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Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
2024: Ranked #1 Law Podcast
Host: Tyler Owen and Clint McNear discussing topics, issues, and stories within the law enforcement community. TMPA is the voice of Texas Law Enforcement, focused on protecting those who serve. Since 1950, we have been defending the rights and interests of Texas Peace Officers by providing the best legal assistance in the country, effective lobbying at state and local levels, affordable training, and exemplary member support. As the largest law enforcement association in Texas, TMPA is proud to represent 33,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers.
Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
#106- "Bear's Necessities" with Melania Doe
In this jaw-dropping episode, host Clint McNear pulls back the curtain on one of the wildest cases of his career as a Detective with the Garland Police Department. It starts with an unsolved homicide — the brutal murder of Melania Doe’s grandmother, a tragic consequence of her father’s dark entanglements with the criminal underworld.
Her father, known on the streets as Bear, wasn’t just any criminal. He was a federal informant, deep undercover inside dangerous networks, including infiltrating the notorious Outlaws motorcycle club. But the twists don’t stop there. Bear's story stretches back to one of the most bizarre crimes in American history: the infamous 1977 theft of Elvis Presley’s body from Forest Hill Cemetery — a political stunt tied to cemetery ordinances and outlaw retaliation.
What starts as a homicide investigation unravels into a tangled web of federal operations, biker gangs, and a plot straight out of a Hollywood script. Trust us — this is an episode you do not want to miss.
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
Well, by the time the boys made it back to the back bedroom, I heard three kicks and the door was open. I was standing up, two gentlemen come in the house and when she saw them she walked towards them and she put her hands up and she said, oh shit. And the moment she said oh shit, they fired and it shot her in her hand, went into her cheek, blew the side of her face off and she landed on the ground.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. Viewers, watchers, listeners. I'm off and she landed on the ground. Welcome back viewers, watchers, listeners. I'm your host. Tyler owen got uh, got my co-host today. What's going on, man? What's up? How was the drive down in the the twister there?
Speaker 3:was a storm that came through that knocked signs out on glenn heights, so I got to do a tactical pause and glenn heights for 40 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yes, I watched a podcast while I sat in the middle did you identify any yard uh yard barns, like in the movie Twister where you're fixing to strap yourself to the water pipe? No, but it was interesting seeing the sign for Buc-ee's.
Speaker 3:It was on that side of the highway now and laying in the median rather than where it was supposed to be. You didn't drive through it like the Red.
Speaker 2:Dodge in the movie. No, it was sporty coming down this morning.
Speaker 3:You didn't pass any dorothy's, did you with?
Speaker 2:the little little tornado twister. No, I've seen toto, that's cool. Well, I'm glad you made it down safely in your three-quarter ton. I'm just glad it cranked this morning. I apparently I've got some maintenance. I gotta touch up on mine. Mine was, it was hesitant about starting this morning. What's going on?
Speaker 3:we want to give some updates real quick before we dive off into yeah, we got uh fop state board meeting coming up april 11 through 13, 11 and 12 in wichita falls. Legislative session is in right now. What resort is that at? Uh, that is, at delta by marriott in wichita falls?
Speaker 2:brand new hotel it really freaking nice.
Speaker 3:Be a good time. T-palm coming up 27th, 27th of April here in Austin this year on Saturday.
Speaker 2:Yep, and if you're in town for the Peace Office Memorial, the bike ride is going to be. You got to stick around. For the bike ride too. It's going to be on Sunday. They couldn't get the plan changed due to Governor Governor Abbott pushing the peace office memorial there on Saturday. So the bike ride is going to continue to come in on Sunday. So it'll be. Man, if you've never been, I would highly, highly, highly recommend you going. All good, no one hood in the country.
Speaker 3:Man everything's good.
Speaker 2:Everything is going good. I haven't been attacked by any deers. We're in the yeah. No, it's been good. Deer repellent I spray on masculine scented buck repellent. They sell buck repellent at the local gas station, so I spray it all over myself and smell his deer stalking as he's jogging through the hill country.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's pretty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's complicated. He says he doesn't like it, but I'm not sure there's nothing wrong with feeling wanted, nothing at all.
Speaker 3:So man who we got on today, we have on someone that I've been excited to get on. It's been a work in progress trying to get her here. She does not live in this state um that I actually met through work, uh, when I was still um detected before retiring at Garland. We're going to dive into it today. She said she's never told her story and we have Ms Melania on Welcome.
Speaker 2:It's a great story, honestly, and thank you for driving all the way down.
Speaker 1:Oh, of course.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not a bad drive.
Speaker 2:Not a bad drive yeah.
Speaker 1:I like it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's important that we probably start off really, the event that you got involved with that happened several years ago and then we're going to dive off into this absolute crazy interesting story that you're now sitting with us and you are who you are today for it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe we start with that, or I'll just tell how we cross paths, paths yeah, you dive into that, and then maybe we can backtrack and start from the beginning once we tell everybody a foundation okay, is that good sounds good so I was working capers in garland.
Speaker 3:Um, we had a pause or something came up at some point and, um, we started trying to focus, refocus, on some cold cases. My, my partner, gary Sweet, got assigned one. Um, the event happened in Garland. Everybody involved was from Memphis, just about everybody involved. They either were previously from Memphis or currently all involved in Memphis. It had occurred 17 years prior. Um, and uh, multiple family members had been shot. Um, and it was a whole chain of events and kind of failures and mistakes that led to it. Um, and Gary Sweet and I worked on it for, or I assisted him, really trying to stay out of his way and do whatever I could do to support him. But it it was multiple trips to Memphis trying to interview, like ex-wives and ex-girlfriends of suspects to see if they would tell a scoop, and met Melania during the course of that and learned that she was one of the children that was shot that day.
Speaker 3:The focus of the hit team that was there was her dad. He just happened to not be there when they showed up and met Melania through that.
Speaker 2:That's how we met. Give us kind of a breakdown of just a real quick synopsis of the case that you got the overview of basically suspects entered.
Speaker 3:So my understanding on the police side and I'll let her dive in to what I'm missing or not from the police side. So there was a drug King pin in Memphis and I'm trying to recall his name, but um, he ended up in forest city federal penitentiary in forest city, arkansas. Um federal penitentiary in Forest City, arkansas, who was making millions of dollars a month there as a drug kingpin. He had sent his girlfriend to Houston to pick up a load of dope. She got popped and Melania's dad was asked by the drug kingpin to go bond her out of jail. He gave what do you want to call your dad in this?
Speaker 1:bear, bear.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what everybody called him, yeah so the, the drug kingpin, and you remember his name? By chance, it was ronnie hawk, was it ronnie?
Speaker 1:yeah, I remember his name being ronnie. I don't remember his name I can't remember.
Speaker 3:I can't remember his last name. Ronnie was a drug kingpin. He gave bear. I can't remember his last name. Ronnie was a drug kingpin. He gave Bear $20,000 or $30,000 cash.
Speaker 1:I want to say it was about $20,000.
Speaker 3:About $20,000 cash to go get the drug kingpins Ronnie's girlfriend out of jail in Houston to bond her out. Bear took the $20,000, made it to Garland or made it to about Wichita Falls and decided I got $20,000 cash in my pocket, nobody's going to care about a drug mule. Bear loaded up his family, moved to Garland, rented a house in Garland and pocketed $20,000. Ronnie reached out, started reaching out where's my money and where's my girlfriend? They weren't taking, bear wasn't taking his call and Ronnie gave it some time and sent four people to garland, did some intel work and sent four people to garland to to handle business. Bear had just left to return his u-haul truck and when they knocked on the door, Melania's grandmother, bear's mother, answered the door and was immediately murdered. And then they ran through the house shooting the other kids Four of you home at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was four of us total in the house Three of the four shot. All four of them were shot, only one was murdered, only one died.
Speaker 3:Okay, killed Malani's grandmother and they shot all the kids. All the kids survived somehow. Grandmother unfortunately did not. The focus of their hit bear wasn't there when it occurred. 17 years went by. Detectives worked on it Fresh cases people don't talk, and so sometimes on cold cases, you have some opportunities and that's how we've crossed paths and it's a crazy tale.
Speaker 3:Bear, her father. There are stories that I was convinced wasn't true and every time he would end up proving it. He called me little brother, he found out I was a Marine and so he would always kind proving. He called me little brother, he found out I was a marine and so he would always kind of jack with me. He was a marine, um, and so he always would share stuff with me, shared with me once about flying weapons to the sand and eastens and through the cia, and I guess he could read on my face that I called bullshit on it and he brought a photo album of him flying weapons to Central America and flying cocaine back landing in Mena, arkansas for Barry Seal. He showed me photo albums, all of that, and I was like, okay, and it was just story after story infiltrating the Mongols or the outlaws, just story after story after story.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, as a child of somebody who's involved with that type of lifestyle, you probably had a good, and how old were you whenever that all took place?
Speaker 1:in Garland. When the shooting happened, I was 12.
Speaker 2:So you were very well of age to know dad's kind of probably not.
Speaker 1:Oh, I knew he's not the banker right. He's not the teacher. Yeah, I learned that.
Speaker 2:But I think this, this, this event, essentially unfolded kind of what you to interpret as his lifestyle and who he was, who your father really was.
Speaker 1:I learned my dad's lifestyle about two years prior to that Um hiding underneath a bed holding pistol, so nobody got me.
Speaker 3:so 10 years old hiding under a bed with a gun yeah, like.
Speaker 1:I've been shooting since I was about seven. So my dad made sure that all of us could shoot a gun, just because of his lifestyle that he chose to have and his company that he chose to have, and the lifestyle that he chose to have you're the oldest sibling right I'm the middle child, middle Middle I was thinking middle Okay.
Speaker 2:So I think maybe it's important we start off something we said off camera of kind of how your dad got involved with this lifestyle, and being a bondsman is very important to that story. So I think it'd be a good starting point to kind of how this all began.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:Start with where you were born at.
Speaker 1:I was born in Memphis, tennessee Baptist Hospital and they have five children. I'm the middle of five, as far as it goes. How long have I known that my dad's been up to no good? I guess I figured that out when I was about six years old. Right before we moved out of Memphis. The feds came and kicked our house down, like kicked our doors down, came inside and my grandmother. She knew it was coming, so my grandmother was rubbing holy water on all of our foreheads, just to make sure that we were all good to the Lord in case something happened.
Speaker 1:Fbi, dea, do you know? I believe it was the FBI that came in that night. I know it was the city of Memphis. I believe it was the FBI that came in that night. I know it was the city of Memphis and I know it was the FBI. My dad was up in the attic. He had climbed out the little window and was hiding on the roof until they got done, looking for whatever. They were looking for him and guns.
Speaker 3:But there was nothing in the house.
Speaker 1:He's hard to hide he is hard to hide, he's huge, was he 6'4", 6'5". I believe 6'4", and towards the end he was a little bit taller. But as you get older you shrink a little bit.
Speaker 3:He's a large, large man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they called him Bear for a reason, but yeah, so he was up on the roof and cops left and he comes back down and tells us what he did. And he had stolen a U-Haul. That's what they were after him for. He had stolen a U-Haul and put it out in the woods and was slowly taking all the antiques out of it and getting rid of them, and they were looking for him for that. Well, he did something and was able to get away with it for a moment and then, right before I turned eight, they came and arrested him out of the house and I didn't see my dad for probably two years that was still in memphis still in memphis.
Speaker 1:He was at the penal farm.
Speaker 1:We got to see him every great once in a while, but he ended up doing some kind of um, I don't even know infraction and jail something to where they moved him out to the penal farm and they put him in his own little housing, basically had a little cabin there where he was taking care of the grounds and he had a pedophile that was in the housing with him.
Speaker 1:It was him and one other man I don't remember this man's name, but I remember going over there and all five of us sitting there and this little man was obsessed with me. He always wanted to pick me up and always wanted to put me on his shoulders and he just I was young, I was like seven, uh, maybe eight, and um, I remember I was on this man's shoulders and my dad came behind me and grabbed me off of his shoulders and put me on his shoulders and punched the guy straight in the face because the guy my dad could see his hands were getting a little bit too close yeah so um, shortly after that dad got out for our listeners penal farm in tennessee, yeah, is the equivalent of like our county jails.
Speaker 3:They call their large county jail facilities. They're the penal farm and they'll have farms and huge housing. It's kind of like in louisiana, louisiana, where it's a huge sprawling estate but they call it their penal farm rather than county lockup.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he had quite a bit of land that he was accessible to and he could kind of disappear at weird times, which was bizarre. Thinking what he was in, You'd think he'd be a little bit more secured. But yeah, that's probably the first time I figured out that my dad was on some crazy stuff. You know, growing up we always just got told that my dad had contracts for the federal government, that he did contracts. He was an independent contractor. Basically it wasn't until years later that I found out what he really was.
Speaker 2:Right, so at that point was he a part. When did he get involved with the motorcycle club?
Speaker 1:That was after shortly after.
Speaker 2:Okay, so he's in jail. You're seven, he gets out.
Speaker 1:He gets out. We moved to Bartlett and we bought a house in Bartlett and that's when he got involved with the outlaws and that's because my mom had a job working for Barron Vale Bonds, for Blue Barron and his wife Joyce Barron.
Speaker 1:Huge bonding company in wife Joyce Baron and my dad had a motorcycle that our dog's bull and dozer had eaten the seats off of, and he ended up trading that to the clubhouse. The main president of the Outlaws in to get him in to the outlaws. That's, that's the price he paid, basically. Um, the only reason they let him in is because they knew that he worked for a Belbon company and that he could get them out of jail at a moment's notice. And he did. He would. It didn't matter what time it was, he would go, get you out, he drive you wherever the hell you needed to go. It didn't matter. Dad was one of those people that you just you call him if you got a problem, and it will be over shortly.
Speaker 3:Got you, that's one thing that struck me not saying good or bad, and it wasn't always for good causes, but your dad was a fixer, oh, he was definitely a fixer and he's portrayed that in a lot of his children.
Speaker 1:I for one, I mythics or two, but I don't take it like that. But I will very empathetic and I will do just about anything from anybody, and I get that from my dad.
Speaker 2:So he joins this motorcycle club and you get combat, You're, you're. You're now the child of a motorcycle patch wearing a member. Yeah, Talk about the environment of the brotherhood, the sense of security that you probably had of your uncles, that you probably you know I wouldn't necessarily say that I had a lot of the security on it.
Speaker 1:I didn't really get to meet these people very much. They did come over to our house to like do barbecues and family functions and stuff like that. But you have to keep in mind I'm the weird one of the group. I would go hide in my room and I would listen to everybody's conversations. I would stay away from arm's reach because that's the rule you learn growing up you don't stay within arm's reach of my father. If he can reach you, he's going to hit you, he's going to get you, so you stay away from him. Well, I was just the quiet one that listened to everything. So, unfortunately unfortunately I knew it was coming 95% of the time.
Speaker 2:I knew when shit was about to hit the fan what's interesting is that majority of the motorcycle club members out there all they're looking for is a sense of brotherhood that lost in the military and it sounds exactly like what Bear had going on. He found the brotherhood back with this motorcycle club, but talk about, he had the sense of brotherhood with the outlaws and at some point during some runs there was a situation where it he was.
Speaker 2:He was a fork in the road and he had a decision to make and talk about how that weighed in on his decision to to get out of it.
Speaker 1:I think that had a lot to do with my mother. I don't think it had to do with my dad. My dad is a sociopath, if you know what a sociopath is. They have no empathy. They don't care, they just do not care. My mom has an overflowing amount of empathy.
Speaker 3:Your mom's an angel.
Speaker 1:For marrying that absolutely. But what had happened is my mom and my dad had gotten I guess my dad had gotten a contract and my mom got roped into it. My dad talked him into going with her and the project was that they were going down to Mexico and pulling babies that had been murdered and that were cut open and they would stuff them full of cocaine or drugs or whatever and stitch them back up and put them in clothes and put them in a car seat and drive them back over the border and they would just play like they were sleeping children. So my mom is the one that said I'm done, you've got to figure something else out, we've got to roll on these people. And from my understanding, that's what happened.
Speaker 1:Well, when it started coming down to, they were about to yank them, yank the outlaws. The outlaws made a hit on my sister. They were going to go kidnap her from school. A hit on my sister. They were going to go kidnap her from school. And we got a call my dad did from I believe it was IC Smith. If it wasn't IC Smith, it was somebody in that realm and told him hey, we've got your daughter and we're coming to get the rest of your family. So that happened about seven o'clock at night. It was dark outside. I remember playing with my friends and coming in the house and you have maybe an hour to get your shit together before they throw you in an all blacked out vehicle that you can't see out of. You don't know where you're going, you have no idea. All you know is the feds have you now and that your parents have done some fucked up stuff and now you get to see the other side of that was it?
Speaker 2:was it weird? Because you're I mean obviously your father had a lifestyle that probably wasn't. Law enforcement followed I mean it wasn't. It wasn't within the realms of an apple right, and so was it strange for you, at that moment, of sitting with somebody who I wouldn't consider the fbi an enemy of your father, but they certainly weren't friends at the time.
Speaker 1:I didn't like them at all but was it?
Speaker 2:was it strange, sitting in the car and all of a sudden being. You know now, now they're friendly and now they're trying to. You know, they weren't friendly, they weren't friendly they were.
Speaker 1:They were not friendly with my mom, my dad, none of us. There wasn't hardly any words said at all, and when it was said, it was very pointed and very spiky. None of us kids spoke at all. We weren't allowed to.
Speaker 3:To clarify for our listeners. They came and snatched y'all up to go.
Speaker 1:To the witness protection program Witness protection. To the Witness Protection Program Witness Protection.
Speaker 3:Yes, so they got us out of Bartlett and pulled up in a van that had drapes over the windows so you couldn't see out of it. So, literally, y'all get notified. You have an hour to scoop whatever you can and your whole family's uprooted.
Speaker 1:right then we didn't take furniture. We had enough to throw in. Each of us had a backpack and I had a purse, like the girls had purses. That's it.
Speaker 3:How old were you at this time?
Speaker 1:Eight Wow gosh.
Speaker 2:Well, talk about the transition period from being a child growing up around what you consider normal, what you grew up in as normal, and then being transitioned to WITSAC. Talk about the lifestyle of that process and talk about the transition period of it's, because it's almost, it's very similar to foster care and it's very similar to to those kinds.
Speaker 3:So talk about that, that, that environment, so our listener can kind of understand was it explained to you as an eight-year-old where you were headed or what, what this was or who the strangers van you were right now they don't tell you any of that.
Speaker 1:You just taught to just if you see a badge, you respect that badge and you go with that badge you know, and thankfully my parents were there, so that made it a little bit easier to just pull a suit, you know. But we were taught early on we don't question, never question. You just do what you're the hell you're told and that's it. None of us really questioned anything. We knew that dad said do what the hell he needed us to do, and we did it. So from there they picked us up and a couple of flights, a couple of hotel rooms later, we ended up underneath the pentagon. So that's where they keep the witness protection people is underneath there until they figure out what the hell to do with you guys. Wow, wow. So that's where we were.
Speaker 1:When you look at the Pentagon, there is a little wall. If you go up and you look over that wall, you're going to see a whole bunch of courtyards. Each of those courtyards are attached to a witness protection relocation apartment, every single one of them. So we were in there for oh shoot, we were in there for probably three months where you don't get to see shit. You literally just walk out and look up and all you get to see is sky, because there's a concrete wall as tall as the world, basically no homeschool.
Speaker 3:Or is there anybody there trying to help you?
Speaker 1:we've been pulled out of school so many times like, and the government does not care about that. That is. The most unfortunate part of it is that you can't. You can only, you can only bullshit your way through so much you know. So, getting into school and realizing that here I am in the seventh, eighth, ninth grade and I don't know what the hell's going on because I've not been in school. So, trying to play hurry up and catch up, I'm the only one that did it. My older sister and my older brother said I'm done, I'm not doing this shit anymore. Aaron's a lot like my dad, so he says scoot, scoot, I'm out. Modesta, she just got tired of being picked on and bullied. I think, um, modesta, just she just got tired of being picked on and bullied. I think so, um. So it's been an interesting one to say the least, so you're stuck at the pentagon you're stuck at the pentagon, you don't really know what's going to happen next.
Speaker 1:from there, they moved us to four or five different places, including salt lake city. Uh, we, god darn. Uh, we went to mississippi for a little bit. They, they literally just pick you up and move you all around, including Salt Lake City. God darn, we went to Mississippi for a little bit. They literally just pick you up and move you all around until they can figure out where they're going to put you. So they thought we were going to be okay in Salt Lake City, and we were there for about two months and then they said we didn't realize there's a huge biker meetup here, so we're going to move you to. They moved us to Spokane Washington. It was cold as fuck there, by the way. So when they moved us to Spokane Washington, we tried our very best, but we are very Southern and that just did not mend.
Speaker 1:Well, well, my dad ended up going to work for Mercer Trucking Company and he got in a really bad accident where he was coming up the stairs and the people that worked in the office thought it would be really funny to spray off the staircase with the water hose and it froze instantly, knowing that my dad was about 20 minutes out. They waited for him to come and they got it all on video. My dad broke his back in like two or three places and ended up having to have back surgery. And he didn't want to have it in Washington because they were going to put a pole in his back and he didn't want to have a rod. So my mom searched around and they found a place in Texas, which is how we ended up in Texas to do the back surgery on him.
Speaker 1:Well, the feds didn't like the fact that my dad said fuck y'all, we're out. We picked up with no warning. We did not tell the feds that we were leaving, we just got up and left. So we got up and we moved to Texas, to Garland no, to Richardson and then we moved to Garland. So Richardson was a lot of. You're not allowed to go outside. If you go outside, you're to stay on the front porch. That's pretty much the way that it was growing up. We did not go outside of view. You just you weren't allowed to.
Speaker 2:But you basically told the FBI deuces or the witness protection deuces were out.
Speaker 1:Deuce were out and Dad took every bit of money that we had and moved us on down to Richardson.
Speaker 3:It's kind of how Barry did everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:When he decided he's going to do something.
Speaker 1:When it's time to go. It's time to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So Richardson, Texas, about how old are you Ten and a half, maybe 11. What year is that? Ninety-one? So what is the time frame? Like the Sandinistas, that's the Iran-Contra affair. Is that 80s?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was more than what I know. I don't know that part of it.
Speaker 3:Just probably periods of time when he wasn't around, he was gone a lot. I guess I knew he was that part of it, just probably periods of time when he wasn't around, he was gone a lot I guess I knew he was gone a lot.
Speaker 1:He was gone for two or three months at a time, either on his motorcycle or just being gone. That's my dad's MO. He would just disappear for months at a time and be doing his contracts or sleeping with other women, whatever he wanted to do, whatever felt good to his soul.
Speaker 3:I guess the MENA and all of that flying to central America, stuff you learned just later in life as an adult.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Same with stealing Elvis.
Speaker 1:No, I knew about the stealing Elvis thing. My dad was very proud of that one.
Speaker 3:You remember that as a kid, or do you remember I was?
Speaker 1:not born yet, but I remember seeing we used to have pictures of the newspaper clippings and stuff all around our house and in our photo albums and stuff.
Speaker 3:So yeah, you want to share what you know on that one.
Speaker 1:So what I know about the Elvis thing is that Vernon Presley and my grandfather used to be pretty good friends. We used to race Shetland ponies and Tennessee walking horses, and Vernon bought a Shetland pony for Elvis.
Speaker 1:We have a picture of it somewhere my mom has it where Elvis is sitting on it. Well, whenever Elvis passed, vernon reached out and asked if we could make a terroristic threat on his body, basically, and my dad could, and that's the only way that they would allow Elvis to be buried at Graceland. So my dad did. He took my mom's car, he went and hired two crackheads off the street, basically went and dug his body up, called the cops on himself, basically, and the people that were the drug dealers are the ones that caught the charges on it. My dad walked away free. I'm sure he did a couple of other little for him.
Speaker 3:It's another story. Bear was telling me he stole Elsa's body and I'm like, yeah, sure you did.
Speaker 1:He really did do it.
Speaker 3:We were in Memphis and your dad took me to the parking lot where he was summoned. There's a back gate out of Graceland. And Bear said that he got a phone call by one of his network that said you need to be on this parking lot. Well, outside the back gate of Graceland is a strip center and he said I get summoned to go meet. He said I show up, I'm figuring there's some work to do. And he said the next thing I know, out the back gate of Graceland comes a car. It pulls up and out-vops.
Speaker 3:Vernon and Bear told me, because I knew what time it was right then I knew what was up. So the city of Memphis, the city council, would not provide a waiver to the Presley family to keep Elvis from being buried at Forest Hill. I believe it's Forest Hill. Yeah, it's Forest Hill. Forest Hill is a public cemetery. Vernon said as long as he's in a public cemetery wide open to the public, they're going to desecrate his grave, they're going to steal his headstone and the city council would not give a waiver. So Vernon told Bear steal his body, It'll make the city council realize that I was right. And Bear said I knew what time it was as soon as I saw vernon could have a car. So he said I found two dudes that were willing to do stupid shit for quaaludes. Yeah, and we stole elvis's body, he goes. The only part of the plan I didn't intend on is getting our car shot up yep, my mom was so mad, she loved that car, station wagon, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:oh?
Speaker 3:he's like the plane was perfect until the police started shooting our car up yeah um said he first tried to steal elvis out of the mortuary. He backed, stole the hearst and backed it up to the doors and he was rolling elvis down the hall. There was supposed to be nobody there and all of a sudden there was security guards. Everybody turned out that they were there, so he canceled and found a couple of Quaalude heads.
Speaker 3:And there's articles about it. Another story where I'm like there's no freaking way, you're full of crap. Absolutely true, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:Absolutely true. If he can't do it, he'll find somebody to do it.
Speaker 3:And it's fascinating your dad's. He had a and I'm not promoting what he did and he lived on the wrong side of the law a lot but it's crazy the network that your dad had. No, the background with the Vernon family and I know there's some other historical ties your family has to some historical events. And um was in Memphis at one point talking to an old old Memphis homicide detective Kind of looked like Sammy Davis Jr and your dad was telling me that he had to jump out of a two-story window one time getting shot at. I'm talking to this little Sammy Davis Jr Memphis detective and he goes. Yeah, I know who Bear is. He walked up, said, did you say Bear? And I said, yeah, he goes. Yeah, I shot at his ass. He dove out a window. I'm like that's the exact freaking story that bear just told me.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. He was not scared. He wasn't scared, that's for sure.
Speaker 3:So so Outlaws you guys go in Witsack, you end up in Richardson and you're about 10 then.
Speaker 1:Right about 11. We moved out of Richardson. We just started to get a bunch of really weird traffic around the house like people that were showing up and we didn't know who they were. I remember we moved shortly after this one incident had happened. I was home, I was sick and I had terrible. I believe I had pneumonia or something.
Speaker 1:I was home for like almost a month straight from school and I was sitting in the living room and this man just kept beating on the door and beating on the door and then he just kept looking through the windows Like he went from one side of the house the other side of the house and I was terrified home by myself.
Speaker 1:So I called dad and I was like dad, get home, like I don't know who this man is. And the man had on a black hat that had like the Navy and roll across the roof of it. I remember this still to this day and dad ended up finding who he was, cause he came back like maybe an hour later and dad beat the tarnations out of this dude and he was literally just a solicitor. He was just a solicitor. He just dad's like well, if you wanted nothing, why were you staring in my windows like that Beat the tarnations out of him. So from there he didn't think that he didn't really like the neighborhood anymore, so he moved us on out to garland and where was he working at the time?
Speaker 2:so I'm sure it wasn't, I mean it was bell bonds okay mom was working bell bonds.
Speaker 1:My dad would just go do little odds and end stuff whenever she needed him to do certain things, or if he had to go catch somebody or go get somebody off of a bond or whatever, he'd go do that for her so he was essentially the enforcer of the bail bonds on that aspect and that's how.
Speaker 3:That's how I got work yeah what age were you when, um, like deputy tally, all of that went on in the chronology of all this man?
Speaker 1:um, tally's a name I haven't heard in a very long time, and I do not honestly remember how old I was whenever Tally came into the situation. I don't know.
Speaker 3:So there was one point where a Shelby County deputy or detective was doing was not on the right side of the wall. Yeah, they were interacting for a while and I guess when one got caught it became a duel of who was going to pinch who first.
Speaker 1:That happened quite a lot, though, with different detectives and different attorneys and different people that my dad would run with. He'd get you before you got him. He'd even do it to his family members. He got my uncle, which was so sad, but if he wanted you, bad enough, he'd get you. Do you want to expand on that? Or? Well, my uncle is a fucking phenomenal person. He's been in the air force his whole life. He literally is retired from it, and my dad found out some. When you're in the Air Force, you have certain stuff in front of you and some of it can come up missing. Well, apparently my uncle had taken some things that weren't his and to be an asshole because my mom knew that my uncle would go save her if something happened my dad tried to cut that lifeline off for my mom, so he rolled on my mom's brother, basically, and almost got his entire pension taken away from him, his retirement and everything so jesus, well, in the incident you're talking about, the shelby county thing they were.
Speaker 2:There were some, some thefts, some pretty significant crimes that were happening, and then they became good friends and he, he rolled on the Shelby County deputy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think Tally had been a narcotic detective and they ended up basically knocking off dope houses and stash houses.
Speaker 1:Which happened quite a bit when we were in Bauxite. My dad came home where my brother was with him and they had went and knocked off a house and they had both stepped through a glass coffee table, I guess, trying to shoot at the person. The person had ran and dad just went charging and they came home with cut-up legs. It's one thing to see your father in that kind of situation, but it's a whole other thing whenever he's getting your middle brother involved, you know, and your brother ends up being exactly like him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I it. I never knew if he was incredibly brave, incredibly stupid, but either way he had some large huevos cause. He would tell me that he would take a pistol grip sawed off shotgun. Go to the biggest crack house in memphis, kick the front door in, rack the shotgun and ask them do you believe in the here and after? Well here I am.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm after wow and, uh, you know, it's one thing for SWAT to go through a front door with shields and body armor and rifles and stack deep with the team behind you, but to kick a door in solo with a shotgun and not knowing what's behind there and it was like it was always something Bigger than life.
Speaker 2:But always something Well talk about. So you guys are in Garland. Y'all moved to Garland At some point. Some connections were made back with this kingpin right back in Memphis.
Speaker 1:So the situation that I don't even think Clint's aware of is that these people had been to our house, they had sat in the floor with us and, you know, talked to us Like the one night right before it happened.
Speaker 3:Ronnie the kingpin or the shooters.
Speaker 1:The shooters Wow.
Speaker 3:I did not know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the shooters had come over to our house to, I think, to finish paying on the debt that was owed, and dad made us all go to our room. We all shared a room. All five of us children shared one big, huge bedroom. Well, the kids were getting to be a little too much, so I walked out in the hallway and they didn't know I was there. So I got to hear a lot of the conversation that was going on about what was about to transpire, and it was exactly that he was about to get one of their girlfriends out of jail. Well, that the night they left, when they left that night, my dad threw the $20,000 in the floor and we all played in it.
Speaker 3:Okay, Uh, part of the reason I don't know all this is when we went to trial, both of her, her and I were witnesses. So with the, with the rule invoked neither one of us are in the right provoked. Neither one of us are in the room, so this is stuff I don't this is.
Speaker 1:She may not know some of the stuff we testified to. Yeah, I don't. I like the Billy Talley thing. I've not heard his name in a very long time, but anyway, we played in the money and almost instantly we were gone and we weren't moving. We were just gone. He picked us up and he took us to Six Flags over Texas. We had a really good time. We went to Wet and Wild, which is also in Texas.
Speaker 2:And this was all happening in Garland, mm-hmm Okay.
Speaker 1:And then from there we came on back home because Dad had found us a place to live. I didn't know that while we were in Six Flags and Wet and Wild having a good old time, him and my mom were trying to find us another place to move to quickly. So the night that we got home, all of us kids are in the bedroom because we've just figured out what's going on. Dad's told us hey, we're moving really quickly, get your shit together. So we had about three days to get the house picked up. Well, that night Joyce Barron calls. There's a voicemail from Miss Barron talking about how she can't believe that dad took the money and split and that these people are going to kill her and her family if dad doesn't give the money back, and that it progressed on from there.
Speaker 2:And the reason you know that a voicemail exists is because this is the old school time where voicemails were, you would call a phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's an answering machine. There's an answering machine. Yeah, they play them back.
Speaker 2:Well, this new generation has no idea what the hell those are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have no idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, and the thing was is my parents did not know I was there. They had no idea I was there. I was standing right outside their bedroom window, or their bedroom door, as they're listening to these voicemails, the rest of my siblings were in their rooms with the door shut. And Joyce Barron's, like the godmother of we called her grandma, my dad called her mama.
Speaker 3:And of the bond. Yes, blue Bell Bonds and after Blue died, she took it over.
Speaker 1:Blue was her husband, so it was Joyce and Janet. They were sisters and joyce is the one that pulled the trigger. Joyce is the one that said y'all go get him, I want my fucking money back. If I ain't getting money, I want blood. That's how that happened. So I don't know why miss joyce never got put in jail, but she definitely deserves to be put in jail. I've heard she's not doing so great these days, so I didn't know.
Speaker 3:I thought ronnie the drug king pin ordered that hit no, that was joyce.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, that was joyce, because she just didn't like the way that my dad was not playing for her anymore. So dad had known joyce for a long time, a very long time, before this shit happened so the the voicemails are being played.
Speaker 2:You're probably there with your mouth jaw, your jaw dropped on what's going on. How many days after that?
Speaker 3:Two.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Two days after.
Speaker 2:Walk us through those two days.
Speaker 1:So it was a lot of tension, it was a lot of anxiety in the house, it was a lot of hey kids be aware let's pay attention.
Speaker 3:How old are you at this time?
Speaker 1:I'm 12. So we get the U-Haul on the third day. Dad has found a place to go. Our house is already packed up. We're slowly getting the shit in the U-Haul. Well, we're out in the backyard, or out in the back. We have a what do you me call that a little road that goes behind your houses. Okay, so there's an alley and me and my two baby brothers are playing in the alley and I just so happen to look down the alley and here's a car full of black men just sitting at the end of the alley really paying attention to what we were doing, like really paying attention to what we were doing. I lost eye contact with them for a minute and then I looked back and I was like no, they're still looking, so something's up.
Speaker 1:So I went in the house, I told my dad. I was like, hey, we've got company and not the good feeling kind of company, you know. He said okay, so he went out back and when he went out back, they hauled ass and left, and so he thought that we were going to have enough time to be okay, were going to have enough time to be okay. So he gets Modesta, Aaron, my mom and himself in the U hall and they go to take it to the house that we had just rented and there was not much left in our house. There was a little bit of dishes, there was some guns in the closet and there was a little bit of other stuff nothing real big, but just small stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, I knew something was about to go down because right before my dad left, he, me and my dad were super close. They called him bear, they called me poo bear. He said poo, you're in charge. He said baby, if anything happens, he said anything at all, call 911. He's like call 911, baby, Just call 911. And I remember looking at him and I was like what do you mean? Like what are you trying to tell me? That you're not fucking telling me right now, Because my dad would tell me things with his eyes and he taught me how to G-talk so that he could tell me things whenever people weren't paying attention, because people can't, they don't understand that. So I asked him, I said what are you trying to tell me? And he was like I'm just telling you 911, baby. And I said okay, so shall it be.
Speaker 1:He pointed out where the guns were in the house so that I would know if I could get to them where the hell they were. And then he left and we're playing on the floor with our hamsters. We had two little hamsters and some balls and my grandmother is in the kitchen wrapping dishes. I'm sitting here playing with the little ball. Well, we had decided that we wanted to play with the hamster without it being in the ball, so we had opened up the little thing and we were playing with the hamster and the hamster got lost. So the boys were really scared because my dad was really mean. And so they go back in the back room to try to find me a clothes hanger so I could try to stick the clothes hanger underneath the fireplace to try to scare the hamster out the other side of the fireplace.
Speaker 1:Well, um, by the time the boys made it back to the back bedroom, I heard three kicks and the door was open. Uh, I was standing up. Uh, two gentlemen come in the house. Um, you hear my grandmother say oh shit, my grandmother did not answer the door. My grandmother was. I was standing up. Two gentlemen come in the house. You hear my grandmother say oh shit, my grandmother did not answer the door.
Speaker 1:My grandmother was standing in the kitchen. So when she saw him, she walked towards them and she put her hands up and she said, oh shit. And the moment she said oh shit, they fired and it shot her in her hand, went into her cheek, blew the side of her face off. She landed on the ground. A second shooter shot me in the shoulder. Um, I turned sideways because my dad always told me if somebody pulled a gun on you, turn sideways. It gives them less of a target to hit. So I did exactly like he said and it's the only reason I'm fucking here. I believe I sat down, I played dead. I watched them go down the hallway. I watched, watched them go into my brother's bedroom and open fire. I believe I heard six or seven shots. I'm not even sure how many times they shot. I just remember thinking to myself I'm not going to have any family left. When they got done shooting, they hooped and hollered their way out the house like they just did something amazing.
Speaker 1:Real tough guys shooting kids super tough um, and I can tell you that when they were going down the hallway, I caught a glimpse of someone standing at the front door, because when they kicked the door in you could somebody was still standing out there. And you just see him really quick, like shoot, like run, like you just see him bolt, so I don't know whoever the hell that was. It was standing outside, but I don't think. And you just see him really quick, like shoot, like run, like you just see him bolt, so I don't know whoever the hell that was that was standing outside, but I don't think they were expecting what had just happened to transpire.
Speaker 1:Two came in. Two came in. One stood at the door for just a moment, just a very brief moment. Well, after they had left, I got up and I shut the front door and I stepped over my grandmother's body and I went and locked the back door because I was scared they were going to come in the back door next. And as I'm laying there, before I even got up, you should have saw a Rottweiler. We had a Rottweiler named Bear. That's a German bred Rottweiler. He was trying to eat his way in the door, like we had a glass door. He was trying to eat his way in the door like we had a glass door. He was trying to eat his way into the door. Poor thing, like he, he wanted them real bad.
Speaker 1:So after I got done with that, locked the front and the back doors best I could go in there and I get my baby brothers and Mark is jumping up and down. It's my youngest. He's jumping up and down. Adam is so white. He is white. He got shot twice in the chest, so white. So I didn't know what to do. I was like all I knew is that we needed to apply pressure. There just needed to be pressure on Adam. So I had Mark lay on top of Adam. I don't know why the bathtub got filled up with water. I don't unless I was just shook and told them to get in there with water in the bathtub. But they literally filled the bathtub up with water. And then I went and got on the phone with 911. I sat right by my grandmother watching her bleed out and snore while I'm talking to 911 and telling them that the house had just been shot up. So after that happened, they came and got us out of the house. We stayed in the hospital for quite a while.
Speaker 2:At what point did your dad come back to the house?
Speaker 1:We did not see my dad or my mom for probably I would say at least like five or six hours after that, and in fact my dad did not even get to get to me first. My dad was too pointed in to get to my mother because my mom was done, she was so done, she wanted out so bad at this point because she knew she was like Ronnie what the fuck did you just do? And so I remember looking as they're cutting the scar tissue off my back because it burns, Like when you get shot. They have to cut that where it sees like it messes your skin up. So they have to cut that extra part off to where you can heal properly. And I remember them cutting and I remember feeling like there was water and I'm shaking my head.
Speaker 1:I'm looking and when I'm looking out the door, what I'm seeing is not my parents, like coming in to check on their fucking children to make sure we're okay. It's my dad consoling my mom because my mom was going to leave my dad. That's it Not. Hey, are the kids okay? While I'm sitting here getting that cut out of my body, I get to hear my baby brother screaming in the other room because he's hurt. He's hurt real bad.
Speaker 2:On the next episode of Blue Grid Podcast.
Speaker 3:Grandma passed. Three of the kiddos were home, you and your two baby brothers, Mom, Dad and two older kids were gone. How long were you on the hospital?
Speaker 1:Let's see who got out first. Mark got out first because he was shot in his achilles tendon. Um, then I got out after that, and then adam was the last one to be released because he was he was in icu for a while he was shot.
Speaker 3:He was shot twice in the chest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah but that's, that's my dad's mo. If he could find you, if he could find that you've got some kind of evil in you, he would pull it out.
