Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Friendly Fire | 7. Pastor Golden and the Outlaw
Episode Date: July 18, 2022Was Marty a corrupt deputy? Is Rick Babbās story true? Host Sean Flynn toggles between witnesses and investigators to get to the bottom of the story that might be the lynchpin to Loriās case. A... Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Can't sight media.
Okay, if you're just starting to tell him who you are, just introduce yourself.
I'm Joseph Carter Bab, you know, nephew of Richard Earl Bab.
What can you tell me about Richard Earl Bab?
Long time, dramatic, long time family member.
He was like a dad to me.
I was my uncle Shadow.
I even went to work with him, rode heavy equipment with him all day.
I mean, he just couldn't shake me, you know.
And there's a lot of mean men out there,
but me didn't mess with him.
If you did his family wrong, he was kicking your door in.
He didn't care.
He wasn't scared to go to jail.
He wasn't scared of probation.
He wasn't scared to death.
He called himself an outlaw.
I didn't see him as an outlaw, but he had this saying he goes, I don't want to be famous. I want to be infamous.
And he was.
He was. Outlaws are given it, you know, not giving him enough credit. He got arrested a lot. A lot.
drugs, alcohol,
assault, driving without a license,
driving without a license,
having an accident, fleeing the scene of an accident,
just keeps going.
I mean, he was a notorious thief.
At least all the bunch of fancy horse saddles
that was worth about 10 grand a piece.
And he used a lot of meth.
Oh, you have no clue. that was worth about 10 grand a piece. And he used a lot of meth.
Oh, you have no clue. He could pop a gram in two days.
That's a lot of meth.
This Uncle Joseph is talking about
this infamous outlaw Uncle Rick.
This is the man who walked into Lory Yankee's workplace
and said he knew why Marty would have killed John-John
because of drugs. When Joseph was in his early 20s, this is who he'd be hanging out with, his 40-something
Uncle Rick, that'd go on long drives together.
We just took joy rides out in the country, he wanted to show them to my roots all the time.
Joseph always drove because Rick...
He didn't have a license, he couldn't drive. We hung out and I took him places, stuff like that.
That's how I got involved with this Marty Carson crap was he needed a ride. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment,
this is season two of Witnessed Friendly Fire. Episode seven, I'm Sean Flynn. The way this man Rick Babb just appeared in Laurie's life was sort of a miracle for her.
For more than three years, she believed that Marty Carson meant to kill her husband.
But she didn't know why.
Until now, maybe.
Marty was taking brops.
He had also been seeing it, drug houses, and that, you know, he was also doing drugs himself,
and he was taking payoffs from these people.
And I think John-John was on to this.
Marty vehemently denied all of this, but this is the story Rick's telling, and her lawyers are going to run with it.
They thought it was credible.
And it just, it really just seemed like,
yeah, this was more of the motive.
Were you surprised?
Yes, yes.
Rick Babb seems to come forward with nothing to gain
and everything to lose.
He knows all about drugs in Scott County, who's making them, who's selling them, and everyone
knows he knows, and he outs himself as an informant, a snitch, because he says he believes
it's the right thing to do.
And he will swear that Marty asked him to kill John-John, but there's a problem.
Remember what that retired TBI supervisor said? You've got meth people there. I guarantee you they don't know what was said.
He was actually talking about one of the witnesses from the night of the shooting,
but it applies to Rick too. It's a little insight into how the TBI was thinking.
I wouldn't put a bit of credibility on what they saw or what they said.
I mean cops rely on informants all the time.
And a lot of those informants,
just by the nature of the business, are drug users.
But in this case, it might be a fair point.
Rick gave a deposition a month before Laurie's case
went to trial, and it's, well, it's messy.
The third question in, right after what's your name
and where do you live?
Rick can't say how many times he's been arrested.
He says there's too many to count, but a little later he gets to the real reason.
He says, quote, I just can't remember anymore.
I've had some real bad licks to the head in my life, in my memory, and drugs.
It's not what it used to be.
And not one specific lick to the head either. It's an accumulation
of licks. A lot of his answers end up being, I don't remember. And he's oddly honest about
just how much he doesn't remember. But on the basic story, he's adamant. He says he
was an informant for Marty, and then he was an informant for John John. Marty was crooked,
and he asked him to kill John John because John John was on to Marty.
But when he's telling this story, it's hard sometimes to understand exactly how Marty
was involved with meth.
Rick said he'd done a bunch of meth with Marty and he delivered a bunch of meth to Marty.
And at one point, he explains that some people he knew were making meth for Marty, like
his personal lab.
Then Marty arrested those people, which is how
informant work is supposed to go. Rick says that's only because John John had caught onto that lab,
otherwise they'd still be cooking. The lawyer is asking Rick questions, keep trying to sort out
just how deeply involved Marty allegedly was with meth. Was Marty dealing or just using?
Was he running a big operation? It's never completely clear.
All those licks to the head.
This is who Lori's going to court with.
Rick Babb and some other meth people to use the TBI agents term.
But is it possible any of this is even true?
Maybe.
That's why I went to find Rick Babb's shadow as he put it.
Is nephew Joseph who you just heard from, who used to drive him around.
I'd take him out one night and he said, just drive him somewhere, you just tell me where
to go.
I didn't question it.
And that's the night I found out that he was Marty Carson's CI.
CI.
Confidential Informant.
Joseph didn't know this.
It's confidential after all.
Until one evening when his uncle said he needed a ride to a cemetery on the edge of town,
to a spot way in the back, hidden, Marty was waiting.
So, you know, they stood outside the vehicle, talked for a while before he got back in the vehicle that evening.
So that's actually how I met Marty Carson the first time.
To where there are other meetings where you drove?
Oh, there was a few.
I took Rick one night, he wore a wire.
So I figured, well, we ain't none of my business.
It's one less dope head off the street.
That's why I was playing it up.
Truth be told, I was kind of nervous about the situation.
Before I go on, I want to be transparent about something.
We've mentioned several times how small Scott County is, how everyone knows everyone,
and this sometimes can be useful.
For instance, we really wanted to talk to Joseph, but we had a hard time tracking him down.
We found him through Lori's husband Howard.
At the time we spoke to Joseph, Howard was his court-appointed public defender on a misdemeanor
charge from a couple years ago.
I should also mention, at the time I'm recording this, the case seems have gone nowhere.
He didn't make you do this, did he?
No, I thought it might would.
Okay, thank you.
I almost didn't, because I didn't want to relieve this memory either.
I understand that, and I appreciate you doing it.
Anyway, Joseph may have been nervous show-faring his uncle, but he wasn't so nervous that he stopped.
CI or not, Rick was family.
Joseph says he drove him back to the cemetery a few times
until the last time, which was in the fall of 2003.
It's kind of late.
He said, yeah, but it's kind of important.
He says, I need to go meet with Marty Carson.
I said, are you in trouble again?
He says, no, I'm not in trouble, but he's
I wanted to talk to me about something.
So I said, OK, give me about 30 minutes.
It was getting dark when they drove out
to Jeffers Road on the eastern outskirts of Onida.
It's a small cemetery, just a few dozen headstones
on a wide flat lawn with a big white cross in the middle of it.
There's a small rise to it. So if you've followed the gravel track from the road, you can
disappear behind it down by the tree line.
He says that was their usual spot.
Always in the very back of that cemetery, way off the road you couldn't see it.
It was right about sunset, sun was going down because you could still see the outline of
the headstones and stuff like that at
the cemetery where we met him. We got there and he was talking Marty out the
window and I was just kind of ignoring them. You know I had the radio kind of up
and I didn't hear the first of the conversation but I heard my uncle laughing
uncontrollably and I just kind of nodded over and he's got it like I Can't remember what kind of hangar chief it was bandana. What have you?
He was laughing and he was looking at this gun
That's it. Okay. What's that? I
Said it's bigger than the one I carry on me. He's like, I don't know
He said but Marty thought it would be funny to ask me if I wanted to kill Johnny answer
I was like are you joking right? He said I think he's joking and then he continued to laugh.
Marty was standing there laughing, but then it kind of turned where Marty was a worried laugh.
And he said, he told me he would pay me so much to kill him and you so much to drive me.
I said, get that out of here. I said, y'all need to stop playing pranks on me because my uncle's notorious for gagging people all the time. I thought
this was another one of those. Nothing ever come of it after that.
Marty for the record denied that ever happened. And as for Rick, he might have fancied himself
an outlaw, but even outlaws have their limits.
He's not a killer. He's done a lot of stuff, but he's never killed anybody.
You know, you talk about a man that quote the Bible forwards and backwards and
tell you every passage and every meaning that goes with it. Murder was not on his
agenda and later, John Yancey was killed. So yeah, that's how I got involved.
I just went home, told my grandma, I ain't going back out no more. I'm not giving my uncle
any more rides. Did you? After that? A few, but only of the daytime and I was never alone.
I always had another Uncle Widmier, some cousins or something. Joseph says he planned on keeping his mouth shut about what happened in the cemetery,
which is reasonable.
If a sheriff's deputy, the sheriff's own son tries to hire you to kill someone, who do
you report that to?
After he's dead, what thought was I supposed to have?
You know, I wasn't trying during that time to get involved with law enforcement.
That buried me.
But then, after the Carson's rot of office, when they could no longer arrest him, Uncle
Rick went and told Lori the whole thing.
I didn't want to know him anymore involvement in what I was already going on.
Then I get told I have to give a deposition.
I didn't want to do that, but you know what?
They already got my number.
They already know what I know.
I just went ahead and done it, because Miss Laurie asked me to.
Joseph was on the witness list for Laurie's civil suit, but he didn't testify.
He had a job with a railroad then, and not inconveniently, he was working far out of
state when the case went to trial.
If he had testified though, his story of that night in the cemetery would not have precisely matched Ricks.
The version Rick recounted in an affidavit, a deposition, and-and-trial testimony.
He and Joseph were standing outside the car, leaning on the hood.
And Marty spoke directly to Joseph, told him he would pay him $5,000 to drive Rick to the killing.
And then, after Rick said that Marty must have lost his mind that he wasn't killing anybody,
Marty drove off in a patrol car and came back carrying a white towel.
Marty unfolded the towel, which was wrapped around a semi-automatic pistol,
and said, according to Rick, I'm serious.
Joseph, on the other hand, says he stayed in the car, in the driver's seat, and turned
up the radio, which he usually did because he didn't want to know what Rick and Marty
talked about.
He said Marty came to the passenger window with the gun wraps not in a towel, but in something
like a bandana or a hankerchief, and that Rick was laughing maniacally.
Joseph said Rick asked Marty if he was serious,
and that Marty didn't say yes or no, he just didn't answer.
On the key details, that there was a gun wrapped in something, and Marty offered to pay them
both, Rick and Joseph told the same story. It's the choreography where they differ, who
was where, when, and who spoke to whom. And they're both stubborn
about it. Rick, in his deposition, was asked repeatedly if he meant Marty came to the window
with the gun. And he repeatedly said no, both he and Joseph were standing outside.
And Joseph is just as certain that he never got out of the car. By the time the trial was over,
Joseph was putting some distance between
himself and Scott County and his uncle Rick. Joseph got himself a job, one county to the
south running a chop saw in a lumber yard, $15 an hour.
So I mean, I had a good thing going, I wasn't trying to jeopardize that, and the company
was bad and notorious for drug testing randomly. So I went clean. He didn't abide my rule to that, so I told him I'm walking away, and I did.
It went until a year or two later we got back together and what have you.
I don't go to Scott County at all for hardly anything.
That's since the trial, since he gave a statement against a Carson.
If I have to, I'm in and out and gone.
It's got to be a statement against a Carson. If I have to, I'm in and out and go.
It's gotta be a half-two case.
Rick Babb said in his deposition and in his testimony that he went and got help
and stopped using math.
But Joseph's story is different from his uncle's there too.
He says Rick never stopped using drugs.
I don't know.
Rick died of an overdose in 2011,
but I met him a few years before
that in 2008 and spent a couple afternoons with him. He seemed sober, he told me he was,
and had been for almost four years. He'd gotten help from a pastor and Rick spoke very highly
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Mail Jim la marca nĆŗmero uno en email marketing y automatizaciĆ³n empieza hoy mismo en mail Jim punto com vas a ver mĆ”s tus pĆŗblicos de marcas competidoras en We met Rick's pastor at the Lighthouse Church of God. His name is Charles Golden. The church
is a small white clapboard building with a gravel lot at the edge of the road in Ventress County, which is next to Sky.
Actually, the whole bit used to sit right here.
The main floor is bright and open, white walls and beige carpet and big windows in the back
behind the altar.
There's no stuffy piety about the place, but there are a lot of guitars and a piano and
a full drum kit.
You got a full band.
Oh, we love music.
Golden, when we meet him, is wearing jeans and work boots. We're
sitting in the church that I pester. I love working with people and encouraging people.
I've been preaching for 37 years. I've been in his life for four years and been pester
never since. I teach martial arts. I'm lasting through state-tenses, 50-degree black belt. Martial arts are part of his ministry. He teaches kids, calls them black belts of the faith.
He's got another program he calls SWAT, students with a testimony. He pastors a lot of kids.
Sometimes I'm the least hope they have before they send them some water or something,
and they'll put them in my program and we've had kids
that come from busted homes from foster children all the way up. I have kids
that's completed that was failing in school that now's graduating college. We're
trying to get them when they get up and graduate high school and we need to be
trying to figure it out while they're still in grade school.
How can we change their life? Don't mean because everybody in your family went to jail, you have to go to jail.
You break that. Scott County has a reputation of drugs flowing through it. One, there's no jobs.
I had this lady. She was 60, 61 year old at the time. In rehab, she was a grandma, a mom. And she said, I can make
$1500 a week, making math, and I can't drive 400 a month. And they can almost justify what
they're doing to feed and take care of a family, but it don't just stop or it keeps leading on and leading on.
So we wanted to ask you about a man named Rick Bab.
What can you tell us about Rick? Did you know Rick?
No Rick very well. Rick was a, I guess the best words to describe Rick. Rick was a character. Rick was referred to the program that I used to do and
the first time I made him I thought Lord, why have you put this fellow in my life?
He was a Jesse modern Jesse James you could say but and and I stress that but
The Rick I know on the end was not like that
he was a
a good-hearted man
Men recited all five-actors is Rick like torsus
You know matter of fact they even own a horse that Rick Rick had I still have it. It's an Arabian pain
Never will forget the time he invited me to stop by his house.
And Rick comes out with a 12 and a half inch knife. If Rick ever made you a knife, you were
special to Rick. And Rick had worked for two days, making me that knife. Rick ended up at the
Lighthouse Church of God because his probation officer sent him there. At the time, Pastor Golden ran a rehab program,
which was mostly word of mouth and mostly funded out of his own pocket.
We had it downstairs, we fed him, we listened to him. Rick could tell you some stories now that you'd look at him, man, come on. But Rick told his side of things to try
to help others where they want to do the same thing he done. Did you trust him? With
everything I had. Was he honest? As honest as day is long. If Rick told you something, you could go to the bank with it. Now, the Rick,
I know the Rick before that, you know, he got things straightened out. I have no idea,
but Rick was warned if it was on his mind, he'd tell you about it. And if you asked him
a question, whether he got in trouble or not, Rick would answer you.
I'd say Rick, you do this.
Well, yeah.
If you was going to walk through the door and arrest him,
he'd say, yeah, I done drugs today.
Or yeah, I done this or I done something else.
So, I mean, you know,
there's very few people with that character, very few.
Did you know him during the time
when he was talking to Laurie?
As short as.
I just wanna run something by you here.
Rick told me that he had this secret
that he kept from Laurie.
Yep. And he told her that John John
wasn't killed over politics, he was killed over drugs. Yeah. And
That he worked with Marty. He was one of Marty's informants.
Marty asked him if he would kill John and he said no, hell no. Yep. That's true. Okay, and that's
This Rick isn't here to repeat that without commenting on that if you don't want to
That time in his life Rick was honest.
Absolutely.
And I'll comment on it because Rick told me the same thing.
And he told me he said, if I come up missing, you'll know what happened to me.
I said, okay.
Rick had no reason to lie to Pastor Golden about anything, really. Rick certainly had no reason to involve himself
in the killing of a sheriff's deputy,
a killing that had already been determined to be an accident.
He wasn't trying to weasel out of any charges, he wasn't getting paid, and Golden, who we had to
track down, had no reason to make it up all these years later. Everyone involved,
John John, Marty, Rick, they're all dead. Rick told him something in pastoral
confidence, and Golden didn't add any details. He only confirmed what Rick said
in court, what Rick told me a long time ago,
and only because we asked. That Marty Carson asked him to kill John John Yancey, and that Marty
was involved in meth. Not true. Former Scott County Sheriff Anthony Lay, who took Jim Carson's job.
Yeah, you know, here's the deal,
when I got elected sheriff,
some of those things I looked into,
personally looked into.
I couldn't find any evidence of anything.
I could never find any wrongdoings.
I never could.
And you know, don't take this wrong,
but you know, one would want to if you were the
new sheriff because that would keep competition down from a very popular man.
But I couldn't find anything wrong. And you know, if I would have ran against Sheriff
Carson the next round, I couldn't have said anything wrong on him because I couldn't
find anything to say.
But there was this other thing that happened. And we know it happened because there's I couldn't have said anything wrong on him because I couldn't find anything to say.
But there was this other thing that happened.
And we know it happened because there's a police report and medical records and a scar on
Rick's chest.
The last week of September 2007, after he'd already given a statement to Laurie's lawyer,
Rick got stabbed.
He says he was sitting on the edge of his porch drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.
It was nighttime, dark.
Two men came around from the back of his house.
They wore blue jeans and work boots and ski masks.
One of them had a knife, and the other one Rick said, started knocking the shit out of
me.
Rick fought back, but he got stabbed right below the breastbone.
The men ran off, and Rick said one of them turned and yelled, if you say one word about Marty or testify against him, we'll
come back and kill you and your family. Rick collapsed and was rushed to the ER.
No one was ever arrested. Marty and his dad said they had nothing to do with it.
And besides, it's not odd to think some people might want to stab an informant,
but the timing was odd. I think when they stabbed Rick, they was trying to somebody, I'll say somebody, was trying to send a message, and it shook him up. Rick Babb wasn't the only person or even the first to accuse Marty of being on the wrong
side of the drug laws.
In fact, Laurie was hearing from some of those people. A lot of people,
anonymous calls, they would call the house, you know, and say that they'd heard
this on Mordy Carson. And some of these people, you know, I don't know if it was
real or not. Because a lot of people like to get involved that maybe don't
know how, don't have facts. but I received a lot of phone calls
saying that they knew more things on Morty.
That was all pretty much the same thing that he was involved in drugs.
But not everyone was anonymous.
Before any of this happened, before Marty shot John-John, before Rick told Lori what he
knew, other people had come forward and said pretty much the same thing that Marty was shaking
down meth cooks
extorting them making them work for him
In 2001 for instance one of the local cooks broke out of the Scott County jail
A couple days later turned himself into the Tennessee Bureau of investigation
He said that he was quote
In fear for my own safety while being held in the Scott County jail
He said I feel like Marty knows that I know what he's involved in.
And that's why he's trying to get rid of me.
Another cook later backed him up, saying we were cooking meth,
and we didn't have to worry about getting busted because Marty Carson would get 90% of it.
Those two cooks were the ones Rick named later.
The ones he said were making meth for Marty.
Here's Paul Phillips, the former DA.
I mean, the TVI investigated all of those leads and they did not find that credible.
Now, Richard was probably one of the most dramatic.
Richard is Rick Bap.
Phillips says he never had any indication that John John's suspected Marty was crooked,
or that anything was off between the two.
They were in our office a lot. They were making lots of cases. They worked primarily with my assistant who handled the Scott County docket.
We thought they were making good cases, and we thought they were operating as partners,
and from everything we knew,
they seemed to work together well.
If John John had been suspicious of Marty,
that's nothing he ever brought to your office.
He didn't.
No, he did not.
The other thing that was very clear in investigation
is that this information that night was officer Yancey's
information.
The impetus to go out there and investigate this was officer Yancey's.
It just doesn't seem logical to think that if officer Carson intended harm to officer Yancey, that this would
be the occasion to do that.
But everyone had an opinion on the case.
Half the people just didn't think that one would intentionally hurt the other, the other half, would be more inclined to a conspiracy theory.
Posing here just for a second to note that if half the people in the county, or any sizeable
fraction, are more inclined to believe the sheriff's son murdered his partner, that's
disturbing.
But Phillips used an important term of art to describe those witnesses and their allegations.
Credible.
Those reports, accusations of Marty's criminal activity, were not credible in his eyes.
A prosecutor, an ethical one who brings criminal charges against a person, has to believe in
good faith that he can prove those charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even in a civil case, where the burden of proof is lower, the witnesses you call and the testimony
they give has to be credible.
That is difficult when so many drugs are involved.
In a case like this, with a lot of rumors and people skittering about in the shadows, there's
an issue of hearsay.
Did you see Marty with the big pile of meth?
Or did you just hear about it?
Only the first is admissible.
Many of the witnesses in question have been in trouble repeatedly with the lawn Scott County,
and they're being asked to swear in essence that some elements of law enforcement in the county
are murderously corrupt. Perhaps not surprisingly, their stories can wobble.
Take Lonnie Gunter. He's the man who shared his meth recipe with us.
It's all pulled. Lonnie is a tall guy with bleached blonde hair,
wide shoulders and a very narrow waist. It looks like a Disney version of Hercules,
with a few more years and a lot more miles on him. And full disclosure,
Laurie's husband Howard helped us find Lonnie too. Like we said, Howard and a lot more miles on him. And full disclosure, Lori's husband Howard
helped us find Lonnie too.
Like we said, Howard knows a lot of people.
Lonnie says he started making math in the late 90s.
He's talkative, funny, very open,
tells a lot of stories from his wilder days.
I broke out a little Mickey Mouse jail.
Yeah, he's one of the ones who busted out of jail
and turned himself into the TBI.
All I left with was that pirate shorts on my ass,
like I told you.
Ended up in the river trying to lose anyone on his tail.
I had to let a road go to the water plant, cut me a lap,
and I'm on the river.
Why are you swimming the river?
To get to the other side.
I mean, the beavers had cut trees,
and if they'd gone through that, I'd swim across to clear side. I mean the Bavars had cut trees and if they were going through that,
it swim across, it was clear side, go down the ways, and if they got thick, go to the other side.
Finally, I need to be on that side to river.
He turned himself in a couple days later and gave his statements to the TBI.
In that statement, which he signed, Lonnie said he fronted some methamphetamine to this one guy,
and that when Lonnie asked him for the money,
this guy told him he'd have to go talk to Marty Carson about that.
When I started quoting Lonnie's own statement to him.
I'd ever get to say that.
Now, you pull out of there, that's a lie, I never said that.
I don't care what they put down to say.
I'd ever, one time said that.
Okay.
I mean, I've been on a sweet shift from the first point of my life.
When the DA talks about credible witnesses, he means, well, not this.
In his statement, Lonnie said he believed Marty was trying to get rid of him,
because he knew Marty was tied up in the meth business.
Now?
Did anyone ever tell you that Marty Carson was involved with selling meth?
Did anyone ever tell you that? I could not actually tell you 100% for these things, so I'm not
even going to go there. No, I know whatever I said that. I mean, I'm not opening up to get into these
Kenpoke coming back, you know, but it would just be,
if I said anything, it would just be hearsay.
And I can't back up hearsay.
All I can back up is what I know.
Lonnie didn't testify.
It's probably just as well.
I said, if I know anything on Marty Carson, it's not to be said out here in public.
It's not to be said nobody.
There'll not be nothing told that I know.
Why not say the things you know about Marty?
That's just not me, man. I mean, I have very little left.
And all I got is my standards. And if I can't keep them and live with them, I've got nothing.
Everybody's got their standards, I guess.
But I want to point out again that when we're reporting this in 2021, Jim Carson hasn't
been sheriff for more than 15 years.
Marty Carson is dead.
And yet getting people, not just Lonnie, others too, even a cop, to repeat what they swore
about the Carson's years ago, it's like pulling teeth.
So we kept looking around, trying to find some of those other people whose names came
up in various statements.
We couldn't find any until we stumbled across one person who was mentioned in the deposition
of a young woman named Ashley.
Ashley was deposed because she was a witness to, she put it the paying off somebody paying off Marty Carson
That somebody was Roger Bowling
We found him in the Scott County jail. I've been in here since August 15
1838 months
I'm in here for selling my thin fat amine 26 and half grams. Okay
How long you've been selling math and fed me? I'm in here for selling my thin fat a minute, 26 and a half grams. Okay. How long you've been selling my thin fat a minute?
All my life.
All your life.
I mean, basically about 25 years probably, somewhere I ran to there.
How'd you get involved in meth?
Well, I've then looked cocaine and growing up there and then the math come along and I got
on here and I couldn't really shake it.
It was so addicted to me.
So why did you start selling?
To money.
Sometimes I would get a pound a time.
Sixteen ounces to a pound.
There's 28 grams to an ounce. So it.28 grams to ounce.
So that's $400 ounce.
That's a hell of a profit.
Holy shit.
So he was good at selling.
He says he brought in math from out of state,
didn't bother with the local cooks,
and that the local law didn't bother him.
He says Marty had a reputation.
It did a little bit of dope on the side.
Would he one of the guys who would look the other way?
Yeah, the counter-turners had the other way.
Do you ever leave anything for him?
No.
Really?
No.
So why would he turn his head then?
You just, I don't know, I guess he'd know me. Pretty much all my life.
As it was he buying was he dealing was he just taking some to look the other way? I'd say he's taking money
But none from you now ever never so other than Marty having a reputation for being involved with with the math business
You don't know of anything first hand of him
ever taking any money or taking any drugs?
No.
I mean, he never took no money from me
because he didn't know I was moving a lot.
He was just after the people that was
moving a lot of dope and the cook.
But you were moving a lot.
Yeah, but he didn't know. I moved mind mostly
in Jamestown, Morgan County. Ah, okay. I don't believe Roger. In Roger, who's being
very patient with a couple of strangers who popped into the jail on an ounce, knows that
I don't believe him. But he's not budging. It's a little frustrating. Ashley, in her deposition, her sworn testimony,
says she was with Roger for about six months,
and she said that one night, she was hiding in Roger's truck
when he drove to a place called Billion Foods
to pay off Marty.
Ashley was really, really specific in her deposition
about you, her relationship with you,
and being in the car, hiding in the back,
and Marty never knew she was there. And you gave Marty a couple hundred bucks, and you told her
that's how you keep the law off your back. Maybe I did one time, I couldn't think about it.
I can't thank about it. I think it was a fail in the foods.
That?
Yeah.
Just the one time?
Yeah.
Okay.
Why just one time?
Maybe I don't know.
I'm just trying to find out if I can believe actually a
steposition or not.
Yeah, I'll give him don't give them $3.
Okay.
You've given Marty a few dollars.
Next time, I'm witnessed, friendly fire.
East Tennessee juries are notoriously tight.
The trial.
Everybody had an opinion of Scott Damnett. Finally, you know, someone's gonna hear John Charles out of the trial. Everybody had an opinion that Scott came. Finally, you know someone's going to hear John Tulsa
this story. For us, the jury, we wanted to feel
as certain as possible.
Sir, may I come for me on the burden? I have no comment. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc
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1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc The Wittiness is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. Friendly Fire
was reported and hosted by me, Sean Flynn. Lindsay Killbride is the senior producer and Cali Hitchcock is
the associate producer. The story editor is Daniel Riley. The series was sound
designed by Shawnee Aviram with mixing by E.W. N. Lightramuyn. This episode was
fact-checked by Alex Yablon. The theme song is Booey by Shook Twins. A special
thanks to our operations team Amanda Brown, Doug Slaywin,
Alia Paps and Alison Haney. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean,
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