Justice For a Serial Killer

Part two of a two-part episode. former Deputy Prosecutor Thomas Vanes recalls his role in the prosecution of Michael Lee Lockhart for the murders of two teenaged girls and a Texas Police Officer. Murder and death sentencing in three states involves a complicated process and coordination, which Vanes meticulously describes in this episode. 

Vanes also discusses the many nuances, coincidences and 'small world' situations in this account.

James Mitchell will continue to present criminal justice representatives who will tell of actual events they have encountered during their service. Many of these guests will discuss actual cases that were documented in the book, A Badge Well Worn, by James Mitchell.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Invite everyone back to listen to Tom Haynes talking about the case of Michael Lee Lockhart. Tom, we covered in depth in detail the actual hunt for Mr. Lockhart. And now today we're gonna cover as well as we can reconstruct the actual preparation for the trials and some of the uh inside baseball that was going on between uh the different prosecute prosecutors' offices or district attorneys. This is a very complicated case when you're coordinating, I suspect, with three different jurisdictions. We're gonna get into that a little bit about the some of the yin and the yin that was going on with this case, along with some of the families of the victims, and and some there's some stories there that you can relive for us. It's a very interesting case. I'm just gonna let you pick it up from the point where I guess where you pretty much locked down. Lockhart was your guy. He's in Texas. Now what are we gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, let me let me cycle back just a little bit. Beginning in late 87 into early 88, three separate jurisdictions, law enforcement in Indiana, then Florida, and then Texas, were investigating separate homicides, or at least they appeared to be wholly separate and unconnected when the investigations first began. In sequence, it was the October 1987 killing of Wendy Gallagher up here in Griffith in the northwest corner of Indiana, followed three months later by a uh the killing of young Jennifer Colehauer in Pasco County, just north of Tampa, Florida, followed two months later by the murder of Beaumont police officer Paul Halsey. The first two were murders of high school young girls, young women, I should say. Wendy was 16 years old, Jennifer was 14 years old. As the police officers began to work these cases, it became clear, despite the distances involved, they were not unconnected. They were in fact connected. And with some nice police work and a bit of good luck, uh, by the summer of uh 1988, it was determined that all could be tied to each other and all could be tied to one particular individual, Michael Lee Lockhart. So that's where things stood in the um uh summer of 1988. At that point, Lockhart was looking at three separate prosecutions, meaning three separate trials, one in each of the states. Texas, as you mentioned, had him in their custody, so Texas was going to be the uh the first to take him to trial. Now let me mention a word, Mitch, about how death penalty trials work in general. Okay. They have to be by law, the word is the legal word is bifurcated or split into two parts. The first part of any death penalty trial will be is the person guilty or not guilty? Is he guilty or innocent? So you have a trial then on that particular legal question with no reference uh in that to whether the death penalty should be imposed. If the person is found guilty, then the same jury reconvenes for a separate legal proceeding, in effect a mini-trial in many cases, on whether the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for the crime to which the defendant has just been convicted. So it's going to be a two-part trial. And in this particular case, there was an additional twist which was going to complicate things. Because these cases were interconnected, each of the prosecutions was essentially going to be a three trials in one kind of situation. For example, in Texas, which was going to lead off with their trial, there would be a trial on whether he did or did not kill Paul Fulsey. And then, assuming he was found guilty of that, there would be many trials involving the killing of Wendy Gallagher and the killing of Jennifer Kohlhauer as part of the evidence presented to determine what the appropriate penalty should be. It was going to be the same thing in Florida. It was going to be the same thing in Indiana. Our Indiana prosecution, and we were lined up, I think, to be second once Texas was finished. In our Indiana prosecution, we were going to present not just evidence regarding Wendy's killing, but evidence regarding Jennifer's death and her homicide and the death of Paul Halsey and how that occurred. So each of the jurisdictions really had to know each other's cases pretty well. I had to learn a lot about Florida. I had to learn a lot about Texas. They in turn had to learn a lot about what we had up here in terms of proof of our in our particular case. That meant some travel. I mentioned before that when we first presented the warrant to the Texas authorities, I was down there with the Griffith police and the fingerprint people, the Texas people came up, the Florida people would come up and visit us. So there was quite a bit of an exchange of information and travel as each jurisdiction began to get ready for its own trial here. I'd have to say that this was an absolute perfect model for interstate cooperation by law enforcement. When we went down to Texas, both before the trial and during the trial, they treated us like royalty. I mean, they were really good. Texas cookouts with gumbo and trips to uh Port Arthur, where Beaumont, Texas, is actually pretty close to the Gulf of Mexico, so we went down at some seafood dinners. When the Texas people came up here, we took them to Greektown for the uh usual flaming cheese, Upa, Saganaki, and all that sort of thing. We had just a wonderful time working with each other. As we did with the Florida people, I went to both Florida and Texas to get ready for the Indiana trial. If you do your homework in this kind of thing, by the time you get the trial, sometimes the trial can be almost anticlimatic. If you really, really have done what you need to do, you can always screw things up, so you still got to be careful. But if you've done your homework, then the trial becomes just kind of the icing on the cake based on your pretrial preparation. By the way, Lockhart's trial, he killed Paul Halsey in Beaumont, which, as we mentioned last time, is East Texas near Louisiana. Because of the publicity involved in that, Lockhart's Texas trial was moved to San Antonio. So when we went to the our witnesses, were summoned to testify in that particular trial. That's where we went, that's where I went to witness the Indiana people testifying at the Texas trial. By the way, the Texas trial, if I remember right, was in August, September, October of the same year that he was arrested in 1988. Yeah. That kind of speed is almost unheard of, at least up here in Indiana. Things don't go to trial that quickly, particularly if it's a death penalty case, as you probably know. They don't mess around down there. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Did he kind of lay down and not uh object to a speedy trial? And in other words, he didn't uh file motions and and kind of drag this thing out. Was he kind of just going ahead and just getting it done?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Uh no, I suspected that that was the judge's decision to push it at that speed. Okay. I'm sure they didn't want to go that fast, okay? Yeah. No, I suspect the speed was the judge's decision in this case. Okay. It would have been a lot for that lawyer defending him in Texas to deal with. Not only did he have to deal with the Texas defense, but he had to prep for the Indiana case and the uh Florida case, which were going to be uh would come up in the Texas trial, too. If I remember right, it was a single lawyer in the last name of Carver who defended him. I'm sure he would have wanted the extra time. I'm sure it was the judge who said, No, you're not. There's too many jurisdictions that want Michael Lockhart. We can't keep him, we're gonna keep things moving here. So he was arrested for Halsey's killing in March, and by October, November, everything was wrapped up. That's worth kind of thing. So no, uh it went quick down there. And of course, there was a little bit of drama involved too, as I don't know that we mentioned it yet, but uh there was an episode during the Texas trial where Lockhart decided to remove himself from the proceedings. One day during jury selection, it was during a lunch break. He was talking with a consultant he had at his defense table. All of a sudden he got up and went and pitched through the window. There was a courtroom. This is a courtroom with windows, and he dove through the window in an escape attempt. The building adjacent to the courthouse had a flat rooftop one story below the level of the courthouse. Okay. I think it was about a 15-foot drop from the window down to a flat rooftop of the adjacent building. Lockhart's plan was that he was going to do a tuck and roll. He'd uh been in the military and assumed some sort of parachute uh training of some sort, and then that was his plan. Do a tuck and roll, get down to the street, melt into the crowd, and be gone. Well, he either didn't tuck or he didn't roll, or he didn't tuck, and he didn't roll. Whatever it was, he broke his hip. He broke his hip bone, yeah. He broke his pelvis bone. It slowed things down for a little bit, but not much in Texas. They put him in a wheelchair in short order. He was back in trial. I don't know if I remember at one point he was complaining about he could not sit with the pain long enough to um go through the legal proceedings, and the judge said basically, sorry, we're going ahead. So they proceeded to go ahead, and security was a lot tighter after that. He was convicted. Uh he testified. He actually claimed down there in Texas that he shot Paul Hulsey in self-defense. Went over kind of fart in church, let's put it that way. Okay. He was convicted, and the jury recommended the death penalty was imposed on him in Texas. At that point, we're up next, okay? As you might suspect here, the Texas is not just going to rubber stamp our request to pick him up and you know, can we have him for a while? Can we borrow him from the Texas prison? Uh, they weren't going to just automatically do it as a matter of courtesy. He was too important a prisoner to them. So there was some serious discussions as to how, in particular, how we're going to get him up here. Okay, in a way, he's not just an escape risk, he's an escape. Okay, he didn't get far, but he sure tried. Uh so how are you going to logistically get him from Huntsville, Texas, where he was now incarcerated, uh thousand twelve hundred miles, whatever the distance is, up here to northwest Indiana. Um, you've been involved in prisoner transport, you know that that's all sorts of opportunities for mischief when you got an individual in a car. And uh Lockhart did not seem to be a good candidate for air travel either on a commercial airline. Yeah, they do transport prisoners, but we had to convince Texas that we were serious about security. Okay. And that's where the Griffith people came in. I'm not sure how they arranged it, but they got Griffith has its own little airport. Okay. Um not much of a commercial airport, but it's a nice little airport. And somebody with a nice plane there at the Griffith Airport volunteered to use the plane and the services of the pilot to fly down to Texas, pick them up, bring them back, and when we're done to return them in that back to prison in short order. I remember right, it was all gratis, too. It was all from the goodness of someone's heart. Okay. So Lockhart was brought up here on a private plane. Um when uh um when he was brought up here, I requested as the prosecutor that he be shackled during the trial itself. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes judges will permit a uh uh prisoner to have essentially leg irons during the trial. They'll make sure that there's some sort of curtain or covering so that the jury cannot see that the person has been shackled for fear that the shackling will create a bias on the jury's part against the individual. Um but uh Judge Letzinger, who was trying the case at that point in time, uh, would not permit that. So we we went ahead, security was tight during the trial. He was actually given three lawyers up here. He didn't get along with three public defenders, okay. Uh he didn't get along at all with his first public defender, Robert Lewis. So the Judge Lesnar appointed a second and then a third attorney to assist Lewis with uh what was a problematic or troublesome client here in this case. Lockhart was essentially bored during the trial here. Read one of, I think one of them was a Tom Clancy novel he was reading during some of the legal proceedings here. Trial lasted about two and a half weeks up here. It went well, no big surprises. He was convicted, and then the once again uh uh the death penalty was deemed to be the appropriate penalty uh for Michael Lockhart, and it was imposed, so that would have been death sentence number two now, this time from the Indiana. I remember getting a guess you'd call it a thank you card from one of the jurors who served on the thing and recommended uh the death sentences for Lockhart. Thank you in the sense of thanks for presenting such overwhelming evidence of the man's guilt that it made our job easier. Okay. Jurors take, I think, on balance take their obligations very, very seriously. And when it comes to deciding whether a person should or shouldn't die, they're gonna want overwhelming proof. And that's just proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but proof beyond any doubt whatsoever that the person they are saying should die did in fact commit the crime in this case. I don't know if I mentioned it last time, but I had always wanted to stay in the prosecutor's office until I presented what I thought was a perfect prosecution. Well, you're never gonna get that. You're never gonna get a totally perfect prosecution. But by the time Lockhart was done, I realized that's about as close as I was ever going to get. We not only presented our case regarding Wendy Gallagher, who was tied to the uh Lockhart primarily by palm prints and fingerprints, we did an in-depth presentation on uh the Jennifer Kohlhauer murder. Our judge permitted us to present that not in the second stage of the trial, but in the first stage of the trial, because the commission of these two murders, the MO, was so similar, the judge decided proof of one shows who committed the other. So we presented the Kohlhauer as part of our proof that Lockhart killed Gallagher. Um the main thrust of the Kohlhauer presentation was DNA. This was actually DNA was just catching on then in courtroom usage. Okay. In fact, presenting the Kohlhauer DNA evidence was the first time DNA had been used at a criminal trial in Lake County. Okay, so there were long and elaborate proceedings to show that DNA testing was reliable. And I remember sitting in the jury room taking testimony from a DNA analyst from Selmark out east in Maryland, and uh Judge Lessinger finally ruling uh, yep, this evidence is reliable, it is scientifically valid, it is going to be admitted. So it was the first criminal case in Northwest Indiana to use DNA evidence. Um couple poignant moments from the Lake County trial. I think I mentioned last time that with these two young women, Wendy and Jennifer, in both cases they came home alone from school. In both cases, they were found by a younger sibling. In the case of Jennifer Kohlhauer in Florida, I think it was her younger brother Jeremy who went upstairs to the bedroom and saw his sisters horribly mutilated and sexually assaulted. That's what he that's what he found, the result, or at least the result of that. He was younger than Jennifer, a little interesting tidbit about Jeremy. He went on to become a police officer. This motivated him to become a police officer there in Pasco County, Florida, and sure enough he did. In the Indiana case, it was Wendy's younger sister, Chrissy, who came home and found her older sister sprawled across the bed, half naked, and uh effectively gutted by a knife. Chrissy had to talk about that in courtroom, okay? And that's hard to imagine how painful, hard to understand how painful that must have been for her. She was extremely nervous during the uh the trial. She came through like a trooper, but during the testimony itself, her knees were shaking so badly that her knee was bumping the table, the little shelf-like table that was in front of the witness. And uh you felt for her, you really felt for her as to how horrible that must have been. After the trial, when everything worked out well and Lockhart was convicted and sentenced to death. We we we we tagged Chrissy in good humor with the nickname of Thumper, and she was she was up after that. Chrissy Gallagher was always going to be Thumper in our in our minds.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Um that's that's trademark Tom Bain's humor. That's just that's who you are.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

She took it well too. I mean, she enjoyed she enjoyed the the good-natured teasing. Uh the other poignant, poignant moment I remember from from the trial is I mentioned last time that Wendy's purse had been taken from her. It was eventually recovered. In the purse was her personal little calendar. And like high school girls will do, it was filled with little observations and messages to herself, reminders to herself, there was some sort of entry right around the time of her death that uh maybe even the day of her death, that that was to be her stress-free day. Something like that. And then, of course, it was October 13th, 1987. Her calendar goes blank. And that's when you kind of realize when you see entry after entry in the calendar, and then there's just no more entries, that kind of visual reminder of the finality of what had happened to her. Um always I still remember it to this day.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Can I interrupt you for a second? You've just sparked a Something a recollection that you had mentioned. Didn't one of these girls tell their parents that they didn't think they were going to live? You may be right. I just can't say which one it was. And I can't they had the premonition that they were not going to live past 16 years or something like that. Okay. I remember as part of one of our earlier discussions, maybe some years ago, but uh I'm sorry. Go ahead. This case is loaded with those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yeah. The other thing I did in connection with that calendar was that uh uh that became part of my closing argument to the jury at the second stage of Lockhart's trial in Indiana, the death stage, the death penalty stage. I pointed out uh that there were no more dates in Wendy's calendar after October 13, 1987. That I was asking the jury to make the recommendation that we'll put a final date in Lockhart's calendar based on what he had done. Um I remember that. Those are the moments I remember in particular from the trial itself. The Texas people were in attendance quite regularly during the Indiana trial. Paul Halsey's father uh attended, came up to uh watch our trial, and the verdict, after the verdict came back that he was guilty and that the recommendation was that he be executed. Halsey's father said that in a way it kind of vindicated or gave some, I don't know what the right word is, but it it closure. Yes, and it helped him to know that his son's death stopped the serial killer from killing again. And sure enough, had Lockhart not been arrested for killing Halsey, he'd have gone on to do it again. I mean, uh there was nothing going to stop him other than uh capture, which resulted from Halsey. So Paul Halsey's death stopped the serial killer. He gave his life, and in the process of which he stopped the serial killer. That made Halsey Sr. The father feel quite proud of what his what his son had accomplished even in death.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Wasn't he a police officer as well?

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Former police chief. Yeah, he's a former police chief. Near Beaumont is the town of Orange, Texas, and I think he was the former chief of the Orange Police Department. Yeah. So it went well. It went as well as anyone could expect the prosecution to go. I mentioned that I was satisfied that that's about as close as I was going to come to a perfect prosecution. And uh frankly, I decided it was time for me to move on. About three months after that is when I jumped the line of scrimmage and became a defense attorney. Interesting little twist on that, Jim. Okay. The lawyer, lawyer number one for Lockhart here in Indiana was a guy named Bob Lewis, public defender. He and I had worked against each other quite often. Um, but after Lockhart, he said, This that's enough. No more. I cannot take any more. He had a tough job, too. I mean, he he didn't get anything extra in terms of pay or benefits for doing a complex death penalty case like this. All he got was grief from the client. Okay. So he said that's enough, and he quit. So I saw a jar of opening and I took it. I ended up flying for the public defender slot that Bob vacated by quitting as a result of like Lockhart. I took his place. Uh I uh uh was a part-time job and I opened my own law practice, and so three months after uh uh that I was doing I was doing murder trials, but defending and not prosecuting.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Quite effectively, I might add.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

How long did you serve on the defense attorney side from uh September of 1989 till a couple weeks ago? Amazing 37 years plus, maybe something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

So moving kind of forward a little bit, we got we got a death penalty in Texas, we got a death penalty pending in Indiana. So you guys ship him back to Texas. Can you pick it up?

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Okay, the the private jet is, or I'm not sure it was a jet, it may have it was a private plane. Okay, a nice private plane. Um is going back to take him back to Huntsville, Texas, where the he was incarcerated. And the Griffith cops said, Hey, this room, you want to tag along. And uh I don't remember having anything special to do, so I said, sure, I'll I'll tag along. So I and some of the Griffith detectives, John Mauri, may have been Mike Thieling, maybe Carl Grimmer, Thieling or Grimmer, I'm not sure. I think it was Thieling. Uh Maury was certainly there, and Lockhart, of course, would have been there. Off we flew from Griffith down to down to Huntsville, down to Texas. He made it clear at the beginning that he was not going to talk about the uh uh crime, which is fine. He set the ground rules, we honored him. But he was otherwise in a real good mood. I suspect it may have to do with just being out. He had been jailed at that point for a better part of a year and a half, perhaps. Okay. And when you're when you're in prison, you get to see the sun a little bit, but not when you're in jail. I mean, it's you don't see sunshine. And to be up at what, 25,000, 30,000 feet, wherever we were flying above the clouds and the sun pouring in, I'm sure it was a uh somewhat exhilarating feeling for him. So he began to talk. Um, not about the crime, not about what he did, but just odds and ends about some of the proceedings. I know, for example, he noted and he said, I recognized that security was tight in the courtroom and that I wasn't going to be able to get away with anything. He said, but if they didn't drop their guard, I should say, for just a little bit, he said, all I wanted to do was pop my lawyer, Bob Lewis, in the nose. He said, bust his nose, at which point they could have grabbed me, taken me back to the cell. I'd been a happy camper. I would have sat out the rest of the trial. But uh the security was such that he didn't even get the chance to do that. The other thing that occurred on the on the plane flight was before this flight, a local reporter named Mark Keisling. Did you know Mark Mitch? Yes. Yeah. He was a great, great reporter, good friend, great sense of humor, and a great sketch artist. Most people didn't know that about Mark, but I've got a couple sketches on my wall that Mark had done over the years. He didn't particularly make it known to people that he was a sketch artist, but he had drafted or sketched out a three-panel cartoon involving or connected to the Lockhart trial in Indiana. It's that three panels, it's state of Indiana versus Michael Lockhart. You got do you have that? Yeah, that's that's Mark's. That's Mark's. Okay, but trust me, you I don't know if you can see it, but it's a Texas-like law enforcement officer, 10-gallon hat, and the like. And he's talking about the post-trial party we were going to have and how it would feature some genuine, Texas gumbo. And then he said it was panel two, he says it is uh shift it a little bit to your right, Mitch. Then a little up. Yeah. Uh in panel two, he said it's frozen, but it'll take about two minutes to defrost. And then the third and final panel, uh, move it to your right, just a shade, Mitch. There you go. Third and final panel, it has Michael Lockhart in electric chair, and they're telling him, hold on to the gumbo tight uh uh because they're gonna warm it up. Yeah. Well, he signed it for me. Yeah. Um I brought that along with me. We had everybody on the team sign it. Everybody involved in the prosecution, some of the Texas people even signed it. I had it with me on that plane ride back to Texas. So I must have been planning that. It wasn't inadvertent that I had it there. Um I showed it to him and he laughed. Uh don't ask me why it made fun of him. I mean, he's basically being executed warming up a they're using him, well, he's executed to warm up some food. I mean, it's not a was it was this uh how did they execute in Texas? Was it a teacher or you know, I don't know by the point in time where he got executed in 1997, I think it was. I don't know what the manner of execution was then. But I presented it to him, he laughed. Maybe because I mean the man was a sociopath, and maybe any attention is valuable to him, okay, whether it's good or bad. Uh he just liked the attention. But I asked him to autograph it, and sure enough, at the top, he autographed the cartoon. I think he dated it too, like 720 1989 or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Hard to see. I think uh yeah, 720 of 89.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Yeah, that was the date of our plane ride. So yeah, he dated it too. Yeah. The original cartoon I have somewhere in my basement. I ended up getting it bronzed, though.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

You know, I'm getting uh I'm getting some real uh recollections come to my mind that that are parallel to this. Do you remember the Van Diver, Billy Van Diver drawing cartoons for me? And uh color color Korean drawing.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Okay, you got it. I know.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

And he signed them just like Lockhart did and dated them. I mean, this is like deja vu.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

I'm not selling this stuff or anything, it's just kind of a personal from the trial, but the bronze version of the cartoon you were showing is is hanging in my home office here. That's awesome. Yeah, so uh so I need to move along.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

I was wanting to get in a little bit about the actual D-Day they executed him. A couple things happened that uh are kind of noteworthy.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Sure. Uh let me add as a quick note here. After we were done with them and brought him back to Texas, Florida came and got him. When he got to Florida, though, he had pretty much given up the fight. He didn't want a lawyer, he represented himself, he pled guilty, and he asked the jury there to sentence him to death, and sure enough, they did. So at this point in time, he had three death sentences against him. Texas came up first, okay, in 1997. And when they did, somebody, and I'm not sure who, Mitch, but somebody in Texas, out of their own pocket, paid for key people in the three crimes, at least the two out-of-state crimes, to attend the execution. I I know that some family members of Gallagher, Wendy Gallagher, were down there to personally witness the execution, as were family members from the Kohlhauer family in Florida. Not sure who that was. I can only guess, but a little bit of an unusual twist of that, too. Anyway, he died in 97. I don't think it was ever completely resolved how many other killings he may have committed, though. You had mentioned that you had found that he was under suspicion on a Vegas killing. Las Vegas, yeah. Yeah. A young girl. I knew about that tonight.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

It was in 1987, so it would have been before our uh uh our our murder in Griffith. There was a 16-year-old victim where was abducted and raped uh in 1987. I didn't have a date specific, but it was 1987. And ours was uh October the 13th, 1987. I don't think they ever uh anybody ever expended a whole lot of effort into trying to connect that that one for whatever reason. That would have probably been handled by the Las Vegas Metro police. They pretty much run everything in out of Vegas, Clark County there. Yeah. That one, that one, and then uh you had quite a bit of uh background out of Toledo, Ohio, which preceded a lot of the activity that we had in Griffith and in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

We we ended up calling a lot of witnesses from out of state in the Indiana prosecution, his ex-wife. Um the girl he uh I should say the police officer from whom the gun was stolen that Lockhart carried with him on this cross-country spree. The car salesman who he carjacked to obtain the vet that was used in the floor connection with the Florida. We called two women from Chicago, one of whom he was staying with on a friendly basis. The other, Tammy Lair, who he sexually assaulted and robbed the day before Wendy Gallagher was killed. We called some people from Florida. There were this was truly a multi-state prosecution. It went so smoothly. That's one of the fond memories I have is how smoothly it went when you had so many um so many wheels and gears in operation here to get this thing done. We got it done.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

He actually uh he actually sexually assaulted his own ex-wife. Yes. Yes, yeah. He he drew no lines. Is that the Toledo woman they talk about uh reporting a rape? Or is that something like that?

SPEAKER_01 36:54

I believe that's what they're talking about, his ex-wife. Okay. Yeah. Um one other possible murder he may have been involved with. He claimed that he killed the girl near uh Fort Campbell, which is on the Kentucky Tennessee border there. And at one point they did a search based on where he said there should be a body. They didn't find anything. Uh if I remember right, he may have gotten a trip out of prison up to Fort Campbell to assist in the search for the I have an observation to make about that scenario.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Yeah. That that is, you you mentioned that he has military experience and parachuting possibly taught him. Isn't uh Fort Campbell the home of the Night Stalkers? Yep, the parachute rangers.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

And you go the Night Stalkers, I think, is the helicopter unit that uh uh responds to the high impact military compound.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Some of the biggest, baddest army guys are based out of that base, and they know how to parachute. Um and he seemed to have picked out Fort Campbell area as a potential killing field. He might have missed the spot, but it sure makes sense that he would might have served time there uh as in the military.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

Yeah, I see he even had the uh I don't know if he gave provided the name of the young girl who was killed, or that came from law enforcement, though. One of the Texas people who was working closely with us back then was an investigator in the district attorney's office. Name was Robert Hobbes, and Rob Robert Hobbes became sort of the go-to person on what else Lockhart may have done in these uh cross-country travels. So, yes. Robert, by the way, left the prosecutions at some point. He he did defense work too. I haven't had any content in a long, long time though.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

So well, he actually uh went uh peacefully to his own uh demise, huh? He just went to kick.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yeah, did not go kicking and screaming. The Texas trial, he fought. The Indiana trial, he became more passive, and then by the time he got to Florida, as I said, he had essentially thrown in the towel and surrendered and said, uh, go ahead and kill him.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

Um you weave a very interesting case record, Tom. Uh and I really appreciate you joining us and kind of going over this stuff. This is stuff that a lot of this is the public never knows about. They don't hear the inside baseball of what really goes on in the back room of some of these investigations and on airplanes and in cars and hotel rooms. You bring this case to life, and I appreciate what you do. Uh is there anything else you wanted uh to mention?

SPEAKER_01 39:47

No, the uh the personal level conversations, uh, I always treasured those. I know you did too when you were working these cases like this. You treat people as individuals. You don't have to like them, you don't have to butter them up necessarily, you don't have to kiss their behind, but you talk to them and treat them as an individual, and they'll often respond.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

It's it's a it's a well-kept secret because a lot of people think that there is another way to do it. And actually, as you know, I I've been very successful in just getting people to talk to me and feel comfortable, and you nailed it. It's like it's not uh you don't become adversarial, you listen and you make a connection somehow, you find a way to connect with that person. Good things start happening, you start getting information that you never thought you could get.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yeah, too often law enforcement, I think, in courts and general and lawyers too, treat people as generic commodities. You're just a client, you're just a defendant, you're a suspect. Okay, you don't make a connection if you treat them generically like that. If you start dealing with them on an individual level, you recognize that they are an individual, they respond in kind.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

It works for you. I know you've you've turned uh many of a defendant around uh as a prosecutor, and they just uh I can name almost every case I worked with you where you've you've established a bond with the defendant in some way, not necessarily friendship, but it was like uh communication lines were open and frequently used to most of the disgruntlement of the defense attorney, but it worked. And uh, you know, you always kidded me about having hamburgers with witnesses and and suspects, but it works. Yeah, yeah, you I know you you spoke of the magic of a hamburger. Always has to be a hamburger, and possibly even a beer or or two. You know, that's just that's it's okay. We're both retired. We can kind of lay it all out now.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Yeah, I I re I remember we're just kind of talking now. I remember taking a tour through the prison, uh Indiana State prison when I was a prosecutor. And in the license plate shop, a guy who I convicted of murder by name uh Garland Hicks, uh name was Harpo, stopped me. There were no guards on the floor. He stopped me, we talked, and the rest of the tour went on, and it's just me and Harpo there talking on the prison floor. And he was not threatening, he was not giving me grief, he was arguing his case, but he appreciated the FaceTime, you know, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

So yeah. Well, you always had that you worked your magic on people, and uh you're you're a master at it. I think the county is going to be uh you're gonna be sorely missed over there, I can tell you that. Well, I'm gonna wrap this up anyway, and uh thanks so much again. We'll be in touch. Who knows what the future brings with these podcasts? It's kind of fun with you. Anyway, thank you. I will be talking with you, and uh I hope everybody here enjoyed it. And by the way, uh visit my uh website if you can. That's uh badgewellworn.com. We're gonna put all these podcasts, the new ones on their website, and hopefully you get a chance to enjoy some of Tom's earlier work and some other stuff we've done. In any case, we'll be talking to you. Okay, Tommy. Thanks.

unknown 43:16

Okay.