The Unsolved homicide of Mickey Bryan & the Wrongful conviction of Joe Bryan: Part 2

Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail and may be sensitive for some listeners. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now on true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome back to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and dive right into right now at your crime. I don't really have a ton to talk about, so it's probably going to be a little on the shorter side, but I did want to talk about. They arrested a fifth person in connection with the killing of the two Kansas moms, Veronica Butler and Jilly and Kelly. So this all had to do with a custody dispute that was going on between Veronica and one of the primary suspects, Tiffany Adams. So they had arrested Tiffany, her boyfriend, and then two of their friends. So they have been obviously investigating the case and they have been able to gather enough evidence of information to arrest a guy named Paul Grice. He is thirty one and he is in jail and charged with the same counts as all the other four, which is two counts of first degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree in relation to the killing of the two ladies. So this is crazy to me. I'll never understand how one person can come up with this diabolical plan potentially to kill two people, and five people get roped into doing it, and not one of those five people thinks this could be wrong, we could get in trouble, we shouldn't do this. Not one of those five thinks that anything that they did is wrong, and that is insane to me. I will say my girls over at Like Mother Like Murder. They have been covering this story as it's breaking, So if you want a more in depth chat, go check them out. Go check them out anyway, because they are fantastic and amazing, but they are staying on top of this every evolving case. So now we are going to move on to a case I've covered on this podcast, the murders of Russell and Shirley Dermond that happened in twenty fourteen. So initially, the department that was investigating it said that initially, when they processed the crime scene, the only DNA that they were able to find was from the victims, but because technology is ever improving and advancing, they recently set the same evidence over to labs in Texas and in Utah, and one of the labs in Utah notified that they had found new DNA on the clothing and some other items and this DNA does not belong to Russell or Shirley. So I am hopeful this DNA is extracted, it's put into the database and maybe they're able to get some kind of resolution for what happened to Shirley and Russell. They were an elderly couple and they were brutally attacked in their home. Russell was found in the home and then Shirley was taken away from the home and was later found awful story. I don't even know what to think about who potentially could have done this. One of the dermont sons named Brad Dermont. He said that we are hopeful that this new DA any evidence, will provide the authorities what they need to catch the killers. We are also hopeful that this information may give costs for someone that may have knowledge of this inexplicable crime to come forward. We appreciate the dedication and job that Sheriff Sills and his team have done thus far, so I will continue to keep you guys updated on this one. This one, I feel like, is one that is easily solvable and it has to be. In my opinion, I think it's more than one person. But it's going to be really interesting to see what comes of this if this new DNA is able to be matched to anyone in the database. But I will for sure keep you guys updated. Okay, last thing I want to talk about for those that have followed the Chris Watts story saga horrific murder of his wife and unborn child and their two daughters. So he is serving life in prison for the horrific murders of them. But interestingly enough, recently, like within the last couple of years, another family that bought the house the Watts family home, and they are a couple and they have three kids, two girls and a boy, which a lot of people drew some parallels from their family and the Watts family. It became like this whole thing on social media. It is what it is. So recently it was noted that the house was back up for sale and it's going for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is a heck of a lot of money, but a very big home. It is a very nice home, I will say. So people were speculating why they were moving because they kind of seemed like it was going to be their forever home kind of thing. But anyways, the internet has no chill, and for whatever reason, people have been able to find that Justin Miller, who is the husband, was arrested and recently was in court and pled guilty to a couple of different charges. I'm going to read his charges. This is directly from the Colorado Frederick Police Department website. So Justin Miller arrested for child abuse, obstruction of telephone or telegraph service, and harassment. So apparently, during the court proceeding, his probably soon to be ex wife was also there via zoom and basically had told the judge were in the process of selling our home and she had, I guess, put out a restraining order against him, but she wants him to be able to go to the home as long as she isn't there too, I guess get stuff that he needs. So interesting, so this leads me down a interesting path because Chris Watts is a horrible human. We are going to put that out there and say that, and he did horrible things. Even before he killed his family, he was not on the up and up. But one thing that Chris said, which I think is interesting, is that he felt like something come over him and he couldn't stop with what he was doing. It was like something snapped in him and he couldn't stop. So we could argue that there is some type of evil entity that is living within the walls of that home, or it could just be that two horrific humans lived in that home back to back. I don't really know. I feel like it's worth mentioning because I as much as I love true crime, I also have a intense fascination for all things paranormal. And if you have done any research yourself on the Lizzie board in house, you know that there is some type of evil entity that is there that was causing, allegedly causing all of this horrible, horrible stuff to happen. So it's just an interesting little tidbit. I just wanted to include it in case anyone else has a fascination like I do. There is multiple TikTok videos where the scal is kind of going through everything because she actually watched the corporate seeding live. But interesting tidbit. If anything comes of it, I will for sure keep you updated. But the house is for sale again, and I went to the page where you can, you know, obviously, look at pictures of the house, and one of the things in the description is like absolutely no photos or videos inside, because this case still to this day, draws such a fascination from people, and people are just obsessed. They're obsessed with it. Like when this family moved into this home, people were harassing them and you know, saying that they were like weirdos for moving into this home. I personally don't think it's weird, but I do understand how people think that a home where somebody was horrifically killed probably doesn't have the best juju behind it, and I would tend to agree, But also I would probably live there because I don't think right. But honestly, for me, the whole thing is just a little bit fascinating and it's just one of my interests, the paranormal the true crime aspect when they coincide. But that's really all I have for you right now, for right now. In true crime, and we are going to go ahead and get started with today's episode. All right, guys, we are jumping into the unsolved homicide of Mickey Bryan and the arrest and conviction of her husband, Joe Brian. In Part one, we learned a little bit about the background of what happened. If you have not listened yet, please go back and listen to part one. There is a lot to cover in part two. I'm going to try really really hard to get it all into two parts, really really hard. I'm trying to be as detailed as I can about this case because I think it's really important to understand some of the background of it and what led to Joe being convicted, because it's a very important story to tell. So in part one we talked about Joe getting arrested. So once that happened, once he was arrested, word in Clifton spread very quickly and everyone was pretty shocked that Joe was under arrest for the murder of his wife Mickey. Now, Joe was a very well liked guy amongst his students and his colleagues, and everyone kind of had the collective thought that it had to be some type of mistake one of his students even said that she recalls a time when Joe went out of his way to help her out in regards to her schooling and making sure she was living up to her best potential, and she said that she couldn't imagine Joe hurting anyone, much less murdering his wife. And all of his coworkers felt the exact same way. They all said that he was calm and easy going, he never lost his temper, and a coworker is quoted as to saying that he was Mickey's champion and protector and I would have hated to have been the person who crossed Mickey and had to deal with Joe. So everyone that knows Joe is very much painting the picture that Joe is this amazing person, gentle soul, loves his wife, dedicated to his family, dedicated to his work, and would simply never harm his wife. So once Joe is arrested, they start interviewing some of the Brian's friends and different people who worked with them, and the first person that initially realized that something could have been wrong in regards to Mickey the one that went over to her house, her coworker, teacher friend she said that she knew that Joe could have never hurt Mickey, and when she was at the police station, the lead detective had asked her numerous questions about Joe being potentially gay and asking if he was effeminate, and said that there were some rumors going around about Joe being gay and asked her if she knew anything about it, and she was shocked and didn't really know what they were doing, like what direction are you guys going with this? And she even pushed back during questioning. Now, this was nineteen eighty five, this was a completely different time, and the friend really wasn't sure how they had kind of arrived at this possibility that Joe might have been gay. But what ended up happening was investigators had found a Chippendale's calendar in the trunk of Joe's car, which was amongst some of the other stuff that was in the trunk, and they thought that this was a sign that Joe must have been gay obviously in nineteen eighty five, way way different times than today, And when they asked Joe about it, he said that he and Mickey had bought it as a gag gift from one of their single friends, but they took this and decided to run with it. They very much tried to make Joe potentially being gay a thing, and they thought that we could make this a motive. For the reason that Joe killed Mickey is because Mickey found out his secret and was going to expose it. Now, there was no and I mean zero, zero, zero rumors about anything of this sort prior to Mickey being killed, and one of their friends even said that just because Joe plays the piano and drinks Doctor Pepper instead of beer doesn't make him gay. The fact that investigators are even going this route just shows me, from the outside looking in, how desperate they are to pin this on Joe and come up with a potential motive. And it's really sad and unfortunate that they felt the need to even do this. So when that friend was interviewed, she basically flat out told the investigators that that's a crazy, not even remotely true rumor and told the police chief that she thought that they could all use their time more wisely since they had not one but two unsolved homicides on their hands. And she's one hundred percent right, like they are grasping ep straws at this point. So Joe Brian ended up going free on a fifty thousand dollars bond, and he pretty much spent most of his time at his mom's house, and he would go back and forth to his lawyer's office, which was located in Waco. He very much tried to keep a low profile, but also very much had the mindset of we need to get this trial behind us so we can figure out what really happened to Mickey and find out who killed her. Mickey's brother Charlie Blue didn't really make this time of life any easier for Joe. He ended up filing a lawsuit in an attempt to tie up Mickey's estate, so that way, Joe didn't even have access to honestly what was rightfully his to take money to help pay for his attorney to help with his defense. So Charlie Blue, in my opinion, is pulling all of the strings in this whole thing, between having the car, finding the quote unquote evidence, and then tying up Mickey's estate so Joe couldn't even try to rightfully defend himself. Charlie is at this point in time being extremely messy. So we are now in March of nineteen eighty six and the trial against Joe Brian was set to start and it was going to run for about eight days. The defense was very confident that they could win, and the prosecution really rushed trial and they really didn't investigate very much. So the defense was very confident that they were going to win this case. The state had very little evidence, but the case did rest very, very heavily on the flashlight that had been found in Joe's car. Investigators had told the jury that they found one of Joe's fingerprints on the backside of the reflector of the flashlight and another on the battery. But the thing with the flashlight is, Joe never denied that the flashlight wasn't his, and he said that the last time he saw that flashlight was in their bedroom. So it's not like Joe said, I've never seen that flashlight in my life, and then his fingerprints were found on it. He said he owned the flashlight. Hence why his fingerprints are on it. It's his flashlight. Now. In regards to the bullet fragments that they claimed were on the flashlight, there was a witness that testified and stated that she had examined a fragment from the lens under a microscope, and she said that it had similar properties to that of a bullet. But they never really talked about if the findings were conclusive or accurate. And again, it was nineteen eighty six, so things are so much different nowadays, and it would either be one hundred percent this is what I found, or this isn't what I found, And I can't really say for sure if there's bullet fragments on this flashlight lens or not. There was also evidence of two human hairs that were found in a cardboard box in the trunk of Joe's car. Now, these hairs did not match Mickey or Joe. And there was also thirteen fingerprints from the master bedroom and the bathroom that were not able to be matched up to anyone. And there was a palm print that was on the headboard that didn't match Joe's. Now, Mickey's palm prints were taken incorrectly at the time of her death, so unfortunately they couldn't be used as comparison. So we really don't know if that pom print could have been Mickey's because they botched the investigation, which I think is very telling as far as evidence goes. They also had found a pair of clear latex gloves that were in the trunk of Joe's car. But these gloves were clean. They had no trace of anything on them, no blood or DNA. But the prosecution doesn't believe in fact, and they very much tried to argue that there was blood on the gloves even though there wasn't. But the single handed biggest piece of evidence was I talked about it in Part one. There was a random cigarette butt that was in the kitchen, So one would think that is potential for huge evidence against whoever committed this crime against Mickey. But the lead detective on this case said that he is the one that tracked the cigarette butt into the house on the boot. It had been raining that night when they went in. He said he must have stepped on it outside and tracked it in and it fell off, And that is what he is claiming and testifying to. Even though he didn't write any of this in his report or it's not on record anywhere, this is what he said. So it very much seems like the prosecution's case, in my opinion, is falling apart. They don't really have any major evidence. The one piece of evidence that they do have isn't really one hundred percent accurate, and it just doesn't really make any sense. And they also had to explain how Joe would be able to leave Austin, drive one hundred and thirty miles, commit this heinous crime, and then get back into Austin without anyone seeing him or noticing that he had been missing. So the timeline of this whole thing, Joe spoke with Mickey at nine point fifteen pm. In order for all of this to have been plausible and able to happen, he would have had to hung up the phone with Mickey, drive one hundred and thirty miles in the middle of the night in pouring rain because there was a bad storm in the area that he was and Joe had issues with his vision so he did not like to drive at night. So he would have had to drive one hundred and thirty miles from Austin to Clifton in the middle of the night, commit this horrible crime, and then slip back into Austin without one single eyewitness, go up to his hotel room where he was saying for the teacher's conference, and clean himself up and have this random flashlight that he left behind his evidence in the trunk of his car. That is what the prosecution is trying to prove, and there's absolutely no way, in my opinion, small towns talk somebody would have seen Joe and thought that maybe something out of the ordinary was going on, because everybody knew that he was supposed to be away in Austin for this conference, for this education conference. There is more likely than not, no plausible way that he could have done this and remain undetected and been so calculating that he did all of this without being seen, but then took the one piece of evidence, the flashlight, and shoved it in the back of his car, thinking that nobody was going to check the back of his car and search it. And if you remember correctly, once Joe got the news about Mickey being killed, he let two of his other colleagues and coworkers drive him in his car back to Clifton. So, if he has this smoking gun evidence in the back of his car, do you really think that he would let two people in his car to drive him home, knowing that they might potentially come across the evidence and realize what's going on. No, in my opinion, the answer is no. The big part of the trial was when Charlie Blue took the stand, and of course there was a lot of back and forth regarding Charlie and him hiring the private investigator who was also his friend, and he basically said that he didn't really have any suspicions of his brother in law Joe, but said that there had been an insurance company that called to verify Mickey's steath and he just kind of felt like that was out of the blue, and even though it's really not out of the blue, but that's what he thought in his head, and he decided that he was going to call his private investigator friend, and that's when they went on their little road trip that they went on, and they found the flashlight and thought that it looked like it was blood on the flashlight. So very much what the state is arguing is that Joe took this flashlight and his gun, went to the home and basically held the gun with the flashlight close enough that there would be blood spatter on the flashlight lens. That is what they're arguing, and the defense very much argued with Charlie, how are you supposed to make us believe that you're not the one that planted the flashlight, which has been a huge point of contention and over the years, whenever you read up on this case, it's that Charlie is the one that potentially planned the flashlight. And they really were just asking him, like, why do you think that Joe potentially could have done this? What is the motive? And he said, she's worth over three hundred thousand dollars to him dead, which is in regards to Mickey's life insurance and the savings that they had, and three hundred thousand dollars in nineteen eighty five was a heck of a lot of money. And the defense also argued that in amongst all of this, Charlie had tied up the savings and Mickey's assets, and if Joe was found guilty, that Charlie would end up being the one that was going to make a heck of a lot of money. So they argued that very much it could have been him that potentially could have orchestrated and planned this. Now, there was a really interesting witness that ended up getting called during the trial, and it was a employee of the Hyatt hotel that Joe was staying at during his education conference. So this person testified that after the murder and when Joe was out on bond, he returned to the hotel and he had said during his stay there during the education conference, prior to Mickey being killed, that there had been a security guard that had approached him and said, Hey, we're trying to take down this housekeeper staff member that is potentially stealing from clients. We need access to your hotel room so that we can try to catch this person. And Joe said that he agreed to help this person, and then afterwards, once Mickey was killed and everything kind of transpired, he thought maybe this was something that had to do with Mickey, like maybe we were being targeted. And there wasn't anyone who fit the security guards description who actually worked at the hotel, and there wasn't any evidence of anything like that going on at that time, so they thought. Prosecution thought that Joe just kind of fabricated the story in order to take the attention off of himself. So they brought in a witness, Robert Thorman. He was the one of the main witnesses for the prosecution, and he was a bloodstain pattern analyst and he is the one that went to the crime scene initially. Now, Robert had been a military police officer for twenty years, and he worked his way up through the ranks in law enforcement and had been trained in bloodstain interpretation. But the training that this guy had back in nineteen eighty five was a week long class on bloodstain and blood spatter. That was really all that he had under his belt. He was not, in any way, shape or form an expert, but that is very much how the prosecution labeled him and presented him to the jury. He said that when he arrived that day to the Brian home, Mickey's body was gone, and that he checked out the master bedroom and he said there was a large amount a blood spatter. And he told the jury that the killer would have had to have had blood on them as well, a large amount of blood on the killer. But there wasn't really much they could say about the bedroom. But they very much focused on this flashlight, and this flashlight, like I said, was their smoking gun. Robert described the pattern on the lens of the flashlight. He said that it to him was like blowback or backspatter, which is essentially blood that had traveled backward at a high velocity from a target, basically saying that the shooting occurred and it was all in very very close proximity and in close range, and also said that because the handle of the flashlight didn't have any blood on it, that it was evident that the person that committed this crime was holding it at the time and that's why there was no blood on it. And again we have some inconsistencies. This guy is saying that the killer i e. Joe is what they're claiming, would have been covered in blood. But Joe's car was spotless. There was nothing on the interior of the car indicating that he got into this car a bloody mess after murdering his wife and then drove one hundred and thirty miles back to Austin. And their answer for that was Joe obviously cleaned himself up in the bathroom before getting back into the car, despite there being no evidence of blood or anything having happened in the bathroom of the Brian home. Whatsoever, they did bloodstained analysis, there was no blood that was found. Joe did end up testifying on the sixth day of the trial, and he insisted and stood by the fact that he never left his hotel room after he had spoke with Mickey on the evening of October fourteenth, and he was at the eight thirty a m. Session of the Principal's conference the following morning, and he talked about the encounter he had with the security guard, and he just said he had no idea what happened, and he has no idea how he has become the prime number one suspect. The defense had thirty six character witnesses, former colleagues of Joe's, friends of Joe's who just testified to his character and who he was and he and Mickey's relationship. And the trial went jury and it only took them four hours to find Joe Brian guilty of murder, and at a later date they sentenced him to ninety nine years. Joe was in complete and utter disbelief and he just stood there in a state of shock, completely silent, didn't even know what was happening. So Joe ended up going to prison for a crime, in my opinion, that he did not commit. But in February of nineteen eighty eight, Joe's conviction ended up being overturned because there was a technicality, and this all had to do with evidence that was brought in at trial and the judge's rulings on all of that. It was the testimony that Mickey's death was worth over three hundred thousand dollars, which it turned out it was not even half of that. So they decided that they were going to retried Joe again with murder, and they were going to be doing that the following summer. But at this point Joe was out. He was able to be free and again thinking, there's no way that they're going to convict me of this murder that I didn't do two separate times. There's absolutely no way. So he was just trying to function in his new norm of a life. He had caught up with a friend that he randomly saw in town one day and he said that he had lost everything, my wife, my job, my home, everything, and he didn't understand how something like this could have happened. Mickey had been gone for three years, he still at this point hadn't even been able to properly grieve her death. And by this point too, Clifton had very much turned against him, and it was more the fact that he was found guilty. They thought, oh, he's found guilty, he must be guilty. Even though there was not really any exact reason for him to have actually killed his wife, Mickey. Everyone just kind of went along with, well, if he's guilty, he must be guilty. And back in those days, people held the criminal justice system at such a high regard and thought that often if something was brought up in the court system and it went through the proper channels and they found a situation to be that of a situation that ended up being guilty, that they held that in pretty high regard, and they thought that he was guilty just because he was found guilty in the court of law. So Joe's retrials started in June of nineteen eighty nine. It was going to be seven days long. His witnesses, the ones that had so vigilantly showed up for him in the first trial, thirty six of them. It was now five people that were going to to be character witnesses and talking about who Joe was and Joe and Mickey's relationship and all of that. Much of the trial was exactly the same, and there wasn't really a whole lot of new information that came out. They were just basically redoing the evidence. Again, we have a whole new jury, but we also probably have a jury of people that are quite familiar with the case already, which tampers the jury pool in my opinion. Unfortunately, the jury came back with a guilty verdict and Joe ended up being sentenced again to ninety nine years in prison. He was sent to and housed at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, and unfortunately, many of the people that once supported Joe kind of fell off, and even his twin brother stopped communicating with him, which I think is horrible. I don't understand any bit of that. It makes no sense to me. But people had such high regard for the justice system in those days, so I could kind of see them thinking, well, he's been found guilty now two different times. He must have done this, so they just kind of cut him out of their life, which I think is really sad. Now, there was that other woman who was killed, Judy Whitley, and there was rumors going around that maybe Joe had killed her too, and people very much kind of put that in their minds that Joe was responsible for Judy's death as well, because that crime was never at that point, it had not been solved, so people, I think rationalized Joe being in prison and thinking if he could kill his wife, of course he's going to kill this random teenager. So in a way, I think that they kind of use that to make it seem like, Okay, there's not some random killer just walking around out there that killed Judy and Mickey. The right person is behind bars, and in their eyes, they thought that right person was Joe Brian. So now here is where the story gets interesting. We have a man named Leon Smith, and Leon was the editor in chief of the Clifton Record and had done a lot of work during the coverage of Joe's trial and his retrial, And in nineteen ninety one, his curiosity got the best of him and he went to Huntsville to interview Joe Brian. Now kind of what prompted him to go to Huntsville to want to see if Joe Brian would want to talk is he was visited by a man named Don Whitley. Now, Don Whitley is the father of Judy Whitley, who is the other unsolved homicide out of Clifton. She was seventeen years old. And Don came to Leon basically saying that he didn't think that the town of Clifton was still looking for the person who murdered his daughter and said that basically the Clifton Police department abandoned he and his family and he wanted Leon's help and asked Leon if he would mind helping him in writing to Unsolved Mysteries, hopefully so that it would cover his daughter's case, and Don Whitley at this point said, I think the show needs to cover both of the nineteen eighty five murders from Clifton. Judy's murder had happened four months before Mickey's murder, and he thought that somehow that the crimes were potentially linked, although he wasn't exactly sure, he did think that they should be investigated together. So he contacted Unsolved Mysteries and they did express some interest in learning more so, he decided that he was going to himself re examine the evidence in Joe Bryant's case and in Judy Whitley's case and see if Joe would be willing to talk to him, and hopefully this would jump start an investigation into the murder of Judy Whitley. Joe was super willing and eager, and he said, I'll do anything I can do to help. If this will help the Whitley family, if this can help me, I am all on board and I really appreciate your efforts with this. So Joe at this point is kind of getting a renewed hope. So Leon went ahead and let the Clifton police chief, who is named Jim vander Hoof. This was somebody that was a good acquaintance of him, They had a good working relationship. He let him know of what was going to be happening. So Jim let Leon spend two days with the evidence in the Brian case and went through stacks and stacks and stacks, and he was struck by the number of leads that had come in that no one had really followed up on. There was one in particular about two men who were seen shortly after midnight at a four dealership on October sixteenth of nineteen eighty five. This was sixteen hours after Mickey's body was found. Each of these people had a lengthy rap sheet, They had weapon offenses. One of them have also been charged with theft and invasion of privacy. It was also noted in the report that one of these men was standing beside a van that had been spray painted green, and they said that they were getting ready to go on a hunting trip and it didn't have a license play like all of the sketchy things that you think about with creepy vans, this van had. So Leon's wheels are already turning and thinking how did this happen? How did all of this evidence just not make it into trial and not get followed up on? How is this possible? So he did go and interview Joe Brian. It was a four hour interview and they talked about the different components of the case. They talked about the flashlight and how Charlie claimed to have founded in there and Joe said that he did not put the flashlight into the car, so he does not know how the flashlight got there. And Leon asked Joe about what he thought about his brother in law kind of setting that situation up where he was going to hire this private investigator, and he really seemed more confused by the whole thing than anything else. He said, if he was going to do that, why wouldn't he have consulted me. I would have gone in on it with him and you know, helped him. And Joe very much held resentment towards law enforcement because they overlooked some key evidence the cigarette butt that was on the kitchen floor that they said they accidentally dragged in quote unquote, the unidentified fingerprints. They had all of this evidence, but for whatever reason, they didn't want to do anything with it, so they ended up going after Joe for the murder of his wife. In the interview, Joe expresses how hard all of this has been for him. He is quoted as to have said, you have no idea the loneliness that a person can feel in here. She was my life. I have wanted to die every day because of the hurt and humiliation, the embarrassment, the accusations that are false, the injustice that's been done end quote. The interview wraps up, like I said, it was four hours and Leon loaded his stuff up and started the drive back to Clifton, and he said it was really interesting because there was a guard that had followed him out after the interview, and this guard shared that many of the other guards and himself believed that Joe was an innocent man. Later they would have some other findings from some other very well respected forensic scientists, Peter de Forrest and Ralph ristenbat They kind of came in and did another look see at the evidence of the flashlight and what they thought was blowback on the lens of the flashlight, and they basically said it was an isolated piece of evidence found in isolation and without context, meaning it wasn't recovered at the crime scene, it was recovered in this external way in the trunk of a car. They both basically said that it was irresponsible of them to have made a classification that that was blood on the lens and specs the blood and said that there was no evidence to support that that's even what that was. They basically said that drawing all the conclusions that the prosecution drew and that law enforcement drew with all of these analysis that they did was not at all accurate and takes a lot of imagination. Basically, they debunked everything that I believe helped convict Joe Bryan in nineteen eighty six of the murder of his wife Mickey. So in the midst of all this, Leon Smith has not forgotten about the Whitley murder and the Mickey Brian murder. Unsolved mysteries did not end up airing anything about either one of them. But he felt like he could not stop, he couldn't turn away from this. He kind of looked into those two suspicious people that were at the Ford dealership that evening, and he did find out that one of them had a son that was in fourth grade in Mickey's class in the fall of nineteen eighty five. He even went as far as to wait for a day when it was raining and kind of damp and stomped all over cigarette but to see if any of them would attach to his boots and had no luck. He was trying to pull holes in the par prosecution and law enforcement of what they said happened that day, and none of it really trapped and none of it really made sense. Leon would occasionally share some of his findings with Jim Vanderhoof, who was the police chief in Clifton at the time, and he did think that Joe's case was worthy of looking into further, but they never wanted to really pursue anything with it, but they did want to focus on the Judy Whitley case, so they started doing that and it was revealed that the number one suspect in the Whitley case was a Clifton police officer who was named Dennis Dunlap, and he ended up resigning and leaving town one month after Judy was killed. Dennis Dunlap had a lot of intimate details in regards to the case that weren't really known to anyone except for the people that were actively investigating it at the time, and there was physical evidence that disappeared from an evidence locker. And they also said that Dennis Dunlap had a history of harassing women while he was on patrol. Basically, Dennis Dunlap is a creeper of a human, but he was a law enforcement officer and he did work for Clifton. Leon decided that this was enough for him to want to investigate further, and he decided to write to Dennis Dunlap. By this point, Dennis was living in a town, Needville, which is southwest of Houston. So in the fall of nineteen ninety one, he wrote to Dennis and explained why he was writing. Leon asked, Dennis, why did you act in this erratic way? Why did you leave town? And Dennis Dunlap was very very short with his answers. He said, Chief told me I was not a suspect for six years. You were the only one who has contacted me in regards to the Judy Whitley case, and then he never wrote back to Leon again. Leon went on to learn that he had been Denis Dunlap had been friendly with the two men that were at the car dealership the night of Mickey's murder. It's all just kind of coming around full circle. Oddly, there wasn't any real hard proof that Dennis was involved in either the murders of Judy Whitley or Mickey Bryan. But for some reason, Leon just kept going and he kept writing. Even though he got no response, He kept writing, He kept writing, He kept writing. So on April twelfth of nineteen ninety six, police in Rosenberg, Texas responded to a nine to one one call that was placed at the time by Dennis Dunlap's girlfriend. When they arrived at the house, they found Dennis and he had hanged himself in the garage. He was forty nine years old. They of course searched the home and they find letters that Leon had wrote to Dennis tucked away in a drawer in his bedroom. At that point, local law enforcement in Rosenberg, Texas decided to contact Clifton and tell them about these letters. And not much happened after that until nineteen ninety nine, when the new police chief said that the Judy Whitley case was solved based on information that had come from interviews with undisclosed people of Dennis Dunlaps to some that he had confided in about the details of Judy Whitley's murder. The article headline was Dunlap officially named murderer of Whitley teen. They also included some of the horrific details of how Dunlap handcuffed Judy before leading her into the woods and listened in her final moments as she struggled to breathe. Somebody that was close to Dennis Dunlap had also said that Dennis was relieved that they didn't find the duct tape that was in the trunk of his car that he had used to tape over Judy's mouth. So this is huge, huge news for the town of Clifton, for Joe Bryan's case, and of course for the Whitley family. After all of this time, they finally know what happened to their daughter and who is responsible. Unfortunately, the piece of shit hung himself, so he never really had to pay for his discretions. Now, one could argue that the walls were closing in on him, and Leon Smith was not going to stop. He was going to keep writing letters, and he was going to keep prying and digging in as much as he could. And I think that a million percent wore Dennis Dunlap down. And that is exactly what we want in a situation like this. We want the person that did this horrific thing to feel like their time is running out. That is exactly what we want, and that is exactly what happened in this situation. So at this point, Leon is trying to figure out if any of this could also be related to Mickey. Bryan Now, the vander Hoof police chief before he had passed away in nineteen ninety seven, had told Leon that someone who was questioned they did not specify as to who it was, claimed that Dennis Dunlap had once bragged that he and the school teacher were together the knight that she was killed, meaning Mickey. Now Leon had no way to know if this was a true statement, if this was just a rumor. But of course, because Leon is the person we all deserve in a good invest mistigation, he decided to pry further. Over the next few years, Leon continued to do what he could, but he also was trying to further his career. He ended up running for mayor and he ended up winning, which is huge, and he did go back and forth writing to Joe, but he didn't really feel like he was able to do very much. He kind of always had it in the back of his mind that he didn't think that Joe was guilty, but he didn't have any way to really prove it, and there wasn't really anything he could do to in his mind, make a difference and you know, do what's right to get Joe out of prison. At this point too, Joe had lost all of his appeals, so his hope was very much fading. In twenty ten, Joe was up for parole and they denied it, and him and Leon Smith are still communicating regularly. They talked at least once a way, and Joe said that he was devastated about not making parole, and he said, I was so upset that for several days I just shook with anger. Joe was seventy at this point in time, and he had some heart issues. He had to have a pacemaker, and he just always was so grateful that Leon believed him and was communicating with him, and it was just one of those situations where at this point I think Leon was one of the only people that really had Joe's back. Joe had very much become a model prisoner. Everyone loved him. He was the pianist for the weekly chapel services. Everyone loved him. He was an exemplary model offender, and everyone thought everyone in prison thought Joe does not belong here. In twenty ten, a Waco attorney named Walter Reeves decided to look at Joe's case, and he was troubled because it was so so circumstantial, and there was just so many different things that weren't done properly, and the fact there was two trials in which he was found guilty. He knew the chances of him getting Joe's case overturned were pretty slim, but he wanted to keep trying. We have yet another person, a literal angel on earth, who was willing, after all of this time, to look at Joe Brian's case and said, maybe I can help you. So he decided to petition the court for DNA testing. He wanted them to test the DNA that was on the cigarette butt and the flashlight. Of course, that came back and they weren't able to get any DNA profile from either one of them because it was too small amount of DANN. But interestingly enough, they said about the flashlight, a presumptive test for blood was negative on the lens, meaning that whatever the heck was on the lens of that flashlight was not blood. And if that had happened in nineteen eighty five, we wouldn't be telling you the story right now, because that was the smoking gun that convicted Joe Brian. Now, in twenty thirteen, there was a Baylor law student named Jessica Freud, and she entered into the practice with Reeves, and she started investigating some of the stuff from Joe's trial, looking at the transcripts and seeing all of the different inconsistencies in everything. So over the next three years, Reeves and her collaborated, They got in touch with Leon Smith, and they all worked very closely to look for any type of information that would hopefully help them get an appeal in Joe's case. While they were going through all of these different files, Leon Smith discovered a passage that was an interview with one of Dennis Dunlap's ex wives, and she said that his in behavior was terrifying, unpredictable, and that he killed her children's animals and he had threatened to disfigure her, and he also told her a few specific details about Judy's murder. And then they had asked her if her ex husband had ever spoken of any other homicides, and she told investigators that he had bragged about having an affair with Mickey Bryan and also that he was with her shortly before she was killed. Dennis's ex wife basically said, all that tells me is that they had an affair, he was with her. I don't think that he was involved necessarily. But neither of the investigators that were interviewing this woman had any follow up questions whatsoever, because in their mind, they already had their guy, and that guy was named Joe Brian. Now, interesting fact, there was a gal named Susan Klein. She was a fifth grade teacher. She taught across the hall from Mickey and there was another friend. They both said that Dennis Dunlap had been a creeper and made unwanted advances at them, and Klein also said that Dennis Dunlap had followed her at one point before disappearing into the dark of night. Like Dennis Dunlap was a creeper, and there is zero and I mean zero doubt in my mind that he killed Mickey Brian and he got away with it, and that really freaking pisss me off. Reeves and Floyd, along with Leon Smith, continued their pursuit of what's right is right, and they wanted more DNA testing. They wanted the human hair that was found in the trunk of Joe's car tested. They wanted fingernail clippings tested, and different vaginal swaps that were taken at Mickey's autopsies, they wanted that tested. Now. Originally, back in nineteen eighty five, there was no semen detected on the swabs that were taken from Mickey, and they were met with resistance every step of the way with this. They fought and fought and fought and fought against this team to test these things, and no one really knew why. What were they exactly trying to hide the fact that they botched an investigation, because that's evident at this point in time. In my opinion, it's just crazy to me the links that people have to go through to get a horrible wrong righted, and the prosecution very much stuck by what they thought Joe was responsible for Mickey's murder and they did not grant him a new trial despite all of this, like wanting to test new evidence they were trying to put forth, he deserves a new trial, he deserves this. They said, absolutely not, because we do not believe in justice. So interestingly enough, John Grisham wrote a book in twenty nineteen called The Guardians, and this is very much based on Joe Brian's story, and he personally believes that Joe Brian is innocent and was struck by the really incredibly sloppy science that was given to the jury, meaning all of the testimony in regards to the blood spatter and the blowback and the flashlight and all of the things. Joe Brian was denied parole a total of seven times, but on his eighth parole attempt he was granted parole and he was released on March thirty first of twenty twenty. That is a hell of a long time. Also, he was released in the middle of a pandemic, which is a whole other situation. The murder conviction still stands. It has not been overturned, but Joe fights daily for full exoneration, which I a million percent believe he should get. He plays the piano and he attends church regularly, and he says that he has faith that one day him and Mickey will be reunited. Joe got to celebrate his eightieth birthday on the outside, which we love. And he says he has a picture of Mickey in his room, a picture of them in his room, and he says he finds himself talking to it and just telling Mickey, I'm going to see you again one day, and that is just like the sweetest thing in the world. I can't imagine this poor eighty year old man who's been in prison. He was in prison pretty much my whole entire life for something he did do because Clifton Police Department was sketchy and didn't do their damn job. It's horrible, it's injustice and it's not okay. But thank God for all of those people that ended up taking this on and coming together to try to help. Granted he did not get exonerated. They have exhausted all of the different things that they possibly could to try to get him exonerated, but all of these people made a difference in his life one way or another. The Innocence Project also picked up Joe's story along the way and was sharing about it and again trying to aid in getting him exonerated. I don't have any like super recent updates on Joe Brian. The last update I see is from twenty twenty two. I can only hope that Joe is well and enjoying his life on the outside what he very much deserves. And I think the lesson learn from the story is that it's obvious that just because somebody is found guilty in a court of law two times, that does not mean that they are guilty. It gives me hope for some of the other cases that I am actively following right now of people who I believe are wrongfully convicted. But it is also very frustrating that it takes literal decades to make anything happen. But that is the power of numbers and people speaking up and just doing what's right. So I hope that Joe as well, and I hope that he has a little piece in the fact that he didn't do anything wrong, which he has said from the very very beginning. He did not hurt Mickey, and that the person that did it is probably long gone. I do believe Dennis Dunlap is guilty. There are people that have thrown Charlie Blues' name out there as being involved. I think that was more or less just because of the random flashlight situation and the private investigator situation. And I also did hear that Charlie Blue moved to Clifton, back from Florida to Clifton, which I think is an interesting little tidbit as well. But this story doesn't really have any winners because Mickey lost her life, Judy Whitley lost her life, and Joe Brian lost his life as well, and he lost everything. He lost his wife, he lost his job, he lost his family, he lost his home, and he lost a long time of his life. And that is sad and unfortunate and stuff like this cannot happen. Our justice system is flawed. I talk about it all the time, and it's still flawed today. It was flawed in nineteen eighty five and it's still flawed today, almost forty years later. We have to do better about all of this. So share this episode because I feel like this is one that's super important to really let people see that stuff like this does happen, and people do get out of prison sometimes even though they're not exonerated, and they still have, unfortunately the scarlet letter of being labeled a killer even though they aren't. It's sad, it's unfortunate, but it happens, and it happened to Joe Brian, and Joe Brian was probably one of the most normal, easygoing, dependable kind humans that I've probably covered in all of my stories, and it happened to him. So if it happened to him, it can happen to anyone. And I feel like in all of my stories, all the ones I do, we hear about these cases and it's just so foreign to us that this stuff can happen. But until you're personally affected by it, you are very ignorant to the fact that it could literally happen to anyone. Until it happens to you or someone you know, it's really easy to just say like, oh, stuff like that doesn't happen, Like stuff like that's never going to happen, until you turn around one day and it does happen. And that's exactly what happened. In Joe's situation. He was one hundred and thirty miles away in Austin when this crime occurred, and they pinned it on him, and they got away with it all in amongst this other guy having very likely did it, and it's horrible, and who knows what other crap Dennis Dunlap did over the span of all the years that he was out of prison, because he bounced from town to town to town to town to town, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was responsible for a lot more unsolved homicides in Texas. So I am going to share all of the things on my Instagram. I swear this Instagram carousel is probably going to have to be two parts because I have a ton of pictures, pictures to share of Leon and the attorneys that helped Leon get Joe's story out there and helped propel Joe's story forward so he could get parolled. Pictures of Joe now on his eightieth birthday, which is the best to see him being able to celebrate his birthday. On the outside, we have pictures of Dennis Dunlap. I'm going to share photos of Judy Whitley. This carousel is going to be long. It's probably going to be two posts if I have to make it that way, So please check out my Instagram and Facebook pages and I will see you on Friday for our first official episode in the twenty twenty four summer series Dan Markel. I don't know why, but I definitely had my timeline mixed up. I felt like we had another week before it happened. But May third is coming up on Friday, so we are going to be going into all of the things to deal with danmark hell trial and all of the players, and I'm not really sure how long it's going to go, but we are going to break it all down and talk about all of the new developments as well, because there's still things actively going on with the case. So I will see you guys Friday for episode one of that, and I hope you guys have a great week ahead. Bye.