Uncovering the Michael Plyler Connection

I'm David Sanger I cover the White House and National seecurity at the New York Times, and I try to explain what decisions made in Washington mean for you wherever you live This is why the Times sends me to the Oval Office when the president is making a major decision or has me ride along on Air Force O on critical trips. And I talk to foreign leaders exploring why they're so often at odds with the United States We live in a world of misinformation and disinformation It's never been more important to have reliable sources of on the ground reporting If you want firsthand reporting on how U. S. policy affects the world Consider subscribing to the New York Times David Wood's original trial in nineteen ninety two The prosecutor acknowledged there was almost no direct proof tying wood to the desert murders In fact, she said it multiple times, like she was trying to get in front of it quote purely a circumstantial evidence case This is exactly what David W's legal team is now trying to exploit. The lack of direct evidence, especially for a serial killer case involving six murders The only physical evidence against David Wood are the fibers found at his apartment and on one of the victims Th then there's the rest of it jailhouse informants who claim would confess to them A rape that resembled the murders, David Wood's prior criminal history and witnesses People who saw him or someone who looked like him with the victims Some of these witnesses were pretty fuzzy on details or had credibility issues You might think the overall weakness of the case would be good for David Wood's lawyers. Make it easier to prove his innocence The problem is, the way the state constructed the case, there's no one big shiny piece of evidence for the defense to knock down Instead, they have a million little threads they can pull at seememingly endless rabbit trails to runund down. For the last fifteen years, Greg Worchuck, the lead attorney on the case, has been working pretty much solo And for much of that time, he's been focused on the DNA When a few items were tested in twenty ten, they turned up a match to an unknown male, not David Wood So Greg's been litigating back and forth for more than a decade to test more items from the crime scenes. He got a final no, just a few months before we started following him around But now, Greg has a team and a dwindling number of days to do every little thing he's put off. Comb through the records one last time, look for remaining witnesses He and his team need the kind of bombshell the courts just can't ignore And fifty eight days before the execution, They just may have one From Serial Productions, the Marshall Project, and the New York Times, this is the last twelve weeks I'm Maurice Schema This week on the Wire Cutter S showow. The Cost of consumer tech products, laptops, phones, gaming consoles is climbing. We have built a world that makes people need this stuff. and increasingly, it's going to be very difficult for a broad category of people to afford. What's driving it and what can we do about it? Find out wherever you get your podcasts On a Tuesday afternoon, Alvin and I get texts from Greg and his co counsel Jeremy with links to an emergency Zoom meeting Well, we can just start going. I've forwarded you guys the email with the information we got from the AG In a few weeks, the lawyers will send the courts a giant legal filing with all their best arguments for why they think David Wood is innocent This kind of filing has a bunch of rules. Chief among them They can't just rehash a bunch of old claims from previous appeals They need new arguments Jeremy's gathered everyone together for just this reason Something new has come in A grizzly story from a woman in El Paso named Michelle Bradley. The information is pretty interesting. So she says that she thinks her father, James Patrick Bradley is responsible for the murders here U herer father was convicted in nineteen ninety five of chopping up Michelle Bradley's stepmother and James Bradley's wife at the time, dismemembering her body and tossing it around in El Paso, New Mexico. Michelle has a pretty radical theory. She's not so sure David Wood actually killed all those women She thinks someone else was involved Her own father So Michelle called the atttorney general's office, the prosecutors in this case. F office handed over her information to the defense because they're legally required to. It's called a Brady disclosure As Jeremy lays this all out, I'm thinking, o my Godd But I look over at Greg on his little Zoom screen and he's giving nothing. hisis face is totally blank I mean, you know, again, I don't want to or water over alternative suspect, but the information we have right now it's not very it's not very compelling to me. I mean, you know, when we first got the message, you get your hopes up, but it's The daughter thinks Dad may have committed these crimes. He didn't confess to her rettyuous. Anyway Part of Greg's reaction can be chalked up to the source of the information Sure, the AG's office has to hand over leads, but Crag has been at this long enough to be skeptical of anything that comes from that office And these are tough calls Every hour the lawyers spend running down one lead that's a dead end It's an hour they could spend on another At the same time, they have no idea which lead could finally pay off and maybe even save David Wood's life As Greg is talking, I notice another lawyer from Jeremy's office, Naomi Fenwick is pursing her lips Almost wincing She lets Greg finish before jumping in. Well, I'm going to strike the hopeful note and say that I think it's potentially really important. at the very least You know, it adds to the list of folks who they whose DNA they could test against the DNA they know is male and is unidentified and is not David Wood And I think it's helpful in continuing to paint this picture They're refusing to investigate or explore other options And I dont be distracted too much because I I'm not saying can come out of the woodwork on a high profile case like this that they just can be distracting. anyway. I'm just I'm not being unhopeful. I'm just saying let's not lose focus You're supposed to be the eternal spring of optimism, Greg. I am, I am, but I'm saying let's not you know, let's not start heading down too many rabbit trails and this might be the AG's very strategy Um Let's send us off on a world's goose chase The lawyers talk some more and ultimately decide the lead is worth checking out We meet up with them in El Paso. Naomi is the one assigned to pay a visit to Michelle Bradley, and Alvin goes with her I'll let him take it from here One important thing I learned about Naomi pretty quickly as we're driving around El Paso is that she has, let's call it some ambivalence about me tagging along with her. I already know I am going to regret all of this deeply and I'm gonna wake up at two AM replaying everything I've told you and tellelling myself it was a terrible idea Naomi, from what I've noticed in Zoom calls at least. is sharp with a teasing sense of humor. bit of a shit talker But on this car ride, she's also cautious Even a little cagey It's not that Nomi is against pressed interest in her client's case. She knows it can be useful. It's more than me being here, observing her at work, observing her. I don't know, It's really jarring. I'm not a trial lawyer, right? I don't stand up in court and put on a show I think some of the cjun has to do with the mission today. Michelle Bradley's dad died in prison more than a decade ago. So Naomi needs Michelle T give her some more detail. Fesh out her theory about her dad. The hope is that Michelle will say something that Naomi can then corroborate with other people nudg this whole thing out of the realm of theory and grounded in facts. L lawyers call it developing a claim. The plan to develop this claim, I am somewhat surprised to find out is to knock on Michelle's door without any advance warning No phone call, nothing. This I learn is standard operating procedure with habeas lawyers and investigators They prefer to take their chances in person, rather than entertaining the risk of getting a no over the phone Under ideal circumstances, Naomi would be taking great pains to carefully choreograph her approach, to build a quick intimacy with Michelle, get her comfortable and talking. But my presence in all this, and sticaking Naomi's partner dance and turning it into more of a flash moob situation We speent a good deal of time rehearsing how I'm not going to get in our way If we do find her, what are we doing? findind me? You're gonna go up and say who you are, and then I'm gonna say who I am. and give her the option of telling me to fuck off. Iect When we finally knock on Michelle Bradley's door, she looks completely out of sorts She's in a t shirt and shorts pacing around her living room. Her large, fluffy dog is mirroring her panting and distress Naomi introduces herself and Michelle asks why Naomi didn't call or text first Michelle is on the verge of tears, saying she didn't even have a chance to brush her teeth or take a shower yet She seems like she's just about ready to kick us out, but suddenly thinks better of it She says she may as well get this all over with She says I can stay, but she doesn't want to be recorded Over the next half hour or so, Michelle describes her father, James Bradley as an extremely abusive man who spent a lifetime terrorizing her, her sister, and their mother beforefore moving on to her stepmother who he killed, chopped into pieces and buried around El Paso and New Mexico The details are raw Hurt a stomach Michelle gets throughot and fits and starts between crying jags and long sips of water When Michelle eventually tells us about why she's suspicious of her dad A lot of it is hearsay stuff she's heard through relatives over the years But there is one thing she says she witnessed directly Michelle tolded us that one day in nineteen eighty seven, she walked into her dad's house and saw a woman she didn't know relaxing on the couch, looking very comfortable. Years later, she thought she recognized a woman's face on the news They looked like one of the desert killers' victs Ivy Williams We leave the apartment and sit in the rental car. Naomi calls her boss, Jeremy Hey, Jeremy, how are you Ii good. How are you? What's up?m so Alvin is here with me recording. Hey Evven. Hi. you couldn't see that, but Ni full body sideigh at that I just wanted to update you So we spoke to Michelle and She was really distressed Nami gives Jeremy the rundown of what Michelle said and they run through their options together. They don't have to have someone corroborate Michelle's story. That's not necessary for their legal filing. but it would definitely be stronger if they did. Their problem is they don't have many people to choose from. Some people are dead, like Michelle's dad Others, like an aunt who lives out in Washington, would require a special trip, or they have to weigh against the other things on their to do list Michelle did mention an older sister to us though, who also lives in El Paso Michelle telllds they mostly aren't speaking terms at this point, but she suggested it might be worth asking her sister what she remembers. Given that menu of options, Jeremy suggests we give the estranged sister a visit. Naomi doesn't skip a beat, starts looking for an address on her phone I can't figure out if they're digging into this because they see something tenuous but worth pursuing, or because they're desperate and they have unlimited miles on the rental car. Did Michelle say something in there that trippps some lawyer wire I couldn't see? I check with Naomi, hoping she'll let me in on her thinking What of what she said seemed useful to you Ask me in a couple hours While Alvin is off with Naomi, I'm spending the day with Greg If there's one overarching story that Greg has been telling himself and anyone who will listen about this case, it's that the cops had tunnel vision. They took every piece of evidence and either massaged it to make it fit David Wood or discarded it if it didn't This was a hard case to solve, Greg's theory goes, and there was a ton of pressure to solve it. Some cops were calling it the biggest case in the history of the police department And victim families were demonstrating in public So Greg thinks the police took shortcuts and zeroed in on David Wood because it was convenient And they were desperate And over the years, he has found some evidence of that tunnel vision For one, there were other suspects. The police could have spent more time investigating. Creg is the list from the original police file There were thirty six names on this list Arguably the most important one though, was a guy named Salvador Martinez He was a friend of David Woods, who also admitted to police that he knew some of the victims According to court documents, one woman claimed told the lawyers that Martinez once put her in a headlock. and said quote If you know how easy it would be for me to snap your neck in two right now? She later told the police that they should be investigating him rather than David Wood The police did give Martinez a polygraph test about the desert murders, which I know unreliable But he failed it The P pololice went ahead and collected his saliva and blood, but for reasons that aren't totally clear, they never tested whether his DNA appeared at any of the crime scenes Both Greg's team and I have talked to Martinez I tried to reach him for months and finally just went to his house He wouldn't let me record him, but he denied having anything to do with the murders When I followed up later about the allegation that he'd threatened to snap a woman's neck, I got an email from his wife She said he couldn't talk to us anymore because of his dementia, but the story quote does not sound like anything Sal would do So, alternate suspects That's one part of Greg's tunnel vision theory And then there's David Wood's pickup truck. A key piece of the state's narrative was that he used this truck to take the victims out to the desert But Greg has since figured out that the truck was in a wreack and sitting in a salvage yard for all of august nineteen eighty seven which is when three of the victims disappeared Plus, El Paso police were actually surveilling David Wood for part of that August, and they didn't see any evidence of him killing anyone. Greg's tunnel vision theory even extends to the physical evidence in the case That evidence is now in the El Paso County courourthouse So that's our first stop So you brought all these photos, right? I see. Okay A clerk ushers us through a side door into the bowels of the building to a low lit room, very law in order. A giant table is covered in white butcher paper with thirty year old evidence from the trial Greg throws his tie over his shoulder so it doesn't get in the way and starts picking up these little canisters and bags So it's got the vacuum bag and then the plastic evidence bag that it came in, I assume. Right. So the vacuum bag's there and then you could see the particles here. From where I'm standing across the table, it looks like these bags are just full of dust But when I lean in and squint, I can see what Greg sees. Tiny orange fibers, like from a blanket or a rug. These fibers were key to the state's case The police found them in a vacuum cleaner in David Wood's apartment and also on a victim's t shirt At the trial, an expert witness testified that the two sets of fibers were identical. Greg has consulted his own experts who have told him this testimony was junk science They say there's no way to prove that the fibers match because they're synthetic. Greg has two options for what to put in the legal filing Option A He can use the junk science argument But I can imagine a judge might find this unsatisfying I find it unsatisfying Because sure the fibers may or may not match, but why were there orange fibers with the victim at all That's suspicious, right This brings me to option B which is a much bolder option Greg can say, sure, the fibers match because you guys planted them there He can accuse the cops of taking the fibers from David Wood's apartment and placing them at the crime scene Far fetched? Maybe But Greg points out that the crime scene was left unsecured for nine days And also the police found a lot of fibers in big clumps Even the prosecution's own expert witness said that was a little strange. This theory is juicier but also riskier The legal filing is going to go to judges who are predisposed to think Greg might be full of it and take all of his other arguments less seriously On the way out of the courthouse, Greg says he wants to grab one more thing from a clerk. He asked for any and all criminal records related to a guy named Michael Plyer This is a new name to me. It wasn't on the El Paso PD's list of thirty six suspects But the other night, Greg came across Pyler's name in Old State records, along with a picture of a truck which looked a lot like David Woods truck So Greg wondered Could this all be a case of mistaken identity? He wants to look through Pler's criminal files to see if there's anything in there that might tie him to the case beyond the truck like if you went by the nickname Skeeter. Because Skeeter is a nickname that keeps popping up throughout the case as David Wood, but David Woods never used that as a nickname. So it seems a bit odd that that would be a name he would be giving to people This depends on believing David Wood about the nickname, which Greg does. But either way, this Piler deep dive seems to me like a real long shot. And it reminds me of a criticism I've heard a lot, mostly from prosecutors and judges. They say, laawyers like Greg have years to do this stuff But they wait until the last minute so they can maximize the drama. I ask them about this. So these are files that you've got for a long time here just now. I guess I wondered if this name had emerged Yeah. Is in something you just got. ye, but it' We've had it for a long time in the sense that it's buried in twelve thousand pages for us. He says it's buried in twelve thousand pages of records, his point being that yes, he's technically had Michael Pyler's name for years, but he's been working solo for much of that time. so he's had to pick and choose what to focus on But it's also true that Greg is incentivized to stretch this out as much as possible to show up at court with new information right before the execution. That way the judges will be so overwhelmed they'll have to hit the pause button And Greg's client gets to live another day In fact, Greg's already been accused pretty harshly of delaying David Wood's execution in all kinds of ways Last year, a judge summarizing the last fifteen years of this case accused David's defense of a quote, pattern of piecemeal litigation and delay Over those years, Greg has filed motions to replace prosecutors to claim a judge had a conflict of interest, to test this or that bit of evidence He lost all these arguments, but the judge's point was, This guy just throws spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. And he does it one noodle at a time Other lawyers get accused of the same things. There's a perception on the part of prosecutors and also lots of judges that lawyers like Greg are such extreme anti death penalty zealots that they're willing to bend the rules if not outright break them. To be clear, there's no evidence here that Greg broke any rules, and he would deny bending them. But I personally think the real issue here isn't the lawyers and their individual conduct It's the death penalty itself, a punishment that takes all of the tension that's inherent in a criminal case and ratchets it up It's an invitation for a certain amount of distrust on all sides. Wh Maurice finishes up at the courthouse Naomi and I are off looking for Michelle Bradley's sister D Mats Nyomi is hoping Misty will corroborate the Brady disclosure Michelle's claim that her father was involved in the desert killings. We're driving for a bit, when Naomi looks down and sees a text on her phone brows immediately for. What happened? She told her sister we're coming. Michelle Rachot to Misty Bad news for Naomi. Her element of surprise is now gone But we're pretty close to the address at this point. So Naomi parks, breezes it out for a minute and pushes forward. We walk up to the door and Naomi rings the doorbell. I hear barking before I see anyone I've already fixed my face into a defeat grimace when a slightly confused woman opens the door and welcomes us San Misty shows us into her living room and introduces us to our very friendly dog. Named Brady of all things And let's me start rolling. I don't know did Michelle tell you that my sister don't talk, but I just got a message from her telling me that you might be contacting me. so I didn't know it was gonna be today. That's why I'm got a little caught off guard. but ye that's fine. showing up unannounced on your doorstep, did your sister tell you a little bit about why we're reaching out? Only that she believes that my dad had something to do with The murders that David Woods is accused of. And that despite being a little caught off guard Misty is surprisingly open to talking Almost immediately though, she throws cold water on her sister's theories My dad did something terrible. He murdered my stepmother. He did. That's uisputable. But I don't think he had anything to do with this situation with Woods. I really don't I u I don't. Missy tells us she understands her sister's feelings about their dad Let share some of them She grew up in the same house and experienced all his abuse too But that's where the corroboration ends. She has no idea if her sister really saw one of the victims on their dad's couch in nineteen eighty seven But she doesn't buy Michelle's theory. For what it's worth, Msty remembers her mom and dad were together at the time. So it's unlikely to her that another woman would just be lounging around the house like that. We talk for a little bit longer, but after a while, it's pretty clear Missia said just about all she knows I don't have any other questions. I don't know if you have any questions for me I think this is a fgment of my sister's imagination. I'm sorry. You know, I wish I could give David would something to you know feel hopeful about, but I really don't think this is it It was hard to walk out of that conversation, feeling like there was anything left to this lead. It was like witnessing a balloon deflating in real time. I can't totally get a read on how Naomi felt about it though Her expression is pretty spphinx like sitting next to me in the car So I sneak in a temperature jack Can I ask really quickly just while we're still here? Y. Did hearing any of that change the way you heard Michelle's conversation in terms of facts Misty did not say anything different to the extent that she confirmed that her father was a very violent and abusive man So It's a difference of notot opinion, but it's a difference of like belief as to whether their father was involved or not, which neither knows to be factually correct or incorrect. you know They've both said their father was a terrible person and a very violent person I was not surprised by Naomi doing her job here, spinning me a little bit. try to make the best possible case for her client, which is basically, two women confirm their father was an abusive murderer who happened to be in El Paso at the time of the desert killer. But it did strike me that Naomi could leave out the part where Misty throws cold water on her sister's story In fact, it seems like she's incentivized to leak it out If more digging wasn't gonna help, it really didn't seem like it would at this point Then it was probably better to leave the whole thing kind of thin and single sourced It was a little surreal to me to imagine this going into a legal filing, but eventually I will read the lawyer's final draft and there it'll be Page one hundred ninety seven, all dressed up and respectable, and its severe font and one inch margins It will include lots of Michelle's claims, like the story about seeing Ivy Williams on the sofa But it will not include any trace of the messy relationship between two estranged sisters No hint of their radically different versions of the past It wasn't Naomi's job to present all of this context But it did make me wonder about a process where you could leave this much of it out Naami and I head off for Misties. It' spent a long day of driving around El Paso, and to me at least, it doesn't feel like we've got much to show for it. There's a punchy, lightly defeated air in the car. Naamy's head in the direction of our hotel, but then our phones light up. Greg, apparently, struggle with one of his own door knocks. someone unexpected opened up and had real information to share That's after the break. Hi, this is Andy. I've been a New York Times subscriber for years and years, and I'm trying to get my teenagers interested in reading it. If they were to have their own logins and we could share articles, I think that would help get them interested. It would also then allow us to discuss over the dinner table or wherever Thank you very much Andy, we heard you It's why we created the New York Times familyamily suubbscription One subscription up to four separate logins for anyone in your life Find out more at nYimes d. com slash familyamily Greg and I finish up at the courthouse around luncht time Before we head back to the hotel pposes we swing by someone's house first a woman he's been trying to talk to for some time now Romona is mukes Her importance as a witness is kind of questionable She was best friends with a girl who disappeared back in nineteen eighty seven A lot of people in El Paso assume David Wood was responsible The police never found evidence, and he wasn't convicted of it. It's the kind of witness I could imagine skipping, but Greg decides it's worth a try. We pull off the highway and drive up to this small house where a guy with a mohawk is hauling stuff out to a dumpster Greg hops out of the car and talks to him He comes back, looking defeated But as we're pulling away, I see a woman in the rearview mirror I see Hi Wh are you Greg leads the woman towards the car and I roll down my window. What's your name I'morry Ra. Everyone is half interrupting each other. Ramona tells us the Mohawk guy is actually her husband. She moved out of state and is just back to do renovations She seems excited to talk to Greg, but says the house is too much of a mess to invite him in. She suggests another spot. I mean, there's like a water burger up the street, rightight around the corner. can your husband said you might have files and records still. I still have all of the old articles. I have everything All right Naomi and Alvin meet us at the Water Burger As the only native Texan in this group, I feel obligated to say Waterberurger is a state institution. But it is not a great place to do an interview. There's loud music, soda fountains and friars going, people coming in and out. Ramona blazes in, big expressive face. Her hair is wild and curly. Some of the layers dyed cherry red. She slaps down this giant binder, very dusty that says Mona's articles. She also goes by Mona. In cururseive letters, next to what looks like a cigarette burn It's full of old newspaper clippings that leave flakes on the table. Apparently, all those years Greg was developing his theories of what really happened in nineteen eighty seven, Ramona was nursing her own El Paso is a pretty big city, but Ramona talks about it like a small town David Wood, the police, the victims, their parents, everybody knows everybody, as if somehow they all went to high school together. Even this Waterburger is relevant in a way Ramona tells us she got involved in this case because of her best friend, Cheryl Vasquez When they were still teenagers, Cheryl married Ramona's brother, which made them best friends and sisters in law. And Cheryl, She worked right here at this water bger. This is where she worked.. When she went missing, she was working here. And she never even got her last check from this place. 'cause she was gone But Cheryl was nineteen when she disappeared, the same summer as all the desert killer victims. When bodies started turning up in the desert, Ramona was worried that Cheryl was gonna be one of them She felt the cops weren't looking hard enough for her friend So she enlisted her mom, and they decided to figure out what happened to Cheryl themselves They knew Cheryl was last seen at this one circle K convenience store. And so they came up with, frankly, a totally bonkers plan. We started hanging out at that circle cate. And my mom was literally tricking me. She was like, L sit on that wall, and somebody's gonna to come and try to kidnap you and I'll call the cops and we'll get them and we'll know who it was. And I'm like s like a real character from what I She was feisty until the moment she died She had me sitting on that wall in Little Swark, seventeen years old waiting to get me kidnapped. I'm like, thanks, mom. But By way of explanation, Ramona says that her mom was quote, German. The lawyers don't ask her to explain more But as strange as the plan was, there was some logic to it. Ramona and Cheryl were about the same age, and according to Ramona looked so alike that they got mistaken for sisters. Ramona's mom thought she could use her daughter's looks to lure out the desert killer. Ramona says that she and her mom did the circle K routine over a few days, with no luck Then, one afternoon, she was sitting on a wall outside the store in her shorts when she saw a truck approach Wd around town was that the desert killer drove a beige or a brown truck One day this brown truck came rolling in and went to the floor and came out and looked over at me and was like, Ohh shit. Threw a quarter at me. Go home. Huh? Go home. Y family's looking for you. They said I stole you. The cops didn't ask any questions. You need to take your ass home. and I'm like Who are you talking to? This was how Ramona first met David Wood. At this point, the cops were starting to zero in on him for the disappearances, including Cheryl's, and he knew it. He mistakenly thought Ramona was Cheryl because again, they looked alike. So that part of the plan actually worked. Ramona says he toss a quarter at her as in, you're the girl the cops think I abducted. Please use this quarter to call home on the payphone. Tell everyone you're safe. Hermona goes on to tell us about the surprising relationship that developed between her, her mom, and David Wood somethingomething between a friendship and a covert op David Wood himself rememember spending time with the two of them. But what he didn't know is that they were also spying on him Ramona says her mom started inviting David Wood to their house He'd come over, she'd give him coffee, they'd hang out, they'd talk. My mom thought she was slick, and she was. My mom was like, you know, I'm going to stit her and talk to him. you go search his truck, you know. She says she stole David Wood's keys and rifled through his truck, trying to find something incriminating But she never did. She also saw him get nauseous around blood. She cut her hand in front of him once, which, while not exactly exonerating, didn't scream serial killer either For Ramona and her mom, it all added up to one thing. David Wood could not be the desert killer Ramona says her mom was eager to help clear his name. My mom immediately called the detectives. He's the wrong guy. You got the wrong guy 'cause he didn't kidnap my daughter and she looks just like Cheryl and he threw a quarter at her and told her to go home. And you know, my mom's German, very feisty, very loud. She's like,, So they're like, Oh, we want to come and talk to you. The police came to the house and asked Ramona to come down to the station to give a statement to detectives She was sketched out. And I said, Now I'm not going to give you a statement. They said, Well, we want to show you something. So they put me in the car and took me out to the desert. And they're like, you know, there's bodies out here and it's be really easy for you to be out here And they wanted me to write a statement. They told me out there in the desert. We need you to go back and write a statement. We need you to tell us that David Wood tried to take you. I said, but he didn't try to take me. He threw a corner at me and told me to go home. I said, Well, that's not what we need you to say. I said, but that's not the truth And they said, you know, you look just like all the other girls that are gone. This could be you And I was like, arere you threatening me And they're like, Well, now, we're just telling you that if you don't put him away, he might take you. Ramona says the detectives who drove her out to the desert were Johnny Guerrero and his partner, Alfonso Marquez. She eventually put all of this in a sworn statement to the court Ramona is not the first person to accuse these guys of abusing their power. There's George Hall, the guy who called Greg with the whole story of the jailhouse informants and the red carpet treatment, and later laid out his claims in a sworn declaration According to trial transcripts, at least one other witness claimed the police tried to add falsehoods to her statement different case from around this time, a suspect told a reporter that detective Guerrero bullied him into a false confession We asked Detective Guerrero about that interrogation, and he said he didn't remember it. He also denied ever taking Ramona out to the desert Actually, what he said was, quote, She's full of shit Moreover, he told us in his fifteen years in homicide, quote. I was never accused of any wrongdoing or coercion by anyone I talked to or any case I worked Unquote Detective Marquez, for his part, died a couple of years ago. But it is worth noting that he had a reputation for lying and using force In a different case, he allegedly bullied a sixteen year old kid to make him confess to two murders. The kid was later exonerated after serving nearly twenty years in prison Watching the lawyers interview Ramona, watching them jot down notes at every twist and turn I was struck by how absurd it was that this was where we found ourselves fifty days out from the execution. All of us huddled around a table in this waterburger. The lawyers trying to piece together something useful from this sany story Rermona is entertaining But since I'm not steeped in the case, it also seems like she mixes theories and stories and gossip and evidence so effortlessly. And it's such a rapid clip that it's a little hard to keep up Much less to accept it all at face value I look over at Greg and Naomi to see how they're reacting to get some clue about how seriously I should take all of this. But they're more or less statues, very stoic, these two lawyers in a waterburger All of which to say I'm not sure how to assess some of the other claims Ramona makes The most explosive ones concern a very important person in the case against David Wood Judith Kelling. And when I heard her name, I'm like, Is that Rstitute that' saying David raped her? Yeah Judith Kelling was the woman who claimed David would raped her out in the desert She had been a crucial witness at his murder trial, and her account helped establish the desesert Killer's MO. Ramona says she was out one day, looking for her sister in law who is still missing when she spotted Kelling and sidled up to her. So I'm like playing it cool with her, and I'm like, Ohh yeah, you know, I'm looking for my sister and,ah. And she's like, Oh, the David Wood thing. She's like, yeah, you know, that's all bullshit. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, you didn't do anything to me Really? So I told you this in after David W was arrested in october of nineteen was already charged with her rape when he was charged. You can tell in Greg's voice how much he would love to poke holes in Judith Kelling's credibility. It's something he's been trying to do for years For example, he found one source who gave a sworn statement to the court that Judith Kelling had been a police informant and specifically that she'd been d Detective Johnny Guerrero's informant when she reported her rape Judith also spent long streches in jail around this time on drug charges. On top of that, Greg has noticed that her story of what exactly happened in the desert kept changing. getting more and more aligned with other things the police believed about David Wood and the murders. Greg uses these points to make an argument in court filings Desper to solve the murders, Detective Guerrero squeezed an equally desperate Judith Kelling to point the finger at David Wood. We ask Detective Guerrero about all of this, and he denies that Kelling was ever his informant. Judith Kelling died a decade ago, so Greg can't ask her about it But here in this wateraterburger, Ramona claims Celling revealed much more to her about what really went down. This is what she's telling me. They made a deal with me to get me out of jail, and all I gota do is testify against this guy. I was like, well were you living rape? She's like, yeah, but not by him. I'mike Wh who? She said, My Pler. I'm like, whoo's this guy Mike Pler, what The same guy Greg asked about at the courthouse a few hours ago. The one I thought was a long shot I look over at Greg and I can see he's just as surprised. He's barely able to contain himself. nodding so hard it's like he's swaying Ramona says that after she got Mike Pler's name from Judith, she and her mom looked for the guy, and, well, basically stalked him. They staked out his apartment, watched him come and go They were blown away by the similarities between this man and David Wood Similar builds, similar tattoos On top of the similar trucks, they also both drove red motorcycles I can practically see the gears turning in Greg's mind And as the waterburger fills with the sound of someone making the world's loudest milkshake, he tosses out one more question Do you have Any information about this nickname Skeeter that supposedly is That's Seter. Myike Father's Scoeter. Well, when you say that, how do you know that he's Skeeter? That's what Judith called him. that? That's where she called him. She called him Skeeter So that's Skeer Ramona says that she went to the cops back in nineteen eighty seven and told them everything she learned Ab David Wood, about Judith Celling and about Michael Pller. And she says the cops did. Nothing They could have, for example, looked to M into Pler, gotten some DNA samples, polygraphed him Instead, Ramona says they simply told her to stay away Ramona's whole story is wild, obviously. And as we wrap up at The Waterburger, it's not clear to me how Greg is going to use it all, Whether he's going to try to corroborate any of these details. And I'm not sure that's really possible. I can imagine what a prosecutor might say. For example, the Judith tellelling story that it wasn't David Wood who raped her? Well, the state could point to trial testimony from Kelling's sister, who said Judith identified David Wood as the rapist right after it happened Greg could go after the sister's credibility But the question remains Why would Judith Kelling make a grand revelation to Ramona a teenager she just met There's also a question about Ramona's motivations I found an old news story that says she was banned from the El Paso County jail She had allegedly graffitied I loveve David Wood on the wall of a visiting booth Ramona denies it and says people were just out to tarnish her reputation because she was questioning the police department's version of events. stillill Not a great thing to have out there on the internet But what's most useful to Greg, I think, are all those moments when the cops appeaar to have tunnel vision For example, when Ramona says they tried to get her to falsely accuse David Wood or when she says they ignore the Piler story Especially if the state didn't tell Wood's lawyers about this stuff before his trial I wouldn't call these bombshells, but I would call them good evidence. And you could argue that Greg only found it all because the execution date forced him to knock on every door one more time. I ended up calling Mike Piler a few weeks later He confirmed that he did live in El Paso during the time in question His tone got a little sharp when I asked if he went by the nickname Skeeter He interrupted me and said, quote, That's false When asked about raping anyone or being the desert killer, he said, quote, I haven't done nothing. I don't have nothing to hide After we hung up, I sent him Mermona's claims He ghosted me. I do feel for him This whole episode made me see just how easy it is for anyone to be accused of pretty egregious stuff in a legal filing In this case, rape and being a suspect in a serial murder case All because some stranger mentions your name in a water burger We f we had to use Pler's name, given how much it showed up in the lawyer's legal filing but we also felt like This man deserves every possible opportunity to respond So after I sent a ton of follow ups that went unanswered Alvin and I decided we just had to try in person Pler lives in a midsize city in the south When we got to his house, there were a couple of warning signs about a pit bull And then we heard barking I did see a dog through the window. prettyretty cute actually Plyler opened up just to tell us quote I'm not interested. I asked if I could give him a folder with remot' claims He suggested I throw it in the garbage I leaned over to put it on the door mat and by the time I stood back up, the door was closed The whole thing lasted maybe ten seconds I haven't been able to reach him since Greg will add Rimon' claims to what he'll file in court in a few weeks. But first, he tells me, he wants to bring what he's found to another audience, an audience that will, if it's possible, be even more skeptical than the judges, even more likely to see it all as smoke and mirrors The mother of one of the desert killer's victims That's next time on the last twelve weeks