Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Law, #True Crime, #Murder, #test

Bad Boy From Rosebud (89 page)

Page 335

Image not available.

Texas Ranger Matt Cawthon
was instrumental in
locating the remains of
Regenia Moore, Brenda
Thompson, and Colleen Reed.
Author's Collection.

III

While talking to McDuff about Regenia, the CI had managed to get a very vague description of where he placed Brenda Thompson. Soon, the directions got more precise: on Gholson Road, about six or seven miles north of Waco, there are two wagon wheels at the entrance to a private driveway; just down from that at the bottom of a hill there is a dry water wash where the fence is down; go twenty paces from the fence inside the dry water wash and there is a slant. These directions were not as good as the ones McDuff provided for Regenia, but it was all they had to work with.

On October 1, only two days after Regenia had been recovered, The Boys had directions to locate Brenda. Bill wanted to go to the area right away, but Mike could not get away from his duties at the marshal's office.

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Late that afternoon, Bill drove out there by himself. It looked hopeless. The vast area was very heavily wooded and covered with trash and about two feet of poison ivy. Bill remembered how he and others had been trained by the Smithsonian Institution to use probes to search for buried bodies at the Branch Davidian Compound. He correctly surmised that digging, whether with shovels or machinery, would be a waste of time. The area was so undeveloped, it was hard to walk.

So Bill got back into his truck and went to a plumbing supply store to buy the kind of metal probes plumbers use to locate sewer lines. The owner of the store, and a friend of Bill's, Larry Anderson, figured out what Bill was up to and refused to sell him any of the rods; he gave Bill three fiberglass probes for the search. Then Bill called Parnell's wife, Linda, and asked her if she had a shovel. Of course, Linda knew something was up, so she told him to go over to the stables. Bill went there and got a shovel and a crowbar to scratch around in the dirt.

All the while, Bill kept calling Mike, who still could not get away. Bill told Mike about the area and how it looked hopeless. Mike suggested that twenty paces, for one reason or another, seemed to be important to McDuff. Why not start with twenty paces from the fence and inside the dry water wash. Then walk parallel to the fence and look for a sinkhole, or something. The problem with that was that most of the area was covered with poison ivy; Bill could not see the ground.

He parked his truck across the street in a shallow ditch and waited to make sure no one saw him. Newspapers all over the country ran stories about how Regenia had been discovered, and the last thing Bill needed was to be seen entering a wooded area with a shovel.

When he crossed the fence he encountered so much brush that he could not even get to the intersection of the dry water wash and the fence. He had to mentally measure off twenty paces. As he stood alone, ankle deep in poison ivy, Bill looked around and said to himself, "Good God, what am I doing here?" He would have been mortified if anyone had seen him.

"A slant. What did McDuff mean by a slant?" Bill thought. Maybe he meant along the side of the wash. He dropped the shovel, took the fiberglass probe and forced it into the ground. He felt an underground cavity. Only a few inches over, he did it again, and he felt the cavity again. Just to make sure he walked away and tried in another spot, but he felt no cavity. He had found something on his first attempt. He got down on his knees

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and scratched away in the dirt. He had to cut away a root and move a rock over before he found a bone. He knew human bones were smooth, and that most animal bones were rough. This one was smooth.

Bill hesitated. Months later he would wonder, "Why was I trying to convince myself that this was not what it must be?" But he wanted to be sure it was a human buried there. If the media coverage of Regenia's excavation was any indication of what he was in store for, he wanted to be sure he had not found a deer, so he hid the tools and sneaked out of the woods. From his truck he called Parnell's house and asked Linda McNamara if she knew where he could find Parnell. "He just came in," she said.

"Parnell, get out here now. I found her," Bill said excitedly.

Parnell met Bill in the parking lot of a nearby country store. While waiting for him, Bill paged Mike and called his good friend Robert Blossman of the Secret Service. They talked about ways to determine if the bone Bill found was really human. Parnell suggested, "How about a doctor? Let's call Gary Becker."

Dr. Gary Becker was an orthopedic surgeon and a good friend. They all met at the country store in their different trucks, but to get to the dry water wash, they piled into Bigfoot.

"Good gosh, Billy," Parnell kept repeating as Bill got on his hands and knees and moved away the dirt. He took out the bone and showed it to Becker.

"That's a human arm bone," said the doctor.

Very carefully, Bill placed the bone back where he found it, put the dirt back over it, and he and Robert Blossman piled trash over it so that animals could not get to it.

The next day, October 3, 1998, several lawmen met at the country stored on the corner of ranch roads 933 and 308. From there a small convoy went to the site. They parked in a shallow ditch along Gholson Road. Parnell and Mike handed out swing blades and several men began chopping their way through the brush and poison ivy. As they got closer to the burial site, Parnell's wide and furious swings sent sticks and leaves flying in all directions.

All of a sudden, Chuck pointed to the left and said, "Look at that." It was a Coke can wedged on top of a stick. The red can had faded to a dull, weathered orange. Some thought McDuff might have used it as a marker, but then, maybe it was just a can on a stick.

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Once a small path had been cut, the men (and two women on the forensics team) went farther into the woods to where Bill found the bone. He got down on his hands and knees and carefully moved away loose dirt with his fingers, exposing about four inches of the bone. The forensics team went to work. Pretty soon J. W., Chuck, Parnell, Mike, and Matt Cawthon put on latex gloves and slowly assisted in the removal of dirt and compost. John Moriarty arrived shortly afterwards.

"He was a lazy grave digger. It's deep in the middle and the head and feet are up," Chuck said as more and more of Brenda Thompson began to be exposed. One of the forensics persons came upon bright red polyester that showed no decay. Other than that and a pair of socks, all of her other clothing had rotted away.

Even more striking was a touching moment when Brenda had been nearly completely recovered. Everyone stood around the edge of the hole, and looked down at her in absolute silence, as if the moment had been choreographed. Minutes later, Parnell McNamara walk out of the woods. He stood alone along the roadway, leaning against someone's pickup truck. He wanted to be alone.

Image not available.

After leading lawmen through thick woods to where he found the remains of
Brenda Thompson, Bill Johnston got on his hands and knees to carefully expose
a portion of the remains. Brenda was twenty paces from the fence line, buried in
poison-ivy covered woods.
Author's Collection.

Page 339

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Recovering the remains of McDuff's victims involved several jurisdictions of law
endforcement agencies. (l-r, at the October 3, 1998 recovery of Brenda Thompson's
remains): J. R. Price, Waco Police Department; Scott Gates, McLennan County
Sheriff's Office; Matt Cawthon, Texas Ranger; Steve January, Waco Police
Department; Mike McNamara, U. S. Marshal's Service.
Author's Collection.

Finding Colleen was much more difficult. All they knew about where McDuff put her was that she was east of Interstate 35. At least that eliminated places like the old McDuff homestead, the abandoned road, the dams, and the area around the S&S Trailer Park.

McDuff seemed convinced that if he revealed Colleen's location he would lose certain privileges in prison. He was especially concerned about not having access to the commissary. On Monday, October 5, the CI visited McDuff for a longer time than was usually allotted to visitors. Insisting that he would not be punished if he revealed where Colleen could be found, the CI told McDuff that the U.S. Attorney was there and he could talk to him if he wanted. Of course, McDuff knew the CI had been working with officials. He said he wanted to talk to Bill.

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Bill and Parnell had driven over a hundred miles an hour to get to the Ellis Unit while the CI met with McDuff. John Moriarty was already there. The CI, Bill and John met with McDuff.

"I'm Bill Johnston, Assistant United States Attorney, and this is John Moriarty of Internal Affairs here at TDCJ. We are here to do you no favor. At the same time, you should not be punished for what you tell us. That would not be fair either. I am not here to affect your case one way or another," Bill said. He chose his words carefully. Some news reports about what had been happening were pretty wild, and through coincidence, McDuff had been granted a temporary stay of execution during the same week of the recoveries. Bill continued, "John, I am asking you in front of these witnesses, can you state that if he gives us information about where to find Colleen Reed that he will be treated the same way today as he was yesterday?"

"Absolutely. We do that all the time. It would be stupid to punish someone for giving information." Then John looked at McDuff. "If someone does something to you that is adverse we investigate that. You call me."

McDuff stared at the threesome sitting on the other side of the plexiglas. In a slow, bored monotone, McDuff said, "Well, there's a bridge over the Brazos River. I'll have to show ya'll; you cain't find it."

Bill pressed for more details.

"There's a road that runs along the river. It's sandy Go down that road for about 200 yards from the bridge. You cain't find it, I'm gonna have to be there with you."

Bill and John did not want to take McDuff out there, so they asked for even more details.

"It rained a lot and there was a place where I nearly got stuck. There is another road above that, and it's in between those two roads."

"Was she killed there?" Bill asked.

"I really don't like the killing part. She was killed there. Worley, he's the one that killed her. He's a liar," McDuff added.

John Moriarty and The Boys went out to the bridge across the Brazos that night. They used the probes to search for Colleen, but they could not find her; it just did not work the same way in the sand. Plus, it was dark and they could not see much.

The next day everyone's endurance would be tested. McDuff's directions about how to find Colleen had been skewed by the dark stillness of

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that horrible night. She was not 200 yards from the road, but given his very precise directions in the past, the search party began digging exactly where McDuff told them. Another problem was that between 1992 and 1998, the Corps of Engineers had actually changed part of the circular drive, a section called the lower road, because of frequent flooding. For hours, the men used graders to scrape dirt and sand in an area the size of a football field. Colleen was not there.

By mid-afternoon, Bill began to despair. He did not want to be seen with McDuff, and the idea of getting him out of the Ellis Unit to find Colleen was repugnant. John Moriarty was at the scene. He had a previous discussion with McDuff about just such a contingency; he knew that McDuff would cooperate if brought to the scene. Chuck Meyer and J. W. favored bringing McDuff there as well. Bill relented.

In seconds, John was on a cellular phone. He arranged for what is called a "Clandestine High Security Move." It is done on rare occasions where inmates are taken out of prison for investigative purposes. (That was why many prison officials did not know that McDuff had left the Ellis Unit. Their statement, that there was
no record
of McDuff leaving the prison, was true.)

Four investigators in two vehicles traveled with McDuff. Moriarty made arrangements to meet the cars halfway between Marlin and Huntsville. McDuff was transferred to Moriarty's car, which was equipped with heavily tinted glass. He was also "cabled" to the back seat and never allowed out of the car.

When John returned there were reporters everywhere. The word at the scene was that Austin television stations had reported that Colleen had already been found. That distressed the search team greatly. John drove through the press corps assembled on both sides of the bridge. High-powered lenses focused on the men and their work, but luckily, no one ever saw McDuff, who had been dressed up in civilian clothes and was wearing a baseball cap John had given him.

John drove the prisoner around the large circular drive. McDuff never referred to Colleen as a person, only as "it." "It may be over there," or "Move over there and you may find it," he would say.

Soon, Chuck joined McDuff on the back seat. "What's the deal, Kenneth?"

"This don't look right. Nothing looks right. It couldn't have been here because those trees were not there," McDuff said.

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