November 27, 2024 • 52 mins
The Derman Murders are the unsolved killings of Russell and Shirley Dermond in Putnam County, Georgia in May 2014. On May 6, 2014, Russell's decapitated body was found in the garage of his Lake Oconee home. He was 88 years old. Over a week later, Shirley's body was found floating in Lake Oconee. She was 87 years old and had been weighted down with concrete blocks. As of April 2024, the murders remain unsolved and Russell's head has not been found. The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers.
Guest Bio and Links:
Alice LaCour is a native Texan, a Yale Law School graduate, and a mean fiddler player. (She’s been known to go down to Georgia). In another life, she was a dancer, but now the courtroom is her stage. When she’s not lawyering she’s hanging with her husband and wrangling her three adorable children.
Brett Talley is a Southern gentleman who loves abandoned buildings, long walks on haunted beaches, and Cthluhu plushies. His saintly wife tolerates him, while his little girl and son hang on his every word–and love the podcast theme.
Listeners can learn more about The Prosecutors Podcast at their website, on IG @prosecutorspod
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, welcomes Brett and Alice from The Prosecutors Podcast to dive into the perplexing double homicide of Russell and Shirley Dermond in Lake Oconee, Georgia. Sheryl, Alice, and Brett cover various aspects of the case including the idyllic setting, Russell and Shirley’s background, the brutal nature of the crime, and the intriguing yet cruel methods employed by the killer. With insights from legal experts and firsthand involvement, they explore different theories, investigate motives, and emphasize the critical role of DNA evidence and genetic genealogy in bringing this case closer to resolution.
Show Notes:
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(0:00) Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
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(0:15) Sheryl welcomes Brett and Alice from The Prosecutors Podcast
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(2:30) Brief background of the Dermond murders
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(4:30) Details of the crime scene in Putnam County, Georgia
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(5:00) Analysis of Shirley’s body being found in the lake
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(6:00) The brutality and peculiarities of the crime
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(10:30) Theories of mistaken identity and cartel involvement
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(14:00) Speculation on why Shirley might have been the target
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(16:30) Timeline and investigation insights
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(23:00) Importance of the boat in the crime's execution
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(27:00) Theories and intricacies of the crime scene
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(27:30) The lake and docking the boat
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(35:30) Revisiting the son’s tragic murder
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(42:00) Genetic genealogy technologies
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(50:00) Final reflections on the case's solvability
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Thanks for listening to another episode! If you love the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to iTunes and leave a rating
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Share Madonna, Elvis Prince. You know you have made it
when you just have to use your first name. And
tonight we have Brett and Alice. Y'all know who I'm
talking about the Prosecutors podcast. They are brilliant, They are adorable,
(00:31):
they are smart, and let me tell you something now, Alice,
when you meet her, you think, oh my gosh, so adorable,
so vivacious. But then you talk to her and you
realize pretty quick, I am out of my league. I
think yet of law school knows what they're doing. And
then you've got Brett. Brett will come up super nice,
(00:53):
a little quiet when you first meet him, maybe, and
then you talk to him and then you realize, yeah,
I Mike should have done some more homework. But together
they are just a powerhouse of information. They are a
solid go to if you don't understand the case, or
(01:14):
you're not sure what evidence can get brought in, or
you don't really understand what the prosecution is doing. They
are a phone call away or an episode away so
that you can have it all cleared up. And when
I tell you, this episode for me is so long overdue.
I adore them, I respect them, and I cannot wait
(01:36):
to jump into this case with them. Brett and Alice,
welcome to zonees Heaven.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, thank you. That's the first time anyone's ever compared
me to Elvis, So I think I'm going to hold
onto this one for a while.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well that's overdue too, are you kidding?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Back? That was like literally the nicest intro I think
we've ever received. I think we can retire and just
play that clip for the rest of our lives and
I'd be happy.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But you know it's true, And I had people come
at me and go, you always just brag. Okay, well,
name something that I've said that's not accurate. Again, y'all
have been kind to my children. I mean every time
I've ever seen y'all in person, y'all have just been
welcoming and gracious and kind. And when you afford that
(02:21):
to my children, well that's all I got to know
about ya. So I appreciate y'all on a lot of levels.
So tonight we are going to be talking about a
case that is bizarre. It's unusual enough that you don't
get this all the time, and it's the case of
Russell and Shirley Durman out of Lake Oconey, Georgia Russell
(02:46):
was eighty eight, Shirley was eighty seven. They had been
married sixty eight years. Y'all. I mean, I cannot imagine
that life was somebody that you've built and now you're
to reaping the rewards of all that hard work. Right,
They've got this beautiful home on Lego Coney. And for
(03:07):
those of y'all that have not been there, let me
just paint your picture real quick. The lake is beautiful,
but these houses. First time I went there, I thought
I can be a squatter. I'm just gonna move in.
They're that beautiful, and you have the back of the
yards that face the lake. It's almost like a competition
(03:30):
who's going to have the greatest landscape. And I mean
that alone is one hundred thousand dollars. Just unbelievably flawless,
is all I can tell you. But they've earned it.
They owned Hearty's bunch of hardy restaurants, so when they retired,
Lego Cony is where they wanted to go. So Brett,
(03:52):
now is y'all just jump in because I know as prosecutors,
y'all have seen a ton of cases and this one,
I know leaked out at y'all for a plethora of reasons.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Absolutely, and you're right. I mean those of you who
haven't been to Lake Aconi in the area. Allis and
I actually went there for a conference once, and it
is gorgeous. It is. If this were a Dayline episode,
at some point, they would say, it's the kind of
place where nothing bad ever happens, just beautiful homes. That's
beautiful lake. You know, maybe you get a robbery here,
(04:24):
or they are gone wrong, somebody breaks into one of
these beautiful houses and someone you know gets shot or something.
But a crime like this one that seems to have
been well planned, violent but controlled, is something that you
just you don't see, not just in this place, but
(04:45):
really this case is unique and one of those that
will leave you sitting and scratching your head for quite
some time when you start to think about all the
little details.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I think that's exactly right. I mean, everything Mack has
said is right. Lake Aconi is at asolutely idyllic and
beautiful and luxurious. However, it's a different luxury than you
would find, say in the Hamptons. It's a quiet luxury people.
You know, people outside of really the Southeast may not
even have heard of look lak Akoni before. So it
is a humble place despite it being a place of luxury.
(05:19):
And when you go there, you feel like you're in
the middle of nowhere. There are beautiful trees, it's very pastoral,
rather than where all the Hollywood stars, for example, go.
And another thing that just boggles the mind here is,
like Brett said, the level of just cruelty and violence
afforded to people who truly seem like they had no
(05:42):
enemies is so senseless. They were a kind couple, they
have friends, they had four children, they have nine grandchildren,
and despite all of this, they are left in a
horrific manner. You know, Russell is the head surely is
(06:02):
thrown into the lake, having you know, been murdered, tied
down with cinder blocks. Really things you almost see from cartels.
That level of violence against this sweet old couple who
was on their way to a friend's party, and all
of this is just absolutely none of the dots seem
(06:24):
to connect when you first look at this case.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And Alice, that's one thing when I first heard some
of the details, I'm like, did they hit the wrong house?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I thought the same thing. That was the first thing
that this is this is almost and you said hit,
And I think that's what this feels like. This feels
like Alice mentioned the cartel. It feels like a sophisticated
murder designed to leave little evidence behind that but also
violent enough that it sends a message to anyone else
(06:56):
who sees it and recognizes. You know, not everyone. If
you're not in the game, if you're not in the cartel,
if you're not part of it, you might not recognize
what happened in this. But if you are, you would,
you would see all the signs. And that's what the
first thing I thought when I saw this was, is
there someone else in this neighborhood, on this leg that
(07:17):
we should be looking at to see if they have
some sort of connection to a group of people who
basically went to the wrong place and did this horrible thing.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
And I can promise you whatever is going to just
leap into your mind and you're going to run with
it like a movie. You're making it sexier than it
is nine times out of ten. So now we've already
said the word cartail, we've already said a hit. Now
we got to think mafia. Now we've got to think,
oh my gosh, did they see something? And now they
(07:49):
got to silence them? So again, Now I'm writing for Hollywood,
and you've got to almost train yourself. Now, Alice, help
me out. Women are bad about that. We can turn
it into a movie pretty quick.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
No, I think that's right. I mean, I think we're
seeing that in a lot of the cases that draw
a lot of national attention. Typically it's just some senseless
violence here, right, But there are kind of three details
here that really jump out at me in terms of
the sophistication and the sending. The message part is the
hard part for me, because I'm not sure who the
(08:23):
message is for the fact.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
That's a good point.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Good point, I mean, the fact that Shirley was taken
and essentially missing. I don't think there was She was
tied down with cinderblocks, and I think the hope was
that she would never float up. Now, this was a
very sophisticated killer. They probably know that when you spend
long enough at the bottom of a lake, your body
takes in the fluids and you'll eventually float up. But
(08:48):
what it does is delay the discovery, and so you
don't have a ransom out there, You don't have some
like you know, phone calls to telephone booths, like in
the movies where they say, we have Shirley deliver the
two million dollars by cash. If there's any trackers will
kill her immediately. There's none of that. But there clearly
was an intent to make it seem like she could
(09:09):
be alive, that she could be missing. But it wasn't
even to frame her as being the potential killer of
her husband. And so these are all things that you
may see in a Hollywood style script of a murder, kidnapping,
or double homicide. Is there's a reason to make someone
seemingly disappear, to frame them for the other murder, or
(09:30):
to try to elicit some sort of reward or ransom.
Nothing here, there's no message about Shirley. In some ways,
she's accidentally found. They didn't tie enough cinder blocks on her.
She eventually floated up but days later. And then the
other detail that really sticks out to me is they
didn't want to be found out right away. Because we've
(09:52):
talked about how Russell was beheaded, but the fact that
this killer was so methodical and home to put towels
around the pooling blood to keep the blood from seeping
out into the garage into the driveway to evade detection
chills me to my bone because we know that this
(10:13):
person must know how much the body bleeds. They've maybe
done this before, and again they're evading that detection and
it worked. This poor couple wasn't found potentially for days.
So those things, in terms of like turning away from
the Hollywood movie script, I'd like to and in some
ways that chills you enough that this isn't some fantastical
(10:35):
Hollywood script. But at the same time, those two levels
of sophistication does point to something more than just your
rage violence you see in many other cases, and.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
See that is why you are so vital. Because the
towel is the reason that I stopped thinking cartail and
mob hit. Most men are a to b their crimes
are also so for somebody to bring cinderblocks, to bring
possibly a firearm, to bring, rope and net and abode
(11:10):
and know where to take her. But yet they're gonna
stop and in any way try to stop blood from
going out the garage door. They didn't bring that tible
that came from their home. So that to me was like,
that's somebody that's afraid to be caught. They want to
have more lead time. That ain't a professional. A professional
(11:33):
would have killed them both right there in the garage.
I'm done now. I want both of you to talk
to me about this. I have said, and I've been
very public. Shirley was treated differently. Anytime I've got somebody
that spends more time with one victim than the other,
or it appears more personal, that victim becomes my focus
(11:57):
because I believe they were the target for the audience.
They're not gonna love what I'm fixing to say, but
I'm gonna say it, and I want y'all to jump
in it. Don't take nothing to behead. Somebody oj did
it with no experience. You got a sharp enough weapon,
that head's gonna go. He was right there. Russell never moved.
(12:20):
Surely they took from the house down the long backyard
into a boat on a lake, when at least six
seven miles knew where on that lake to put her
because where she was found Georgia Power had cut down
a bunch of trees, so the trees are just under
(12:41):
the surface. There's no homes there. You can't boat across it.
So if they had tossed her far enough they didn't
think anybody would ever find her because nobody ever goes
over there. She was beaten to death. Again, that takes
more time. In fact, Russell was shot and then beheaded.
(13:02):
What are you talking about fourteen seconds at the most, Shirley.
That takes a lot of time to beat somebody to death.
Put him in a boat, drive them, hook him up
to some cinder blocks, toss him out. That ain't quick well.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Another thing that I think indicates that she was the target.
There's at least one report that Russell's hands were bruised
and he actually had some of Shirley's hair in his wounds,
which sort of indicates that he is attempting to fight
off whoever is doing this, who has Shirley, and he's
(13:39):
trying to get her away from that person or whatever,
and is unable to do so. And then, as you said,
because there is gunshot residue on his shirt, the theory
is that he was shot in the head and then
whoever did that then removed his head. Probably may I mean,
(14:00):
I don't know. This is speculation, but one reason to
do that would be to avoid any sort of evidence
of what kind of weapon was used. Ballistics that sort
of thing. But if all that's true, then that would
go along with your idea that for some reason, Shirley
is the target of this event, that is the person
that this killer was really interested in. Well, for whatever
(14:21):
reason or whatever they intended to do with her, she
was the person that they started with and she was
the person that they finished with.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I think you're right to focus on Shirley because she
was absolutely treated differently. Does seem like she was the target,
sadly because their bed was unmade and may have even
been a situation. I think she was known to get
up early that perhaps she had gotten up early, was
met with the attacker, was screaming for help, and her husband,
you know, being her loving husband, ran to her aid
(14:53):
and unfortunately was ended quickly in a quick manner, because
a gunshot to the head is don't know that for
a fact, but there's gunpowder residue on his collar and
his head is missing, and then there's the beheading, so
we don't have the bullet. But if he was shot,
that's not personal, and it's quick. You do that when
(15:13):
someone interrupts you with what you're doing. Now, she died
from blunt force trauma, that's personal. Because in order to
inflict blunt force trauma, you have to be very close
to someone. It often takes more than one hit, so
it is longer and it is incredibly violent. I've never
had to suffer through that, but seeing someone's head bashed
(15:36):
in is not for the faint of heart. And to
raise your arm and to do it again, there is
a commitment to that, and that killer had to face her,
watch her head get bashed in, and probably do it again.
With all that said, she is the stay at home
mother raising four kids. If you see a picture of her,
(15:57):
she literally looks like you know, Hollywood cast grandmother. She
had ninety grandchildren. She has this beautiful kind smile, perfectly cooid,
you know, gray hair, and she looks like a kind
person who probably says hello, honey to everybody who passes her.
She's involved in her church. You know, she really seems
(16:21):
like just a kind person within community. So what that
tells me is that because nothing was missing, you know,
nothing in the house seemed to be disturbed. This does
not seem to be a robbery. Her phone, her wallet,
I think her phone, kind of her valuables were in
the home. I don't think there was anything of note
(16:42):
missing from her. It wasn't like she always had, say,
you know, some very valuable piece of jewelry that was missing,
So it doesn't seem like robbery is the motive. And second,
there doesn't appear to be any sexual assault. She is
not your typical sexual assault victim. There are very sick
people in the world who it doesn't matter if you're
a tree or inanimate object. They will sexual assault no
(17:05):
matter who you are. But she is not your typical
profile for a sexual assault victim because of age and
the fact that there her clothes were all on her.
She doesn't appear to have been sexually assaulted. So if
sexual assault isn't a motive, which again is usually high
on the list of why women are targeted, this almost
(17:26):
feels personal, as in, she's a stand in for a
mother figure, or a grandmother figure, or some sort of
nurturing figure that may not even have to do with her,
but perhaps she's standing in for whoever the killer has
immense rage over, and she is like the prototype of
(17:46):
what a mother should be.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I like that, I wrote that down, so I want
to give everybody just a little bit of the timeline.
Thursday afternoon, May first, twenty fourteen, Russell is captured own
surveillance video inside a local publics. That is the last
time he is absolutely on camera or seen alive other
(18:12):
than once he gets home with Shirley. But I'm saying
outside of Shirley, that's the last time. That Thursday is
also the last day that Drmans ever talked to any
of their children. One of their sons called and they
talked to him. That evening. The couple was expected to
be at a friend's house for the one hundredth and
fortieth runn into the Kentucky Derby Saturday, May third. They
(18:36):
never showed up. Now, Shirley is the kind of woman
that if she had accepted that invitation and somebody became
ill or something else came up, she would have called
and said, we're not going to be able to come.
So this couple thought, well, maybe something kind of bad happened.
There may be really sick. We better go check on them.
(18:57):
So they went to check on them, and that's when
they were found deceased. So, according to Sheriff Seals, Russell's
murder occurred somewhere between four point thirty pm May the
first and six pm on May fourth, when they didn't
show up at the party, So Brett, I loved what
(19:19):
Alice was talking about about where the rage was focused.
I loved what you said about how this killer, even
though the level of violence was high, was still controlled.
Tell us a little more about what you see as controlled.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Well, this is, for instance, you don't see there's no
obvious signs of breaking in, which I think is also
interesting because a lot of times if you don't see
obvious signs of a break in, it may be because
whoever it was knew the person and willingly let them
into the house. And we've obviously seen that in a
(19:56):
lot of cases, the house itself is not ransacked. You know,
this was a house with a lot of stuff in
it which would have been valuable. I think this points
against any kind of robbery. You don't see that, and
what you see is the things that they did see.
Everything seems to have a purpose. So we talked about
you know, the beheading wasn't just an act of violence.
(20:18):
It was done for a reason, and apparently the cuts
were very clean. Somebody took their time in doing that.
And then you know is these are difficult things to
talk about, but Russell's Head's never been found, so whoever
did that disposed of it in a way that it
wouldn't be found. Also, the fact that her body was
(20:39):
dumped the way it was, to me, indicates a little
bit of planning for that purpose. We know they had
to come by a boat because there was no other
boat available, and you would have needed a boat, as
you were saying, to take to take her to the
deepest part of the lake. And you mentioned the trees
being cut down, And one thing that I was curious about.
(21:01):
My understanding is they took her to this deep part
of the lake for the purposes of dumping her, but
she actually ended up on top of those trees, which
was when reason the body was found. And I wonder
if that was a slip up they did not anticipate,
and if the trees hadn't been there and they had
dumped her in that part of the lake would have
if she had gone all the way to the bottom,
(21:22):
maybe she never does resurface, which I think that shows
a level of planning and sophistication the fact that you're
going to that part of the lake. There's also been
reports and I don't know why the police say this.
A lot of times they say things they don't tell
us everything. Obviously that whoever did this appears to have
known the house. I don't know exactly how they know that,
(21:42):
but that also was something that I found interesting in
their description of the home, and Alice made a really
good point that I think is one of those things.
It is an avenue of investigation in a case like
this that I do think you need to follow, because
there are cases where someone and you see this with
serial killers, but even not serial killers, where someone misplaces
(22:07):
their anger at another person they know it is. There
have been several cases where people in sort of an
abusive situation or a situation where they have a lot
of hatred towards, say their mother, there is another kind
person who was sort of a stand in for that
and is being kind to them, and then they end
(22:28):
up murdering that person in a rage, and it all
goes back to they can't do anything to the person
they actually have the rage against, and so they're misplacing
that that. I don't think that is an incredibly common thing,
but there are many cases where it does happen. I
think that would be an interesting angle to look at
if we're pursuing, if we're heading down this path that
(22:50):
she was the target. You know, we often say you
don't have to have motive to prove a case, and
that's absolutely true. But I think in order to solve
this case you probably need to fit. You're out the motive.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I cannot agree with that more. And you know the
thing is when you look at Russell, he's killed before
he's beheaded, So again, is his head taken so that
they can prove they did what they're getting paid to do.
Or between the house and where Shirley was found, was
it tossed? Were they going to go back and get
(23:22):
him and they're interrupted? Were they trying to hide both
of them and failed? I believe they left at night
because again I live on a lake. You know people's boats,
you know their activities. You know a lot of times
if they're having a party or people visiting, you can
watch the way somebody drives a boat and know what
(23:44):
they've ever done it before. So these folks with these houses,
if somebody in the broad daylight was on a boat
that nobody recognized and they were alone, somebody would have
seen that nobody's whole boat. And in the cove where
they live, you have to pass two houses to get
to their dock. Only one person was at home. The
(24:07):
other house was empty, and a lot of these folks, y'all,
these are their second home, so there's not always somebody
in them, but for the folks that are home, for
the folks that are out fishing. I believe it was
done at night. What do y'all think.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I would be interested to know if you know if
anyone reported hearing a boat, because boats are pretty loud
and at night. If you've ever been to the lake
or stayed the lake, if somebody's driving around on the
lake at night, you hear it because sound travels.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well over water.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Boats are loud, and that late at night, it's not
that usual to have people out boating. I would be
curious if anyone heard anything, even if they didn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
No ear witnesses have come forward, and that's interesting because
we suspect that a gun went off as well. But
like you said, this is a second home area. There
are a lot of trees. The water, depending on what
it's like, can reflect sound, but the amount of trees
around can also muffle or someone may mistake that one shot.
(25:10):
If it was just one shot, and it seems like
it was probably a close range if there was a shot,
so probably no need for additional shots. May mistake it
for a car backfire, or someone trying to start their boat,
or allowed bang, you know, one bang. I can see
that most people may just discount it. If they heard
multiple bangs, that may draw some attention. So I think
(25:31):
the nighttime thing is very It's very intriguing because we're
assuming that Shirley was taken out by boat, and I
think that's the most likely. That seems to be Okham's razor.
Their backyard backs up into the lake, and then she
was dumped there, and I think it would be an
added level of risk to have to carry her to
(25:52):
a car, drive to some sort of a boat dock
area very close by, then to boat out. So I
think it's wrecked that they likely came by boat, and
in order to evade detection, it would have to be
at night. But here's the thing that really boggles my mind.
I think when the police say that this killer or
(26:15):
killers had familiar familiarity with the home. If you've ever
been on a lake, the backs of houses do look
very different from the front. When you do like a
Google Maps to go to a home, it takes you
to the front of the home, and if you go
to Zillow, it takes you to the front of the home.
And especially on lake front properties, the back of the
home is typically almost more grand than the front because
(26:37):
you have the big tall windows. That is the purpose
of living on the lake is to be able to
look out and enjoy the view. And so when I
see the backs of houses that are backing up to
a lake, they look very different from anything you would
see online. And so if you did not know how
the home looked from the back and know which dock
(26:58):
led to that home, could easily see someone get mistaken
on which home to go to. So that's either one
of two theories that it's a mistaken hit the wrong house.
But then why kill both of them? And then why
not just kill them and leave quickly? Why go through
all this trouble of beheading and then you know, taking
Shirley to dump with cinder blocks? Or this person really
(27:20):
knew this home so well that even in the dark,
without looking at the front of the home, without the
numbers of the home, if it was nighttime, all the
lights would be off. There's not a lot of navigating
to a dock you know, those of you who've docked
a boat, it takes some level of navigation, and especially
when lights are off. Unlike parking lots where there's lights up,
(27:44):
most people when they go to sleep, their dock lights
are also turned off. Because it's the country. You turn
your lights off to go to sleep. No one's going
to come by your dock, so you don't need to
leave the lights on for anyone back at the dock.
This all indicates someone who is familiar with going up
to the right house, knowing how to dock a boat correctly.
(28:04):
And you do have to dock, you have to tie it.
It will float away in the time that you take
to go into the home, commit the crime that you're
going to commit, carry a body out, which is going
to be heavy, and then load that you know, victim
onto the boat. So the darkness I think is necessary,
a necessary component to being able to carry this out.
And then also that level of familiarity.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
This is bold, you know. I mean, as Ala said,
pulling your boat up to someone's dock is not a
quick thing. This is not like slipping through the trees
at night, you know, parking half a mile away and
slipping through the trees quietly and attacking this person. You know,
you're exposed. You're on the leg. If anybody does happen
to look out, they're going to see you. You have
(28:49):
to take the time to pull up to the dock.
Like I said, it's going to be loud. Then you're
gonna have to tie yourself up. Then you've got to
make your way exposed up the dock because usually docks
are not There aren't trees covering the dock. You know,
it's it's wide open up up to the house. Hope
that no one woke up, no one heard you arriving.
I mean, all of this is very it's intriguing that
(29:11):
it happened this way. And I think I think Alice
is right, and I think you're right. I think this
had to happen. It had to happen at night, if
this was a surprise. You know, I'm still considering the
possibility of someone they knew coming to the house and
just and then this happened. And if that happened, then
maybe he could have started, you know, in the in
(29:32):
the evening or the afternoon. Certainly I think the departure
happened at night. But yeah, and and I think This
is a really important point that Alice made, so I
just want to just want to reiterate it. Lake at Connie,
it's not the biggest lake in the world, but it's
a big lake and lakes they have all these inlets.
It is really easy to get lost in the lake
(29:53):
if you don't know the lake. You know, it is
really easy to forget where you are, to turn down
the wrong area, particularly at night, because there's even fewer things,
you know, landmarks. So I think there's not a lot
of In one way, there's not a lot of evidence
in this case, but the things that had to happen
(30:14):
for this murder to occur, I think are pieces of
evidence that can help direct you to the kind of
person who did this.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
If this was a hit, I'm just gonna go over
here and kill these two people. I don't have cinder box,
I don't have rope, I don't have net bags, I
don't need a boat, and I shore lord, don't need
to take anybody from that house. And I could care
less that the blood is going down the driveway. So
if this is an A to B hit with a
professional person, none of that happens. We have three separate
(30:48):
crime scenes the house, the boat, and the water. The
house we got, the water we got, the boat we
don't have, and Shirley and Russell didn't have a boat.
No boat has been reported stolen or missing. No boat
has been recovered with blood in it.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And so now I'm going to undercut my theory that
this is someone who knew the lake well, knew the
back of the house well, and could navigate to it.
Another thought that would make it slightly easier, but I
would think there would be some cell phone data, which
I don't know that there is. But one thing I
could imagine, if Shirley seems to be the type of
person she's been described as, she seemed like a kind
(31:28):
hearted person, willing to help others, was a motherly figure
to probably many people, is that someone she knew reached out.
And it may have been at night, and it may
have been a ruse to be able to get in
the house, But this way, if anyone saw them, or
if Shirley or Russell woke up to him docking the boat,
there would be an excuse, something along the lines of
(31:51):
I'm lost on the lake, or I'm running out of gas,
or hey, i'm on the lake. I really need to
use your phone, or I need to use the restroom,
or I need to stop buy for a second. Can
I just pop in for a second. I'm so sorry
it's late, and was let in in that manner, and
then something horrible happened, and I can imagine, And I'm
just going back to the fact that she had children
(32:13):
who are grown and grandchildren. But then that suddenly opens
up the web of possibilities of erratic kind of actors
who may not be rational, who we don't know everything about.
But that spreads your social web much further because it
could be I'm your son's college roommate. I'm so sorry
(32:34):
to bother you, you know, miss Derman, but I could
I stop in for this? Oh sure, honey, come on in.
I know it's late, don't worry about it. And so
that could be a way that this person could have
found their way into the home, even if they were
going to be detected with the sound of a boat,
with tying up to a dock and walking up to
the house and not having any signs of forced entry earlier.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Okay, here's another reason. I think, at eighty something years old,
you are absolutely a creature.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I have it.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
I think Russell went to bed first. Russell got up last. Surely,
they said, the minute her feet hit the floor, she
was fully dressed. That sometimes Russell would stay in pajamas
all day. Russell's in box of shorts and the robe
is near him. She's fully dressed. There's a crossword puzzle
on the kitchen table, but there's no coffee cup that
(33:31):
tells me it was at night. Walt, my husband. The
first thing he's gonna do is crawl to that coffee pot.
So if I wake up and the coffee ain't going
and Walt's not there, y'all he died the night before,
I'm just telling you so the absence of a coffee
cup to me was very significant. The other thing, there's
(33:55):
an FTI agent, Andy Smith, and he said, I've been
an FBI agent for over twenty years, and this is
the strangest case I've ever seen. Because you've got two
people that are well off. They've got valuable things in
that home. They've got paintings and Rolex watches and other things.
(34:15):
Not a thing was even looked for. So if it
was a robbery, again they got interrupted and never went
back for what they went for. But like anything in
every case we have all ever worked, there's a twist,
and one twist is they had a son murdered and
(34:37):
that son was murdered in what law enforcement described as
a drug deal gone bad. So Brett talk about that
a little bit. As a prosecutor, when you see that,
what do you automatically have to do?
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Well, you certainly have to see if there's any connection.
And in that case, the person who did the murder,
who committed the murder, was found and was convicted and
was in prison at the time of the murder, so
he would be the first person you'd want to look at.
He obviously is not available. You know, I will say this.
I think when people hear that, their mind automatically jumps
(35:12):
to as you said, Hollywood earlier. You know, oh, the
son was involved, he probably got he got murdered, and
now the cartel is sending a message you cross us,
your family's going to suffer. We're going after the family. Honestly,
Alice and I have done a lot of these cases,
have dealt with a lot of drug dealers. That isn't
(35:35):
very common. It's very rare that something like that would happen.
It seems like twenty years for revenge right exactly that
this is the murder. I don't know if we said that,
but it happened in two thousand, was when the drug
deal went wrong. So the idea that there is some
connection there, I think is I think is pretty weak.
(35:57):
You do have to consider it, like you said, and
you have to run that down, but it feels like
sort of an interesting fact, but not a really good one.
The other thing you're going to look into is all
their business dealings to try and see if anything's going
on here. They were in business, like you said, but
they owned some fast food restaurants and they had retired
(36:20):
from that. So it also feels like any sort of business,
bad business dealing or anything like that, bad blood and business.
It's once again, this is a long time to wait
to do something like this. So I think we can
rule out by a robbery. I think we can rule
out a robbery. I think we can rule out some
sort of kidnapping plot or extortion or anything like that.
(36:43):
This to me, is not a financially based crime.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Agreed to me. There's two things left, revenge and crazy.
Never really out crazy, never rule out crazy. But normally
people are killed for three reasons. Sex, money, revenge, So
there's no sexual assault, nothing was taken. We got revenge.
If it's not revenge, it's a crazy person.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
And I think the interesting thing about the son's murder
is less so that this is a hit twenty, you know,
fourteen years later, but rather it opens up the type
of social network that they may be exposed to. So
we know that their son had suffered from addiction, specifically
with substances. Those circles run with a lot of people
(37:30):
who may suffer from addiction themselves. They I know, we're
not very close to the sun at the time because
of the addiction, but I can imagine we're talking about
this misplaced rage, perhaps that it could have been a
cohort of their son who was in the same circles.
And here you have a family who has their son murdered.
(37:52):
And for most people's lives is life ending. It tears apart, marriages,
they become destinied, their lives fall apart. But here the
Germans keep it together, right. They continue to be these
wonderful examples in their community. They continue to own businesses,
(38:14):
they continue to on the outside thrive despite kind of
the worst tragedy happening to that to them. So who
who may be looking at that and being incredibly angry
that they seem to continue to live despite the worst
happening to them, losing a child in a horrific manner.
Maybe it's someone who knew them distantly. We've talked about
(38:38):
their businesses. They owned hearties. That opens up a different
kind of service sector population. You know, service sector is
a tough profession to be in because of the grueling
hours and because of the way a lot of customers
treat you. And you can imagine that something that may
(38:59):
seem to not register on anyone's agenda to even report
to the police can really stick with someone to have
a grudge to hold that may seem like nothing. It
may be something as small as they withheld my tips,
or they think they withheld their tips, or they taxed
me wrong, or they knew I was struggling and they
wouldn't booked me for more hours. You know, things that
(39:21):
can be very rational in a business sense, but can
feel very personal. If you are struggling to make ends
me and you are working a service sector job where
you are being paid not the highest wages, and every
hour you work could mean the difference between putting food
in your child's mouth or not. And that's really hard
to capture because it's not some big event that the
(39:42):
police would be looking for. It's so personal and unless
you knew about it, you may not even know that's
a motive.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
And I think Alice makes a really good point. As
you said, revenge is one of the reasons people kill.
But when most people think of revenge, they think it's
some big They think like, you know, you kill my father,
you know, and now I'm going to kill you or whatever. Right,
that's what they're thinking of. But oftentimes not oftentimes, but
(40:09):
it can happen that the motives for murder seem so
insignificant to all of us. You see people who were
murdered for just nothing, and you know, the quote unquote
revenge could be for something as simple as they do
have this idellic life, this perfect life living on the lake,
(40:30):
you know, and even that can be a reason for
someone who feels as though they have been slighted in
some way to drive them to do something like this.
Now I tend to I mean, I hate to say that,
I lean towards crazy because there are aspects of this
crime that are so well thought out. But just because
(40:52):
you're quote unquote crazy or your motivation is crazy, doesn't
mean you can't act in a very rational way when
you're committing a crime. But the murder seems so senseless,
just going all the way back to the beginning. I mean,
the first thing we talked about here was a hit
gone wrong. And the reason we talked about that is
(41:12):
because of the senselessness of the murder. It just doesn't
feel like this could have been intentional, that these people
were the target of this incredibly violent, thought out murder.
But the other aspect of that is, as you mentioned, crazy,
crazy can lead you and can lead people to do
(41:33):
things that are inexplicable.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
And crazy is difficult to investigate, absolutely because it's hard
to follow the reasoning.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
That's one hundred percent, right, I mean investigations, and we
see this so often, and you see this in true
crime a lot, because crazy can come in degrees, right,
I would argue that colloquially everyone who murders someone is
crazy to some extent, and trying to put yourself in
their shoes and rationalize what they're doing. Ordinarily, it is
(42:03):
going to be difficult for you to figure out why
someone would kill would kill a child, for instance, it's
going to be hard for you to really think of
a motive. And we see that so often in true
ground where people they don't think it could be the
person on trial, for instance, because they just can't rationalize
it out why they would do something like that. So,
you know, the spectrum of crazy here could be pretty broad.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Is there anything regarding evidence that just slaps y'all in
the face.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Well, I think the one thing, you know, everybody who's
grown up watching CSI always wants to know is is
their DNA in the case? And that sometimes can be
a difficult thing to answer, because there may be DNA
that's completely unrelated, but we know, or at least it
seems like I And it's been reported recently that there
is some unknown DNA that I believe was on Russell's
(42:59):
s or possibly correct me if I'm wrong on that. Now,
if it's unknown, that means that to the extent they
can get a complete profile. It has been run through
CODIS and there has not been a hit. And that's
where I think the modern miracle of genetic genealogy would
(43:20):
come in. If it were up to me and it
were possible, you know, I'm looking at author them, I'm
looking at somebody like them and seeing whether or not
they can help out.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
I think what that also tells us is with genetic genealogy,
you would know if this was a family member. I know.
Unfortunately people always think of does this have to do
with the kids, if does it have to do with inheritance.
I think the fact that it's unknown DNA really rules
out the family. And I think that's already been the case.
They all had good alibis. They were all, you know,
(43:48):
far far from home at the time of these horrific murders.
But this also opens it up to that craziness. Right
when you don't already have a criminal record, you're not
already in a database. That indicates to me that this
is personal, that this wasn't just some serial killer who
is trolling the lake at night looking for people to kill.
(44:10):
There was a reason that they were targeted. We don't
know the reason, but for whatever reason, they haven't shown
their head in other crimes before. It doesn't mean they
haven't committed crimes before, because usually you don't start with
a double homicide. But there could be other things that
were smaller, on a smaller scale. And perhaps they were
just never caught for it. But I think this is incredibly,
(44:33):
incredibly heartening that there is DNA. We know that DNA
technology makes strides literally on a daily basis, and if
they don't yet have a confirmed profile, you know, there
are very responsible folks in this arena who are looking
at how to preserve this type of DNA until the
(44:54):
technology catches up. So I hope that is the case here,
that there is enough if they can't yet generate a
profile now, that they will keep it until the technology
catches up. But because they have DNA, because it's unknown
at the present time, I am heartened that this case
is solvable and we will get more answers at some point.
I just hope it's sooner rather than leader, for the
(45:16):
sake of the family members who have to live with
this horrific murder and not have any answers at the
present time.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Amen. Well stated, And y'all know me, And when this
thing first happened, of course, I'm in Georgia, and I thought,
you know, he's talking about sending things to the state lab,
and we have limitations like most state labs, and in
a case this severe, I don't want there to be
any well. I didn't personally know share of Seals, so
(45:46):
I called him. He didn't answer. I left him a
message and I just said, hey, this is who I am.
Here's what I thank you. How to do with that evidence?
He didn't call me back. So I called him back
and I said, here's the other thing you can do
with it, and here's the person and here's their number.
And he didn't call me back again. So I kept
making calls, just filling up his answer machine, saying here's
(46:08):
a playbook. If you want to utilize it, great, but
there are options above the GBI that can possibly help you.
And Brett, you already mentioned it. The first thing I
told him was author them. If you have not heard
of them, for all that is right and holy in
this world, call them. They are solving five six cases
(46:29):
a day, a day, y'all, not a month, not a year.
They have got the technology. Doctor Middleman started working on
that when he was fourteen. Now, I met Walt when
I was fourteen. Let me tell you what we were doing.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Okay, we.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Weren't trying to invent nothing except an alibi of while
we were out of the house. As long as we
were that's it. And you know, I think again, when
you meet these people like y'all have been able to
do I've been able to do, it elevates what you
can do on a case. That's what's so wonderful to
(47:12):
me is you know you can call doctor and doctor
Middleman and y'all. If that ain't an intimidating couple, Okay,
they're both brilliant and they will help you and they
will walk you through it and allow you to understand
it in a way that you can present it. And
it's an unbelievable thing. So again, I don't think there's
(47:37):
enough we can do, but I cannot say enough about
sheriff sales. And I just want everybody to know he
hadn't stopped, he ain't slowed down, he ain't tired. He's
got the FBI, he's got phone data, he's tried to
get DNA off a truckload of stuff. He goes through
and talks to any expert he can find, and I
(47:59):
believe in my he's going to solve it.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I do, yeah, And I will say this, this case,
I think is the thing about genetic genealogy. We're reaching
a point, I hope where we're using it in the
middle of hot pursuit type cases. You know, where a
crime happens yesterday and we're using it. But one place
we see it a lot are in cases that have
(48:22):
taken a little while to solve, and there is no
downside to it. They are The thing I love about
them is if they can't get a DNA profile, they
don't run the DNA, so they're going to give you.
They're not going to just give it a shot because
they want to be the ones to solve a case.
(48:42):
They're going to tell you if they can't do it.
There's no downside to bringing them in. And the miracle
of genetic genealogy, I mean it is, it is truly.
It is like fingerprints were in the late eighteen hundreds.
It is that big a revolution. So and it can
solve cases.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Amen Us, You got any less?
Speaker 3 (49:01):
No, I absolutely love discussing these cases with you, Mac
because you bring so much insight to this. And I
think this is a case that, now that we know
there's some DNA and maybe some other data, that it's solvable.
And when we do cases like this that feel like
they're on the cusp of some big break, I think
(49:22):
the more attention focused on them the better so that
we can keep them, you know, at the forefront of investigators' minds.
We always say this to folks. Unfortunately, the reality is
there are more crimes than there are law enforcement to
investigate and to be able to allocate resources. It's a
you know, it's a losing battle, which is why we
(49:43):
need to give grace to our law enforcement officers who
are working just around the clock in order to solve
these cases. But I think this type of conversation is
helpful to keep this case on people's minds so that
if anyone heard anything that night, if anyone has any
other information, they can come forward and help law enforcement
solve it. Because this is unfortunately bragworthy. I mean, they
(50:07):
have gotten away with two murders in a horrific manner,
and if they are as bold as they were during
the murders, they're probably pretty prideful about what they've been
able to accomplish, and they don't want to keep it
to themselves.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Y'all. We have had two federal prosecutors walk us through
a case like nobody else could, y'all. I appreciate it
so much, and I'm going to be talking to Sheriff
seal soon and I'm going to let him know. I
took a lot of notes, so I'm going to let
him know all the things y'all were saying. But Brett Alice,
thank you. Thank you for not just coming on Zone seven,
(50:44):
but being a part of my Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Thank you so much for having us when we got this.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
When we started doing this and nobody knew who we are,
we reached out to you and you walked through some
stuff with us and talked to us and Cam on
our show, and we've appreciated it. You are amazing. We
love you and we're always always happy to do anything
with you.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
One hundred percent of greed.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Well, I love y'all too, and it's nothing but mad respect.
So we're going to be able to solve some cases.
That's the most important thing. And y'all check out the
Prosecutor's podcast. If you have not, I don't know where
you've been, but go there now so that you know
your life is enriched. Get over there and listen to
what they're doing. It's important work. And y'all want to
(51:28):
get an end Zone seven the way that I always
do with a quote. Immediately when this thing happened, everything
else I was doing stopped Sheriff Seales, Putnam County. I'm
Cheryl McCollum and this is one seven, five
Share Madonna, Elvis Prince. You know you have made it
when you just have to use your first name. And
tonight we have Brett and Alice. Y'all know who I'm
talking about the Prosecutors podcast. They are brilliant, They are adorable,
(00:31):
they are smart, and let me tell you something now, Alice,
when you meet her, you think, oh my gosh, so adorable,
so vivacious. But then you talk to her and you
realize pretty quick, I am out of my league. I
think yet of law school knows what they're doing. And
then you've got Brett. Brett will come up super nice,
(00:53):
a little quiet when you first meet him, maybe, and
then you talk to him and then you realize, yeah,
I Mike should have done some more homework. But together
they are just a powerhouse of information. They are a
solid go to if you don't understand the case, or
(01:14):
you're not sure what evidence can get brought in, or
you don't really understand what the prosecution is doing. They
are a phone call away or an episode away so
that you can have it all cleared up. And when
I tell you, this episode for me is so long overdue.
I adore them, I respect them, and I cannot wait
(01:36):
to jump into this case with them. Brett and Alice,
welcome to zonees Heaven.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, thank you. That's the first time anyone's ever compared
me to Elvis, So I think I'm going to hold
onto this one for a while.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well that's overdue too, are you kidding?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Back? That was like literally the nicest intro I think
we've ever received. I think we can retire and just
play that clip for the rest of our lives and
I'd be happy.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But you know it's true, And I had people come
at me and go, you always just brag. Okay, well,
name something that I've said that's not accurate. Again, y'all
have been kind to my children. I mean every time
I've ever seen y'all in person, y'all have just been
welcoming and gracious and kind. And when you afford that
(02:21):
to my children, well that's all I got to know
about ya. So I appreciate y'all on a lot of levels.
So tonight we are going to be talking about a
case that is bizarre. It's unusual enough that you don't
get this all the time, and it's the case of
Russell and Shirley Durman out of Lake Oconey, Georgia Russell
(02:46):
was eighty eight, Shirley was eighty seven. They had been
married sixty eight years. Y'all. I mean, I cannot imagine
that life was somebody that you've built and now you're
to reaping the rewards of all that hard work. Right,
They've got this beautiful home on Lego Coney. And for
(03:07):
those of y'all that have not been there, let me
just paint your picture real quick. The lake is beautiful,
but these houses. First time I went there, I thought
I can be a squatter. I'm just gonna move in.
They're that beautiful, and you have the back of the
yards that face the lake. It's almost like a competition
(03:30):
who's going to have the greatest landscape. And I mean
that alone is one hundred thousand dollars. Just unbelievably flawless,
is all I can tell you. But they've earned it.
They owned Hearty's bunch of hardy restaurants, so when they retired,
Lego Cony is where they wanted to go. So Brett,
(03:52):
now is y'all just jump in because I know as prosecutors,
y'all have seen a ton of cases and this one,
I know leaked out at y'all for a plethora of reasons.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Absolutely, and you're right. I mean those of you who
haven't been to Lake Aconi in the area. Allis and
I actually went there for a conference once, and it
is gorgeous. It is. If this were a Dayline episode,
at some point, they would say, it's the kind of
place where nothing bad ever happens, just beautiful homes. That's
beautiful lake. You know, maybe you get a robbery here,
(04:24):
or they are gone wrong, somebody breaks into one of
these beautiful houses and someone you know gets shot or something.
But a crime like this one that seems to have
been well planned, violent but controlled, is something that you
just you don't see, not just in this place, but
(04:45):
really this case is unique and one of those that
will leave you sitting and scratching your head for quite
some time when you start to think about all the
little details.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I think that's exactly right. I mean, everything Mack has
said is right. Lake Aconi is at asolutely idyllic and
beautiful and luxurious. However, it's a different luxury than you
would find, say in the Hamptons. It's a quiet luxury people.
You know, people outside of really the Southeast may not
even have heard of look lak Akoni before. So it
is a humble place despite it being a place of luxury.
(05:19):
And when you go there, you feel like you're in
the middle of nowhere. There are beautiful trees, it's very pastoral,
rather than where all the Hollywood stars, for example, go.
And another thing that just boggles the mind here is,
like Brett said, the level of just cruelty and violence
afforded to people who truly seem like they had no
(05:42):
enemies is so senseless. They were a kind couple, they
have friends, they had four children, they have nine grandchildren,
and despite all of this, they are left in a
horrific manner. You know, Russell is the head surely is
(06:02):
thrown into the lake, having you know, been murdered, tied
down with cinder blocks. Really things you almost see from cartels.
That level of violence against this sweet old couple who
was on their way to a friend's party, and all
of this is just absolutely none of the dots seem
(06:24):
to connect when you first look at this case.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And Alice, that's one thing when I first heard some
of the details, I'm like, did they hit the wrong house?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I thought the same thing. That was the first thing
that this is this is almost and you said hit,
And I think that's what this feels like. This feels
like Alice mentioned the cartel. It feels like a sophisticated
murder designed to leave little evidence behind that but also
violent enough that it sends a message to anyone else
(06:56):
who sees it and recognizes. You know, not everyone. If
you're not in the game, if you're not in the cartel,
if you're not part of it, you might not recognize
what happened in this. But if you are, you would,
you would see all the signs. And that's what the
first thing I thought when I saw this was, is
there someone else in this neighborhood, on this leg that
(07:17):
we should be looking at to see if they have
some sort of connection to a group of people who
basically went to the wrong place and did this horrible thing.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
And I can promise you whatever is going to just
leap into your mind and you're going to run with
it like a movie. You're making it sexier than it
is nine times out of ten. So now we've already
said the word cartail, we've already said a hit. Now
we got to think mafia. Now we've got to think,
oh my gosh, did they see something? And now they
(07:49):
got to silence them? So again, Now I'm writing for Hollywood,
and you've got to almost train yourself. Now, Alice, help
me out. Women are bad about that. We can turn
it into a movie pretty quick.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
No, I think that's right. I mean, I think we're
seeing that in a lot of the cases that draw
a lot of national attention. Typically it's just some senseless
violence here, right, But there are kind of three details
here that really jump out at me in terms of
the sophistication and the sending. The message part is the
hard part for me, because I'm not sure who the
(08:23):
message is for the fact.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
That's a good point.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Good point, I mean, the fact that Shirley was taken
and essentially missing. I don't think there was She was
tied down with cinderblocks, and I think the hope was
that she would never float up. Now, this was a
very sophisticated killer. They probably know that when you spend
long enough at the bottom of a lake, your body
takes in the fluids and you'll eventually float up. But
(08:48):
what it does is delay the discovery, and so you
don't have a ransom out there, You don't have some
like you know, phone calls to telephone booths, like in
the movies where they say, we have Shirley deliver the
two million dollars by cash. If there's any trackers will
kill her immediately. There's none of that. But there clearly
was an intent to make it seem like she could
(09:09):
be alive, that she could be missing. But it wasn't
even to frame her as being the potential killer of
her husband. And so these are all things that you
may see in a Hollywood style script of a murder, kidnapping,
or double homicide. Is there's a reason to make someone
seemingly disappear, to frame them for the other murder, or
(09:30):
to try to elicit some sort of reward or ransom.
Nothing here, there's no message about Shirley. In some ways,
she's accidentally found. They didn't tie enough cinder blocks on her.
She eventually floated up but days later. And then the
other detail that really sticks out to me is they
didn't want to be found out right away. Because we've
(09:52):
talked about how Russell was beheaded, but the fact that
this killer was so methodical and home to put towels
around the pooling blood to keep the blood from seeping
out into the garage into the driveway to evade detection
chills me to my bone because we know that this
(10:13):
person must know how much the body bleeds. They've maybe
done this before, and again they're evading that detection and
it worked. This poor couple wasn't found potentially for days.
So those things, in terms of like turning away from
the Hollywood movie script, I'd like to and in some
ways that chills you enough that this isn't some fantastical
(10:35):
Hollywood script. But at the same time, those two levels
of sophistication does point to something more than just your
rage violence you see in many other cases, and.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
See that is why you are so vital. Because the
towel is the reason that I stopped thinking cartail and
mob hit. Most men are a to b their crimes
are also so for somebody to bring cinderblocks, to bring
possibly a firearm, to bring, rope and net and abode
(11:10):
and know where to take her. But yet they're gonna
stop and in any way try to stop blood from
going out the garage door. They didn't bring that tible
that came from their home. So that to me was like,
that's somebody that's afraid to be caught. They want to
have more lead time. That ain't a professional. A professional
(11:33):
would have killed them both right there in the garage.
I'm done now. I want both of you to talk
to me about this. I have said, and I've been
very public. Shirley was treated differently. Anytime I've got somebody
that spends more time with one victim than the other,
or it appears more personal, that victim becomes my focus
(11:57):
because I believe they were the target for the audience.
They're not gonna love what I'm fixing to say, but
I'm gonna say it, and I want y'all to jump
in it. Don't take nothing to behead. Somebody oj did
it with no experience. You got a sharp enough weapon,
that head's gonna go. He was right there. Russell never moved.
(12:20):
Surely they took from the house down the long backyard
into a boat on a lake, when at least six
seven miles knew where on that lake to put her
because where she was found Georgia Power had cut down
a bunch of trees, so the trees are just under
(12:41):
the surface. There's no homes there. You can't boat across it.
So if they had tossed her far enough they didn't
think anybody would ever find her because nobody ever goes
over there. She was beaten to death. Again, that takes
more time. In fact, Russell was shot and then beheaded.
(13:02):
What are you talking about fourteen seconds at the most, Shirley.
That takes a lot of time to beat somebody to death.
Put him in a boat, drive them, hook him up
to some cinder blocks, toss him out. That ain't quick well.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Another thing that I think indicates that she was the target.
There's at least one report that Russell's hands were bruised
and he actually had some of Shirley's hair in his wounds,
which sort of indicates that he is attempting to fight
off whoever is doing this, who has Shirley, and he's
(13:39):
trying to get her away from that person or whatever,
and is unable to do so. And then, as you said,
because there is gunshot residue on his shirt, the theory
is that he was shot in the head and then
whoever did that then removed his head. Probably may I mean,
(14:00):
I don't know. This is speculation, but one reason to
do that would be to avoid any sort of evidence
of what kind of weapon was used. Ballistics that sort
of thing. But if all that's true, then that would
go along with your idea that for some reason, Shirley
is the target of this event, that is the person
that this killer was really interested in. Well, for whatever
(14:21):
reason or whatever they intended to do with her, she
was the person that they started with and she was
the person that they finished with.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I think you're right to focus on Shirley because she
was absolutely treated differently. Does seem like she was the target,
sadly because their bed was unmade and may have even
been a situation. I think she was known to get
up early that perhaps she had gotten up early, was
met with the attacker, was screaming for help, and her husband,
you know, being her loving husband, ran to her aid
(14:53):
and unfortunately was ended quickly in a quick manner, because
a gunshot to the head is don't know that for
a fact, but there's gunpowder residue on his collar and
his head is missing, and then there's the beheading, so
we don't have the bullet. But if he was shot,
that's not personal, and it's quick. You do that when
(15:13):
someone interrupts you with what you're doing. Now, she died
from blunt force trauma, that's personal. Because in order to
inflict blunt force trauma, you have to be very close
to someone. It often takes more than one hit, so
it is longer and it is incredibly violent. I've never
had to suffer through that, but seeing someone's head bashed
(15:36):
in is not for the faint of heart. And to
raise your arm and to do it again, there is
a commitment to that, and that killer had to face her,
watch her head get bashed in, and probably do it again.
With all that said, she is the stay at home
mother raising four kids. If you see a picture of her,
(15:57):
she literally looks like you know, Hollywood cast grandmother. She
had ninety grandchildren. She has this beautiful kind smile, perfectly cooid,
you know, gray hair, and she looks like a kind
person who probably says hello, honey to everybody who passes her.
She's involved in her church. You know, she really seems
(16:21):
like just a kind person within community. So what that
tells me is that because nothing was missing, you know,
nothing in the house seemed to be disturbed. This does
not seem to be a robbery. Her phone, her wallet,
I think her phone, kind of her valuables were in
the home. I don't think there was anything of note
(16:42):
missing from her. It wasn't like she always had, say,
you know, some very valuable piece of jewelry that was missing,
So it doesn't seem like robbery is the motive. And second,
there doesn't appear to be any sexual assault. She is
not your typical sexual assault victim. There are very sick
people in the world who it doesn't matter if you're
a tree or inanimate object. They will sexual assault no
(17:05):
matter who you are. But she is not your typical
profile for a sexual assault victim because of age and
the fact that there her clothes were all on her.
She doesn't appear to have been sexually assaulted. So if
sexual assault isn't a motive, which again is usually high
on the list of why women are targeted, this almost
(17:26):
feels personal, as in, she's a stand in for a
mother figure, or a grandmother figure, or some sort of
nurturing figure that may not even have to do with her,
but perhaps she's standing in for whoever the killer has
immense rage over, and she is like the prototype of
(17:46):
what a mother should be.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I like that, I wrote that down, so I want
to give everybody just a little bit of the timeline.
Thursday afternoon, May first, twenty fourteen, Russell is captured own
surveillance video inside a local publics. That is the last
time he is absolutely on camera or seen alive other
(18:12):
than once he gets home with Shirley. But I'm saying
outside of Shirley, that's the last time. That Thursday is
also the last day that Drmans ever talked to any
of their children. One of their sons called and they
talked to him. That evening. The couple was expected to
be at a friend's house for the one hundredth and
fortieth runn into the Kentucky Derby Saturday, May third. They
(18:36):
never showed up. Now, Shirley is the kind of woman
that if she had accepted that invitation and somebody became
ill or something else came up, she would have called
and said, we're not going to be able to come.
So this couple thought, well, maybe something kind of bad happened.
There may be really sick. We better go check on them.
(18:57):
So they went to check on them, and that's when
they were found deceased. So, according to Sheriff Seals, Russell's
murder occurred somewhere between four point thirty pm May the
first and six pm on May fourth, when they didn't
show up at the party, So Brett, I loved what
(19:19):
Alice was talking about about where the rage was focused.
I loved what you said about how this killer, even
though the level of violence was high, was still controlled.
Tell us a little more about what you see as controlled.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Well, this is, for instance, you don't see there's no
obvious signs of breaking in, which I think is also
interesting because a lot of times if you don't see
obvious signs of a break in, it may be because
whoever it was knew the person and willingly let them
into the house. And we've obviously seen that in a
(19:56):
lot of cases, the house itself is not ransacked. You know,
this was a house with a lot of stuff in
it which would have been valuable. I think this points
against any kind of robbery. You don't see that, and
what you see is the things that they did see.
Everything seems to have a purpose. So we talked about
you know, the beheading wasn't just an act of violence.
(20:18):
It was done for a reason, and apparently the cuts
were very clean. Somebody took their time in doing that.
And then you know is these are difficult things to
talk about, but Russell's Head's never been found, so whoever
did that disposed of it in a way that it
wouldn't be found. Also, the fact that her body was
(20:39):
dumped the way it was, to me, indicates a little
bit of planning for that purpose. We know they had
to come by a boat because there was no other
boat available, and you would have needed a boat, as
you were saying, to take to take her to the
deepest part of the lake. And you mentioned the trees
being cut down, And one thing that I was curious about.
(21:01):
My understanding is they took her to this deep part
of the lake for the purposes of dumping her, but
she actually ended up on top of those trees, which
was when reason the body was found. And I wonder
if that was a slip up they did not anticipate,
and if the trees hadn't been there and they had
dumped her in that part of the lake would have
if she had gone all the way to the bottom,
(21:22):
maybe she never does resurface, which I think that shows
a level of planning and sophistication the fact that you're
going to that part of the lake. There's also been
reports and I don't know why the police say this.
A lot of times they say things they don't tell
us everything. Obviously that whoever did this appears to have
known the house. I don't know exactly how they know that,
(21:42):
but that also was something that I found interesting in
their description of the home, and Alice made a really
good point that I think is one of those things.
It is an avenue of investigation in a case like
this that I do think you need to follow, because
there are cases where someone and you see this with
serial killers, but even not serial killers, where someone misplaces
(22:07):
their anger at another person they know it is. There
have been several cases where people in sort of an
abusive situation or a situation where they have a lot
of hatred towards, say their mother, there is another kind
person who was sort of a stand in for that
and is being kind to them, and then they end
(22:28):
up murdering that person in a rage, and it all
goes back to they can't do anything to the person
they actually have the rage against, and so they're misplacing
that that. I don't think that is an incredibly common thing,
but there are many cases where it does happen. I
think that would be an interesting angle to look at
if we're pursuing, if we're heading down this path that
(22:50):
she was the target. You know, we often say you
don't have to have motive to prove a case, and
that's absolutely true. But I think in order to solve
this case you probably need to fit. You're out the motive.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I cannot agree with that more. And you know the
thing is when you look at Russell, he's killed before
he's beheaded, So again, is his head taken so that
they can prove they did what they're getting paid to do.
Or between the house and where Shirley was found, was
it tossed? Were they going to go back and get
(23:22):
him and they're interrupted? Were they trying to hide both
of them and failed? I believe they left at night
because again I live on a lake. You know people's boats,
you know their activities. You know a lot of times
if they're having a party or people visiting, you can
watch the way somebody drives a boat and know what
(23:44):
they've ever done it before. So these folks with these houses,
if somebody in the broad daylight was on a boat
that nobody recognized and they were alone, somebody would have
seen that nobody's whole boat. And in the cove where
they live, you have to pass two houses to get
to their dock. Only one person was at home. The
(24:07):
other house was empty, and a lot of these folks, y'all,
these are their second home, so there's not always somebody
in them, but for the folks that are home, for
the folks that are out fishing. I believe it was
done at night. What do y'all think.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I would be interested to know if you know if
anyone reported hearing a boat, because boats are pretty loud
and at night. If you've ever been to the lake
or stayed the lake, if somebody's driving around on the
lake at night, you hear it because sound travels.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well over water.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Boats are loud, and that late at night, it's not
that usual to have people out boating. I would be
curious if anyone heard anything, even if they didn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
No ear witnesses have come forward, and that's interesting because
we suspect that a gun went off as well. But
like you said, this is a second home area. There
are a lot of trees. The water, depending on what
it's like, can reflect sound, but the amount of trees
around can also muffle or someone may mistake that one shot.
(25:10):
If it was just one shot, and it seems like
it was probably a close range if there was a shot,
so probably no need for additional shots. May mistake it
for a car backfire, or someone trying to start their boat,
or allowed bang, you know, one bang. I can see
that most people may just discount it. If they heard
multiple bangs, that may draw some attention. So I think
(25:31):
the nighttime thing is very It's very intriguing because we're
assuming that Shirley was taken out by boat, and I
think that's the most likely. That seems to be Okham's razor.
Their backyard backs up into the lake, and then she
was dumped there, and I think it would be an
added level of risk to have to carry her to
(25:52):
a car, drive to some sort of a boat dock
area very close by, then to boat out. So I
think it's wrecked that they likely came by boat, and
in order to evade detection, it would have to be
at night. But here's the thing that really boggles my mind.
I think when the police say that this killer or
(26:15):
killers had familiar familiarity with the home. If you've ever
been on a lake, the backs of houses do look
very different from the front. When you do like a
Google Maps to go to a home, it takes you
to the front of the home, and if you go
to Zillow, it takes you to the front of the home.
And especially on lake front properties, the back of the
home is typically almost more grand than the front because
(26:37):
you have the big tall windows. That is the purpose
of living on the lake is to be able to
look out and enjoy the view. And so when I
see the backs of houses that are backing up to
a lake, they look very different from anything you would
see online. And so if you did not know how
the home looked from the back and know which dock
(26:58):
led to that home, could easily see someone get mistaken
on which home to go to. So that's either one
of two theories that it's a mistaken hit the wrong house.
But then why kill both of them? And then why
not just kill them and leave quickly? Why go through
all this trouble of beheading and then you know, taking
Shirley to dump with cinder blocks? Or this person really
(27:20):
knew this home so well that even in the dark,
without looking at the front of the home, without the
numbers of the home, if it was nighttime, all the
lights would be off. There's not a lot of navigating
to a dock you know, those of you who've docked
a boat, it takes some level of navigation, and especially
when lights are off. Unlike parking lots where there's lights up,
(27:44):
most people when they go to sleep, their dock lights
are also turned off. Because it's the country. You turn
your lights off to go to sleep. No one's going
to come by your dock, so you don't need to
leave the lights on for anyone back at the dock.
This all indicates someone who is familiar with going up
to the right house, knowing how to dock a boat correctly.
(28:04):
And you do have to dock, you have to tie it.
It will float away in the time that you take
to go into the home, commit the crime that you're
going to commit, carry a body out, which is going
to be heavy, and then load that you know, victim
onto the boat. So the darkness I think is necessary,
a necessary component to being able to carry this out.
And then also that level of familiarity.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
This is bold, you know. I mean, as Ala said,
pulling your boat up to someone's dock is not a
quick thing. This is not like slipping through the trees
at night, you know, parking half a mile away and
slipping through the trees quietly and attacking this person. You know,
you're exposed. You're on the leg. If anybody does happen
to look out, they're going to see you. You have
(28:49):
to take the time to pull up to the dock.
Like I said, it's going to be loud. Then you're
gonna have to tie yourself up. Then you've got to
make your way exposed up the dock because usually docks
are not There aren't trees covering the dock. You know,
it's it's wide open up up to the house. Hope
that no one woke up, no one heard you arriving.
I mean, all of this is very it's intriguing that
(29:11):
it happened this way. And I think I think Alice
is right, and I think you're right. I think this
had to happen. It had to happen at night, if
this was a surprise. You know, I'm still considering the
possibility of someone they knew coming to the house and
just and then this happened. And if that happened, then
maybe he could have started, you know, in the in
(29:32):
the evening or the afternoon. Certainly I think the departure
happened at night. But yeah, and and I think This
is a really important point that Alice made, so I
just want to just want to reiterate it. Lake at Connie,
it's not the biggest lake in the world, but it's
a big lake and lakes they have all these inlets.
It is really easy to get lost in the lake
(29:53):
if you don't know the lake. You know, it is
really easy to forget where you are, to turn down
the wrong area, particularly at night, because there's even fewer things,
you know, landmarks. So I think there's not a lot
of In one way, there's not a lot of evidence
in this case, but the things that had to happen
(30:14):
for this murder to occur, I think are pieces of
evidence that can help direct you to the kind of
person who did this.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
If this was a hit, I'm just gonna go over
here and kill these two people. I don't have cinder box,
I don't have rope, I don't have net bags, I
don't need a boat, and I shore lord, don't need
to take anybody from that house. And I could care
less that the blood is going down the driveway. So
if this is an A to B hit with a
professional person, none of that happens. We have three separate
(30:48):
crime scenes the house, the boat, and the water. The
house we got, the water we got, the boat we
don't have, and Shirley and Russell didn't have a boat.
No boat has been reported stolen or missing. No boat
has been recovered with blood in it.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And so now I'm going to undercut my theory that
this is someone who knew the lake well, knew the
back of the house well, and could navigate to it.
Another thought that would make it slightly easier, but I
would think there would be some cell phone data, which
I don't know that there is. But one thing I
could imagine, if Shirley seems to be the type of
person she's been described as, she seemed like a kind
(31:28):
hearted person, willing to help others, was a motherly figure
to probably many people, is that someone she knew reached out.
And it may have been at night, and it may
have been a ruse to be able to get in
the house, But this way, if anyone saw them, or
if Shirley or Russell woke up to him docking the boat,
there would be an excuse, something along the lines of
(31:51):
I'm lost on the lake, or I'm running out of gas,
or hey, i'm on the lake. I really need to
use your phone, or I need to use the restroom,
or I need to stop buy for a second. Can
I just pop in for a second. I'm so sorry
it's late, and was let in in that manner, and
then something horrible happened, and I can imagine, And I'm
just going back to the fact that she had children
(32:13):
who are grown and grandchildren. But then that suddenly opens
up the web of possibilities of erratic kind of actors
who may not be rational, who we don't know everything about.
But that spreads your social web much further because it
could be I'm your son's college roommate. I'm so sorry
(32:34):
to bother you, you know, miss Derman, but I could
I stop in for this? Oh sure, honey, come on in.
I know it's late, don't worry about it. And so
that could be a way that this person could have
found their way into the home, even if they were
going to be detected with the sound of a boat,
with tying up to a dock and walking up to
the house and not having any signs of forced entry earlier.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Okay, here's another reason. I think, at eighty something years old,
you are absolutely a creature.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I have it.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
I think Russell went to bed first. Russell got up last. Surely,
they said, the minute her feet hit the floor, she
was fully dressed. That sometimes Russell would stay in pajamas
all day. Russell's in box of shorts and the robe
is near him. She's fully dressed. There's a crossword puzzle
on the kitchen table, but there's no coffee cup that
(33:31):
tells me it was at night. Walt, my husband. The
first thing he's gonna do is crawl to that coffee pot.
So if I wake up and the coffee ain't going
and Walt's not there, y'all he died the night before,
I'm just telling you so the absence of a coffee
cup to me was very significant. The other thing, there's
(33:55):
an FTI agent, Andy Smith, and he said, I've been
an FBI agent for over twenty years, and this is
the strangest case I've ever seen. Because you've got two
people that are well off. They've got valuable things in
that home. They've got paintings and Rolex watches and other things.
(34:15):
Not a thing was even looked for. So if it
was a robbery, again they got interrupted and never went
back for what they went for. But like anything in
every case we have all ever worked, there's a twist,
and one twist is they had a son murdered and
(34:37):
that son was murdered in what law enforcement described as
a drug deal gone bad. So Brett talk about that
a little bit. As a prosecutor, when you see that,
what do you automatically have to do?
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Well, you certainly have to see if there's any connection.
And in that case, the person who did the murder,
who committed the murder, was found and was convicted and
was in prison at the time of the murder, so
he would be the first person you'd want to look at.
He obviously is not available. You know, I will say this.
I think when people hear that, their mind automatically jumps
(35:12):
to as you said, Hollywood earlier. You know, oh, the
son was involved, he probably got he got murdered, and
now the cartel is sending a message you cross us,
your family's going to suffer. We're going after the family. Honestly,
Alice and I have done a lot of these cases,
have dealt with a lot of drug dealers. That isn't
(35:35):
very common. It's very rare that something like that would happen.
It seems like twenty years for revenge right exactly that
this is the murder. I don't know if we said that,
but it happened in two thousand, was when the drug
deal went wrong. So the idea that there is some
connection there, I think is I think is pretty weak.
(35:57):
You do have to consider it, like you said, and
you have to run that down, but it feels like
sort of an interesting fact, but not a really good one.
The other thing you're going to look into is all
their business dealings to try and see if anything's going
on here. They were in business, like you said, but
they owned some fast food restaurants and they had retired
(36:20):
from that. So it also feels like any sort of business,
bad business dealing or anything like that, bad blood and business.
It's once again, this is a long time to wait
to do something like this. So I think we can
rule out by a robbery. I think we can rule
out a robbery. I think we can rule out some
sort of kidnapping plot or extortion or anything like that.
(36:43):
This to me, is not a financially based crime.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Agreed to me. There's two things left, revenge and crazy.
Never really out crazy, never rule out crazy. But normally
people are killed for three reasons. Sex, money, revenge, So
there's no sexual assault, nothing was taken. We got revenge.
If it's not revenge, it's a crazy person.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
And I think the interesting thing about the son's murder
is less so that this is a hit twenty, you know,
fourteen years later, but rather it opens up the type
of social network that they may be exposed to. So
we know that their son had suffered from addiction, specifically
with substances. Those circles run with a lot of people
(37:30):
who may suffer from addiction themselves. They I know, we're
not very close to the sun at the time because
of the addiction, but I can imagine we're talking about
this misplaced rage, perhaps that it could have been a
cohort of their son who was in the same circles.
And here you have a family who has their son murdered.
(37:52):
And for most people's lives is life ending. It tears apart, marriages,
they become destinied, their lives fall apart. But here the
Germans keep it together, right. They continue to be these
wonderful examples in their community. They continue to own businesses,
(38:14):
they continue to on the outside thrive despite kind of
the worst tragedy happening to that to them. So who
who may be looking at that and being incredibly angry
that they seem to continue to live despite the worst
happening to them, losing a child in a horrific manner.
Maybe it's someone who knew them distantly. We've talked about
(38:38):
their businesses. They owned hearties. That opens up a different
kind of service sector population. You know, service sector is
a tough profession to be in because of the grueling
hours and because of the way a lot of customers
treat you. And you can imagine that something that may
(38:59):
seem to not register on anyone's agenda to even report
to the police can really stick with someone to have
a grudge to hold that may seem like nothing. It
may be something as small as they withheld my tips,
or they think they withheld their tips, or they taxed
me wrong, or they knew I was struggling and they
wouldn't booked me for more hours. You know, things that
(39:21):
can be very rational in a business sense, but can
feel very personal. If you are struggling to make ends
me and you are working a service sector job where
you are being paid not the highest wages, and every
hour you work could mean the difference between putting food
in your child's mouth or not. And that's really hard
to capture because it's not some big event that the
(39:42):
police would be looking for. It's so personal and unless
you knew about it, you may not even know that's
a motive.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
And I think Alice makes a really good point. As
you said, revenge is one of the reasons people kill.
But when most people think of revenge, they think it's
some big They think like, you know, you kill my father,
you know, and now I'm going to kill you or whatever. Right,
that's what they're thinking of. But oftentimes not oftentimes, but
(40:09):
it can happen that the motives for murder seem so
insignificant to all of us. You see people who were
murdered for just nothing, and you know, the quote unquote
revenge could be for something as simple as they do
have this idellic life, this perfect life living on the lake,
(40:30):
you know, and even that can be a reason for
someone who feels as though they have been slighted in
some way to drive them to do something like this.
Now I tend to I mean, I hate to say that,
I lean towards crazy because there are aspects of this
crime that are so well thought out. But just because
(40:52):
you're quote unquote crazy or your motivation is crazy, doesn't
mean you can't act in a very rational way when
you're committing a crime. But the murder seems so senseless,
just going all the way back to the beginning. I mean,
the first thing we talked about here was a hit
gone wrong. And the reason we talked about that is
(41:12):
because of the senselessness of the murder. It just doesn't
feel like this could have been intentional, that these people
were the target of this incredibly violent, thought out murder.
But the other aspect of that is, as you mentioned, crazy,
crazy can lead you and can lead people to do
(41:33):
things that are inexplicable.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
And crazy is difficult to investigate, absolutely because it's hard
to follow the reasoning.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
That's one hundred percent, right, I mean investigations, and we
see this so often, and you see this in true
crime a lot, because crazy can come in degrees, right,
I would argue that colloquially everyone who murders someone is
crazy to some extent, and trying to put yourself in
their shoes and rationalize what they're doing. Ordinarily, it is
(42:03):
going to be difficult for you to figure out why
someone would kill would kill a child, for instance, it's
going to be hard for you to really think of
a motive. And we see that so often in true
ground where people they don't think it could be the
person on trial, for instance, because they just can't rationalize
it out why they would do something like that. So,
you know, the spectrum of crazy here could be pretty broad.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Is there anything regarding evidence that just slaps y'all in
the face.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Well, I think the one thing, you know, everybody who's
grown up watching CSI always wants to know is is
their DNA in the case? And that sometimes can be
a difficult thing to answer, because there may be DNA
that's completely unrelated, but we know, or at least it
seems like I And it's been reported recently that there
is some unknown DNA that I believe was on Russell's
(42:59):
s or possibly correct me if I'm wrong on that. Now,
if it's unknown, that means that to the extent they
can get a complete profile. It has been run through
CODIS and there has not been a hit. And that's
where I think the modern miracle of genetic genealogy would
(43:20):
come in. If it were up to me and it
were possible, you know, I'm looking at author them, I'm
looking at somebody like them and seeing whether or not
they can help out.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
I think what that also tells us is with genetic genealogy,
you would know if this was a family member. I know.
Unfortunately people always think of does this have to do
with the kids, if does it have to do with inheritance.
I think the fact that it's unknown DNA really rules
out the family. And I think that's already been the case.
They all had good alibis. They were all, you know,
(43:48):
far far from home at the time of these horrific murders.
But this also opens it up to that craziness. Right
when you don't already have a criminal record, you're not
already in a database. That indicates to me that this
is personal, that this wasn't just some serial killer who
is trolling the lake at night looking for people to kill.
(44:10):
There was a reason that they were targeted. We don't
know the reason, but for whatever reason, they haven't shown
their head in other crimes before. It doesn't mean they
haven't committed crimes before, because usually you don't start with
a double homicide. But there could be other things that
were smaller, on a smaller scale. And perhaps they were
just never caught for it. But I think this is incredibly,
(44:33):
incredibly heartening that there is DNA. We know that DNA
technology makes strides literally on a daily basis, and if
they don't yet have a confirmed profile, you know, there
are very responsible folks in this arena who are looking
at how to preserve this type of DNA until the
(44:54):
technology catches up. So I hope that is the case here,
that there is enough if they can't yet generate a
profile now, that they will keep it until the technology
catches up. But because they have DNA, because it's unknown
at the present time, I am heartened that this case
is solvable and we will get more answers at some point.
I just hope it's sooner rather than leader, for the
(45:16):
sake of the family members who have to live with
this horrific murder and not have any answers at the
present time.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Amen. Well stated, And y'all know me, And when this
thing first happened, of course, I'm in Georgia, and I thought,
you know, he's talking about sending things to the state lab,
and we have limitations like most state labs, and in
a case this severe, I don't want there to be
any well. I didn't personally know share of Seals, so
(45:46):
I called him. He didn't answer. I left him a
message and I just said, hey, this is who I am.
Here's what I thank you. How to do with that evidence?
He didn't call me back. So I called him back
and I said, here's the other thing you can do
with it, and here's the person and here's their number.
And he didn't call me back again. So I kept
making calls, just filling up his answer machine, saying here's
(46:08):
a playbook. If you want to utilize it, great, but
there are options above the GBI that can possibly help you.
And Brett, you already mentioned it. The first thing I
told him was author them. If you have not heard
of them, for all that is right and holy in
this world, call them. They are solving five six cases
(46:29):
a day, a day, y'all, not a month, not a year.
They have got the technology. Doctor Middleman started working on
that when he was fourteen. Now, I met Walt when
I was fourteen. Let me tell you what we were doing.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Okay, we.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Weren't trying to invent nothing except an alibi of while
we were out of the house. As long as we
were that's it. And you know, I think again, when
you meet these people like y'all have been able to
do I've been able to do, it elevates what you
can do on a case. That's what's so wonderful to
(47:12):
me is you know you can call doctor and doctor
Middleman and y'all. If that ain't an intimidating couple, Okay,
they're both brilliant and they will help you and they
will walk you through it and allow you to understand
it in a way that you can present it. And
it's an unbelievable thing. So again, I don't think there's
(47:37):
enough we can do, but I cannot say enough about
sheriff sales. And I just want everybody to know he
hadn't stopped, he ain't slowed down, he ain't tired. He's
got the FBI, he's got phone data, he's tried to
get DNA off a truckload of stuff. He goes through
and talks to any expert he can find, and I
(47:59):
believe in my he's going to solve it.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I do, yeah, And I will say this, this case,
I think is the thing about genetic genealogy. We're reaching
a point, I hope where we're using it in the
middle of hot pursuit type cases. You know, where a
crime happens yesterday and we're using it. But one place
we see it a lot are in cases that have
(48:22):
taken a little while to solve, and there is no
downside to it. They are The thing I love about
them is if they can't get a DNA profile, they
don't run the DNA, so they're going to give you.
They're not going to just give it a shot because
they want to be the ones to solve a case.
(48:42):
They're going to tell you if they can't do it.
There's no downside to bringing them in. And the miracle
of genetic genealogy, I mean it is, it is truly.
It is like fingerprints were in the late eighteen hundreds.
It is that big a revolution. So and it can
solve cases.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Amen Us, You got any less?
Speaker 3 (49:01):
No, I absolutely love discussing these cases with you, Mac
because you bring so much insight to this. And I
think this is a case that, now that we know
there's some DNA and maybe some other data, that it's solvable.
And when we do cases like this that feel like
they're on the cusp of some big break, I think
(49:22):
the more attention focused on them the better so that
we can keep them, you know, at the forefront of investigators' minds.
We always say this to folks. Unfortunately, the reality is
there are more crimes than there are law enforcement to
investigate and to be able to allocate resources. It's a
you know, it's a losing battle, which is why we
(49:43):
need to give grace to our law enforcement officers who
are working just around the clock in order to solve
these cases. But I think this type of conversation is
helpful to keep this case on people's minds so that
if anyone heard anything that night, if anyone has any
other information, they can come forward and help law enforcement
solve it. Because this is unfortunately bragworthy. I mean, they
(50:07):
have gotten away with two murders in a horrific manner,
and if they are as bold as they were during
the murders, they're probably pretty prideful about what they've been
able to accomplish, and they don't want to keep it
to themselves.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Y'all. We have had two federal prosecutors walk us through
a case like nobody else could, y'all. I appreciate it
so much, and I'm going to be talking to Sheriff
seal soon and I'm going to let him know. I
took a lot of notes, so I'm going to let
him know all the things y'all were saying. But Brett Alice,
thank you. Thank you for not just coming on Zone seven,
(50:44):
but being a part of my Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Thank you so much for having us when we got this.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
When we started doing this and nobody knew who we are,
we reached out to you and you walked through some
stuff with us and talked to us and Cam on
our show, and we've appreciated it. You are amazing. We
love you and we're always always happy to do anything
with you.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
One hundred percent of greed.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Well, I love y'all too, and it's nothing but mad respect.
So we're going to be able to solve some cases.
That's the most important thing. And y'all check out the
Prosecutor's podcast. If you have not, I don't know where
you've been, but go there now so that you know
your life is enriched. Get over there and listen to
what they're doing. It's important work. And y'all want to
(51:28):
get an end Zone seven the way that I always
do with a quote. Immediately when this thing happened, everything
else I was doing stopped Sheriff Seales, Putnam County. I'm
Cheryl McCollum and this is one seven, five
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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