Taped Confession or Much Ado About Nothing?

    On December 12, 1983, Darrel Carter called Tom Bird at Faith Lutheran Church and asked if Tom would meet him to talk over various issues.  Tom felt that Darrel could be helpful to Lorna, and agreed to meet Darrel in a bowling alley parking lot.  Tom did not know that police had wired Darrel and were recording their conversation.  During this time, Darrel was supposed to get Tom to admit to crimes related to the death of Martin Anderson and Sandra Bird.

    The entire transcript of that meeting follows.  The author has removed superfluous words that inhibit the understanding of the conversation, preserving the factual elements presented in court at Tom’s 1984 trial.  The reader can judge whether Tom confessed to any crime during this dialogue.

      “He’s getting’ in my car.  How you doin’ Tom?”

      “All right.  How are things on your end?”

      “Things are a mess, ain’t they?”

      “Yeah.  They really are.”

      “A friend of mine said you wanted to talk about somethin’,”  Darrel said, referring to Julie Palmer.

      “Yeah.  I just wanted to touch bases on the…you know, back in June when we talked.  I know Lorna introduced us and so that’s some kind of a connection.  I’ve heard enough rumors for sure; rumors are rampant.”  [Darrel claimed under oath several times that this meeting occurred in May.  Why didn’t he correct Tom here?]

      “Well of course your rumors and well, I don’t know what’s goin’ on.”

      “I don’t know.  I was really surprised to even hear that Danny was involved in this deal.  But I mean, as far as we just talked about the use of firecrackers,”  Tom reminded Darrel.

      “Yeah.  The party that you talked to doesn’t know anything you know.”  [Here he is referring to Julie Palmer.]

      “Well, I was kind of playin’ an ace in the hole there.  You got kids, I got kids.”

      “That’s right.”

      “We don’t want the kids messed up in this.”

      “Yeah, but she don’t know anything, I’ve never told her anything.”

      “Yeah, well you handle that because I’m never going to say anything.”  [Tom meant that if Darrel stopped spreading rumors, he’d never say anything about Julie.]

      “Good, cause after you talked to her she come around lookin’ me up and she said, hey! I’ve heard a lot of rumors and you know.  What’s goin’ on?  Are you guys involved?  And I said, hey! I don’t know what the heck you’re talkin’ about.  Then she said, well why would Tom Bird want to talk to you?  I said, I don’t know, maybe he just wants to talk to me, I’ve had a lot of people call me and talk to me.”

      “Well, you can handle it, just tell her you heard some rumors were comin’ from you.  I didn’t buy it but you know, I wouldn’t see that would help your brother or help anybody else.” 

      “Well, all I’m interested in is, I don’t care who did what.  I’d like to know what his involvement was.  He told me that he was involved and then he tried to back out of the deal.”  [Darrel knew the investigators were listening carefully to his every word.  Here he reinforced Danny’s attempt to withdraw from the murder scheme.]

      “Yeah.”  [A portion of the tape here was inaudible.]

      “Oh, he thought somebody blew the whistle on him.  He wasn’t gonna confess.  I was right there when he went down to the Sheriff’s Department.  I had to go over to the apartment and turn the water on, they’d turned the water off over there.  I had to go over there and turn on the water and then I showed up and here’s, two or three cops.  He told me well we’re goin’ down to the Police Department, and I said what for, and he said, well, they’re gonna search my apartment.  I said, all right.  I’ll wait here and see if you come back.  I got a soccer meeting I have to go to and so I waited around there for the water guy and he got there, it was probably 9:00 o’clock and Danny never did come back.  So, I went to the soccer meeting and it was over and I went home, and these guys came over about 10:00 o'clock or 11:00 o’clock.  I said, where’s little brother?  They said, well, we have arrested him.  I said, what the hell for?  And he said, well, conspiracy to commit murder; and I said, well, he didn’t do that.  They said, well, he confessed.  And I asked him later, I said, why would you have talked, I mean what possessed you to talk?  And he said, well, they come in and they knew about this and they knew about that and I thought they really had me.  And he said, that they knew all of that stuff, so he thought someone had ratted on ‘em.”

      “Well, somebody had.”  [Tom had no information, but it was easy to see somebody turned Danny in to the police.]

      “Well, he didn’t know who, he thought maybe they’d talked to Lorna and Lorna had told ‘em.  He didn’t know if they’d talked to Curry.  He just got home from work, you know.”

      “Jumped on him.”

      “Yeah man, and they jumped on him and he knew that they’d been down to Burlington and had talked to ‘em down there and checked out his files and stuff.  I said, I can’t understand why you talked to ‘em.  Well, then about 11:00 o’clock, I went back over to the apartment to see what was goin’ on cause they never had searched it.  But he was over then and they had searched it, and I asked him, don’t you think we need to get an attorney?  And he said, yeah, I think so.  I said, why don’t you keep your mouth shut now, get an attorney.  By this time he had told ‘em quite a bit.  I had no idea that Lorna had given him the money and he had never told me that.  And I had asked him several times, if he was involved in any way and he said, no, that he wasn’t.”

      “We gotta keep each other clean here just for the sake of the kids.”

      “That’s true.”

      “That’s our number one concern.  You’re gonna probably have to testify or something, huh?”

      “Well, if they knew I knew, they’d probably…yeah, hell!”

      “Danny’s not gonna…?”

      “No, Danny’s not gonna…”

      “He can’t help very much.”

      “No, Danny’s not gonna say anything.”

      “You can’t help Danny that way.”

      “No, he’s gone, they know.”

      “Is he gonna try to burn Lorna with him to protect himself?”  [Tom wanted to protect Lorna.]

      “Well, I don’t think so.  He’s really not sayin’.  He tried to get out of the deal, and then this Curry tried to get out of the deal so I don’t know.”

      “Well, what’s Bingham got?  See, I don’t know any of these people, I’ve never met your brother.”

      “Yeah, Danny told me that he didn’t know you.  No Bingham said he didn’t do it.”  [Both men agreed that Tom and Danny had never met.]

      “Well, they didn’t arrest him.”

      “So he said he didn’t know anything about the deal.”

      “Of course, that may be the smartest (inaudible)…”  [Did Tom speculate here that Johnny knew enough to keep his mouth shut, unlike Danny?  The tape revealed nothing.]

      “Yeah.”

      “Well, what have they got physical?  They got a (inaudible)…”  [Tom fished for information about any evidence investigators might have that would hurt Lorna.]

      “They really don’t have anything.”  [Darrel meant they had nothing on Johnny yet, other than Greg Curry’s statements.]

      “I don’t think they got anything.”

      “They don’t have anything.  Did you read the reports, have you seen the reports like Lorna’s seen the reports?”

      “I’ve seen newspapers.”

      “Well, I’ve seen all the reports,”  Darrel asserted.  [He knew a lot.  Tom knew nothing, unless it was in the newspapers or Lorna told him.  In either case, he might not get the truth.]

      “The attorney you mean?”

      “Yeah.”  [Danny’s attorney, Mike Patton, apparently shared all of these reports with Darrel.]

      “What have they got?”

      “They really don’t have anybody but Danny, the only one they got’s Danny.”

      “Curry.”

      “And Curry.”

      “But they busted Lorna just to make her talk.  They were gonna keep her in over Thanksgiving holiday and try to crack her.”  [Tom thought the sheriff’s tactics were wrong and unfair.]

      “Yeah, but she isn’t gonna talk, is she?”

      “No way.  (Inaudible)”

      “That’s good.”

      “Danny’s kind of in a bind right now.  I don’t know what’s gonna come about but I think it was his girlfriend messed him up, wasn’t it?”

      “Well yeah, it was.”

      “I heard she was in a mental institution.”

      “I don’t know anything about that.”

      “Well, I know everything about that.”

      “Yeah, I know after he got out why she did, I don’t know if it was a mental institution but she did go to a hospital for about a week on this.  Course he hasn’t seen her but she really didn’t know anything.”

      “Somebody knew somthin’ to start all this a rollin’.”  [Tom believed Marty sold drugs, and this murder was drug related.]

      “He thought somebody else had ratted on him.  He thought Lorna.  He thought that they’d broke Lorna and Lorna had talked.”

      “Yeah, those guys are good.”

      “Yeah.”

      “I'm steerin’ clear and I just wanted to touch the bases and make sure that we just talked about possibly my youth group sellin’ firecrackers for you.”  [Darrel had a second chance here to refute the purpose of the meeting, but said nothing to contradict Tom.]

      “Yeah, but I haven’t talked to ‘em, I haven’t said anything.”

      “I’m not gonna say anything cause I don’t want to get your name involved, you don’t want to get my name involved, we got kids to take care of.  I feel sorry for Lorna’s kids, and I don’t know what it’s gonna come out but I know for Danny and everybody else, they don’t have anything physical.”

      “No, they really don’t.  I don’t know how it’s gonna come out.  I know pretty much that Bingham didn’t do it.  They’re pretty sure that he didn’t do it, so they’re lookin’ for somebody else.  But right now, no, I don’t think they really have a clue.  They’re still workin’ on it.”  [Why didn’t Darrel say something like, “Tom, they think it’s you?”]

      “Yeah, they’ll work on it, but I wonder what the deal is with this Bingham, cause who named him?”

      “Well, this Curry named him, cause see, Danny didn’t even know him.  And like you say, you don’t know Danny.”  [Again, Darrel reinforced the story Danny told police, that he never talked to Johnny Bingham and that Tom and Danny never knew each other.]

      “There’s a lot of Wolf Creek people talkin’ for sure and I think that didn’t help any talkin’.”

      “Well, there’s just a lot of people that knew that Lorna and Marty weren’t getting’ along, and those people are all talkin’.”

      “Sure.”

      “And they’re spreadin’ a lot of rumors.  Lorna’s really done some stupid things that didn’t help her any.”

      “When was that?”  [Here Tom saw a chance to discover what was being said about Lorna.]

      “Well, really pretty close to the time Marty was killed.”

      “Like what?”

      “Well, like that insurance.  Like he had a lot of insurance and she just recently took that out, and they’re lookin’ at that real heavy.”

      “Yeah, well I asked her about that because they are talkin’ about that.  They really didn’t increase the amount of insurance, they just changed companies and got cheaper insurance, that was back in May.”  [Tom had no knowledge of the particulars of their insurance coverage.]

      “Umhuh.”

      “That was right before he went to camp.  You mean they’ll look?  They’ll look at that all night.”

      “Yeah.”

      “You know, that’s a lot of money, got four kids growin’ up who will need it.” 

      “That’s true, that’s true.”

      “But it’s a mess, but I know you care about kids.”

      “She may need it before she gets out of this mess too.  I’m pretty sure that they’re gonna nail her, you know.  It’s just gonna take some time but they’re gonna work on this and they’ve had a lot of witnesses that saw some people there.”

      “Saw some people where?”

      “At the van.”

      “Oh, when the murder was…?”

      “Yeah, when...when Marty was killed.”  [If Tom had been there, wouldn’t Darrel have said something about it in this context, or wouldn’t Tom have said, “I hope they can never tell who it was.”]

      “Yeah.”

      “But, there’s just a lot of stories, so we really don’t know.”

      “Yeah, well see I don’t have any access to anything so I don’t know, I’m just tryin’ to help her out mentally and spiritually, and doin’ what I can.  Otherwise, I’m just stayin’ clear because I can’t, I can’t afford.”  [Tom makes it plain that he is just trying to help Lorna.]

      “No, really.”

      “The rumors are enough to wipe me out.”

      “There’s a lot of rumors.  After the meeting at the church, did she ever say anything else about this?  I kinda thought maybe this thing was…”

      “I thought it just had to work out.  It just wasn’t gonna fall in place; and when my wife died, it was God’s way of sayin’, you don’t mess with this stuff, and I don’t, I don’t mess with it.  Life’s too valuable.  You know Marty died and I ain’t celebratin’ but I ain’t mournin’ either but it’s a mess, it’s what I’m really mournin’ about, a lot of people bein’ hurt.  Turned the town upside down for awhile.  Danny’s lawyer, what tactic they are gonna take now that he’s talked or where they can go from there but ah…”

      “Well, now that he’s talked he’s pretty well committed himself, so (blank space on tape)….”

      “I know nothing about courts.”  [Tom would soon learn much about courts.]

      “Well, I don’t either and usually you really can’t predict what’s gonna happen but you know I’m pretty sure that they’re gonna nail her.  I mean there’s a lot of evidence that leads up to that she had a motive to do it and her story is pretty shaky of all what happened out there, and the kids saw what happened out there and what the kids saw and what Lorna saw wasn’t the same sight, so you know, I mean you just gotta face it.  It really doesn’t look that good.”

      “Umhum.”

      “But, I mean I’m glad I’m not in her shoes.”

      “Well maybe we ought to be glad that we didn’t follow through,”  Tom answered thoughtfully.  [Tom and Darrel talked in June about the two of them, along with their wives, working to get Lorna into some sort of safe house for battered women.  If they had done this and then later Marty was murdered, Tom knew it would look very suspicious, given that Danny had confessed to being a part of the murder.]

      “Well, that’s true.  I didn’t want anything to do with it at the time and I’m glad I didn’t have anything to do with it then and now.”

      “I’m not for having to do with anything.  I don’t want to have anything to do with anything [laughs] the rest of my life as far as me getting involved.  I hope Danny does okay, but I don’t know him.  I hope it comes out okay for Lorna.  I know they are both suffering right now even just the waitin’ and stuff.  [Tom’s involvement had already cost him a great deal.  He saw his ministry at Faith being destroyed from the rumors generated by his desire to help Lorna.]

      “Yeah, really.”

      “She’s left town.”

      “I thought she had.”

      “It’s just no good stayin’ in town, can’t go around anywhere.  But you think Danny’s gonna try to burn her to get less for himself?”

      “Really there’s not a whole lot that he can say because she could deny that she gave him the money.  I don’t know where she got the money but I don’t know what he could say to really help him all that much.”

      “Yeah, well it just kinda looks like, I mean, settin’ his hearing date after her hearing date, it kinda looks like the attorney might be settin’ something up, I don’t know.  It’s pretty much in the attorney’s hands now anyway.”

      “Yeah, it really is, but you know when she said that you wanted to talk to me, I thought maybe you might...I’d like to get him out, but I’m really not wantin’ to burn anybody either in this deal, especially myself and you and…”

      “There’s just no use in it.”

      “And the uh…”

      “There’s no use in getting’ it complicated.”

      “No.”

      “You still want to live in this town...(inaudible)…”  [Darrel was an Emporia native.  Tom planned to move on.]

      “Oh, really.”

      “I think Lorna knows some things as far as you and Danny in the past, and you guys know a lot of things about her in the past and none of that wants to be threshed up either.”  [Lorna claimed she served as an alibi for the Carters when Darrel burned down one of his properties and filed an insurance claim.  She also committed adultery with both of them.]

      “That’s true.”  [Which is true?  The arson or the adultery, or both?]

      “So we’re okay with it...whatever our contact with the whole business.  We never really followed through on anything, and so we just better be quiet, that’s all.  I just wanted to check the bases.”

      “Yeah.”

      “I’m sure about that.  That’s the way you figure?”

      “That’s the way I figure it.  Well, I’m not gonna be able to do anything to help either one of them.  I’d like to, that’s why I’d like to find out, I’d really like to know who really did it.  I don’t care who did it but I’d just like to know who did it so we could, know what kind of a defense we could come up with or if the guys that were in the conspiracy, if they did it or they didn’t do it, why then he…”  [Where was Darrel going with this?]

      “How come you’re so sure that Bingham didn’t do it?”

      “I think those guys just kept that money, then this Curry left town right after he got the money, and he has already said that they weren’t gonna do it.”  [Darrel showed he not only read the reports, he knew their content very well.  He had already given a lot of thought to the case, or police had told him their plan.]

      “You know, at that point you just don’t know what’s gonna be truthful and what’s gonna be fiction and what they’re gonna try to hide, because conspiracy’s one thing.  Doin’ it is another thing.  I imagine they’re gonna want to keep quiet but I don’t know how else to go with it, but Lorna’s lawyer had already told her not to talk to anybody about any of these things so I haven’t been told by her.  [Lorna wasn’t telling Tom much of the details.  But in later years, Tom realized Lorna had many different versions of the details.] I think she probably would confide in me but she’s not goin’ to.  She’s scared, so she’s not going to say anything to me about whatever’s happened since all this business.  I don’t know whether the lawyer knows.  I don’t know what’s been said between her and him and where they are goin’ with it.”

      “Yeah, I don’t either.”

      “But I do know none of it looks good.  Shoot! I just, I’m just kinda tired of the rumors although everything seems to be settlin’ down along that way as far as what I know.  About everything gets back to me.”

      “Well, I really haven’t heard a whole bunch of rumors, other than what we read in those reports.  I mean, you hear all kinds of stuff, you know.”  [Darrel spread the rumors.]

      “Yeah.”

      “But when you know the facts why you either know it’s rumor or it’s not rumor and so I pretty well know what the facts are, I think.”

      “Do you, from the reports?”  [Tom would have loved to see those reports.  If he had, It could have changed his entire future.]

      “Umhum, I have a pretty good idea, I think, of what the facts are.  I’m not puttin’ a finger on anybody but some of the reports don’t look good.  You can put two and two together on some of those reports and they don’t add up.”

      “What reports are you talkin’ about?”

      “Well...”

      “… (Inaudible) from the lawyer.”

      “From everyone that has talked, everyone they have talked to.  See, we have all the reports and the KBI has those reports.  The attorneys have those reports and we’ve all read those reports and it don’t look good.  Some of the things that just don’t add up.  Lorna has too many different stories of what she saw and what she didn’t see and Lori has too many stories.”

      “Well, an 8-year old girl, my gosh!”

      “Well, the story that she told the person at the scene and then the story that she told a day or two later are not quite the same story, see?”

      “Lori’s story?”

      “Yeah, and Lorna has about three stories, she changed it a little but every time she told it so I don’t know just exactly what’s gonna happen.”

      “Well they don’t (long pause), they don’t really have anything.”

      “They don’t really have anything right now, no.  But you know they know where Curry was and they know where Bingham was and they know where Danny was, so you know they know where Lorna was.  Three of ‘em were at the scene.”

      “Umhum.”

      “So they know, on that.”

      “Well, I guess everybody’s covered.”

      “Yeah, that’s why it don’t look like that party did it.  That’s what I’m sayin’, I don’t know who…”

      “Unless there was somebody else.”  [Tom fished for more information.]

      “No, unless there was somebody else involved.”

      “Seems to be pretty complicated.”  [If Tom was involved, why didn’t he ask Darrel whom he thought the police suspected?  Darrel might say, “Well, you!”  But Tom didn’t ask because he hadn’t even considered he might be a suspect.]

      “It’s a puzzle.”

      “Lorna’s not going to say anything but I imagine Danny hasn’t been in jail before this, has he?”

      “No, nope.”

      “Well, they oughta go pretty light on him, we’ll see what comes down I guess, won’t we?”

      “Yeah, before long.  It’s a hell of a deal, the guy to get involved in something like that when he didn’t get anything out of the deal.”  [Darrel seemed to be playing to the investigators listening in.  He states that Danny had no motive.  If so, why did he do it?]

      “Boy! They just caught him off guard, if he just would have kept his mouth shut.”

      “Yeah, everybody should, I guess.  The girlfriend should have, Danny should have.”  [Darrel only cared that his brother got caught, not that a crime had been committed.]

      “Can’t do anything about that.”

      “That’s true, so…”

      “Well…”

      “So if I find out anything I’ll get back with you on this.  If you hear anything, give me a call,”

      “Okay.”

      “The phones aren’t bugged, I know that.  This was a while back, I checked, I have a friend in the phone company.”  [Darrel apparently knew a lot of helpful people in town.  Tom knew nothing about this kind of craftiness.]

      “You mean Lorna’s phone?  (Inaudible)”

      “Yeah, to bug a phone that has to come down through security and stuff and they have to put it on the phone at the phone company, and I’ve checked all that out, and no one’s phone is bugged, and they can only leave it on there for so many days, so no one’s phone is really bugged on this deal, cause I checked that out the day after this thing all come about and I said, yeah, I have a friend down there and he’s pretty much up to doin’ all that stuff and he’s a good enough friend that he’d tell me.  He knows whose phone’s bugged and whose phone’s not bugged.”  [The investigators must have grimaced hearing Darrel confess this to Tom.]

      “Well, I know these, these guys tried to nail me, I mean they tried to put it all together on me, just because rumors of our relationship with Lorna, and the fact that my wife died a few months ago.  They know where I was that night.  I think these guys are kinda desperate to pin it on somebody.  I think they better just find out about Marty’s life.  I don’t know what they found out about his life.”  [Tom referred to his belief, based on Lorna’s statements to him, that Marty became a drug dealer.  He thought the police should investigate the local drug scene, not his church.]

      “I haven’t heard anything on him.”

      “What he was involved in, and that’s what I’m hearing, some things filtering down.”

      “Oh really, what was…?

      “That he may be involved in something.”

      “He may have been involved in something, that may have been a legitimate shoot.  I mean, maybe none of these guys did it, maybe somebody else on his side did it.”  [Darrel, who knew investigators were listening, picked up on this idea.  If they started chasing drug dealers, it would take the heat off of Danny.]

      “He may have been involved in gamblin’, or maybe involved in drugs, maybe involved in…”

      “So, who would know so we could…?”

      Tom’s response was inaudible.

      “Who would know so a person could check that out You got any idea?”

      “A whole different world than what I live in.”

      “I didn’t know if Lorna ever said any…he had a girlfriend.  I knew that.  I never did know her name.  Did you ever know her name?”

      “The Reserves, you know.”

      “I never did ever hear her name.”

      “I know it.”  [Of course, his source for the name was Lorna, but he believed all she told him.]

      “I’m sure Lorna said but…”

      “I think she’s gonna save herself, she’s gonna maybe have to burn Marty, not protect him, so that she wouldn’t, and that means lettin’ her attorney know a few things.”

      “Umhum.”

      “But all these people callin’ the Hotline, some of ‘em ought to call up and say, Hey! Why don’t you check out Marty’s life out a little bit, he’s got some things to hide.  He was pretty much hated in a whole lot of directions and I’m...that’s what’s filtered down to me.”

      “Yeah.”

      “There was a lot of folks didn’t like him.”

      “Well, see, I didn’t know him that well so I don’t know.  We’ve just been acquainted, some parties and stuff, through sororities, so I really didn’t know him but I did know, Lorna told me one time, that he had a girlfriend that I guess he used to stay there at the house once in a while.  I don’t know, a different life than what I’d lead, I couldn’t hardly believe it, somebody would do that, but they did.”

      “So I think Danny’s life is gonna be drug a round a little bit and Lorna’s is too.  It’s gonna be a mess.  It looks real messy.  I guess I’ll just take it if they wanta drag me in the mud too.”  [Tom realized that no matter what he did, his life would be linked to Lorna to some extent.  He believed it would take time, but eventually he could clear himself of this mess and get on with his life.]

      “That’s true.  Do you really think that she had anything to do with it?  Do you think she did it or had it done?”

      “I’m pretty… I’m sure she didn’t do it.”  [Tom believed Lorna was innocent for almost two more years.]

      “Do you think she had it done?”

      “I know she talked about it before.  I can’t tell you what I think, but I think she’d tell me, and she may one of these days.”  [Lorna once told Tom she had an urge to drive her van off the road into a bridge and kill herself and Marty.]

      “I know she talked about it, but I really never thought she’d ever do it.”  [Darrel here admits that Lorna talked to him about killing Marty.]

      “Yeah, I mean it was like ah...oh you know, like a kind of a test to see what would really happen, but I don’t know, I don’t know what it was like in their home either (inaudible)…”

      “Well, I don’t either cause we never went to any parties up there or anything, we always went to someone else’s house.”

      “Well, I don’t know how bad it was but I think checking on Marty’s life, maybe there’d be some opening there cause he was gone a lot.  He was up at Topeka, Guard duty.  I know he’d kind of brag sometimes.  He’d talk about some of those topless bars up there and he’d always like to talk to me about those things, see what kind of reaction I’d get, see how the preacher would act if he brags about that.  He was also getting’ pretty desperate for money too.  I didn’t realize that until the last few months.  He was really desperate for money.”

      “Wonder why.”

      “I don’t know cause there was no reason to, he was makin’ good salary.”

      “I wonder where she come up with that money that she supposedly gave ‘em.”

      “I don’t know.”

      “If they didn’t have any money.”

      “I don’t know.  Well let’s see how (inaudible)…”

      “Well, hide and watch, I guess, and see what happens.”

      “I’m a little tense about it (inaudible) just for the rumors, but then I can see where they’d look at me.  All they can do is look at me.”

      “Well, I think they’re gonna look at everybody.”

      “Well that’s what I figured, that’s when I said I wanta touch bases with you because there’s no use addin’ another little niche in there.  You don’t wanta be involved, I don’t wanta be involved, darn! I got three kids and I gotta be with them and I got a church.  I can’t afford to have a whole bunch of people wonderin’ about me.  I’m handlin’ the rumors as best I can.  There’s nothing I can do about that.  You can’t do anything about rumors.”  [Tom once again emphasized he wanted the rumors stopped, his whole purpose for meeting Darrel.]

      “Well that’s true.”

      “But I hope it doesn’t get any further than that.”

      “Well, it really does look bad for you too because your wife was killed.”  [Darrel already had linked the two together for the police.  Tom had no idea how much damage Darrel had already done.]

      “Yeah, I know that but…”

      “And then Marty was killed and it really does look like a real coincidence.  You know anybody can put two and two together on that and it don’t look right.”

      “If they want to, but there’s nothin’ I can do about it.”

      “Yeah.”

      “I’m just tryin’ to exist and tryin’ to build back my life.  I have to let ‘em look at it as long as they don’t try to hurt me on it.  I’m sorry, I’ve got a job to do.  I got kids to take care of, Christmas comin’ up and a life to live.”

      “I really thought when I heard that, just read in the paper, I really thought Lorna had just pulled off the road there and shot him, cause I knew she had a gun.”  [How did he know she had a gun?  Did she show him the eventual murder weapon?  Did police ask him about this incriminating statement?]

      “They checked that out though.”

      “Did they check out her gun or just check her out to see if she did it?”

      “Well they checked her out to see if she did it, don’t they have a little test on gunpowder (inaudible)?”  [They tested her after she washed her hands.]

      “Well, that I don’t know.  I guess I didn’t know that.  I guess that’s good to know, huh?  Well I just figured when I heard that he got shot, why I really thought that she did it, just the circumstances.”

      “Well that first article in the newspaper looked pretty bad anyway, pretty inaccurate but…”

      “But then when I heard he’d been shot with a .22, why I knew she didn’t have a .22.”  [Is he covering up his earlier comment that he knew she had a gun?]

      “See I hadn’t heard these things.”

      “Yeah, they thought it was a .22.  They weren’t sure but it looked like they shot him with a .22.”

      “Well, they’d know where the bullets went.”

      “Well I don’t know if they got the bullets.  I never saw an autopsy report on it.  They just said they’d shot him with a .22 or .25 caliber handgun, or gun, they didn’t say handgun, but I figure it’s a handgun.”

      “Well, they didn’t get very many details from Lorna or Lori.  I imagine it was a pretty big shock anyway no matter what.  How can you remember a situation like that, a little 8-year-old in question.  What I heard, they talked to her a little bit at the scene and then talked to her a little bit later on about 11:00 o’clock at night.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “What can you get out of a little 8-year-old girl at 11:00 o’clock at night when she’s been through what she’d been through?”

      “That’s true.”

      “It wouldn’t even be admissible.”

      “I don’t know, all I know, we’re in a lot of trouble with it.”

      “Humm?”

      “My brother’s in a lot of trouble.”

      “Who’s in a lot of trouble?”  [Tom pressed him for a clarification.  He thought Darrel knew more about the way police would pursue Lorna than he revealed.]

      “My brother….  I just thought maybe I could find out something.”

      “Oh well if I could find out anything, fine, it’s probably gonna be filtered down.  I don’t think Lorna will ever talk to me until it’s all over, and then I think maybe she’ll talk to me but I don’t know if it’s ever gonna be all over.”

      “I don’t know.  Have you talked to her since it happened?”

      “Oh yeah.”

      “Well I mean, well I guess you have.”

      “She’s talked with her lawyer and he’s, I think, the one that decided originally she don’t talk to anybody and I think she’s stickin’ to that and I haven’t pushed her.  I really haven’t pushed her at all.”

      “Yeah.”

      “So I don’t know, if I find out something that will be helpful.  But otherwise it’s pretty much in the hands of the lawyers now and I don’t know what else the investigators can come up with.”

      “Well I don’t think anything.  They may dig up something that we don’t know about but …”

      “So I don’t know, they had a lot of people talkin’.  They have witnesses who saw the incident.”

      “Oh no, they don’t have anybody that saw it, that actually saw it.  But they had a lot of people drive by at different times with different things.”

      “Well, what did they see?”

      “Well like they saw somebody stand’ there talkin’ to Lorna, and there was some reports that people had stood there, that they saw somebody stand’ there talkin’ to Lorna and ah…”

      “Could have been Marty.”

      “We’ll see.  No it wasn’t, well, like Lori said that she saw some guy standin’, talkin’ to her Mom after her Dad had been shot.”

      “So the story Lorna told me was the guy grabbed her, asked for her purse, threw her down on the ground, told her to be quiet and pulled the trigger on her, maybe just to scare her, just clicked it or somethin’ and ah...ran off.”  [Tom believed her.]

      “Uhhuh.”

      “Well, you know they’ll put it together and maybe find out something, I don’t know whatever they can do, but I’ve had enough troubles (inaudible) and I’m kind of at the point where...and I want Lorna to be taken care of.  I don’t want her to be locked up but I’ve got my life to live and that’s why I was concerned.  I just wanted to touch bases with you as far as, I heard enough about the rumors, I don’t (inaudible) anything else to be involved and you’re Danny’s brother and when I talked to you I didn’t even know…”

      “Yeah.”

      “…your brother and so I don’t want that connection to be made because that’s really not even a connection, so let’s just all steer clear.”  [Tom saw the potential connection between him, Lorna and Darrel as a problem, given that Danny had already confessed to being the bag man for the murder of Marty Anderson.  He wanted to steer clear of any connection to Danny.]

      “Yeah, well Danny told me he didn’t know you cause I’d asked him if he’d ever talked to you and Lorna and he said, no, he didn’t even know you.”

      “(Inaudible) if I find out something that will be helpful, but I think it’s just up to lawyers now.  But I figured you might be subpoenaed to talk (inaudible).”

      “Yeah, course you know I’m not talkin’ so they really don’t have a connection with me on the deal.”

      “Well, I just want to make sure that stays, you don’t want it to be connected to you.  Let me tell you, bein’ part of a rumor’s no good, so you don’t want any part of a rumor.”

      “That’s true.”

      “Those guys...they will try to make all the connections they can.  Danny told ‘em Curry told ‘em that they really never intended to follow through?”

      “Yeah.”

      “They just spent the money, huh?  I guess it’s up to them whether they want to (inaudible) or not.  But one report came out, said there was four involved.”

      “Well, I think they were talkin’ about those three and Lorna, the four of ‘em.”

      “Okay, well that’s one party’s missing, you know.”  [If Darrel really believed Tom was the fourth party, he could have said something at this point, but he didn’t.]

      “I don’t know, cause I don’t read too much in the paper…”

      “Yeah, well reports are probably a whole lot better than the paper, but there’s nobody passed me with (inaudible) of what come out now.”

      “No, I mean, that’s as far as they went is to Bingham and…”

      “That’s the end of the line.”

      “That’s the end of the line.”

      “As far as they know, and it’s probably as far as they’ll ever know.”

      “I don’t know, you never can tell what they might dig up.  I think they’re gonna start back up and get off of those guys and they’re probably gonna start lookin’ at some other people.”  [Is he about to ask Tom directly if he was involved?  This is a good place to do it.]

      “You think so?”

      “Yeah, what other channel do they have?  If them guys didn’t do it, they’re at the end of the line.  They’re either going to have to look for another alternative or they may have to look at Marty’s side like you said, something there.”

      “I suggested they dig on Marty’s side.”

      “Yeah.”

      “I think he’s dirty, that’s just the kind of feeling I get.  He was desperate and dirty, I know he was desperate and I always wondered about him because he was wantin’ money.”

      “Uhhuh.”

      “He was wantin’ to do a lot of things.”

      “Well, is that right?  So ah I’ll get back with you, all right, Tom.”

      “Yeah.”

      “Talk to you later.”

      “All right, thank you,”  Tom said, getting out of the car.

      Darrel waited for Tom to walk away and then said, “Okay, I’m now leavin’ the parking lot and Tom is also leavin’ in front of me.  I will meet everyone back at ALCO, same place.”

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