The Man Who Turned Into A Monster

August 12, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett explore the case of Susan Woods. When police dive into a murder investigation, they checked all the obvious suspects allowing the killer to almost get away with it.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey, everybody! Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

He's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

Wow, it feels good to be back on our set! I know if you just listened last week, it sounded the exact same, but it feels good to be back.

Also, if the set does look a tad different, it is a little different. We might have moved spaces, and so setting up the set tends to be a lot of work. Things aren't exactly the same. It's supposed to be the same, but there might be a light in a different position. We might be different heights. It might sound a little different. I might look a little buffer than I usually do, you know—just kind of the normal stuff that happens when moving sets.

All right, you guys, we love you so much. Thank you for always being here. Thank you for supporting us. Seriously, I mean it. I mean it.

The fake laugh from Payton there.

Okay, I—oh my gosh, yeah—so I’m laughing, dude. Okay, give them your 10 seconds.

I've been going to the gym a lot. Like, a lot a lot, huh, babe?

Yep.

I've been living there practically. I've been becoming a gym bro, I guess I could say, except I don't like talking to anybody. I go in there, I do my thing, and then I leave. I stare at a bunch of people while I'm there, I'll be honest. Other than the gym, I still have my mustache. I got some new clothes. I'm wearing a hat by this company called Diamond Cross Ranch. They also have some shirts that I like, so you can go check them out—not a sponsor, just some clothes I like—so free plug, I guess.

The Olympics! Payton and I have been watching the Olympics. If you have not been watching the Olympics, where is your school spirit? Where is your soul? Because the Olympics are amazing! I mean, not even just for USA—I just love watching everybody from different countries. I love watching underdogs. I love when countries who haven't won medals in so long win something. It's just amazing to see people—literally the best of the best—compete at the highest level. There's been some amazing track and field events. Everything has been amazing.

Um, if you're keeping up with basketball, the USA just beat Serbia, and yeah—the Olympics are crazy. The Olympics are fun.

Remember your bonus episodes. We're back on track. We're getting our bonus episodes out—two a month—all ad-free. Plus, Dear Daisy will be coming again. Now, I know we stopped those for a second. We were doing a bunch of stuff—a lot of stuff was going on. There's just—I don't want to get into it—there's a lot of stuff. Look, there's a lot of stuff going on. There's no other way to say it.

This is a true crime podcast. This is not The Life of Payton and Garrett—maybe another day. So, there's a lot of stuff going on, and we love you all, and we really appreciate the support.

Other than that, I guess we can get back into some true crime stuff. Let's hop into today's case.

P.S. If you hear me eating now and then, I have some Sour Hi-Chews in my shirt pocket.

Our sources for this episode are ABC's 2020, TexasMonthly.com, The Stevenville Empire-Tribune, Deseret.com, ABCNews.com, Heavy.com, BeneathTheSurfaceNews.com, TheSun.com, MyPlainview.com, Distractify.com, Newser.com, and Happy.com.

When someone is murdered, it is the natural inclination of the police—and always Garrett—to suspect someone close to the victim. I mean, how many times have we seen a husband kill a wife, or the other way around? In other instances, outside of those famed serial killer cases, the attacker is usually a family member, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or maybe even a close friend from time to time. So, it's understandable that the first suspects called into the interrogation room are someone who knows the victim pretty intimately. It might not be fair, but it is understandable.

But there's a problem with being so quick to suspect. While we're so set on getting justice for the victim's family, we often don't think about the effect that false accusations have on those wrongly accused or suspected. This is why the police, and we as storytellers, need to keep in mind that when it comes to murder, things aren't always as they seem. Sometimes, the most obvious places to look are actually the wrong places, which then allows the real killer to hide in plain sight.

So, it's 1987. We are in the sleepy little town of Stephenville, Texas. This is the kind of place where you could drive for miles without seeing another car. You would pass dairy farms—

Um, I thought you were going to say Dairy Queen!

You would pass dairy farms, have your windows down in the summer, and there would be a faint smell of fresh-cut grass and a hint of manure blowing in the breeze. With a population of about 14,000 at this time, the biggest social events were Friday night football games at the high school and maybe the occasional hangout in the Dairy Queen parking lot.

No way!

Then everyone would go to church on Sunday, because it’s humble, innocent little Stephenville.

In fact, it was a dry town—you couldn't even buy beer in Stephenville at the time. Which is why no one ever suspected something as dark and sinister as what would happen to Susan Woods would actually happen in Stephenville.

Kind of reminds me of that movie with Julianne Hough. What's that movie? Okay, not the original, but, um, Footloose.

Footloose. The original is obviously Kevin Bacon.

There we go.

Yeah, mhm.

Okay, so 30-year-old Susan—she's quiet, she's shy, she's easygoing. She had grown up in the Stephenville area. She'd been working part-time at a nursing home and a sandpaper factory ever since she graduated high school over a decade earlier. In fact, she was working six days a week to support herself ever since things had ended between her and her husband, Michael.

See, let's back up a little bit. Michael and Susan met around the late '70s. Susan was so reserved in high school; she had never really dated anyone, she didn't even go to prom. But one day, Michael Woods caught her eye. He was kind of a rock-and-roll bad-boy type that Susan just couldn't resist. He was not the traditional cowboy like the other twenty-something-year-old men in Stephenville. So Michael charmed Susan, who fell fast and hard. Susan's parents, however, did not see the appeal. When Michael showed up to meet her family for the first time, he arrived shirtless, in a pair of cut-off jeans and sandals.

That's kind of cool, I'm not going to lie.

Susan's parents didn't exactly approve. Still, we know these small-town girls love a bad boy, and Susan did not seem to care that her parents were not on board with her relationship—at least not at first. Because in 1980, she moved to El Paso with Michael after his uncle offered him a job there.

But soon after they settled down, Susan went to Michael with an important question. She says to Michael, "Listen, my parents are going to kill me that we're living together." Even though she's in her 20s, she's like, "They are legit going to disown me." She asks, "Can you just marry me right now to make it slightly better that we moved away and are living together?" And he's like, "Yes, I can." He told her, "I can take the day off tomorrow; we can go down to the courthouse." And that's exactly what they did.

Michael's job does not pan out in El Paso, so the couple returns to Stephenville. In 1985, they moved into a little bungalow near downtown, and Susan became the sole breadwinner for the family. But Michael's ego really could not handle this. He began acting out in ways that Susan did not approve of. He was frequently getting pulled over by local police, he would get into fights with neighbors, and at one point, he even poured sugar into a woman's gas tank.

Meanwhile, Susan did her best to be that Betty Crocker wife she thought she needed to be—coming home from work to then spend all her time in the kitchen making beautiful dinners, honestly hoping that one day her husband Michael would turn himself around. But the final straw was when Michael went to her with a new business idea. He told her he wanted to start buying and flipping houses, which would have been great, but he didn't have any of his own money. So he's like, "Hey Susan, I know you're the breadwinner and I haven't had a job. I now need you to give me money to start this new business venture."

When Susan shot down the idea, it caused a massive blowout that ended with Michael saying that he felt emasculated. After this, things only got worse between the couple. Michael built up this rage and resentment toward Susan. He even began leaving her threatening notes in odd places for her to find, like the microwave, kitchen drawers, and under the toilet lid.

Now, I'm not sure what these notes said exactly, but I do know that by the summer of 1987, things had really come to a head.

Ego, man. It's crazy all that happens.

Also, have you seen those TikToks where a guy will make a TikTok and he'll say, "When I find out my wife's making, for example, like $250,000," and then it pans, and he's like cleaning the house with music and stuff like that?

Yeah, 'cause he's like, "I don't care. If my wife is making that much money, I'll do whatever needs to be done."

There's a lot of guys who feel emasculated. Their egos are hurt. I think the worst for me is exactly like Michael—when they feel emasculated, but not enough to go get a job and actually help provide. They act out.

Yes, and that's where it's like, okay, well...

So, things have come to a head, and Michael moves out for good. As a little goodbye gift, Michael takes the car and Susan's prized fur coat—what?—and he leaves behind a cassette recording of himself telling her how she was responsible for ruining their marriage.

Which is so funny because it's like, you know how people have been posting the voicemails where you dance to your ex's voicemail? He basically did that—just back then.

He did that, yeah.

Susan told her friend Cindy that at this point, she was afraid of what Michael would do now that they were separated. She knew he had a jealous and angry side, and while Michael had left town, she worried she would never really be able to live her life without him finding out. So, she stays with Cindy for a little while until things calm down. When the dust settled, she asked Michael for a divorce that July. She even started seeing someone new—a bartender she met over in the town of Granbury, Texas. Friends of Susan say for the first time in years, she finally seemed truly, genuinely happy, like she had turned a new leaf.

And then, all of a sudden, Susan goes radio silent.

On July 28, 1987, Susan's father, Joe Atkins, was worried. That night, he received a call from Susan's boss at the Sandpaper Factory saying that she hadn't shown up for work in two days. People had been trying to call her, but she was not answering. Joe knows that this is not like his daughter—she takes her job very seriously. So, it leaves a pit in his stomach. The only thing he can think to do is to go to Susan's house.

When he pulls up, the house looks dark. When he reaches the front door, he notices that it's unlocked. He walks in, goes into the living room, and on the coffee table, he finds a bag of chips, a Diet Coke, and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. But Susan doesn't smoke, and she also avoids caffeine. So, he's like, "Okay, obviously, someone else was here or is here." He makes his way into the bedroom, calling out Susan's name, but he sees that the room is a mess—the bed has been moved closer to the bathroom door, like it had gotten caught up in some kind of struggle.

When he continues towards the bathroom, that's where he finds Susan. And not only does he find Susan, he finds the naked, dead body of his daughter Susan. Something no one should ever have to find, but especially not a family member. She was draped halfway over the tub; her head and chest were submerged into the water that was in the tub, and her hands were tied behind her back, bound with a tank top.

This is just horrible, horrible.

When the police arrived, Joe was standing out front of his daughter's house in complete shock. All he could say to detectives was, "They killed my daughter." Now, it's unclear who the "they" was that Joe was referring to in this moment. Keep in mind, he had just walked in on his daughter like this, so give him some time.

But the scene inside would honestly be enough to confuse even some of the best detectives. Susan's body had already started decomposing, which told the medical examiner that she had been dead for at least two days already. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled, as indicated by the red marks across her throat. The attacker also appeared to try and smother her with a pillowcase since one was found with mascara stains and a haunting impression of Susan's face on it.

Detectives were able to gather several pieces of crucial evidence, though, like two really solid sets of finger and palm prints on the bathroom tub, which they strongly believed belonged to the killer. Plus, there were those cigarette butts and the Coke can, which they knew were not used by Susan herself. It looked as if she had invited someone into the house, hosted them for a bit, and then was attacked. Either that, or they stayed in her house after she died—they came in, then attacked her, and then stayed there.

Now, a sergeant named Donnie Hensley was the one to spearhead the investigation, and he felt pretty confident that Susan knew her attacker. But when he started talking to Susan's friends and family, they said there were not a lot of people she would have willingly opened up her home to. Ever since her separation from Michael, Susan had kept her social circle pretty small—she had a hard time trusting people.

But one friend named Deborah Hardy told Detective Hensley something of note. Just a few weeks before Susan's death, Susan had come to Deborah really upset. She had a bunch of hickeys all over her neck, and she told Deborah that she was afraid of other people seeing them and talking about it.

Okay, so Hensley's like, "Okay, I'm going to track down the source of these hickeys," and it's Susan's new bartender boyfriend, J.C. Bowman.

Now, J.C. willingly comes in for an interview. He says he and Susan both talked about keeping it casual—they were dating, but it was nothing serious. He would go over to her house, cuddle on the couch while she drank, and he had a few Coca-Colas. Sometimes, they would just take baths together. But she had actually ended it with him after the hickey incident—she was upset that he had left this many hickeys on her, and this was just a few days before she died.

Now, obviously, none of this is looking good for J.C., and when Hensley asks him to take a polygraph, it comes back inconclusive. There's definitely some strange coincidences between J.C. and clues found at the crime scene, like the Coca-Cola, but Hensley had this feeling that J.C. seemed like a pretty genuine guy. So, he stays on the suspect list, but he doesn't remain at the top of it for very long because soon there's another tip that points them in a different direction.

Before Susan died, a neighbor reported a man lurking around Susan's bungalow. It was a big guy with a red pickup truck, who fits the description of Susan's friend Cindy's boyfriend. Remember, Cindy is who Susan went to complain about her hickeys. Cindy's boyfriend was seen lurking around Susan's home the day before she died.

Which, why? That doesn't make sense. What's the connection? I mean, I know we're going to get to it, but right now, there's no connection there.

So it was a man named Roy Hayes, and a lot of people described Roy as this gentle giant. In fact, Susan had turned to him for protection in the days after Michael left. He came over to the house, nailed some of her windows shut, and even offered to lend her a gun, which she inevitably declined. He also helped Susan with some odds and ends whenever she needed it that summer. But this meant that his fingerprints were all over the home, and it also meant he was someone that Susan probably would have willingly invited in.

Now, Hensley and his team kind of zoom in on Roy, but not for any reasons that really make sense. Mostly, they do it because Roy was involved with something seen as sinister, even demonic, back in the small town of Texas in 1987.

What do you think Roy was doing in 1987 that the police were like, "Bad, bad boy"?

Oh, he was drinking, wasn't he?

No.

Oh, well, I thought you said they couldn’t buy alcohol.

I mean, they can drink; they just can't buy alcohol in town.

Oh, um, think hard. 1987?

1987.

Drugs?

No. Wait, that is bad.

Am I? Am I? I don’t know. Now you got me confused.

He was known around town for running a little game called Dungeons and Dragons.

What's wrong with that?

Babe, in the '80s, people thought it was like a devil game.

They did?

Yes, like parents were freaking out, being like, "The devil is...!"

Yes. Oh my gosh. How do you not know this?

I don’t know.

I play a good amount of video games.

Yes, so how do I not know this?

When Dungeons and Dragons came around, is this real guys? Is she lying to me right now?

There was an uproar about this game being demonic and like devil worshipping, and that people who played it were not the type of people you wanted to be around.

I did not— I had no idea.

Okay, well Roy is the little, you know, like the headmaster of the local Dungeons and Dragons game. Now, this of course sounds ridiculous to us, especially with how many violent video games are out there, but back then police felt it was cause for concern, particularly after a news station did a whole story on the game, how it was only played by devil worshippers.

So the police were like, "Roy..."

So Roy is sent to the Texas Rangers office for a polygraph as well, and while he's waiting for the results, the police badger him—they're trying to get him to confess. They tell him, "You had to have killed this girl, Roy," and the poor guy is white as a ghost, thinking that he's going to go to jail for something he didn't do. But then the polygraph comes back, and it shows that Roy is telling the truth, so he's removed from the suspect list. But after that, he is scarred for life, and he's left wondering, "How could I be under suspicion when it's clear as day the person they should really be looking into is Susan's estranged husband, Michael Woods?" Which, I mean, duh.

Yeah, duh.

So fear not, because the police were definitely keeping a close eye on Michael too. However, it was a bit more difficult considering Michael was no longer living in Stephenville and had actually moved out of the state since separating from Susan.

He was now supposedly living in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is weird. If he's out of state, it's kind of a good alibi, you know—a really good alibi. Yeah, so he was residing in a tent in some dilapidated house he and his brother were remodeling. The guy probably wasn't easy to find in the first place, but when police do track him down, they're the ones to break the news to Michael because he still doesn't know. They tell him his estranged wife has been murdered, and Michael knows this isn't looking good for him.

When they ask Michael to sign a confession statement, he refuses. He says he knows he's innocent, and there's nothing they can do to coerce a confession out of him. Over the course of the next few days, he says the Indianapolis police start harassing him for his role in this case. They begin pulling him over for no reason, and they're arresting him for public intoxication when he hadn't even been drinking. At one point, Michael claimed they tried to force him onto a plane to return to Texas.

But here's the thing: the police aren't the only ones to think Michael played a part in Susan's death. It's pretty easy to say that Susan's friends and family all suspect him as well. Susan's dad, Joe, is at the police station almost every single day in the first few weeks of this investigation, badgering the police about why they haven't arrested his son-in-law yet. They had those finger and palm prints all over the bathtub. If they could just match them to Michael's, it would be the smoking gun they needed.

So Detective Hensley and his team went to Indianapolis with a full-fledged plan to get Michael's prints and confirm once and for all that he was responsible for Susan's murder. It's going to be crazy if the prints don't match Michael. After hearing that Michael had stolen Susan's car, her fur coat, and some crystal figurines after their separation, Hensley secured a search warrant and went to Michael's Indianapolis home to get the stolen items back. They tore the place apart, and while I don't think they found the stolen items, they did find some marijuana, which was enough for them to arrest Michael and finally get those fingerprints.

But once Hensley gets back to Stephenville and compares Michael's prints to the ones found at the crime scene, he is taken by complete surprise. No match. They are not a match, which means Michael is basically eliminated from the suspect list, which is strange because he's like the perfect suspect. I know, but it's like you said earlier—that one guy was stalking outside, Roy. Roy and Dungeons & Dragons, but I don't know, man. He was also looking out for her. Yeah, Roy was also looking out for her.

So now I'm really confused. It really should be Michael. It should be Michael, but he's moved out of the state. It should be Michael, and his fingerprints don't match. It's like the fingerprints on the tub are in a position that the killer would have probably grabbed right here to do this. What else are you supposed to do if they don't match? Nothing.

Everything in Hensley's veins, though, tells him the only logical person to do this was Michael. Yeah, in fact, the same went for most everyone in Stephenville. If you knew Susan, then you knew Michael, and you knew that things were not good between them, which was why Michael remained under suspicion even as Susan's case stalled out. It was kind of like the case in town where everyone was like, "Oh, Michael killed Susan, but he's still out because they don't have enough evidence to get him." That was the theory.

The thing was, no one ever told Michael or the public that his prints didn't match. So, police knew they weren't a match and didn't announce it.

Can you do that? Yeah, but it's shady because he's now going to be persecuted.

Could you lie and say they did match in an interrogation?

You could.

That's nuts. I mean, I agree with it, but I don’t because I think there are times when it's useful, but there are also times when it leads to false confessions.

Exactly. Someone might just be like, "Okay, I did it," because they're so pressured.

I know a lot of people don't understand false confessions and don't understand how you can get there. It happens. Psychology—it happens. It is so real. I've done some crazy things in my life. Psychology, man, it happens.

So, Michael basically continues living with this perceived target on his back for years, thinking at any moment that police were going to come for him. He stayed the heck out of Stephenville for that exact reason. Rather, he stayed out of Texas for that reason. The dirty looks that he got, the scowling faces—even when Susan's family sued Michael in a civil suit in 1989, Michael actually refused to show up for the trial in Texas. As a result, the judge awarded the family the $11,000 they were looking for and slapped on another $700,000.

Wait, what's up?

Yeah, so Michael's lawyers told him as long as he steered clear of Texas, it would never be collected. But that was beside the point because Michael went on living this way for another 19 years. He had paranoia, depression, his own grief because his ex-wife was murdered. I'm going to be pretty upset if it's not Michael, and he's like, "I didn't kill her, but everyone just says I did." Like everyone thinks I did.

Eventually, news of the case even spread to Indianapolis as time went on, and news became easier to spread. And that's where Michael was living, and now the neighbors and the locals there were coming up to him and asking if he was the one mentioned in the article, if he was the Michael that everyone is saying killed Susan Woods.

So, in 2000, Michael hit his breaking point and attempted to die by suicide. Oh no, he survived. Sad. He turned to music to try and cope, and then in the summer of 2005, everything changed for Michael during one chance encounter. He was playing a show at a house party for a friend's birthday, and afterwards, Michael was overcome with emotion and went around the side of the house to try and calm himself down.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Michael was struggling mentally at this point in his life.

Yes.

The host was a woman named Barbara Gary, and she went to check on Michael to ask him why he was so upset. Michael broke down, telling her the entire story about Susan's murder, saying, "You know, I used to live in Stephenville, and my wife was murdered. Everyone thinks it's me, and it's been so bad that it led to me attempting suicide, and I survived, but it's just so much. It's so much to know that everyone thinks this of you."

At that point, Barbara saw something in Michael that no one had really seen up to this point: a man who she presumed to be innocent, desperate to have his name cleared publicly. That was all he wanted in life—for the public to know and confirm that he did not kill his wife.

Afterwards, Barbara wrote a letter to the Stephenville Police Department to see if there had been any updates on the case. At this point, a new detective named Don Miller opened that email. With Susan's case still unsolved, he figured, “Okay, someone is reaching out and bringing attention to this. Why not look into it once more?” Especially because crime-solving technology had drastically improved in the years since Susan's case ran cold. There were new digital databases, DNA testing—a lot more could be done.

So Miller went back to the evidence locker, dug out those cigarette butts from Susan's home, and sent them off to the lab. They came back with one note: "unidentified male." Now, without a match in the system, Miller knew there was only one way to clear Michael's name for good.

I mean, and this is hard, right? They've already cleared him of the prints. So my question is, and maybe you don't know the answer to this and that's okay—I hope one of our listeners will—I wonder how many people don’t match on fingerprints but match on DNA. It definitely happens. Like, I wonder the statistics behind how often, or percentage-wise. I wonder how you even find those.

Yeah, I don’t know. I just think it’s kind of interesting. Or is it even possible? I mean, it has to be. I’m sure it’s happened in cases where it's happened. Like, how often? What are the chances it happens? Is it pretty common? Is that why now the gold standard is DNA instead of fingerprints?

Yeah. I think what’s even scarier, that’s more common, is that someone doesn’t match DNA or fingerprints and is still arrested and convicted.

Yeah, that’s insane that that happens.

It is pretty crazy because if you don’t match DNA and you don’t match fingerprints, and the prosecution still decides to move forward, there shouldn’t even be circumstantial evidence. That shouldn’t even be a thing. You should just be cleared, right? Because you’re just messing with so many variables.

Yes, so many variables.

So the new detective is like, “Listen, if this guy just wants his name cleared, we’ve cleared him of the fingerprints. Let’s clear him of the cigarette butts and publicly say this guy did not kill his wife.” So they reach out to Michael and they’re like, “Are you good to give us your DNA?” and Michael agrees.

Oh no, dude, this is crazy, man.

So standing on his front stoop in the cold Indiana winter months of 2005, Miller and his partner took Michael's cheek swab right there. They sent it back to the lab to compare with the DNA on the cigarettes and found it was not a match.

Oh, okay, good.

So, between that and the fingerprints, it's obvious it wasn’t Michael. Michael is not their guy. Like, Michael was not the person in the house that day. So publicly, his name, after all these years, is finally cleared.

But Miller knew the fingerprints were still a very important and unsolved piece of this puzzle. By 2006, there was a whole new system which was still in its infancy when the case was being investigated back in 1987. This was one that the Texas Department of Public Safety had just gained access to thanks to the FBI. It was the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, as a lot of us know it by. AFIS, Automatic Fingerprint Identification... some of the names are just funny.

So since the crime was committed, the digital database had built up a massive catalog with criminals from all over the country. As you guys know, this is like going to change the true crime industry. So, in May 2006, Miller ran those bathtub prints through the system and crossed his fingers for a match. And he gets one. He gets one.

They belonged to a man named Joseph Scott Hatley. Freaking Joseph, man, who is this? So, Joseph had also grown up in Stephenville. Of course, he did. And like many of the families in the area, he was raised in a middle-class, churchgoing family. Now, Joseph found himself curious about sex at a very young age, but whenever he tried to ask questions about it, his parents pointed him in the direction of God. So Joseph got more and more angry at the prospect of religion, and by 12 years old, he began refusing to go to church.

Over time, his anger at his religious upbringing turned to rage. He started fantasizing about violence, and at one point, he even considered bringing a gun to school. Instead, Joseph turned that anger inward and resorted to drugs and drinking to numb his confusion and pain. Now in his late teens, he finally met someone he thought would solve his problems. It was a young woman that he fell in love with and married. But a year or so later, their relationship crumbled, leaving Joseph bitter and angry again.

While in the midst of his divorce, Joseph sought comfort in one of his only friends, his cousin Cindy. Now if you remember, yep, Cindy is Susan Wood's best friend. This was the one who was helping her through her divorce with Michael. Well, one evening in early July of 1987, Cindy invited both the 30-year-old Susan and her 21-year-old cousin Joseph over for dinner. After a few drinks, Joseph believed that Susan was flirting with him, and he mistook this as her being interested in him.

Not only did Susan meet Joseph a few weeks before she died, but now Joseph's fingerprints match the prints found on the bathtub. I think it's important to note that Joseph also went to Susan's funeral with Cindy.

Oh my gosh, man.

I mean, that happens a lot, though.

Yes, I mean, I know it’s horrible, but it’s, I don’t want to say intriguing. It's mind-blowing, interesting how much it actually happens.

Well, he even signed the guest book.

Oh geez.

But is this enough to say that Joseph Hatley was the one who killed Susan? Police are like, maybe, let's keep looking into him. And this is when they learned that Joseph had committed a similar crime about a year after Susan's death. So he did not stop.

The summer Susan died, Joseph met a 15-year-old girl named Shannon Meers at a friend's house. Keep in mind, he is 21. Shannon had recently moved to Stephenville from Arkansas and didn’t have many friends in the area, so when the 21-year-old Joseph took an interest in her, Shannon returned the sentiment. The two began casually dating, then they exchanged "I love you's." But later that summer, Joseph sexually assaulted Shannon. She went to her mother, who encouraged her to report it to the police. While they spoke with Joseph, they inevitably let it go. He didn't, though. He grew angry and cut off all contact with Shannon.

Now fast forward to a year later, in July 1988. Shannon runs into Joseph at a party. Again, Stephenville is a small town; it's going to happen. Joseph pulls her aside and says he wants to clear the air between the two of them. He says he misses her and wants to see her. Later that night, she meets him in a laundromat parking lot. He tells her to get into his truck; they should go for a ride and chat. He takes her to a park just south of town, right off the highway, and he sexually assaults her again.

Again.

Okay, he first starts by saying, “Let’s just have sex.” She says no. He holds a knife up to her and sexually assaults her. This goes on for six hours.

Oh.

He doesn’t stop; he doesn’t do it just once. So Shannon fights for her life. She doesn’t even think she’s going to make it out of this alive. But she does. He actually takes her back to where he picked her up, and she runs home and obviously tells her parents immediately. They take her to a hospital for a sexual assault kit, and they press charges against Joseph Hatley.

And he’s not in jail?

Who knows why. Now Joseph is told to stay in the Stephenville area while police investigate the charges, but he doesn’t. He runs away to Las Vegas, where he commits armed robbery.

Holy—

He is sentenced to 120 days in a youth offender program.

Sorry, I'm sorry, everybody. This is...this is insane.

It’s insane how stuff like this happens so often, where people commit crimes over and over and over again and somehow don’t end up with any punishment. And then there’s somebody who will commit the smallest crime—not saying it’s okay or not okay—but all of a sudden, it’s like, "Hey, 10 years in prison."

Yeah, also it’s like, I know they don’t know that he’s killed someone at this point, okay? But, like, take the fact that he’s killed a woman at this point. He sexually assaulted a young girl again for six hours, multiple times, and then runs away and commits armed robbery, and you’re going to absolutely lose your mind because when he finally does come back to Stephenville, a grand jury declines to indict him on the sexual assault charges, stating that there was insufficient evidence. So he gets away with it.

Like, holding a knife to someone and sexually assaulting them for six hours is not that far off from violently hurting someone, like murdering someone. Like, it’s really not that far off.

Insane.

Insane the amount of people that get off for sexually assaulting people, just absolutely no excuse, pisses me off.

It’s not okay. So Shannon Meers is left to live her life in crippling fear of this man, especially because during that attack, he tells her something terrifying...

So when she goes to the police, she says, "Yes, he sexually assaulted me for six hours, and during this, he told me that I should be scared because he has killed someone before. He had killed a woman named Susan."

Okay, so she tells the Stephenville police this, and they're like, just a year earlier, Susan had been murdered.

Okay, I digress. But so while police were focusing so hard on busting Michael Woods for something he didn't do, Joseph Hatley was out there living his life. He ends up moving to Nashville. He gets married again, has two kids, and becomes a truck driver.

What is happening right now?

Who knows how many other victims he targets on his routes? And when police reopen the files on Joe, they find that even outside of this supposed confession, there were a lot of things that pointed to him being the killer.

As I mentioned earlier, Susan wouldn't have let a stranger into her home. She knew Joseph; they had met just recently. He was also a heavy smoker, and when police tracked down Joseph, they learned he’s actually moved back to Texas—Round Rock, to be exact, less than a three-hour drive from Stephenville. He’s been hiding in plain sight all of these years.

I don’t know how you murder somebody and then live three hours from it and just like, "Yeah, I killed someone years ago over there."

So on June 6th, 2006, Detective Miller and his partner bring Joseph in for questioning, and there he admits he did visit Susan in her home right before she was murdered. They got drunk and high; they fooled around a bit, and he says, "But then I left. I didn’t kill her." He was so adamant, in fact, that he's like, "Here, take some of my DNA."

What he didn't know was at the time, Joseph's wife was also talking to police. So they brought his wife in.

Oh my goodness.

She's like, "Why is he in here?" and they're like, "Well, you know, he’s a suspect in a murder," and she’s like, "Well, he has been physically assaulting me for years."

Oh my gosh, dude. What?

So Joseph goes home that night. He meets up with his kids, takes them to dinner at IHOP, and his wife is during this time pressing charges.

Good.

That evening, as Joseph dined on pancakes, Round Rock police moved in and arrested him there for domestic abuse. The lab came back with those DNA results, and it's a match. A perfect match. They were his cigarettes in her living room.

Which, go—how do you—okay. Anyways, police now had enough to arrest him for Susan Wood’s murder.

Susan’s father, Joe Atkins, was blown away by the news. All these years, he was certain that Michael Woods had murdered his daughter and gotten away with it, and suddenly his world was turned upside down. But that also finally meant getting justice for his daughter.

Michael Woods was actually attending a college course when he received word that Susan’s killer had been caught, and it literally brought him to tears right then and there.

Oh, it gives me chills because what he had to go through is not okay.

Not okay. Shannon Meers was also relieved to hear that Joseph was finally paying the price. Obviously. I mean, she's been attacked, you know. She said for years after the sexual assaults, she suffered from panic attacks, migraines, and PTSD. She could now rest a little bit easier knowing that Joseph was finally behind bars. But he didn't remain there for very long.

In 2007, Joseph confessed to the murder a week before his trial as part of a plea deal, and the 43-year-old was sentenced to 30 years in prison. But after serving only 11 of those years—no, do not tell me he got out after 11 years—he was released on good behavior.

Is he out right there right now?

He moved to a halfway house, got a job as an auto mechanic, and got a second chance at life. Shannon Meers felt the justice system had failed her for a third time.

You know what? Hold on, that's not okay. No, it's just not okay. I don't care what he thinks. I don't care what his family thinks. I don't care what any of his friends think. Like, they can all screw themselves. He was abusing his wife. That is no, not okay. He attacked Shannon Meers twice and killed—killed—if you murder somebody, if you murder somebody—yeah, you do—I’m talking about murder. I know there's manslaughter; I know there's DUI, drunk driving—I'm just talking about first-degree murder. I'm just talking about if you first-degree murder somebody. If you murder somebody, you should never be out of prison. You don’t get a second chance at life. That person didn't get a second chance at life. No, screw you.

So once again, Shannon has to go back to living her life in fear because Joseph Hatley is now back out on the streets and could show up on her doorstep at any time.

Oh my gosh, dude. This case is nuts.

But in 2021, fate finally did catch up with him. He was 56 years old when his bladder cancer returned, and on December 9th, he was found dead in his RV, where he had been living alone in the city of Abilene, Texas.

Okay, so he's dead.

But Joseph’s story didn’t end there. Sucks, right? Shortly after his death, Detective Miller received a phone call from the man who purchased Joseph’s trailer.

Okay.

Inside was a bunch of letters. There were nearly 200 pages worth of notes from Joseph explaining why he had become the man he had become and why he did the things he did.

In those writings, he claimed that on the night Susan died, he went over to her house. He wasn't set out to hurt her. He said while he and Susan were hanging out, he, quote, "overstepped his bounds." She slapped him, and he snapped.

So she said no—oh, I just still don’t believe him because I think he's still trying to justify what he did and make himself look better. I mean, she said no. Like, no matter what he writes in those, I just can't believe him.

He claims in his writings that after he came out of a drunken fog, he realized he had brutalized her. He said Susan was still alive. She begged for her life repeatedly, and he still decided to kill her.

He sexually assaulted another girl for six hours. He was beating his wife. Like, everything he’s writing is just invalid, right?

So all of this makes me realize that when considering suspects, we really should not just, like, do it lightly. Like, "Well, it could be this." And it still happens today, like in the true crime community. People still are like, "Well, what if it was this person? What if it was this person?"

I mean, Cindy’s boyfriend Roy Hayes—remember Roy? He said the suspicion actually cost him two jobs. He got fired from two jobs because he was a suspect in this murder, and it actually prevented him from following his dreams of becoming a police officer.

And Michael Woods—well, we heard how things ended up for him because of the suspicion that fell on him. Luckily, he was able to turn a new leaf, but I think his strength in all of that is actually an anomaly.

I just can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the police looked outside of those obvious suspects, if they didn’t approach this case with it had to be someone in her immediate life. I can tell you one thing: Shannon Meers wouldn’t have had to live her life in fear, and who knows how many other lives might have been affected simply because Joseph Hatley was ignored and inevitably ended up walking free.

And that is the case of Susan Woods and Shannon Meers.

All right, you guys, well, that was our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another episode.

I love it. I hate it.

Goodbye.

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