CenLAw
Kellye, the true crime enthusiast, and Kyler, her willing partner, delve into intriguing cases from Central & Northeastern Louisiana.
From small-town cases to nationally known crimes, they bring you stories that hit close to home, always with that Louisiana connection.
Tune in bi-weekly for your true crime fix and support their show for a shout-out in the next episode.
Stay safe out there!
CenLAw
A Tragedy & A Haunting Silence - The Lafarron Goodman Case ft. The Uncle of the (un)Solved!
Check out our website! cenlawpodcast.com
Support us by joining our Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/CenLAw
- Twitter: CenLAwPodcast
- YouTube: @CenLAwPodcast
- TikTok: @cenlawpodcast
- cenlawpodcast@gmail.com
When the stillness of a typical day shatters under the weight of tragedy, the ripple effects can touch us all. Join us as we recount the harrowing journey from the discovery of a lifeless body in a Louisiana laundry room to the courtroom's final gavel. We'll walk you through a perplexing case that begins in Concordia Parish and sprawls into a legal struggle over the sealing of post-trial medical records. Alongside Officer Valerie Clark's testimony and the unnerving sighting of a man with unknown intentions, we reach into the heart of a community shaken by violence and loss.
Imagine finding the unimaginable in your own home, your mind grappling to process the grim scene before you. This episode weaves through the tapestry of human emotion and response when faced with the ultimate shock – the untimely death of a loved one. We share Sharon's gut-wrenching experience, her instinct to lean on family, and the investigative odyssey that unravels a story far darker than it appears on the surface. Our narrative also scrutinizes a contentious shooting, the tangled threads of testimony, and the frustration of sealed truths, as we question the reliability of memory and evidence in the face of profound grief.
As the gavel falls and a 35-year sentence is handed down, what remains are the haunting echoes in the lives left behind. You'll hear the poignant words of parents bereft of their child, the complexities surrounding the case closure, and the enigmatic details that continue to provoke unease. We dedicate this episode to the exploration of truth and justice, and the pursuit of closure for those haunted by questions that may never be answered. Through the tapestry of this community's experience, we honor the memories and seek to understand the intricate dance between law and humanity.
Sources:
- Concordia Archives Database & Concordia Parish Clerk of Court Records
- https://www.natchezdemocrat.com/2009/04/30/ferriday-man-accused-of-manslaughter-changes-plea-to-guilty/
- https://www.natchezdemocrat.com/2008/03/04/accused-killer-makes-court-appearance/
This has been an elfaudio production.
Thanks for listening & Take care out there!
All🎶created by: Uncle Sawyer
15 years ago this month in Concordia Parish, a mother returned home from visiting her ailing father in a hospital to find the body of a young woman in her laundry room, and was in such a state that the family, after the court proceedings were completed, requested that the district attorney seal her medical records. Today, on our 21st episode, we will go through how, but not really why, this happened. This case was interesting from start to finish, so don't miss any of it. On today's episode of SINLAL. Hello and welcome to this episode of SINLAL where truth crime meets the legal system. I'm Kelly.
Speaker 2:And I am Uncle Sawyer.
Speaker 1:We are bringing you another mess of an episode.
Speaker 2:Although, as per usual, I know nothing going into the case.
Speaker 1:That's right. I think I made a little mention of it before, but he hardly ever actually listens to what I say, so we should be golden.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm the one that doesn't listen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. So I don't think we have anything else. I literally just want to go ahead and get into this and do a bonus episode later, because we got to kind of catch everybody up on what happened since the last episode with Jimmy Townsend. There's been some interesting developments on that, but we'll get into that in the bonus episode which should come out about a week from today.
Speaker 2:At least if we think everybody personally for what they did wouldn't take very long.
Speaker 1:Oh no, absolutely not. No, just for the listener base and for everybody that listened or shared, and just for you know the amazing wildfire that it is just real quick. Our first episode for this podcast started. We aired it in June of last year and as of right now, I think it has like a hundred and twenty seven or a hundred and thirty downloads. Right, the last episode that we just did, two weeks ago, it has over a hundred and ten downloads, so it's probably because I'm on it.
Speaker 1:Maybe, but in all of our episodes that we've recorded ever, that one got the most attention, the most quickly, and it continues to outdo every other episode. We've ever done so for nothing else than for sharing and making sure that that got heard. It may have made a difference, it may not have, but either way I appreciate each and every single one of you that did your part in just listening to it and becoming aware of that situation. So that means something to the family, I guarantee it.
Speaker 2:Definitely means something to the family.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. With all that being done and we'll get into that more, like I said, later on, a bonus episode let's get into today's episode, which gets us a little bit closer in terms of how long ago. It was. Not a crazy amount, though, because that's 2008. Still fifteen years ago, right Wait?
Speaker 2:what 2008, 2008. No, that was like two years ago, dude.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's what I think too. Two years after I graduated.
Speaker 2:Oh damn you old. Yeah, I know, damn I'm old.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, anyway, so crazy stuff, this story. We're going to go to Concordia Parish, which we've talked about before. We're also going to be in Farity, which, coincidentally, was the exact same spot as our first episode, farity, louisiana. So we've talked about both of these before, so we don't really do a whole lot of like placing and since that, so we can just get it.
Speaker 2:Also very findable on a map, if you're not against it.
Speaker 1:Oddly enough, this isn't a weekend, this isn't a late night, this isn't. This is like literally the middle of the week, right before dinner or time ish, when the 911 gets the phone call. It was about 520 when they got a phone call from a man by the name of Charles Bell and he was requesting officers to a house on Carolina Avenue and he placed the call at 520. Valerie Clark, one of the officers, the patrolling officers she showed up at 523. So real, quick.
Speaker 2:Is it back there behind the auto zone on that side?
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's on that side or not, but it's in that general area, I believe.
Speaker 2:Or is it by the?
Speaker 1:So yeah, right there, as you're coming into Farity, if you're coming from Vidalia, if you're leaving out the other way, going towards Vidalia, be off on a ride all in that little subdivision area over there.
Speaker 2:It's on the southern side of Fertigfairie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either way, north-south-east I can't tell you directions, I don't know, so best thing I can tell you, though, is that it's in the middle of a bunch of other houses, there's a lot of neighbors, a lot of traffic back and forth in this. Like I said, thursday at 5 36 o'clock, it was a little unusual, and Miss Valerie Clark she got there and got a little bit information. As she pulled in, she noticed that at the end of the street, kind of looking towards the house, there was a heavy set guy, just how she refers to him in her investigator report, kind of watching, watching the house or whatever and as she went to enter the house she said that she got over, overcome by the smell and actually had to turn back overwhelmed very much so that the quote smell was all over the house.
Speaker 1:And then, once she actually proceeded and got all the way into the laundry room area, which is where they had advised her that they had found a dead body, when she opened the door she saw the body of what appeared to be a female, slumped over in a wheelchair, with a black plastic trash bag pulled around her head and down almost over her shoulders. And from the smell and from the look of her, her body, it was obvious she'd been there for at least a day, if not more. And I think on her report she actually said that it looked like she had burn marks on her arms. It was like she had several burn spots on her arm. And at this point she backed out, called for backup, called for all of her other people, you know the crime scene investigators, her chief, her captain, yada, yada, yada. And once they got there they started to set up a perimeter and she went to go move her car to the end of the street block to block it out or to block off the flow of traffic to that area because it was crime scene. And again she looked down and she saw that the heavy set guy had now been joined by another guy who looked to be a little bit younger and slimmer, and she made note of this to her captain, who was captain Hollins. And captain Hollins had worked in the area for a long time. He knew pretty much everybody and he knew these folks too. So he, you know, looked out, saw who it was, recognized them both and, you know, basically went over and told him like hey, come on, one was Mr LaFerrin DeSean Goodman. He went by fee, fee, I believe. He was 26 at the time and he lived at the house, at the house that they had been called to with a dead body in it. And the other guy, the heavy set guy, his name was Patrick, I think. He went by Bubby and he and FEE were really good friends, you know, hung out a lot and they'd actually been hanging out for the last couple days while his mom had been been out of town. So the captain gets FEE and heavy set guy, he gets FEE and brings him back to the house. I think they take heavy set guy back to the station to get him the question, because they don't they don't actually know the full story of what's going on. All they know is they've got a dead body in a laundry room. Well, according to excuse me, according to Valerie Clark's report, she said that they brought him back into the house and they let him, like, went to the house and, without him being led or being told, he went straight to the body in the laundry room, came back out, said yes, that's Tasha, and then they put him in the control, the patrol car to take him down to the station to get a ticket, an interview, to get a statement. So let's back up a little bit, because now they know that the body they found was V's girlfriend and they know that the body's been there for a couple days. That's, that's pretty much it at this point.
Speaker 1:Now, from what they gathered after that, v's mom, who was Ms Sharon Goodman, she had been out of town and In Alexandria, I believe, visiting her father. He had had some kind of procedure at the hospital, so she had stayed with him. That's not out of town. Well, she had stayed the night at the hospital with him, a few nights, pretty much throughout the entire week. I don't know if he was having a procedure or if he had just been Recovery. I don't know what. I don't remember exactly what it was. But I know she was in a like a few nights basically, since like Monday night and got home that Thursday, that Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 2:So it's literally an hour away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's still out of town.
Speaker 2:Which for some people overnight somewhere else is the point some people that might seem like awfully far, but it's not guys and so Normally in the house they had there had been.
Speaker 1:From what I gathered, the information that I have, it may have been different, but from what I understand there was at least fee. His girlfriend and mom lived in that house there on Carolina Avenue and I am unsure of how long the had been dating the girlfriend who now we know is the victim. I couldn't find it anywhere how long they had known each other, how long they have been dating, but here's what I do know.
Speaker 2:Who called this?
Speaker 1:again who called I'll get back to that in just a second because it's an interesting point. Well, I already told you guys earlier, I guess I could say it again Charles Bell. Charles Bell is who called 9-1-1. We'll get to that because that's, that's one of my little. This is odd points. So these girlfriend which is not how she should be known and remembered forever, because she was her own person Miss Natasha Christina Bates. She was born in February, february 17th, so she had literally just turned 23, 11 days before, or, yeah, 11 days before she died, actually nine days before she died, and then, anyway, so she was 23 years old at the time that she passed away and Was murdered that that, but we'll get there.
Speaker 1:So she was from Jackson but I believe most of her actual I heard Immediate family they were all from Indiana, I believe, if my notes yeah, from Indiana, and that comes later when they're doing the sentencing stuff but she Was for them and there's from their statement. She was very caring, very trusting and very naive and, as most of us are at 23, you just don't have a lot of world knowledge at that age. And she had met fee at the job Corps event in, I think it was, crystal Spring, mississippi. And when they met there it was just kind of they hit it off real well. And again, I don't exactly know how long they had known each other or how long they had been dating, but at the time that this occurred, these events happened, they were living together and she had been living with him, although she was supposed to be leaving at the first week of March I think it was March 4th that she was supposed to be going to do like an onboarding training for the job Corps. She had something lined out for that. She was supposed to be leaving within the next week to be going to do that. So she was still, you know, working on things, getting things together for herself and trying to Further her life and do better.
Speaker 1:Now, if any of you are wondering what job Corps is, of course you can do a quick Google, but I did also had to do a quick Google because I know what the hell that was. Really I didn't, I really didn't. I'd never heard of it.
Speaker 2:Somebody was sheltered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is Crystal Springs. It's Crystal Springs, mississippi, and that let me just read you real quick. It specifically says but it's almost like a college type thing or training type thing, I guess, Think of it as the hive For bees.
Speaker 2:All the bees can go there, okay or have to go there, but you have to be within a certain age group.
Speaker 1:I see, okay, so it's. It says they provide free career training and education for 16 to 24 year olds. They have over 120 campuses across the US where students gain experience needed to begin a career or apprenticeship and then they can advance their education, join the military, and it's free more or less it's, if you struggled in school, struggled in social environments or struggled at all, in general low income have nowhere else to turn, you can go to the job Court is kind of like a I don't want to say halfway house.
Speaker 2:But no, no, no, no, it's almost like.
Speaker 1:It's almost like having a union for kids like you know what I mean, like having Having somewhere that you can go, that's going to support you and help you grow and further your education as well as your College. No, no, no, not college.
Speaker 2:Yes, I know I'm gonna be like it's just a good way for.
Speaker 1:Children who may not have the option to pay for college or training or Trade school or something like that. This gives them an opportunity to get the foot in the door, get that education at least get that on their ability to mark it off on a resume or to show it on a resume. Or to show it on a resume. That would they have some kind of experience in something.
Speaker 2:Mostly, it gives you a solid foundation and people to talk to that are in the same boat, have the same Right. Same things happen to them. Same things happen to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So anyway, they meet at job core, they start dating. They end up living in the same house. She had been living there, and, um, at this point, what we know is Fee said that that was her in the laundry room and she looked like she'd been there a couple days. Excuse me, they are now processing the scene for evidence and they've got Fee and his buddy, bubby Patrick, back at the station to get interviews and statements. What I was going into, though, before was mom Sharon. She had just got home that afternoon. She had been gone hanging out with her dad for his medical stuff at the hospital in Ellick, and when she got home, according to her statement, fee had helped her get, or maybe that was hers and Patrick's Bubby's. Either way. Basically, when she got home, he had helped carry stuff in the house for her while she was still unloading stuff from the car, and then when she asked, hey, where's Tasha? He said in there and then kind of walked off in the opposite direction, and when she got home, him and Bubby had been in the driveway tinkering with the bikes that they were messing with or something, and just messing with stuff in the driveway. So they weren't actually in the house and she thought it was kind of odd that he said it like that and just kind of pointed and didn't think too much of it until she went inside and had the smell.
Speaker 1:Now this is when you asked me earlier, when I was talking about it, who called 911. And damn sure it wasn't her. She walked in the house and it's not because she didn't have a phone or because she was in such shock she didn't know anybody to call her. No, no, no, no, no, that's not the case. She called someone other, someone. She called family members and relatives, who then called her neighbor, charles Bell, who lived right up the road. And they got statements from all of these people, but apparently the one that she called was not even in the same state. From what I understand her, she was hours away and she's the one who called Charles Bell, who it would then, in turn, went over to the house and pulled up, which was corroborated by bubby's statement later. But anyway, he goes over to the house. He's the one who calls 911 after he gets on the scene and sees the dead body. She never once called 911.
Speaker 2:Although you can't even begin to imagine the mindset that people are in Exactly. Never having into any contact with any kind of law enforcement uniform or anything of this sort, not even that Like walking into the house to see a dead body. And then being blindsided by the first dead person you've ever seen in your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to have it be that, and this. This was a gruesome find.
Speaker 2:And like it's kind of like finding a dog mess in the living room floor after you get back home.
Speaker 1:But a million times worse, because this isn't a dog mess, this is a human that has been murdered.
Speaker 2:I'm saying you throw a paper towel over and you move on until somebody else knows what to do with it.
Speaker 1:Right, but that's that's no, it's awful, and for this specifically it was.
Speaker 2:Does she need the wheelchair Just?
Speaker 1:a shock. No, no, no, no, we'll get to that.
Speaker 2:You also didn't mention that the bag was tied around her neck.
Speaker 1:It was tied completely around because we'll get to that, we'll get to that, we'll get there.
Speaker 2:You're saying the way you picture the word image you made.
Speaker 1:So basically, I don't want to sound too hypocritical or too critical in general of of mom, because a couple of things that are going to go through your head this is the most stressful situation she's been in, probably to date.
Speaker 2:Even though her dad's in the hospital currently.
Speaker 1:Even though that, because this has come out of nowhere, she's got a million things running through her mind. Of course you're going to have scattered thoughts, of course you're going to be worried because this is her son. Now that she has to think about, this is her son's girlfriend, who's now dead in her laundry room and she doesn't know what happened. But she is still a protective mother. And, on top of that, like I can understand the confusion, I can understand the the missed, um, missed points of like hey, I don't, I don't. You know, I should call the police, but I don't want to.
Speaker 2:I get it. Three lawyer ever tells you do not talk to the police. In a nutshell, Fair enough.
Speaker 1:So I can understand mom, I can understand her missing that, that that crucial element of calling 911 first. So back real quick to the crime scene. They have found the body and then, once they've removed the bag from the top part of her chest and her head, they see an obvious glaring bullet wound to the left temple. Okay, so initial thought this is the cause of death. Because they don't see anything else, just on a cursory, superficial glance.
Speaker 2:Plus bullets of the head usually doesn't pull it to the head usually doesn't.
Speaker 1:So, um, then they see no signs of violence. Otherwise in the house there's no other. Like I said, the one spot where it looked like it had drained or dripped onto the floor into that blood spot on where was that? In the room that was in a different closet of the house, In a closet. It was off of the living room in a closet, yes, and it looked like something had been left there, and then it wasn't there anymore. So let's go ahead.
Speaker 2:Was she always in a wheelchair Like did she?
Speaker 1:No, no no, no, no, no. Well, he said in a minute because she was not, she was going to the job course. She was 23 years old. She was fully functional, fully able, fully capable.
Speaker 2:Well, you put them in a wheelchair, easy to all around.
Speaker 1:That's the thought, so we're going to go.
Speaker 2:So who hauled her from where she got shot?
Speaker 1:We're about to get there. Let's go listen to that house. You don't have to wait long for answers. This one was open and shut and it was never a question of food. You're not right?
Speaker 2:She got wheeled from some other place where she got shot in the wheelchair by somebody else. That is true. That didn't shoot her, that's true. No, the shooter wheeler, the shooter, yeah.
Speaker 1:At the scene. Outside of the blood spot and outside of the body itself, they found one single shell casing and put a ring on it. The way that it was described in the report was a single gun casing.
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, that's, that's what I'm saying to the couch.
Speaker 1:Okay, yes, if there was a large couch, which is where he said that Tasha was sitting, and the smaller couch, which is about six or seven feet away from the large couch, that's a big ass living room. Yeah, um, decent size.
Speaker 2:So the couches weren't close together at all, they were my body length apart.
Speaker 1:Look at the ones in our living room right now.
Speaker 2:They're at least six, seven feet apart. So the couches were close together, the people were far apart.
Speaker 1:No, the couches were six to seven feet apart. Now it said that the couch, the big couch, was south from the small couch, being east in the house.
Speaker 2:You just say you don't know directions.
Speaker 1:I haven't written in my notes, so the way that it was sitting he would have shot, you know, the south towards the couch, the large couch. Anyway, they found the casing by the large couch which use a rectangle.
Speaker 2:He was sitting on the short side of the rectangle.
Speaker 1:She was sitting on the long side. Yeah, so if anything, no, just to describe this gone north just to describe this.
Speaker 2:Okay so short side of the rectangle is where he was. Long side is where she was. Uh-huh, the bullet casing from where he was sitting on the short side ended up behind her on the long side.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:That's way easier to visualize than north, southeast and the west. That's why you're here Like honestly.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to do these things.
Speaker 2:I have no idea.
Speaker 1:My brain makes it work. I don't know how to explain it.
Speaker 2:They don't know what direction the house is facing.
Speaker 1:It doesn't even know which direction is, which you know. It doesn't matter South and east, never eat soggy waffles. I always know which way they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I'm always in a weird square in the house. She might be able to remember that, but she don't remember to make the waffle soggy.
Speaker 1:Well, it is what it is, okay. So, like I said, you don't have to wait long for any kind of solution or resolution in the who done it. Part of this story because Especially when I'm involved. True, very true, but this one's pretty easy to put together. There were only two people in that house. As far as we know, one of them is dead. So let's go first to Bubby, or Patrick, his statement. The heavy set guy. They took him in.
Speaker 2:The one mean Muggin from the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he wouldn't really mean Muggin. He was just looking Because you know all the people in Verity and any state or any city really like if you have people, you can have people here that you see cop cars coming in in swarms, of course you're going to stop and scare. You've got rubber neckers for days.
Speaker 2:Who would stop and stare when you just got a free pass to not do the speed limit?
Speaker 1:Right, that's also true. That's where all the cops are. Let's go.
Speaker 2:All right, they took the heat off those doodoo's.
Speaker 1:They don't have the big enough fleet to come after us all.
Speaker 2:All right, I already counted all six of the squad cars from the station. Let's do this.
Speaker 1:That's right, but then you're going to watch out for LSP anyway. So, according to Bubby, his statement was that on Tuesday, february 26, two days before the body, before they called 911, bubby said that he had gone over late Tuesday evening and knocked on the door because he wanted to see what they were up to. And apparently Tasha came and answered the door, said that he was sleeping. He looked around her, saw Fee in there laying down and he kind of said I was like yo man, what's up, whatever. And he was like I'll just come back tomorrow and hang out with you guys tomorrow because he wouldn't get out of bed. So that was it about. I want to say. He said it was somewhere like eight, maybe seven, eight, somewhere in there.
Speaker 1:I don't honestly remember what he said in his statement. And when he returned the next day, on Wednesday the 27th, he got there and they were like barbecuing and hanging out outside and he got to notice in like wait, wait, somebody's missing. Where's Tasha, where'd she go or where's she at? And Fee kind of like mumbled to the side and like very oddly answered oh, she left early and he was talking about, of course, like her on board training or whatever it was that she was going to do for the job corps, right, but Bubby knew that she wasn't supposed to leave till, I believe it was March 4th, so about a week from that time she was supposed to be leaving, but he didn't think too much of it, he just kind of shrugged it off. They kept cooking, they played dominoes all into the evening time and then I think at one point they left to go to KFC to check on an application that Bubby had put in.
Speaker 2:Which is walking distance, by the way.
Speaker 1:Walking distance. Yes, and they took the bikes. Remember I said they were tinkering with the bikes. When Bee's mom came home they took those and did all that and they made that run while they got back and again still hanging out out front. Because that's what they do, that's what people do, and especially in fairy, and it don't little area like they just hang out out front. You don't want people in your house. See, now you live Exactly. So. They got back and Bubby said something about it being chilly outside. So they went ahead and went inside and when he made mention of him feeling a little bit tired, he went ahead and made a cup of cup of coffee for him. He made a whole pot of coffee. They drank a cup and then he said you know what? I think I'm just going to go ahead and go home because I'm tired.
Speaker 1:So Wednesday evening he had been in the house. He said he went home probably about eight o'clock that night and then went over on Thursday, thursday morning, early, early afternoon to go hang out with V and you know they were messing around with the bikes and whatever until V's mom got home. And according to him, when mom got home he said that like V ran over real quick and helped her bring all the stuff in the house. She was out by the car he was taking stuff in for her and then when she was taking the last of it into the house to go start laundry, according to him, v came and asked him if he could borrow his bike to go up to the gas station to get a pack of cigarettes or something. And he said, sure, you know, no problem, he borrowed my bike all the time. I let him do that and then, while he was waiting, while Patrick Bubby was waiting for V to come back, he was standing up on the corner and looked back down. He saw a like gold truck come squealing in and pull up to V's house. The guy jumps out, runs in the house and then a couple of minutes later he sees cop cars and then more cop cars. And that was about the time that V came back and was like what's going on? And that's what Patrick asked. Bubby asked. V was like what's going on down there? Do you know what's going on? He's like, oh man, I don't know. And that's when they came out and from that point in the story we kind of know what happened up until the point they went to the police station. That was when they noticed that they were out there. But Detective Hollins recognized who they were and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:So as far as they could see and tell everything in his story, kind of checked out, they had no reason to believe that he was lying. Really he seemed very bewildered and genuinely distraught. He had no idea what had happened. So they are at the same time they're interviewing him, they're also talking to V and initially V didn't want to admit anything. He didn't know what happened. He kept trying to say that the last time he saw her was Tuesday night and yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 1:But it didn't take long for him to switch it up and go ahead and admit like yeah, okay, here's what happened. So first he said nothing, then going to Mississippi due to the job court, then changed it at least four more times and then eventually his quote was I didn't mean to do it. Now it's very, very vague. He gives no actual reason. Everything that I read and I read literally everything I could find, because I like to know things, I like things to be complete, and I could not, for the life of me, from anything I read, figure out why this might have happened? Because one very well placed shot to the temple doesn't seem like I was accidentally messing with the gun behind her while she was sitting on the couch and it accidentally went off and shot her perfectly in the tip bowl and killed her.
Speaker 2:No, no, he didn't mean to. What he meant to do was just scare her a little bit. Maybe, Put it up to their head. You know you don't mean to pull the trigger every time. Well, there was no stibbling.
Speaker 1:There was, it wasn't close enough for that to have been a thing. It has to be at least three to four feet away. But what he says, the way that he says he shot her, the way he says that it happened, and I can't refute with any kind of degree of any kind of certainty because, unfortunately for us, and like I said in the intro, the family asked for her autopsy and all of her medical records that were attached to this case to be sealed, so they I wasn't allowed to see the autopsy, so I have no idea about trajectories, I have no idea of knowing if she was. I don't know. All I know is she has a left gunshot wound to her temple, gunshot wound to her left temple. That's it and that's how. That was her cause of death. That was how she died.
Speaker 2:And you said there was some stuff laying on the ground. Yeah let me, let me, let me explain that because he gets in the chair.
Speaker 1:He gets into that as well. He said she was sitting on the couch and the way he describes it. There was like a couch here and then on this wall there was another chair or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he was sitting on these ones accidentally shot her and she was sitting on the couch and he didn't want blood to get all over his mama's couch. So he went and got a trash bag and tried to catch the blood with the bag and then he got scared, didn't want to go to jail, he didn't want to catch those charges. So he put another bag around her to catch the blood and keep it from getting on the couch, moved her to the closet that day, and that was on Tuesday, the 26th. Ok, it was in the evening, I think. He said probably between 930 and 10 in the evening, ok, so hey sir all of this is to say that it didn't really fit.
Speaker 1:It didn't really line up with what he was saying, that he accidentally shot her in the head from the small couch where she was on the large couch. They asked him like how I already put a hole in that one too.
Speaker 1:How come we didn't find any blood on the couch? He said he cleaned it and said, well, he cleaned that and he washed the pillows and all the towels that he used. He said he only shot. There was only one shot. Why he didn't call 911 was because he was upset. He didn't know what to do. But then you know, the question that that begs is well then, why would you clean up after yourself? Why clean up after the crime? And his answer to that was he didn't want to go to jail.
Speaker 2:What was the bloody pile of clothes?
Speaker 1:that was from where she had been sat in the closet.
Speaker 2:Was it where the clothes there before she was sat there, or was that where she got shot? No, and the clothes were there.
Speaker 1:No, that was really just blood splatter. That was literally just the spot.
Speaker 2:There was no splatter.
Speaker 1:That was why they asked about the blood on the couch, because if she got shot on the couch, it would be everywhere they would be able to find evidence of that, because it would have been high velocity 2008,. It would have been able to find any kind of but you also have to think about the area that you're in.
Speaker 2:Doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:If they didn't call LSP which I don't believe they did, I don't see any record of that If they didn't call in any higher crime scene investigators to be able to luminal and spray test, and all of that for a little more.
Speaker 1:Yes, you do for high velocity blood spatter. That's pretty much if you, if you have cleaned surface, if you have done a good enough job. But see, but then in my mind that makes me wonder because, like, why would you leave the blood spot in the closet, where where the blood is leaked out of her while she was in the closet? Why would you leave that and then clean up everything else? Because it's in the closet, you don't think anybody's going to see it.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you she was laying down on that shit that was in the closet when she got shot and he just moved it all in there, don't know, because that would explain why there wasn't any splatter anywhere that he had to clean up. She was probably laying down on the couch with that shit there, right?
Speaker 1:Well, if we had the autopsy, we'd know the trajectory and then we'd be able to say, but it could have said something, right yeah. With a 25 caliber. I feel like it should have been.
Speaker 2:Well, it depends on the gun. Honestly, yeah, a 22 is not going to go out of your skull Not usually but a 25 caliber.
Speaker 2:I would think 25 caliber is around the same size with a little bit more power, right, a little bit more powder in the shell, that's it. If it's shot from six feet apart, like you said, and it goes through the temple, that's a hard ass piece of bone, depending on where it hit. Of course you got some of the thicker bones in the skull there, all the brain, all that matter, all that juiciness. A 25 caliber wouldn't go through all that, or at least not enough to make a giant splatter. It might.
Speaker 1:The pictures that we saw they didn't look like actual spatter though it just looks like it was just straight, it didn't look like a gunshot wound in the head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, he said he moved her to the closet, which is he just set her in the closet.
Speaker 1:He didn't put her in a wheelchair at that point. Now there was a wheelchair already in his house because of his family members or something had left one at the house for other family members to be able to get around and do stuff inside the house. It was just there, it was already present in the home and on Thursday morning he said I don't know, I don't know. On Thursday morning he said that he, for whatever reason, he decided to move her from the closet to the laundry room and use the wheelchair to help get her there, because she was way too heavy to be able to move at that point, because this is almost what 36-ish hours Thursday morning from Tuesday night. So she would have been in full rigor, she would have been hard to move around in general, and that the dead weight is an actual thing, like it's hard to move a body of any size after a certain point because it's just it's hard to maneuver by yourself especially. So he stuck her in the wheelchair, moved her into the laundry room, closed that door and left her.
Speaker 1:It's not that hard and they asked in the interview if it was an accident, why didn't you call the police? Well, they would have put me in jail. And let me tell you this about the gun the reason that I know about this story is a really, really amazing person in front of mine. He was an investigator for our office and he was a police officer for years in Mississippi. Thirty-eighth special, very, very special person to me and my family.
Speaker 1:It was a twenty-five, but anyway, he was explaining the story to me and the only part that he remembered was that a member of I think it was the public defender's office I think it was one of the attorneys actually was either given or told information about where the gun was from the family and he didn't know what to do. Like, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to hand this over? And come to find out the family had found it in a toy box in the house. It was all on the same day, so it wasn't like it was a long time in between, but they eventually located it by the family, located it in a toy box inside the house. So that's the part that my dear friend remembered from this story and that's how we got to where we are telling it now. So just a little shout out for him there, and so they have the gun, they have him, they. They know it was a twenty-five caliber pistol. They asked him what he was doing with it, why he was messing with it, and you know his answers were again very vague. There's not a whole lot of information that he would give them and, seeing as he's the only one that was there, and apparently the autopsy and medical records that came back from that didn't refute his statement in so much as they could charge him, I guess, because initially he went to jail, he was booked on a hundred and twenty five thousand dollar bond by Judge Johnson, I believe, at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was Judge Johnson who said his bond, but it was Judge Leo Booth who presided over his case in its entirety because he was in Division B. Hey, I know that guy. Yeah, now this happened in February, at the end of February in 2008. By April of 2009, he he had they worked out a deal with the district attorney and his defense attorney, who was Robert Clark for the public defender's office at that time, and we've heard about him before as well. So he was the attorney for Debbie Adams had a whole rigmarole over that, but when they got to April they made a deal and he pled to manslaughter and I'm going to come back to that, I promise. I just wanted to let you know. Dude, how many things are you going?
Speaker 2:to come back to.
Speaker 1:No, no, that one for sure, because that one's more insensitive. And I want to make sure that that one's at the end, because I want to talk about the statements from Tasha's family.
Speaker 2:It's a good thing. You got like 18 things in notes here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, for sure so 20 more hours of right so we don't know anything about the autopsy but we do have other statements from witnesses or not technically witnesses. They were like ear witnesses because they had neighbors that lives right next door that was the grandma and like a cousin or somebody that or no sister I'm sorry sister and cousin that live right next door. They wrote statements that they had heard a single gunshot around 930 10 Tuesday night and the sister had actually done Tasha's hair on Monday night. So like she had a pretty good idea of how things went because Monday she had done her hair. Tuesday she heard the gunshot and then Thursday when they heard that she had been found her body had been found she was like oh my gosh, that's what that was. So they also had another independent witness that also said they heard a gunshot around that time. And then they had Bubby's statement about Fee telling him while she left early, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. And then the grandma and sister also said that he had acted kind of weird the last couple of days, just outside of his normal, like self. He was just off. Something was definitely off with him. So it wasn't a whole lot like. That was pretty much open and shut.
Speaker 1:They went from finding the body to having him in custody. He didn't get back out. They started the trial process and doing all of that. Now, interestingly, they started with one district attorney In the interim from the time he was arrested to the time that this got to trial and pleading to a to a deal with the prosecutor. The prosecutor actually changed, so he made a deal with one guy and then they elected the new district attorney, who is our current district attorney, brad Brigette. He was elected and took over the office before this case was closed out. So the deal that LaFerrin Goodman made with the previous district attorney stood when Brad took office, so he couldn't do anything about that deal that was already made.
Speaker 1:Now the reason I say that is because the family was not happy with this. They were not okay with manslaughter even being offered and because he didn't actually give an actual reason and he said it was an accident and nobody ever said anything to refute it and there wasn't a trial. They didn't get a chance to put on the medical examiner and have their opinion. So we don't. We don't really know and, like I said, that sealed, that part of the record is sealed. So I didn't even get the chance to see, to give anybody else you know a little bit to work with on making different assumptions.
Speaker 1:So all you have is my little little bit of cleverness to go off of a little bit so when he was arrested he was booked on second degree murder charges and, like I said, the bond was set at 125,000. He went into trial posture with his attorney, robert Clark, and eventually they got to the plea agreement for manslaughter with a cap of 40 years for the judge to decide. So he pled guilty to manslaughter and that was in April, the very I think it was the day before the end of the month. Either way, the very end of April he pled and then they did a pre sense investigation. Do you know what that is? Psi, pre sense?
Speaker 2:pounds for scoring.
Speaker 1:Yes, but this is the court version, so a PSI or a stop intoxicating me pre sentence investigation pre seminal and flux no Flux capacitor so perfect symmetry, instantly Sure. Sure Private. Sell your eye?
Speaker 2:No, it's plain sex innovator.
Speaker 1:Okay, so pre sentence investigation is exactly what it sounds like. It is an investigation that takes place prior to being sentenced by a judge, and its reasoning is specifically because they get statements from the people involved, they get statements from the victims family, they get statements from the defense, itself Relevant because this is the sentencing. This is what they got and I talk about different things when they do this instead of going to court, basically, yeah, what? What happens when you make a plea like this and there's no?
Speaker 1:idea who the dude is they kind of get an idea of the background of the family and what happened, because they didn't have a court. That judge, at this point, is supposedly without knowledge. You're, you're coming into it and they are only given what they see for it during the trial. So until that point they don't know anything about anything. So when they go to do their sentencing, that's, the judge gets all the information at that point once they plead. So they get the information from that, the reports and everything that are given. They get the pre sentence investigation that is done and they get all that information to make their decision on how much time they want to give them.
Speaker 2:So they have a blank canvas to pretty up however they want to pretty up, right and or to dirty up, however they want to dirty up because you get both sides exactly and you get the police reports and all of the information.
Speaker 1:That is what had been presented at trial.
Speaker 2:Hey, I can make a lot of bad people look real good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can try. So really I'm a silver tongue In. In technical terms it's providing judicial guidance in this case because there was no evidence presented, because there was no trial. So he pleads in April. I think they set the sentencing for September. Honestly, he's still sitting in jail waiting for the judge to make up his mind.
Speaker 1:They go back into the sentencing and they were actually going to try to continue it that day from the transcript that I read. But the family had flown down from Indiana to be there, to be in person in court to be able to give their impact statements directly to the judge. So they did it that day. They postponed it till the end of all of the other stuff that was going on, but they did it that day. So as it stands, according to the statute for manslaughter you can only be charged up to 40 years. 40 years is the maximum and the law, according to the language in the statute, it does not allow the judge to sentence him, no matter how many years. It doesn't allow for sentencing without benefits because I know we've talked about it, you know life without parole. So, lwop, we've talked about that before the life without suspension of sentence or benefit of anything.
Speaker 2:Basically the death penalty, except you have to live it out.
Speaker 1:Right, but manslaughter doesn't have that term, the terminology, that language in its statute. So the judge technically can't do that. And the reason I make that point is because in the victim impact statements which were from the mother and father of Tasha, they both were asking basically you know, pleading with the judge, like we didn't want this, we didn't like this deal. And even Brad Brigitte gets on when he does his closing statement, what have you? In the sentencing portion, the sentencing hearing, he says I wouldn't have made this deal, it would have been at least murder or would have been at least murder. Two, he wishes he could go back and undo it because he feels like this isn't justice, I mean, like it was a whole freaking thing.
Speaker 1:So the couple of things that I did take out from the parent statements this was their firstborn child, firstborn daughter, and apparently Tasha had a nine year old that at the time that she passed away that she was murdered. She said that the dad statement was pretty long but the mom statement was kind of short. She just was basically like you guys have no idea how intense this pain is. Losing a child is the worst thing ever. Please, please, do her justice. I don't have the liberty of visiting my daughter and she actually went and looked at her daughter's body because until she saw the body, she couldn't believe it was real.
Speaker 1:And it was just. It was heart wrenching, it was absolutely. It was rough, it was rough to read. So she said that and you know, just, please give him the maximum sentences, don't let him get on probation, don't let him do any of that, because he doesn't deserve it. Nobody did justice by us. Please do justice by us. And we find out in the father's statement she was murdered on his birthday and that he has no faith in anything anymore because he was raised to believe that God took care of rights and wrongs and he's been going to therapy for the last, however long since everything happened, trying to get that faith back, because he no longer believed in any of that, because he believed that his daughter was flat out murdered and he'll never have that that back. And he knows how good of a person she was and it was just, it was just awful. And for her to have been killed on his birthday, like every year, that's going to be the reminder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I kind of, I kind of get that feels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not your fault.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the greatest tragedies in American history. Yeah, pretty rough.
Speaker 1:But you made it and now it's almost like it's a vacation day. So it's not almost, it's almost a vacation. It's still terrible. It is still terrible. So, like I said earlier, brad Brigette, the district attorney that was actually elected as a time he took office in January of 2009. So at the time that the deal was made, he wasn't a part of it and he also believed it should have been second degree murder, but there wasn't anything he could do about it because his hands were tied. So, judge Leo Booth, actually that guy get messed up in prison.
Speaker 1:As far as I am aware, no one. You can write him an asking.
Speaker 2:Okay, he was text girls back.
Speaker 1:He was sentenced to 35 years to the hard labor in the Department of Corrections and the judge actually said on record Judge Judge Booth said that he he has no capability of sentencing him to that without suspension of suspension of sentence or benefits, because it just doesn't, the law doesn't allow for him to do that. But he gave him 35 years. He had 36 months to post post conviction relief. He did file that in September of 2012. But nothing came of that. They just told me just you're gonna serve all your time and as of right now, he is 42. And he is at the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer to show like the step down from Angola. It's basically a rollover for less violent people. So block a. He's 42. Yeah, and he's so 15.
Speaker 1:And, as far as I know, I haven't heard anything outside of outside of this since, since he did the post conviction, because when you take a plea deal and you accept that you actually are waiving your right to a circuit third circuit court of appeals, you don't get to make those appeals anymore.
Speaker 2:You get what you get and you don't throw fit.
Speaker 1:That's right. Once you make that deal, you're basically saying, okay, I give up all my rights to all those these benefits that I would get if I go to trial, but I'm not taking a gamble on losing the rest of my life. So, because second degree is life without life, without benefits. So yeah, and, like I said, this was a very interesting one for me because the information that I was given at the very beginning was like body found in the house, they had a party, they found the gun in the toy box and yeah, that's, that's basically what I was told that I was like, oh my gosh what should that happen here this weekend?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely crazy minus the dead body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it just it blew my mind when I started getting into the details, because there's so much. I feel like we don't know, like we weren't told about what actually went down that night and it just doesn't make any sense to me like nobody none of the witnesses, none of the testimonies, none of the statements that anything about any prior incidences. The only thing that even got close was that the dad said something about Tasha telling him because they talked a lot that her the previous conversation she'd had with Tasha about fee was that you know, they had a lot of arguments about jealousy and they were both of them were very possessive and that the night before that she was shot that she had made a mention about confronting a big problem with him and that she wanted to do that before she left. So he seems to believe him in the moment, like that, because they think and believe that that never even came up, that that was never mentioned, that nobody ever talked to them to get that information, and so they were. They felt very slighted by the officers and the investigators On this case specifically, and then to hear that he had got a deal and was gonna be out and it just it all feels kinda icky, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It just leaves a really bad taste in your mouth. You wanna take a shower afterwards Because something doesn't feel right at all. And both the mom and dad of Tasha were both ex-military and they were both, you know, very, very gunned for cross-shes. And they knew Tasha knew way better than to mess around with them or just, like you know, be known to be around them or fool with them. She didn't like guns, she never mess with guns. So I would love to have been a fly on the wall to know what he actually said in the interview, because we don't even have that. We don't. I didn't get a transcript of that or an audio or nothing. So it just seemed a little weird. It just seemed a little weird.
Speaker 2:So I guess, Teg, you could consider this a case of the unknown, because there's so much unknown?
Speaker 1:There's so much that we just don't like there's not a good cause. You know, not every case we do is gonna have a nice little tidy bow on top, but at least you can kind of guess at what could have possibly been the reason. There's just not enough information to even wager, I guess, at this point.
Speaker 2:Leave it to the uncle of the unknown to make you feel dirty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll bet.
Speaker 2:I mean, you just said you may have to take a shower afterwards and she yeah, do you need a shower? Your words, yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so that's it for that one. Guys, leave me a comment, a question of what do you think happened? Put it somewhere where there'd be in the YouTube the Jake Talks, the emails somewhere and or don't, we don't control your life. Or don't. We don't do that, but like that would be awesome, because I really am lost on this one. It's kind of like it could have been a million things. It could have been nothing. So what are your thoughts? What do you think?
Speaker 2:Just my theory, like I don't know if she got it on the thing earlier, but I said it's very plausible for shell casing, depending on the gun.
Speaker 2:Of course I don't know what kind of gun it was, but depending on which way the shell ejects, it could, if you're having If you have it in your hand, basically sitting on your lap with your palm up, and you pull the trigger, it shoots straight in front of you, which is where she would have been sitting, and the shell could eject straight upwards and fly back over the back of the couch that she was sitting on. Very, very easily happen it. Just there are a lot of different variables that we don't get to take into effect because we don't know everything that went on. Right. But you could postulate that he was sitting there playing with the gun, or even had it pointed at her, and if it was a left ejecting gun it would have shot her and it ejected over the couch backwards. But typically that's not how guns work they eject to the right. So the only way it would have went over there is if we knew which way the gun wound went into her head Right, the trajectory of the bullet wound.
Speaker 2:Because all we got is a gun wound to the left side of the head, which is the opposite side of where he would have been sitting.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Which would have made it if he shot her with a normal right ejecting gun would have put her on the opposite side of where he said he was. Yeah, just a lot of things, a lot of things.
Speaker 1:That just a big, big-ass question mark. We don't know if it was a, it was a investigative side. We don't know if it was, uh, unable to find the evidence or not having enough information inside. Like he was, was he over descriptive of of details in some parts of his story and then not in others, and that's why they couldn't proceed forward in that sense, like there's just a lot of like, what the hell's?
Speaker 2:It's because, beyond a reasonable doubt, it's a real thing. Oh, absolutely. And he's the only one that can corroborate what went on that night. That's why everybody tells you to keep your fucking mouth shut. Exactly, and he did that pretty well apparently.
Speaker 1:There's only gonna be one story.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah, mine yeah, and I think that's the only one that's been in a reasonable relationship with that woman.
Speaker 1:That's a terrible story. Don't go without it. It didn't work out for Will, for him either.
Speaker 2:All right guys, I think it did. Thank you so much for listening. You got some niggity in the White House. The old office, what?
Speaker 1:up. Yes, he did. Yes, he did Allegedly. Allegedly. No, that one was actually provis, that's not allegedly anymore. So Anyway, thank you guys, so much for listening, thank you for coming back, thank you for sharing, thank you for being awesome and keep coming back.
Speaker 2:Thank you for loving me.
Speaker 1:Um, I don't know if that's, that's a little bit of a stress, so is it most popular. We'll go with that.
Speaker 2:We'll go with it. The numbers don't lie.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, but we appreciate you guys. We'll see you next time, probably in a bonus episode, and we'll get back at you later. Y'all be safe out there, take care Bye.
