her willing partner, delve into intriguing cases from Central & Northeastern Louisiana.
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CenLAw
Echoes of Evil in Catahoula - Ponthieux/Adams - Part 2 of 4
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Join me, Kellye, as I continue peeling back the layers of a complex triple homicide that rocked a small town to its core. This episode sees us navigating the treacherous waters of Lee John's fragmented memory, a suspect whose recollections are as shaded by darkness as the night of the crime itself. We scrutinize the tangled history of family tensions, substance abuse, and the fateful celebration that ended in an irreversible tragedy. Each statement, each piece of evidence, is held up to the light, as we wrestle with the task of discerning reality from Lee John's own blurred lines of truth.
The plot thickens with every conflicting testimony and every potential hidden motive that bubbles to the surface. From Debbie's arrest for obstruction to Lee John's intoxicated run from the law, the story unfolds like a chilling jigsaw puzzle whose pieces don't quite fit. We're faced with a labyrinth of deception as Debbie's evolving statements during intense police interrogations clash with the grim forensic findings. As experts dissect the mechanics of the crime, the narrative spun by the accused is called into question, leaving us grasping for clarity in the midst of mayhem.
As the gavel falls and the court delivers its verdict, we take you inside the courtroom drama that's as fraught with inconsistencies as the investigation itself. Despite the absence of blood evidence and a confession that doesn't quite fit, a jury reaches a decisive conclusion. But the story doesn't end there; Lee John's fight for justice continues as he navigates the appeals process, challenging his life sentence on constitutional grounds. This episode isn't just a recounting of events—it's a journey through the very heart of a legal enigma that refuses to yield its secrets easily.
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Hello guys, this is Kellye, and I'm gonna give you a quick recap of last episode, episode 17. Part one. This is gonna be part two, so if you haven't listened to part one, go back, listen to that one and then come back here and skip a couple minutes, because I'm gonna recap it now and then you really need to get the first episode though, because if you skip it it's gonna be confusing as all hell because it gets twisted in this one. So last episode we found out that there was a triple homicide of a Miss Annie Bell Adams, a Edris Eileen Ellard and John D Ellard Jr, or he went by his nickname of Bozo. Eileen and Bozo were married and Annie was Eileen's mom and her sister, debbie, was the 911 caller. She initially said that there was an argument at their house. She left on foot to go up to the neighbor's house where she was calling 911 from, and there was an argument. She took off running. As she was running, she heard two shots. She also told police that her boyfriend that also lived at the house, lee John, was in an argument with him as she was leaving, or something along those lines. So what followed was the police getting there, realizing they had three dead bodies and then a manhunt for Lee John. The only little bit of information that I gave you about the crimes, specifically last episode, was Bozo's obviously got a gunshot wound to the head because he's missing the top part of his skull and there is a massive gaping wound on both Annie and Eileen's neck that initially by police at the scene was thought to have been also gunshot wounds, but we find out later in this episode we'll get more into those specifics. So, other than that they've got Debbie in custody, which I actually need to do, a couple of just little small corrections from last episode.
Kellye:Okay, I wasn't sure exactly where Debbie was after her initial interview because, if you guys remember, the officer Bubba Roy had picked her up from Mr Fields' house where she called 911 from. He picked her up and brought her to the scene that morning, left her in the car by herself for about 45 minutes while he was helping gather evidence and stuff, and then went to the car. He said with a little like like a handheld recorder or whatever, and recorded a statement from her and that's when they realized or found out that the motorcycle was missing and put a bolo out for that and anyway. So I wasn't quite sure where, what, how, how, where she went from that point to the point where she was in custody for obstruction, because they did later arrest her for obstruction of justice, right? So they, from what I can gather, they let her drive her mom's truck, ms Annie Bell's truck that was at the crime scene. They let her drive that truck back to the Cataho ula Parish Sheriff's Office to turn herself in. And that's just from the little information I could actually find on that part of it. Like it's very not mentioned. Yeah, so she was booked that night at about 7.50 on obstruction. So no idea, not a clue. All I know is that it was mentioned that she drove herself. So anyway, there was also because I think I said something before was that she was initially arrested on obstruction and she was. She was held until her the next day or the couple of days actually. Either way, she was initially arrested for obstruction. Just wanted to make sure that was clear.
Kellye:And then I think I mentioned last episode. I think in the intro to last episode I said something about the April incident from 2012,. But I actually found 911 calls and call logs from as early as 2011. There was a July call that a friend of Miss Annie's calls and said he was worried about Miss Annie's well-being because Miss Annie told him that Lee John had pulled a gun on her and threatened her life. Now, when actually it was Detective Wiley who was one of the first people on the scene of the murders, detective Wiley went out and talked to Miss Annie and she said no, nobody pulled a gun. No, that didn't happen. Well then, later, in January of 2012, miss Annie actually called 911 and said she wanted Lee John removed from her property. He was custody at Holler and then she didn't want to deal with it anymore. So there were multiple cases of drunk, disorderly type behavior stemming from, basically, the in a couple months, of him moving in down there with Debbie.
Kellye:So, that being said, I think that was only the couple things that I wanted to touch on before we got started on today's episode. So buckle in, guys. This is going to be a good one.
Kellye:Hello and welcome to episode 17,. Part two of three Echoes of Evil. This is Kelly of Sin Law. You know me, we all know me. I'm going to be coming in solo for this episode. Unsure if we'll have Kyler back for the third part, but we'll see. Just busy, got a lot going on.
Kellye:So I'm going to go ahead and jump into this part two and, before we get too far into the story in 2012, I'm going to take you guys back and we're going to talk a little bit, because at the end of our manhunt which I don't know if I said this or not, but there were like seven different agencies and over 40 officers that were a part of that almost 24 hour manhunt to get him in custody. So, again, major props to all of those. I think it was Cato Hula, parish, concordia Parish, louisiana State Police, jonesville Police Department, rapidswatt, lasalle, parish Sheriff's Office. I think there was a couple of the wildlife and fisheries and a couple of other ones that I can't think of right off the top of my head. But like amazing job, like wonderful, wonderful teamwork, but they got leech on into custody. Everybody went home, they got him booked, got him in his prison blues or oranges or whatever they could put in at this point and everybody went to go kind of, you know, collectively collect themselves. And so while they're doing that, we are going to slip back into the past a little bit and talk a little bit about who Lee John Pontier Jr really was.
Kellye:Now, this was hard, hard findings. Okay, this probably took me longer than any other part of this entire case altogether, and there's a lot going on in this thing, but it was probably more difficult to figure out, like anything about this man. So this is what I got. He was born on 1122. Let me double check that here Yep, 1122, 70.
Kellye:He was born in Cottonport, louisiana. His dad is obviously the senior. I could not find a single bit of information about who his mother was. It just one of those things that I just couldn't find. We know about his sister because she was in part one Shelly, and he were apparently really close. I think he had at least another sister that lived in the area, the Louisiana area, and I'm not sure about other siblings. It's just not something that I could get a number on.
Kellye:Okay, so his level of education varies a little bit, because I saw reports that he left high school in his junior year, but then I also got from other court records that he only had a third or fourth grade education, which tends to be backed up by the letters and handwriting and spelling sampling that I have of his. It kind of tends to make me believe the third or fourth grade education, but you know, some people can go to their junior year and only have an actual fourth grade education. So what I did manage to scrounge up? He also had an incident, I think, when he was about 16 years old. He was jumped by a group of kids and he sustained yeah, you guessed it head injuries and from that point on, you know, family members, relatives, said that. You know, he never really functioned the same.
Kellye:Now, from everything that I've gathered and everybody that I've spoken with, he was a very soft-spoken person. He didn't come off real loud, he didn't come off real aggressive, which I am assuming at this point that that was his baseline and then if he started to drink, then it was almost like a flip of the switch was slipped and he became the exact opposite you know loud, overzealous, aggressive, all of the things that you know mean alcoholics tend to be, which is not all together unsurprising If you look back far enough, which I did manage to find some information about his father, the senior I'm not sure if he's still alive, but it's a possibility what I could find out about him he had multiple DUI charges, careless operations and actually the April 2012 call that I spoke about at the beginning in the intro of part one, lee John Jr and senior were both involved in that call. Like when they took off they said in Debbie's car that that was the senior driving the car with junior in the passenger seat and I believe for that incident that Lee John Jr actually got arrested and charged with littering and disturbing the peace. Yeah, so not a good role model. From what I could tell, his arrest record goes back to like 67. He was born in 49. So again 18 years old. Like when he could start to have an actual record that we can see to the public is when he started having an arrest record and he served multiple DOC sentences. That was out long enough to father a couple kids apparently. But other than that, just all in all not the greatest role model. Like I said, just based on the information that I could gather publicly, he may have been a great guy, but it says something when the senior his arrest record starts at 18. And then the junior, his arrest record also starts at age 18. Now there's no way of knowing for sure if that's the first incident, which probably not, but we can't see juvenile records. So that's what we go with.
Kellye:And Lee John Jr. He got arrested I believe it was initially for when he was 18, for the battery of a juvenile. Now this could be something as simple as him getting into a fight with somebody at school, but if he left it his junior year he was probably already aged out or he had already been out of school. But I mean still like his age group and if you're over 18, they're under 18, it's still a battery of a juvenile. So that possibly could have been the situation.
Kellye:I don't know specifics, I just know from the rap sheet. So he'd got that and, excuse me, cats, a couple other charges and different parishes all the way around, like he had a rest out of Pineville, rapids Parish and Tibidot. I think he had some like Deville area, I don't know, but all the way back to age 18 in the year 1988. He's had these cases and the most of them were like burglary, theft. He actually stole a truck of somebody's and then he had like simple criminal damage to property. There was an indecent behavior with a juvenile, but I don't believe that one was actually wasn't convicted of that. So the other ones are just like resisting and disturbing the peace and careless operation and things like that that had to do with alcohol related issues.
Kellye:So, from what I understand and from what I could see, the majority of his life and adult life from the time he turned 18. He spent in jail. He was sentenced and convicted for he stole somebody's truck. I stole it, he borrowed it and then he was sentenced to four years hard labor. Okay, now he had earned trustee status, but he took advantage of that and had an escape attempt, an in-dead escape attempt. He actually stole a four-wheeler. So when they caught him and they did catch him they sentenced him to 10 years hard labor consecutive to his original four-year sentence.
Kellye:So, from my addition in things, after he was released he moved to, like the Morgan City, deville that kind of area, mansur, where I believe his family was originally from, that you know bounced all around in there for a little while Working as like he worked on tugboats, he worked his carpenter handyman, he worked in a shipyard from his own words and story and then I believe it was I want to say, 2009-ish when he went to the wedding of his sister and that's where he met DeVille and according to him, they met at the wedding and she moved him in the same night and that's where he had been for the past three years and, to all his reckoning, they were in love and he loved her more than he'd ever loved anybody else and he'd do anything for her, and so on and so forth. So that gives you a little bit of background on Lee. And yeah, I mean oh, and at the time that he was arrested that August 2012, 21st of 2012, he was actually working at a pecan orchard yeah, there's a thing down here and he was making about $100 a day. Unfortunately, good amount of that, a percentage of that, was going to his probation fees, fines and court costs because I guess the littering and deserving the piece in April. And then he had had another one that was a misdemeanor charge before then that he had also pled guilty to. That he was supposed to have been paying on already and he wasn't. He had a bench warrant, like it was a whole thing, but they actually they had let him, they had released him I believe it was May and put him and continued his probation with a new payment plan and that's when he got the job at the pecan orchard. So he's living in the house with Debbie, has been living there for about three years and yeah, it. Just it came to this, so we're going to get into that now.
Kellye:So on August 21st, after everybody had taken an app, they come back, and by they I mean our chief investigator, mr Tony Edwards, and Bob Arroy, another detective for the Cata Hula Para Sheriff's office. They come back up to the jail and sit down for an interview with Lee John. And it's about three o'clock in the afternoon because, like I said, they were one, they were trying to make sure that he was sober. Two, they were trying to make sure they had the clearest idea and head of you know how to approach it and where to go and try to get as much sense made of what they had found at the scene and everything like that, and to just try to get it, try to get you know, gain point, starting point, to go in there and begin this interview because they don't know what he's going to say, what he's not going to say, and so on and so forth. They didn't really have to worry too much because he was very forthcoming and, like I said, they went in there about three o'clock.
Kellye:The interview, the first one, only lasted about an hour and they, like I said, when they were at the scene processing. They assumed that all three victims had been killed by gunshot. Well, lee John is about to rock the world a little bit. So this is what Lee John says in a nutshell because, like I said, this was about an hour long interview. And they go in there and they just ask him you know, run it back, tell us what happened.
Kellye:And the biggest part that I think needs to be said is he is very inconsistent, he is very unsure. He says I don't know or I can't remember more times than he says any other phrase or set of words in this entire interview. And just a lot of it is just I can't really remember. I was, I blacked out. You know, there was just a lot of vagueness to everything.
Kellye:So when they start this interview, they're asking about that day and what had happened and talking about what led up to it, the events that led up to it. So his story went something like this they had started drinking, he said, sometime between 12 and early afternoon, so they were having a quote unquote party or birthday party celebration type get together, for a friend of theirs lived down the road and there were two guys who had come and they were drinking beer and hanging out at the house and he tells them it's been like they drank like two cases of beer, plus they had some energy slash alcohol drinks. You know those things guys, the ones that are like red bulls but they have like an alcohol content. Yeah, not a good combo. Anyway, look at it. And then he also mentioned the fact that you know they were taking pills, like he said, xanax, and then another one that looked like an orange football or something like that, and so he just mentioned a lot of drinking, drug use. Okay, let's see what we got, we'll see.
Kellye:You know, this started to make a little bit of sense. And you know, he said we went through two cases of beer and then eventually we went and got another case of beer, like we stocked back up, but then about the time that it started to get dark which this was August and so probably be about I don't know 738 o'clock at nine, and that the two other guys had left and so it had only left the core five, annie, which any Miss Annie had been inside the whole time watching TV and like hanging out in the house. She wasn't a part of the drinking outside or whatever, obviously, but the core five were home at that point Debbie and Lee, and then Eileen, bozo and Annie Bell. Okay, so at some point he says that Debbie and Eileen got into it about something, because they're always getting into it, and I think one of his quotes was they get to drink in, they get into it. Basically, he says that anytime they were drinking that they were arguing about something, whether it was how Eileen didn't feel like Debbie was taking the best care of their mom, or how Debbie was really upset because none of the other six kids siblings of hers would come and help. Even though she was getting paid to look after her mom, she was still kind of bitter that nobody would come and lend her a hand or give her a day off, and so they always were getting into some kind of argument or another.
Kellye:Not to mention the really big sticking point in Debbie's side Eileen and Bozo, the married couple, which we'll get into that a little bit later. But Eileen and Bozo got married in January of 2007, which was a short, I don't know. I want to say four months after Debbie and Bozo got divorced. Yeah, you heard that right. He married Debbie first and they got divorced as of September in 2006 and Bozo married Eileen, debbie's younger sister, in January of 2007. Yeah, so this was basically a big old pot that basically was a powder keg inside of a pressure cooker that was also sitting in the heart of an active volcano. It was going to explode. There was something bad that was going to happen, not to mention the fact that you've got a violent drunk that is now a part of this whole equation, which was also a point of contention, basically, for all of Debbie's siblings saying that he didn't need to be there. He was only causing more problems, which seems to be true based on just the 911 history.
Kellye:So, all of that aside, though, you've got major contention and stress and strain between the sisters, and then also between Debbie and her mom, because she's the only one that's taking care of her. She's got that resentment there. She claims in all of her Later we'll get to it but she she gives statements to the police, and so in all of her stuff, though, she's always talking about how much she loves her mom and that was all she had to live for, but you could also tell that she was resentful of her siblings not helping and not doing anything to to. You know, free her of having that burden. I guess you can say so. There's that Resentment that they've got and you've got a Lee John that is, like I said, a known to be violent, aggressive, drunk, and they're drinking and doing whatever recreational drugs that they're choosing to do, and You've got Debbie and Eileen getting into it at some point in the night, according to Lee John, and then, also according to him, they kind of go their separate ways. So Lee John and Debbie go into their room in the house and Eileen and Bozo are outside in their shed and Miss Annie's in the house and they're getting ready for bed. He said it's probably closer at this point, it's probably closer to midnight and you know there's still Debbie, still going on and on and on.
Kellye:She just keeps on and keeps on nagging and bitching and nagging, monon and groaning and talking about how her life would just be better if they were all dead. Somebody, just somebody, should just kill them and Get them out of, because her life would be so much better without any of them in it. Talking about not just Eileen and Bozo but also her mom, because you know, aside from feeling like she may have, may not have been a burden, she also kind of had that. Well, she let them move in here. And she knows how bad they did me and because you know, according to Debbie, bozo had cheated on her while they were married with her younger sister and you know, supposedly she had gotten over it and it was water under the bridge. But you could tell, and in everything that I read, that that was always something that came up, no matter what. It was always well, she took my husband. So, yeah, so it was always a thing, always a thing. She obviously wasn't over it.
Kellye:So when he's telling the story about, you know, being in the house after they'd come in and they were, they had been drinking all day now, and Debbie just keeps on and on and Lee John just said he got tired of it. So he said okay. So he got up, went into the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, came back into the room and this is his story again. He comes back into the room, shows us to Debbie and says is this what you want? And His statements aren't exactly clear. But he says something along the lines of she didn't stop me, she didn't tell me not to, so I took that as kind of a go-ahead or I bet you won't, something along those lines. So then he went, goes ahead and he walks into Miss Annie's room and she didn't really make any kind of movement because apparently Lee John would go in and help and do things for her and at the night, and just try to be helpful. So Miss Annie had no cause for alarm when he walked into the room. And At that point he Looked back, saw Debbie standing in the doorway and proceeded to stab her.
Kellye:Now, according to his first Statement, he says he stabbed her twice, okay, and then, but again peppered through in his head and then, but again peppered through. In his entire testimony even through all of these parts it is. I don't really remember, I don't know. Maybe I did, maybe I think it was, I'm not sure, maybe it was. You know a lot of that, and that could have to do with the fact that he was drunk and high, or it could have the fact that due to the fact that he didn't Actually do it, or I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that, but so far this is what we got. So and and and Tony, detective or chief investigator Tony Edwards, and Detective Bubba Roy, they both did an amazing job, not leading, not Trying to get him to say something based on their information. So they did a really great job in this and this interview interrogation, because they let him speak from his own memory and lack thereof. So anyway, so they, they keep going in the story and he's I don't know, I don't know, I think I did this, I think I did that.
Kellye:So at this point he says I got the shotgun that was from behind Mama's door and he called miss Annie mama, and that's one thing. He's. He gets really upset in the interview and has to be, you know, he has to calm himself down because he's really upset about what happened to her and the fact that she was dead now, because she was, you know, he cared a lot about her. According to him, and according to the, his reactions, he never called her miss Annie or Annie bell or anything like that. He called her mama. So he says that he got the shotgun from behind her door. He knew to be there, everybody knew it was there and he knew it was loaded and he said he went outside. At that point, when asked where was Debbie, he said he didn't know. But later he comes back around and says well, she was, she followed me out there or she was, she was outside when I, when I shot, but Again, unsure, very inconsistent.
Kellye:So they go out or he goes out, knocks on the door because he intends to kill them too. Because that's the other part of Debbie's, you know frustration and Issues in her life and so for them to be able to be together and to be happy and to stop all of this Going around and being upset all the time and you know just this major Life hurdle that they've got to get over, they've got to get rid of all the problems. So that includes Mama, sister and ex husband, brother-in-law. So he goes out there with the intent of killing them, knocks on the door, he tells the cops and his first statement that Bozo opens the door and he shoots him.
Kellye:And now, obviously this can't be true because of how they found Bozo. You know he was Steps feet away from the front of the house or front of the shed and if he had shot him as soon as he opened the door and hit him, all of the matter that was found on the ground and spread out in the yard would have been Inside the shed or at least part of it, most of it, like the majority of it. But there was no such evidence. There was no such blood spray or anything like that to corroborate that. So obviously he had his story wrong, right? So, you know, tony Edwards, he confronts him about this information and the fact that it doesn't jive. And well, maybe he came out, maybe I, maybe it was the second shot, I don't really remember again, inconsistent all the way through. So he says, you know, he moves the story around where I don't remember where he was when I shot him, but I shot him in the front, like I shot him. He was looking at me when I shot him.
Kellye:And then he talks about Eileen coming out trying to attack him which Choice of words. But she tried to jump on him and take the gun from him, but according to him, he'd already shot, if not twice, at least three times, which means at this point, because all shotguns that are sold and regulated for hunting may have a plug put in them. So they have the capacity for only three live rounds at a time, two in the barrel and one in the chamber. So he shot three times, which is evidence of the crime scene as well, and so they've got the gun. At this point the shotgun is useless, although Eileen still tries to wrestle it from him and he says one at some point he lets go of the rifle or let's go the shotgun and reaches into his pocket to where he always keeps his Pocket knife it's a goat Gerber pocket knife, the same one that they found on him when he was arrested. He says he pulls that out of his pocket and proceeds to excuse me, kitty, he proceeds to stab her and again when he, when they asked him how many times, he said I stabbed her a few times. And According to the statement now that he is given, this is all new information, except for the gunshot wound to bozo.
Kellye:Because, remember, when they roll up to the scene they assumed that everybody had been shot. Even in the evidence Video he talks about them being shot in the neck area. But now that they have this confession from Lee John, they realize that They've got Knife wounds. They've got these are these, these horrendous looking wounds that they saw on these bodies were not from a gun, they were from a knife attack. So now they've got to resituate themselves. Now they already kind of and I want to say they kind of assumed as much, because when they found him and the Gerber pocket knife Was in his pocket, it was. It did have a bloody hue to it. However, you know we live out in the country. It could have been blood from damn near anything. But now they knew that that knife was of extreme importance. And they also knew now that they had to go back and search again To be to look for this other knife which, you know, all he Could say about it was the butcher knife from the kitchen didn't have a color, I think. I think he actually did say that it was a black handle, black plastic handle, maybe from the kitchen, but that was all I could give him. And so they had to go. You know this one thing knew that they had to go back and search for that.
Kellye:Well then they asked him about like, where did you hide out after you got arrested and how did you manage to evade us? For you know all of those questions and Basically he says well, after after I stabbed Eileen, I was trying to find Debbie. I didn't know where she'd gone to. I figured she might have gone up to Scott's, so I got the keys for the. The keys for the motorcycle of Bozo's were always left in there, so he got on the motorcycle. He said he put the shotgun under his butt. So he was sitting on the shotgun as he took off on the bike.
Kellye:Okay, awkward, and Not only awkward, but drunk, drunk, drunk. So that was why he did not make it any further than he did and ended up with the motorcycle in the ditch. So at that point he says he was just trying to find Debbie to figure out what had happened and what, how this had all gone wrong. And that's actually a direct quote. He said I was trying to find her so she could tell me what happened. Because his mind is still foggy and still very unclear. So he goes and he's sneaking around trying to see if he can see Debbie, but she's not there and he can't get any glimpse of her because she's not in that place to be seen. So he eventually, you know, takes a nap out past the house and then works his way back down the woods, down back to Miss Annie's house, watches them leave, goes back in, and at this point is when he tells them that you know, he went back in.
Kellye:He changed his shirt because that other one was gross, it had like sweat and it was just nasty. They asked him if it had any blood on it. He said he didn't remember. And he said he changed his shirt while he was in there and grabbed some more beer, grab some more shotgun shells out of the house and then called his sister. And the reason he said that he got more shotgun shells was because he was going to kill himself. And he actually says in his interview but I couldn't do it. I had the muzzle or the barrel in my mouth but I couldn't pull the trigger. I wish I had, I wish I had killed myself instead.
Kellye:So they get all of this information back. They realized that you know that it wouldn't even think crazy special. Oh, and they asked him about how close the blood hounds had got to him. He said probably within about 20 feet. Yeah, it's crazy, right.
Kellye:So he tells them all this and they ask him like why on earth, if you love Miss Annie this much, why would you do this? And he said well, because I love Debbie more. You know I would do anything for her and you know she just said it so many times. Every time they argue, every time we got to drink and every time they argued, I just wish they were dead. I just wish they were dead. And when they asked him, did you do this because of because you love Debbie this much, that you would do this for her, that you would kill them for her so that she could be happy. And he said, absolutely yeah, that's why I did. It was because I just snapped and was tired of hearing them argue and hearing her bitch about it all the time, and the yin yin yin, I think, is how he put it, and that's what he decided he was going to do it for her so that she could finally be happy.
Kellye:So with this new information, like I said, they've got to go double back and go search to see if they can find that other butcher knife, see if they can find any other evidence there at the scene that they weren't looking for to begin with. And also they've got Debbie locked up for obstruction and now they're starting to see that this was a little bit more involving her. And if what Li-Jion in this version that he gave in his very inconsistent and very vague and very blurry version, is to be believed, debbie was there and witnessed her mother being murdered and when she got to Scott's house she literally only said that they were having an argument and she heard gunshots. She never mentioned anything about Lee having a knife, having stabbed her mother. In fact when she called she was actually worried about him shooting her dog and she wanted the officers when they got there to check on her dog. Yeah, okay.
Kellye:So they go to talk to Debbie, but not that day. Not that day, because that day they're going to check evidence and do all that good fun stuff. So they wait till the next day, at about 2, 30 to 45 ish, and they go in there and talk to her and again it's Bubba and Tony and they sit down and they start talking to her and they ask her about the day. Okay, so she basically tells them the same story. You know we were drinking pretty much all day and I don't really know those two other guys.
Kellye:They were out there talking with Bozo and Eileen and drinking or whatever, and real quick into the story they realized that her story she's sticking to. They were outside tussling, scuffling, and that was actually one thing that Lee said. That didn't happen. He said I never got into a physical altercation. Maybe I should have instead of what happened, but I've, you know Bozo and I never got into it like that. And so that's the first thing Debbie says is they started to get physical. She saw Lee throw Bozo down on the ground and that's when she got scared and ran off. Okay, ran off to Scott's house.
Kellye:Now, this didn't make any sense. Okay, didn't make sense to them. It didn't make sense now, didn't make sense then. And if you listen to her statement and the way she's talking about it and the way that property is laid out, why the ever love and hell? If they were out there arguing and fighting outside the house, would you not just go in the house and call 911? Like had been done at least a dozen times before? Okay, so there's problem number one. Problem number two they've got Lee John saying that they were in the house, they were having conversation, they were, you know, she was bitching about always having to deal with everything and her wish and everybody did, and that they had already come in for the night. And that is actually bolstered by the fact that Debbie was in her pajamas, eileen was in her just a pink bathrobe. Bozo, he still had his belt, socks, jeans, I don't think he had shoes on, but like he was still half dressed, I guess. But Eileen was in her bathrobe, annie Bell was in her night night clothes and so was Debbie, so it didn't make a whole lot of sense. What Debbie was trying to pitch, that she was outside Eileen was. You know, that whole thing just didn't jive not with the crime scene, not with Lee's story. So they finally, after about 35, 40 minutes, and Tony Edwards, he gets into her. He doesn't kiddie, gloves her by any means or stretch of the imagination. He finally gets her to admit that she was there when Lee first stabbed her mom and that she saw that.
Kellye:And this story, her versions, change at least three to four different times in just this one one hour interview that they do. And hers is a little bit more consistent. I just mean like consistent in the way that she tells it. So it's, she doesn't have a lot of black out, she doesn't have any blurry moments, she's still very coherent. The inconsistencies come with her story changing because they call her out on it and they call her out on the evidence of it, because initially they thought, well, they had done it together and that she had held the shotgun on the motorcycle when they took off and then crashed the motorcycle. So she went up to Scott's house.
Kellye:I don't know how they actually thought that one through, but you know she was very adamant about some things and then the other stuff she was, you know, not as adamant about and would get kind of defensive in her answering or questioning. So when it comes down to it she ends up saying that she was there when he stabbed her mom, but she didn't want him to do it. She never said that. She changes her story.
Kellye:At one point she admits that she said that she wished they were all dead, at least four times in the past. She swears she didn't say it that night or she might have, she doesn't remember. And then she changes it completely to I never said that. I never told him that I wanted them dead. I never said my life would be better if they were all dead. And this is just within a couple minutes of the same interview that they're in and it's a little bit wild. I think it started to click in her mind that if she had said those things and they believed and Lee believed, that doing it for her would somehow make her life better and that they could go on and live this happily ever after together, if they just got rid of the quote unquote problem and he did it by proxy for her, then in her brain she's clicking things together, and realizing that means I'm in trouble too, because even if she technically didn't wield any weapon, if it was in some way her idea and she didn't stop him, then she's just as liable, right? Okay, so they get this interview with her and at this point they are now both booked on first degree murder three counts, and when their bond is set, it is set at $10 million each and it's set the next day After that happens. They actually go and talk to Lee John one more time, see if he's got anything to clear up or any kind of details that he might have forgotten, and he does. There's a couple things that he clarified, as, like the footprints that were in the shed on the bedding, like the bloody footprints. He said he went in there to try to get a pack of cigarettes or something, because he knew that they kept cigarettes in there. But you know, who knows, who actually knows. So that's where it sits for a good long while, until October, I believe. So they were arrested October 21st, bond was set at $10 million. I think it was on August 23rd and then October what day was it? I forget? Okay, october 15th 2012,.
Kellye:The grand jury indicted Lee John, but they did something different for Debbie. They called okay. So I'm going to do a quick explanation here for everybody, because we try to try to bring the legal system to our true crime here. So when it comes to a grand jury, it's different than a normal jury because basically they are trying to decide whether or not there is evidence to support a case for the prosecution. So they can be in secret, they have strict confidence. But that's for two reasons witnesses that will testify in front of a grand jury have zero fear of retaliation and it also protects the defense's reputation if it's not a true bill. So if they go in there and they're accusing somebody of murder regardless, nowadays you're going to have public out the wazoo regardless, right, but it's still trying to protect the reputation of the defendant in the off chance that it's not true or in the situation where isn't a true bill.
Kellye:So there are three ways that a grand jury can decide. They can decide a true bill, which means they believe that there is sufficient evidence to proceed with a trial. A not true bill, which means there is not enough evidence. And the third one is the interesting one, and this is what they did in Debbie's case. It's called pre-termiting and this is a basically like a hung jury. For a grand jury, it means that they're waiting until the entirety of the investigation is completed, and basically, that just means you don't have enough evidence, but we think there might be something here we don't want to say. It's not true, but we're not going to say that it's true either.
Kellye:Okay, so nine of the grand jury members must concur for true or not true, and if they have a vote for pre-termiting, they have to have at least nine, so it has to be a majority vote of nine, always. If nine cannot be reached for true or not, that's when it becomes a hung jury or a hung grand jury, which ends up in it being pre-termiting. Okay, so this is a procedure that is similar to the preliminary hearing. There's a huge difference there, though. The preliminary hearing is done and decided by a judge, and he decides it on probable cause, and it's the same thing that they're judging and weighing the amount of evidence and, if there's enough, to proceed to trial. Big differences, like I said, though, is a judge. For a preliminary hearing, it's open to the public, and you know the prosecution, defense, the defendant, all of those people can be present because it's open to the public.
Kellye:The grand jury, like I said, is very secretive and done in strict competence and you know that is done by the grand jury, not by a judge. So, keeping all that in mind, they ended up pre-termiting Debbie's indictment. So at that point in October she had been in there since August and according to stuff that I got, I don't think she was actually released until a little bit later. I think she was in jail for like 180 days or so, something along those lines, but she ended up getting released a little bit later. Her attorney at that point filed a motion to get her out because they hadn't reconvened the grand jury, because they hadn't brought any new evidence. So but as of October 15th, lee John was indicted. He was then, you know, sent through the roller coaster. He was appointed a public defender, I think eventually it became Darryl Hickman for the defense and they went through all the normal course of motions and suppressions and he tried to get the interviews, quote-unquote confessions, thrown out or suppressed and that didn't happen. So they move on and eventually they come to a trial. In December, december 16th, they started jury selection and this took most of the first day and they ended up with get this 10 females, two males and then a male and female for the alternates, which I thought was pretty crazy. I haven't seen a split like that in a while, where it was a great majority female to male or vice versa, even I just normally it's a little bit more, you know, divvied up, but and yeah, so I just thought that was interesting.
Kellye:Now they had opening statements from the defense attorney and for the and for the defense. Brad Brigette was the district attorney and his opening statement was about 30 minutes and he touched on the fact that you know, I'm going to give you this evidence, I'm going to show you exactly in black and white, to the letter, and so on. And you know the defense, basically their entire argument, hinged on the fact that they were blaming Debbie for all of it. That you know. Lee didn't have any motive, he didn't have any reason to want any of those people dead. Debbie had all the motive. She had all the rage and hostility and all the things. That's where it was sitting All right Now as the trial begins to unravel and fold.
Kellye:They called officers that first arrived at the scene and the dispatch who answered the call, the 911 call. They also called the arresting officers that found Leigh John in the woods and that testified to what he had on him and what you know where they found him and all that. And then they call the forensic pathologist who talks about the autopsies of the bodies, and this is where we get into some interesting points. Okay, so they talk about Miss Annie Bell and trigger warning. It gets pretty rough. Skip ahead or, you know, just be warned.
Kellye:Miss Annie Bell had 12 wounds. Now that is not indicative of actual injury, so let me, let me explain a little bit better. She had 12 separate wounds, but it's not entirely clear if they were all done separately. So she could have had. You know, she had been stabbed, or stabbed at like, six times and received 12 wounds. Does that make sense? So the major damage causing were the three to her throat. There was one specifically that severed her her jugular, all the way through her larynx, all the way, all the way across, basically it all the way down. It began this was the butcher knife, so it severed all of those and then, basically, she bled out from the stab wounds.
Kellye:She also had some defensive wounds on her hands and you could tell that you know she had tried to fight a little, but I mean she was an elderly, 76 year old lady at the time. She was on oxygen. I believe she had been diagnosed with Parkinson's just overall moderately poor health in general. Like she had to have her daughter live in and was being paid to take care of her to be able to help her because she just couldn't do as much. She had a handicap ramp ramp on the porch, and I mean she could still get around and walk around, but not a lot. Like she was very limited, so not much of a defense could be put up, and so they had. The majority of the focus of the wounds, though, were on the neck, and I think she had one on her face and her cheek, and then the small or slight defensive wounds on her hands, and they determined that Eileen had been, she'd been stabbed and cut Unsure an unknown amount of times, but it resulted in 23 separate wounds. These were majorly focused to her throat, face and hands. She also had defensive wounds on the front back of her hands, as well as one on her leg, almost kind of like trying to use her leg as a defense to push back or push away from the attack, and then, in the struggle, had been stabbed or gouged in her leg as well. So both of those, according to the pathologist, seemed to be killed out of rage.
Kellye:Because most and if you're a true crime fan you'll know this already that most times a knife attack it's very personal, to very up close. And if you're stabbed more than just once, in like a fit of, either like self-defense or, you know, like a panic kill, a panic stabbing, which has happened, it happens. But if it's anything more than like one or two quick wounds or jabs, if it's anything more serious, like 12 different wounds or 23 different wounds, that generally indicates some level of personal, some level of relationship, the more I think. I don't remember which one it was, but one of my true crime people said the more stab wounds, the more personal. So, and they also indicate that it's depending on the area of where they are stabbed, so in like a sexually aggressive or like a revenge stabbing, it could be focused in the groin area or you know something like that. It's very personal. Stabbing, cutting, those kind of killings or murders are very, very personal. So that leads you to the next question of well, what the hell is Lee doing personally stabbing these two women? Excellent question, we'll get to it.
Kellye:So now we're talking about Bozo, which is a whole other bag of worms, right? So if you remember from Lee John's statement, he said he shot him while he was looking at him. Like he shot him from the front and then he fell backwards on his back and that's how he was found by the cops and that's what the police were led to believe as well, like they thought he was shot from the front and it took off the top of his skull, right. That's not how that happened. The wound trajectory came from the base of his skull at a slightly upward angle, from the back, left occipital, which is, you know, that bottom left part of your skull and towards the front, and it came and the trajectory was almost midline forehead by the time it was exiting. So how the hell did he shoot him in the back of the head? Another thing that he did not get correct in either of his statements he never said that he shot him from the back Anytime. He said he shot him, he said he shot him from the front, that he was looking at his face when he shot him.
Kellye:So inconsistency after inconsistency and another kind of inconsistency both Eileen and Bozo had very minimal amount of alcohol in their bloodstream. They had no drug set popped up on their drug screen outside of what was prescribed to them and was within therapeutic levels. So they weren't drunk, they weren't high at this time. It doesn't mean that they weren't drinking earlier, but the levels that they were at at that point were low enough to be considered like not even. They were both well under the legal limit. I mean, I think Eileen barely had anything in her at all and it could have even been contributed to decomposition at that point, although I think they were still in rigor. But regardless, they weren't drunk, they weren't high. So it sounded more like a Lee and Debbie were drunk and high and all in their feelings and Lee figured that he'd end it, if you want to believe his story.
Kellye:So they get the, like I said, the forensic pathologists. They even get Mike Stelly, hey, hey, buddy, mike Stelly, our weapons expert, our firearms analyst. He gets up there and he talks about the shotgun itself, which is a pump action, remington 12 gauge and talks about the fact that it's a pump action. You have to manually eject and, you know, knowingly cock and reload this weapon to be able to fire it again. So it is a very thoughtful process. You don't just like mindlessly pull the trigger. You have to work at it, you have to put effort into it and make a conscious decision to load it again or eject the cartridge and keep shooting. So he justifies that the gun that they gave him, that they found on Lee's person when he was arrested, was in good working order. The safety did work and all of the things were functional.
Kellye:Now, noticeably to me was the fact that they the shell casings that they found at the scene, which I think they had maybe six they didn't get those analyzed. So we don't know if those shells were shot from the gun that was found on Lee John's body, which blew my mind. But I could think of a very, very good reason as to why the district attorney might not have done that, because he probably didn't have enough faith in the fact that those came from that weapon. Now out in the country we have shells, especially out where you can shoot from your own backyard. They're gonna be shell casings everywhere. I'm not like when we used to live in Oklahoma. We had a the side of the hill that we would shoot Skeet from, and you go over there and you see it's almost like a shell shotgun, shell graveyard. You know they're everywhere and so in their minds, if they had the shotgun shells that are at the scene the quote unquote scene right there by the shed, they think they're the ones that came out of this shotgun.
Kellye:I think they were the ones that you know possibly could have been the ammunition that caused the death of at least Bozo. But on the off chance that they didn't come from that specific shotgun, even though the ammunition was the same type, they were known to have other weapons there. They were known to have other guns on that property. So if that specific shell that they are saying was used in the crime doesn't match up, that is a reasonable doubt. That is a reason for the that is a hole for the defense to stick his stick in and stir it all around and say, hey, they don't even know if this was the gun that shot him. They don't even know if. Because if that ammunition doesn't match up to the weapon that that, and say that it was fired from the shotgun that was on Leijon when he was arrested, they can say that maybe somebody else got a shotgun and quote unquote, debbie that she had a different weapon shot them. And then you know, leijon wanted to take all the blame, so he took off with a shotgun and she ditched the real one or whatever. You know, there's a plenty of ways that you could poke holes in that right. So just to err on the side of caution and don't test the bullet casing. So why would they need to right? He has the gun on him. He has the pocket knife that has the blood on it which was tested for DNA. It did have Eileen's blood on it, also, it had Annie's and it also had DNA from Leijon, which of course it would because it's his knife. But they also couldn't eliminate Debbie from that DNA pool that they found on the knife. So that's the Gerber pocket knife.
Kellye:Now they never recovered the butcher knife, never recovered it. Leijon said he threw it in the river. Then he said he threw it on the trash side of the river. And then you know, they just they never got it. They never found it. They looked for it, they look for it, but they never found it. They also never found the shirt that he said he changed out of. Yeah, so there's a little bit of a difference between the two, I'm telling you. I'm telling you, but they didn't test the shells to the weapon. They didn't match that. They came from the gun that he was laying on and that bothered me, it bothered me. It still bothers me to this day. So, anyway, regardless of all that, they get through the witnesses, they, I guess, if they talk about the DNA, where they did match it up. Now, interestingly enough, here's another point that I would have to mention in the defense attempt, the clothing that Leijon was arrested in, that they took off of him the boots, the pants, the shirt and I don't remember if he had a belt or anything like that, but definitely the boots and the pants.
Kellye:In an attack like that of which that ended Eileen and Miss Annie's life. Now, miss Annie, she was on a bed, okay, so if he is crouched or kneeling on the bed, I understand how that may not have had as much of a splatter or a spray of blood, but you talk about the amount of defensive wounds that were on Eileen and the fact that she fought hard to stay alive, and the wound that killed her almost cut all the way to her spine. So a lot of blood, a lot of spurting, and when you're attacking someone with a knife in that manner, that's gonna go everywhere and a lot of times in a lot of cases and this is like majority of all cases if they don't have some way to stabilize the knife in their hand, the blood and everything else will make it slippery and will cause injury to the assailant's hand or the suspect's hand. And that's one thing. I one thing that I noticed that was noticeably absent there were no pictures of neither Debbie's nor Lee John's hands on the date of the incident, on the date that they were caught, on the date that they were arrested. They weren't entered into evidence. I couldn't find hide nor hair of them or any hint of them or having been taken at the time they were arrested. So there's no way of knowing and this is a possibility if they had or if somebody had noticed, and maybe they, I don't know. It's long gone in the past now, but I'm just saying that's something that you know. You would think that that would be a big thing to look for and I don't ever. I have not, in any of the research I've done, in any of the court documents, police reports, any of it, no mention of pictures or anything like that of even mentioning the fact that their hands did or did not have intercharies, you know. So you've got that. You've got the clothes that Lee John was wearing when he was arrested zero blood found, not a drop. She tested, like 23 different areas on the boots of course you can't, I mean, she probably could have tested the entire thing, but 23 different areas on the boots and there was not a speck of blood. How does that happen? And the same thing on the pants. And, like I said, I could maybe understand Miss Annie because she was in the bed and with the crouching and having your legs, you know, kind of covered by the bed if you're on your knees over the top, but when you're struggling with Eileen, that blood's going everywhere, right, I would think so. So to that point, the boots, the pants, have no blood and even with it raining and him going through the woods and everything there still would have been microscopic. It would have been there, right, because water doesn't degrade DNA, not enough. So no blood on the pants, no blood on the boots.
Kellye:No, really really bad confession. Like he just he doesn't he's very wrong about everything that happened, like he just doesn't describe the events as they happened, according to the autopsies and everything else at the scene. So you'd think you'd think after all of that, that they'd find him innocent, right or not innocent and just not guilty, because there's too many inconsistencies. It doesn't make any sense he couldn't have done. I mean, he could probably could have, especially when you talk about and I don't even know if they introduced it at trial but the amount of times that he had been called, that they had called 911 specifically on him for his aggressive behavior.
Kellye:But yeah, they didn't take long. It actually was a four day total from the time they started the jury process, four days. So it started December 16th and I believe it was oh goodness, I lost my spot. Where did it go? I don't know that one Okay. So four days total. And the defense was basically Debbie did it. She had all the reason to do it and if she didn't specifically do it, she's the one who. It was her idea, she made him do it.
Kellye:And on the fourth day of trial, after the state rested, the defense only called one witness. That was Debbie. She was in court with her own attorney, robert Clark, at her side at the jury or at the witness box testifying and, funny enough, she actually pled the fifth to more of the defense's questions than she did the DA's questions Anytime they started asking anything specific about that night, up to the point where she was talking about the party and what had happened and that they were drinking anything. Past that really she kind of pled the fifth. But it was a funny, inconsistent way of pleading the fifth. She'd say, yes, I don't know, plead the fifth. So she'd answer the question and then plead the fifth. Or she'd say I plead the fifth, I didn't know that answer or whatever. So it was kind of funny. It was interesting to read anyway.
Kellye:So not a whole lot gathered out of that testimony, but she managed somehow to bring up the fact that her sister married her ex-husband. She also managed to bring up the fact that her siblings didn't help her out any with her mother and yeah, like I said, she didn't do a whole lot of good for anybody. But she kind of bolstered the defense's claim of like hey, look, she had all the reason, all the motive, all the motivation to want these people dead, not Lee. So his physical details didn't match. Debbie was a useless witness. Basically there were things in the investigation that didn't get done properly and I honestly feel like they could have played into that a little bit more, but on a whole, he brought the points up about the gun shells not being tested, that they didn't test for fingerprints. But why test for fingerprints when they had DNA and so on and so forth. So they get down to the nitty gritty.
Kellye:The state and the defense both rests after the defense rests after Debbie gets down from the stand, lee John doesn't testify in his own defense and then the jury gets their instructions and they're excused. And it was about 45, 48 minutes later, I think under an hour, they came back with a verdict. Now this is where it also gets a little bit more interesting. They found him guilty of all three counts of first degree murder. However, they pulled the jury Now they were unanimous on Eileen and Bozo, okay, but for Miss Annie Bell the jury pulled 11 to one. So there was one person who did not believe that Lee John was responsible for killing Miss Annie, which came up later in his appeal, because you have to have a unanimous for first degree murder. But we'll get to that in just a second.
Kellye:So he was found guilty of all three and he was sentenced. I think they actually waived sentencing, which was also a point of an appeal, because they waived waiting the mandatory cooldown period or whatever you, even though it's automatic in first degree murder they're going to get life without parole. But they waived waiting the amount of time which they're allowed to do and he was sentenced to life without parole to be served consecutively Three times over. So with that he was sent off to Angola and, interestingly, when he initially got to Angola he was put into the psych ward. He was having a really hard time adjusting and it was kind of eating him up and he was having nightmares and such. According to what I read and I'm getting a little bit of a shock and I'm going to get a little bit more into the letters that he wrote while he was still pre-trial, before his stuff was finished, and I'll get into that more in the next episode, because we're already almost over an hour here.
Kellye:So let me just real quick talk about the appeal. He submitted it saying that the three consecutive life sentences was unconstitutional and excessive. They also appealed on a second error of sentencing him less than 24 hours from the time of the ruling. But the appellate court found that there was. But the appellate court found that the defense attorney was actually the push, like he in the transcript he said you know it's happened before, we're okay with it and if there was going to be an objection to that, it should have been done then, and then they could have ruled or appeal. You could have appealed on the basis of that should have been granted if there was an objection in court at the time, and there wasn't. So as it stands right now, his appeal was affirmed as of December 10th 2014. There are no other appeals that I could find, and he is currently an inmate at the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer. So the step down, not Angola, but one beneath that, the rollover. So, as far as I know, that's where he's at and then that's where I'm going to leave you guys for this one, with him in jail and his appeal denied as of December 10th 2014.
Kellye:And when we come back on the next episode, part three, we're actually going to go a little bit earlier, back in 2014, and start with Debbie's section and part, because it's going to be a crazy one. So we'll get a little bit more into detail and we'll get a little bit more. We'll get a little bit more into detail and go over some of this up, go over some of the stuff that I left out of this one that pertains to her as well, because I didn't want to give too much away. All right, thank you guys. Stay awesome. Happy New Year, and I appreciate you guys listening. Give us a like, a share, a follow, a review, a rating, and you are bound and determined to get in here, aren't you? Shoot me an email if you have any questions, comments or concerns. I love you guys. See you next time. Take care out there.
