The Receipts

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Heads up. This series contains graphic descriptions of violence.

00:00:07
Speaker 2: I want you to tell me. We're gonna go all the way back in this case. We're gonna go all the way back to July the thirtieth or two thousand and I want you to start third and tell me exactly how you got involved in this case and what happened.

00:00:28
Speaker 3: Got involved in this case is due to the fact I was the last person to see Jaska alive.

00:00:37
Speaker 1: Nearly ten years after the trial and conviction of Quincy Cross, Venetia's Doublefield sat down with a private investigator.

00:00:47
Speaker 2: We don't do interviews like other people doing. There will be no turning off those cameras unless it's an emergency or unless you have to go to a bathroom.

00:00:56
Speaker 1: This is a familiar scene, Venetia sitting at a table with her hands on her lap, her anxious eyes cast downward, answering yet another question about the murder of Jessica Curran.

00:01:10
Speaker 2: Anything to say in this room about this case is going to be on this tape. They understand.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: The first time police interviewed Venetia, she was sixteen years old, going on seventeen and four years Venetsha maintained that on a Saturday night in the summer of two thousand, she hung out with Jessica, played cards and had some drinks.

00:01:33
Speaker 3: And then Tom passing by. We didn't realize it until it was like fifteen twenty minutes to two, so we got up, we lay.

00:01:42
Speaker 1: Off, They said goodbye, never to see each other again. That story changed though in two thousand and seven, when Venetia became one of the state's main witnesses and implicated Quinn he crossed as the ringleader in Jessica's brutal murder. But now Venetia says that story, the one used in court, is a lie.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: They literally made me say that I was there at jessica curse. It's the crime scene when Jessica's being killed. They literally made me say that I took part in it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I pore guests on her. They made me say that I took party into having sexual contacts with her when she was already dead, and everything.

00:02:32
Speaker 1: A lie that she fabricated. When agents with the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation, the KBI took over as lead investigators for the case.

00:02:42
Speaker 2: This the KD I threatened in any kind of way in this case, you stay in.

00:02:49
Speaker 3: Tell me how they had told me that I did not come forward and tell the truth on him killed Jessica, that they would make sure that I've been the rest of my life in prison. I will never see my family, my friends, the Yale, all kinds of stuff. And yes, I'm a meeting. Yes I was wrong because I should have thought about everything before I said what I say it and at that time I was gullible and I wouldn't really focus.

00:03:25
Speaker 4: Right.

00:03:29
Speaker 1: I've spoken to Venetia and she also told me this. So that makes two prosecution witnesses recanting, first Rosie and now Venetia. The dominoes that make up the state's case seem to be falling. However, there is one key person who made the prosecution's charges and convictions possible.

00:03:54
Speaker 5: Victoria, don't you got paid to make up a whole story just to get rid of this case.

00:03:58
Speaker 1: Rosie's sister Victoria Yah called well and get money?

00:04:02
Speaker 6: Ready, Yeah, and get money? Yes, you got paid to do this case. Yes, she got paid to do it.

00:04:14
Speaker 1: And what Victoria will go on to say involves more than some threats or the scheming of citizen investigators. Susan Gallbreath, it implicates law enforcement and not only the investigators with the Kentucky Attorney General's Office, but one of the state's top prosecutors as well. This is Graves County, Chapter five, the receipts. At the end of last episode, you heard victorious sister Rosie Christ telling me she'd been coerced into lying. But Rosie says it wasn't only threats. Law enforcement also persuaded her with money.

00:05:39
Speaker 6: They paid me a hundred dollar bill to call people.

00:05:42
Speaker 1: It's Detective Sam Steger with the Kentechta State Police. Today's date is June fifth, two thousand and six. One of those people was her cousin. We will be making a phone call to tamer Caldwell.

00:05:55
Speaker 5: Kyle Tammery and if she knew anything about Quincy being a blob in this case, we'll give you a hundred dollars. And she says, yes, Hello, Hey, Nana, is Tamra home.

00:06:08
Speaker 3: Talk?

00:06:09
Speaker 4: No?

00:06:10
Speaker 1: Can I talk to her?

00:06:13
Speaker 6: I said, Tama.

00:06:13
Speaker 5: These uh officers have been asking me lately if you knew anything about Quincy Cross his involvement in the career in case, anything about him being I knew you had knew.

00:06:23
Speaker 7: That Quincy was involved in a murder.

00:06:25
Speaker 6: I ain't know about nobody else.

00:06:27
Speaker 1: She ain't hurt nothing yet.

00:06:32
Speaker 6: Yeah, she said, yeah I heard, Yeah, I know.

00:06:36
Speaker 1: Tamra doesn't say anything else about the case. They go on to talk about a family gathering over the weekend.

00:06:44
Speaker 5: Did you see what was bringing the kids bad down on Saturday?

00:06:48
Speaker 1: But Rosie says that didn't matter to law enforcement.

00:06:52
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know. It was enough for them, and.

00:06:54
Speaker 1: A few dollars were enough for Rosie to betray her own family. Those weren't great years for Rosie. You mentioned you were on drugs back then, and you would have said anything for one hundred buck.

00:07:06
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was oh crack okay back to you. Sure was.

00:07:10
Speaker 8: They really tapped into people who had a lot to lose, but also a lot to gain.

00:07:18
Speaker 1: Miranda Hellman again the attorney for the Kentucky Innocent's Project. She says law enforcement took advantage of people.

00:07:26
Speaker 8: People kind of living on the periphery, maybe even folks who didn't have stable homes, who had young children and were really young children themselves.

00:07:34
Speaker 1: Like Venetia and Rosie and Victoria, who was only fifteen at the time of the murder and around twenty one when she reached out to Rosie saying they could make some money.

00:07:49
Speaker 9: Yeah yeah, and if I have her, she was lost money.

00:07:53
Speaker 7: Let me.

00:07:54
Speaker 1: Rosie told this to the same private investigator you heard earlier.

00:08:00
Speaker 3: She said, I know himself.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: Miranda says Victoria had been financially struggling at the time.

00:08:08
Speaker 9: So they really tapped into two things.

00:08:11
Speaker 8: I think they played good cop, bad cop with her and making threats that if you aren't gonna work with us, you could lose your kids, but then also giving her incentives.

00:08:20
Speaker 1: At one point there was a nine thousand dollars reward for any tips that helped solve the murder, but I haven't been able to confirm if anyone ever claimed the cash. Still money or the promise of financial gain has always loomed over this case.

00:08:38
Speaker 8: I was hearing rumors of hey, witnesses were paid off, there were some bad cops involved, and as I started to dig into the discovery.

00:08:46
Speaker 9: All those things really played out to be true.

00:08:51
Speaker 1: At one point in her investigation, Miranda visited with Venetia. She was in jail on an unrelated charge. At first, Venisia didn't want to talk. But two hours later Miranda walked out with a full story similar to the one you heard her tell the private investigator earlier. They forced me to say that Tamara has something to do with it.

00:09:16
Speaker 3: They forced me to say that she forgets something to do with it.

00:09:19
Speaker 1: And she says she didn't even meet Quincy until around the time he was dating Tamra, a few years after the murder.

00:09:27
Speaker 3: No, I didn't even know who was good because cousin, I'm like, oh, is he yeah?

00:09:32
Speaker 1: Venesha is referring to a conversation she had with Susan Galbreath. Remember, early on in her investigation, Susan kept pushing Venetia to give up Quincy's name. You heard a secret recording from Susan where Venesha sounds confused and replies.

00:09:50
Speaker 7: Well, what, I don't get going quiet for that.

00:09:57
Speaker 1: Venetia is in her forties, now less wiry, and her giant eyes, once filled with fear and defeat, are now gleaming with determination as she speaks about her experience as a witness in this case. She's opened up to private investigators, to the Innocence Project, my team, and to me, And on top of blaming law enforcement. Venetia confirms what so many people have told me that Susan played a big role in this case.

00:10:30
Speaker 6: Although she's diseased.

00:10:31
Speaker 10: Let her recipes, but she's another reason why a my life got messed up as well.

00:10:36
Speaker 1: Here Venetia is sitting with her mom chatting to one of my producers, and Vanisha doesn't talk about Susan with bitterness. Susan and Vanisha's mom were actually once friends.

00:10:50
Speaker 10: Susan used to do parties that I have surity or whatever and invite mom and my uncle and all them to their parties.

00:10:57
Speaker 1: But then Jessica Kurrn was killed, Jeremy Adams was charged, and the rest is history.

00:11:04
Speaker 10: She was good friends with Jeremy Adams's mother, Donna, and Donna was like girlfriends or whatever, and she was helping Donna close Jeremy's name, which is I mean, I understand that's respectful, but at the same time, you still incriminated a lot of people.

00:11:21
Speaker 6: You still put a lot of people's name in it.

00:11:23
Speaker 7: They didn't have nothing to do with it.

00:11:25
Speaker 1: And there was another motive, Venetia says, a much simpler one.

00:11:31
Speaker 3: Susan Cabert did it for the faith and for the money.

00:11:37
Speaker 1: Susan did get her Outstanding Citizen Award from the Kentucky Attorney General's Office for her role in helping solve the current case. Tom Mangold wrote articles about her and her investigation. The BBC aired a radio documentary touting her accomplishment, and countless movie offers followed. In the emails obtained by the Kentucky Innocence Project, Susan and Tom discuss splitting any money fifty to fifty, though a feature film never materialized. And I can't knock Susan, Victoria or anyone else for being motivated by money. In this case, people are allowed to have desires. That's not a crime. The problem comes when the people with power, the state and law enforcement, take advantage of people's weaknesses to get what they want. Miranda says law enforcement ran with Susan Goallbres's theory and paid Victoria Caldwell to back that story up in order to close the case. And it was more than a measly one hundred dollars much more. When Miranda Hellman started going through footage of Quincy's trial, she says she noticed something odd.

00:12:55
Speaker 8: There were many cross examination questions about were you paid?

00:12:59
Speaker 1: The defense was asked asking these questions to witnesses like Victoria Caldwell.

00:13:03
Speaker 8: You know, were you paid to be here today? Were you paid for your testimony? Did you receive money from the government? Did they pay for your meals? Did they pay for your clothes?

00:13:12
Speaker 2: What else did the KBI pay for you besides your rent and your moving expansions?

00:13:20
Speaker 11: The the utilities, the utilities.

00:13:23
Speaker 6: Food.

00:13:25
Speaker 1: No Morendus's Quincy's attorneys also asked the KBI agents whether they paid for the meals and clothes of their main witness.

00:13:34
Speaker 8: And a lot of the answers to those questions were no, what.

00:13:38
Speaker 5: Other expenses were paid besides utilities and rent and moving?

00:13:49
Speaker 4: Off the top of my head, sir, I believe it was all the buried, you know. I'm sure at one point in time we had to give her something need so well, I thought.

00:14:00
Speaker 8: That was strange that these questions kept coming up, And then I stumbled across the set of maybe two hundred pages.

00:14:05
Speaker 1: Of receipts, receipts that, according to Miranda, the defense never used in their cross examination and that showed law enforcement was being untruthful under oath. When Victoria made contact with Susan and first met the agents with the KBI in two thousand and seven. She was living in California. Then around March of that year, law enforcement moved Victoria into witness protection in North Carolina because she claimed to be afraid for her life.

00:14:40
Speaker 8: Also sort of did the same thing with Venetia, but they didn't really pay for nearly as many of her expenses. They actually held her in jail while they held Victoria in a paid condo.

00:14:53
Speaker 1: According to a court filing from the Kentucky Innocence Project, the Office of the Attorney General and the Kentucky State Police paid Victoria from February two thousand and seven to January two thousand and eight.

00:15:06
Speaker 9: She collected all of her receipts for all the meals she ate, the food she bought, the clothes she bought, the you know, living expenses, turned those in and then the Attorney General's office would issue an authorization to pay funds to her.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: Many of these receipts were filed under the state's witness protection program. I've gone through them as well, and at first glance they appear pretty standard a gas bill, groceries, but then they start to branch.

00:15:36
Speaker 8: Out, and so I started digging, and we found that they included nights out bowling, going to movie theater, going out to eat, and it even included Margarita's and beers at restaurants. It included phone cards, clothing items for her kids, all of her gas, getting her car repairs done, new tires, and then some really odd items.

00:16:01
Speaker 1: There was one receipt for Claire's accessories and another one from a sex shop, and.

00:16:08
Speaker 8: Then we dug into the receipt and it appeared to be a vibrator that she had purchased at a one of those video stores in North Carolina.

00:16:15
Speaker 1: According to Kentucky law, the Attorney General's office should reimburse costs that are deemed reasonable and necessary for the protection of a witness. It includes expenses for things like meals and child's care, as far as I can tell, though a vibrator is not on the list of approved items. In total, the Kentucky Innocence Project found that Victoria Caldwell was paid at least seventeen thousand dollars in one year.

00:16:43
Speaker 8: She was living on the state dime pretty freely and really nicely for an extended period of time, while realistically she had been charged as complicit in this murder and should have been sitting in jail next to Venetia. They knew they could not make this case without her, and they had to do everything they could hold it together. So it just really looks to me and that this is just purely paying your witness to come in and testify in the way that you want her to testify, and also keep her under your exclusive control, hidden away in a totally different state to make sure that very fragile narrative doesn't fall apart.

00:17:22
Speaker 1: Miranda is making the case to me and the courts that law enforcement committed perjury at Quincy's trial when they concealed the extent of the payments they made to Victoria. And not only that, the top prosecutors with the state's Attorney General's office enabled those lies.

00:17:41
Speaker 8: We have law enforcement officers and special prosecutors from our head prosecution body coming into a trial saying we absolutely didn't do anything that would put this case in jeopardy. We did not pay that witness. It was just for her protection. Everything was above board, and of course a aujury here's that they would have no reason to not believe it.

00:18:01
Speaker 9: But the proof was sitting there the whole time.

00:18:05
Speaker 1: According to the Kentucky Innocence Project, this is a clear due process violation and is yet another reason Quincy Cross's conviction should be vacated. My team has reached out to the Office of the Attorney General several times, as well as the lead prosecutor at Quincy's trial, Barbara Manswale. We have not heard back, but we did hear from Victoria Caldwell. That's after the break. I've reached out to Victoria a few times and haven't heard back, but Miranda was a to track her down.

00:19:01
Speaker 12: Miranda Hellman August fourth, twenty twenty three, twelve fifty eight pm in Cincinnati, Ohio, meeting Kenneth Nixon to go speak to Victoria Caldwell.

00:19:13
Speaker 1: Miranda found her living in Ohio and she brought along Ken Nixon. Ken is from Detroit and he spent sixteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was exonerated a few years ago and now runs his own organization helping exoneries get on their feet. Ken knows what it's like to deal with the legal system hell bent unscrewing over people without power. And I've known Kem for years. He's tall, handsome and greets everyone with a charming smile.

00:19:45
Speaker 12: Hi, how are you?

00:19:46
Speaker 13: I'm good looking for Victory.

00:19:50
Speaker 9: Yeah, how you doing?

00:19:52
Speaker 1: Ken is exactly the kind of guy you want around to put people at ease.

00:19:57
Speaker 3: If you wouldn't mind, we'd like to have com.

00:20:02
Speaker 1: Victoria is nearing middle age, though she still looks baby faced. Her black hairline is showing peaks of gray.

00:20:12
Speaker 6: I'm acting this.

00:20:13
Speaker 7: He'll now to talk about this cave.

00:20:15
Speaker 1: Off the bat. Victoria says that Barbara Whalley, the lead prosecutor, called her and told her not to talk about the case.

00:20:24
Speaker 3: Barbara Wayley, I mean, do you feel comfortable? Name is the names or somebody we need to talk to? Do?

00:20:29
Speaker 1: We need to get it clear it with them first?

00:20:32
Speaker 14: Oh?

00:20:32
Speaker 1: Man, I call him, but Victoria takes out her phone and dials first. The person she calls bab O'Neil. Hey, Bob, one of the agents with the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation who interrogated persons of interest at the Drury in in suites.

00:20:51
Speaker 15: They want to talk about the cave.

00:20:54
Speaker 1: Victoria talks to O'Neill with familiarity. She's on a first named basis with him. She calls jess because killing from over two decades ago the case like they speak about it often. O'Neil advises Victoria against saying anything, but she adds.

00:21:11
Speaker 7: He said, once did I see the.

00:21:14
Speaker 13: Told us what?

00:21:15
Speaker 1: Once Ken and Miranda leave the residence, O'Neill will talk to them. So they leave.

00:21:23
Speaker 6: And Ken calls him, hello, I speak to Bob.

00:21:29
Speaker 1: O'Neil sounds skeptical but friendly, and he tells Ken that Victoria has had to deal with a lot.

00:21:37
Speaker 15: She she has faced a lot of trauma in her life, even before that, before that murder took place, which kind of the way she was brought.

00:21:47
Speaker 12: Up and stepped.

00:21:49
Speaker 1: And O'Neil says he still gives Victoria advice now and then, is.

00:21:54
Speaker 6: That why you told her not to talk to me today?

00:21:56
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:21:57
Speaker 15: I told her, yeah my opinion. I told her because you didn't go.

00:22:04
Speaker 1: But they were determined. And a few weeks later, once things cooled off, Ten messaged Victory on Facebook. Then he called Miranda.

00:22:13
Speaker 12: All right, he just looked at my message. I just centered my number.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: Miranda recorded the conversation and we've edited the call for length and clarity.

00:22:24
Speaker 9: Right now, okay, all right, I'm muting again.

00:22:26
Speaker 1: Victoria wastes no time getting to business.

00:22:30
Speaker 11: I was over there.

00:22:30
Speaker 6: I never witnessed anything. Okay, how did they get you to say what?

00:22:35
Speaker 3: They got you to say?

00:22:36
Speaker 13: What happened?

00:22:37
Speaker 11: They told me they'll just pick a needle on my arm on the elevator at the jury it was called Jurianne and Paducah, Kentucky.

00:22:45
Speaker 6: Oh make my statement? Did they specifically tell you what to say?

00:22:51
Speaker 12: Is that how your story came about?

00:22:53
Speaker 11: Yes, one officer, multiple officers, multiple from the Sutherland to Lee Wise, the main one.

00:23:06
Speaker 1: Victoria is implicating a prosecutor with the Attorney General's Office and agent Lee Wise with the KBI, O'Neill's partner.

00:23:15
Speaker 3: Okay, how do you know question?

00:23:18
Speaker 6: I don't know him.

00:23:19
Speaker 11: I've never know him a day of my life.

00:23:22
Speaker 13: How do you know his name?

00:23:24
Speaker 6: They gave it to me.

00:23:27
Speaker 12: How do you know what he looked like?

00:23:29
Speaker 1: They showed me? And she doesn't stop there. She tells Ken that the KBI not only had her lie, they helped fabricate evidence.

00:23:40
Speaker 3: There was some mention about a diary.

00:23:42
Speaker 5: Can you give me a little more details about it?

00:23:45
Speaker 11: I wrote it in the same day they came.

00:23:48
Speaker 1: They're referring to the diary Victoria read from a trial where she detailed the aftermath of the murder along with the belt. The prosecution used this diary to show that Quincy and the others committed the crime, and Victoria is saying she made it up that she didn't actually write the diary entries. At the time of Jessica's death in August of two thousand, then, Victoria confirms she's still in touch with law enforcement, specifically bab O'Neil from the KBI.

00:24:21
Speaker 11: He's always giving me money.

00:24:24
Speaker 3: Okay, when you save money? What kind of money?

00:24:26
Speaker 15: Are we talking like a couple of hundred bucks just to get by, or we're talking like a couple of grand to help more.

00:24:32
Speaker 6: Than a couple of grand But he's always taken care of me.

00:24:35
Speaker 2: Is it cash?

00:24:36
Speaker 11: Check?

00:24:37
Speaker 3: No?

00:24:38
Speaker 15: Cash?

00:24:39
Speaker 11: Always cash?

00:24:41
Speaker 13: You meet in public places or he comes to you?

00:24:43
Speaker 3: How does that work?

00:24:44
Speaker 4: Oh?

00:24:44
Speaker 11: He comes to my house?

00:24:46
Speaker 4: Oh wow?

00:24:47
Speaker 11: What do you think their position is?

00:24:49
Speaker 3: They're trying to keep you quiet? Is that the cansire?

00:24:52
Speaker 11: Yeah, they want me tell the same story, and I refuse to tell the same story. And I don't want to keep telling her. If I can't remember, I remember lies. You can remember the truth. To tell a lie, right. I can't remember everything I said, so.

00:25:05
Speaker 1: Yes, Bob O'Neil did not want to speak with me for this piece, but he told me he stands by the convictions by the tactics used by the KBI, and that he denies all of Victoria's claims. Leewise, the other agent with KBI, has not responded to my request for an interview. I don't know why Victoria is so casually admitting this to Ken, and I have no way of telling if she's being truthful, but I do know that she likes to spend stories. The one she's told about the death of Jessica Curran has changed more times than I can count, from the very first time she spoke to Mayfield Police in two thousand until now, and still law enforcement made Victoria their star witness, and they chose to use one of her many stories to put Quincy Cross in prison for life and to convict Jeff Burton and Victoria's own cousin, tim Or Caldwell. Victoria goes on to make many many more accusations and claims to Ken, but I'm not going to share those because they're damning and could all just be made up. And the reason for Victoria's supposed lies only gets more bizarre.

00:26:38
Speaker 11: I am criminate your cousin though, as you killed my grandma, and I said that to everybody that interviewed that they wouldn't put it on record. She pushed my grandma down the spears and broke her hit and my grandma died.

00:26:56
Speaker 3: Oh wow, So basically you're in her in this case?

00:27:01
Speaker 4: Was your get back?

00:27:03
Speaker 10: Yeah?

00:27:06
Speaker 7: Let me get the story straight. My mother died at Lord's Hospital during surgery. Tamra had nothing to do with her dying.

00:27:15
Speaker 1: This is Brenda Jackson, Tamra Caltell's mom and Victoria's aunt.

00:27:21
Speaker 7: My mother was getting a stint put in her neck. She was a diabetic and she was getting a stint put it in her heart build Her heart stopped meeting on the table and that's where my mother died.

00:27:34
Speaker 14: It.

00:27:35
Speaker 1: We got a copy of the death certificate and it matches Brenda's story. Her mom died from cardiac arrest natural causes, not an accident. At one point, Victoria told police her mom was supportive of her going to law enforcement with her story, and Brenda thinks it could have been because her sister, Victoria's mother, Wanda had some resentment.

00:28:01
Speaker 7: I believe Wanda was jealous of me and my kids. I really do, because my children and I we were very close, every one of us. Wanda and her kids, they were not.

00:28:15
Speaker 1: Brenda lives in Mayfield in a small one story home with little tomato plants outside baking in the sun.

00:28:23
Speaker 7: And my son bought me this one and so far I've got one off of it. Huh one?

00:28:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, how many do you normally got?

00:28:33
Speaker 7: Seven or eight?

00:28:36
Speaker 1: Inside? Her home is adorned with porcelain angel figurines and family pictures on the wood paneled wall.

00:28:43
Speaker 6: Those four on the wall over.

00:28:44
Speaker 1: There, Brenda points to ones of her four kids.

00:28:48
Speaker 7: The top one is Damien, one after him is Tamra, and then one after Tamora.

00:28:55
Speaker 1: There's a lot of life pictured on those walls. Brenda comes from a big family.

00:29:01
Speaker 7: Well there was. There was ten of us those kids. There was eight girls and two boys. And out of ten of us, there's only three of us living now.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: We were all close, except for her younger sister, Wanda, Rosie and Victoria's mom.

00:29:21
Speaker 7: Because Wanda was a tattletale everything and no matter what we did, she would go and tell mom or my oldest sister and we could.

00:29:30
Speaker 3: Speak for it.

00:29:31
Speaker 7: We get in trouble or she was still cigarets from Mama and bring them to us and we would smoke them and she would run in the house and tell on us.

00:29:42
Speaker 1: Brenda says they all teased Wanda, and they had the kind of love hate relationship that only siblings do. Still, they stayed tight over the years when they were both single moms trying to make ends meet. They even moved their families in together. Tamra remembers those times fallen.

00:30:00
Speaker 5: Like fifteen kids, Yeah, and we all slipping like two beds.

00:30:05
Speaker 6: I mean, it's not close. We were.

00:30:06
Speaker 1: Tamra says she grew up inseparable from her cousins, including Rosie and Victoria, who were just a few years younger.

00:30:14
Speaker 6: Close. Close, yeah, I'm talking about mudpie. Close.

00:30:18
Speaker 5: When you see mud pie make mud pies and go into woods and do all that.

00:30:24
Speaker 6: Just play together.

00:30:26
Speaker 1: But as time passed, the cousins and the sisters grew distant. While Brenda says she nurtured a close knit family with her kids, Wanda couldn't settle down. She left Victoria to be raised by her grandma and took Rosie with her to help pay the bills.

00:30:44
Speaker 7: Brenda says wherever she go, she would be sailing Rosie, her daughter.

00:30:51
Speaker 5: She said, maybe I'm gonna have to show you. Mommy's gonna have to ask you this. You have to do threesomes. We have to do threesomes.

00:30:58
Speaker 1: Rosie tells me it's true's true that her mom sold her for sex when she was just a little girl.

00:31:05
Speaker 6: She said, it's gonna pay the bills.

00:31:07
Speaker 1: Victoria has also said she suffered a similar fate. I've reached out to Wanda and she's not replied. The family drama, the alleged jealousy between sisters may be true, but it's impossible for me to fact check. And as far as the alleged abuse, Rosie actually told the KBI about it during her interview in two thousand and seven. It's the reason I'm even telling you about it in the first place. Remember O'Neill told Ken Nixon on the phone that Victoria had suffered a lot of trauma even before Jessica's death. Well, this trauma would be exploited by law enforcement, including the KBI.

00:31:53
Speaker 13: I one time my home life. Did you have Rosen growing up? Let's say saw it at twelve start around tea from ten years old to eighteen, and you you stepped out on your own.

00:32:05
Speaker 1: The agents used those stories to ingratiate themselves with the girls. You can hear it in their interview tapes with Rosie.

00:32:13
Speaker 15: Well, the only reason we're ask those questions is kind of just to get to know you.

00:32:17
Speaker 6: Yeah, and the finance some things.

00:32:19
Speaker 13: It helps me, But know what frame of mind or what state of you know, addition in your life.

00:32:25
Speaker 7: See Okay.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: Rosie goes on to tell the KBI agents what she told me.

00:32:32
Speaker 13: I thank you for your honesty on that, and I know that's something that's very difficult to the goal with for people. I hope that we have proven to you so far that we're not threatening, okay, Yes, And I hope that you feel that you can tell us information and that information is not going any further than this room.

00:32:57
Speaker 4: Okay.

00:32:58
Speaker 6: Yes.

00:33:04
Speaker 1: Remember what attorney Miranda Hellman said. They tapped into young girls who had nothing to lose and a lot to gain, who would lie on their own cousin out of fear or for money, or simply out of spite. Lies that shattered numerous lives and an entire family to lie.

00:33:29
Speaker 7: Oh my daughter liked that. It's best did I not see the one of them?

00:33:34
Speaker 1: Because I will be in prison that's after the break. Just like Quincy Cross and Jeff Burton, Tamra Caldwell has had people fighting in her corner, people like Brenda.

00:34:15
Speaker 7: Tamra is actually my best friend. She's my daughter, don't get me wrong, but she's also my best friend.

00:34:23
Speaker 1: When Tamor went to prison for Jessica's murder, Brenda quit her job as a ged instructor to take care of Tamra's three kids.

00:34:31
Speaker 7: And if I had to do it all over again, I would. I would because there's no way my grandkids was going to be put in anybody's spouse to care. No way. So I took care of her kids and you know, just do what I had to do.

00:34:47
Speaker 1: In a low profile matching armchair. Next to Brenda sits Nobel Faulkner, Brenda's common law husband, and the private investigator you heard earlier interviewing Venetia and Rosie.

00:35:00
Speaker 2: As I started investigating this case, you know, I found that a lot of things were that they just didn't make common sense.

00:35:08
Speaker 14: Hello, ladies, I just got off the phone with Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel faultner.

00:35:15
Speaker 1: Nobel is also close to Daryl Woolman, my trusted source.

00:35:19
Speaker 14: First time I talked to Noble, he told me a wonderful story about when he was in the Navy he had to jump into the ocean and that there was a shark chase in him and he punched the shark in the face or something along those lines. But you couldn't make him up or write him if you wanted to.

00:35:43
Speaker 1: Noble is in his seventies, tall and lean. He's worked in security for over fifty years, and he's been a private investigator since the eighties. His body is slowing down with age and its many ailments, but he comes alive when talking about this case with the exuberance of a preacher.

00:36:03
Speaker 2: See, in this whole big jungle of lies and deceptions, there is the truth.

00:36:13
Speaker 1: But you got to figure it out, You got to put it together. Brenda actually sought Nobel out years ago before they got together, and I.

00:36:22
Speaker 7: Had heard so many people saying how good of an investigator he was, and I wanted my daughter to be cleared of this murder case.

00:36:33
Speaker 4: Yes.

00:36:34
Speaker 1: Since then, Nobel has spoken to nearly every key player in this case, and all of their stories have led Nobel to one conclusion.

00:36:45
Speaker 2: They framed Quincy Crass, they framed Timer Carwell, they framed Jeffrey Burton.

00:36:53
Speaker 3: And they know they did.

00:36:55
Speaker 2: And that's why today you all are standing up in this room try to get the facts on this case when it should have been solved twenty years ago.

00:37:10
Speaker 1: And this is where Attorney Miranda Hellman is now wondering how this case was even brought to trial in the first place.

00:37:19
Speaker 8: When I look at this case, I go no way, like this couldn't have happened. I see the holes in this case. Why can't a prosecutor who's been practicing for thirty years see it? Why didn't the Attorney General see it? Why didn't the judge see it?

00:37:33
Speaker 1: And as a journalist myself, I'm wondering why didn't a seasoned reporter like Tom Mangold see it. We have no emails between Tom and Susan after twenty twelve. This is the last time Tom published a piece featuring Susan in his radio documentary for the BBC, and this was also around the time Tom sent the email to Susan's friend and collaborator saying, Lacy, I'm just beginning to wonder This is but a tiny worm of an idea in my wine soaked brain that there is a teeny weeny, itsy bitsy chance that we've got this whole fucking murder story wrong. This seat of doubt was planted after Susan's friend took a more active role helping Tom mangled research for his documentary. She went to talk to Victoria, and Victoria told her that she made most of her story up, that the diary they used at trial was fake, that the KBI had threatened her, that she lied on Tamra out of spite. Tom knew this. He fretted over her credibility in emails to his producer and to law enforcement, but he ended up going with Victoria's story, implicating Quincy, Jeff and Tamra of horrific crimes without mentioning her incantation, and praising Susan as the everyday citizen who helped solve a murder against all odds. And that was really it for the duo, the veteran journalist and the Kentucky housewife. Then in twenty eighteen, Tom got the email from Susan's sister telling him that she died. I've been trying to contact you and regretfully inform you of Susan's recent death. It's been such a trying time, and that Susan's sister would be taking over any negotiation on pending movie deals or documentaries about her. I do know she has pending proceedings going on, and I'll need to discuss that with the agent or BBC. Tom's work on the Jessica current murder is full of half truths, yet I'm unable to dismiss all of it because Tom didn't only go after people with no recourse or real power, like Quincy Cross. He also sought to hold the people in charge accountable, pointing the finger at the very first officers who led Jessica's case astray.

00:40:19
Speaker 2: When he finally left the Mayfield Police Department. What was found in his desk?

00:40:24
Speaker 9: Oh, they found drugs, they found guns, everything that should.

00:40:31
Speaker 13: Not have been there.

00:40:37
Speaker 1: That's on the next and final episode. Graves County is a production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company Number One. This show is written and produced by me Maggie Freeling and senior producer Rebecca Ibarra, Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wurtis. Are executive producers. Our editor is Martina Abraham's Ilunga. Dannia Suleiman is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Joe Plored, music created by Wrench. Our theme song is the Gangsta grass version of The One Who's Holding the Star by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick. Darrel Woolman is investigative producer. Our head of marketing and Operations is Jeff Cliburn. Is Many Guarderama is our social media director, and our social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons. Andrew Nelson is art director, with additional production help from Jackie Pauley, Kara Kornhaber and Kathleen Fink. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and threads at Lava for Good and follow me at Maggie Freeling. And we know there's a lot of names for you to keep up with in this series, so for a detailed list of characters, please go to our show notes