K: In the search warrant, officers claimed that Gilley likely still had possession of items from the crime scene, like Davids shoes and car keys, a scrapbook of newspaper articles and personal photos of the scene and possibly the murder weapon. And they said Well Mr. Gilley, Im standing here in your living room and it looks like somebody broke into your house.. He told Rick that it would cost us a $20 fine each or he would have to take us down As he was leaning up against the car, he asked me, and this was one of the first things he said, eh asked me if Rick and I had ever gone all the way together or something like that. On Thursday. Oklahoma City, OK I think dad was with him for a long time with what was going on He was so honest and wanted justice done. Web9801 DEERFIELD DR, NORMAN, OK 73026 Get a FREE Property Report for this home. Recording of Ken: But we jumped in the car in Oklahoma City and drove out to Lubbock, drove all night. Episode 1 Recording of Pearo: Frank had rented a house from this guy and he brings in this .22 caliber rifle.. When Gilley started work for the Norman police, he was described by other officers as just having shown up one day. They took in Sheryls ex-boyfriend for questioning. Recording of Pearo: We went down and we talked to a judge in Dallas. K: This is Dave Pearo, a Norman police officer from 1981 to 2004. I asked him why and he relayed to me that when he was in Amarillo, he went and would bust the parkers up and make them get out of the car and harass them and then let them go. K: The defense strategy was one of continual questioning. Recording of Ken: So we showed them photographs and they picked Gilley We ended up with seven couples, 14 kids, that picked Gilleys picture out that claimed this had happened to them on Lovers Lane.. WebNORMAN Police conducting a murder investigation say the decomposed body of a woman with special needs was found inside a container in the basement of a home about Joshua Bookout. Gilley was brought in to the Amarillo police station and had his mug shots taken. Two days later, testimony began. I call, my dad picks up the phone. K: The Norman Police Department also changed its evidence protocols, said Sarah Jensen, the public information officer for NPD. But agents like Ken Jacobson didnt believe that and kept investigating. The state Medical Examiners Office confirmed the body as that of Sandoval. He probably has a .22 pistol. But it was one that, it was kind of a taboo subject., Recording of Kayla: Why? I think he was but was not dying or dead, maybe not even dying. I think he started his lovers lane harassment and I think David recognized him. Most of these shots were in the upper body and head. I just dont think its there. Turns out I was right. The Girl Scout Murders of 1977 still remains unsolved to Any kind of doubt that he could create was important to him. WebNorman man arrested in connection with murder of woman found at Lake Thunderbird; Former Norman car dealer accused of tampering in criminal case; Body recovered at Lake The explanation that Gilley was being framed ended up as somewhat of the official stance of the police department. There is a picture of him in a 1969 OU yearbook with his racket. With the information from the previous investigation, the gun turning up and interviews with every single original witnesses, except one that died, detectives decided to try and get a warrant to search Gilleys De Soto residence. My mind was, Where could I go, what couldve happened? She drove me to Norman. A Norman man has been arrested in connection with the murder of a Wellston woman whose remains were found at Lake Thunderbird, the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation reported Wednesday. Badge was in a black holder. They walked up and down the field, finding a few things more bullets, mostly. Way past that 1991 trial. An officer who cut into the plastic detected an odor that they could identify with a decomposing human corpse.. K: There was plenty of evidence in the case right after the murders happened that today would have most likely garnered a conviction through DNA testing, said Jordan Solorzano, the public information officer at the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. As the night hours of May 9 wear on, Sheryls dadbecomes worried. Maybe Sheryl had been drugged. Because of his mistrust in the intentions of other officers as the case unfolded through the years, Jacobson held onto it until he presented it in 1990 as the lone remaining piece of evidence. The phrase good ol boys was repeated to me several times. Grady 2 Views. Recording of Ken: I dont know. Bill Maher funeral home. Frank wanted you to know that he was on top of everything and that he was better than these other guys.. Gilley was white, 5-foot-8 and close to 180 pounds. About 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City, the Norman Police Department responded Sunday night to storm damage on the south and eastern sides of Norman. I think he just thought it was embarrassing to have the guy being investigated.. Police said the double-murder occurred late Tuesday night in this University of Oklahoma community 20 miles south of Oklahoma City. WebNorman Cleveland County Oklahoma Arrests, Warrants & Most Wanted. Recording of Kayla: Is that difficult to do?, Recording of Brake: Let me tell you, its not difficult to do for a true sociopath., K: Ex-policeman appears victim of hate plot, headlines a June 2, 1970 article in the Norman Transcript. We got out there and the polygrapher is an old Texas Ranger, one of Hensleys buddies. Recording of Ken: There was just like half a dozen guys on the police department that would even talk to us. Davids mom raised him and her other children on her own, according to Linda. WebMost accurate 2021 crime rates for Norman, OK. Said hes shoot rabbits with it and stuff. She would drive it to work, drive it to see her friends She loved life, she loves everything that everybody did, and she looked for that in people.. FOX23 spoke with survivors who are just grateful to be alive following Sundays EF-2 tornado that ripped through Norman at around 9:20 p.m. And about 10 or 15 minutes later, we looked up and dont know how long this guy had been standing there, but we looked up and there was a man standing there and he had a badge and he showed it to us. K: The caliber of the weapon that killed Dave and Sheryl. Maybe the war protesters from earlier that week had started rioting. They picked through old evidence and files, contacting anyone who would still have a good recollection of what happened two decades before. K: Many of the individuals named in our investigation died within 10 or 15 years of the case going to trial. Recording of Ken: Frank stood on the porch and he said, Well Rangers can come in, but you guys from Oklahoma cant come in. And the Ranger said, You dont have any choice Frank, these guys are with us and were all coming in. Frank said, I dont have any .22 caliber weapons, I never owned one, I wouldnt have one. Hundreds of thousands of college students were protesting the Vietnam War. Linda and Sheryls parents, Ben and Sue Benham, moved around for Bens different jobs until settling their family in Oklahoma City for good. We walked into his office and we had our probable cause for the search warrant and then he kind of looked at the case and looked when it was and said, Trails kind of cold, isnt it boys? and we said yeah.. And over the years, when we went back and started looking for those things, the OSBI couldnt locate them. They tried to set up sting operations, but they came up with no solid evidence. WebCrime rate in Norman, Oklahoma (OK): murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, thefts, auto thefts, arson, law enforcement employees, police officers, crime map Crime rate in They were younger detectives and they knew that was kind of like a festering sore. The police department brought in dozens of suspects, potential witnesses, family members and friends to interview. Just after 3 p.m. Wednesday, officers responded to a Dave and Sherry deserved something better than what they got and their families Maybe there is something in there we missed.. The verdict was inevitable in my opinion. As I remember it, they thought he was guilty but after 20 years, you know hes sitting there, Dave and Sheryl had been dead for 20 years. K: Sheryls mom died in 1995 and her dad in 2001. And on March 1, 1991, after roughly a month of testimony and deliberation, the second Cleveland County grand jury looking into Gilley returned an indictment. And now I can talk about it without breaking down and crying. When the OSBI, along with the Norman Police Department and the Cleveland County Sheriffs Office, found the bodies on Monday, May 11, Sheryl and David had been missing for just over 24 hours. Recording of Linda: I know justice was not served It was one of the hardest things Ive ever done in my life, cause every day I would drive from Oklahoma City clear to Norman, to the courthouse and you know Kayla, what I heard in that was just even, even proof to me more and more that he did do this.. K: 1970. Gilleys attorney, Robert Perrine, said most of the evidence was not conclusive. But amid the chaos, David Sloan and Sheryl Benham were preparing for a date. Description: DISTURBANCE/DOMESTIC. They took the weapons and tried to match them with some of the shell casings from the crime scene, but the tests came back without a ballistics match, Jacobson said. K: NPD responded to public criticism of its officers over the years, said Major Kevin Foster. The boy had been dropped off at a party in late May or early June 1968, and later in the evening he got into a fight until Gilley pulled him off. K: Slowly, multiple other young couples started to come forward and they told stories like this one, of being out in a lovers lane area and getting harassed by a man claiming to be with the sheriffs department. WebNorman police shoot suspect who allegedly killed 1, shot another The shooting happened around 6 p.m. Thursday in the 300 block of East Comanche. TWO FOUND DEAD IN TRUNK. Those five words, in large bold font, headlined a story on the bottom right corner of the May 12 front page. He was going to drive to Amarillo, Texas, and kill him. Recording of Ken: As far as physical evidence, evidence is required to sustain a murder conviction, we didnt have any. I told him we hadnt. But this night ended differently. But Frank, from the time David got out and it was apparent that he did recognize him, theyre both from Amarillo, I mean, what are the chances of that happening?. On the last day of the pretrial, one of the most interesting pieces of evidence emerged, though it was never corroborated, when a new witness was called to the stand. While Sandoval lived with Sanchez and his wife, there were multiple reports filed with law enforcement and state agencies, investigators said. And they are locked in the trunk now, what are they going to do. K: This was one of the houses Gilley lived in full-time while he was on the Norman police force and on and off for a few months after the murders. She did have a couple of chest wounds, but there was not a lot of bleeding internally in that. Words he said he believes she would have said.. Maybe hes just gone away and somebody will rescue them or find them. One of them was Butch Green, who had ridden with Frank, who gave the statement that Frank did in fact carry a .22 rifle on duty in the car. Decades of investigations followed, creating ripples in the Norman community still felt today. Those types of safeguards are in place. K: Gilley had a clean official record until this incident in 1968. Investigators said Sandoval at one time was placed in Griffin Memorial Hospital for mental health treatment, and on Feb. 17, 2018 she filed a report with Norman police stating Sanchez and his wife were abusing her. Perrine put in dozens of requests, ranging from declaring a mistrial to requesting that words like grotesque not be allowed in the courtroom. Gilley said he was not guilty. WebForty years ago this month, Oklahoma suffered one of its most horrific murder scenes near the small town of Locust Grove. K: Thats Chip Minty, a reporter at The Oklahoman who covered the trial, describing Gilleys demeanor on Oct. 21, 1991, as jurors were picked. Pearo and his fellow investigators would drive to Dallas frequently, watching Gilleys house, following him to work, trying to put together enough evidence to arrest him. They arrested a man who was picked up on the side of the road in a different town because someone reported him as having blood on his clothes. Re-reading articles and court documents, its clear he challenged every step of the trial. NOTES: STEPHENS CO. More Info. It was really hard for them when we told them we were reopening the case again because it had been so long and sort of accepted the fact as much as they could. SpotCrime crime details. I didnt really want to, but I thought itll be pretty easy; I live in Midwest City and Ill drive down there and we can process that car in an hour or two. And he answered a crucial question about why the case came into the spotlight again after nearly 20 years since the initial investigation. And if he did know, what did he think when investigators were first tipped off by an Amarillo reporter to look into Gilley as a possible suspect in the murders of Sheryl and Dave? K: Youre listening to Uncovered: the Lovers Lane Murders. Its every single step we take in our evidence transfer or testing or anything and is logged in a computer system. And then we were afraid that if we didnt let him know, we wouldnt know when he was coming home. Investigators located in the basement a 3 feet by 4 feet container heavily wrapped in high density plastic, packing tape, and rope stored under the stairs of the basement. The more I learned about that night, the more I realized it started off just like the fraternity parties today. I hope he died alone and a very painful death. Recording of Ken: Well Frank and Henslee and the sheriff were all buddies from out there and so we asked Henslee if we could take a look at that letter and he couldnt produce it. He was detained briefly and released. Thats when we realized this case was more than a pair of untimely deaths. NORMAN Cory Jay Bodily was killed in 2008. K: Ballistics tests had come back negative for guns collected from a search of Gilleys home in November 1990, when officers found a sawed-off shotgun and tried to connect it with the murders of David and Sheryl. Back to Brake reading Bodens statement: Recording of Brake: We watched it go down and when it was down, we were still there for a few minutes and a car drove by and I didnt see it but Rick did. There is no other perpetrator that makes any sense at all, none., Recording of Ken: When you get in a situation like that, you never really think youre going to die. They began to feel the full weight of frustration that only a couple of guys were truly working together to bring down a case held back by politics. Splashed along the front pages of newspapers and TV station headlines were two words: not guilty. K: Brake had the actual statements that Jacobson is referring to, from when Butch was questioned by investigators on Nov. 24, 1970. K: This is one of the only times we ever came across the Sloan family coming to Norman to be involved with the case. Months went by without a response or a jury. We got several Norman officers lined up and walked across the area to see if we could find anything He told me, I knew that smart punk in Amarillo. At the time, I thought, Boy, thats a cold statement to make, the guy just got taken out of the trunk, he was shot a couple dozen times or so. He came up to me and volunteered that, none of the officers had anything to say, they just did what they had to do. Jacobson said calls flooded in, but every one of them led to a dead end. Theres a large backyard shaded by multiple trees. WebNORMAN, OKLAHOMA: The trial of a 45-year-old father, who allegedly molested and killed his daughter and then told the police that the 22-year-old accidentally shot herself, started And the further you get into it, the further you want to get into it. A reporter there had a tip about someone on Normans police force. Recording of Pearo: Ken never gave up on the case. WebAbout 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City, the Norman Police Department responded Sunday night to storm damage on the south and eastern sides of Norman. It chronicles what Gilley called a scandal, telling detectives and reporters there was a plot against him. K: Youre listening to Uncovered: The Lovers Lane Murders. A tight knit group. Why?, Recording of Brake: I think Gilley was just out there trying to get a glimpse of some boobies and harass some kids like hed done many times before and runs into somebody that knew who he was.. Here, Linda Adams, the sister of Sheryl Benham, is describing the first time she had come in contact with Frank Gilley, the man she believes killed her sister and her date, David Sloan, 21 years earlier. WebAccording to the most recent data from the FBI, the total crime rate in Norman is 2,867.6 per 100,000 people. Police reported that in 2018 Sandoval described Sanchez as her brother and that he and his wife were abusing her. Instead, immediately call the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department at 405-701-7700. He had a .22 caliber rifle in his locker at the Norman Police Department and also has several pistols of this caliber in his residence in Norman. Henslee said he thought Gilley was the target of a hate plot and a smear campaign. Recording of Ken: It turns out, there werent that many people working toward the same goal., Recording of Brake: Frank Gilley did it. He was working as a recent recruit to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation in 1970 and was assigned to the case full time. Recording of Kayla: What was it like for you at the time that you retired was the case still open or had it kind of effectively gone cold?. K: In the spring of 1971, the bodies of Gilleys former partner Butch Green and Greens mistress were found after her husband shot and killed them when he found the pair together. WebThis horrific crime happened on June 13, 1977 at Camp Scott in Mayes County. The cloudy past of the man suspected for the murders is investigated in episode 3, as well as the beginnings of a cover-up, a retracted alibi and testimony from various couples who were also harassed on Lovers Lanes. -36.90% lower than the Oklahoma violent crime rate of 458.6 per 100,000 people. He then cut the body up into a hundred pieces and cooked and ate from them for days. He was married multiple times and had a few children. Well start back up with thoughts from Linda, Recording of Kayla: Now what does that mean?, Recording of Pearo: Because of the way it was handled back in the 70s and the fact that the main suspect had been a Norman officer. And then relayed to me that that rifle actually belonged to his wife so he wasnt lying. And even though these statements were coming in after the murders of Sheryl and David, police were including pictures of Gilley. What do you think was the change there? The case is almost 50 years old and remains unsolved. And I think he did use time as an ally to just cast some doubt on the allegations that were made and the accuracy of the allegations and the accuracy of the witness recollection. K: Randall County is a small portion of land encompassing the southern half of Amarillo, a lake and a few other small towns with a current population of about 120,000. Recording of Linda: She also loved her first nephew, my son that was living there with us She was just crazy about him She had, believe it or not, she had a blue Mustang, a baby blue Mustang. Around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, police were called to reports of a shooting in the I dont fault them for trying. As a matter of fact, he, even all those years later, he kept track of where Gilley was on the sly, would leave him a little note on his car every once in a while, Gilley wouldnt know where it came from, but were still looking at you, that kind of stuff, a little psychological warfare. And they did a good job, far as cleaning it up and everything.. Recording of Pearo: So what we had done in retrospect was probably a mistake. Map Browse By State Brake lives in Oklahoma City, working part time as a public information officer for the OKC county commissioners office. FOX23 spoke with survivors who are just grateful to be alive following Sundays EF-2 tornado that ripped through Norman at around 9:20 p.m. Recording of Jacobson: David Sloan was from Amarillo, and when they tried Gilley on his aggravated assault out there, they tried it like a murder case because it was a horrible thing for a law enforcement officer to be accused of aggravated assault. He spoke of how Gilley admitted to him he did know David before the murders, though Gilley previously testified he had never met David. The violent crime rate in Norman is 289.4 per 100,000 people. The only thing we had to work with was the shell casing that had been ejected, and the firing pin makes a distinct impression on the shell casing, and this one was unusual But we could never match them. 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