Yeardley:  Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. How are you guys? Oh, welcome to Season 16. Hooray. We’re so happy you’re here. And it’s your lucky day my friends, because we have our own Paul Holes on the microphone today.

[music]

 I don’t know if anyone’s better than Paul at combining suspense and science whenever he talks about an investigation, and this case is no exception.

 The case Paul talks about today really got under his skin. And if you know the kinds of cases Paul has worked on over the years, you know that’s saying a lot. At a couple of points in the story, you’ll hear dead silence as Paul stops and gathers himself before he can go on. As always, Paul brings fresh eyes and fresh ideas to the table as law enforcement reopens the 1974 Murder of Carla Walker.

 Paul’s enthusiasm inspires the investigative team to pull out all the stops to get answers. And that out-of-the-box approach is instrumental in finally clearing the name of a man who’d been under suspicion for decades, while also giving some long overdue answers to Carla’s family. But let’s start at the beginning. Here is Part 1 of Justice For Carla.

[music]

Yeardley:  Hi there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  I’m Dave.

Paul:  And I’m Paul.

Yeardley:  And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan:  Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave:  -and retired detectives from small town, USA.

Paul:  And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan:  Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Dave:  Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul:  Names, places, and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan:  And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Speaker 2  -out of respect for what they’ve been through.

Unison:  Thank you.

Yeardley:  Today, on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have detective Dan.

Dan:  Greetings.

Yeardley:  Greetings. Greetings to you. We have detective Dave.

Dave:  Hello, all.

Yeardley:  Hello. Hello, sir. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul:  Hey, hey, hi. [laughs]

Yeardley:  Hey, hi. I love it. I love it so much. And Small Town Fam I feel like if we could, we would throw a parade for today because today on the microphones, we don’t actually have an awesome guest. We have the awesome A team. And it’s funny, when I ask Dan, Dave, And Paul, “Do you have any more cases that you could do for an episode?” They’re all like, “No, I’m all tapped out. I’ve rung out my library,” and I’m like, “I just don’t think that’s true.” I respect it, but will also twist their arms as much as possible. And today it actually worked. And so, Paul Holes is going to give us a case. So, Paul, you’re such an old pro, I’m just going to hand it over to you.

Paul:  [laughs] I thought you were going to ask me, how did this case come to you.

Yeardley:  Well, I am then. I am going to ask you. Tell us, Paul, how did this case come to you?

Paul:  This case came to me twice, both under unusual circumstances. The first time I had this case put in front of me was at a CrimeCon.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Paul:  So, this was obviously after I retired, and I think it was the New Orleans CrimeCon. And I’m very busy at CrimeCon’s, with the various events, and I meet a lot of people, so I just have a vague memory, long line of people during the Meet and Greet. And a woman came up and handed me a piece of paper with a photo of a young woman on it. And this was a summary of this Carla Walker case. And this is not abnormal. I get handed documents from a variety of people asking me to take a look at their loved one’s case.

Yeardley:  I’m guessing it’s a little bit like being a doctor at a dinner party. And they’re like, “Listen, I have this thing on my blah, blah and can you check it out right now?” And they just expect you to– hand you a little bit of info and go, “You can solve this, right? I’ll be back at 5.”

Paul:  Right. Well, and obviously at CrimeCon, I can’t be reviewing whatever’s handed to me. So typically, I bring these documents home, and then once I kind of get settled, then I do actually look at them. And quite frankly, I don’t remember what I did with that document. I don’t remember reaching out. Most people, when they reach out and they’re asking me to help out on their case, well, it also requires cooperation from the investigating agency, without that, there’s really nothing I can help.

 So, this just kind of probably faded in my memory. I just hardly remember this incident. And then I had a TV show, DNA of Murder. The way that the TV show worked was that supervising producers would come up with cases, summarize those cases, and then have me review to see if it’s a case I had interest in and thought I could impact. I reviewed so many cases, but one of the cases was this homicide out of Fort Worth PD of a 17-year-old girl, Carla Walker. And you know, again, the bells are kind of dinging. I’ve seen this case before somewhere.

Yeardley:  And Paul, can I just ask you, was the woman who handed you sort of a one sheet on the case at CrimeCon, was she related to the case in any way or was she an armchair sleuth? What was her particular interest in it?

Paul:  I ended up seeing her again and this was at somewhat of a memorial for Carla Walker. And she came up to me and said she was the one that had handed me material on the Carla Walker case in the beginning, thinking that that’s what spurred me getting involved with the case. And so, she, if I recall correctly, was a close family friend and obviously very passionate about this case. So, for the show, I ended up reviewing the case, saying, “Yeah, this is something that I want to help out on.”

Yeardley:  This is for DNA of Murder you’re talking about.

Paul:  This is for the DNA of Murder and this show was where I was legitimately working with agencies, consulting with the investigators, talking to family, friends, even suspects, in some instances, trying to solve these cases. So, I had access to material in order to actually be effective. And in this particular case, after I said yes and Oxygen Network agreed that it was a case that they were going to have for one of the episodes, eventually I got involved. And the initial involvement was a discussion with the current cold case investigator at Fort Worth, Jeff Bennett. And that discussion I was actually in Vancouver doing a presentation on the Golden State Killer case.

 And I was at Butchart Gardens with a couple of my GSK buds from back in the day, as well as a Vancouver PD detective who was actually the organizer of this. And Jeff Bennett from Fort Worth PD calls me and he’s very passionate about the Carla Walker case. But his big position in terms of cooperating with the show was to get the show to help pay for the forensic testing.

Yeardley:  Because you had some DNA evidence.

Paul:  They had some DNA evidence that they had looked at over the decades, but nothing that was real promising in terms of when I was taking a look at the forensic lab reports. And we had built into our budget for the DNA of Murder show to pay for some forensic testing. But what Jeff was asking for was far above what our typical budget was. And he was like, “I need more, I need more.” And he eventually got more, which turned out to be very, very good in this case. But ultimately this is how I’m getting involved in the Carla Walker case. And that’s when I go out to Fort Worth PD and meet with Jeff Bennett and his partner Leah Wagner, the two assigned at that time to their cold case unit.

 And I will tell you, this case is somewhat of a trigger for me. It turns into one of my tougher cases from an emotional standpoint, and I think you’ll find out why. But this case involves 17-year-old Carla Walker. And this is February of 1974. She had gone to a Valentine’s dance at her high school with her boyfriend. He was the star quarterback of the football team.

Yeardley:  What was his name?

Paul:  Rodney. They go to the dance, it’s February 17th, so a little after the actual formal Valentine’s and they end up leaving the dance and start driving around. And Rodney and Carla pick up another couple. And as teenagers are prone to do, they’ve got alcohol, they’re drinking, there may even have been some marijuana use as they’re driving around. And eventually after stopping at the Taco Bell in town, which was the kids hangout, [laughter] they go to the bowling alley, Wrigley Bowling Alley. And the reason they go to the bowling alley is the Taco Bell restrooms were shut down and I forget the reason why. So, they had to go to the bowling alley and Carla had to go use the restroom. So, Rodney and Carla go inside the bowling alley, they come out, they get into Rodney’s car and Rodney’s driving.

 It’s one of those huge Pontiac cars with the big front bench seats. And Rodney of course is the driver and Carla is on the front passenger side. This is roughly about 12:15 when they get back into their vehicle. Rodney and Carla are back in their vehicle and they are talking. The front passenger door whips open and a man with a pistol sticks his head in, grabs Carla and Rodney’s initial statements. The man told him, “I’m going to kill you,” and then shoots Rodney. So, Rodney said the man shot him. Rodney slumped down to the seat and Carla is drug out. Rodney just remembers Carla yelling, “Go get my dad.” As she’s being drug off to a car that Rodney said had five or six other men in it.

[Break 1]

Yeardley:  So, Paul, if Rodney was shot, does he actually get to Carla’s parents’ house?

Paul:  Yes. So, what ends up happening is Rodney, once he recovers from the shooting, drives to Carla’s parents’ house and Carla is living with her parents, she’s 17 years old. And he is seen initially by the family, including Carla’s younger brother, who was 12 at the time, Jim. And Rodney is bleeding extensively from his head. His shirt, which was a button up shirt, was unbuttoned. And he has a lot of blood on his shirt as well as on his upper torso.

 Where the Walker family lived was outside of Fort Worth city limits. It was in Benbrook. So initially you have Benbrook officers arriving at the family residence and interviewing Rodney and trying to get a description of this man. And Rodney initially states that this man had like a cowboy hat on, military like crew-cut type of hair style. And I never heard this term, but said he was a goat roper.

Yeardley:  A goat roper? I’ve never heard that. You’re nodding, Dave. Do you know what that is?

Dave:  I can surmise based on some other terms that I’ve heard over the years, but basically, it’s somebody who’s familiar with the country is how I take that.

Paul:  Yeah. And I guess it’s somewhat of a derogatory term.

Yeardley:  Sounds like it. [laughs]

Paul:  Yeah.

Dave:  Like a redneck.

Paul:  Yeah. If you’re a cowboy, that’s cool. But if you’re a goat roper, nope.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  You don’t sit with the cool kids.

Dave:  Right. Big hat, no cattle.

Paul:  That’s just it. So, Carla is nowhere to be found, and her dad goes to the bowling alley parking lot. And Carla’s purse is on the ground. Presumably got drug out when she was drug out of the car. And then right near that purse is a magazine from a pistol for a Ruger 22. And it is fully loaded with .22 caliber ammunition.

Yeardley:  That seems unusual that you would leave a fully loaded magazine behind. No, Dan and Dave are shaking their heads. No, not unusual.

Paul:  Well, when Rodney goes to the hospital for his injuries, he’s got lacerations basically to the top of his head as well as a cut to just underneath his right eye on his cheek. And he wasn’t shot. He had been pistol whipped.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Paul:  And this is where the offender during the pistol whipping, likely hit the magazine release and was completely unaware that he dropped his magazine onto the parking lot.

Yeardley:  Ah, I see.

Paul:  Great little piece of physical evidence there.

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Paul:  So now there’s some concern. Rodney initially claimed that he had been shot. He obviously was confused. Or changing his story that he wasn’t shot, he had been pistol whipped. And so, this is now within a week of Carla going missing. Rodney is starting to change his story.

 The other issue is Rodney claims to have lost consciousness, and then when he came to, he drove straight to the Walker residence. However, Carla was abducted around 12:20 AM, Rodney doesn’t show up at the Walker residence until 01:50 AM, an hour and a half later. So, this is an issue, this is a gap in his timeline.

 The inside of Rodney’s car in the front seat, there’s a lot of blood staining, blood drops, blood smears. And as you know, if you’ve ever injured your scalp to where you split the skin, it bleeds extensively. And so, Rodney’s claim of losing consciousness and laying for a period of time on the front seat, I would expect to see a pooled source of blood where he had been laying and that wasn’t present inside his vehicle.

Yeardley:  So what did you see?

Paul:  As Rodney is moving around in the front of the car, there’s drips coming off of his head, he’s smearing the blood as he’s interacting inside as he’s driving to the Walker residence. When I’m starting to assess the crime scene and trying to look at Rodney’s statements, I’m having some concerns. And this is, you know, we’re early on– It’s like, “Well, what did Rodney do for that hour and a half?” The whole set of circumstances are suspicious, straight up. You mean your girlfriend got abducted right under your nose and you’re the star football player and you know.

Dan:  And the other question also is why did you go to Carla’s parents’ house and not call the police from–

Dave:  You would assume there’s a payphone at the bowling alley.

Paul:  Absolutely.

Dan:  So there are a lot of red flags here.

Paul:  And I had those red flags from the very beginning about Rodney and the circumstances. And then over the decades, Rodney had been interviewed multiple times, both by law enforcement as well as media who had put some attention on the case. And every time he had been interviewed about what happened, he changed his story.

 So, as I’m initially assessing the case, of course I’m going okay, I’m going to have to really pay attention to Rodney as I do my investigation. So, Carla was last seen being abducted by this goat roper, being pulled towards a vehicle. And there’s a big search out for this abducted 17-year-old girl. And three days later her body is found.

 So south of Fort Worth, south of where the bowling alley was located at, there’s a big lake, I think it’s called Benbrook Lake. And there’s several roads off the main freeway that will go out towards the direction of that lake. And it’s a lot of like cattle type of land. And where her body was found is in what’s called a cow culvert.

 So, Carla’s body is found in this cow culvert. And I didn’t even know what a cow culvert was. But it is a cement tunnel that goes underneath the road that the cows can be moved by the ranchers from one part of their property to another without having to cross the road. So, this cement tunnel, which in this case is rectangular shaped, it’s not round shaped. And the openings on each end have cement that slope down to the ground. And then there’s barbed wire fencing around both ends of this culvert so the cows don’t have free access. The ranchers have to open up the gate on one side and on the other one in order to be able to get the cows through.

 But Carla’s body is found inside this culvert. So, the offender had to get her body somehow past the barbed wire and then placed in the middle of the culvert. Now this culvert, I don’t have exact measurements, but I would say this culvert is about 50ft long and maybe 4ft wide and almost 6ft high. It’s very cramped, very, very dark inside this tunnel.

 So, Carla’s body, she’s laying face up. She had this blue dress that her sister had actually worn I think to the prom the year before. So, it was a hand-me-down dress. And the dress has been torn off of Carla, exposing her lower body. Yet the upper part of the dress, her bra had been pushed up above her breast, but the upper part of the dress been placed by the offender covering her breasts.

 Carla had been strangled. She had lots of abrasions, significant abrasions like to her jaw, her hip area, shoulder area, as well as her knees. And these, you can’t say if they were before she died. They look to me like they’re transport injuries which I commonly see on victims’ bodies being moved in and out of vehicles like a truck bed. And here, she has to be moved through the barbed wire or dropped into the kind of the cement opening. And most certainly some of these abrasions could have been done during the disposal, body disposal process.

 When I got this case, what struck me, Carla, 17 years old, but looking at her laying here in this cow culvert, the crime scene photos, she looks like she’s 12, she’s a petite 17-year-old girl. She’s 4’11, 100 pounds, while she’s laying here, still has the blue barrettes in her hair, kind of keeping them back. She had the blue eyeliner matching the color of the dress.

 Kind of where I go is– she went out to a Valentine’s dance with her boyfriend, and in a matter of minutes, her life is over, in essence, she’s sexually assaulted, strangled, and then disposed of. So, all the hopes and dreams that she had, gone. And, of course, her loved ones, they no longer have Carla.

[Break 2]

Paul:  The autopsy showed that significant number of sperm were found from Carla Walker’s vaginal swab. And so, of course, when I’m reviewing that with modern DNA technology, it’s like, “Well, why isn’t this case solved? What’s going on?” And the forensic testing that had been done by multiple labs over the decades was focusing in on either hair or they’re going after Y-STR profiles from a stain off of the blue dress. I was like, “Well, what’s going on, why isn’t the vaginal swab being examined? And why aren’t we getting a CODIS eligible profile?” So that was part of the questions that I had going into this case.

Yeardley:  And, Paul, is the Y-STR information you’re trying to get, is that the newest technology or that’s the older technology for DNA testing?

Paul:  So, the STR technology, short tandem repeat, is the technology that crime labs started to use generally around the late 1990s. And this is the technology that the FBI’s DNA database called CODIS, is built off of. An STR profile is literally just a series of numbers. And those numbers represent sort of the genetic information that generates the profile that DNA analysts can use to compare, let’s say, a suspect DNA sample to evidence found at the crime scene.

 Y-STR is, in essence, the same technology, but it’s focusing in on the male chromosome, the Y-chromosome. And generally, labs resort to Y-STR testing when there’s very little male DNA present and there’s a whole bunch of, let’s say, Carla’s DNA present. And so typically, let’s say off of a vaginal swab, Carla’s DNA is going to be there. Tons of cells out of her vaginal cavity will be on that swab. And then, let’s say there’s just a few sperm. You try to separate that sperm out, but sometimes you can’t. And now you have a big mixture in which the female’s contribution overwhelms the little bit of male DNA there. So, you don’t even see the DNA profile using traditional STR test.

 Companies developed this Y-STR technology, so now you ignore all the female’s DNA and can just focus in on that little bit of male DNA in there to be able to get a Y-STR profile.

Yeardley:  That’s pretty incredible.

Paul:  It’s amazing technology. But that’s where my question was at, is the pathologist is saying numerous spermatozoa– numerous sperm on the microscope slide that he made and is looking through the microscope during autopsy and going, “Yeah, there’s a lot of sperm here. Why are they resorting to that? I’m not understanding this.” So, I get out to Fort Worth, and now I’m talking to the investigators, talking to an original investigator from back in the day who was at the autopsy. And he said “Not only was there a ton of semen, the pathologist noted that he could visually see pooled semen vaginally and had used a syringe and sucked up about 5 cc’s of fluid.”

Yeardley:  Holy shit.

Paul:  So where is that? And turns out it’s gone.

Yeardley:  Oh, no.

Paul:  I’ve run into this over and over from this era that pathologist probably threw out that microscope slide as well as probably the vaginal swab, because in 1974, couldn’t do anything with it, out saying, “Yes, there’s sperm present, she was raped.” And it’s so frustrating when that happens, but where’s the syringe with all this fluid that likely contains the killer’s semen? And that also has been lost over time. And so, this is part of the process of working these older unsolved cases is I can’t go back and resurrect this lost evidence. It’s gone. I have to work with what we have.

Yeardley:  Wow, we’ve heard so many stories about this now, and it is incredibly frustrating. And so, when you find investigators, and we even talked about it in the limited series we did [unintelligible ], where they somehow had the foresight to preserve things in a way that had never been done before with a sort of prescient thought that, “I don’t know, maybe it’ll be useful. I’m not sure how.” And so, when you’re talking about 1974, any investigators who were like, “Listen, I can’t do anything with it now, but let me not be the last word.”

Paul:  Yes. So, after I reviewed the forensic testing that had been done and the fact that what I was hoping to have present, the vaginal swab, that was gone. My recommendation to Fort Worth PD, and they were already thinking along these lines, Jeff and Leah were already thinking along these lines, is we need to do comprehensive screening for additional DNA off of all the clothing on Carla, that blue dress, her bra, her panties and pantyhose had been found kind of tossed out near the opening of the culvert.

Yeardley:  Sorry. Does the comprehensive testing mean now you’re going to try to discover other evidence of DNA on the clothing using more modern methods?

Paul:  Absolutely. And this is something that I have learned on cases that I’ve personally worked, both in the lab as well as cold cases, is that I do not rely upon what was done in 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, even recently. I want everything revisited because I have seen labs miss. Analysts miss evidence. And some of it has to do just with the change in technology over time. Some of it has to do with laziness, some of it has to do with–

 It can be really hard to find DNA evidence, especially on a larger item like the dress or imagine a king size comforter and you’re looking for a little drip on there. And so, Fort Worth PD sent Carla’s clothing as well as some other items to Serological Research Institute out in the Bay Area. This is a private lab that I have great familiarity with and they deploy a broader set of screening methodologies than many of the law-enforcement based laboratories. And it’s just unfortunate across the nation that forensic labs have dropped some of the screening methodologies to help find potential DNA evidence.

 Most notably, I rarely see law-enforcement based labs today utilizing what’s called an acid phosphatase mapping technique. Acid phosphatase is an enzyme that is found in higher concentrations in semen and can be used to try to locate semen stains. And it’s a mapping technique where if I’m, let’s say, have a bed sheet, in essence, I grid that bed sheet and then I have big square pieces of filter paper that get moistened and then pressed down for a period of time on each of these grids. And then I can take that filter paper, hang it up in a fume hood and spray it with a chemical. And this chemical turns a color wherever there’s this acid phosphatase. So now if I get a brownish purple reaction on this filter paper, I can go back to that location on the bedsheet and go right here, I’ve got potentially semen stain. Labs aren’t doing this technique anymore. And they say, “Well, we screen it with an alternate light source,” which you talked about your blue light. But today there’s many different wavelengths that can be used.

 I’ve personally seen alternate light sources miss semen stains. And I found them utilizing this acid phosphatase mapping technique. So, when I consult on a case. I don’t want to read a lab report and they say “No semen found.” I want to know, “Well, how did you look for it?” And part of the issue that I’m running into is labs don’t like to share their notes anymore. [laughs]

Dan:  Oh boy. Dave and I have experience in that.

Yeardley:  And why is that? Aren’t we all going for the same goal?

Dave:  I will say, in addition to what Paul was saying about laziness, there’s all sorts of factors. I admit. Labs are completely overwhelmed with case submissions. I mean, it’s every day. I can’t imagine being in a lab because it’s from everywhere. You’re getting hit from all sides. I would submit a rape kit for analysis at the lab. And I know that that’s going to take months. After about four or five months, you get an email from the analyst in the lab who says, “Hey, can you send me the reports? I need to know why you want this checked for this.” And I’m like, “No, that’s not how I want this to work. I want you to tell me if there’s evidence present. I want you to go about it like Paul does.”

Yeardley:  You don’t want confirmation bias playing into this analysis.

Dave:  Exactly. And this was an ongoing issue that I had, especially in sexual assault cases where I was fighting with labs about why I put on my lab request, I want you to test this for this. And I’m not trying to hammer lab folks. I’m just saying from a law enforcement perspective, that can be really frustrating.

Paul:  Just like in any occupation, you have a spectrum of competence, a spectrum of effort. And then there’s also just sometimes, as Dave mentioned, the volume of casework. The analysts are essentially, “I’ve got this evidence. I’m doing my approved procedures. I either find DNA-containing evidence or no DNA, move on to the next case.” And what often happens is with this one-pass mindset, they get a sample that gives them, let’s say, a partial DNA profile. Well, they report out that partial DNA profile. But don’t go back to the original item of evidence and say, “Well, maybe if I take a cutting or a swabbing just to the left or right of where I initially sampled, there might be more of that DNA there in higher concentrations, and I get a full profile.” But this is one of the reasons in Carla Walker’s case, after assessing what had been done, let’s redo everything.

[Break 3]

 So, all of this evidence, Carla Walker’s clothing items, get sent to SERI’s Serological Research Institute out in the Bay Area. And I requested, I want comprehensive testing done. So that happens. Now I’m out in Fort Worth and I am doing my investigation. Of course I want to talk to Rodney.

Yeardley:  Rodney, the boyfriend. Back to the boyfriend.

Paul:  Back to the boyfriend. Now we are talking– I mean, this is 1974 case and I’m looking at this case in 2019.

Yeardley:  I’m not sure Rodney really wants to talk to you about this or about it ever again.

Paul:  Rodney most certainly has been under suspicion for half century. And here I am coming in, kind of suspicious of Rodney too,-

[laughter]

Paul:  -right? And so it’s like, “Well, yeah, I want to interview him and so arrange a sit-down interview.” And this is in front of cameras.

Yeardley:  In front of television cameras or police interrogation cameras?

Paul:  This is in front of television cameras. So, this is being filmed for the show. And I asked Rodney to detail what happened that night that Carla went missing. And once again, some of the details of his original statements changed. And so I was going, “Okay, you know, half century has gone by, so you could see where memories fade.” And I saw that some of Rodney’s memories of what happened that night had faded. And I thought, well, I want to do more of a cognitive type of interview and put Rodney inside his vehicle. Having a production company backing something like this type of investigation, they go out and they find that same make model car of that vintage.

Yeardley:  Really?

Paul:  And so we end up taking it out to the bowling alley parking lot and place it approximately where Rodney remembered he had parked that night for Carla to go in and use the restroom. And so now it’s like, “Okay, Rodney, you’re inside this vehicle.” He’s surrounded by the environment of what happened back in February of 1974. And I had a co-host with me, Loni Coombs. Loni is a former Los Angeles DA whole has been on numerous true crime shows and I used her for multiple cases for DNA of Murder.

 And Loni and I just clicked. We not only got along very well, she complimented my skill set. I’m a big picture guy. Loni is so detail oriented and she’s so good at doing interviews. So, we would be sitting down and interviewing family, friends, etc., and Loni will be taking notes. And then she’ll slide it over to me and tap on the notepad and say, “Make sure you ask this question.”

[laughter]

Yeardley:  That’s the kind of collaboration you want in an investigation of any size.

Paul:  Absolutely. And two different skill sets. Loni has that legal mind, and of course, I have the forensic background, the investigative background. And so, when Loni and I were talking about Rodney and I was bringing up. I am very suspicious about Rodney’s claim of he was unconscious and laid inside this vehicle for a period of time. I don’t see a blood pool. And then how come I’ve got blood drops all the way over on Carla’s side of the front seat and down where the seat belt, mechanism would be? It’s like he’s over on that side bleeding–

Yeardley:  Well, let me ask you this. What if as he passes out, he falls over and his head is now where Carla was sitting?

Paul:  That’s where being inside this replica vehicle really showed physically that would not happen. And so now my theory was, well, Rodney has an hour and a half after Carla was supposedly abducted before he shows up at Carla’s parents’ house. Well, that’s enough time to get down to the cow culvert, put Carla’s body in that culvert, through the barbed wire and across the cement, and then drive back. And so, I’m thinking, well, Rodney is pulling Carla’s body out of the front of the vehicle and that’s why he’s on that side of the vehicle and dripping blood down. And this scratch underneath Rodney’s eye, I was going, how does that happen during a pistol whipping? That’s more like he got hit with a barb from the barbed wire, like he’s trying to get through the barbed wire.

 And I went and interviewed a Dallas pathologist who looked at that and said, “Yeah, that’s more consistent with a pointed object scraping along his cheek.” So, I’ve got some concerns. And so now I’m thinking Rodney actually is the one that he sexually assaulted and strangled and dumped Carla’s body. So, getting back to now, doing more of this cognitive interview of Rodney, reenact what’s happened. And Rodney walks Loni and I through what happened.

Yeardley:  Paul, I’m curious when Rodney agrees to come on the DNA of Murder and sit down with you and have an interview and also do this reenactment in the car that they procured to set the scene, what’s his affect or what’s his intention? “I’m here to once again clear my name. I’m here to prove something.” I’m just sort of curious if he was at all defensive or just kind of, “I’m going to tell you everything I know.”

Paul:  So, when I was interviewing Rodney, both for the sit-down interview as well as inside the simulated car, he was cooperative. I didn’t get any sense of nervousness on his part. Did not seem evasive in answering any of the questions that I asked of him. So, he’s checking the boxes, that he’s just trying to cooperate and provide the best information he can. It’s just my perspective is, “Well, I know what his prior statements are. Now he’s telling me something that there’s details that are different.” So, it just– That’s really where I was putting some weight on, is at a certain point, I would think that he would have locked his statement in, and it just continued to evolve.

 Loni had told me ahead of time, “I’m not getting any bad vibes about Rodney. I don’t think he’s involved in Carla’s death. I think he’s telling the truth.” And then as Rodney is reenacting what he did, one of the things that he started showing us, Loni and I, is that when he was driving, the front passenger door hadn’t been shut. And so, when he took a turn, it kind of swung out wide, so he reached over while he was driving in order to pull the car door shut. And when he reenacted that that would put his head over the location where I had concerns about the blood drips and the smear. And Loni looked at me and was like, “See, I told you.”

[laughter]

[1] And here I am, the blood pattern expert. [laughter]

Yeardley:  But it makes sense. So, you’re saying, Paul, that after Carla’s abducted, the door is not shut completely. So, when Rodney does finally drive away and he makes his turn, the door swings open, and that’s why his blood is over there.

Paul:  That’s it.

Yeardley:  But how? — I mean, even the best blood spatter analyst wouldn’t necessarily infer that scenario, that’s pretty awesome.

Dave:  Actually, I thought about it the whole time, and I’ve got quite a history of blood analysis.

Paul:  And part of interpreting blood patterns, it’s more of, “Okay, I can tell what type of pattern I have. I have a drip. I have a smear.” So, if I have a drip that’s, let’s say, completely perpendicular, it fell straight down, “Oh, I have a bleeding source above that location. I can’t say, well, this is what that person was doing,” in terms of formal blood pattern interpretation, but investigatively, I’m going, “Well, this adds up with Rodney being over on that side of the vehicle pulling Carla’s body out to dispose of it.” Turns out I was wrong about that. I can’t draw that conclusion. But then I also have this scratch, and we have this magazine from a .22 caliber Ruger.

 So, I reached out to a former firearms examiner that I worked with that I actually had hired for the lab that I worked for. His name was Chris Coleman. And so, he brought that type of Ruger, and he also brought some pigskin. And Chris knows his guns. And he said this particular model of Ruger has a very sharp front sight. So, by using pigskin over, like, I think it was a volleyball or something, he was showing how during a pistol whipping, if the front sight had hit this part of Rodney’s face, it could cause that type of injury.

Yeardley:  No kidding.

Paul:  Okay, so now I can’t say that Rodney got that injury from the barbed wire out there at the cow culvert.

Yeardley:  Wow. Wow, wow. So here you are, Paul, 50 years later, finally lifting the cloud of suspicion on Rodney because it seems like he really didn’t do it.

Paul:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  That is incredible. Let’s put a pin in this right here and come back next week to answer the question. “Who killed Carla Walker?”

[music]

 Small Town Dicks was created by detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin, and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps.

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