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INFAMOUS: The Lake Waco Murders Part 2

A community demands answers when three teenagers are found brutally slain in a scenic lakeside park, and it breathes a collective sigh of relief as righteous local lawmen quickly zero in on the perpetrators. But when the dust finally settles, many are forced to ask: who pays the price when ego eclipses justice? This is Part 2 of 2.
Duration
1h 5m
Broadcast on
09 Dec 2024
Audio Format
other

A community demands answers when three teenagers are found brutally slain in a scenic lakeside park, and it breathes a collective sigh of relief as righteous local lawmen quickly zero in on the perpetrators. But when the dust finally settles, many are forced to ask: who pays the price when ego eclipses justice?

This is Part 2 of 2. Make sure to listen to INFAMOUS: The Lake Waco Murders Part 1 before diving into this one… you’re going to want to know the first part of this wild and twisty case.

 

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Welcome back crime junkies. I'm still your host Ashley Flowers and I'm still Britt. Let me jump right back into our story right where we left off in part one and if you haven't listened to that yet you're definitely gonna want to do that first. Do not pass go do not collect $200 otherwise you won't know what's going on but if you have diving with us won't you? Water's fine. When we left off four men had been convicted of the murder of three Texas teenagers. The cop who put them away had become a celebrated hero but and isn't there always a but for those who looked closely at the case there were holes. It wasn't nearly as solid as clickbait headlines might lead you to believe and no one was leading the charge for the men's exoneration harder than the mother of one of the men on death row. This is Lake Waco part two. [Music] For all the confessions the bite mark evidence the jailhouse informants David Spence never wavered on his innocence and though his word clearly held no weight with the jury David's mother Juanita White stood steadfast by her son's side. He may have committed other crimes by no means was her son an angel but like David's lawyers she believed in his innocence here in this case. A mother's opinion doesn't tend to go very far once a jury has spoken. So there were very few people by her side as she tried to fight for her son in the months after the final Lake Waco trial. There was a PI and one of David's trial lawyers who both believed in Juanita and in David and they would take her calls if she heard rumors or if she got tips about her son's case. Specifics may have been TBD but she was determined to learn every last detail of what actually happened that night and she stopped at nothing even hanging out in some questionable places spending her free time in Waco's seediest establishments cozying up to Waco's seediest people. People who could have been involved in the murders or people who knew people who could have been involved. But in the time since the trials there hadn't really been anything that was going to move the needle. Not until one day in 1986 when like manna from the heavens Juanita and David got a letter that they believed would finally prove his innocence. The letter writer was a guy named Robert Snelson. He was one of the jailhouse informants who had testified against David and helped put him on death row. His specific testimony had to do with overhearing David bragging about doing something particularly cruel to one of the victims which was big because the act was accurate. It was something that the jury was made to believe Robert would have only known about if he heard it from the real killer i.e. David. But in this letter Robert told David and Juanita that his entire story every last bit of his testimony was false. He made it up and he'd eventually say that all of the informants made up their stories too because they were getting breaks in their own cases in exchange. Of course they were. But worse than it just being fabricated some of the other informants say that the whole thing was orchestrated by none other than Truman Simons. They said that Simons had been doling out favors to the inmates of the MacLennan County Jail like he was freaking Oprah. You get a break you get a break everybody gets up right but obviously he only Oprah the ones who were willing to play ball right very much like a you scratch my back I'll scratch yours kind of thing. The mission of course had been to book David Spence a one-way ticket to the busiest execution chamber in the country which mission accomplished wait I hope this dude just had like a random job as a corrections officer like how is he getting them mmm breaks and stuff you're not the first to ask that question every time this gets brought up he's like

Transcription truncated.

A community demands answers when three teenagers are found brutally slain in a scenic lakeside park, and it breathes a collective sigh of relief as righteous local lawmen quickly zero in on the perpetrators. But when the dust finally settles, many are forced to ask: who pays the price when ego eclipses justice? This is Part 2 of 2.