The Fugitive

When a woman vanishes while traveling in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, law enforcement and her family act quickly to try and figure out what happened to her. After her skeletonized remains are eventually found in a popular camping area, investigators across multiple states begin searching for a man who they would eventually learn went by many names.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Stop, this is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  And the case I'm going to tell you about today is truly a doozy. When I first selected it for this podcast, I thought I knew for the most part what I was going to be dealing with. But boy, was I in for a surprise. For me, covering this case began as one thing. I was looking into a woman's mysterious murder in one of America's most well-known recreation spaces, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But as I kept digging and finding out more and more information, I discovered that this story was way bigger than just one crime. The perpetrator at the center of this case was someone who had a history of awful crimes spanning nearly two decades.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  It just seems no one really connected the dots about him because he managed to stay one step ahead of authorities. Well, that is until the folks at America's Most Wanted got involved. And I'm not talking about the modern reboot AMW producers who have social media on their side. I'm talking about the OG 1980s AMW crews. The ones who used the power of television and landline phones to help federal investigators sweep fugitives off the streets.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  This is Park Predators.

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  On Thursday, September 27, 1984, loved ones of 35-year-old Rosalynn Rose Goodman noticed that she hadn't returned from a vacation in eastern Tennessee. Among those worried was Danny Morgan, Rosalynn's brother. His sister was divorced with two kids and owned a cleaning business called Yes We Do Windows that she ran out of her home in Memphis. At the time, her teenage daughter Adrienne and son Nicholas lived with their dad Roy in Bartlett, Tennessee. But it seems despite the couple's divorce, the kids had a good relationship with both their parents. However, based on what I read in news coverage about this case, it doesn't appear the co-parenting situation between Rosalynn and Roy was very good, though.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Investigators learned from speaking with her loved ones that shortly before her trip, she complained to relatives that she'd been having problems with her ex-husband, which is why she wanted to get away to Great Smoky Mountains National Park to, according to her, meditate and pray in the mountains. After giving it a few days, Rosalynn's family decided on October 4 that enough was enough, and they officially filed a missing persons report for her with the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, now known as the Shelby County Sheriff's Office. Investigators from that agency learned from speaking with Rosalynn's friends and family that after leaving home on the morning of Monday, September 24, she briefly stopped in Jackson, Tennessee to see one of her brothers for lunch before traveling to meet up with a friend in Nashville that same night.

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  She went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with that friend, which ended at 9:00 p.m. According to coverage by the Knoxville News Sentinel, another friend of hers who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, was originally planning to meet up with her in Nashville and then go camping together in the Smokies. But at the last minute, that person ended up bailing because of a scheduling mix-up. So Roslyn had continued on her journey alone late at night on the 24th. And despite her Nashville friends' warning that it was dangerous to travel alone, Roslyn had left the Music City and gone east to the Gatlinburg area.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Her plan all along had been to return to Memphis on Thursday, the 27th. In fact, around lunchtime either that day or the day before, she'd called her teenage daughter Adrienne from a payphone and told her she was looking forward to being back. One of Roslyn's sisters told the Knoxville News Sentinel that she had told Adrienne, quote, "We were camping in Cades Cove, and I am going back to Cades Cove to get my stuff." Which suggested she was in the company of other people. Otherwise, Roslyn wouldn't have used the phrase "we." And that statement struck loved ones as odd at the time because as far as they were aware, after Roslyn's friend bailed on her, she was supposed to be traveling by herself. But until loved ones knew what exactly was going on, they basically had to sit tight

• 6:02Speaker 02

  and wait to see what investigators would turn up. An important piece of the puzzle, though, regardless of whether Roslyn was just overdue or something worse had happened to her, was her car. The vehicle was described as a yellow in color, well-used 1970 Volkswagen Beetle with a Tennessee license plate. Like Roslyn, it was missing, along with all of the camping gear that neighbors had seen her pack for her trip. She'd also just acquired an Arabian stallion, which she was boarding at a stable near her home. And reportedly, this horse purchase was something she was really excited about. So it didn't make any sense that she'd not come back to care for it. However, despite authorities working the case diligently, few clues emerged

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  in the weeks after Roslyn was reported missing. About three months later, some of her friends started making plans to travel to the Gatlinburg area to search for her. But those plans would be dashed come Saturday, December 29.

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  That day, a family hiking through a wooded area on a steep ridge near the Cades Cove section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park came across what appeared to be a human skull buried beneath a clump of leaves or a log. Depends on which source material you read. The family had been following a deer to try and get a picture of it when they stumbled upon the remains. They alerted authorities about the discovery, and when investigators took a closer look, they eventually determined the bones had been there for about two or three months. A pathologist in Knoxville studied the remains even further and concluded that they belonged to a white woman in her 30s who had brown hair. And at the time of her death, she'd been wearing tennis shoes, blue jeans,

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  a green jacket, yellow vest, and white socks with green and yellow stripes on the top. She also had a gray shirt with multicolored lines on it and a red sweatshirt. And there was evidence found that suggested animals had disturbed her remains after she died. As far as her cause of death, investigators weren't exactly sure what it could be. They didn't find any traumatic injuries on her bones that suggested she'd been a victim of foul play. So, nothing like bullet wounds or stab wounds, or even traces of blood on the woman's clothing. In fact, authorities weren't even sure who she was. Officials told the press that the remains didn't match anyone who'd been reported missing in the park. However, it appears that wasn't the thought process behind the scenes,

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  because just one day after the woman's bones were discovered, law enforcement put out an alert asking folks to be on the lookout for a 1970's Volkswagen, which to me sort of suggests investigators thought the remains could be Rosalyn. But according to the coverage, authorities didn't confirm that suspicion publicly. The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that after the start of the new year, investigators said they were seeking dental records for a woman who'd been reported missing, aka Rosalyn. And by January 4th, it was officially confirmed via dental x-rays that the skeleton in the park was in fact her. Now despite authorities being unable to tell how she died, they didn't think it was a result of suicide or exposure to the elements.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  By all accounts, Roslyn had been healthy and looking forward to her trip. So there was no basis for authorities to assume it was a natural death. They were pretty clear with the press that they were operating off the suspicion she'd been murdered, and that the crime had likely occurred in the park sometime during the last week of September. When they checked camping permit records, they didn't see that a permit had been issued to Roslyn, and they also couldn't find anyone who'd remembered interacting with her or seeing her yellow VW Beetle. Which was odd, because the time that she'd planned to be in the area was one of the park's busiest tourist seasons. So because of this, investigators surmised that it was possible Roslyn had never made it into the park of her own free will.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  And from that point on in the investigation, the case was handled jointly by the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, the FBI, and the National Park Service. Items of evidence that officials sent to the FBI's lab for forensic testing included Roslyn's shoes, some of her clothing, and soil samples from where she'd been found. While they waited for results to come back, news of her death reached her neighbors in Memphis. They were saddened to hear what happened to her, and described her to newspapers at the time as a friendly outgoing person who liked being outside and who was into all sorts of sports like jogging, skiing, and even hang gliding. They said she was the type of woman who'd help anyone who needed assistance, even if she didn't know them. Her mother, Norris Morgan, told the commercial appeal

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  that this particular aspect of her daughter's personality had always been concerning. She remarked, "She would help anybody. I had cautioned her so often. She thought everybody was good."

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Within a day or so of Rosalynn formally being identified, investigators caught another break in the case when they received a call from someone who said they'd found her yellow VW parked at a bus station in the small town of Alcoa, Tennessee, which is about an hour northwest of where her remains were found. The tipster didn't provide their name, but they said they'd spotted the car after reading a description of it in a local newspaper. Law enforcement told news publications at the time that when the car was found, it looked as if it had been abandoned for a while. Rosalynn's purse, keys, sleeping bag, about $150 in cash, and 35mm camera were missing, along with all the registration and insurance paperwork for her vehicle.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  The only items found inside the car were a hammock, two pillows, two blankets, a lounge chair, and a notepad with a list of phone numbers in it that was tucked beneath one of the back seats. That item was sent straight to the FBI for further investigation. But the source material doesn't say who the numbers belonged to, or if the notepad was even Rosalynn's. News coverage explains that authorities initially had trouble retrieving usable fingerprints from the car because it had been washed inside and out. However, articles by the Knoxville News Sentinel and Commercial Appeal explained that some fingerprints were obtained after investigators used a special chemical. Officials told the press that process revealed a partial handprint on the hood, as well

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  as some finger smudges on the back of the driver's seat. Investigators also found potential trace evidence on the underside of the vehicle. Despite being washed, there was dirt still stuck up under there, and authorities collected samples of that for further analysis to try and determine where the car had been driven. An investigator for Great Smoky Mountains National Park told reporter Greg Gordon that the more authorities analyzed all the evidence in the case, the more they began to suspect that Rosalynn's killer was someone who was familiar with violent crime and had seen her as an easy target. The investigator said that it was evident the killer had taken meticulous steps to try and cover up the murder, and there were indications that the suspect had spent a

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  significant amount of time at the crime scene. He expressed, quote, "Whether she had met someone or had been followed, we don't know. But it was somebody that she knew, and the more we're getting into it, the more it seems that he knew what he was doing," end quote. An assistant chief ranger for the park told the Knoxville News Sentinel that a few specific items had been discovered at the crime scene, which indicated the killer had spent as long as six hours there after the murder. He said investigators had found a campfire site with several stones around it, some 50 feet away from where Roslyn's body had been left. And underneath one of those stones were nearly a dozen cigarette butts, which authorities

• 13:51Speaker 02

  surmised would have taken an average smoker about six hours to smoke. An additional cigarette butt, which was believed to be the same brand as the others, was located further away in the woods, directly next to where Roslyn had been found, which indicated the person who'd smoked it had been present when her body was discarded. Interestingly, when investigators spoke with Roslyn's loved ones, they said she'd stopped smoking years before her death, and she wasn't shy when it came to telling her own family members they needed to quit. So it seemed unlikely the cigarette butts had come from her. According to news coverage from the time, investigators also collected a two-foot-long piece of twine near the crime scene, and a piece of torn tree bark that had a pool

• 14:35Speaker 02

  of melted candle wax on it. Naturally, authorities sent the cigarette butts, along with all the other items of evidence, to the FBI's crime lab for testing. Those results would take some time to come in, though, so in the interim, investigators reviewed some 30,000 campground records from the timeframe Roslyn vanished. But like I said earlier, late September, early October was during the park's busy season, so there was a ton of analog data for law enforcement to comb through. They were also simultaneously receiving tips from various alleged sightings of Roslyn during the week she was supposed to be in the area. One witness reported they'd spotted her at a service station with a much older man who was, quote, "dressed scrubbly."

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Another tipster said they'd seen her in a restaurant in Gatlinburg, and yet another witness claimed they'd seen her at a commercial shower facility. She also used a phone at a motel in Gatlinburg on the 26th to place a call, presumably back home to Memphis. Now, I initially assumed that this phone call might have been when she'd spoken with her daughter Adrienne to let her know she would be headed home the next day. But according to what a Shelby County detective told the Knoxville News Sentinel, Rosalind's call home was actually placed on the 26th from a payphone in Nashville. Later, coverage by the newspaper explained that Rosalind's last known contact with someone over the phone was with a worker at the stable in Memphis where she was keeping her horse.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  But it's unclear if that call was the one that was placed from the motel in Gatlinburg, or if the Gatlinburg call was to someone else. I have to assume this was when she spoke with the stable employee, but the source material just doesn't specifically say. Either way, the following day, September 27th, she'd sent a postcard to her friend in Atlanta who'd been unable to join her camping. And that postcard successfully arrived on the 28th. And after that is when concrete information about Rosalind's movements gets a little fuzzy. Like I stated earlier, based on what investigators could pin down, Rosalind's journey had for sure started out just fine in Memphis. Then she'd stopped to have lunch with her brother on the 24th before ending up in Nashville

• 16:44Speaker 02

  that same night. It was at that point that she'd learned from her friend in Atlanta they couldn't join her and she'd have to go camping alone. And by the end of the day on the 24th, she'd left Nashville and she was in the Gatlinburg area by either the 25th or 26th. Then she traveled back to Nashville at some point and called her daughter. And after that, she returned to the Gatlinburg area again where she sent the postcard on the 27th. I know it's a lot to keep track of, but that's the best I can piece together just based on the information I have. Anyway, in early January, two witnesses came forward and reported that they'd seen Rosalind alive after September 27th. Which I imagine was information that really piqued authorities' interest.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Because prior to this tip coming in, they'd only ever heard from people who saw her on or before the 27th. These two tipsters were a couple from out of state who'd been hiking in the park on either September 28th or September 29th. And they explained that while on their way to see a restored Pioneer Cabin attraction in Cades Cove, they'd seen Rosalind hiking with a man who had a beard and dark brown hair. The couple said they greeted the pair, but Roslin and the man didn't respond in kind. In fact, news coverage describes Roslin and the mystery man's response to the couple's gesture as "snubbing them." But what's super interesting to me, though, is that the area this sighting occurred in was about three miles away from where Roslin's remains were found.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  So I have to think that fact only further heightened authorities' suspicions that whoever this mystery man was, he could be a suspect, or at a minimum, a person of interest. The couple who provided the tip told investigators that in addition to seeing Roslin with the bearded man, they'd also spotted a yellow 1970 VW Beetle parked at the start of the trailhead. Now, I'm sure you're probably all asking the same question I was, which is, was the guy who was seen with Roslin on the trail on the 28th or 29th the same dude who'd been reportedly seen with her at the service station in Gatlinburg earlier that week? And the answer is, no. An investigator for the park told the Commercial Appeal, "The man who'd been seen with her

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  at the service station had a totally different physical description than the man who'd been spotted with her on the trail." But in my opinion, the trail guy feels like the more crucial sighting, because he was seen with Roslin after the 27th, which suggests he was the last person to see her alive. In February 1985, more than a month after Roslin's remains were discovered and this tip came in, not a lot of progress had been made in the case, despite officials' promises that significant attention was still being dedicated to the investigation. For about seven months, things sort of languished, at least as far as the public was aware. Behind the scenes, though, investigators had been busy following up on information

• 19:38Speaker 02

  about a man and a woman seen in the Knoxville area at the time of Roslin's murder, who might have been living under false identities. And this lead would change the entire trajectory of the case.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime in Real Time.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Outdoor defense plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory: a baby factory.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 21:05Speaker 06

  That's the one time that we called the cops, because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.

• 21:10Speaker 07

  I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  I'm Eva Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  According to an article by Greg Gordon for The Commercial Appeal, in early September 1985, nearly a year after Roslin's murder, authorities announced that they wanted to interview a married couple who'd been seen with her in Maryville, Tennessee, around the time she disappeared. This husband and wife were named Harry and Linda Mercer, but authorities suspected that Harry and Linda were not the couple's real names, but rather aliases. According to investigators, the pair had been working at different Knoxville-area chain restaurants for about two weeks before Roslin vanished. And then, right around the same time she disappeared, they did too. They left no clues behind about where they were going and no one who'd worked with

• 22:17Speaker 02

  them at their respective places of employment had any idea why they left or where they'd moved to. Investigators told the press that they considered the Mercer's potential material witnesses in Roslin's case, but law enforcement stopped short of calling them suspects. The description for Harry stated he was in his mid-30s, stood 5'5" to 5'6" tall, was about 120 to 145 pounds, and had brown eyes and black hair, which was graying on the sides. He also had a tattoo of a blue heart with an arrow in it on his left forearm, a tattoo of a Playboy bunny on his right forearm, and a tattoo of a heart on his chest. His wife Linda was said to be about the same height as him, but weighed about 100 pounds

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  and had blue eyes, brown blonde hair, and severely decayed front teeth. But weeks passed, and then months, and eventually the only criminal warrants the FBI could manage to get approved for the Mercer's to, I guess, attempt to get them into custody for questioning, were for charges related to social security fraud. The feds got arrest warrants for the couple in October 1986 for those charges, but they couldn't successfully execute those warrants because the Mercer's hadn't resurfaced. Meanwhile, way down in Naples, Florida, some 800 to 900 miles south of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, investigators at the Collier County Sheriff's Office were busy trying to track down a mysterious couple from their jurisdiction who were wanted in connection

• 23:46Speaker 02

  with a sexual assault case from April 1983. It was the late 80s by this point, and the Collier County case had pretty much hit a dead end. The couple they believed was linked to the crime was this guy named Billy Joe Edwards and his wife Rebecca, and they'd been in the wind after running from law enforcement.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  According to investigative reports from the sheriff's office in Naples, Billy Joe Edwards, whose real name was actually William Hewlett, had drinks at a local bar with a 19 or 20-year-old woman before taking her on a motorcycle ride. At some point, though, he pulled off a paved roadway and driven into the woods, where he forced the victim off the motorcycle before sexually battering her. He then tried to choke her, but she managed to break free and run back to the road where she flagged down a passing car for help. She immediately filed a police report with the sheriff's office, and not long after, investigators, armed with an arrest warrant, went straight to where William and his wife Rebecca lived. But just as deputies arrived, the Hewlits took off.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Police reports state that one of their neighbors drove them one county north, and after that, they vanished. From the way I read the reports, I'm not sure if the neighbor who helped the couple knew William or Rebecca had been living under aliases, or that he was wanted locally for sexual battery. But regardless, the sheriff's office's report explains that William and Rebecca were somehow able to convince their neighbor to help them get out of Collier County. And after that, the pair was in the wind. Florida authorities had no clue where they went, and it stayed that way for years. The Naples Daily News reported that officials with the US Marshal Service suspected William was connected to a faction of a larger organized crime group

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  called the Sam Melville Jonathan Jackson Unit, which carried out violent crimes and bombings in the name of prison reform. In the 1970s, that terrorist faction claimed responsibility for upwards of 35 bombings in California, and they were suspected of carrying out numerous bank robberies, a courthouse bombing in Boston, Massachusetts, and the slaying of a New Jersey state trooper. And that wasn't even half of William's suspected criminal ties.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Turns out, according to an article by the news press, William's life of crime began in 1961 when he stole a car. A few years later, he went AWOL from the Army. And then, per news coverage in the Sarasota Journal, Bradenton Herald, and Tampa Bay Times, formerly known as the St. Petersburg Times, in late May 1970, he and this guy named Joseph Brumba robbed a bank together in Ohio. In that case, prosecutors allege that 49-year-old Joseph, who was a military veteran and technical writer for the government and private companies, participated in the robbery because he wanted to gather firsthand material for a book he was writing about robbing banks. However, when the case went to trial a few months later,

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Joseph claimed he'd been William's hostage in the whole thing, not a willing participant. He explained that on the day of the crime, he'd been driving in a car with William, and it was William who'd pulled a firearm on him, and stated they were going to rob a bank together. Joseph said he only went along with the plan because he was under duress. Witnesses from the bank who testified in court told the jury that Joseph had waved a gun at workers and customers, but he'd also laid down as a hostage himself. However, William's version of events was that Joseph was the brains behind the whole operation, and he told him he was going to act like a hostage so that if they were ever caught, he'd have a defense.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  So it was a very "he said, he said" situation. Ultimately, the bank robbery case ended with William taking a guilty plea and being sentenced to eight years in prison. Joseph went to trial and was found guilty by a jury. Like William, he was also sentenced to eight years in prison. However, William eventually received parole in 1975 and was required to reside in his home state of West Virginia. But he didn't. Instead, he violated his parole by robbing another bank. According to reporting by the news press, he posed as a federal auditor and managed to get bank officials to close the branch. Then, he robbed it. According to coverage by the Knoxville News Sentinel, after that offense,

• 28:17Speaker 02

  he became the prime suspect in a 1977 sexual assault in West Virginia, but then fled after the state police there got a warrant for his arrest. He remained in hiding before eventually emerging in Naples, Florida, under the alias Billy Joe Edwards, where he committed the sexual battery in 1983. Because William was a convicted felon, had an alleged association with a known terrorist group, and had active warrants for sex crimes in two different states, the US Marshals decided to add him to their 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list in July 1988. At that time, he hadn't been formally connected to Roslin's case, but he was about to be. Shortly after he was added to the Marshals list,

• 29:02Speaker 02

  his name, photo, and description were broadcast on the television show America's Most Wanted. When that segment aired in early July 1988, an FBI agent based in Knoxville, Tennessee, happened to watch it. And he realized William Hewlett looked identical to one Harry Mercer. The same Harry Mercer who the feds and Great Smoky Mountains National Park investigators had been wanting to interview about Roslin Goodman's murder. So it became very clear at that point that William and his wife Rebecca had been living for years under multiple aliases. And they'd traveled frequently between different states, including Tennessee, Florida, and Kentucky.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  In August 1988, officials formally announced William was the prime suspect in Roslin's murder because investigators in Tennessee had compared William, aka Harry Mercer's fingerprints, to the palm print and smudges that had been found in Roslin's car. And they confirmed they were a match. So as far as forensic evidence, they had a solid case in that respect. Rebecca Hewlett was also named as a suspect in the murder case, though it was unclear what role authorities believed she'd played in the crime. But now that investigators knew the couple's true identities, they had a much better chance at tracking them down.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  America's Most Wanted aired follow-up segments featuring their names and photos, along with the charges pending against them for Roslin's death. And in short order, tips came pouring in. From what law enforcement had gathered, the relationship dynamic between William and Rebecca was uniquely, let's say, bad. For example, in a letter he'd penned to her while he was in prison for the 1970 bank robbery in Ohio, he'd expressed to her that in his mind, they were going to be the next Bonnie and Clyde. And it appeared they'd gone on to live exactly like the infamous criminal couple for more than a decade. But their luck would run out in spectacular fashion in December 1988, about five months after they were added to the U.S.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Marshals 15 Most Wanted fugitives list. And that was thanks in large part to, you guessed it, America's Most Wanted.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 32:28Speaker 06

  That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.

• 32:33Speaker 07

  I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 32:38Speaker 02

  I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  According to the news coverage on this case, right before Christmas 1988, law enforcement received a call from a family in Pearlington, Mississippi, who claimed that a few months earlier, they'd allowed a couple to live with them, who looked an awful lot like 44-year-old William Hewlett and his wife, 36-year-old Rebecca Jo Hewlett. This family's neighbor had told them back in September that he'd watched a follow-up program on America's Most Wanted, and the Hewlits looked really familiar. But it wasn't until the family themselves saw the third airing of America's Most Wanted on the Hewlits that their neighbor had videotaped, that they realized the wanted couple were definitely the husband and wife who'd stayed with them earlier in the year.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  So with this information in hand, investigators did some digging, and they learned that the Hewlits had in fact arrived in Pearlington, Mississippi, on a boat sometime in July 1988. However, they'd been forced to stay put there while they waited for their boat's engine to be repaired by a family who allowed them to live with them. Unfortunately, by the time that family realized in December that the Hewlits were wanted fugitives, the couple had already left town. But thankfully, they hadn't gone too far, because law enforcement was able to track them to a home in Pearlington. And on Monday, December 19th, they were apprehended together, wearing, wait for it, matching outfits that consisted of black zipper jackets and blue jeans.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Now, like I mentioned earlier, William was wanted for a slew of open warrants, so he was staring down a pretty bad future regardless of how you cut it. But Rebecca was only wanted for charges related to social security fraud and being a material witness in Roslin's murder. After they were arrested, they were denied bond and remained in a Mississippi jail before being extradited back to Tennessee for the charges related to social security fraud. But it seems authorities' greater aim, once the Hewlits were in custody, was to question them about Roslin's murder. Whether or not that happened right away, though, is unclear. What I can tell you is that on December 28, 1988, they were arraigned in federal court for the social security charges.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  And shortly after that, FBI agents took their first crack at interviewing them about Roslin's death. Interestingly, by that point, law enforcement's long-held suspicion that William was part of the Sam Melville-Johnathan Jackson terrorist group went away. Because they realized he'd merely used a stolen social security card with the name and information of an actual group member on it. And William himself wasn't part of that organization. Still, the future was not looking good for him and his wife Rebecca. Over the course of being interviewed by the FBI, William reportedly confessed to Roslin's murder. The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that on January 5, 1989, less than a month after

• 35:48Speaker 02

  he was arrested in Mississippi, William pleaded guilty to social security fraud and second-degree murder in Roslin's case. He also promised to plead guilty to the sexual assault from 1977 in West Virginia and the 1983 sexual assault in Florida. In exchange, prosecutors in those jurisdictions would ensure his sentences for those crimes ran concurrent with his sentence in the murder case. Which, by the way, was 60 years in prison for the murder charge and five years for the fraud. He was required to serve a minimum of 20 years before he could be eligible for parole. However, that was later changed to 10 years. He appealed his conviction in 1991 citing numerous constitutional violations, but a

• 36:32Speaker 02

  district court and a higher court denied his requests.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  His wife Rebecca pleaded guilty to social security fraud and was sentenced to five years probation. She was never charged in relation to Roslin's case because the FBI determined she wasn't aware of anything related to her murder. Per the feds, they said William acted alone when he killed Roslin in 1984. The article I mentioned a second ago by the Knoxville News Sentinel explained that the FBI determined that at some point during her trip, Roslin had met the Hewlits in the park, and then on the day of the murder, had given them a ride to a motel in Knoxville so they could get some of their stuff. After that, the trio returned to the park and camped together in the Cades Cove area.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Rebecca was later taken to a laundromat in Alcoa, Tennessee, so she could do her and William's washing and buy bus tickets. Meanwhile, Roslin and William drove to purchase cannabis beer and psilocybin, aka magic mushrooms, before returning to the group's campsite, just the two of them. According to the FBI, they had a sexual encounter, but then Roslin reportedly got upset, struck William, and then attempted to run away from him. But he chased her and tried to stop her from screaming, and then he strangled her with a piece of twine. He told agents he spent the rest of the night at the campsite with her body before moving her to her final resting place further up the ridge. After concealing her, he drove her car to a car wash and eventually abandoned it at

• 38:03Speaker 02

  the bus station in Alcoa where it was eventually found. This whole time Rebecca was reportedly completely unaware of what William had been up to, and she'd spent all that time by herself. When William showed up the morning after the murder, she joined him on a commercial bus and they left the area. Now, I don't know about you, but if I were Rebecca, I would have had a lot of questions for my husband if he'd just abandoned me to do laundry and then didn't show up again until the following morning. But there's nothing in the source material that discusses what Rebecca was thinking or feeling at this time. In fact, I couldn't find much of anything about her. What she did after 1989 is a mystery.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  I don't know if she ever divorced William, if she changed her name, I got nada. What I do know for certain is that after William pleaded guilty to Roslin's murder in January 1989, investigators in Naples, Florida didn't formally charge him in relation to their case until 11 months later in December 1989. According to court records, by then, William was already serving his federal prison sentence for Roslin's murder. Still, Florida prosecutors wanted to make sure he was held responsible for the sexual battery incident in their jurisdiction. Not long after being transported to Florida and formally charged with sexual battery, William pleaded no contest to the offense and was sentenced to 15 years in state prison,

• 39:29Speaker 02

  which, you guessed it, ran concurrently with his federal prison sentence. Collier County investigators noted in their incident report that Roslin's murder in Tennessee had happened after William and Rebecca fled Florida, meaning her death might have been prevented if he'd been apprehended in their jurisdiction in 1983. And that's the hard truth in this case. It's so clear to me that William was never going to stop, and it's heartbreaking to know that Roslin would likely have never come across his path if he'd only been caught sooner. This kind of thinking begs the question: Did he have any other victims? After William was sentenced, the FBI straight-up said they suspected he might have committed

• 40:14Speaker 02

  other violent crimes in the 11 years that he and Rebecca were on the run, living under at least 10 different aliases, and residing in 14 different states in the southeast part of the United States. One FBI agent told the Knoxville News Sentinel, quote, "Our behavioral science experts believe Hewlett is someone who could commit a series of violent crimes, including violent rapes. We are quite concerned about his frequency of travel and his frequent name changes." End quote. The feds even came up with a detailed map of all the areas in the southeast between Texas, West Virginia, Florida, and the Carolinas that they knew the Hewlits had lived in between 1977 and 1988.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  They asked law enforcement agencies in those places to take a look at any unsolved murders and sexual assaults to see if William might be linked to them. But untethering the wildly nomadic lives of William and Rebecca proved difficult. They never used their assumed identities for more than 14 months, and they usually stayed in campgrounds or rundown hotels. Sometimes they'd even spend the night under bridges. As far as I could find, William was never charged in relation to any other murders or sexual assaults besides the ones I've told you about. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, in September 2020, at the age of 76, William died in custody from a cardiac event related to hypertensive heart disease.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  To my knowledge, he never confessed to any other murders. Jerry Hobbs, the assistant chief ranger who investigated Roslin's case, made a remark to the Knoxville News Sentinel back in 1985 that I found myself thinking about a lot because I believe it's a statement that really gets at the base-level feeling that so many people associated with this case seem to have had. Referring to all the evidence and details surrounding Roslin's murder, Hobbs said, quote, "I saw something out there that's just not right. I don't know what I saw or what it is, but it's there. Inside, I feel it, and it won't go away." End quote.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Now, at the time, Hobbs had been a law enforcement investigator for 22 years, but I don't think the gut feeling he was expressing is reserved just for people with law enforcement backgrounds. I think we can all relate to what Ranger Hobbs was expressing. William Hewlett had a dark energy. He committed very dark crimes, and that cloud of darkness, though invisible, left traces of itself. Ranger Hobbs seemed to perceive that, and I think we should all take a page out of his playbook. Just because you can't always put your finger on what's wrong with a situation or a person doesn't mean that something isn't.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators. I think Chuck would approve.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow, a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.