Pod Insights Crime Junkie MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Rowena Wilkinson Zapalac About this episode For decades, police said Rowena Wilkinson Zapalac died via suicide by masturbation. But her family always believed there was more to Rowena’s death than met the eye. Could she have been the victim of a serial killer passing through Texas, or could her case be connected to the deaths of two other women in the area?
Transcript 10,638 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Ashley Flowers? Do me a favor. Put all five fingers up. Now, put one down if you have workout saved on Instagram that you haven't gone back to. Put one down if you were gonna go to a workout class this week, but there's just none that the times worked out for. Put one down if you don't like working out at home because you don't know what to do and you need someone to push you. Put two fingers down if you want to stop this game. Babe, we are the same. I don't have a lot of time and honestly, I'm not even someone who likes working out. But Ladder actually changed that. I literally had to waddle into the studio to record this because my butt is so sore. Ladder is quick. I'm not wasting time wandering around or doing reps of something that won't matter. I'm in, I'm out. I have a coach along the way who can help me make 30 minutes with weights feel better than two hours of whatever I was doing before. And it's $1 a day.
0:45 Ashley Flowers? So if price was ever stopping you before, you're officially out of excuses. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking, everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit/crimejunkie and take a quick quiz to find your perfect ladder plan. Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card and $10 off your first month if you join. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And today's story is one that found me about eight months ago. I was combing through our case suggestions and one of them just jumped out.
1:27 Ashley Flowers? It was from a woman down in Texas named Jolita Wilkinson, who wanted help rewriting the false narrative around her sister's death. A death that was ruled such a shameful accident in the 1980s small-town Texas place they lived that her family didn't really even want to speak of it. So she was never able to voice her concerns about a crime scene that she had to help clean up, one that she believes pointed to murder. And part of her submission, I actually want to read it to you. It says, quote, "My parents did not want to stir the pot because her past may embarrass the family and her three-year-old son. So I told them after they pass, I would dig into the truth. They have now passed and I feel it's time to really investigate her death,
2:11 Ashley Flowers? being as there are so many coincidences, discrepancies, and I hate that my nephew has lived the past 40 years believing his mom accidentally killed herself masturbating."
2:24 Ashley Flowers? This woman came to us believing that her sister might have actually been murdered by a known serial killer, but she didn't know where to go from there. So, a few months ago, I put one of our reporters on the case. And through our own investigation, we have come to agree with Jolita. Her sister was murdered, but maybe not by the roaming serial killer she thought. Because our investigation led us to the cases of two other women who died in this same small town. And all of these women link back to one local man. So, let me start with the story of Rowena Wilkinson Zapalac.
3:34 Ashley Flowers? When Jolita was only 14 or 15, her family got a call from the local sheriff's office in Fayette County, Texas, that her 20-year-old sister Rowena died in her studio apartment over a saddle shop in Flatonia, Texas. It was unexpected for everyone and only made more shocking by what authorities told them. According to the sheriff's office, Rowena had died via suicide by masturbation. The rope around her neck and the dildo on her bed were the clear signs that deputies pointed to when breaking the news to her family. But when Jolita and her dad went to Rowena's apartment the day after this to clean it
4:15 Ashley Flowers? out, they saw so much more that two Jolita painted a completely different picture of what happened. Now Rowena had only just moved to this apartment recently, so there wasn't much in there to begin with, which only made the stuff that was there stand out even more. Pennies littered the floor. There was a broken acrylic nail with blood on it, water still in the shower a day later, and a literal broken kitchen window with glass on the floor. But because it was ruled a suicide, there was a very short investigation. It was case closed basically that same day. And Rowena's family was just sort of left to accept what the sheriff said,
4:58 Ashley Flowers? which Jolita said was like painful and embarrassing for them. And even though her dad was seeing some of the same stuff that Jolita did, and definitely had some suspicions, they just couldn't bear to push for a deeper investigation.
5:13 Speaker 01 And also like 80s, small-town Texas, like you said, like back when it seems like most people weren't questioning law enforcement like we do now. Like, you think they must know what they're doing. And even if they don't, like, how in the world are we, normal people or whatever, supposed to change our minds?
5:28 Ashley Flowers? Exactly. But just because her family didn't feel like they could rock the boat back then, and obviously there wasn't much Jolita could do as a teenager, that nagging feeling that she always had about her sister's death just grew in her as she got older. So when her parents passed away, Jolita knew that it was time to get to the truth. So the first thing she did was file a records request at the Fayette County Sheriff's Office for her sister's case file. And when she got the stuff back, she could not believe what she read in there. There was no mention of the pennies, the fingernail, the broken window.
6:07 Speaker 01 What?
6:08 Ashley Flowers? Nothing. And sure, like whatever, maybe the pennies are nothing because the records do show that when the sheriff's deputies arrived that afternoon, they found that the door to Rowena's apartment was pushed open and there was this coffee table kind of like slid out of the way. And it turns out a friend and neighbor, who, the one who'd actually found Rowena, said that she knew the door didn't lock. So what Rowena would do is she would push that coffee table up against it as her way of like locking the door and staying safe. So this woman who found her, like her and another woman actually had to like force the door open and like dislodge the coffee table. So, I mean, maybe Rowena could have had like a dish of pennies on the table. They get scattered when the door is pushed open. Again, whatever. Even if you write that off, it was right near the coffee table where Jolita
6:52 Ashley Flowers? found Rowena's broken acrylic nail that had blood on it, by the way. And Jolita remembers giving that to her dad, like, you know, I think this might be important. Right. Her dad said that he gave it to the investigators, but there is no record at all of that in evidence. So all of this stuff she knew was part of the scene because she'd seen it with her own eyes. She had been the one to clean it up. And it just wasn't even mentioned in the sheriff's report. But there was something else surprising in the reports. There were a lot of things included that she and her family never knew. Like the autopsy report, which notes that Rowena's fourth right fingernail is missing, which is probably the one Jolita found.
7:36 Ashley Flowers? And to me, that like points to a struggle that happens like that night, right? Well, exactly. And listen, this wasn't even a huge apartment. It's basically like a studio with a bathroom, this little kitchenette. And Rowena had a couch and two beds in there. This like main bed with an iron bed frame and then this spare bed on the other side of the room. And what's interesting is they found Rowena by the main bed. The main bed and the coffee table on like opposite sides of the room. So to me, there's no way to even say like, oh, if she was like, did something to herself, like it just came off. Like you would expect that if she lost that nail, it'd be next to her. So I agree, like this is just pointing to a struggle. Now, when they found her, she was sitting on the floor nude,
8:21 Ashley Flowers? except for this thick twist a bead necklace and a nylon rope that was wrapped around her neck and then attached to the bed frame. Now she had blood on her left hand and then this, they call it like a yellowish gummy substance on her shoulder and left arm. And the autopsy report also notes scratches on her neck too, which could have been from Rowena trying to like get the rope off her neck. Now, the bed sheet on the bed was like bunched up to one side, and there was a sex toy on the bed along with an open fifth of whiskey that was about, like, one-fifth full. And there were two pillows, one on top of another.
9:02 Ashley Flowers? And to the side, there was a marijuana roach in an ashtray on the bedstand. But weirdly, her tox screen that came back said that Rowena just had normal levels of a drug that she was prescribed, and a .07 blood alcohol level. So, not a lot at all. And zero marijuana. I mean, to me, it seems pretty clear someone else was there. And you don't even know the half of it yet. Rowena's bed sheets had a large diluted blood stain and a small amount of sperm. And she had sperm inside of her. Her pillowcases also had specks of blood on them. And there were hairs in her bed sheet that didn't belong to her.
9:47 Ashley Flowers? I'm sorry, and they just did nothing with that? Not nothing. I know they tried to do blood typing with the semen. And all they know is that the semen on the bed sheet belonged to someone with, quote, "H substance," which, this is like a long sciency thing, but basically, it could potentially mean type O blood, but there weren't enough tests done to even rule out A and B. So, basically, all the blood types are in? Yeah, and it doesn't seem like it went further than that, because they said there was no sign of sexual assault. So, investigators are like, "Well, you know, all the semen in her and on the bed proves is that Rowena had sex, might not have anything to do with her death." Which, sure, one option, like, okay.
10:31 Ashley Flowers? But you want to say that there were no signs of sexual assault, which, I guess to me, I take to mean like tearing or bruising of her genitals, fine. You want to write off scratches on her neck as self-inflicted, because, I don't know what, she had second thoughts? Okay, fine. How about we look at the other parts of her? Jolita didn't mention this to me in her original email, but when I read it in the autopsy report, I about fell out of my chair. And now is your turn, I'm just gonna have you read it verbatim. And this is from the autopsy report? Mm-hmm.
11:02 Speaker 01 Symmetrical linear bruises are present on the inner aspect of both upper arms. The size and aspects of the bruises suggest that they were the result of the subject being gripped from behind and the tips of fingers produced the four separate symmetrical bruises on each side. Ashley, what?
11:24 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, gripped from behind. I mean, in my opinion, that's evidence to at least keep the option open that she was murdered.
11:32 Speaker 01 I'm sorry, what are police pointing to to say that this is a suicide? I mean, the dildo on the bed? The bed with the semen?
11:39 Ashley Flowers? There are only three things I can find that I think might have shaped their theory.
11:44 Speaker 01 Okay.
11:45 Ashley Flowers? So in the report, there is a mention that investigators found a receipt for an X-ray in Rowena's closet. Now, there are no other notes about this or anything, so this is just like a random thought I had. Knowing how much they didn't note in their reports, to me, them pointing this out at all is odd.
12:04 Speaker 01 Right.
12:05 Ashley Flowers? So I'm wondering if they were like, oh, maybe Rowena got like bad medical news. Maybe she like would want to take her own life because of that.
12:14 Speaker 01 And did they ask the family about this to confirm that?
12:17 Ashley Flowers? I don't know. They only wrote that they found the X-ray receipt and nothing about follow-up. So who knows? But I asked Jolita about this now, and she told us that due to a hereditary breast tissue condition, that both she and Rowena got early mammograms. And Rowena didn't have breast cancer or anything. It was like just a precautionary X-ray. So even if they had asked her parents, this was well-known in the family and should have been easily explained away if they asked. So the second thing that I think they hang their hat on was a conversation they had with Rowena's boss, this guy named Joel, who owned the barbecue place that she worked at. And he tells police that Rowena once took an overdose of pills before.
13:01 Ashley Flowers? Now, Jolita doesn't know what to make of this. She says that she asked several people who knew her sister well, including like their aunt, who was the Flatonia Town doctor, if this was true. And nobody else had ever heard of Rowena overdosing before or trying to.
13:17 Speaker 01 Then how would Joel know this?
13:20 Ashley Flowers? I don't know. And unfortunately, he died in 2002, so we couldn't like reach out to him and ask. Maybe he was close with Rowena. Who knows? But the third and final thing that I believe makes them so certain that this was a suicide is the report says there was no sign of forced entry into Rowena's apartment. So I think they're thinking if no one got into the apartment, then she was there by herself and it had to be suicide. The end.
13:46 Speaker 01 But there was signs of forced entry. They just didn't write it down. I mean, the window was broken. Also, news flash, her door didn't even lock. Like, how can you force entry in a door that's not even locked? Like, what are we doing here?
14:00 Ashley Flowers? I know. Like I said, they don't even mention the broken glass. Like, it just doesn't exist to them. Now, the sheriff's report does mention something about a broken screen in the kitchen, but like in the report, they say that it was pushed out from the inside and that it was broken previously. Like, it wasn't from whatever happened. But they don't say how they know this.
14:19 Speaker 01 Okay, this woman was murdered and I've kind of never felt more sure of something, Ashley.
14:24 Ashley Flowers? I know. And this is exactly how Jolita feels after she FOIA's the records. Every instinct and suspicion that she ever had was right. She knows in her bones now that someone killed her sister. The question is, who? So over the next 20-plus years, Jolita is left to just stew in this knowledge that her sister never got justice. Until 2006, when she gets a call from the Texas Rangers and they ask her a pretty shocking question. Did Rowena know a woman named Melody Bush?
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17:14 Ashley Flowers? Jolita has never heard the name Melody Busch before. It rings no bells, means nothing to her. But when she asks why they're asking, she gets the shock of her life. The Rangers tell her that six months before her sister's death, Melody Bush was murdered in the same small town. And they think this serial killer named Robert Charles Brown just confessed to Melody's murder. And they've begun to wonder, could he have been responsible for Rowena's death too?
17:48 Speaker 01 So, wait, are they considering Rowena's death a homicide now?
17:53 Ashley Flowers? This is the weirdest part to me. No.
17:55 Speaker 01 But-
17:56 Ashley Flowers? I don't know how Rowena's case would have come on their radar at all, all these years later, because she is not listed as an unsolved homicide with the department.
18:05 Speaker 01 Right, like, wouldn't even be in like the batch of deaths they would be looking at if they were looking to connect this guy to someone else.
18:10 Ashley Flowers? No, and this is years later. So like, in my mind, there had to have just been like, some old timer hanging around who was like, you know, like, I remember this one case.
18:19 Speaker 01 It was kinda weird.
18:21 Ashley Flowers? It is the only thing I can think of. Like, Jolita doesn't even know. But when they call her, so they push her, they're like, you know, could there be any connection between Melody and Rowena? But Jolita really doesn't think so. I mean, she even did her own legwork after this and started asking around, but no one seemed to think that they knew each other. But that didn't necessarily rule out a connection, especially the more that she came to learn, not just about the events leading up to her own sister's death, but about what Robert Charles Brown was capable of, and the circumstances surrounding Melody Bush's murder. Now, all Jolita knows about Rowena's last day comes from Rowena's friend and neighbor, this woman named Ruby Cherry,
19:04 Ashley Flowers? and Rowena's manager, who I'm gonna call Jessica. That's not her real name. Jessica said that Rowena dropped off her son with her and borrowed her truck for the day. And Ruby said that she and Rowena went out on the town together with a group of friends, and they spent most of the night at a bar called Stag Club. Well, it turns out that almost six months to the day before Rowena's death on March 19th, 1984, Melody Ann Bush was partying with her husband, Robert Bush, in a room at this like seedy motel in Flatonia called Antlers Inn. And there were like two other people there. Well, she and her husband got into an argument and Melody left the room and walked around back
19:46 Ashley Flowers? to the Stag Club, the same bar that Rowena was hanging out in the night of her death. And the Stag Club is the last place that Melody is ever seen alive. 12 days later, her body gets found a couple of miles north of town off the interstate in this culvert. And the ME ruled her cause of death as acute acetone poisoning. So it was definitely a homicide.
20:10 Speaker 01 Acetone like nail polish remover?
20:13 Ashley Flowers? Or it could have been rubbing alcohol. Like it, rubbing alcohol metabolizes into acetone. Now, at the time, Melody's case is never connected to Robert Charles Brown because Melody's husband was the prime suspect in her death. But authorities never had enough to charge him.
20:29 Speaker 01 And then Rowena's death is written off as a suicide.
20:31 Ashley Flowers? Right. So it never crosses anyone's mind that those two cases could be connected. And people certainly weren't picking up on the fact that they had each last been seen alive in the same bar. But, fast forward to 2003, that is when the El Paso County Sheriff's Office in Colorado get this creepy AF letter from Robert Charles Brown, who is already in jail serving time for two separate murders. And I'm gonna have a voice actor read his letter.
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23:05 Speaker 02 I thought long and hard about picking an incident that would not be lost among the many others. A very small town seemed to be my best bet. Small towns don't forget such rare happenings. The town I chose is Flatonia, Texas. They don't get much smaller. The year was approximately 1984 or 1985. A young woman was killed and her body was found near this town. The last I heard was that her husband was being charged with her murder. I'm curious as to the eventual outcome. Please let me know. Afterward, we may talk some more on this. Texas does like to kill people. That should give you something to think about. Robert Charles Brown.
23:45 Ashley Flowers? Robert had been sending detectives in Colorado a bunch of cryptic letters for years. Like, one was a hand-drawn partial map of the US with numbers in a few states. Like, it was supposed to allude to the number of victims that he had across the US. And all in all, I think Robert's claiming that he killed 48, possibly 49, people. And he wrote the number 7 in Texas. And investigators in Colorado believe at least some of this. I mean, they know this man is capable of dark stuff. Now, we don't have time to dive all the way into him and his story now, or this episode would be like eight hours long. But I do think the information is really important, so we're doing an entire separate episode on Robert Charles Brown.
24:29 Ashley Flowers? That's gonna be available in the fan club if anyone wants to dive deeper. Literally, the episode is out already right now if you want to sign up, crimejunkie.com. But Colorado authorities are trying to pry information out of Robert to see if they can really connect him to some of these cases. But this dude is like playing mind games, and it is clear that what he's after seems to be infamy. So police start piecing together Robert's little clues, seeing if they can actually match up to real cases. And they think that his letter about a woman in Flatonia is Melody Bush. But it takes a year for them to even get him to write back about Melody, and when he does, Robert writes just the following words.
25:12 Speaker 02 Flatonia, ether slash ice pick.
25:16 Speaker 01 But that's wrong.
25:18 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, we know that the ME listed her cause of death as acute acetone poisoning. No stab or puncture wounds, or anything even close to that.
25:26 Speaker 01 Did they ask Robert if he used acetone?
25:29 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, and he said that he never used it on any of his victims. And detectives are like, okay, like, maybe he's mistaking ether for acetone, whatever. But when asked later by investigators about stabbing her with an ice pick, Robert, like, doubles down. He said, yes, he wanted to make sure that he got Melody's heart, so he stabbed her at least two or three times, which just isn't in the autopsy report. Though, like, quick side story, maybe we can't trust the autopsy report or the Emmy's finding for Melody at all, because this guy, Dr. Roberto Bayardo, was investigated by NBC affiliate KXAN for literally botching autopsies. And we tried to get the report ourselves,
26:10 Ashley Flowers? by the way, but no one we FOIA'd had a copy of it. Now, we also spoke to the lead investigator for the El Paso Sheriff's Office, and he said that acetone was a preservative that Emmys might use, and he thinks that this guy who did Melody's autopsy just, like, confused it and thought it was like the cause of death. And the guy's clearly not good at his job.
26:34 Speaker 01 Okay, but what about the potential multiple stabs to the heart with an ice pick? I mean, that's, actually, that's hard to miss.
26:42 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, he didn't really have, like, a straight answer to that one. But like, you can't say the Emmy got the cause of death wrong, and then also say Robert Brown gave you information only the killer would know.
26:51 Speaker 01 Right, because they don't know how Melody died, if they're saying the Emmy was wrong about the acetone.
26:57 Ashley Flowers? Right. I think it's safe to say that they just don't have any evidence that what Robert is saying is true. And it took over five months after that ice pick letter for detectives to even get to talk to him in person. But when they do, he gives this whole story about Melody with details. He said that he was working for a flower-delivery company, and his route regularly took him through Flatonia. He stopped, got a room at the Antlers Inn, and then went over to Stag Club for a drink when this drunk woman came in, wearing jeans, a blouse, and she was barefoot. He remembered that the woman said that she and her husband or her boyfriend or whatever had gotten into an argument, and she thought that he
27:40 Ashley Flowers? had gone to another bar down the street. And the bartender apparently asked Robert to give this woman a lift to the other bar. And Robert says, you know, "At first, I say no, but then I say okay." And then, as he's driving her, he says she started to put the moves on him, and they decided to go back to his motel room where Robert says they had sex. Then Robert said, quote, "Then I used ether on her, put her out, and then I used a ice pick on her," end quote. He said that he went back and forth between his motel room and the stag club. And after the bar closed, he said that he and the bartender went out to a local truck stop for breakfast. And then, when he got back from breakfast, he loaded up the woman into his van and drove north across I-10.
28:25 Ashley Flowers? And then he said he dumped her body over a bridge or a culvert. He says he hears this splash and that the area was full of tall grass and water, and like, that's kind of it.
28:35 Speaker 01 So, that end part, like, that's kind of accurate, right?
28:39 Ashley Flowers? Yes, and I will say that the manager at the bar, the night that Melody was last seen, also says some things that kind of back this up too. Her name's Florine, and she told detectives that she remembers Melody did walk in around 11:30 PM. She was unsteady on her feet, like she'd been drinking. Now, she says she was wearing a black sweater with Red Heart's silver pants, but was barefoot. So, different clothing than what Robert described.
29:05 Speaker 01 But still barefoot.
29:06 Ashley Flowers? Mm-hmm. And she said that she knew Melody pretty well because Melody would waitress there sometimes, and she was always fighting with her husband.
29:13 Speaker 01 Which is right again.
29:14 Ashley Flowers? And that night, Melody seemed intoxicated and, quote, "spaced out." She told Florine that she left because her husband was destroying the motel room, and she apparently didn't order any drinks and just, like, left the bar alone. But Florine did say that she remembered a silk flower salesman that would stop by the bar once or twice a month back in 1984. He would, like, pass out these silk flowers to the women. One time, even gave her eight-year-old daughter some daisies, which is just sickening to think about because both of Robert's later murders were of young teenage girls. But what Florine doesn't remember is this guy, Robert, being there the night when Melody went missing.
29:56 Ashley Flowers? And she never asked him to give Melody a ride, and certainly never went out to breakfast with this guy. And like, here's the thing to know. A lot of what Robert knew and like the parts that were like, oh yeah, that's the same. That could have been in local papers. So he could have just pieced together that information. Like, yeah, he was in the area at that time. Maybe he heard people talking. Maybe he was reading the news. I mean, when police asked him how he knew Melody's husband was a suspect, he said he heard it in the bar when he was passing through three weeks later. So to me, him knowing a couple of right things is not solid evidence to convict him of another murder here.
30:37 Ashley Flowers? But there is enough suspicion that he, like, kind of forever stays linked to Melody's case. Even on the Wikipedia page for him, she is listed as a possible victim. Is Rowena? No, because even after Rangers clearly were aware of Rowena's death and had to have at least briefly considered it a homicide. For it to even be in this conversation. Uh huh. It is still officially a suicide and has never been connected to Robert Charles Brown. But even if not officially connected, for years after this, Jolita wondered if it could be true. So again, after her parents passed away, she's like, okay, you know, now's the time to find out once and for all.
31:21 Ashley Flowers? And that's why she reached out to us. And what our reporter Jenna Mel found may prove that Jolita was right and wrong. Yes, we believe Rowena was murdered. And we too think that her case might be connected to Melody's, actually. But we're not convinced that Robert Charles Brown is the most likely suspect. There's someone else that had connections to the two women who we find far more interesting. Let me start at the beginning of our investigation, so you know how we got to where we did. So when we started looking at this case, I wanted to begin with law enforcement's theory, which was that this was a suicide.
32:04 Ashley Flowers? I see all the same red flags as Jolita, but like, let's at least ask the question. Is it possible that Rowena died by auto erotic asphyxiation?
32:14 Ashley Flowers? One thing that I found odd was the fact that she still had the Twisted Beads necklace on. And the autopsy report also says that the necklace made like impressions on her neck. Now, the investigators were thinking that was because the rope was laying over the necklace, which like to me raised a flag. Like, wouldn't you take off this big beaded necklace if you were gonna put a rope around your neck?
32:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:37 Ashley Flowers? And like, when I say big, this isn't like a dainty necklace. Twisted beads are, if no one remembers them, are like this thick necklace. They were a big thing back in the 80s, but you could like mix and match lots of these strands of beads, like, and literally twist them all together.
32:48 Speaker 01 So is it possible that she was strangled with the necklace and not the rope then?
32:53 Ashley Flowers? Maybe. It's hard to say without seeing any autopsy photos, but in that case, I mean, it would be a homicide to me, not a suicide by masturbation, which is the term they had for it back then. Like, today, it's auto erotic asphyxiation, but same thing. But that's what they're calling it. Now, I felt like, at least in the cases that I've heard of, most auto erotic asphyxiation cases are associated with men. But after a little research, I found that it does happen among women as well, but there have been very few documented cases. The ratio is like 50 men to one woman, according to a study that I read in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. And prior to 1980, there were only two cases of women who died this way ever recorded,
33:38 Ashley Flowers? and then a third in 1980. So, super rare at the time.
33:42 Speaker 01 And do we know anything about whether she was like into that type of thing?
33:47 Ashley Flowers? So, here's the thing. So, Rowena was actually married at the time, but separated. And we talked to her then husband, his name's Thomas. So did Jolita, and he told Jolita that he and Rowena never did anything like that. Now, obviously, they weren't together when she died, so we can't say for sure if she ever tried anything different without him.
34:07 Speaker 01 Okay, but, hang on, was her husband ever looked into?
34:10 Ashley Flowers? Well, he's never investigated as a suspect because there was no one to look into. It's not a homicide. Even after the Robert Brown stuff, like, her cases never reopened, never reinvestigated. I will say, though, even if they had looked into her husband, I don't think he had any answers. I know Jolita never considered him suspicious, and he was forthcoming with us. Turns out, at the time that she died, he was living an hour away. So for all the reasons you just heard, I don't think this is a suicide or even an accident, and I don't think her ex was involved. So we looked into the man that Jolita suspected, Robert Charles Brown. Interestingly, Jolita and Rowena's husband, Thomas, both remember
34:53 Ashley Flowers? that Rowena was dating a guy named Rob about a year before she died. This Rob even lived with her briefly out in San Marcos, Texas, when she split with her husband. So of course, we're like, do you remember his last name? Right. And listen, both of them were like, you know, this is gonna sound crazy, but we remember the last name Brown. And Jolita said she met this boyfriend, Rob, once. So she looked at a picture of serial killer Robert Brown and was like, it kinda looks like him? Oh, my goodness. But both Jolita and Thomas are the first ones who told us, like, listen, please do not trust our memories 100% on this one. Like, it is very possible things have gotten
35:36 Ashley Flowers? twisted up over the years. And Rowena was dating this boyfriend, Rob, like, several months before her death, and they were living together in a totally different town. So it feels like a bit of a stretch. And Robert Brown is, like, still around. Yeah, yeah. Like, he is in prison for those other murders, like, to this day. And as you know, from the Robert Charles Brown episode we did, our reporters wrote to him. And when Jen Amell wrote to him for this one, she just asked him point blank, "Did you have anything to do with Rowena Zapalac's death?" And he wrote back.
36:12 Speaker 02 "Sorry, I can't help you. I know nothing about the person you are inquiring about. If I knew anything at all, I would tell you. I am old and near the end of my life and have no reason to conceal anything. I am truly sorry. If you would send me some funds, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance, R.C. Brown."
36:32 Ashley Flowers? Obviously, Jen explained that we don't pay sources and asked him a follow-up question, "Did you kill Melody Bush?" And Robert wrote back with the subject line, quote, "No pay, no play."
36:46 Speaker 02 "Do not hide behind that tired old evasion. The courts did away with that lame excuse many years ago. If you are interested, send me some funds for my birthday or some other reason. Adios, Mr. Brown."
36:59 Ashley Flowers? So, Robert says that he doesn't know Rowena, and he won't say anything about Melody unless we pay him. But excuse me if I don't just take a serial killer's word for it.
37:10 Speaker 01 Right. And not that he couldn't have done one or the other, but I feel like both is such a stretch because the MO is so, so different.
37:20 Ashley Flowers? I know. It's just like the hard part to wrap your head around when it comes to him. The different MOs might actually be one of the reasons I say it was him. Because like, I mean, you know, like now, like from our other episode, dude was all over the place. Like the one victim he claimed to have strangled with shoelaces, claims another one died because he used chloroform. He talks about stabbing, he talks about shooting, blunt force trauma. Like you name the horror, Robert says that he's done it. So, no, like no calling card to link back to him. Like his calling card is like-
37:51 Speaker 01 There's no like signature, yeah.
37:53 Ashley Flowers? And listen, long story, not short, like just long story that we did another episode on. I'm going to cut to the chase here. The more we looked into Robert and his crimes and his movements, his MO, or lack of MO, yeah. Me and our reporters came to feel that it was unlikely that he had anything to do with Rowena's murder. But again, there was a murder here. So we started to ask, if not him, then who else could have done it? And that's when our reporter Jen went back to the beginning. Because if no one ever investigated, then every clue was missed by default. And right there, at the beginning, she found something that shocked us.
38:36 Ashley Flowers? Something that would have been totally missed if she hadn't just been deep in Melody's case, trying to connect everything to Brown. You see, we found out that before Melody went to stag club that night, she, like I said, was with her husband and those two other people. They're all partying in the motel room. We know Melody starts fighting with her husband about something, and then she storms out. Then the husband told investigators that he went to sleep, didn't wake up till like 6:00 in the morning, found his wife, never came back. And again, I think the husband was always like sus to people and as far as I know, never officially cleared as a suspect. But then people kind of just like, forget about him and like everything that night once Robert Brown is in the picture. But what caught Jen's attention was one of the two other people who were with them
39:20 Ashley Flowers? that night at the motel was a guy named Cooper Cherry. Now Cherry's not a name that you read like every day. And it rang a bell for Jen because she spent so much time digging into Rowena's story. And it was Rowena's friend Ruby Cherry from across the hall who found Rowena dead. Little bit too big of a coincidence in such a small town. So she pulled records for Ruby. Turns out she was actually once married to Cooper. So we went back to Ruby's written statement in the case file from the night that Rowena died. And it turns out she also crossed paths with Cooper Cherry. You're kidding. No, I'm not.
40:04 Ashley Flowers? So in her statement, Ruby basically went into detail about what happened the day before Rowena died. She said that before they went out to party, Rowena went with Ruby to drop off Ruby's son with Cooper. They're divorced by this point, but like that's his dad. So we know Cooper and Rowena were in the same place at least once that night. Now briefly, whatever, like just crossing paths. So Rowena and Ruby go out, they're at the stag club, they hang out with a bunch of people they know, and Ruby actually lists all of these people. Nothing weird happened. She said they went home together around 4:00 AM. The two of them live in these small apartments above that saddle shop.
40:44 Ashley Flowers? And then Ruby says that in the morning, Jessica, who was their manager at the barbecue place, she's the one who was watching Rowena's son, she comes knocking on her door and wakes her up. Like I think looking for Rowena because she's got her son. But Ruby told her that Rowena was probably still sleeping it off because they like got in so late. So Jessica leaves. Sometime after this, Ruby's statement says that she goes to pick up her kid from a sitter's house. So at some point the night before or that morning, Cooper needed someone else to watch their kid for him. Where was he? I don't know. How did she know to go get her kid from a sitter and not from Cooper? I don't know.
41:27 Ashley Flowers? But after Ruby picks up their kid, she goes back to Cooper's house and he's got a buddy over. This guy named Bart Moore. Interesting, because if you look back at the list that Ruby gave of the people who were out with her and Rowena at the bar that night, Bart Moore is right there.
41:46 Speaker 01 But she didn't mention that Cooper was out with them, right?
41:49 Ashley Flowers? No, no, no. She explicitly lists everyone who was out. Cooper's name is not on that list. So she says that when she is at Cooper's that next morning, Cooper and Bart ask if they can go to her apartment to use her shower because they didn't have any hot water. And Ruby's like, sure, whatever. She leaves ahead of them and got back to her building just as Jessica was coming back the second time looking for Rowena. And this is when they break in and they discover Rowena's body.
42:16 Speaker 01 Wait, does that mean that Cooper and Bart were there like above the saddle shop when they found Rowena?
42:23 Ashley Flowers? I don't know. She doesn't say anything else about them in her statement. I don't even know if Cooper and Bart ever went to take showers. But it made us think back to that little detail that Jolita said she noticed when she was cleaning out Rowena's apartment the next day, that Rowena's shower was wet?
42:41 Speaker 01 Right.
42:42 Ashley Flowers? So like, what if Cooper or Bart did go use the shower, but at Rowena's instead?
42:48 Speaker 01 But wasn't Rowena already dead by the time Cooper and Bart were asking to come shower?
42:54 Ashley Flowers? Yes, but that is if we're just assuming that Ruby's account is totally accurate. I mean, there are other inconsistencies in Ruby's story, even in the few pages of reports we have. And just to be clear, so there are technically three agencies involved. So you have the sheriffs, the justice of the peace, and a little later, the Texas Rangers. And it's not like they're all opening up new investigations. All of these statements happened in the first like 25 days.
43:20 Speaker 01 And get like put in the same file.
43:21 Ashley Flowers? Yeah. So in her own words, the statement put in the sheriff's report says that Ruby woke up, or she's woken up by Jessica at 9:30 in the morning. She goes to the babysitter's house, gets her kid, then back to Cooper's. But the justice of the peace writes in her inquest that Ruby goes to work at 11:00 a.m., not to Cooper's house. Then in a Texas Ranger inquest, the officer says Ruby was woken up at 9:00 a.m. by Jessica and then went back inside her apartment to sleep. Nothing about going to work or to Cooper's or the Sitters. So why are the stories different? I mean, is it sloppy police work by all these agencies? If they're not like recording her statement correctly? Like, sure, that's an option.
44:05 Ashley Flowers? But it also could mean that Ruby was telling different versions of her story to different agencies. And if she did, why?
44:14 Speaker 01 Are there statements from other people, like anyone else to compare it to? Like, uh, like the other people who were out that night? Or Jessica, who found her with Ruby?
44:25 Ashley Flowers? So the sheriff's report says that they talked to other people, but no other witness statements were included. So we started calling people. We were trying to reach out to all of the people specifically on Ruby's list. And our reporter Jen got in touch with a guy named Red Mulholland, who was out with them that night. And he told us he thinks Cooper was out with them that night.
44:49 Speaker 01 Okay, but why would Ruby leave that out?
44:52 Ashley Flowers? One option is that she forgot or accidentally left his name out. Another option is that she lied because she didn't want police to know that Cooper was there.
45:04 Speaker 01 Just to play devil's advocate, though, my favorite role.
45:07 Ashley Flowers? I know.
45:08 Speaker 01 If Ruby knowingly lied because something happened and she was trying to like cover for Cooper, why wouldn't she just leave out all that stuff about Cooper and Bart and the shower in her own statements? Like, why add them back into the story at all?
45:23 Ashley Flowers? I know. And like, maybe it's because that's the truth and like she just forgotten later statements because that's like the least interesting part of her morning. Or if the later statements are accurate and they like didn't come over, I don't know, I don't know why you make up that unless you wanted to give them like an innocent reason for being seen around there. But then you would think you would stick to it.
45:47 Speaker 01 Right.
45:47 Ashley Flowers? So like, it doesn't make sense. And if we're gonna question Ruby at all, this got me thinking about Joel, the owner of the barbecue place where Rowena worked at. He's the one that told the sheriff that she overdosed before, which bolstered their suicide narrative. Well, remember, Ruby worked there too.
46:06 Speaker 01 So maybe that story about the overdose could have come from Ruby.
46:11 Ashley Flowers? I don't know, but something just feels really odd about the whole thing.
46:18 Ashley Flowers? Now, obviously, we reached out to Ruby to try and get her to talk. She is alive and around, but she has not gotten back to us as of this recording. We couldn't talk to Cooper himself about it because he passed away in 2023. And we even tried like Cooper's brothers, his son, which is Ruby's son, no answer. And listen, like, when comparing Cooper to a guy like Robert Charles Brown, Cooper looks like an angel. We talked to one of his other ex-wives. He has three besides Ruby. And she said that he was kind, religious, and she had never heard of Rowena before. And when we talked to Red Mel Holland, he told us that Cooper and Bart, they played in this band together, they liked to party a lot.
47:02 Ashley Flowers? But like, the most salacious thing on his record is a possession of marijuana charge that he and Bart got together in 1989. Other than that, he didn't have anything else, and Bart only had some traffic violations. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that Bart had anything to do with Rowena, but I thought it was interesting that the one, like, criminal charge Cooper had, he was with Bart when he got it. But it sounds like they were besties. So we even tried calling Bart several times, but didn't hear back from him either. Which I think is a shame because he was definitely around that night and that morning, and I think he might remember something important. Because I don't know, like, I just, I cannot let go of the fact that something seems very wild about Cooper being around both Rowena and Melody on the nights that they died.
47:47 Ashley Flowers? It could be a weird coincidence, it could be something else. My spidey senses were like, I don't know, like, feels like something else. And when we kept looking at him, like, there was also someone else close to him who died. His first wife, named Rhonda Stahl, she died in a questionable way back in 1980, less than 10 months after marrying Cooper.
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50:31 Ashley Flowers? Now, there is literally one newspaper article and an obit about Cooper's first wife's death. But here's what we know. According to the Victoria Advocate, on a late summer night, Rhonda was driving toward train tracks on a rural stretch of road between Platonia and Muldoon when her car rolled over twice and threw her from the vehicle. The car actually rolled partly onto the train tracks and was then pushed aside by the train. Now, state troopers said that Rhonda was probably laying on the ground for half an hour before the train passed. How they know that, I have no idea. I don't know if maybe somebody like on the train reported hitting a vehicle and that's like how her body was discovered.
51:15 Ashley Flowers? But they rushed her to the hospital where she died a few hours later. And her death certificate says that she died of, quote, "possible intracranial trauma", which is like head trauma, but no autopsy was done.
51:27 Speaker 01 So they just assumed that she died from the car accident?
51:31 Ashley Flowers? Yeah.
51:32 Speaker 01 And did they say how the car rolled over?
51:35 Ashley Flowers? Kind of. Like, the state trooper thinks that she fell asleep at the wheel. So like physically, no, they just think that this was like an accident.
51:42 Speaker 01 A lot of questions there. But let me try to get this straight. Cooper Cherry is now connected to three women who all died in some sort of violent way. But this is shocking. It seems like no one has a bad word to say about this guy.
51:58 Ashley Flowers? Mm-mm.
51:59 Speaker 01 It kind of feels like he's just cursed.
52:02 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, that's an option. Or maybe people are scared to talk. I mean, here's the thing, in cases this old, the problem we normally face is not having any witnesses alive anymore. That's not what's going on here. There are so many people who are still around, but for some reason, people in Platonia are not talking. Only three people got back to us, outside of Rowena's husband and Jolita. Or really, two and a half people got back to us. We obviously talked to Redma Holland, and then we talked to one of Cooper's ex-wives. And we did really briefly speak to Rowena's boss, the one that we called Jessica. She is the one that found her that day. But when I say briefly, I mean, we got her on the phone for like a minute.
52:47 Ashley Flowers? And I was really surprised that it wasn't longer because Jolita was the one who told us to call her. She's like, "I talked to her, she remembers everything, she is definitely gonna talk to you." But that is definitely not what happened.
53:01 Speaker 03 I imagine it's probably not the easiest subject to talk about. Rowena's sister, Jalita, asked me to sort of look into Rowena's case. And I mean, she believes that Rowena was killed. But I'm wondering, since you were there, you saw everything. Like, do you have a personal feeling about that?
53:21 Speaker 04 I do, but you did talk to Rowena's sister, is that correct?
53:26 Speaker 03 Correct, yeah, Jalita.
53:28 Speaker 04 Well, she knows, she knows everything there is to know about the outcome. As far as discussing anything about what I saw, I won't be able to do that.
53:38 Speaker 03 Oh, why is that?
53:39 Speaker 04 Because I've decided not to do it. I don't, I don't, I don't care to do it.
53:44 Speaker 03 You don't care to do it? Um, is it because?
53:47 Speaker 04 I do not wish to do it.
53:48 Speaker 03 Okay.
53:48 Speaker 04 I do not wish to do it, and it's, and it's personal.
53:52 Speaker 03 Okay.
53:52 Speaker 04 Okay?
53:54 Speaker 03 All right.
53:54 Speaker 04 She would be the person for you to talk to.
53:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, she suggested I talk to you, though. That's the only thing.
54:01 Speaker 04 Yeah. And, and, and that's nice, and I appreciate that, but I'm not going to.
54:05 Speaker 03 Okay. Um, is it because you-
54:07 Speaker 04 Thank you so much.
54:08 Speaker 03 Is it because you fear any repercussions?
54:11 Speaker 04 No, it's because exactly what I just said. I do not wish to discuss it, and that is all.
54:17 Speaker 03 Okay, because it's an upsetting topic?
54:20 Speaker 04 Thank you very much.
54:21 Speaker 03 Okay, I hear you.
54:23 Ashley Flowers? We don't know her reasons for not talking. And when we asked Jalita about this, she didn't really understand either. But Thomas, Rowena's husband, thinks that people might be hesitant to talk because of who they would be talking about. You see, Thomas told us that if they were going to say anything about Cooper, Cooper is from a prominent family in Flatonia. Like, his dad owned a big ranch out in Muldoon, and they had several oil wells. He sat on the board of the town bank, which was a powerful seat.
54:55 Speaker 01 And are there still cherries around locally?
54:57 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, there are. But I want to be clear. There's nothing that we found to suggest that Cooper's family would threaten people. And we couldn't ask them anything because none of them have spoken to us. But to understand the implication here, Thomas gave us a little background, just like in his own experience, like his life. So him and Rowena were high school sweethearts when they got pregnant really young with their son, Brandon. Thomas was from a prominent family as well. His dad actually sat on the same town bank board, like he knows this world. And Thomas was like, look, nothing against Rowena, but she was a runaway and we got pregnant. And I'm betting that that wasn't my dad's idea of a dream life for me.
55:38 Ashley Flowers? You know, they weren't happy, but they supported their decision to get married and to do right by his child. And like, so they supported them financially when Thomas went to college. And he said Rowena was a good mom and she loved her son. But it did get to the point where it was all too much, like Rowena didn't want to grow up so quickly. She wanted to be young, she wanted to have fun, go out, see other people. She's 20, remember? So she and Thomas split up, but they never actually divorced. Now, he said that he knew most of the people who were out with Rowena that night, but he didn't know Ruby. He did know Cooper. I mean, they'd partied together, but they're not like best friends or anything. And you know, as we were talking to Thomas and he tells us the thing about like their dads being on the bank board together.
56:22 Ashley Flowers? Like you could see like the wheels start turning in his head and he's like, you know, Cooper was always getting in trouble and like that might not have been a good look for his dad. So he's like, I could see a world where Cooper doesn't have more of a record. Because when you have the right connections, life is a bit easier for you. If Cooper had anything to do with the deaths of Melody or Rowena or Rhonda, like, nobody in his family would, again, this is like the kind, nobody wants to know, that kind of stuff.
56:52 Speaker 01 Right.
56:52 Ashley Flowers? So there's like all this smoke, but there is no fire. Though at the end of the day, the one thing that is excruciatingly clear is that authorities need to take another hard look at Rowena's case. Jolita wants them to reopen her case and actually do the investigation that her family has been denied for decades. She thinks Rowena's son Brandon deserves to know what really happened to his mom. Rowena was so young when she died. She was a talented rodeo rider, a kind, fun person, and a mom just trying to figure out how to give her son a good life. And we believe that someone decided to cut that life short. And the Wilkins and Zapalac family want justice.
57:37 Ashley Flowers? And that is why Jolita started a petition asking Fayette County, first, to change Rowena's death certificate from suicide accident to homicide, because that would then allow the authorities to reopen her case. Recently, Jolita told us that the county attorney seemed interested in at least taking another look at the case. But no one from the Fayette County Attorney's Office or the Justice of the Peace Office has gotten back to us about any official steps that they're taking to actually make that happen. Though I will say, right before we were about to release this episode, Jolita told us that she received a call to meet with the Texas Rangers and the Texas Attorney General's Office.
58:21 Ashley Flowers? They say they want to discuss reopening Rowena's case. Now, she shared with us that she told the county attorney about some of our reporting, and she says that they're at least interested in following some of those leads. And if you have any information on the deaths of Rowena or Melody Bush, please contact the Fayette County Sheriff's Office at 979-968-5856, or you can reach out to us, [email protected] .
59:03 Ashley Flowers? You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com. And if you want to listen to more episodes like this and all of our episodes completely ad-free, be sure to join the fan club. You're going to get early access to our new episodes and a ton of bonus episodes as well.
59:21 Speaker 01 And you can follow us on Instagram, at Crime Junkie Podcast.
59:24 Ashley Flowers? We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
59:50 Ashley Flowers? Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.
59:59 Speaker 05 When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing: Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful, you never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.
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