November 30, 2022 • 39 mins
A man has finally been convicted for the murder of Rebekah Gould. But his confession leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Catherine Townsend attends a pre-trial hearing, seeing photos of the crime scene and Rebekah’s autopsy for the first time, and talks to investigator Jennifer Bucholtz.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, Helen Gone listeners. We are so excited to share
these case updates with you. Did you know that you
can hear this bonus episode plus three more, completely ad
free and before everyone else in the I Heart True
Crime Plus channel, exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Don't wait weeks
for the new episode. Subscribe today to get early access
to all the available case updates with no ads. Subscribe
(00:23):
to Helen Gone on the I Heart True Crime Plus
Channel today, exclusively available on Apple Podcasts. I am driving
from my dad's house in Mountain View to Melbourne down
(00:46):
Highway nine. This will be the first time that I've
been on Highway nine in quite a while. The drive
has not gotten any easier. It is a rough drive.
It's really curvy. It's almost like as soon as you
cross over the bridge says sharp curves for the next
twenty miles and you have to really concentrate and there's
no shoulder and the road gets really skinny. So I
(01:08):
find the drive, even in the daytime, um a little sketchy,
even more so at night. So I'm driving to the
pre trial hearing. So far there's been a hearing for
emotion to suppress Billy Miller's confession and that was denied.
This is the pre trial hearing. I have no idea
(01:30):
what they're gonna be covering. Um, I'm just gonna show
up and see what I find. I don't know how
many people are gonna be there. I just I don't
know anything. I'm just gonna go in blind and see
what happens. The last time I drove this specific route
(01:50):
down Highway nine was four years ago. At that time,
I drove from Mountain View and went to a specific
outlook about five miles from Melbourne. It's a scenic beauty spot,
but it's also a place where some people stopped to
dump trash. I went there because more than eighteen years ago,
this is the place where police found the body of
(02:11):
twenty two year old Rebecca Gold. Rebecca Gould disappeared on
September twenty one, two thousand four. All I knew about
the case at the time was what I read in
the papers that on the day before, on the morning
of September two thousand four, she dropped her boyfriend, Casey
McCullough off at work at Sonic. After that, Rebecca stopped
(02:34):
at a gas station called the Possum Trot to buy
a breakfast sandwich and coffee, then she went back to
Casey's trailer to pack her stuff. Rebecca's life was in transition.
She had just enrolled at a college in Fayetteville and
moved into an apartment there with her sister, Danielle. She
was supposed to pick Danielle up that morning so that
(02:55):
they could drive back to school together, but Rebecca never
showed up up. Danielle spent the day frantically calling her friends,
but no one had seen Rebecca, and the next day,
Rebecca was officially reported missing. At Casey's trailer where she
was staying. Law enforcement found blood everywhere on the mattress,
(03:17):
in the carpets, and in the washing machine, but Rebecca
was gone. It was a week later when searchers found
her body in that embankment off Highway nine. She was
still wearing her cropped black T shirt with the word
music printed on it in rhinestone's and her underwear. Her
body was badly decomposed. For the next eighteen years, Rebecca's
(03:43):
case would be one of the most notorious cold cases
in the state of Arkansas. I had followed Rebecca's case
for years. I'm from Arkansas and my younger sister, Caroline
was very good friends with Rebecca's baby sister, Danielle. They
went to high school together, and my dad and my
sister still live in Mountain View. That's in Stone County,
(04:05):
which is right next to Iszard County where Rebecca was murdered.
And in two thousand eighteen, I showed up with a
couple of producers to make a podcast that became the
first season of Helen Gone. By the end of the season,
I believed that the lead Arkansas State Police investigator, whose
name was Dennis Simmons, was doing nothing to investigate the
(04:27):
case and that he was fixated on someone else, a
guy named Chris Kntrell, who had nothing to do with
the murder. The crime scene indicated that Rebecca was murdered
in Casey's trailer and then her killer or killers took
her body out and dumped it by the side of
the road where it was found. Based on that crime
(04:47):
scene and interviews with witnesses, I developed a theory. I
believed that either Casey McCullough or someone connected to Casey
McCullough or his family had something to do with it.
But because I thought that anyone who would bother to
clean up that crime scene would have to have a
reason for doing it. In January of two thousand twenty,
(05:09):
a new lead investigator named Mike McNeil was assigned to
the case. He called me in early two thousand twenty
and said he'd heard I had some audio. He wanted
us to send it to him, And over the next
several months there seemed to be renewed interest in the case.
Journalist and true crime author George Jared and Jennifer Buckle's,
(05:31):
a private investigator and professor of criminology, started a Facebook
group called Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gold. And then in
November of two thousand twenty, we got the news that
we've been waiting for for so long. There had finally
been an arrest. The man who was arrested was forty
four year old William Miller, and he goes by Billy.
(05:53):
He's Casey McCullough's first cousin. Now that Billy has been caught,
we're beginning to answer a lot of the questions we've
had for so many years about Rebecca's case. New information
has been revealed, and some parts of the story aren't
adding up. I still have a lot of unanswered questions,
(06:13):
and I made a promise to Rebecca and to all
of you in the first season that I wouldn't stop
until I did my best to get justice and answers
for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend, and in these bonus episodes
for season one, I'm gonna walk you through everything that's
happened in the past few months and figure out what's missing.
(06:34):
This is Helen Gone. First, let's go through Billy Miller's confession.
(07:12):
We learned that Billy had been in the Mountain View
area for a brief period of time visiting family. He
claimed that he was helping his mom and brother Jeremy,
moved from Arkansas back to Texas. If you remember, on
season one of Helen Gone, we talked to someone who
said they had seen a man, a white man with
a darker complexion and black hair, a man who matches
(07:34):
Billy's description with a woman at Casey's trailer talking to
Rebecca and then weed eating, and that witness said that
Rebecca seemed comfortable and that the man they saw was
talking to Rebecca for about twenty minutes. The witness said
the man was driving a blue car with Texas plates.
After Rebecca's murder. Billy Miller left town with his family
(07:56):
and never came back to Arkansas. He spent some time
living into Texas. Then he got married and started a
family of his own. Later, he moved to the Philippines,
where he worked on oil rigs. His first marriage ended
and he married for a second time. His new wife
was from the Philippines. They had another child. Meanwhile, Mike
(08:17):
McNeil had taken another look at the case. He testified
at a pre trial hearing that when he looked at
Rebecca's case file, he stated that based on the evidence
he saw, he believed that either Casey McCullough or someone
connected to him committed the murder. Mike noticed that Billy
had been interviewed in two thousand four briefly by some
(08:39):
investigators in Texas, but based on the fact that Billy
had been mentioned as someone who was present in Casey's
trailer shortly before Rebecca was murdered, Mike decided to take
another look at him. Mike testified that when he saw
that Billy had allegations of violence and sexual assault in
his past, he became more interested in him as a suspect,
(09:01):
and he decided that he wanted to interview him. Mike
learned that Billy had come back to where some of
his family members were living in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Sources
close to his family have told me that Billy was
planning to relocate his family there from the Philippines, and
he was looking at buying property in that area. In
November of two thousand twenty, investigator Mike McNeil made a
(09:25):
trip to Cottage Grove, Oregon to interview Billy. During that interview,
Mike told Billy that he had a wash rag from
the crime scene, one that had DNA on it. In reality,
Mike had no physical evidence, but Billy didn't know that,
and it's not illegal to lie to murder suspects. Billy
(09:45):
tried to make up a story about seeing two strange
men on the back porch of the trailer on the
morning when Rebecca was murdered, but Mike McNeil was clearly
not buying Billy's story. He said, quote, what you saying
is ridiculous. Tell me what you did, Billy, or tell
me how you helped Casey cover it up. At that point,
(10:07):
Billy looked visibly shaken on the video. He asked if
he could step outside of the room to talk to
his mother, and when he came back into the room,
he started talking. Billy said that he committed the murder alone.
He said that he killed Rebecca and that he had
played everyone for a fool all these years. Billy never
(10:30):
really offered a motive for killing Rebecca, but he did
say at one point, I am a monster. Billy said
that on that Monday morning, September four, after Rebecca dropped
Casey off at work at Sonic and went back to
his trailer, he happened to be hunting in an adjacent
field near the mcculla's land. He said that he saw
(10:53):
her car and realized that she was in there. He
said that on Sunday, he and his mother and his brother,
we're getting ready to move back to Texas, and they
went over to see Casey. While he was there on Sunday,
he saw Rebecca, but he didn't actually talk to her.
So Billy said that that Monday morning when he came
to the trailer was the first time that he'd ever
(11:15):
actually had an encounter with her. Billy said that he
hid his truck in the woods to disguise it. Then
he walked up to the door and knocked. Rebecca let
him in. He told her he was Casey's cousin and
he needed to use the phone. Billy said that the
phone excuse was really just a pretext to get inside
the house. After that, Rebecca turned around and went back
(11:37):
to the bedroom. He said she was lying on her
bed with her head facing away from the door, and
Billy said that he got an urge, an overwhelming urge
to kill her. He said that he'd had these kinds
of urges before. He was pacing around like an animal,
in this kind of murderous frenzy, debating what to do.
While he was pacing, his leg knocked again the piano.
(12:01):
The piano leg was loose, It had kind of just
been propped up there. Billy said, it rolled down and
he grabbed it. Then he said he went inside that
bedroom and he hit Rebecca. He hit her twice, and
at that point the injuries were catastrophic and she was
bleeding out. He said that he took a necktie from
(12:23):
the closet and strangled her until she stopped moving. After that,
he was in a panic. He decided to do a
quick cleanup. He cleaned up for about fifteen minutes. Then
he said he threw the bloody sheets and the pillow
cases into the washing machine. Billy said that he tried
to stuff Rebecca's body into her black suitcase, the one
(12:44):
that Danielle, her sister, had told us was missing from
the crime scene, the one that was never found. But
Billy said that the body wouldn't fit, so he said
that he took some of the bloody betting material and
put that in the suitcase. Then he threw her body,
along with all that stuff, into the back of his truck.
Billy said that he drove right through Melbourne with Rebecca's
(13:06):
body exposed in the back of the truck. He pointed
out the fact that he had passed very close to
the turn off to the police department, and then when
he got to Highway nine, to that scenic overlook, he
pulled off the side of the road and dumped her body.
After that, he put the piano leg the murder weapon,
in a trash can at a nearby car wash. When
(13:29):
police asked about the black suitcase, he told them he
could direct them to the exact place in Izard County
where that suitcase was. According to information that came out
during the pre trial hearing, police officers did follow Billy's
directions and they found the suitcase, but they did not
provide any information about where it was found or what
(13:50):
was inside. After Billy confessed, he was arrested for Rebecca's murder. Eventually,
he was extradited back to Arkansas. Since November two thousand twenty,
he's been in jail awaiting his murder trial, but due
to COVID and other issues, the trial date kept getting
pushed back. The date was finally set for October thirty one,
(14:12):
two thousand twenty two, but before the trial, there were
some hearings. First, there was a suppression hearing to determine
which evidence would be allowed in court. The first hearing
was in August of two thousand twenty two, and at
that hearing, Billy's confession was played and the judge ruled
that it was admissible. Billy's confession was played for a
(14:34):
room full of reporters, family members, and people who had
been following this case for years. I really was worried
about seeing him because of what he did, but one
I remember seeing his mug shot and thinking how cruel
and awful he looked. And everything then got into trial.
(14:57):
They hading dressed in khaki and then nice navy's shirt
and tie, and I thought, no way, no way. I
looked Attie like, how could you do something this cruel?
This is Diana Cox. She's a resident of mountain View, Arkansas.
Diana and her sister Karen have been attending all the
(15:19):
suppression hearings of William Miller because they, like so many
residents of mountain View and Melbourne, are highly invested in
Rebecca's case. Diane is active in George Jared and Jennifer
Buckolets his Facebook group. She keeps up to date with
all the new information coming out of Iszard County. I
also found out that Diana's late husband, Junior, was very
good friends with my dad. They grew up together in Alzheimer, Arkansas. So,
(15:43):
as it turns out, I've been hearing stories about Diana
for years, and it was great to finally be able
to put a name to the face and to meet
someone else who cared so much about Rebecca and her case.
My name is Diana Cox, and I got involved in
this when Catherine came out with The Hell and Gone.
I had never listened to any podcast before, but this
(16:06):
seemed to be a big interest and everybody got so
excited over it. So that's how I got interested, and
I'm still interested. I love it, and I think my
sister and I missed our calling of being detectives. But anyway,
what's what do you mean? It's too late. Diana and
Karen were at the suppression hearing back in August, and
(16:27):
she told me about her impressions of Billy's confession video
when he finally said I did it. I killed her.
Nobody else knows. Nobody else was involved. This is what
he said. That's nobody else but me and Catherine. It
was kind of like, in a way he was reading
(16:50):
like what we have read on different things, you know,
on our website and things like that. It was like
kind of like he was reading it. I don't know
what what it was about it. Well, um, that was crazy.
(17:16):
So I just got back from the pre trial hearing
I found out there was a ton of wow. It
was just it was pretty incredible. On October three, two two,
I traveled back to Arkansas to attend the pre trial hearings.
That's where I met Diana. On that day, the judge
would be deciding which autopsy photos and crime scene photos
(17:40):
would be allowed into evidence, and I wanted to be there.
It was really important that I was at this pre trial.
To my knowledge, I was the only journalist there, and
if the photos were ruled inadmissible or for some other
reason the trial didn't happen, this could be my only
chance to ever see photo of what Rebecca's body looked
(18:01):
like and what the crime scenemed looked like. We weren't
allowed to record inside, so it was just me and
my notebook for hours. So here's what happened. First, I
(18:22):
saw Billy Miller in person for the first time. It
turned out that instead of having the hearing in the
main Iszard County Courthouse, it was held in the Izard
County District Court, which is basically a tiny room inside
the sheriff station. I got very up close and personal
with Billy Miller. He was sitting right in front of me,
unto the left, about five ft away from me. He
(18:45):
did not look like a psychotic killer. In fact, he
looked utterly forgettable, which might be one of the scariest
things about him. He didn't say anything during the pre trial.
He had several lawyers, and they were challenging the admissibility
of some of the autopsy photos, arguing that they were inflammatory,
and they were also trying to get some of the
(19:06):
crime scene photos which were taken at Casey's trailer thrown out.
The autopsy photos have never been seen by the public.
Before they started showing the photos, the judge said, if
you don't have to be here, you can leave the
room now. I'd seen diagrams of Rebecca's autopsy, but this
(19:28):
was the first time I actually saw what she looked
like when she was found. They started showing the photos,
they flipped through them rapidly, so we only had a
few seconds to see each one. From what I could tell,
if you're looking at Rebecca's body from above, she seemed
(19:49):
to be kind of crouched down. Her legs were apart
and what I would call almost like a frog position
when your legs are splayed out. To me, it looked
like the killer had dumped her down that embankment on
Highway nine. It looked like she could have tumbled over
a few times and then landed in that position, stuck
between two trees. On one side of her body. From
(20:12):
a certain angle, you could see hair hanging down across
her face, and there was some skin remaining, but Once
the body was turned over on the autopsy table upright,
you could see that there was hardly anything left. Rebecca's
body was in much worse shape than I ever could
have imagined. I was shocked at the level of decomposition
(20:34):
that the Arkansas, Indian summer causes, and I think it's
really important to understand how decomposed she was, because looking
at it as someone without medical training, I would have
thought she'd been out there for a month. She had
almost no skin. She was a skeleton. I'm really glad
(21:04):
that Rebecca's dad, Larry, and the rest of her family
were not present at that hearing, because no parents should
ever have to see that. But I looked at every
single autopsy photo because I believe that I owe that
to Rebecca. As an investigator, that was my responsibility. Then
(21:28):
we got to the photos of the crime scene. Those
were also a little shocking for different reasons, because a
lot of what we had been told about the crime scene,
things that have been reported in the paper, we're actually wrong.
And this was the first chance that I ever had
to look at that and to figure it out. We've
been told that the first officer on the scene back
(21:49):
in two thousand four was Charlie Melton. He was the
police officer who came into the trailer with Casey, and
he supposedly secured the scene after that. Now, presumably that
would mean that nothing was moved in there before those
photos were taken, but other sources have told me that
there were multiple people at the crime scene, so I
just don't want to totally discount the possibility that law
(22:12):
enforcement or someone else could have moved some of those
things around before they were photographed. There were about thirty
photographs and all, and because they were just showing them
to see if they could be admissible in court, it
took a few minutes to present them. All the lawyers
and judges briefly discussed each one, which is why I
(22:33):
called up Diana afterwards. I wanted to see if she
remembered the same things as I did, just because we
had to view them so quickly and we were all
trying to take notes. First, I wanted to address the
mattress because since the beginning of this case, we've been
hearing about this blood soaked mattress. I pictured the mattress
(22:55):
to really have a lot of blood on it, but
there was only as we're looking at the mattress on
the right top corner was a pool of blood or
a big blood stain about the size of a basketball.
That was about it. And did you notice the stuff
under the bed the pillows, Yes, okay, I remember the
(23:16):
picture that they were stuffed under the side of the
bed and you could see blood. It wasn't a lot
of blood on them, but it was spotted blood on them,
and they were stuffed under the under the bed, just
stuffed right there. Evidently whoever stripped the bed or whatever
they done, they forgot about the pillows. That makes sense.
(23:38):
So like they stripped the bed and through it in
the washing machine, but they forgot about the actual pillows. Yeah, exactly.
And what do you remember about the washing machine? The
first picture that I remember saying was really bloody water.
And then in that thing like up on top of
your washing machine that you put bleach in, it was bloody.
(23:58):
It was real old bloody. What do you remember about
the suitcases? Okay, whenever they were scanning around the room,
there was two suitcases sitting up against the wall. They
were kind of a bluish color, and there were two
of them. Like the suitcases you pull around got the
wheels on it. There was two of them, and that
(24:21):
really caught my eye. The suitcases, because all we've talked about,
or anybody's talked about, is the black suitcase. That was
you know, Rebecca's supposedly Rebecca's right. What about what do
you remember about the interior, Well, it was you know,
like the bathroom was very neat clean. What stood out
(24:46):
to me was all those cleaning supplies, paper towel and
stuff like that. I think it was on a table
or a bar or something that stood out to me,
all the cleaning stuff. I was real focused on the
cleaning products too. Yes, they really stood out. There was
a lot of cleaning products on the table or whatever
it was. Um and also you I think you were
(25:08):
telling me that that you didn't notice any folded clothes, right,
because we've been talking about how that the clothes like
they were supposedly clothes folded on the bed, which was
the reason that like he I guess presumably someone took
him out of the suitcase, put him on the bed,
and then either put her or put other stuff in
the suitcase. Yes, that that was one thing that that
(25:28):
we've heard that her clothes were neatly stacked on the mattress. Well,
there was nothing on the mattress, you know the pictures
that we saw. There was nothing on the mattress, no
clothes anywhere that I saw. And you know, that was
one of the things, wasn't it that they talked about?
But I did not say that at all. And also
(25:50):
did you notice the the bloodstains in the living room, Yes,
on the wall and baseboard, yeah, and the carpet too,
But I couldn't tell whether I think it was the
living room, Yes, yes it was. I wonder if that
was maybe tracked the way the door the way I understand,
he wouldn't have had to gone in the living room
(26:11):
to take her out the back right exactly the trailer
was made, you know, the back door and and everything.
So was did he track it in there or what? Yeah?
And they also said that they originally that the police
were saying the fight started in the kitchen or it
started in the in that area, and then that's also
(26:33):
kind of what my witness had said. But then like
I don't I don't think any of the evidence I
saw points to the fight starting in the bedroom. It
looks like something happened on that carpet outside. What do
you remember about the porch. I remember the porch was
empty all but that they call it a thumper or
(26:54):
a tire checker. It was that, Yes, I remember that
was it. But I remember sin faint blood like a drag,
and I do remember that on the porch, and then
two spots of blood on the steps. Did you notice
he seemed to me really looking at the not the
autopsy photos, but all the crime scene photos crime scene.
(27:15):
He looked at all the crime scene. He did not
look at us autopsy at all. And I wish they
had made him look at him. I wish they had
made him look up there at it. But he hung
his head the whole time. But yeah, he really watched
the crime scene, all of them. But I tell you
what those crime scene Catherine. Really it was kind of
like a question to me on some of the stuff
(27:37):
where it was. Yeah, and then William. That was also
one of the things that was weird to me about
his confession. He's he mentioned everything that was online. So
it's just the whole thing is very strange to me. Yes,
it is. It's very strange. Just like I told you
start with, it was like he was reading some of
the things that he had heard or read before you know,
(27:59):
on on on how that some of the things that
come out that how she was or around this and that.
But it was to me, I don't know, he I
don't know. It's it was a very strange confession. Honestly,
after seeing the crime scene photos, I have more questions
(28:19):
than ever because it does seem like a lot of
the things that Billy Miller confessed to are true. But
there's a piece missing and I'm not sure what it
is yet. Maybe someone else let him into that trailer,
or maybe someone else struck the first blow and Billy
finished it off and cleaned up. Maybe he's covering for
someone else, perhaps one of his family members was there
(28:41):
at the time. I absolutely believe that he had a
role in killing Rebecca, but I don't think he did
the whole thing on his own. It's illogical that William
did this in I'll vacuum, you know, completely by himself.
This is Jennifer Buckles. She's a criminal investigator and professor
(29:05):
of forensics. After she listened to Helen Gone, she got
interested in Rebecca's case. Later, she contacted Rebecca's father, Dr.
Larry Gold and George shared. Since then, Jennifer and George
have worked on a lot of cases together. They also
started a Facebook group, Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gold, where
(29:26):
they tried to use crowdsourcing to help get information and
leads on Rebecca's case. The couple of aspects of Rebecca's
case that really caught my attention and that I thought
I hadn't been considered or given any attention by law
enforcement is the fact that her body was removed from
the crime scene to a secondary location and someone had
tried to clean the scene. And those actions are super rare,
(29:50):
like most killers just don't do that. They usually des
grabbed the weapon and they sleeve the scene. And so
that immediately told me like, it's got to be someone
who has like a known connection to her and that residents.
The other thing that stuck out to her was the
road back Casey's. You know, there's a road that leads
basically from Casey's property to where Rebecca was found, and
(30:13):
I think there's been like a little mentioned about through
the years, but it seemed like the prevailing theory is
that the killer like took pavement, either went up and
around through Melbourne or went down and around through a
mountain view which never made sense to me because usually
a person like they want to have a dead body
in their car for the least amount of time possible,
so obviously, like there's an alternate route that doesn't take
(30:33):
your own pavement that's rarely traveled, and you know law enforcement,
like there's not gonna be any cops out there, that
would be the logical route to take. So then it
occurred to us, well, assuming they took that that throw
it says to be someone either local to the area
or who has spent a decent amount of time in
the area. So again, it's just like the evidence has
(30:55):
kept kind of pointing to someone with a personal relationship
or connection to Rebecca. Another weird thing about Billy is
that before he was arrested, he actually reached out to
me and also to Jennifer. He called me while I
(31:16):
was staying at my grandmother's cabin by myself in the
middle of nowhere, I was getting multiple calls a day
about people of interest, and a lot of them turned
out to be people whose names were being whispered around
town because they knew Rebecca, but who had nothing to
do with her murder. To the best of my recollection,
Billy told me some coworkers of his had been talking
(31:38):
about people and had mentioned the names Chris and Jennifer.
But again, at the time, a lot of people were
calling me and had stuff to say about Chris and Jennifer,
So nothing that Billy Miller said particularly stuck out, at
least until afterwards, when I realized how creepy it was
that the person who confessed to killing Rebecca called me
in a remote location and presuming when you knew exactly
(32:00):
where I was. Billy also made contact with Jennifer by
reaching out on the Facebook group that she and George
Jared had started to help their investigation, and we started
out in October and within a month a guy named
William Miller joined the group, and thankfully due to a
(32:21):
woman named Miranda who had dated Casey for a year
and a half, she had mapped his whole family tree
for us, and so when that request to join came in,
She's like, that's Casey's cousins. I'm like, well, that's interesting.
Then he maybe he lurked around for a month or so.
I think it was towards the end of eighteen is
when he started making comments on some of the posts,
(32:44):
But you know, like aside from being Casey's cousin, there
wasn't really any other red flags to his comments. I mean,
he was throwing ideas out just like everybody else. We
just thought that, I mean, most people probably know about
My theory is that, well, he thinks we don't know
who he is, so he is in the group to
spy for Casey and his family. Right, there were definitely people,
(33:07):
There are people doing that. There's always spies. Yeah, and
that's fine. I mean, yeah, we want the killer to
know what's going on. Yeah, we want them to see
what's in our group, and we want them to stay
on edge so that we don't That's fine. And then yeah, January,
which ironically is Casey's birthday, William Villari sent me the
first message, like a direct message to me, and he
(33:31):
had sent me a photo of a newspaper article, the
one that says a neighborhood heard screams in the hours
before the murder or something like that, and he had
asked if I'd seen the article, what did I think?
You know? And so, Mike, this is interesting because I'm
talking to Casey's cousin now, and so I just wrote
back like normal, you know, I'm like, thanks for reaching out.
(33:53):
I appreciate you, know, your insight, your thought process. You know,
we do know that that report from a neighbor was
made to police, but we don't know the timeframe, like
police have not ever divulged what time they heard the screen,
So it's hard for us to put much stock in
that or use it at this point, you know. And
so it's been from there on out. We just went
back and forth periodically, and he would ask a lot
(34:16):
of the same questions that tons of other people asked,
and he might have been digging a little bit, I'm sure,
you know, to try to get our viewpoint on stuff,
but it was really it's fairly benign. Obviously. I've read
them over and over and over again, now like did
I miss something? And I don't really feel I do.
I did. But there's a few things that he was
he had more focused on than others, and one was
(34:38):
the timeline, like the actual timeframe of when Rebecca was killed.
He told me on multiple occasions like I'm trying to
do what you do and put together the timeline of how,
how and when the murder actually went down. And he
talked several times about the maybe the person who cleaned
up ward gloves and now you know, I'm kind of
(34:58):
like that might have been true, but there wasn't, like,
you know, any huge red flag. And then the last
conversation we had was, I think it was September. He
had posted a photo in our group of Chris Cantrell
and so something about his tear drop tattoos must mean
he committed a murder. Remember that. So and I we
(35:20):
rarely removed posts, but that one had come down. And
then I messaged him, I'm like, no, we can't have
people posting photos and pointing the finger at someone who,
as far as we know, has no connection to this case,
So please don't do that. And you know, he apologized,
And that was really our last exchange, which makes sense
because that's when Mike McNeil was onto him. When I
(35:41):
was talking with Diana, we both said it seemed that
Billy was studying those crom scene photos, almost like he
was taking notes on them. Jennifer got a similar impression
from him when he first read his confession. In fact,
some of his quotes almost seemed like he took them
straight from George, because specifically the one where he said
(36:02):
he drove with her body right through Melbourne past the
Sheriff's department. I'm like, that's something Georgia said. Are written
like and and and we never believed that anyways, he
did not drive your downtown Melbourne with a dead body
in the open bet of your pickup truck, like nobody
would do that. He's wording what really? And look, I
mean if it was if I really believe that it
(36:24):
was only him, I would be a lot happier right now,
you know, because it'd be like, oh, justice is served.
But I feel like, um, when I read the confession,
I had exactly the same thought. I was like, this,
this feels like he's been reading stuff online or something
and took it from there. It was really strange, yes,
and some of it just it just couldn't be like
he I guess. He said something about like he went
(36:46):
hunting early in the morning and he knocked on Rebucca's
door about eight. Well, Rebucca is supposed to be taking
Casey to work at that time, like he but Casey
clapped into twelves. She wouldn't have been home at n talk,
so that it can't be true. But then he said,
like he committed the removal, he clean did all his cleaning,
and then he went back to his mom's house, and
(37:07):
they hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. Like your
your brother had to go to the high school. They
were certainly up by ten o'clock or whatever time in
the morning. So I then we knew some of that
just had to be a lie if there's other And
and the thing about his mom, I know there's been
a lot of speculation that she might have known something.
So I just wonder how much the mom knew and
when she knew it. What I've been told is that
(37:30):
they confirmed that she knew now that she knew her
son killed Rebecca. I don't know the timeframe for sure
of when she found that out, but what I've been
told is that she has known that information for quite
a while and obviously did nothing about it. Billy never
(37:55):
went to trial. On October nineteen, William Miller was convict
did a first degree murder and sentenced to forty years
in prison. Billy is now incarcerated with the Washita River
Correctional Unit in Malvern, Arkansas. After the conviction, Billy said
that he was willing to speak privately with Rebecca's dad,
(38:17):
Larry Gould, and her older sister Tiffany. So the three
of them went into a back room with a sheriff
station to talk in private. After about fifteen minutes, they
came out and according to Larry, the confession Billy gave
to him was totally different than the one that he
had made in court. If Billy has two different stories,
(38:39):
that must mean that he lied in one of them.
And if he lied before, what's to stop him from
lying again? What is Billy Miller hiding? I'm Katherine Townsend.
This is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of
(39:01):
School of Humans and I Heart Media. Our producer is
Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and
Elsie Crowley. Music is by Ben Tale Special thanks to
season one producers Taylor Church and James Morrison. School of
(39:31):
Humans
Hi, Helen Gone listeners. We are so excited to share
these case updates with you. Did you know that you
can hear this bonus episode plus three more, completely ad
free and before everyone else in the I Heart True
Crime Plus channel, exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Don't wait weeks
for the new episode. Subscribe today to get early access
to all the available case updates with no ads. Subscribe
(00:23):
to Helen Gone on the I Heart True Crime Plus
Channel today, exclusively available on Apple Podcasts. I am driving
from my dad's house in Mountain View to Melbourne down
(00:46):
Highway nine. This will be the first time that I've
been on Highway nine in quite a while. The drive
has not gotten any easier. It is a rough drive.
It's really curvy. It's almost like as soon as you
cross over the bridge says sharp curves for the next
twenty miles and you have to really concentrate and there's
no shoulder and the road gets really skinny. So I
(01:08):
find the drive, even in the daytime, um a little sketchy,
even more so at night. So I'm driving to the
pre trial hearing. So far there's been a hearing for
emotion to suppress Billy Miller's confession and that was denied.
This is the pre trial hearing. I have no idea
(01:30):
what they're gonna be covering. Um, I'm just gonna show
up and see what I find. I don't know how
many people are gonna be there. I just I don't
know anything. I'm just gonna go in blind and see
what happens. The last time I drove this specific route
(01:50):
down Highway nine was four years ago. At that time,
I drove from Mountain View and went to a specific
outlook about five miles from Melbourne. It's a scenic beauty spot,
but it's also a place where some people stopped to
dump trash. I went there because more than eighteen years ago,
this is the place where police found the body of
(02:11):
twenty two year old Rebecca Gold. Rebecca Gould disappeared on
September twenty one, two thousand four. All I knew about
the case at the time was what I read in
the papers that on the day before, on the morning
of September two thousand four, she dropped her boyfriend, Casey
McCullough off at work at Sonic. After that, Rebecca stopped
(02:34):
at a gas station called the Possum Trot to buy
a breakfast sandwich and coffee, then she went back to
Casey's trailer to pack her stuff. Rebecca's life was in transition.
She had just enrolled at a college in Fayetteville and
moved into an apartment there with her sister, Danielle. She
was supposed to pick Danielle up that morning so that
(02:55):
they could drive back to school together, but Rebecca never
showed up up. Danielle spent the day frantically calling her friends,
but no one had seen Rebecca, and the next day,
Rebecca was officially reported missing. At Casey's trailer where she
was staying. Law enforcement found blood everywhere on the mattress,
(03:17):
in the carpets, and in the washing machine, but Rebecca
was gone. It was a week later when searchers found
her body in that embankment off Highway nine. She was
still wearing her cropped black T shirt with the word
music printed on it in rhinestone's and her underwear. Her
body was badly decomposed. For the next eighteen years, Rebecca's
(03:43):
case would be one of the most notorious cold cases
in the state of Arkansas. I had followed Rebecca's case
for years. I'm from Arkansas and my younger sister, Caroline
was very good friends with Rebecca's baby sister, Danielle. They
went to high school together, and my dad and my
sister still live in Mountain View. That's in Stone County,
(04:05):
which is right next to Iszard County where Rebecca was murdered.
And in two thousand eighteen, I showed up with a
couple of producers to make a podcast that became the
first season of Helen Gone. By the end of the season,
I believed that the lead Arkansas State Police investigator, whose
name was Dennis Simmons, was doing nothing to investigate the
(04:27):
case and that he was fixated on someone else, a
guy named Chris Kntrell, who had nothing to do with
the murder. The crime scene indicated that Rebecca was murdered
in Casey's trailer and then her killer or killers took
her body out and dumped it by the side of
the road where it was found. Based on that crime
(04:47):
scene and interviews with witnesses, I developed a theory. I
believed that either Casey McCullough or someone connected to Casey
McCullough or his family had something to do with it.
But because I thought that anyone who would bother to
clean up that crime scene would have to have a
reason for doing it. In January of two thousand twenty,
(05:09):
a new lead investigator named Mike McNeil was assigned to
the case. He called me in early two thousand twenty
and said he'd heard I had some audio. He wanted
us to send it to him, And over the next
several months there seemed to be renewed interest in the case.
Journalist and true crime author George Jared and Jennifer Buckle's,
(05:31):
a private investigator and professor of criminology, started a Facebook
group called Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gold. And then in
November of two thousand twenty, we got the news that
we've been waiting for for so long. There had finally
been an arrest. The man who was arrested was forty
four year old William Miller, and he goes by Billy.
(05:53):
He's Casey McCullough's first cousin. Now that Billy has been caught,
we're beginning to answer a lot of the questions we've
had for so many years about Rebecca's case. New information
has been revealed, and some parts of the story aren't
adding up. I still have a lot of unanswered questions,
(06:13):
and I made a promise to Rebecca and to all
of you in the first season that I wouldn't stop
until I did my best to get justice and answers
for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend, and in these bonus episodes
for season one, I'm gonna walk you through everything that's
happened in the past few months and figure out what's missing.
(06:34):
This is Helen Gone. First, let's go through Billy Miller's confession.
(07:12):
We learned that Billy had been in the Mountain View
area for a brief period of time visiting family. He
claimed that he was helping his mom and brother Jeremy,
moved from Arkansas back to Texas. If you remember, on
season one of Helen Gone, we talked to someone who
said they had seen a man, a white man with
a darker complexion and black hair, a man who matches
(07:34):
Billy's description with a woman at Casey's trailer talking to
Rebecca and then weed eating, and that witness said that
Rebecca seemed comfortable and that the man they saw was
talking to Rebecca for about twenty minutes. The witness said
the man was driving a blue car with Texas plates.
After Rebecca's murder. Billy Miller left town with his family
(07:56):
and never came back to Arkansas. He spent some time
living into Texas. Then he got married and started a
family of his own. Later, he moved to the Philippines,
where he worked on oil rigs. His first marriage ended
and he married for a second time. His new wife
was from the Philippines. They had another child. Meanwhile, Mike
(08:17):
McNeil had taken another look at the case. He testified
at a pre trial hearing that when he looked at
Rebecca's case file, he stated that based on the evidence
he saw, he believed that either Casey McCullough or someone
connected to him committed the murder. Mike noticed that Billy
had been interviewed in two thousand four briefly by some
(08:39):
investigators in Texas, but based on the fact that Billy
had been mentioned as someone who was present in Casey's
trailer shortly before Rebecca was murdered, Mike decided to take
another look at him. Mike testified that when he saw
that Billy had allegations of violence and sexual assault in
his past, he became more interested in him as a suspect,
(09:01):
and he decided that he wanted to interview him. Mike
learned that Billy had come back to where some of
his family members were living in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Sources
close to his family have told me that Billy was
planning to relocate his family there from the Philippines, and
he was looking at buying property in that area. In
November of two thousand twenty, investigator Mike McNeil made a
(09:25):
trip to Cottage Grove, Oregon to interview Billy. During that interview,
Mike told Billy that he had a wash rag from
the crime scene, one that had DNA on it. In reality,
Mike had no physical evidence, but Billy didn't know that,
and it's not illegal to lie to murder suspects. Billy
(09:45):
tried to make up a story about seeing two strange
men on the back porch of the trailer on the
morning when Rebecca was murdered, but Mike McNeil was clearly
not buying Billy's story. He said, quote, what you saying
is ridiculous. Tell me what you did, Billy, or tell
me how you helped Casey cover it up. At that point,
(10:07):
Billy looked visibly shaken on the video. He asked if
he could step outside of the room to talk to
his mother, and when he came back into the room,
he started talking. Billy said that he committed the murder alone.
He said that he killed Rebecca and that he had
played everyone for a fool all these years. Billy never
(10:30):
really offered a motive for killing Rebecca, but he did
say at one point, I am a monster. Billy said
that on that Monday morning, September four, after Rebecca dropped
Casey off at work at Sonic and went back to
his trailer, he happened to be hunting in an adjacent
field near the mcculla's land. He said that he saw
(10:53):
her car and realized that she was in there. He
said that on Sunday, he and his mother and his brother,
we're getting ready to move back to Texas, and they
went over to see Casey. While he was there on Sunday,
he saw Rebecca, but he didn't actually talk to her.
So Billy said that that Monday morning when he came
to the trailer was the first time that he'd ever
(11:15):
actually had an encounter with her. Billy said that he
hid his truck in the woods to disguise it. Then
he walked up to the door and knocked. Rebecca let
him in. He told her he was Casey's cousin and
he needed to use the phone. Billy said that the
phone excuse was really just a pretext to get inside
the house. After that, Rebecca turned around and went back
(11:37):
to the bedroom. He said she was lying on her
bed with her head facing away from the door, and
Billy said that he got an urge, an overwhelming urge
to kill her. He said that he'd had these kinds
of urges before. He was pacing around like an animal,
in this kind of murderous frenzy, debating what to do.
While he was pacing, his leg knocked again the piano.
(12:01):
The piano leg was loose, It had kind of just
been propped up there. Billy said, it rolled down and
he grabbed it. Then he said he went inside that
bedroom and he hit Rebecca. He hit her twice, and
at that point the injuries were catastrophic and she was
bleeding out. He said that he took a necktie from
(12:23):
the closet and strangled her until she stopped moving. After that,
he was in a panic. He decided to do a
quick cleanup. He cleaned up for about fifteen minutes. Then
he said he threw the bloody sheets and the pillow
cases into the washing machine. Billy said that he tried
to stuff Rebecca's body into her black suitcase, the one
(12:44):
that Danielle, her sister, had told us was missing from
the crime scene, the one that was never found. But
Billy said that the body wouldn't fit, so he said
that he took some of the bloody betting material and
put that in the suitcase. Then he threw her body,
along with all that stuff, into the back of his truck.
Billy said that he drove right through Melbourne with Rebecca's
(13:06):
body exposed in the back of the truck. He pointed
out the fact that he had passed very close to
the turn off to the police department, and then when
he got to Highway nine, to that scenic overlook, he
pulled off the side of the road and dumped her body.
After that, he put the piano leg the murder weapon,
in a trash can at a nearby car wash. When
(13:29):
police asked about the black suitcase, he told them he
could direct them to the exact place in Izard County
where that suitcase was. According to information that came out
during the pre trial hearing, police officers did follow Billy's
directions and they found the suitcase, but they did not
provide any information about where it was found or what
(13:50):
was inside. After Billy confessed, he was arrested for Rebecca's murder. Eventually,
he was extradited back to Arkansas. Since November two thousand twenty,
he's been in jail awaiting his murder trial, but due
to COVID and other issues, the trial date kept getting
pushed back. The date was finally set for October thirty one,
(14:12):
two thousand twenty two, but before the trial, there were
some hearings. First, there was a suppression hearing to determine
which evidence would be allowed in court. The first hearing
was in August of two thousand twenty two, and at
that hearing, Billy's confession was played and the judge ruled
that it was admissible. Billy's confession was played for a
(14:34):
room full of reporters, family members, and people who had
been following this case for years. I really was worried
about seeing him because of what he did, but one
I remember seeing his mug shot and thinking how cruel
and awful he looked. And everything then got into trial.
(14:57):
They hading dressed in khaki and then nice navy's shirt
and tie, and I thought, no way, no way. I
looked Attie like, how could you do something this cruel?
This is Diana Cox. She's a resident of mountain View, Arkansas.
Diana and her sister Karen have been attending all the
(15:19):
suppression hearings of William Miller because they, like so many
residents of mountain View and Melbourne, are highly invested in
Rebecca's case. Diane is active in George Jared and Jennifer
Buckolets his Facebook group. She keeps up to date with
all the new information coming out of Iszard County. I
also found out that Diana's late husband, Junior, was very
good friends with my dad. They grew up together in Alzheimer, Arkansas. So,
(15:43):
as it turns out, I've been hearing stories about Diana
for years, and it was great to finally be able
to put a name to the face and to meet
someone else who cared so much about Rebecca and her case.
My name is Diana Cox, and I got involved in
this when Catherine came out with The Hell and Gone.
I had never listened to any podcast before, but this
(16:06):
seemed to be a big interest and everybody got so
excited over it. So that's how I got interested, and
I'm still interested. I love it, and I think my
sister and I missed our calling of being detectives. But anyway,
what's what do you mean? It's too late. Diana and
Karen were at the suppression hearing back in August, and
(16:27):
she told me about her impressions of Billy's confession video
when he finally said I did it. I killed her.
Nobody else knows. Nobody else was involved. This is what
he said. That's nobody else but me and Catherine. It
was kind of like, in a way he was reading
(16:50):
like what we have read on different things, you know,
on our website and things like that. It was like
kind of like he was reading it. I don't know
what what it was about it. Well, um, that was crazy.
(17:16):
So I just got back from the pre trial hearing
I found out there was a ton of wow. It
was just it was pretty incredible. On October three, two two,
I traveled back to Arkansas to attend the pre trial hearings.
That's where I met Diana. On that day, the judge
would be deciding which autopsy photos and crime scene photos
(17:40):
would be allowed into evidence, and I wanted to be there.
It was really important that I was at this pre trial.
To my knowledge, I was the only journalist there, and
if the photos were ruled inadmissible or for some other
reason the trial didn't happen, this could be my only
chance to ever see photo of what Rebecca's body looked
(18:01):
like and what the crime scenemed looked like. We weren't
allowed to record inside, so it was just me and
my notebook for hours. So here's what happened. First, I
(18:22):
saw Billy Miller in person for the first time. It
turned out that instead of having the hearing in the
main Iszard County Courthouse, it was held in the Izard
County District Court, which is basically a tiny room inside
the sheriff station. I got very up close and personal
with Billy Miller. He was sitting right in front of me,
unto the left, about five ft away from me. He
(18:45):
did not look like a psychotic killer. In fact, he
looked utterly forgettable, which might be one of the scariest
things about him. He didn't say anything during the pre trial.
He had several lawyers, and they were challenging the admissibility
of some of the autopsy photos, arguing that they were inflammatory,
and they were also trying to get some of the
(19:06):
crime scene photos which were taken at Casey's trailer thrown out.
The autopsy photos have never been seen by the public.
Before they started showing the photos, the judge said, if
you don't have to be here, you can leave the
room now. I'd seen diagrams of Rebecca's autopsy, but this
(19:28):
was the first time I actually saw what she looked
like when she was found. They started showing the photos,
they flipped through them rapidly, so we only had a
few seconds to see each one. From what I could tell,
if you're looking at Rebecca's body from above, she seemed
(19:49):
to be kind of crouched down. Her legs were apart
and what I would call almost like a frog position
when your legs are splayed out. To me, it looked
like the killer had dumped her down that embankment on
Highway nine. It looked like she could have tumbled over
a few times and then landed in that position, stuck
between two trees. On one side of her body. From
(20:12):
a certain angle, you could see hair hanging down across
her face, and there was some skin remaining, but Once
the body was turned over on the autopsy table upright,
you could see that there was hardly anything left. Rebecca's
body was in much worse shape than I ever could
have imagined. I was shocked at the level of decomposition
(20:34):
that the Arkansas, Indian summer causes, and I think it's
really important to understand how decomposed she was, because looking
at it as someone without medical training, I would have
thought she'd been out there for a month. She had
almost no skin. She was a skeleton. I'm really glad
(21:04):
that Rebecca's dad, Larry, and the rest of her family
were not present at that hearing, because no parents should
ever have to see that. But I looked at every
single autopsy photo because I believe that I owe that
to Rebecca. As an investigator, that was my responsibility. Then
(21:28):
we got to the photos of the crime scene. Those
were also a little shocking for different reasons, because a
lot of what we had been told about the crime scene,
things that have been reported in the paper, we're actually wrong.
And this was the first chance that I ever had
to look at that and to figure it out. We've
been told that the first officer on the scene back
(21:49):
in two thousand four was Charlie Melton. He was the
police officer who came into the trailer with Casey, and
he supposedly secured the scene after that. Now, presumably that
would mean that nothing was moved in there before those
photos were taken, but other sources have told me that
there were multiple people at the crime scene, so I
just don't want to totally discount the possibility that law
(22:12):
enforcement or someone else could have moved some of those
things around before they were photographed. There were about thirty
photographs and all, and because they were just showing them
to see if they could be admissible in court, it
took a few minutes to present them. All the lawyers
and judges briefly discussed each one, which is why I
(22:33):
called up Diana afterwards. I wanted to see if she
remembered the same things as I did, just because we
had to view them so quickly and we were all
trying to take notes. First, I wanted to address the
mattress because since the beginning of this case, we've been
hearing about this blood soaked mattress. I pictured the mattress
(22:55):
to really have a lot of blood on it, but
there was only as we're looking at the mattress on
the right top corner was a pool of blood or
a big blood stain about the size of a basketball.
That was about it. And did you notice the stuff
under the bed the pillows, Yes, okay, I remember the
(23:16):
picture that they were stuffed under the side of the
bed and you could see blood. It wasn't a lot
of blood on them, but it was spotted blood on them,
and they were stuffed under the under the bed, just
stuffed right there. Evidently whoever stripped the bed or whatever
they done, they forgot about the pillows. That makes sense.
(23:38):
So like they stripped the bed and through it in
the washing machine, but they forgot about the actual pillows. Yeah, exactly.
And what do you remember about the washing machine? The
first picture that I remember saying was really bloody water.
And then in that thing like up on top of
your washing machine that you put bleach in, it was bloody.
(23:58):
It was real old bloody. What do you remember about
the suitcases? Okay, whenever they were scanning around the room,
there was two suitcases sitting up against the wall. They
were kind of a bluish color, and there were two
of them. Like the suitcases you pull around got the
wheels on it. There was two of them, and that
(24:21):
really caught my eye. The suitcases, because all we've talked about,
or anybody's talked about, is the black suitcase. That was
you know, Rebecca's supposedly Rebecca's right. What about what do
you remember about the interior, Well, it was you know,
like the bathroom was very neat clean. What stood out
(24:46):
to me was all those cleaning supplies, paper towel and
stuff like that. I think it was on a table
or a bar or something that stood out to me,
all the cleaning stuff. I was real focused on the
cleaning products too. Yes, they really stood out. There was
a lot of cleaning products on the table or whatever
it was. Um and also you I think you were
(25:08):
telling me that that you didn't notice any folded clothes, right,
because we've been talking about how that the clothes like
they were supposedly clothes folded on the bed, which was
the reason that like he I guess presumably someone took
him out of the suitcase, put him on the bed,
and then either put her or put other stuff in
the suitcase. Yes, that that was one thing that that
(25:28):
we've heard that her clothes were neatly stacked on the mattress. Well,
there was nothing on the mattress, you know the pictures
that we saw. There was nothing on the mattress, no
clothes anywhere that I saw. And you know, that was
one of the things, wasn't it that they talked about?
But I did not say that at all. And also
(25:50):
did you notice the the bloodstains in the living room, Yes,
on the wall and baseboard, yeah, and the carpet too,
But I couldn't tell whether I think it was the
living room, Yes, yes it was. I wonder if that
was maybe tracked the way the door the way I understand,
he wouldn't have had to gone in the living room
(26:11):
to take her out the back right exactly the trailer
was made, you know, the back door and and everything.
So was did he track it in there or what? Yeah?
And they also said that they originally that the police
were saying the fight started in the kitchen or it
started in the in that area, and then that's also
(26:33):
kind of what my witness had said. But then like
I don't I don't think any of the evidence I
saw points to the fight starting in the bedroom. It
looks like something happened on that carpet outside. What do
you remember about the porch. I remember the porch was
empty all but that they call it a thumper or
(26:54):
a tire checker. It was that, Yes, I remember that
was it. But I remember sin faint blood like a drag,
and I do remember that on the porch, and then
two spots of blood on the steps. Did you notice
he seemed to me really looking at the not the
autopsy photos, but all the crime scene photos crime scene.
(27:15):
He looked at all the crime scene. He did not
look at us autopsy at all. And I wish they
had made him look at him. I wish they had
made him look up there at it. But he hung
his head the whole time. But yeah, he really watched
the crime scene, all of them. But I tell you
what those crime scene Catherine. Really it was kind of
like a question to me on some of the stuff
(27:37):
where it was. Yeah, and then William. That was also
one of the things that was weird to me about
his confession. He's he mentioned everything that was online. So
it's just the whole thing is very strange to me. Yes,
it is. It's very strange. Just like I told you
start with, it was like he was reading some of
the things that he had heard or read before you know,
(27:59):
on on on how that some of the things that
come out that how she was or around this and that.
But it was to me, I don't know, he I
don't know. It's it was a very strange confession. Honestly,
after seeing the crime scene photos, I have more questions
(28:19):
than ever because it does seem like a lot of
the things that Billy Miller confessed to are true. But
there's a piece missing and I'm not sure what it
is yet. Maybe someone else let him into that trailer,
or maybe someone else struck the first blow and Billy
finished it off and cleaned up. Maybe he's covering for
someone else, perhaps one of his family members was there
(28:41):
at the time. I absolutely believe that he had a
role in killing Rebecca, but I don't think he did
the whole thing on his own. It's illogical that William
did this in I'll vacuum, you know, completely by himself.
This is Jennifer Buckles. She's a criminal investigator and professor
(29:05):
of forensics. After she listened to Helen Gone, she got
interested in Rebecca's case. Later, she contacted Rebecca's father, Dr.
Larry Gold and George shared. Since then, Jennifer and George
have worked on a lot of cases together. They also
started a Facebook group, Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gold, where
(29:26):
they tried to use crowdsourcing to help get information and
leads on Rebecca's case. The couple of aspects of Rebecca's
case that really caught my attention and that I thought
I hadn't been considered or given any attention by law
enforcement is the fact that her body was removed from
the crime scene to a secondary location and someone had
tried to clean the scene. And those actions are super rare,
(29:50):
like most killers just don't do that. They usually des
grabbed the weapon and they sleeve the scene. And so
that immediately told me like, it's got to be someone
who has like a known connection to her and that residents.
The other thing that stuck out to her was the
road back Casey's. You know, there's a road that leads
basically from Casey's property to where Rebecca was found, and
(30:13):
I think there's been like a little mentioned about through
the years, but it seemed like the prevailing theory is
that the killer like took pavement, either went up and
around through Melbourne or went down and around through a
mountain view which never made sense to me because usually
a person like they want to have a dead body
in their car for the least amount of time possible,
so obviously, like there's an alternate route that doesn't take
(30:33):
your own pavement that's rarely traveled, and you know law enforcement,
like there's not gonna be any cops out there, that
would be the logical route to take. So then it
occurred to us, well, assuming they took that that throw
it says to be someone either local to the area
or who has spent a decent amount of time in
the area. So again, it's just like the evidence has
(30:55):
kept kind of pointing to someone with a personal relationship
or connection to Rebecca. Another weird thing about Billy is
that before he was arrested, he actually reached out to
me and also to Jennifer. He called me while I
(31:16):
was staying at my grandmother's cabin by myself in the
middle of nowhere, I was getting multiple calls a day
about people of interest, and a lot of them turned
out to be people whose names were being whispered around
town because they knew Rebecca, but who had nothing to
do with her murder. To the best of my recollection,
Billy told me some coworkers of his had been talking
(31:38):
about people and had mentioned the names Chris and Jennifer.
But again, at the time, a lot of people were
calling me and had stuff to say about Chris and Jennifer,
So nothing that Billy Miller said particularly stuck out, at
least until afterwards, when I realized how creepy it was
that the person who confessed to killing Rebecca called me
in a remote location and presuming when you knew exactly
(32:00):
where I was. Billy also made contact with Jennifer by
reaching out on the Facebook group that she and George
Jared had started to help their investigation, and we started
out in October and within a month a guy named
William Miller joined the group, and thankfully due to a
(32:21):
woman named Miranda who had dated Casey for a year
and a half, she had mapped his whole family tree
for us, and so when that request to join came in,
She's like, that's Casey's cousins. I'm like, well, that's interesting.
Then he maybe he lurked around for a month or so.
I think it was towards the end of eighteen is
when he started making comments on some of the posts,
(32:44):
But you know, like aside from being Casey's cousin, there
wasn't really any other red flags to his comments. I mean,
he was throwing ideas out just like everybody else. We
just thought that, I mean, most people probably know about
My theory is that, well, he thinks we don't know
who he is, so he is in the group to
spy for Casey and his family. Right, there were definitely people,
(33:07):
There are people doing that. There's always spies. Yeah, and
that's fine. I mean, yeah, we want the killer to
know what's going on. Yeah, we want them to see
what's in our group, and we want them to stay
on edge so that we don't That's fine. And then yeah, January,
which ironically is Casey's birthday, William Villari sent me the
first message, like a direct message to me, and he
(33:31):
had sent me a photo of a newspaper article, the
one that says a neighborhood heard screams in the hours
before the murder or something like that, and he had
asked if I'd seen the article, what did I think?
You know? And so, Mike, this is interesting because I'm
talking to Casey's cousin now, and so I just wrote
back like normal, you know, I'm like, thanks for reaching out.
(33:53):
I appreciate you, know, your insight, your thought process. You know,
we do know that that report from a neighbor was
made to police, but we don't know the timeframe, like
police have not ever divulged what time they heard the screen,
So it's hard for us to put much stock in
that or use it at this point, you know. And
so it's been from there on out. We just went
back and forth periodically, and he would ask a lot
(34:16):
of the same questions that tons of other people asked,
and he might have been digging a little bit, I'm sure,
you know, to try to get our viewpoint on stuff,
but it was really it's fairly benign. Obviously. I've read
them over and over and over again, now like did
I miss something? And I don't really feel I do.
I did. But there's a few things that he was
he had more focused on than others, and one was
(34:38):
the timeline, like the actual timeframe of when Rebecca was killed.
He told me on multiple occasions like I'm trying to
do what you do and put together the timeline of how,
how and when the murder actually went down. And he
talked several times about the maybe the person who cleaned
up ward gloves and now you know, I'm kind of
(34:58):
like that might have been true, but there wasn't, like,
you know, any huge red flag. And then the last
conversation we had was, I think it was September. He
had posted a photo in our group of Chris Cantrell
and so something about his tear drop tattoos must mean
he committed a murder. Remember that. So and I we
(35:20):
rarely removed posts, but that one had come down. And
then I messaged him, I'm like, no, we can't have
people posting photos and pointing the finger at someone who,
as far as we know, has no connection to this case,
So please don't do that. And you know, he apologized,
And that was really our last exchange, which makes sense
because that's when Mike McNeil was onto him. When I
(35:41):
was talking with Diana, we both said it seemed that
Billy was studying those crom scene photos, almost like he
was taking notes on them. Jennifer got a similar impression
from him when he first read his confession. In fact,
some of his quotes almost seemed like he took them
straight from George, because specifically the one where he said
(36:02):
he drove with her body right through Melbourne past the
Sheriff's department. I'm like, that's something Georgia said. Are written
like and and and we never believed that anyways, he
did not drive your downtown Melbourne with a dead body
in the open bet of your pickup truck, like nobody
would do that. He's wording what really? And look, I
mean if it was if I really believe that it
(36:24):
was only him, I would be a lot happier right now,
you know, because it'd be like, oh, justice is served.
But I feel like, um, when I read the confession,
I had exactly the same thought. I was like, this,
this feels like he's been reading stuff online or something
and took it from there. It was really strange, yes,
and some of it just it just couldn't be like
he I guess. He said something about like he went
(36:46):
hunting early in the morning and he knocked on Rebucca's
door about eight. Well, Rebucca is supposed to be taking
Casey to work at that time, like he but Casey
clapped into twelves. She wouldn't have been home at n talk,
so that it can't be true. But then he said,
like he committed the removal, he clean did all his cleaning,
and then he went back to his mom's house, and
(37:07):
they hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. Like your
your brother had to go to the high school. They
were certainly up by ten o'clock or whatever time in
the morning. So I then we knew some of that
just had to be a lie if there's other And
and the thing about his mom, I know there's been
a lot of speculation that she might have known something.
So I just wonder how much the mom knew and
when she knew it. What I've been told is that
(37:30):
they confirmed that she knew now that she knew her
son killed Rebecca. I don't know the timeframe for sure
of when she found that out, but what I've been
told is that she has known that information for quite
a while and obviously did nothing about it. Billy never
(37:55):
went to trial. On October nineteen, William Miller was convict
did a first degree murder and sentenced to forty years
in prison. Billy is now incarcerated with the Washita River
Correctional Unit in Malvern, Arkansas. After the conviction, Billy said
that he was willing to speak privately with Rebecca's dad,
(38:17):
Larry Gould, and her older sister Tiffany. So the three
of them went into a back room with a sheriff
station to talk in private. After about fifteen minutes, they
came out and according to Larry, the confession Billy gave
to him was totally different than the one that he
had made in court. If Billy has two different stories,
(38:39):
that must mean that he lied in one of them.
And if he lied before, what's to stop him from
lying again? What is Billy Miller hiding? I'm Katherine Townsend.
This is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of
(39:01):
School of Humans and I Heart Media. Our producer is
Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and
Elsie Crowley. Music is by Ben Tale Special thanks to
season one producers Taylor Church and James Morrison. School of
(39:31):
Humans
Hell and Gone News
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!