Archive.fm

Texas Wild

Texas Wild - 20240725

Duration:
57m
Broadcast on:
25 Jul 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

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So don't wait any longer to add a personal touch to your products. Call Romica Laser Engraving and Custom Designs today at 817-44040 or visit our website at RomicaDesigns.com. We look forward to helping you make your mark. ♪♪ ♪ Home to be wild ♪ ♪♪ Welcome back to another exciting episode of Texas Wild with Ryan Prigmore. Adventures from the Water to the Campfire. Tonight, we have an especially interesting show for you lined up. Tonight, we have Rusty Arnold, brother of one of the ladies in the Missing Trio and Wayne Spears, one of the divers who help investigate the case. Welcome to the studio, gentlemen. Thank you for coming on the show tonight to talk about what's important to you. Thanks for having us. My pleasure. And also, we have C. L. Mayhew, which stands for Clu. Don't do that again. He is the newest member of Blue Diver Search and Recovery, and we are over the moon to have him in here with us to talk about what he knows, what he does, why he does it, and who he is. So, Rusty, tell us a little bit about who you are and why you're here. Well, back in December 23rd, 1973, 2004, excuse me. My sister decided she wanted to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. She went over to pick my mother up, and my mother couldn't go because she could take care of my dad. He had cancer. He was at the shop. She had to go up there and be with him. What kind of cancer did your dad have? We had Malinoma. Malinoma? It spread all the way to his brain. And metastasized, he was only 39 years old, holy crap. He was too young for that. Definitely. So, she called Renee from my mother's house and went over to Renee's grandmother's house to pick Renee up. What are their last names? Renee Wilson, Julia and Moses are the nine-year-old recently talked about, and then my sister is Mary Rachel Tralesa. I can never figure out how to pronounce that name. A lot of reporters over the years have had trouble with it. It just aches me, and somebody goes, "Traleka." That's what I always thought it was with Traleka. Yeah, it was Traleesa. Traleesa. Okay. Well, when Rachel got over there to pick Renee up, well, Julie came out to the car and said, "I want to go with y'all." Well, they said, "Well, you're going to have to call your mom and ask permission." And she did. And she begged, and begged, and begged, and begged, and begged. Her mother finally said, "Yes." And that's the last time she ever saw her hurt from her daughter. Wow. But they left there and they went to Army Navy store first, and pick up some bell bottom blue jeans, hip-hugger bell bottom blue jeans. I think it was Renee had them in their way. Right. So everybody picked those jeans up, and they went to the mall. And we think they left the mall around 1230 and went back home just for a few minutes. And I'm not sure about what happened after that. You know, they just vanished, and we never heard. I never knew they went back home. Yeah. Yeah, we have a deposition from a person that told us that she met them back at the house. Oh, wow. Okay. And actually, she told us it was to pick up Sean. Sean was Tommy's two-year-old son, Rachel's stepson. Right. So his mother was supposed to go back and pick him up. We never identified Sean as even being with the girls. Huh. We had Terry Mosley, which is Julian Mosley's brother. He came out to the car, and he was talking to the girls, and I asked him years and years and years later, like 40 years later. I said, "When you went out to that car, and you talked to Renee and Rachel, did you see a kid in the car?" No, I didn't. There was no kid in that car. And I'm going, "Where the hell is Sean?" She's supposed to have been dropped back off it, you know. So it was the morning time when they went over there, and then she says she's supposed to go pick up Sean. You know, around one o'clock at Rachel's house. Where's Sean? Right. Never was seen, never was picked up, nothing. No. So what happened after that, do you think? No. They just disappeared, and there's thin air, and we're never heard from again. That's right. What kind of headway has been made on the case since then? Well, what have you done in terms of hunting for them? I can't tell you how many holes I've dug. I can't tell you how many lakes I've searched. There's too many. Talk to me a little bit about the lake searches. What do you do? Were we got the cars out of the lake? Mm-hmm. Well, we went out there with a guy named Dennis Waters in the beginning. I had the appropriate name for searching the lake. I thought it was kind of cute. He had a boat with the really good sonar on it, real good stuff. And he was the best sonar technician in Texas. I say even in the world, right? He taught sonar at all the police around, you know, the game wardens and stuff like that. But he came out here, we called him and told me we wanted to search Ben Brooklake because a friend of mine told me that they think there's a possibility that there might be a car in the lake. You know, we were missing a car from one of our suspects. He was missing a car, so it made sense that they could possibly be in that lake. That's when the dive team got involved. And we decided, you know, well, let's go back to where Dennis Waters checked the lake. Within 20 minutes, we found three cars. Boom, boom, boom. Yeah. Found out three cars. And he must be good at that sonar business. Oh, yeah, he was the best, you know. He's recently died though, so that's unfortunate. I was going to look him up and see if he could do not my sonar for me. Yeah, well, he's gone. And that was a sad day. Sounds like it. But anyway, we found those three cars, and then the dive team got involved. And they, I had one dive team before, before weighing in his dive team. I had another dive team go down, and they actually were the ones that dove on the cars for the first time. Who was the dive team you sent down the first time? I can't call their names. Did they have a group name? No. Oh, it was just three individuals. Okay. But they dove on the cars twice. And the second time they stayed down so long, they made themselves sick. They got sick, and they wouldn't go back down. Wow. I guess they wouldn't experience this weighing here. I don't know. Well, weighing is a pretty, pretty experienced diver. Well, we got, we got the dive team after the second dive team. They dove on the cars. They brought up pieces of the cars. Matter of fact, I have some of those pieces of the cars in my living room right now. Just as memorabilia. Do you have a license plate I could talk you out of? Mmm. From the cars? Yeah. No. We didn't find any license plates on this car, did we? No. You got some rust. A lot of rust. A lot of rust. Well, we come up, they come up with a plan that they were going to pull the cars. And they did, right? We had benefits. We took donations. Were they raised the proper? I think it was $15,000. The dive team rose. I didn't raise that. Wow. There's a lot of money. Wait, wait, wait. Rusty helped, though. It got up and saying. I did. I sang my songs. I did. Staying your heart out, I'm sure. Yeah, he did. He said it good. And I wasn't drinking either. Can you still perform? No. Okay. I only play with myself nowadays. That sounds bad. It was supposed to be late. We're not overseen by the FCC, so. Oh, good. You know, you can say whatever you want, but be gentle with it. Well, anyway, we dove on the cars. They brought me pieces of the cars. And we identified the pieces they brought up. What years making model was not the car we were looking for. And we knew that before we dove on them to pull them. I remember hearing somebody say they could see on the stonar that one of them was an old Impala. 1963 Impala. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was. And we, they set the one to fill the part. Yeah, because it was Lincoln. We got the Lincoln and the, what was the other? Yeah. Mark. Mark 4. Mark 4, I think. Mark 4 was Lincoln. Yeah. No, that was the one that was in the cold. Yeah. It weighed like 12,000. They had all two rings on top of it. Bricks on top of it? Oh. Somebody dumped a whole load of bricks on top of that car. Why? I don't know. But I have one in my house. My mother has one. That's weird. That's weird. I like to keep memorabilia from each search that we do. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. And I've got a lot of it. It's, it's only been 49 years, right? Yeah. That's not that long. Only half a century. Yeah. December 23rd of this year will be 49 years. Been a long time. But, you know, funny stuff happens on anniversaries sometimes. Well, I got married on December 23rd. Yeah. They say I did that to break the curse of Christmas past. Because anything bad happened to my family on the 23rd? Did it work? Nothing bad has happened since. It's been 32 years. Well, congratulations, man. I'm glad that you were able to lift that curse. That's good stuff. Yeah, 32 years. Could've found a finer woman. That's good. That's really good. Yeah. I did really good in that direction. But I got lucky. I should say she turned my life around. And she's really special. Right on. That's good. Back to the cars. We got the cars out. I can't remember what that third car was. The weird car I had a motor in the Pintrunk. Corvair. Corvair. Ah, yes. Sandbags on the front wheel wheels. 1960 Corvair? What is it? It was a 60 model. 1960 Corvair. We got the VIN number and ran it. And we got hits on both those cars on the VIN numbers. I don't have that information. Were they stolen? One of them was Lincoln was stolen. Really? Yeah. It was stolen. They went for a joy ride. Just drove it off in the lake. And we found the trail at the very top where the cars could drive off. And where are they cars? Where are they could get to it? That's been chained off since 1978, I think. That must have been a spectacular destruction when they drove that car off and watched it careen into the lake. Oh, it brought off the cliff. Wow. And the Lincoln was stolen. I found the names of the people that owned the Corvair. I can't remember that. It was three years ago. It didn't mean anything. So we just didn't document that. It didn't need to. So you didn't like go around any of the people who the cars belonged to, like documented owners and be like, who was on your car? I called the people that owned the Lincoln. It was a brand new Lincoln back then. Yeah. And they just reported stolen, I guess it got replaced. But I talked to the grandchildren. The people that owned the car did the deceased. Yeah. But that's pretty much where we are with that. And nothing ever came of what you brought out of the lake. There were no clues. There were no evidence. There was nothing concrete tying any of those cars to this case. No. Oh, OK. So what led up to the lake search? Wayne, maybe you can give us a little bit of insight on that. What led up to searching that lake for those cars? What sort of preparation did you have to go through in order to prepare yourself to do these black water search and recoveries of these sunken vehicles? I mean, I'm sure you were familiar with airbags and compressors and all that before you got to this job, right? Yeah. I was real familiar with all that. The hardest part was some of the team that we had. They had been in black water before, but not many times. To get them to acclimate theirself, if you want to call it that, the surroundings, what we had to go down and do and then work in kind of like sitting at this table here and we're trying to bring it to the surface. To get these guys to, it was tough. I'm going to leave out the middle part of that, but yeah. What kind of conditions did you face in the course of doing these dives? Very dangerous conditions. Like what? Tell me a little bit about them. Yeah. One, I remember, and this is when we went back a secret time per rusty. I got it in the car. Cars? You got in the car. I've been in the car in the back seat. You know those older cars, they got them, I call it S springs in the back seats. Yeah. Those will grab you wetsuit. I promise you. They'll grab everything on you. You ever told me that? We had, I showed you the hole in my pants. Oh yeah. I think I had a hole in my rear end. We had one guy, there's two divers down on this car. One guy's going in the trunk and he's checking it thoroughly. I mean, we're not coming up. He's bringing anything that he thinks might. We got bags. We're putting stuff in. Right. I'm inside the car. Nothing's more eerie than sitting in the back of a car checking what's left of the floor. And you feel someone's hand come around and kind of rub on your neck and go like, you know, up on top of your head, you know. Who was that? That guy, AJ. We called him preacher. He was a, you know. Was he just messing with you or? No, no, he was, he's supposed to be doing, he's failing around. I just got, I didn't, I, you couldn't tell where you're at in this car. It just gives me the creates. And at that time, I didn't know I was hung up either. Yeah. I sat down trying to get, I was trying, I couldn't get the door on the passenger side open. So I went in on the driver side and you went through the window or door? Well, I pulled the door. It felt like it almost come off the car, but it was just because where it was mounted was severely rusted. What do you got to get this rushed? Well, it just sticks you in the rear end, it's, you know, take the shot comes to mind. Anyway, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, short on all that stuff. We checked the car as best we could. Yeah. I mean, it was thorough. Yeah. We didn't find anything. No bones, no hair, no teeth, no, no evidence at all that anyone had been in that car when the car went into the water. No. We have, after the cars came out, we got them on the record. Who was the record service during all that? Thomas Towing. Thomas Towing is Silver Star record. Silver Star record. Yeah. I know Barry. I've done a wallet dive for Barry. Sorry. I'll be honest with you, Barry, first of all, Barry probably isn't listening. I used Silver Star once upon a time when I had no one else to call and I was really kind of stuck out and he, yeah, he came and took care of me, but got to tell you, it felt nice. Did it come with a price though? Oh, yeah. It felt really nice the day he called me and said, man, I need your help. He's good, guys. You know what, Barry, I can do that. I'm going to charge you for it, but I can do that. It felt good to finally have a tow truck driver over a barrel instead of the other way around. A lot of them forget Barry, when Jeff, the leader of the team, he come up and said, hey, man, we may need a rotator cup to pull this thing out. It may be more than what a flat bed can pull out of the water and load. Barry had one sitting there all day long, all day long. Just waiting. And somehow somebody ordered pizza, nobody this day knows who ordered pizza. I could answer that question. Who was that? Pizza Hut, right here in Bartless, I believe it was, donated to all those pizzas. No kidding. I don't want to change the subject. Do we have any control over the air conditioner in here? Why is it cold? Well, I feel like I'm making ice cubes over here. I'll tell you what, in 10 minutes, 45 seconds, I'll go adjust it. I'm going to snuggle with somebody here. Stay away. Stay away. Oh, come on, man. He's a big, warm teddy bear. Yeah, I don't know about all that. Well, we got the cars out of the lake. And we took them to a disclose, non-disclose, secret location. And I still won't tell anybody that today where it was. But we went through the cars with the fine tooth comb. Let me interrupt you for just a sec, sure. I don't know if my list is out there familiar with what it takes to pull a sunken, 30-year, sunken-rusted car 40 years out of the lake. It is filled with mud and muck and gunk. It is coming apart and stinks. And yeah, oh, it stinks to high heaven. Oh, my God. I don't know if y'all are familiar with what it takes. The absolute monumental undertaking that this sort of thing is. But the tow truck that they must have had on hand for this thing is a freakin' beast. Just wanted to put that in there for you. Yeah. Those tow truck drivers. The men that I'm JD from Thomas, the men, they donated their time to you. Yes, they did. Oh, wow, that's awesome. Yes, they did. And, you know, again, shout out to Pizza Hutford. Oh, absolutely. Everybody there got fed pizza. Everybody got a pizza-the-pie. Pizza-the-pie. I remember talking to the record driver that was over the rotator cut truck, the biggest one that would actually drag the car out. Rotator cut. Well, I forgot what they called them. There they go. I don't know what... I didn't... It's got a crane, literally. I don't think it goes 360. Oh, wow. I think they called a rotator cut. Pretty sure. Anyway, this thing pulling God to him out. The guy said, he said, "Man, I'm off at five o'clock." And I said, "Oh, okay." I said, "You got a replacement coming or something?" And he was, "No, no, no, I'm gonna stay him. I'll stay till this is done." Oh, that's cool. And this guy worked with Silver Star Wrecker. I don't know what his name was, but he said he was there to help until... 'Cause it was done until Rusty did need to help no more. That's awesome. I'll tell you what, there's probably 150 people out there that day that showed up to help? There was no... Just infected spectators. There was more like 350, 'cause some came and went, they couldn't take the cold, the rain. Oh, you think there was that many people? Oh, yeah. 350. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What time of year did you do this? What month was it? It was cold, and when that rain came in, I was on. It was warm, wasn't it? Why'd you wait till cold time? I got a tornado, two miles from us. We were after diving. Wow. Yeah. And they wouldn't give up, huh? Uh-uh. They wouldn't call it. They wouldn't just say, "You know what? The diver's wet? Yeah, it's gonna get a whip." It only takes one lightning strike. I know. It'll ruin everybody's day. Yeah. They were extremely dedicated and extremely appreciated. Now, there was a documentary done about this whole scenario, wasn't there? There was... I don't know whatever happened to it. I never saw it. It's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. He's finished the journey. He's finished the journey. It's on YouTube. Who was that guy on the documentary? Remember his name? I forget his name. I don't know. He did a pretty job. Yeah. He did a pretty job. So, I don't remember a lot of these people. There's so many of them. Yeah. Well, I didn't remember who you were. Yeah. I was a little miffed about that. You didn't remember who I was. Well, but that's all right. I just, there's so, so many people wanting to help. Right. It's so... So many people came to help that we couldn't, they didn't have anything to do. Well, Rusty, the reason I brought you on the show this evening was because I want to... I feel personally connected to you and the case because of my history with Wayne and you and the former captain of the dive team and I want to make sure that this case doesn't die. It's not going to die. I'm not going to let that happen. Well, I want to do what I can and I've, you know, with a platform and with a business to help, I wanted to make sure that I could reach out and have a part in it and make sure that I'm doing my part to make sure it doesn't die, so I want to thank you again for coming in. And, well, what happened after we, oh yeah, we got, I want to get back to the cars. Okay. Yeah. We got distracted again. That happens, yeah. We took the cars to the location and we had a professional forensic team there. Yeah. They had the screens to set up, the water hoses, every, they had everything because they were professionals. Right. We went through those cars with the fine tooth. Consifted everything. We took five gallon buckets and filled them up and sifted everything. I was over there sifting myself, you know, we found, we found a bone, but it was end up being a fish bone. It was a cart bone. A cart, yeah. A cart. And it, we identified that and, but we found some change in glove department and... Let's stop you there, Rusty. I remember the car that we brought up, the, the money that was in it was newer, was it newer than the car or older than the car? It was, it was confusing how that money ended up in that car. I don't recall. It seems like it would be confusing if the money was newer than the car. I believe that's what it was. But it would be determined by when the car might have been reported stolen as to how the money wound up in there because I can have a twenty ten dollar bill in my excursion and drive it off into the truck. That's not confusing at all. There was something about, it was a dime, that's all I remember. I mean, it kind of threw a red flag up for a little bit. Well, go ahead, sir. We went through these cars. We got all the mud out. We sprayed them down. We put them up. We took everything out of them. We said them. We got nothing. But I was over there, washing all this, that stink, the filth. We call it the boo-foo. It's nasty, nasty. Well, I'm thankful I can't smell in the water. It was so bad, the doctor had to remove ten styes off my eye. Ten. Dude, what now? It caused the infection in my eye and caused styes to come up. That stuff did. I had to have surgery to remove the styes. Huh. Yeah, I never knew that. I never knew it could cause an infection like that. It must have, it's the only thing it could have. Right. I mean... I can take... Let me stop you. Rusty for a second. When we were digging around those cars, we had boats up on top and we took turns going out there in the evening times after we got off work to dig around these cars. Yeah. And we were sitting, Rusty was sitting on the boat. I think this is one of the times Rusty wasn't there and had some of the other volunteers helping us and stuff. But the boats were on the surface and they said they had to back off three and four hundred feet because they couldn't stand the smell when we were digging with shovels around that stuff. We couldn't smell it because we had full-faced masks and we could lightly smell it. But man, we come to the surface and pull our mask on. Man, we thought we were in the sewer. It was terrible. It was bad. And whenever... Yeah. When that car broke loose from the bottom. Yeah. Oh boy. Mmm. There was... That an ass could come up with it. Well, there was a porta potty under that car. I promise you that. Well, there was a porta potty under that car. I promise you that. [Laughter] Well... Sorry everybody. I thought I'd turn that off. Uh-huh. That's your girlfriend. Did you know why I was going to do that? Honey, that didn't happen. You want me to turn your ringer off for you? Yes, do that. Alright. I'm gonna go ahead and do that. Let me stop by and talk to her. I'll tell her what... Rusty didn't show up. [Laughter] Probably wouldn't be taking very humor. Yeah, man. Nothing funny about you. You don't know my wife. You're right. I don't. Anyway, go ahead Rusty. That's right. Well, we got all the cars cleaned up. And determined that we didn't find anything. Right? Well, then we got to do... What do we do with these cars? Yeah. Yeah, what do we do with them now? What if... I wouldn't take the Corvette but my front yard because it was so cool looking, huh? Do you remember it? Oh, yeah. That car was cool looking. The Corvette had the engine in the back end of the car. And I remember they had to put sandbags on the front wheel wells of the car to maintain the wheels traction when you're going around corners because the back end of the car was so heavy. Yeah. If you got going too quick, the front end would lift up. If you had no traction on the front end, couldn't break, couldn't steer. Yeah. I remember the Corvette. I worked on a bunch of them when I was a kid. Yeah. It was just cool. The way it rushed it, it was just like a piece of art. Yeah. And if the city eventually would have let me do it, it had some sweet patina to it. Well, we ended up taking those cars and hiring somebody to come up, kind of out and cut them up into small pieces and then re-side hold them. Put that on. And they did it just for the battle. Scrap value, huh? Yep. Cool. But those cars are gone and they'll never be an issue again. But that pretty much ends the dive, right? We did go back a few times and re-dive on that third car. Tell me about some of the other people that you've had involved in this case, like Adventures with Purpose, for example. What did they do for you? And where were they? Well, you know, they didn't come down here strictly for me. They came down here to search the lakes and then they ended up diving on Benbrook again because they thought they might be able to do a better job of us than we did on that third car. Now, I met him out there, I told him, basically, "Who did you meet out there, Jared?" Jared? Yeah. Leasek? Yes. Okay. It's always better to have someone else coming behind and check. I didn't have a problem with that. I didn't know what the question was. Deborah Bruce has just said that Randy is the name of the journalist who documented the dives creating finish of journey. So thank you, Deborah. I appreciate that. If you have his last name, I would love to get in touch with him. Good girl. Yeah. Who is Deborah Bruce? Thank you, Deborah. She's one of the administrators on our Facebook page. Oh, well, thank you, Deborah Bruce. Welcome to the show and feel free to call in if you have anything to add at 1-7-6-3-7-2-5-8-5. We'd be happy to have, you know, to listen to anything you might have to say about the case. You're here, Deborah, if you want to talk. Send pizza. You might want to wait until after the commercial break. We got 40 seconds left and then we're going to break for a commercial and then feel free to call in. Well, we went back on that third car and checked it again, waned it, went in it, all around it, and then a vicious repurposed come out and they agreed with us after they dove on it that, yeah, there's no way with that car coming out and there's, and there's nothing in it. They check that, you know, they check the car again. So, that car's been checked a lot. Now, do they dove Lake Worth also, right? They dove, they drove, uh, dove Como, Lake Como. We were talking about Lake Como last week. They got like six cars out of Lake Como, so that doesn't surprise me. Two of the cars, two of the cars had, we're going to break for a minute. We'll come back after about a minute and a half commercials. Stay tuned. Here's important new information from the Diabetes Solutions Center for you, a family member or a loved one suffering with diabetes. 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TuneInJoeCo.com is a place to find all the ways to listen and watch, and the station app is also available for free on Android and Apple devices. Simply search your store. Check out our lineup and more at jococommunityradio.com. This episode more brought to you by next level claims, making your insurance work for you. Reach out to your Texas sales rep at 844-839-4245, that's 844-839-4245. Be sure to address your arms and more at thetiffy.com. Welcome back to the studio, gentlemen. Had to break for station ID and commercials and all that. I've almost got that thing memorized. Believe it or not. It's not like it. Yeah, it doesn't. We had to turn the heater on. Every time I take a picture of that commercial and I go home to memorize it, they change it. So I just said, all right, well, I'll just start reading it from the copy every time. If I don't memorize it, they leave it just the way it is. Works every time. All right, Wayne, tell us a little bit about how you and I got hooked up together, how you and I met. Tell us about how our paths crossed a little bit, if you will. It was a dark alley. Just kidding. Don't tell people that. No, I got to lake one day. I got there early. We were going to be doing some training. I know some students were supposed to show up. I always got there early trying to get the pavilion, so the pavilion was a big covered honing that we stayed up under. Keep all the students out of the sun when they... Keep all your gear somewhere safe. Yeah. Well, you didn't have to worry about it out there. You're pretty safe out there. I remember asking you about that big fancy roll around gear tote that you had. I still had it. I said, Wayne, do I need to get me one of them? No. I have as much gear as I have. They said, you don't want one of these, you don't need one of these dope boats. Now I have a whole boat and truck to haul around instead of a gear box. The problem with having one of those things is if you get something like that and you feel like you have to fill it up, so now you've got to fill up a boat. Yeah. It's been an issue. And we still have one of them roll around deals. Yeah, we do, don't we? Yes. It's in the ambulance that we've also filled with dive gear. Ambulance. So you guys are ready, huh? Oh, yeah. We have a... You know what, that had been brook lake a few weeks ago, were you? Oh, yeah. I saw y'all out there in that ambulance, the yellow and white one, I think it was yellow and white. Yeah. That's my truck. That's my dive truck. My dive rig. What are y'all doing out there? We get so many calls out there, it's hard to say. It might have been a phone, it might have been an earring, it might have been a wallet. I don't know. It was probably a phone. What else? We were camping out there like we could. All kinds of stuff, man. He don't want to say it. Man, Annie. Hey, there's one thing that we left out. No, no, no. We didn't finish talking about how we crossed paths. I think this is more important. Okay, let's hear it. We'll hit it. Rusty about the reward. Oh, yes. We didn't even go over that, did we? Man, we need to hit that. Wow. We've recently, well, we're getting sick of tireless. Oh, by the way, thank you, Brenda for the information about Mr. Bell, the owner of Spartan Media, Texas, and Brenda, real nice guy, I'm not who you're talking about, but probably talking about Randy or Wayne or Rusty or me or Junior or... But thank you. All right, go ahead. Sorry. What was I saying? I don't know. Distracted from the reward. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We've recently had a private donor or a private person put up $50,000 for a reward for the information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons that have done this. But or who could find the girls or tell us where to find them and bring them home. We don't even have to have a conviction. We just want to bring them home. Thank you, Brenda. Yeah. Thank you, Brenda. $50,000 out to whoever can bring information to this case to bring those girls home or that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of the person or persons responsible. Yes. And the money's real. I've held it in my hands. There's a lot of money. Yeah. I kept it the bank. I would hope so. Yeah. It's not where anybody can get to it. It's a shame that we live in a time where a reward is what gets people to do the right thing. Well, it loosens up lips. It does, yes. It sure does. If they don't feel comfortable with going to the police, I'd rather they go to the police. They can come to me. They can private message me on Facebook page or anything like that. Yes, no, it's probably going to go to the police because the other ones need to be doing this not me. Yeah. They're the ones out there doing the footwork, aren't they? But they can remain anonymous when they talk to the police. Absolutely. And they can remain anonymous when he talked to me. But or if anybody's out there that wants to relay a message through Ryan or Rusty or me or... I'm sorry. Anyone, really? Anybody. Well, we're just... Don't be shy about it. It's been 49 years. It's time. Even through this our whole life. The nine-year-old girl would be almost a senior citizen by now. Yeah. Yeah. It's time. It's time. So, several years ago, Dan James, the private investigator that had this case for so long, he's in the cease now, he offered a $25,000 reward. What kind of headway did he make on the case? He got a lot of information. A lot. I don't remember all the information so much, but yeah, this $50,000 reward is getting some attention too. I would imagine so. Dan eventually just retracted the reward. I went online and told everybody that the reward was no more. Somebody out there knows something with like a point of fingers. Someone has to know something. Somebody knows something. Yeah. I'm positive. Come on and talk. There's people out there that know what happened. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Positive. It's incredible when you start flashing cash like that, what people are going to do and say. At the same time, you have to be able to filter through what BS and what isn't. Oh, you've been doing it all the while? I imagine you have. I can't imagine the crazy people that have come up to me or called me or contacted me. I can't even tell you how many people, but I would say at least 50% of the people are complete nuts. They're complete nut jobs. They have nothing to do with it, nothing no idea, nothing and they're just fishing around and seeing what they can get. Yeah, wow. I've spent hours and hours on the phone with people who didn't know anything. I had a girl tell me one time. She knows her boyfriend did it. She's sure of it. She's positive of it. Couldn't prove the thing. Had nothing to go on at all. Spent hours on the phone. And people, that happened a lot, you know? But it's settled down now. I've kind of gone dark because I just want to live my life. So what I do, I just keep. At some point, you have to. I just keep to myself, you know? And I don't go live on Facebook anymore like I used to. I may again someday, you know? Don't be surprised if I do, but I don't have any intentions to or nothing to say. Well, I would like to say right here, right now, that blue diver searching recovery is there if you ever need us. Maybe we'll go down anywhere you want us to, we'll search anything you point at, we'll do everything we can to help you rescue. All right. I don't forget that, please. I appreciate that. I really do. World needs more people like y'all. Well, we're doing what we can. But, you know, we've had, I've got stories, I can stay here for hours and tell stories about what we did, what we've done in the past. You know, I've got a big old piece of petrified wood that's in my aquarium right now. It's one of my souvenirs from one of the searches. We searched the Wilhoyt ranch out in Weatherford. And I was out in the, we thought Wilhoyt killed Carla Walker. Bill was Carla Walker. You never heard of Carla Walker cakes? It was probably before my time. It was right around the time my sister disappeared and, you know, I've never heard of the cave. Wow. They just solved it. They just made an arrest. No kidding. This year. It was a couple of years ago. Is that long-term? Yeah. Time to last year. Yeah. Time to last. Time to last year. Oh, let me. Think for yourself. Anyway, we were searching the Wilhoyt ranch because he had, Wilhoyt had admitted basically to a detective named John Terrell. Is this any relation to Wilhoyt's grapevine? No. Okay. No. He had told Detective John Terrell that, you know, John Terrell worked robbery and he walked in to the room where this guy was, Wilhoyt, he had been arrested for a robbery or something. And Wilhoyt, he said something effective, "I was wondering when y'all was going to come after me," and he goes, "For what?" For Carla Walker's barter. And then somebody walked in and the guy shut, Wilhoyt shut up and never said anything else about it again. For years we thought that Wilhoyt was the one that got Carla and possibly our girls. We searched his ranch, he didn't live there, his parents did, I think, and help. We went into the house and we found ropes on the end of the bed, blood stains right by the ropes, tested it for blood, it was blood, and the house hadn't been entered in 30 years. And he just sat there and everything was preserved. Wow. But I was walking through the woods. They weren't able to pull a DNA match off of it. They never proceeded. I mean, took the evidence to the police that they never done anything with it. I don't know. I don't want to get into that. But anyway. But that's a clue that was never followed up on, they very well could have something to do with the Fort Worth trio. It's possible, not likely, knowing what I know now. Gotcha. Okay. But it ended up, Wilhoyt didn't kill Carla Walker. It was that guy. I can't remember his name. Do you? No, I don't know. Why would he have said that to the detective now? I don't know. Maybe he was involved with it. Detective made it up. Huh. I don't know. You never know what people might say. Right. I don't know. He's dead now. Wilhoyt's still alive, but here's not a person of interest anymore. You know. We pretty much rolled him out. The Wilhoyt, the one who confessed, is still alive. Yeah. What's his first name? William Ted Wilhoyt. William Ted Wilhoyt. Okay. Yeah. But he's cleared. He's cleared. He's okay. You know. But anyway, I was out in the forest looking around because there was a 100-acre ranch and I walked up on this tree. It was a petrified tree, the whole tree, 30-foot long about this big around. I've never seen anything like that in my life. Been there a long time. Been there a long time. Long time. And I looked down and I saw a piece of it broken off about this big, right? Glenn McCurley killed Carla Walker February 1974 from Deborah Bruce. There you go. There's Deborah. Glenn McCurley. And when was he arrested? A couple of years ago? He said? Yeah. Wayne said a couple of years ago. I thought it was sooner than that, but William what? William Ted Wilhoyt. I don't know how to spell Wilhoyt. W-I-L-A-T-E. I don't know. Listen to you. I think it's just one of my favorite bars in grapevine. He may still be in turn because he's ill. We'll do it later. No, no big deal. I see this tree. A piece of it broke off. Man, I'd like to have that. And I walked away. We get ready to leave. I jumped to the bed of the truck to ride up to my camper. Somebody took that piece of wood and put it in my truck, one of the volunteers. For me to have a souvenir without you having mentioned that you wanted it, I said I'd like to have that. And they grabbed it. I didn't know they did. But they did. It's kind of a surprise for me. Well, that was nice of them. Yeah, it's in my aquarium. To this day, it is beautiful. I bet. I found a lot of petrified wood in the bottoms of the Brazos River. That's a hard bottom river. It's loaded from one end to the other with petrified wood. Really? Yeah. I never knew that. You can reclaim it and sell it. Because it's in a public waterway, you can dig it up and keep it and sell it if you want to. Yeah. It's pretty cool. I'll stick to digging up cars. I'll stick to staying on the boat watching you dig up cars. I'm grabbing at the guys digging up cars. So $50,000 has been put up by an anonymous donor for any information leading to the arrest, conviction, or just evidence of what happened to the girls to bring them home. That's absolutely incredible that a benefactor with that much has stepped up and said, "Yeah, I'll do this." Yeah. It gives me chills. That's awesome. That people come together that way. I've got so many people that support me on this case. I have a whole network of people and you all are dialing it. Don't forget that, man, 24/7 and if I need divers, I tell you this, I'm not going public anymore. I don't blame you. With what's going on. I don't want no attention. I don't blame you at all. Somebody can get hurt. Definitely. Definitely. And we don't need that. We don't want that. We don't need that. That's right. Rick, if you're listening out there, I want to tell you, I respect your opinion and all that, but leave me in my radio show alone. That's all for that. Okay. I'm pretty sure you listen. I want to just put that out there. Wayne, tell me a little bit about how you and I cross paths. Let's touch on that for just a second. I told you it was a dark alley, but all right. Nobody out there believes that. I guess it starts with you signing up for wanting to be a diver. Yeah. Chasing a dream I had. You're chasing a dream? You shared that with me. I showed up early at Wheeler Branch and I've been there about an hour and a half or so trying to get that pavilion thing that people stay under all the time. We have pretty big class, so we needed that coverage. And I showed up on a motorcycle with flip flops and swimming jobs. Yeah. Yeah. A few other things. Being you got to talking and signing something ins and outs, I could tell you you're pretty excited by the whites of your eyes. And then, you know, we're fast forward to the water. Would we nickname you Locomotive? Locomotives. Yeah. He just got to swim around like a sword fishing on the water. I told you, he said, man, I'm going to be doing that black water stuff and blah, blah, blah. And I think you told me that Mike had shared with you what I've been doing or something about, you know, black water diving and so you were all excited to talk about that. And I said, man, you're going to have to slow down, dude. You can't dive like that in black water. And he said, oh, you know, I'll figure it out. And I said, well, you're going to figure it out. All right. So we got out there and I guess you got, well, if I'm not mistaken, they gave me split vein fins to dive with on my very first dive underwater that wasn't in a pool. Well, yeah, well, and that might have been that's beginner's training a little hazing going on. But you know, I have to say, no, the split vein fins are fast. Oh, are they? Yeah. From what I remember of your dive in that day, you were probably the top dog in the class. That's what I see. Wow. Well, thank you for that. You weren't. You just show any fear. Ain't no fear. And they ain't no room for fear. And they don't think you needed some fins on the side of you. So you look like a fish, but you did good. You did good. I remember them coming to me because we had to take turns filling out little sheets and stuff and me being an assistant instructor. I had to cut out so much stuff and sign some things, turn it over to my instructor so they can sign off on it. And I told them at that time, they usually ask us, I volunteered it though. They didn't ask me. I said, he doesn't need any. He got it. He doesn't need a babysitter. Yeah. He doesn't need a babysitter. He said, so you feel comfortable taking them out there and showing them the trip? I think they wanted us to take you to the tree. Yeah, Christmas tree. Yeah. The big tree. Yeah. Way out there. Did we make it out there? Yes, we did. Me and you and Kevin. Yeah, Kevin. Yeah. The only guy that would dive with 20 pounds of air. I'm not making a joke. Man, I'm telling you. He went down with 600 pounds to the bottom of this tree. You need every bit of 1,000 pounds and he comes back up with pulling his mask off. 25 PSI left. You know, he's flopping around like a, he ain't got no air. He didn't even do a safety style like I don't think. So I was over at Kevin's house. We were going over used gear and I was getting ready to buy my Z Eagle and all my, all my first set of gear. I was so excited. I told my party van to pay for my first set of dive gear. I'm going to retell me that. I was so devastated, but I was so excited to be a diver and I've never looked back. But I was over at his house and he goes, let me show you a cool way to put on your dive gear. And I said, okay. So he had the gear standing up in his living room. He bent over and he put his arms through the arm holes of the gear set and he picked the tank up from the back of it on the bottom. And then he stood up and hoisted all of this over his head and it landed on his spine. As the tank hit him in the spine and were it not for going to the doctor to have that spine x-ray done from where it hit him so hard, he would never have found out he had cancer. Oh wow. Yeah. Really? That was an interesting little turn of events there. Cancer's not our friend. I did not know that. No, it's not at all. He would never have found it if it hadn't been for the day when he put that gear on and it cracked his spine that way and laid him up for something like two weeks. He couldn't move. But had it not been for going to the doctor to have a spine looked at, they would never have seen it. So things do work out for tutors, Lee. Man, I'm serious. Works in mysterious ways. Doesn't he? Yes, he does. I had no idea that meeting you for my instructor, my assistant instructor that day at Wheeler Branch that seven years on, you know, we'd still be talking, we'd still be hanging out and hopefully diving again soon together. We'll do something together. Come out to Eagle Mountain Lake, we'll put you on the Chumstain and show you some interesting stuff. I'll keep you up busy. Come on. Hey, man. We're collecting rust. Our downtime is underwater anyway. That's what we do for fun. That's what we do for work. Put us on it, man. Let's do it. Let's go. Whenever you're ready. Very soon. Okay. We'll be back in town on Monday, Monday evening, and then we'll be doing Fourth of July on Eagle Mountain, watching fireworks from the boat, and Tuesday will be... We need to initiate him once he gets his certifications, I take him down here and let him grab a hold of a catfish. I came noodling. You can't grab my nowhere but to tell. Yeah. He tried to tell me one day last week, he said, "Yeah, I was diving in." Big old catfish. Swam right up to my mask. I said, "You're full of shit. There's no way." And what it was. He said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I said, "Wait, wait for me." I said, "There's no way." I said, "There ain't no freaking way." I said, "This catfish is the most skittish fish in the water." You can't get anywhere near him. He scarcely touched them. They're gone. And a cloud of mud. I don't know where we were at. It's just got feeds. Catfish right there beside his boat. But as soon as you get in the water, they all disappear. Most dangerous fish out there is a diver's enemy. It's gonna be a gour. An alligator gour on top of that. Why? A little teeth on him. A teeth on a little snout. He ain't coming after you, though. He don't want nothing to do with you. In that black water? Yeah. He don't know you're there. He don't know what you are. He knows you're bigger than he is and you're blowing bubbles. I'm not blowing no bubbles. I don't know what you're doing down there. I'm not blowing them. I'm just letting go. I don't really want to let them go. I do. The only thing I've ever encountered anything under water except maybe a gator that was a threat. Boy, that's because you got bumped. Yeah, they just bumped you. They don't even open your mouth. What's going bump you? The gators. He can bump me one time. He bumped him three times and he came up. No, not in one day. What lake was that? Eagle Mountain. Wow. Yeah, they'll bump you. They'll bump you if you get in their territory, but I've never been attacked. I've never actually seen one in the bumping. I've seen one swim by and the course of other work, but I've never seen one when he actually bumped me. But you can tell it. You can tell by his suit, he was full of something. Oh, you can feel the heft. Where's that? That's by Kenneth Copeland. Where? North of Kenneth Copeland's place on Eagle Mountain Lake. Oh, okay. Picture of six gators after a storm, sticking your head up to the surface. That's a lake I'm not getting in. Well, I mean, if you get attacked by an alligator in any lake in Texas, you'll be the most famous mofo in Texas because it just doesn't happen. They've been here, they're natural to this area. They're, what's the word I'm looking for? They're... Native. Native. Thank you. They're native to the area. First sighting was in 1850. I graduated. And how many gator attacks have you ever heard of in Texas? They've heard of one. Yeah. They happen in Florida because there's 10,000 to one compared to here. We've got maybe... But who wants to be the first? 15 alligators in the entirety of Eagle Mountain Lake because they police their own population. The big ones eat the little ones. Yeah, they're in Eagle Mountain Lake. They're extremely territorial. Well, there's a sailboat, a little small sailboat marine in Lake Worth. Yeah, the old boat and ski club. You don't talk about? Yeah. I've been on this. There's just a few select sailboats. I mean, there's not very many. They're not newer models or anything. And some of them have been sitting there for quite a while. Darrylick. Yeah. But I'll tell you right now, there's a gator in there. Mm-hmm. I've dove there. About a two-foot gator. Is that where we went? No. I was sitting in the kayak one day right there where those deals are where they walk across a little walk, whether you just have a wooden dealer went out to the little dock there. Right. But they could take off. I think it was like more for security. Like a gangway? Yeah. Yeah. I was sitting right there one day and my kayak goes... It kind of like lifted up and went back down. You got bumped. And I was like... [laughter] Well, I'm not seeing any of these. I sit there for a few minutes and then the next thing I know, it kind of goes up and it kind of pushes me towards shore. You know, well, I'm in between, oh, this is about four feet between the boats and we're the shoreline. Yeah. And I'm like, "I got a trolling motor all hooked up, but if the battery's not even hooked up, so no, it's not shorting out or anything." I'm like, "Why don't you move?" And yeah, he'd come up and show his head, "Well, I'll tell you what, it'll make you..." [laughter] I need that trolling motor, man. I'm gonna make you pack her up a little bit. I'll hook her up on the kayak and it wasn't with my hands either. [laughter] Because I didn't know why he was bumping, you know. They had to pull the seat cover out of your butt. Mm-hmm. Probably. [laughter] That's why you tell me to sit in the survey for just 20 minutes or more. Right. When we do a dive at Lake Worth, I tell him, "Don't load your shit. Don't put it together. Don't do anything." When you get to the water's edge, you just sit there and you just watch. You watch your area, you look for snakes, you look for alligators, you look for any kind of predator that could give you a bad day. And that's only Lake Worth. We don't have to do that anymore. Big amount and I'm just in and I'm ready. Right. I'm going to share something with you guys when you're out there in that stuff all time. Can you do it in two and a half minutes? Yeah. I'll do it real quick. You can make a rod and hook it to an air tank, one of your extra scuba tanks, and have a pipe that's got all these holes, like PVC pipes, got all these holes in it. Like a French train? Yeah. A lot smaller. Right. And just have the air slowly trickling into that pipe. Those bubbles coming up touching you, like say it's down below the bottom of you, but those bubbles coming up, nothing will bother you. The fish won't want to come around, they're concerned about what's going on. That's what I tell you. Yeah. Every critter in that lake scared the bubbles. That's why they tell them he goes, "Don't worry about anything else." Gators are intimidated by us because of our length, because of our fins, we're just a little bit bigger than what they've got a tango with. We're not on land, we don't have four legs, and they don't have the advantage. Right. They're not sure who has the advantage. They're not sure what the hell's going on when they see a diver in the water. Yeah, but I don't want to cuddle up with one of them. Yeah, I don't even think I have too many teeth. They also have it in large medulla hablangata from when I hear, "What the?" You got one rusty, don't worry about it. Yeah, that's what he tells me all the time, he goes, "Don't be scared of anything, your bubbles will go mostly scary, everything else that you've got to worry about." If you have to, you feel like you're threatened by something like that. You can't take your regulator to purge it. Take your spare one in this purge it. Use your face mask, whatever you've got to do. He hasn't dove with a full face yet, I'm saving that. I tried one on, but I haven't dove with it. Yeah. We've got two of them, we calmed you and said, "You need to go to 20 feet, have 40 feet of water, and then take your mask off and drop it to the bottom." When you can find that, you're ready to go. If you're 20 feet, you drop your mask, and you know things. At 40 feet? It'll go to 40 feet, okay? Yeah. Then you have to go down and find your mask, but you have to do that before you come back up. Yeah. It's tricky. Then you know you're ready. Yeah. Into your mouth, out to your nose. Don't go the other way. It's going to go badly for you real quick. I know, I've done that once. Have you? That's when I came back. If you're following a mask off another diver, and you feel like, "Man, it's getting warm." I'm going to tell you right now. Get out of that stream. Get out of that stream. That's right. Quickly. Well, I don't usually have to worry about that with what we do. Well, gentlemen, I want to say thank you for coming out. Thank you for being on the show, Rusky. Let's keep this going, man. Let's keep this case alive. Let's do whatever we can to not let the memory be forgotten. Wayne, thank you for coming out, being on the show. I'm sure there'll be plenty more opportunities for you to come and show your face around you to your park. Junior, always a pleasure. Can't wait to have you on next week, too. We will see y'all again next week. Thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye. From Burleson to Venus and Grandview to Godly, this is the voice of Johnson County, Choco Community Radio. From Burleson to Venus and Grandview to Godly, this is the voice of Johnson. Choco Community Radio. From Burleson to Venus and Grandview to Godly, this is the voice of Johnson County, Choco Community Radio. The Dacono Music and Spirits Festival returns to Centennial Park Saturday, August 3rd from 2 to 10 p.m. And it's free live music from the Warren Treaty. Christmas Daniels and the Kings is Cally and More. Enjoy a Spirits Competition, Kid Zone and Fireworks presented by Oxy and the City of Dacono. Admission and parking are free. The Dacono Music and Spirits Festival brought to you by Breckenridge Brewery and City of Dacono. Go to thecityofdacono.com for more information. 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