Robert Riggs
True crime reporter goes inside the yellow crime scene tape. I'm investigative reporter Robert Riggs with decorated former federal prosecutor Bill Johnston. You can follow our journey into darkness and get bonus episodes by joining our true crime community at truecrimereporter.com. Our true crime cases are stranger than fiction. With that said, here's a classic police procedural: a true crime reporter, confidential. Texas narcotics agents called him mr. Z. Talk among informants was that mr. Z was the man, the big shot, the kingpin of methamphetamine operations in North and East Texas. mr. Z provided the formula, know-how, and most importantly, muscle for meth labs across a wide swath of the state in the early 1980s, a true-life version of Walt in Breaking Bad, but with extreme paranoia and an arsenal of stolen military weapons. mr. Z's nickname came from the Datsun 280Z sports car that he drove back in 1982. The 280Z sleek European styling took America by storm in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Nissan produced the three-door, two-seat coupe 280Z. His real name was Richard Larry Rusk, a 41-year-old meth kingpin from Athens in East Texas. But in the meth underworld, mr. Z was only known as the name of his car. Law enforcement only knew him as the elusive mr. Z. I crossed his path when I arrived in Dallas from New York in 1981. Meth was an epidemic. Our TV crew rode along on raids with the DEA and state narcotics officers to remote farmhouses in rural Texas, where meth cooks would temporarily set up to hide their labs. Sometimes the location was given away when neighbors downwind sniffed the foul odor that was a byproduct of cooking meth. The houses and makeshift labs were not the glittery chemical wonderlands called super labs in Breaking Bad. It was pure filth. I was always shocked by it, and the impurities in meth marked habitual users with ugly sores covered with scabs. I first learned about the hunt for mr. Z when agents raided a storage unit near downtown Dallas. It held one of mr. Z's many arsenals. Inside, agents found cases of hand grenades. As a former congressional investigator for the Joint Committee on Defense Production, I was taken aback by what I saw. mr. Z stockpiled air-to-ground missiles used on Huey helicopter gunships in Vietnam, and he stored the Army's M 72 Laws rocket launchers that I had been trained to fire at Fort Jackson. It was a disposable Vietnam-era shoulder-fired light anti-tank weapon that could penetrate armor as thick as seven inches. It suddenly dawned on everyone that we had ventured inside a powder keg. We slowly backed out. Agents called Dallas Fire Rescue and Bomb Disposal Units, fearful that an explosion could destroy a wide swath of area across a busy Interstate 30 on the northeast side of Dallas, taking down mr. Z could set off a war. Officers from the DEA, ATF, Texas Department of Public Safety Narcotics, and the Dallas area organized crime task force surprised mr. Z at 2:30 a.m. on Friday, March 20th, 1982, at a campground at Lake Dallas, located north of the city. As the meth kingpin stepped out of a travel trailer, they confronted him with a state arrest warrant for manufacturing amphetamines and federal warrants for unlawful flight in possession and distribution of narcotics, mr. Z drew a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol and opened fire. Three officers returned fire. mr. Z died from a bullet wound to the chest. Shotgun pellets peppered one arm. He clutched a grenade in one hand and held another grenade in his pocket. The element of surprise kept mr. Z from pulling the pin. I'm Robert Riggs, back with former federal prosecutor Bill Johnston, with another story from our careers. Where we like to say, truth is stranger than fiction, and now Bill's going to talk about a case of his from 1987. It's a case of murder, mayhem, and methamphetamines,
Bill Johnston
and that's the title given by the, of all things, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, which handled a large part of the South in those days on appeal, and they called it that because that's really what the factual background showed. It was a group of meth cooks, and as you as you mentioned, it was different in in those days. What what is now imported from Mexico by the cartel was almost exclusively made in the United States in clandestine laboratories. A pound here, a pound there, or 50 pounds here and 50 pounds there. Methamphetamine doesn't take a degree in chemistry, although I prosecuted Ph.D. chemists for it for making more sophisticated labs, but it takes some precursor chemicals, three of them, including phenolic acetic acid, which is which has quite a smell to it, which gives it away. And it took 12 to 24 hours to cook it, depending on the method. And they could, you know, somebody with a third-grade education and a lot of nerve could make $100,000 a week doing it, and that's why they did it. And the case that the Fifth Circuit termed the case involving murder, mayhem, and methamphetamine involved the infamous Shackelford brothers from West Texas. The Shackelford brothers and a couple of other multi-time convicted felons decided they would, instead of buying and wholesaling methamphetamine, they would just make it. One of their brothers had studied chemistry at Texas A and M, where Robert, you and I went, and he-I
Robert Riggs
didn't-I didn't take that chemistry course when I was there. Now
Bill Johnston
you know about this same time, I prosecuted a guy named Doctor Ed Crawford, who was a full professor at Texas A and M PhD, who was the sort of the godfather of certain style of cooking. We sent him to federal prison, but this character Eric Shackelford,
Robert Riggs
who didn't live up to the Aggie Honor Code, did not
Bill Johnston
didn't well didn't take it seriously. He he wanted to make money, and so they set up labs in the old-fashioned method, which again it takes a great deal of glassware and precursor chemicals, some heating mantles or propane burners, and they finally had a bit of a troop with them. They had some women that they had recruited that either they got hooked on meth or already had the addiction.
Robert Riggs
Same on
Speaker 1
mr. Z,
Robert Riggs
there's a whole group of women around me. All all of meth addicts.
Bill Johnston
Yes, and I was amazed in so many cases where these scruffy looking guys, dirty, nasty guys, had the most beautiful women in in their wake, following along, and it was all about the meth, of course.
Robert Riggs
And I saw that on every big time meth dealer and cook that I ever covered. I could not figure it out. You know, they looked like, you know, Victoria's Secret models. It was just wow, right? But they all had addictions.
Bill Johnston
They did, and meth. In my experience, prosecuting hundreds and hundreds of meth dealers and manufacturers, meth was one of the hardest drugs to get off of. It still is. Meth is now smoked more than it's injected, but in the '70s and '80s and '90s, meth was mostly injected, mainlined, and incredibly addictive because of that and because of the surging high that it gave, and the Shockford brothers, once they set up their labs, they finally found an old rendering plant near Hamilton, Texas. Now, for those urban dwellers, a rendering plant is where the remains of cattle are processed, and so they kind of kind of a glue factory. And so, this old rendering plant in sort of the northern part of the hill country of Texas, Hamilton, Texas, was was spooky enough anyway, because there's cow bones everywhere and old machines and rusty parts. And anyway, these these guys set up a meth lab there. They were making very large quantities of meth. They could make 1015, 20 pounds at a time, so every day or two they could make that much.
Robert Riggs
And what was that worth on the street back then? So
Bill Johnston
that's worth $100 a gram, and worth so grams a sweet and low package, and so that would be if it was already cut down with a diluent, and so that would be worth $10,000 a pound, or maybe $20,000 a pound, depending on how pure it was, and that's the how they were operating. It looked like at first it was just a large meth case that was substantial enough for DEA and the Texas Department of Public Safety Narcotics Service. To make it a priority, and they did, as did local law enforcement. So it was a big drug case. Big enough, they wanted to take it federally, which I was happy to take when I was prosecuting. That was part of the area I covered. They decided they would once they started following them and got the position of getting a search warrant and and began arresting these people, they decided to look around the rendering plant just to see if they'd missed anything. And an old deputy from Comanche, Texas, popped the top of a barrel, and something didn't look right. There was white powder all in it, but it wasn't a drug. It smelled foul and strange. Well, it was a barrel full of lime with a woman's body inside, encased in the lime. That was the first indication because no one knew there was a woman missing that had been with him.
Robert Riggs
Yes,
Bill Johnston
and it was a it was a woman out of Houston, who had run with them, and as Wendell Shackleford, the older brother, said, started using a little too much product, using a little too much product, and he felt like that wasn't good for business. So he, one evening, just decided to take electric cord and strangle her, and he did, and he stuffed her in a barrel and filled it full of lime so that it would hide the smell and and sort of leach the moisture out of her body, and he did that. But they found it, so now they're like, "What in the world? They didn't have any explanation for how she got there, who she was, and that was strange enough. And we began rounding up as many of them as we could and getting federal warrants all over the place. After a day or two, there was word that there was someone that was an acquaintance of theirs, perhaps a cohort named Jack Wiltrout from Comanche, Texas. This is sort of old 3040, miles away. It was a mystery. No one knew where he had gone, if he had found trouble or just moved off, but once we charged all these jokers with serious federal crime, now they're looking at real time. The younger brother wanted to talk. Well, we weren't that interested in talking to him, but he said we he really wants to talk. So told his lawyer come up to my office. Had a Texas Ranger, Big Fred Cummings of Lampasas, Texas, Great Ranger, came up, and the guy sat in my my office, handcuffed, with his lawyer there, and said he has something to tell you. And we said fine, and he talked a little bit about the meth, and we said no, Eric, if we could, the Ranger said, where's Jack? I mentioned Jack Wheeltrout earlier. Where's Jack? And he had this funny look on his face, and he said, "He isn't. And we said, "Well, now Eric, the ranger in his deep voice said, 'Now, Eric, everybody's got to be somewhere. So where's Jack? And he repeated, "He isn't. He's not. He's not. So after a few minutes, it's not funny, but I'm laughing because of how ridiculous it was. He said, "Did you? Did you guys? Were you out there? Did you see a little, little pile of ashes, maybe in front of one of the sheds? And he said, "Well, that's where he is, but there's nothing. He said, "You'll find nothing, nothing. What does that mean? So we had him taken back to jail and gathered up, and several agents and I went out there, and sure enough, in front of a sort of a lean-to shed near where their lab was, but not right there, there was a pile of ashes two or three feet across and maybe six inches high, and it was just ashes. It didn't look like anything, and the ranger had fortunately brought a sifter. So it's a wooden box-looking thing, two by fours, maybe about three feet square, with a screen, a metal screen, sort of like chicken wire, but smaller in there. And he said, "If you'll shovel it in, Bill, I'll hold the screen. So we, I shoveled it in, and it was just as small that it was powder. But after a little bit, before we decided to give up on the idea, there was a little piece of metal. Well, it was a zipper. It was a, it was a zip man's lucky find on a man's pair of jeans, and well, okay. So another scoop and sift and nothing, and then in a moment a little broken piece of glass. Well, could that be from eyeglasses or is that just a piece of window pane? And then a little prize we're finishing up a little metal object that slipped through the screen, but it was a little sort of clump, but it looked like it was metal and survived the fire. So all of that goes off to forensics and forensic people of different types got involved, and and even the local idol. And he said, "Yes, Jack Wiltrup wore glasses, and this is his prescription. And another expert said, "Well, that's a zipper off of a Wrangler brand pants. And we found out that Wiltrout usually wore Wranglers.
Bill Johnston
And then the final piece, Vincent DeMayo, who was pretty well-known medical examiner in San Antonio, famous, famous. They did some work on the tooth and and dental, as they call it, forensic odontology is a is a field that's had a lot of criticism. You have to be very careful about that field regarding bite marks, but regarding crowns and dental pieces, it's usually pretty reliable. And Doctor DeMaio said after obtaining Will Trout's dental records and looking over, he said that is the cap of his tooth, and that's actually how the identification was made.
Robert Riggs
And so all we have left of Jack from these meth dealers is the cap of a tooth, little bit of glasses, and zipper, zipper, and the zipper. So we're gonna pause for a message. We're gonna pick it back up, and I want to talk to you when we come back about Wendell Shackleford. Okay. So when we left off, you have found a piece of metal zipper, little piece of glasses, and a dental cap. They've all been helped you identify Jack, but the principal in all of this, the drug dealing, was Wendell Shackelford. Now, didn't he become one of the nation's top 15 fugitives.
Bill Johnston
He did. These murders were so substantial in the terms of the drug spree that, and we found that the drug spree had stretched all the way from Houston to way out in West Texas near the town of Big Spring. I mean, probably a 500 mile stretch. Sure.
Bill Johnston
And the killings were so terrible, and the and the effort was so big that when everyone else was caught, but Wendell, we really wanted Wendell. The Marshals Service had a program that they had developed a few years earlier called the Nation's Top 15 Fugitive Program, much like the FBI's Top 10. And a case you and I were involved with that we've talked about quite a bit on a the True crime reporter podcast is Kenneth McDuff. He was also a nation's top 15 fugitive, but it's it's reserved for some pretty bad characters. And Wendell was one. And by the way, I talked about the pieces left. Well, you know, I don't know a lot about incinerating human beings or any that process, but I just knew what I saw, which was there was nothing left. Well, it turned out that when Wendell, after he'd killed Jack, and we'll talk about that in a minute, how calculated that was, in order to get rid of the evidence, they used one of their meth cooking burners, a big propane ring burner. They put a barrel up on a heavy grate, heavy metal grate, and they put the barrel there first, put the ring burner underneath it, stuffed Jack into the barrel, and put and put wood around him, and constantly fed wood into the fire. And they used a propane tank and and just started cooking him. And after about 12 or so hours, I'm sure it went pretty well for them, but not quite well enough. And so they ran out of propane and went and bought at the local propane business another big tank of propane and started it up again.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, these aren't your little propanes. That's your barbecue grill. Right, big,
Bill Johnston
big, and to made made to cook meth for long periods of time and very hot. And so we found, of course, found the receipt for that, but they cooked him for a total of 24 hours, feeding wood into it so that it just cooked it down. It cooked the bones to powder. There was literally not a bone left, and that's but that's how cold-blooded they were. And one of the reasons that Wendell became the nation's top 15 fugitive and was hunted all over the place.
Robert Riggs
Well, this is a a pattern I saw in covering meth back in those days, you know. Today, everybody is familiar from Netflix and all the the violence and brutality of the Mexican cartels in Colombia. But this preceded all of that, and they would kill you in a heartbeat, and they would set. I saw cases where they they the girlfriend of the meth dealer, she had a meth deal, and another rival gang would turn her and set him up. I always wondered, was it the meth and the paranoia from them using the meth that fed all this, like Doctor Z and his arsenal, or was there just something about the personality, the people that are drawn to this?
Bill Johnston
That's a great question. You know, you have people, people that are willing to not just deal drugs to support a habit, which is which is bad, but that happens sometimes to support their habit. But people who are willing to start at the top of the so-called food chain, make it in large quantities, and as you said, with all sorts of adulterants in it, horrible stuff in it, and not care. At all, not care who's getting it, how many people are getting hooked, what it's doing to their bodies and their systems, and and the death it causes and destruction to families it causes. So someone that would do that's probably a sociopath anyway, certainly. And so it's not much of a step fired up and with the catalyst of being on meth, so to speak. Yeah, you get someone that's willing to kill so many meth cases, and it's still true today with the cartel. They're the most well armed people. They make crack dealers look like used car salesmen. They are the most well armed and, as you said, paranoid people. The violence involved, and I tell you other stories, and will at some point. But the violence in that meth dealers and manufacturers showed really was the American cartel. In other words, yes, today it's the Mexican and Honduran and Central American cartels, and they are brutal and they are
Robert Riggs
cold blooded in every respect, but the pattern was started with the American meth dealers. Well, one of the things I saw is that you know I'm from East Texas, but I'd gone off. I was an investigator in Congress, worked for a member of Congress, but all the the good old boys, guys I'd gone to high school with, they started doing growing marijuana, and that evolved into meth because of money, big money. But the violence they brought to the game and the the fear of being ripped off and eliminating competition, boy, it was a brutal. I mean, they would, you know. I mean, I knew of a case where they just tied the guys up and burned them alive in a car.
Bill Johnston
Right. There was no U.S. Attorney's office for the central part of Texas. Between Austin and Dallas was no man's land, and prosecutors from Austin might come up from time to time. There were just a handful of them back then. But meth, its manufacture and distribution at the wholesale level was huge in Central Texas, between Dallas and Austin. And very early on, before I even got put in that job as federal prosecutor for Central Texas, I was involved in a case where I met the godmother of methamphetamine in the southwestern United States. The godmother, godmother. Her name was Edna Kate Christenberry, known as Mama Kate. She had figured out after murdering her husband in Georgia and traveling west, she had figured out how to make meth. It's no secret you can look it up on the internet now, but back then it was a bit of a trick. You need sodium acetate. I'm not giving any secrets away. Acetic anhydride and phenol acetic acid, none of which you can get anymore. They can get them in Mexico, but we can't get them here. You cook it a certain way. You mix in some methlamine. You might use the catalyst to mercuric chloride, and cook it certain way, a certain temperature, certain pressure, and you'll come up with methamphetamine. Well, and again, the recipe is everywhere now, but the problem is you can't get the chemicals, thank goodness. And it's and they're all and all the precursors are now illegal too.
Robert Riggs
And this is why I have to show my ID for Sudafed, right? Yeah,
Bill Johnston
and that and that was the little shortcut, small batch method they did later because I couldn't get the precursor chemicals, but Edna Kate Christenberry had figured out how to cook it. Don't know how she learned, and she became when I say the godmother. She taught most of the great meth cooks of Texas and the Southwest. She started a lab in I think Cleburne, Texas, south of Fort Worth, Mansfield, Texas area, that became an early embryo point, I may say, for meth cooking, and it spread from there to West Texas, South Texas, East Texas, and it doesn't take teaching just two or three people how to cook it, and they'll teach two or three, and there you go. That's what happened. Her first lab in Waco, near east of Waco, was a huge methamphetamine lab. Each flask had used giant glass flasks, and each one was a 22,000 milliliter milliliter flask. And she had separate burners for each one, and she had all the glassware you can imagine-1000s and 1000s. It looked like a high school chemistry project gone wild, but she started it there, and she led to any number of cases that I ultimately started prosecuting from goofballs and narrative wells and weirdos and meth freaks who decided why work when I can make meth, and they did, and it started in in the United States for a long time. It was made domestically in that method. It was cooked, and then it was dried into powder, and it was bagged up, and it was watered down with dilutants. You might use a vitamin B or something powder to make it more valuable. And that went on for a long time. After that, to quickly in a minute, I can tell you how we got to where we are now. Then, when the Mexican gangs realized, "Wow, cocaine's great. We'll continue to transport that, but we can make a myth. Okay, so they started making it in the San Joaquin Valley of California. There's some really amazing songs. Bruce Springsteen wrote a couple cool songs about it, telling the story of it. And that was made often when the hydrotic acid method, which is a slightly different method, produced cyanide gas and just killed a lot of people because of the gas coming off of it. And then the Mexican, when the cartels, the Sinaloa cartel was partly behind that. Yes, when they figured out that they, if they make it, they'll have their in essence their own like cocaine production, but they don't have to do anything but just do in a lab. And the cartels started making it in Mexico to a pharmaceutical grade. In other words, to a purity that, again, it's smoked now. Here, it's rarely injected. It's so powerful. Smoking gives you the high. Yes, and it's just as addictive. But it was just a follow the money, follow the economics of it deal when the Mexican gangs realize U.S. idiots in the U.S. are making it, and now they're having Americans were having trouble getting their precursor chemicals, which they were. Much of it came out of Oklahoma and elsewhere, and they clamped down on it. And after they couldn't get it, and the Mexicans started making it, they took over the business. Now, guess would be 98% of all meth in the United States comes from Mexico. It's smuggled in the same cocaine and marijuana routes, mostly cocaine routes these days, and the profits tremendous because the precursor chemicals are not that expensive. They get them, they buy them from pharmacies. I mean, they buy them from pharmaceutical providers in Mexico because everyone's paid off along the way. State judicial, the federal police, whoever they need to pay off, they pay off, and it's cooked in laboratories, not in in sheds or back buildings. It's cooked in laboratories, and that's the meth problem we have now. Is that the Mexicans saw how the some ignorant you know American cook could make it in large batches, and they figured they could do better than the Mexican cartels did, and now they run it.
Robert Riggs
Well, you know, I talked in the beginning of this about mr. Z, and I was going out drug raids on meth, and they were always in the remote rural areas. Some old, God, almost abandoned farmhouse. They wanted out because there was such a stench, such an odor that came off of it. But I remember, oh my God, just nasty. If you saw this stuff, how it was made, the nastiness, you know. I used to think, you know. Remember Nancy Reagan had the "Just Say No" or drug war, and I was like, "No, just just show them the pictures of how this stuff is made. It reminded you in the military how they would show you the graphic pictures of syphilis and gonorrhea. Well, I don't know. Maybe we should have taken that approach because I would look at it like, oh, and then the other thing I knew, the street dealers were cutting it with
Bill Johnston
all kinds. They didn't
Robert Riggs
care what they didn't cut it with.
Bill Johnston
They they could use chopped up sheet rock. I mean, did not matter. Yeah, and they did, they did,
Robert Riggs
they did. So, and yeah, a baby powder and just other anything handy
Bill Johnston
because you could double the weight of it and sell it for the same price.
Robert Riggs
Yeah,
Bill Johnston
but that's right. No, they were the most violent, nastiest, and and now, unfortunately, because it is made to a pharmaceutical grade, it is so powerful that the addictive quality of it is is just terrible again without injecting it. Many people have problems with needles. Well, they solve that problem. They made it so strong you could smoke it. Nothing was too
Robert Riggs
no
Bill Johnston
too horrific, and as you said, some of these guys started with marijuana. You know, and I don't mean innocently at all, but I mean certainly less consequence to the body and so forth. But when the meth dealers started, it's it's sort of like the Colombians used to actually produce and transship marijuana, and they realized the bulk of that was just not economies of scale didn't work.
Robert Riggs
Right,
Bill Johnston
so they started doing cocaine, and Colombia became the headquarters of all cocaine because marijuana wasn't profitable enough. Similarly, meth, what you can make in a short period of time compared to any other drug, was just unbelievable.
Robert Riggs
So I want to talk about a connection here to our case that's out there on True Crime Reporter. Shackelford is captured by U.S. Marshal Inspector Mike Carnavale. Carnavale, you know, a few years later, plays a big role with U.S. Marshal Inspector Dan Stolz and getting McDuff. What was there about Carnavalli? I mean, he seemed to be, you know, he was in Panama behind the Rangers when they were taking down Noriega. He and Stolz seemed to be at the center of every mean fugitive in the country. Mike Carnavali.
Bill Johnston
Who passed away of cancer several years ago was one of the most quietly fearless humans I ever met. He was tiny. Yes, he was. Mike probably was five six or five seven. Might have weighed 131, 40. He Mike was married to a woman from Thailand, and Mike spoke English and Thai and Spanish, and he used it all in his career. Mike, I don't know if you know this. Mike not only was involved in the capture of Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, which a case which I had tangential relationship to, in a in a meth case, believe it or not, but Mike was involved in sweep through Mexico after DEA agent Kiki Camarena was tortured and murdered by Pablo Acosta's. I mean Pablo Acosta's gang. I think that's right. At any rate, he was given the keys to Mexico by the head of the Mexican judicial police because they trusted Mike. Mike had no fear, of course, but had a great sense of duty and patriotism. He loved our country and he loved law enforcement in our country. He loved to be an advocate for making something right, and so yes, he helped capture Wendell Shackleford in Houston, Texas. Wendell had an AK-47, and it was in the middle of cooking some more meth, and where Mike caught him, and and they jumped on him. Had quite a fight apparently, little Mike and big old Wendell Shackleford, and Mike prevailed. But what a what a guy, as you said, with Danny Stoltz, the other marshal we know. Their careers are unbelievable, and they just hit the top of history all the way through.
Robert Riggs
And he was a a thin, wiry guy, but he was like a terrier. But he also had a persona, like oh boy, he did. There is something in this package. He did
Bill Johnston
the Mex Mexican Carl Quintero, that was who Carl Quintero was was behind the Kiki Camarena abduction case, and so yes, Mike was he had a fearlessness that that's so hard to measure. You think of a guy that's little like that. Well, is he is he great with a firearm? I'm sure Mike was a great shot. Is he good at some martial art? I don't know, but he had a penumbral aura that that emitted from him, and everybody respected him or feared him. The crooks were terrified of him.
Robert Riggs
Well, you know, there's a famous story. You mentioned they were down in the Nureiga invasion. He and Stolz planted themselves at the airport because they figured, hey, every fugitive from America that we've got a warrant for, they're going to be trying to get out of here, and we're going to nab them. But along the way, some official from another country that was favorable to the drug dealers smarts off to Carnavale, big time smarts off to him, and the story is Carnavalli grabbed him and took him to the basement of the airport, tied him to a chair, and put a paper bag over his head, and said, "Sit there until you start respecting America, and I might just be in your country next. Wow! And then later, the you know the the State Department's calling like, "Well, we understand you snatched this official and all, but you know, Stultson caught up. They didn't care. We're teaching the guy a lesson, and he's out there with the narco traffickers,
Bill Johnston
right? Yeah, it's very rare humans that have that sort of fearlessness and and that gravitas, as they would say today. But what a guy! But did a great favor for us in this case because this was a killer on the loose, and Mike caught him. And so, talking about meth, you know, I did a meth series, Lord, around you know mr. Z, which I interviewed women that had been meth addicts and stuff, and you know, they talked about how it just took over their life. But one woman would tell me that, oh, you know, I could I could vacuum and do house chores nonstop for 48 hours straight, and I was like, "Who wants to do that? How's that a good feeling? There's there are still public service announcements about meth, and I I think that's because they're just so true that the deterioration of the body and the mind, frankly, on meth happens pretty quickly, but you don't find that many really old, we'd call them meth freaks. Yes, because it kills you. There are a few, but it turns a beautiful 20-year-old or a handsome 20-year-old into a very old man or woman two or three years.
Robert Riggs
So what is up happening with Shackelford? Because he appeals his case.
Bill Johnston
He appealed his case. He complained about a number of things: the way the search was were done in our conduct of the trial in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. So, from federal district courts, they take if they take appeal, they go to about a dozen appellate courts throughout the United States set up to take federal appeals. And Wendell was very unhappy with his trial, mostly because the federal judge gave him a life sentence. And that's real. And federal life sentences mean you're never coming out. And the Fifth Circuit wanted to remind mr. Shackelford that everything was done properly, and that his tale of murder, mayhem, and methamphetamine would not well end for him, and it didn't.
Robert Riggs
It's rare I ever saw at a circuit court, write that in an appeal. I mean, he must have really made the judge angry, or they were like, "You got to be kidding me! Bringing this case up here.
Bill Johnston
I've never seen an opinion, an appellate opinion that gave title to the case, and they truly did, because just that-it was murder. The type of murder was mayhem for certain, and methamphetamine was scattered and sprinkled throughout the case.
Robert Riggs
Don't you wonder how many other little piles of ashes these guys left behind? Clearly, we never knew about.
Bill Johnston
I don't think they told us anything they didn't have to tell us because they figured we would ultimately trail across that, or it would help him in this regard. Wendell was out on his own for a long time without the brother who told, so who knows what he did. Well, I'm Robert Riggs with Bill Johnston. Thank you.
Robert Riggs
We want to be your favorite true crime podcast, so please recommend us to your friends and leave a review wherever you listen. If you want to receive updates and bonus interviews, join our true crime community at truecrimereporter.com. If you have suggestions or know of a case that we should look into. Email us at [email protected]. This podcast is a trademarked and copyrighted news organization based in Dallas, Texas. You can read more about our news [email protected]. Thanks for listening to our journey into darkness.
