Ben 00:01-00:09

Rita, welcome back to Crime Capsule, and thank you so much for joining us for our 100th episode celebration.

Rita 00:09-00:14

Well, thank you for including me. I'm all excited about this. I'm looking forward to talking to you again.

Ben 00:15-00:34

You are too kind. And when we were trying to figure out just who we wanted to speak to, we thought we got to go straight to the source, right? We got to go to our one of our all star legendary guests. And it is just such a joy. Tell me, how are you and how is the fishing down in John's Island?

Rita 00:34-01:02

Well, right now it is hot, but I haven't done any fishing. But I have done a few crabbing trips. Actually, for this time of year, crabbing has been pretty good. We're getting fairly decent sized ones, but you have to know where and what time. You've got to work the tide a little bit. I usually do most of mine in the fall, September, October, November. Boy, they come in big then.

Rita 01:03-01:07

Oh, yeah. I've sneaked out a couple of times and done some here, so we've done pretty well.

Ben 01:09-01:30

My dad's trick down in the Pascagoula River in Mississippi was always to take a chicken leg and tie a string around the chicken leg, a raw drumstick, and then you just drop it off the side of the boat. And then you wait about two or three minutes is usually about all it takes. And then you reel that sucker back up and guess who's hanging off the end of it.

Rita 01:31-02:05

There you go. We do it with the chicken. I use chicken backs mostly. We do it with the cages, you know, off of the dock or if you find a good area where you can walk out in the water. Now, it has to be clean. I don't go out in all that mud and everything, but it has to be where you can walk out in the water and throw that chicken back out there on that string and then walk in the water and scoop them up. That's really the big sport of it. Either way. Either way, either way we can get them. They're doing better this year than they have in the last two years.

Ben 02:05-02:18

Good, good. I'm glad to hear that. There's nothing better than walking up to a big old crab boil and just seeing all the claws sticking out of the pot, you know what I mean? And you just think, now I have arrived.

Rita 02:18-02:30

They've got their own world, they sure do. But I tell you what, I've had many a crab bite too with the claws and everything, you know, and had to shake them off. It's all worth it. It's all worth it.

Ben 02:30-02:47

The joke is, and this brings us to my first question for what's been going on in your neck of the woods lately, the joke is you throw a line out there and you never know exactly what you're going to catch. And, you know, it might be a crab or it might be somebody's bloody vest, you know, that is piece of evidence from a crime scene, right?

Rita 02:47-02:48

That does happen.

Ben 02:49-03:40

It does indeed it does indeed and you know, it occurred to me that the last time that we got together was right after the conviction of the alex murdoch, um, you know the trial and um his conviction for murdering maggie and paul and and so forth And i've got a couple questions for you about what things have been like down in the low country. We are now a year out, and he was just recently convicted of his fraud and conspiracy misdoings as well. Got 40 more years on top of the 27 for the murders. What do things look like in the aftermath of all this a year out?

Rita 03:40-04:59

I haven't really been following him the last couple of months, and I just kind of got over the whole thing, I guess. But as far as I know, it's been quiet. The news down here in the last couple of months has been quiet except bringing up about the latest ones. Now, of course, you saw where the clerk of court, his attorneys got her and took her to court about the book she wrote and all that was in there too. A lot of, I mean, I think Becky had, you know, people were pulling for her, and then all of a sudden this happened, and then more things came out, and that was pretty big. A lot of people were disappointed of how it, of the outcome, and a lot of people were just amazed at what all did come out of it. But as far as why I went and where, I don't know. I know she did resign as clerk of court. And I knew Becky. I liked Becky. I read her book.

Ben 04:59-05:02

I enjoyed the book. Yeah, what was your take on it? Yeah.

Rita 05:02-06:38

I enjoyed the book. It was behind the scenes of what happened at the trial and what what she wrote, and then, you know, it came out that she had plagiarized some, which that surprised me, because she had originally asked me, too, about, you know, the legality of me writing my books, and her, too, and I said, well, you're an elected official, you work, and I was already retired, plus the fact I did talk to a few Attorneys about it and I mean the aftermath of my cases they had to be adjudicated And I could use anything of course that was out in the media Right and I could also bring in my opinions as well that if you if you get information from somewhere else you it's easy enough just to say put a footnote or as was reported in the newspaper this morning or Just add the name, make sure you get permission to use it. I hate that happened to her, but as far as I'm concerned, I enjoyed reading the book because I worked behind the scenes a lot too when I did sequestered juries with my work at SLED. I was just amazed how the courtroom and all the proceedings got done. There's so much that the clerk of court has to do.

Ben 06:41-07:01

The very privileged position of witness and so forth. But that does require you to maintain, I think, an extra level of care and integrity, of course, in what you're writing about. I think the circumstances, yes, of yours and hers are very, very different. And your vantage points are different.

Rita 07:01-07:16

Absolutely. And I told her that. I said, you're still an elected official. talk to a few attorneys to make sure what I could do. I mean, I covered my butt on everything.

Ben 07:20-08:01

sort of admired so much about the Elaine Fogel book was that, you know, here you have the balance between what is hard, hard evidence, right, which has, you know, been collected and assessed and so forth. And then you have, and you write about this explicitly, you know, sometimes you get hunches, right? Sometimes you get kind of intuitions and you think, okay, hold up. Let me just, there's something bothering me about this particular, you know, photograph or, you know, um, you know, crime scene analysis. Let me go back and take a second look at that and so forth. And those hunches are kind of, they're not just what propel the narrative of the book, they're actually what propelled the case forward, right? Which is fascinating, if you think about that.

Rita 08:01-09:31

It is fascinating. And, you know, I call them in my book, I would call them hand-to-God moments on time, and you were going, oh my God, this happened. Just a happenstance. I don't believe in coincidences that much, you know, but a happenstance. I hand to God, and it's almost like he's, okay, work with this, work with this. And you feel so good when you find one of those, and then you feel so bad, why didn't I find this before? But I think everything happens at the right time. In fact, The detective, the chief that worked with me on this, you know, afterwards, he said, Rita, you know, this thing could have been solved a couple of years back. And I said, it could have. I said, but we were supposed to do it, Jean. I said, we were the ones that were supposed to do it. And I said, you know, we got what was done, and the two of us together, our thoughts came together. It was the right time. It was the time that it was supposed to be done, I guess. Although, if it would have been done years ago, you know, what difference would it have made? I don't know. But it got him off the street, I guess. But they got him off the street for a lot of stuff and put him back out. Timing is a lot. Timing is a lot, Ben, in these cases.

Ben 09:32-09:42

Absolutely. And sometimes things just aren't ready. You know, evidence needs to percolate a little bit or we need a better technique, right, that hasn't been invented yet or something like that.

Rita 09:42-09:58

And you can't start with just one thing. I mean, unless that's the only thing you've got, it's like we had the fingerprints and palm prints and then, of course, the DNA. Yeah. So you have to keep, you have to try and find everything you can.

Ben 09:59-10:23

Absolutely. Let me ask you, I'm curious with respect to the Murdoch, you know, the aftermath and so forth. One of the biggest questions, and I never heard the answer to this, Rita, and I was always curious about it. One of the biggest questions that came out, you know, as far as matters of evidence went in that particular trial was the weapon. Did they ever find the gun? Not that I know of. Never heard anything about that?

Rita 10:23-10:26

Not that I know of or his clothing.

Rita 10:28-10:32

I didn't find that. Took me a while to get into Paul's phone. I know that.

Ben 10:32-10:46

I remember that. Yep. Sure. But, uh, just curious if there'd been any further sweeps of the land, you know, I had to go back and make me a timeline on that just to understand it all too.

Rita 10:46-10:52

Cause it took, it took them about eight months to get into it.

Ben 10:52-11:21

But, you know, you mentioned that in your retirement, law enforcement does still call you every now and then for, you know, for thoughts on cases and for, you know, different little things here and there. Have there been any that you have been working on lately or any cases that have kind of come back to your desk in the last year or so that are of interest?

Rita 11:55-14:04

Yes, there have been a few that they've called me about my part of working with the evidence, when it happened. And one in particular is the Larry Jean Bell, Sherry Smith, Deborah Mae Helmick story. Larry Jean Bell was a serial murder here in South Carolina back in 1985 and he kidnapped and killed Sherry Smith and about two weeks later he kidnapped and killed nine-year-old Debra Mae Helmick and that case has been out there since 1985 and now it just keeps coming up. There's been documentaries on TV I wouldn't even want to think about how many there have been, but they always call me about my part in it, and Lara Jean Bell made taunting phone calls to the family, and I still do have those phone calls that the investigator gave me to keep when they would call to share with them, you know, after the fact, it had to be adjudicated first and after he was caught. But that case is, it just seems to come up ever so often that it's just so amazing how it was solved with some indented writing in a letter that Larry Jean Bill let his first victim, Sherry Smith, write. She wrote it to her family. She wanted to tell them goodbye. And it was titled Last Will and Testament. And there was some ended writing that our question documents examiner was able to pull up. And it was a partial phone number. And that phone number led him to a few links to find the bad guy who was Larry Jean Bell. And he was house sitting at a house there in Saluda, South Carolina. for a couple when they went on vacation.

Ben 14:04-14:20

Let's just do a quick bit of contextualization here, because it does actually matter. In 1985, I mean, we're talking, there's no internet, right? Computers are really in their kind of infancy, in their home versions.

Rita 14:20-14:21

You didn't have them at Sledge, anyway.

Ben 14:22-14:50

Yeah, yeah, but like law enforcement is not really using it very widely. I mean, you're talking so many just analog technologies there that I mean, it's almost like going back to the, you know, Sherlock Holmes era of if there is a physical piece of evidence, you have to examine it in every single capacity under every single angle for anything that can possibly reveal because it's just you can't cross check it against anything at that point, can you?

Rita 14:50-15:49

No, you can't. And You know, one of the amazing things about him calling the family, the first time he called, they were not recording any phone calls. They set up a task force in the yard of Sherry Smith's family, and she was missing. And the first phone call, he called and said that he had her and that they would be getting a letter the next morning. Well, after that first call, then they set a recording device up on the telephone. And they were hoping that he was going to call. And he did. Oh, man, he was having a big time. He was having a big time, and he would call. But even in 1985, they worked with the name of the phone company, and this is ironic, was Southern Bell. And Larry Jean Bell's last name was Bell, I thought. These things hit me like that sometimes.

Ben 15:49-15:52

I think AT&T bought Southern Bell eventually, didn't they?

Rita 15:52-18:37

They did. They did. I still have a Southern Bell email address. How about that? Bell South it was when I had it. But anyway, they were able to trace him back to every phone call that he made, even back then in 1985. They worked closely with Sill and Bell. And they were able to trace it back to every phone booth that he had used to make those calls. But of course, when they got there, he was gone. And he'd left nothing. There was nothing that they could use. They didn't find anything they could use. But he covered some ground now. He would call from the upcountry. He would call from the lowcountry. He went around calling, just taunting the family.

And then he did call and tell them where Sherry's body was after about, I think it was the third or fourth day. And then after he took little Deborah Mae Helmick, the little nine-year-old girl, it was longer than that before he called. And he had to call the Smith family to tell them where her body was because they didn't have a telephone. They had just moved down from Ohio and they didn't have a telephone. They lived in a trailer park. And that was when they knew that it was the same guy. And then they got back to work on that phone number and within a few days they had a good phone number there that they called the phone number and he said his mom and dad lived in Saluda. When they'd go on vacation, Mr. and Ms. Shepard would leave the numbers of where they could be reached. And it was Mr. and Ms. Shepard's son out in Alabama, his number. And he said, they live right there in Saluda.

So they went and questioned them. And as soon as I saw it, they were middle-aged and retired. They knew it wasn't them. And they'd let them listen at the phone calls, the audio. And I think Mr. Shepard, I believe he said, I'll be damned. He said, that's that son of a bitch, Larry Jean Bell. That's the way he said it. And he said, he's our house sitter. And then, of course, he lived right up there on Lake Murray. And they just put a roadblock up the next morning. And when he was coming out to go to work, they got him. But he never admitted to it. He always said the bad Larry Gene Bell did it inside of him. If it was anything inside of him that did it, bad Larry Gene Bell did it. It wasn't the guy sitting there.

Ben 18:38-18:44

Yeah, how well does that hold up in court, Rita? That defense.

Rita 18:44-19:30

I'll tell you what, he tried to make people think he was crazy, but he wasn't crazy. That man was evil. He was miserable, but that case is out there if anybody wants to. It's podcast, it's been on documentaries, on TV, and forensic files, it's been on that. I don't think it'll ever go away because of the uniqueness of how it was solved back in 85 with that Indian number and how they traced the phone calls back to those phone booths. But even though it didn't help that much, they saw how he was just moving around. Supposedly, you know, he told the family too, you know, They stopped me in a roadblock last night, but they let me through. But you couldn't believe nothing he said. You don't know whether he was lying or telling the truth. And then he got fascinated with Sherry's sister, because Sherry's sister looked so much like Sherry. But law enforcement used Don. That was Sherry's sister. Okay, when he calls, you keep him on the phone. And she had to just keep her composure. And she did just an excellent job of talking to him. And they were all very religious people. And he was saying, you know, please forgive me and God forgive me and all that and whatever. And she went along and he said, you know, God will forgive you. She kept him on the phone so that they could trace the phone back. Wow. You know, back to the phone. How long does that take? He was always going when they got there. But she has quite a few testimonials out there, too. And she's written two or three books.

Ben 20:49-21:00

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, in the 80s, how long would that take to get a reverse trace established? I mean, how long did someone need to be online, so to speak?

Rita 21:01-21:32

on the phone. You know, I don't know the exact minutes, but it wasn't that long. They said, and you might could have looked that up, I don't know the exact minutes of how long it took back then, but they were able to trace it. Even that first phone call when they didn't even have a recorder on it, they traced it back to a little convenience store there just right around the corner from where the Shepherds lived and where Sherry's body actually was found not too far from the shepherds house.

Ben 21:32-22:14

Yeah, you know Rita, I have to say this is something that has been a source of just real admiration for me and for all of us here at Crime Capsule. Just hearing about the high level of coordination with SLED and with county and with city, you know, just the way in which you guys all came together And, you know, just operations and just really impressive to see like that level, you know, in order to get these guys. And it just it's a running theme, you know what I mean? And in all these cases that you've worked on, it's really very impressive.

Rita 22:14-25:24

Yeah, and you know, back then, like you said, we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have, I mean, in the later years, we had little flip phones and we had beepers. So we really had to get out. They had to get out and dust the bushes. It was manpower. You had to go out and walk. In fact, when Larry Jean Bell was doing his thing and they didn't catch him at first, They kind of had a description of him in some cars, but he switched cars. His sister had a used car dealership, and he would switch cars.

But they had everybody, just anybody that looked strange, whether we were working or not, or anybody. If you see anybody strange, let us know. They had a description at first, but he was clean-shaven. And then when he took little Debra Mae Helmick, he had a beard. So he actually had clean shaven himself when he took Sherry, because he took her first. And then when he took Debra Mae, he had let his beard grow back. So the composite they got of somebody that said they were driving by when he picked up Sherry, he picked her up from the mailbox when she was getting mail. did a composite and, you know, they just kind of drove by and they said they didn't remember facial hair. So the composite went without facial hair.

But we did find out later he had shaved his beard. He had a beard and he'd shaved it. But then he let it grow back when little Deborah May was taken. It's an enormous indicator too. The neighbor actually saw him pull up to the trailer from his window of the trailer across the road and saw Lara Jean Bell get out and take little Debra Mae and she was kicking and screaming getting in the car. And another happenstance here. It was hot. It was hot in May. And his air conditioner was broken. He was in the kitchen making And he had the windows up, the guy that saw Clara Jean Bell take her, the neighbor. And he ran out the house and ran over and her daddy had just come home from work and he was back in his trailer.

And he said, somebody just stopped by here and took your daughter. And her little brother was with her, but he didn't take the little boy. And his name was Woody. It scared him to death. But anyway, that guy gave a wonderful composite. And the facial, if you look at how Larry Jean Bell looked when they arrested him and that facial composite that the neighbor gave, it'll put chills on your spine.

Ben 25:24-25:24

Wow.

Rita 25:24-26:52

How about that? And I mean, it was that close. I had heard that they used an inmate to talk to that guy. He was an artist. And they used an inmate to work with the neighbor to draw that picture. And then that ran in the paper. They got rid of the clean shaven. And then when he was arrested, the shepherds remembered. He would go and pick them up from the airport and bring them home, too, and take them back to the airport when they'd leave. And Miss Shepherd said she remembered that she looked at him when the first time he came and picked him up. And that was right after Sherry was taken. She wasn't even found yet. And she said, well, you finally shaved that old ugly beard off. And he said, yeah,

BEN

you have written about all of this in your murder in the midlands book is that correct

RITA

that is correct yes and and this um i i wrote it from the law enforcement

Rita 28:09-28:42

view of what I did and what the investigators did. And Don, Sherry's sister, has also written a book about it. She's written quite a few books, I believe. But this one was the one. To me, this was probably one of my career cases because of the way it went through the Midlands. how long it took. It's probably the longest manhunt in South Carolina, too.

Ben 28:42-28:43

Really?

Rita 28:43-28:59

I believe it was. It may have been one later on here in the last couple of years, but I know it took, let's see, one, two, I think it was about a month. I'd have to look back in my notes.

And everybody was afraid to go out, not even in the Midlands. They were actually all around the state, you know, they were afraid to go out. You didn't see a child out hardly anywhere in the Midlands. And they were afraid to let the children out, especially little blonde-headed ones, because both of them were blondes.

Ben 29:45-30:12

No, and that echoes very, very loudly. You know, our very first guest ever on Crime Capsule was Joshua Sushon. And, you know, when he wrote about the killing of Tina Fails in California, you know, all the parents kept their kids indoors for weeks and weeks and weeks on end, you know. And it's just kind of natural reaction to circle the wagons. You know, you just don't even, you know, until they get him, until they get him.

Rita 30:13-35:00

You know, no one's going anywhere, right? Husbands fared for the wives, you know, and it was just, and we were scared. We were scared, too, because you just, he was just so slick. He could, he was like a cat and a mouse. He could slide in and out, slide in and out. But they did, after they got that composite that they knew there after he took Deborah May, and they put that composite out, They had law enforcement all around the area, and anybody that had a beard, they stopped and talked to them. And they told us when we went out, if we saw anybody or anything, you know, just call us and let us know about it. And here's one thing that did happen with me. I and a friend of mine were looking for a pop-up camper. during all this time. And it so happened, we had to go to a phone booth to call, let's see, scratch that, let me get the story straight here. Okay, my friend and I, during this time, we were looking for a pop-up camp.

We camped with some friends of ours, so we were looking for a pop-up camp. and we had a little trader there that we could look in, and it gave us numbers of campers that were for sale. And it so happened we went up around Lake Murray looking at one, and then we were going to look at another one, and we didn't have cell phones at that time, so I had to go to a phone booth to call the number of the one we were going to look at. And when we got to that phone booth, it was right there at a little up a hill from Lake Murray, a boat landing there on Lake Murray, where some residents would dock their boats. And the phone booth was there. And when we got there, this guy was in the phone booth.

And he had the phone receiver in his hand. And we pulled up close to the booth. And it so happened that I was in my state car, because they told us, you know, to take the car out and look for anything you see strange. And I was in my state vehicle. And he looked out of the phone booth, and he was acting real cocky. And I looked at my friend, and I said, now, that's a strange bird, isn't it? Because he had the receiver in his hand. He wasn't talking to anybody. And he'd look back in, and he'd bend back out. We just kind of sat there in the car. Well, he later hung the receiver up, left the booth, and walked back down to the bullet landing, down the hill to the bullet landing, where the bullets were docked. And, you know, working in law enforcement, and I work with composites, too. I did composites with a kit.

Faces just kind of stick with me sometimes. But I kind of, we kind of shook it off. I went and called the number, and we went on a look to that camper. Well, when he got arrested, they brought his mugshot over to me the morning he was arrested, and I had to make copies of it for him to send around to the media. And when I saw his mugshot and his driver's license picture, I went, Oh my God, this is the guy we saw in that phone booth. No! I called my friend real fast and I said, are you looking at… She had heard… What? They'd put it out on the media. And I said, did you see that picture? She said, Rita, there's no doubt in my mind that was him.

So then it blew up. Holy crap. Why didn't I think about this? And then I found out that This was before Debra Mae was taken that we saw him. So that composite of him being clean shaven was the only one we had ever seen. That was the only one that had been released to the media. And this was before Debra Mae was taken. Debra Mae was taken after we were looking for the camp. And then I later found out, too, in his second trial of Debra Mae, I believe it was, that his mother and daddy had a boat dock where they docked their boat down at that particular landing.

Ben 35:00-35:04

You're kidding. I mean, that just, it's too much. It's too much.

Rita 35:04-35:09

You know, I look at it, can't 100% say it was, but I can 100% say it was.

Ben 35:13-35:16

That'll put chills on your spine more than anything, won't it?

Rita 35:16-36:24

I mean… It kind of bothered me then, but then I said, you know, we were looking for a clean-shaven guy. We wasn't looking for a guy with a beard. yeah no and you can't beat yourself up for it but it does it does kind of just give you pause right there you know as they happen things happen as they happen and well good heavens that is an incredible story and i mean he got two death sentences so he was electrocuted they kept him alive for a year after i mean about 10 years afterwards so you know with the appeals and everything but He finally was electrocuted for it. It's crazy. He did bizarre things in court. All that's in my book and in the stories. Any stories you read about that case, it's just an interesting way as to how all of that evolved and how much faith Sherry had and her family had. She said in the letter one time, some good will come from this. And I think it has. Absolutely.

Ben 36:26-37:20

that story and more can be found, you know, in your books and we absolutely encourage our listeners to go and pick up a copy of Murder in the Midlands or The Low Country Murder of Gwendolyn Lane Fogel. I mean, there are multiple different avenues for them to explore life in the low country with you and from that incredible perspective that you've had. Over the years Rita, it is it is just always such a joy to get to hang out with you We appreciate your staying vigilant and you know, carrying the fire for all these stories that, you know, the victims can't tell their stories anymore, and so often, you know, it falls to you, and, you know, we're just so grateful for the way that you keep not just their memories alive, but the hope of justice, you know, which ties it all together, and we know you've played a big role in that over the years. Well, thank you.

Rita 38:44-38:58

I still have a passion for it, and I miss it. I do miss being around all the evidence and I just had a good team I worked with at SLED too, those guys. I was one of the guys.

Ben 38:58-39:25

It is. There it is. Well, y'all did a lot of good over the years and are continuing to and I know that… I feel like we did. Absolutely. Well, look, tell us this. If you get any more projects on your desk or any more books coming out, we want to hear about it. But in the meantime, in the meantime, when the crabs start biting, that's what we want to hear too. You know who to call. Absolutely.

Rita 39:25-39:28

If you ever get down this way, I will take you crabbing.

Ben 39:29-39:35

I can't wait. I'm gonna bring the chicken legs myself and we'll just get it done. We will get it done.

Rita 39:35-39:37

I'll put beer in a cooler for you.

Ben 39:37-39:41

Can't wait. Can't wait. Well, we'll see you down there Rita.

Rita 39:41-39:48

It's been great talking to you and thank you again for including me in on this. I just love talking to you guys. Always a joy.

Ben 39:48-39:52

Always a joy. The pleasure is ours and we will see you soon.