Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

A spiral of mistakes and odd behavior by Tex does not go unnoticed by investigators in the death of his wife, Diane. Binge all episodes of Deadly Fortune, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend, Britt, break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice. Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen to all episodes of Deadly Fortune ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or

visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge, feature true crime obsession. September 29th, 2016. Three days after Diane McIver's death, the digital billboard on Corey Tower displays the photo of Diane, used in her obituary, and is seen by the million plus drivers that pass by every day. Her obituary reads in part, Diane McIver, a brilliant and inspiring force of nature, died on September 26, 2016. She was a young, young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young

woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young woman who was a young of Reynolds Lake Oconee. When not at work, they were always at each other's side. She epitomized love and loyalty in action and lived a life out loud. One of her many godchildren was 10-year-old Austin Schwall of Atlanta, who called her Mommy Di and whose wish was her command. With encouragement from her, he has become a straight-A student and an

all-star athlete. She regularly demonstrated her role in his life as an ardent fan, tutor, disciplinarian, and pushover. He loved her for it. Instead of an official funeral, she had a celebration of life ceremony held at the Corey Company's headquarters. Hundreds of people attended. I was asked to be the emcee. Among the people in this room, I'm the least qualified person to hold this honor. I'm humbled, but Diane loved me. And I love Diane, but there are so many people here that she's known far longer, had so

much life with. Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Corey. If she was putting this on for me, you'd be the same group here. Now I'm putting it on for her. Anything happens to me in the next couple of years, you've already been to it. You're getting too familiar. Tex, her husband, was there. But something was off. It was thick and palpable.

Bill Crane, longtime friend of Tex's, remembers that day. I would say 10 seconds after I entered the Corey building and walked into that big room, there were beautiful photographs of Diane blow ups on the wall with Austin, with friends in that circle of friends we're talking about. Picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture. None of the pictures. I texted them. and I suddenly realized, because I'd heard about the conversation with Mr. Corey, but I suddenly realized within that circle of friends where he was. He was a dead man walking in Billy Corey's eyes. As I acted as the event's emcee, I saw an orchestrated dance keeping texts from jumping

onto the podium to speak about Diane. Billy simply did not want him to have the stage. The body language, I mean not just Mr. Corey, the whole room. I've never witnessed a leper coming out of a leper colony or a true pariah being shunned by a community and sent out or, you know, a scarlet letter being painted on. But it felt like that. It wasn't spoken out loud that day, but there was a strong message sent to tax. So he arrived late. He came, I believe. I cannot remember if Voss came with him, but they were visiting.

And I walked over to him and I said, before you leave, I need to talk to you. And he said, oh, I need to talk to you too. And I said, well, we don't have to do it here. You've got a lot of people you need to see. No, let's do it now. So we go out of the big room. He sits me down and he says, the law firm is all over me about clients' reaction

to the Black Lives Matter comment. And he said, said essentially I need you to fall on your sword and to contact these news outlets and to recant what you told them at the time. He never made eye contact with me when he's asking me to do the whole time he's got his head down you know that big table in there. And I was very shocked that he was asking. But I said, Tex, can't do that. I won't do that. But even if I would and could,

it's not going to put the genie back in the bottle. I went back in there and I was just sort of just stunned. I was stunned that this man I've known since childhood is asking me to lie. These people clearly think he's ELG. What have I done? From Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road, you're listening to Deadly Fortune. This is episode 3, Hiding. Danny Jo Carter is struggling to come to grips with what just happened to Diane and wants

answers from Tex. At the time, I thought it was an accident, but I really didn't understand his behavior. It was very puzzling to me. I hadn't come to any conclusions except that I knew that I had this list of questions that I wanted to ask him. And I did two weeks to the day on a Sunday at one of Austin's flag football games. I said, can I talk to you?

So we went over by ourselves and I asked him why he was doing this with the clothes and the jewelry because it was all in the works. He says, well, I'm just doing what my attorneys are telling me what to do. It's December of 2016. Just over two months after his wife's death, Tex McIver sets an estate sale on their 85-acre Eatonton Ranch. An ad from Peachtree Battle Estate Sales and Liquidations tells of a very unique collection

of a prominent Buckhead socialite and CEO, comprising of over 2,000 designer couture items from Jimmy Choo, Prada, Chanel, and Valentino to name a few. The photos of the sale are like nothing you've ever seen. Rugs, chandeliers, sterling silver, purses, ski apparel, and of course, quote, hundreds of hats for every season. This was odd behavior for someone that had just lost his wife. Why was Tex doing this? I had a mutual friend by the name of Mr. Jay Grover, who I worked with many years ago in the hospitality business.

And that is how Diane ended up with me. This is Wendy Edson. She works at the crematory where Diane's body was brought. I got the call probably, I want to say about 10 o'clock on the 27th, and from a lady who lived or worked with Diane. And she called and stated that they had had a death in the family and we had a mutual friend. She didn't tell me that that was Mr. Grover at the time and so we kind of went over a couple of pieces of information that I

needed, the name of the person who had passed and of course I never knew, I didn't know Diane, I knew of her, but she gave me the name Landa Diane McIver, so I wasn't familiar. We started the paperwork exchange, if you will, the things that I needed. And then later on that morning is when I spoke to Mr. Jay Grover about it. And then I put the two together. Wendy knew Jay Grover. He worked for Billy Corey. And of course put the two together. Wendy knew Jay Grover. He worked for Billy

Corey and of course side by side with Diane. Jay always called me Wendy Girl. When he would call, he would say Wendy Girl and Jay was always a very happy man. And when he called, he didn't say Wendy Girl. He just said, you know, good morning Wendy. And I knew by the tone of his voice that something wasn't right. And then he expressed to me that Diane had passed. And when he said it, I guess it was under the assumption that I knew exactly who she was. And I was like, I'm sorry, Jan, don't, you know, who you're referring to. And then he explained the Diane that worked at U.S. Enterprise with him and Mr. Corry. And then I was like, and then we just established that dialogue of the things that would occur. Wendy received Diane's corpse from the county and was pleasantly surprised by the obvious

care that went into preparing Diane's body. Because of the extensive nature of an autopsy, I had to do certain things to make sure that Diane was presentable. And when I began that, I was quite shocked at the way Diane looked when she came back to me. She was extremely presentable, which is not the case most of the time when you come from a county after an autopsy. And with that I was shocked and I made a phone call to Mr. Grover and I asked him if after the

county had performed their autopsy, if maybe there was an additional private autopsy performed. And he said no. And he asked why. And I replied with how she looked. She didn't look like anyone I had ever received from Fulton County. When I say that I'm not being disrespectful towards Fulton County, but it was not something that was a normal occurrence.

She was quite presentable. Diane's arrangements were now in the hands of tax. Mr. McIver is the one ultimately under Georgia law that had to make the arrangements with me. And because of everything going on, I do this with everybody. I try to make this process as easy as possible and nobody wants to come back and forth to me. I understand. I tried to call him several times on his mobile as well as his office. It went to voicemail. Could not

tell you verbatim but the voicemail referred to something as simply that he was out of the office in the state of mourning, leave a message, and he would get back. She was cremated on the 28th day. He came to me when I got the death certificates, which were filed the 30th day of September. I obtained those, I want to say the fourth day of October. He called me. He was at Mr. Corey's residence and I told him that the death certificates were ready. He needed 20 and an hour later he came to me. I had the 20 death certificates with me And an hour later he came to me. I had the 20 death certificates with me and Mr. McIver wanted 10 small

we refer to them as keepsakes but miniature urns if you will and He had asked for different urns Classic with the Western flair or theme Well, there was the discussion of monies and Social Security when I explained to him that the death benefit of Social Security because I assumed that both he and Diane were of the higher income bracket. So when a spouse passes away you can either draw your Social Security or theirs, whichever is the greater amount of money, but not both. And that seemed as though that was a little out of sorts for Mr. McIver.

He didn't quite understand that. And then we spoke of money, the charge for our services. And it was, in my opinion, a minimal amount of money in conjunction. But he asked if he had to pay the bill today. And then I inquired as to kind of, I don't understand, explain a little bit more. And he expressed to me that he wanted to wait until he opened an estate account to pay the bill that he didn't want to co-mingle funds. Here's Danny Jo again.

I asked him where her cremains were because he'd made a huge deal out of her cremains and if you wanted some and making this special urn for hers for him to keep them. He didn't know that I knew that he had driven down there and talked to the woman at the crematorium and walked out and said her estate will pay for that and left him there. And I knew that. So he lied to me. He said the woman hadn't called him. And I knew that was a lie. It just made me put a lot of emotional spect that I didn't care. I did not want to be friends with him. If it was an accident, it was an accident, but his behavior was irreprehensible. I didn't want to have anything to do with him.

Diane was with me in a simple box, and we just kind of waited. Then there was a lady who was the sister of another woman who lived in the same residential areas, Mr. and Mrs. McIver. And I guess things, conversations were had about monies not being exchanged. And this particular woman called me to ask me if the invoice had been paid. And I was honest and told her no. And on the 22nd of October, she paid that bill with the understanding that I would never divulge who she was.

And I explained to her that I would honor that promise as long as I could until, or if in the event that there was an investigation in Fulton County came to me with the Spinoff records and then I would have to divulge who she was. She understood that. So that bill was paid on the 22nd, on the 1st of November. I got a letter from Mr. McIver that was dated the 28th day of October, post-Martin 31st, with a check and a handwritten letter stating that he had opened in a state account through a particular bank by the name of Brand Banking. He apologized for the delay and a check was written for the amount of services incurred. I then turned around on the 1st of November, same day,

read a letter back to Mr. MacGyver, explaining to him that the bill had been paid in full. I was returning his check, and that he, of course, at any time could come for the cremains. Mr. MacGyver could never come to an urn he wanted. And then I had referred him to a gentleman that makes custom urns. Maybe he could provide Mr. MacGyver with what he was looking for. And on the eighth day of November is when Mr. MacGyver came back to me

and took the ten keepsakes and the residual amount of cremains for Mrs. McIver in a simple box. Tex had waited months to pick up Diane's cremains. Why? I have had people abandon cremains over the years that I have done this. Some just leave them indefinitely. Of course, we have to keep them. We notify them that they need to come in and receive their loved ones into their care.

I have, but not in a situation, I guess, like this. And I know that everybody grieves differently. Shock can do different things to people. And just in my opinion, I don't think that in a situation like that, that I could leave cremains that long. But then again, everybody is different. Diane's most precious hats, clothes, and elegant furnishings were now gone from the estate sale held by tax, and Wendy discovered that Diane's cremains were set in a cardboard box. I asked Ms. Johanna where Diane's cremains were.

I was just out of curiosity, and she then showed me a picture that Diane's cremains were still in the simple cardboard box, in a drawer in what used to be her closet. You had this woman who, from everything I learned, had a passion for life. Jay referred to her as a koala bear or a cobra, that she was a wallabare or a cobras that she was very passionate yet aggressive, knew her stuff, enjoyed life, traveled, fur coats, designed her things. And to have a woman of that stature, if you will, be in a simple cardboard box in the bottom of her closet after her husband sold all her things. It's a little unsettling to say the least. NPR's Through Line podcast sort of feels like stepping into a time machine. Each episode,

our Peabody award-winning show travels beyond the headlines to answer the question, how did we get here? Listen to one of Apple's favorite podcasts of 2024 by searching for Throughline on Apple podcasts or on your favorite podcast app. I'm Laura Webb. And I'm Lindsay Wolfington. We are two friends and fellow music supervisors who are obsessed with sad songs. So we started a podcast called Sad Song Queens, where we dive deep into the songs that make us cry. We are always wondering what the story is behind a song. And we thought, what better way to find out

than by having authentic conversations with the creators of the songs themselves. So join us for in-depth conversations with Ash, Licky Lee, Simmel, and many more. So grab those tissues and let's get into it on the Sad Song Queens podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Bill Crane is a legendary public relations expert in Atlanta, who locals will also recognize from his frequent television appearances talking about local and national political races.

2024 has kept him particularly busy, to say the least. Bill and Tex MacIver have a long history together. Tex MacIver was the family's attorney. My family was in the newspaper and printing business. He represented first my grandparents and father, and then later the success of businesses. I was probably 12 or 13 years old when I met Tex. It would be almost 25 years later when I first met Diane. And Mr. Corey was looking for this kind of representation.

And Tex brought me to lunch at the Corey headquarters building, the old Georgia Power Complex on Martin Luther King. And I walked into the conference room at the back and there's this elegant woman with a large hat on, laying out a spread of Chick-fil-A like I'd never seen with family serving bowls and more of the carrot and enough of the carrot, raisin salad to feed a church. And Mr. Corey sat at the table with the head and she sat at his side and I thought she was in that first instance an administrative assistant. They were obviously very friendly and then text came in and introduced me, this is my wife or actually fiance, I think at that time they weren't married yet when I first met

her and then got to know them over the course of the years they were together. Bill recalls the day he heard the news. I've received a phone call from a reporter editor with the Fullton Daily Report, Jonathan Ringle, who told me Tex MacGyver was dead. This was the day after the shooting. And I said, I'm not family, but I'm pretty close. And I think if that happened, I would have heard from Sheriff Howard Sill in Platinum County or one of the people in this circle of friends we're talking about.

And he said, well, I've got it on pretty reliable authority. So I said, well, I'm going to call Texas's phones and I'm going to reach out to Sheriff Sill because I'm pretty sure they were at the plantation at what I called the ranch that weekend and you know, get back to you. So I called and Tex did not answer his phone or any text or email that day. And I finally reach Howard Sill, the Putnam County Sheriff and he says, Tex had a really bad night. There's been a shooting but he's not dead. Diane MacGyver's dead and he didn't have a

great deal of detail at that point in time. I was like, wow. So of course I called Jonathan back to tell him Tex was alive but that wasn't the end of the story and by that time it had unfolded I think the AJC had the first item about the death. So I then started trying to reach Tex. It was within 48 hours of the incident that Tex and I first had our conversation. He was very emotional. He was concerned on several fronts. He was concerned on several fronts and he... I would say at that point in this process we're going to talk about, he was still what

the person I consider to be techs. He was still of sound mind and kind of went through a narrative that made sense to me, which I then repeated to the news media outlets. He was emotionally distraught. He cried. He was, you know, he was not apologetic and he took no responsibility for what had happened, but he basically laid out what had happened and why. And then I think within 24 hours of that, he let me know

that he had a conversation with Mr. Corey in Jake Grover's kitchen that Mr. Corey had asked for that didn't go well and he kind of relayed the circumstances of that. And that was kind of the first instance in the process of me going, why would you go to speak with Mr. Corey to tell him, as he did, on advice of counsel, I'm not going to answer any of your questions? Why would, it just, I was incredulous. And knowing again the nature of this close circle of friends and friendship and Mr. Corey was at the wedding, and I think he gave Diane away if I'm remembering correctly. And that was the first of many moments where I just couldn't quite understand what I was being told.

I told Tex, you need to let the professionals handle your case and stop trying to influence Petal and stop trying to reach out to people you know to fix this. Your life is irrevocably changed. Diane MacGyver is dead. There will be a price for that. There will be consequences for that. And you need to start reconciling and moving forward that way. Black Lives Matters protests comes up in a conversation between Bill and Tex. So as it was explained to me, and there are some things that got a little bit of reporting at the time, but there were that weekend that the shooting in Diane's Death occurred. On Friday and Saturday night, three Black Lives Matters protests in the city of Atlanta, one resulting in the closure early that evening of Lenox Square, which was across the street from the condominium high-rise the Dian and Tex lived in,

which they saw on television while they were out at the farm. The second was on I-85 and briefly shut down the interstate. And the final was outside the Atlanta, then detention center, now closed, that none of these instances resulted in violence. And so all of that had sort of played out on television while they were at the farm. So they are driving back from Conyers in a golf game late in the afternoon. Danny Joe Carter is driving the vehicle. They stop for dinner at a Longhorn Steaks in Conyers, which is about halfway between Putnam County where they were coming from and downtown Atlanta where they were getting into.

As they were approaching the downtown connector on I-20, traffic just stopped as it is want to do on a Sunday night. But according to texts, there were people that were either homeless or looked like they were protesters milling at the intersection and he became concerned. So he said to Diane Honey, can you get me the head that kept a 38 snub nose, no hammer, wrapped in a Publix grocery bag in the console of that car. And he asked for it, Diane gave it to him. And he said he was concerned, it's a white kind of conspicuous vehicle,

two white women driving it through downtown that late at night. And he wanted to be prepared if they tried to carjack or get into the car. So in his discussion with me and in my relaying it to the two reporters that I later did on the record interviews for as spokesperson for Tex and the MacGyver family, he wasn't sure if they were Black Lives Matter protesters who had been in Atlanta that weekend, that Friday, that Saturday night, that Sunday, near the jail, which is where we were, or they were homeless people.

He felt threatened, and as a result of feeling threatened, he reached for the gun. The spiral of Texas mistakes continued. It became that kind of a moment. So this was probably within the first week of the shooting that the story went from prominent Atlantic couple shot when critically injured to white Republican lawyer, Tex MacGyver, advisor to many in the Republican circles, fearful of Black Lives Matter protesters, draws gun and accidentally kills his wife. And it blew up. And he was on the front page of the Umarishin Boon in Tokyo. It was in Parade Magazine. It was on the networks. And to tell you how wacky it got in a period of 48 hours, my name is Charles William Crane,

my full name, and I go by Bill Crane. My father's name is Charles William Crane, my full name, and I go by Bill Crane. My father's name is Gerald William Crane, and we're both, you know, in the same town. Good Morning America sat up on my father's front yard, and they banged on the door looking for me, which I didn't live there. And Dad had no idea why they were there, but that's how big at the time the story got in nanoseconds. Tex and Diane had it all. Until the night, neither of them wished to relive. The night only one of them can. She said, Tex, what did you do? You shot me. Join us as we dive deep into a world of power, money, and greed, and one man's secret quest to grab the million dollar fortune

of his deceased wife. From Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road, this is Deadly Fortune. Listen wherever you get your podcast. In the summer of 2003, two half-starved young men emerged from the woods in my small Canadian town, telling an incredible story. They'd been raised in an extremely remote cabin in the wilderness, and this was their first ever contact with society. So the community took them in,

with everyone marveling at the so-called Bush Boys. But there was a problem. Not a word they said was true. From Campside Media and Sony Music, Chameleon, Season 3, Wild Boys. Available wherever you listen. Despite all the turmoil and all the confusion of what really happened that night near Piedmont Park, no one's under arrest and no one has been charged. Tex now has the vehicle back in his possession and it's set to be cleaned, eliminating all the ballistic evidence for good. I decided to look closer at the clues left at the scene and detectives grew more suspicious

of Tex and what really happened that night. I talked to Danny Joe and she told me what happened in the vehicle. I said, you need to check the angle of that bullet. I called a friend of mine, an Atlanta homicide detective named Danny Stevens, and I said, Danny, you gotta get that car back. I told him, you've got to do some kind of plumb line test for the angle of that bullet, because it seems completely illogical that that bullet would have traveled straight ahead at a 90 degree angle through that seat. And next Billy Corey orchestrates a secret purchase of Tex's vehicle to preserve it before it can be cleaned. Billy has been informed

that Tex plans to have the Corey company handyman detail the SUV in preparation for selling it. Billy wanted to preserve any evidence that was still in the vehicle, so he attempted to buy the vehicle himself. But before any of this went down, law enforcement stepped in. It turns out that my call to the Atlanta Homicide Squad on top of Billy's operations manager, Jay Grover, talking to the Fulton County DA's office, results in a warrant being issued to retrieve the vehicle.

With Tex on the prowl constantly looking to reshape the story, Billy Corey calls me and asks me if I can hide Danny Jo and her husband at my house for the time being so that Tex can't influence her to change her story. The press was hounding me. They had been. But Tex had been really putting pressure on me to speak to two Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalists in front of his attorney.

He wanted me to make a deposition. I didn't want to. I didn't want to and I thought about it at one point and then Jay Grover told me that the only reason that he said I'd made my deposition at the police department. The only thing another deposition would do is if things went south for Tex, that they could compare my two depositions and if they didn't check out evenly, that it would make me not credible as a witness. And so I didn't do it and Tex was going to have somebody come pick me up, a detective, come pick me up. And I didn't want to be at home.

We asked if we could come spend the night with you. He was trying to find you. Yeah, he, cause he was, well, I don't know which day he called Tom repeatedly and Tom wouldn't answer the phone. And he left, that's when he left that recording on there that I was going to send him to prison. And even with all of this, another bombshell drops as friends of Diane close ranks. Text, it seems, is nearly broke.

Next time on Deadly Fortune. Mr. MacIver had an anxiety attack there at the hospital and he's going home going to sleep. Relay to us that it was an accident and he made a few comments to the effect that he wanted us to be sure that we knew it was an accident. And she said before she put her to sleep that Mrs. McIver said that it was an accident. Were you in the room when that was said? Yes, I was. Okay. But that still doesn't explain how the gun went off. Guns just don't magically go off on their own. Don't want to wait for that next episode?

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I'm your host and reporter, Dale Cardwell. Jason Hoke wrote and produced the series. Our associate producer is Marnie Zambri. Production support provided by Tim Millard. Audio Engineering by Shane Freeman. The original score for Deadly Fortune is by Thomas Avery. Jason Hoke is the Executive Producer on behalf of Waveland Road. Executive Producers for Sony Music Entertainment are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis.

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