S-Town - Chapter I

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Chapter 1 When an antique clock breaks, a clock that's been telling time for 200 or 300 years, fixing it can be a real puzzle. An old clock like that was handmade by someone. It might take away the time with a pendulum, with a spring, with a pulley system. It might have bells that are supposed to strike the hour, or a bird that's meant to pop out and cuckoo at you.

There can be hundreds of tiny individual pieces, each of which needs to interact with the others precisely. To make the job even trickier, you often can't tell what's been done to a clock over hundreds of years. Maybe there's damage that was never fixed, or fixed badly. Sometimes entire portions of the original clock were missing, but you can't know for sure because they were rarely diagrams of what the clock's supposed to look like.

A clock that old doesn't come with a manual. So instead, the few people left in the world who know to do this kind of thing rely on what are often called witness marks to guide their way. A witness mark could be a small dent, a hole that once held a screw. These are actual impressions and outlines and discolorations left inside the clock of pieces that might have once been there.

They're clues to what was in the clockmaker's mind when he first created the thing. I'm told fixing an old clock can be maddening. You're constantly wondering if you've just been hours going down a path that will likely take you nowhere, and all you've got are these vague witness marks, which might not even mean what you think they mean. So at every moment along the way, you have to decide if you're wasting your time, or not.

Anyway, I only learned about all this because years ago, an antique clock restorer contacted me, John B. McLemore, and asked me to help him solve a murder. Something's happened. Something has absolutely happened in this town.

There's just too much little crap for something not to have happened. And I'm about having up with shit tailing the things that goes on. From cereal and this American life, I'm Brian Reed. This is Shit Town.

John B. McLemore lives in Shit Town, Alabama. That's the subject line that catches my eye one day in late 2012, while I'm reading through emails that have come into our radio show, This American Life. The email's from John B.

McLemore. Shit Town is capitalized. I'm an old-time listener who just recently rediscovered your show, John Rights. I live in a crummy little shit town in Alabama called Woodstock.

I would like to tell your producers of two events that have happened here recently. I would hope you have the facilities to investigate. One of the events, John Rights, involves a local police officer with a county sheriff's department. John's heard that a woman has been saying this officer sexually abused her, the guy's still on the force.

So, that's one. The other event is a murder of a guy in his early 20s named Dylan Nichols. The murderer, John, says, is the son of a prominent local family. His name is Cabrum Burt.

The birds are millionaires. They have lots of land in the area, as well as a large timber operation with lumber yards and sawmills all over, one of which is right near John's. That's called K-3 lumber. John says it seems the Burt family has effectively made this event disappear, except that Cabrum is now going around town bragging about it.

Quote, bragging about how it only took 30 seconds of kicking this boy, Dylan Nichols, in the head for him to become a paraplegic, and only a few more days for him to die. We really need people like you to come down to this pathetic little Baptist shit town and blow it off the map, John Rights. I would like to talk you by phone if possible. This is just too much to type.

John, hello. Hi, it's Brian. Hey. Here we are.

This is happening. I think I was all about that awkward moment of silence. What do you realize? After about a year, it finally happened.

When I make this call, it's been a year since John first emailed. We'd written back and forth a couple times over the months, but we never talked. Until one day, he sent me a message, and this time it had a link to a news report. The news story was about a sergeant with the Bib County Sheriff's Department, Bib County is where John lives, who'd been indicted for pulling women over and forcing them into sexual harassment.

Both on the side of the road and back at the station. Another guy allegedly helped cover up this abuse. I thought if corruption like this existed in the Bib County Sheriff's Department, then maybe the other room were drawn into me about could also be true. Then maybe it was possible a murder had happened, and it had been covered up.

So finally, I get them on the phone, and we talked for a while. Yeah, you know, my life is kind of a nut half because I take care of my mom that has Alzheimer's, and we're about our separate right to your flat. So sorry about the other day when you tried to call them all held and busted loose. No, I'm sorry.

You have to deal with that. I'm sorry. Of course, losing the dog the other week that didn't help. You know, I take in straight, which shouldn't surprise you.

You know, considering where I live, you shouldn't be the least bit surprised that these people right here just dumped their dogs on the side of the road. At one time, I've had as many as 21. I got 14 now. Well, 13.

Yeah. So that was really hard because that was an old dog and a good dog. But you have to know the one of my projects that I take on. I'm sort of the local human society.

So you have a lot of property? I like to think it's my grandfather's property. It's a hundred and twenty acres. And you grew up in Woodstock?

Is that right? Yeah. The whole area needs to be defined. You know, if you look at the demographics charts of the state of Alabama and go over the poorest counties, the best county is maybe the best worst county to live in.

We are one of the child molester capitals of the state. We have just an incredible amount of police corruption. We have the poorest education. We've got 95 churches in this damn county.

We don't have to high school. No secondary education. And we got Jeepers because Jeepers is coming. And global warming is a hoax.

You know, there's no such thing as climate change and all that. Yeah, I am in an area that just hasn't advanced for lack of a better word. I don't have to eat at home here. I was offered cherry flavored ones.

That would be the first one to hop out. Is your stomach bothering you? Oh, I have constant acid replugs. You know, I hated all my life.

So what? Can you tell me why did you email me? Well, you know, the original, the original reason, which I gave you, was just some of the things that I heard. Okay.

You know, some of the goings down here. Remember I told you about the boy Dylan Nichols that got murdered? And apparently that was swept under the rug. I guess we'll cover that one first.

Yeah, tell me what happened. I mean, you kind of mentioned this in an email, but there wasn't a lot of detail. And I did a little googling online and didn't really find much. So yeah, tell me what.

That's one of the things y'all have the capability of doing is finding much. All I've managed to find out is that Dylan Nichols went to school down here at West Blocked in High School. Basically, I've got these kids out here digging a hole between the house and the yard and the summit. And we're going to plant some cash iron plant.

That's the Aspidester Elator in case y'all don't know. I don't know what other things you just said are. But I don't know how these kids talk on cell phones all day long. You can't do it.

You can't get them to do nothing because they're on the cell phone. And they're tweeting and they're always on Facebook. I'm out there on the back porch. And if you keep your mouth shut, you'd be surprised what you can learn.

You know, kids around here have grown up so destitute don't have enough sense to be ashamed of things. They'll just tell everybody. Well, I'm yacking away that Dylan Nichols is in such and such hospital. He's a quadriplegic now.

He just got into a fight with Koeben Bart and he's not expected to live through the night. Buddy, when I heard the last name, Bart, you know, my attention just peaked. I decided I'd stick my nose in the ass. This is a by many chance related to the famous Bart family down there that runs the K3 lumber store in Green Pond and the KKC lumber mill and fans.

Is it? Oh, yeah, that's Kendall's son. I'm sure they're so to do their workout here and they chatted and chatted about it. And over the course of the next few days, they're tweeting the girl friends and tweeting the other friends.

It comes to pass and then D Dylan Nichols had died. That or the hell? And Koeben Bart's whereabouts was unknown. Well, later on I have the good ones working out here.

Two boys. It just so happens. One of them, Jacob Goodson apparently, he knew the Koeben boy. And right at the darned, little Caesar's pizza and Woodstock just happened to run into him.

Hadn't seen him for a year. Asked him where he'd been. Well, I've been in drug rehab. You know, I've spent such and such and such and what's in rehab.

Well, what happened? Well, that's when the Koeben boy just got out there and spilled the darn beans. And the story that I was told is that they were at some party. And the Nichols boy, the Koeben and his buddy, had ganged up on him and was calling the bitch boy and a bitch boy and all that.

And the boy eventually smacked one of them and they jumped on him. Well, the boy they jumped on, that's Dylan Nichols, pulled out a little knife and cut the throat of Koeben's friends. Well, Koeben pulled his belt off and wrapped it around the neck of the friends who had got cut and got the nickel to boy down the ground somehow and kicked him in the head repeatedly and kept kicking him in the head until he was basically unconscious. Of course, you know, the rest of the story from the first bar from the Toece.

You know, the boy, paraplegic died in a few days. But Jake is noticing he asked him how he just get by so easy. And you know, the boy, Koeben, Bert, Bert had told him they just claimed it was self-defense and the other guy kept his own mouth shut. Of course, Koeben's family has got plenty of money.

So naturally it wasn't murder. So just to clarify, so what, so you're hearing this from a guy named Jake Goodson? He ran into Kebram and Kebram told him that we told the other guy to keep his mouth shut and we claimed self-defense. That's what he told him.

There you go. Now, at some time I was up there at that hardware store in Kendall, that's Kebram's father. He's back there on the phone, yacking that big mouth. He's on these big mouth rush Limbaugh types.

Loves, Glenn Beck running that mouth running that mouth. And what I heard come out of that office was, he's my son, I love him, he's guilty as hell and I know it. And he finally realized that someone was standing out there waiting to be waited on and pulled up slam the hell out of that damn door. And he got a lot quieter with that conversation.

Really? We've obviously got too much little dipstick gossip going around for something not to happen. We've got the kid out bragging about it in front of a little Caesar's Pizza Hut. And we've got a ten-year-old snippet of conversation in conveniently audited over at the store one afternoon.

So this crap happened. And as far as you know, is Kebram Beck just living in town now? He's working up there at the damn K-free librarian. He's covering up with tattoos.

He's almost skin and bones. He looks like a crackhead. Hell, I found him this way. You know, I contacted you for a while and I quit contacting you.

And you all go through these stages of depression. When you live in an area like this, it's like the Darfur region of Sudan. You realize you're in one of these areas where stuff happens and you can't help it. And after this dude got arrested, you know, that recently male I sent you about that Urban Lee herd that had been, you know, basically falsely imprisoning women and using them for sex slaves.

No one talks about that. Urban Lee herd is the name of the big county police officer who'd been sexually abusing women he pulled over. I decided, you know what, I need to contact him again. I need to get out of my depression.

I need to get over this attitude problem I've got that nothing can be done. And tell someone someone to crap that goes home down here. Because what do you get depressed about? Oh my God.

And 49 years old. I'm close to 49. I should have, you know, you're able to use this in the future. You'll sure have to have a cuckoo bird bleep.

I should have got out of this cot damn fucking shit town in my twenties. I should have done something useful with my life. I love my home. I don't know why.

I live here all my life. My mom's live here all her life. My dad's lived here most of his life and grandpa Miller's lived here all his life. Places like that should be important.

I'm looking out over a yard without Rose Garden here. There's 300 fucking feet long. I plan a hedge maze out here. It's only one in the state.

You can go to Google Maps and enter 33.20241 common negative 874. Whoa, whoa, slow down. Let me take this in as you're telling me. I should actually play you to the center of the maze.

Tell me the numbers again. 33.202465, negative 871. I'm going to hide a couple coordinates here for John's privacy. I type them into Google Maps.

I should be close to a few feet. Oh, there we are. That's your yard? Yeah.

Oh, my God. You know now that's an aerial view of acres and acres of forest and in there in the middle of the woods is a huge labyrinth made of concentric circles of hedges with a path weaving through them. I'll have little gates in it now, which I picture doesn't show. So you see, you can swap the solution around.

It actually has 64 possible solutions depending on how you swap the gates around. Oh, wow. So it really is amazing. 64 possible solutions.

Yeah. That's crazy. Do you ever just go in and get lost in the maze? Well, it's not telling us to get lost.

You have to only about hit high and still see over it. You'll be able to get lost one day. Yeah, in other words, you're asking, do I use it to walk around in when I'm thinking? Sure.

Sometimes I do. Yeah. I've never had anyone to really sit here and ask me. I guess what I'm depressed about because I'm looking out over the trees here and I realize that the people in the South 40 trailer have a much worse life than I do.

But I think the thing that's happened is I've gotten myself in almost, you know, sort of a prison of my own making where, you know, all my friends have died off because I only had contact with people much older than me. Even when I was a kid in school, I didn't want to hang around other kids because no kids are talking about, you know, getting girls or deer hunting or, you know, football. Whereas I was interested in the afterlife, sundials, projective geometry, new wave music, climate change, and how to solve Rubik's Cube. But you can't tell a redneck that the cool, you know, Greenland melt falling directly into the left-inch water where the thermal halion confector normally gets back south.

It's sufficient. Firstly, try to explain that the Earth is more than 5,000 years old. John, is there, is there, I'm curious, is there anyone down there that you're able to talk about these gripes or ideas with and you feel like you're on the same page? My lawyer, the tail lawyer, he's the, oh wait, he's everything I've talked with you about.

I've talked with him about it. He lives in tough and loose. He's got too much sense to be living down here. But absolutely, I'll go over there and talk with the tail lawyer every down then.

But that's it. That's all you've got? Oh, you're beginning to figure it out now, aren't you? So why don't I move?

There's got to be people in Fallujah right now or Beirut that just asked each other the same question. What the hell don't you get out of here, Hassan? That's what my answer is. I don't know.

Hassan is probably out there and made a sandwich or something. He's aging mother, can't decide which one of her, she's going to wear that dye. She ends up peeing all over herself, has to clean her up or something. He keeps thinking, okay, maybe one day he'll get better, although secretly he knows it never will.

I have this old crummy forward truck. You can't be a redneck and live in Alabama without a damn forward truck, can you? And I keep thinking, could I put everything that I would put in that truck and drive down that driveway for the last time? I think again, who took care of Mama, who'd feed the puppies, who'd water the flowers, who'd prune the mays.

You must like, I'm just talking about this, Paul. No, I understand it, Paul. That's hard if I got off the subject and all that. No, don't get the right.

I can point you back to it a little bit. Why do you think it's important to try and figure out what happened with this? I believe we have a genuine murder that resulted from some kids probably picking on a bully that defended himself. That's almost certainly been covered up.

After that first conversation with John, I do some research online, and I find no evidence of this murder. I see there is a place called K3 Lumber owned by the Burt family. K3 in rural Alabama? Is that just a coincidence?

The family also owns a large timber operation. John called it the KKK Lumber Mill, but it's actually named Kai Ken Key Inc. And on their website, they explain that the Kai Ken and Key and Kai Ken Key refer to the three brothers who currently run the family business, Kyle Kendall and Keith Burt. Kaven Burt is Kendall's son.

His name begins with a K2, by the way. I discover a Facebook page for a Kaven Burt in the area with just a single disturbing post that tells people to raise hell and kill black babies, though it uses a word other than black. I don't know if Kaven made this page or what. I also find court records for DUI charge that suggest that maybe he did disappear for a little while, like John mentioned.

At one point, there was a stretch of court they'd seen in show up for, and a notice from his lawyer telling the court he hadn't been able to reach Kaven. Other than that, I find nothing. Nothing about murder or even assault involving Kaven or an obituary for Dylan Nichols, or any event in newspapers or court filings that seems like it could be the fight John's talking about. Honestly, there's not much about Bibb County online at all.

But John kept emailing me. He kept insisting this was a story I needed to cover. And when I call him back to say I was having trouble finding anything or to just quickly double check something with him, almost without fail, we'd end up on the phone for hours, with him going on and on, not just about the murder, but about his life and his town. We talked on weekends.

Once, he got in touch at 1.30 in the morning because a bunch of cops had been in his yard. And I had the purt scouring behind that uniform. It felt as if by sheer force of will John was opening this portal between us and calling out through it, calling from his world, a world of prolific. So eventually, I decided I'd come check it out.

I was dying for the search of House Battle War, the funding needed. That's right after this. I the article we can discuss it. I was really excited to give him a New York Times cooking subscription, so that we could share recipes, and we even just shared a recipe the other day.

The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. You have all that information on your fingertips. It enriches our relationship, broadening our horizons. It was such a cruel and thoughtful gift.

We're reading the same stuff, we're making the same food, we're on the same page. Connect even more with someone you care about. Learn more about giving a New York time subscription as a gift at nytimes.com slash gift John says his hometown is filled with proleptic decay and decrepitude I'm not ashamed to say I had to look up the word proleptic. It means using a word or phrase in anticipation of it becoming true When I go to Alabama, I don't want to cause any trouble proleptically speaking So John and I discuss a plan after all what he's alleging about the murder That cave remember has beaten someone to death feels comfortable enough to make small talk about it out in the open and a bunch of people No, but no one has done anything.

It's pretty scary a reporter showing up from New York asking questions Who knows how people might react? I do not want to do anything that's gonna put you in any kind of danger You've got this is your stock and trade well I've never gone into a small town and investigated a murder and this is your small town John and I agree when I come I need to keep a low profile. I won't talk to any authorities yet The one thing I want to do I tell them is meet with Jake Goodson That's the guy John and we're doing her the rumor from the one K-brim supposedly admitted everything to outside the little seathers Yes, wherever you went with them fine with it. Okay, are you sure I guess so you guess so Like the back out now no, I don't see that's what I don't like your second guess in this more than I am On a windy afternoon in October 2014.

I'm driving through Woodstock, Alabama about 40 minutes southwest of Birmingham headed to meet John for the first time To get to his house rather than use his address. He suggested I navigate by latitude and longitude And even then I miss his place the first time past it just thick woods all around from the road I have no idea. There's a house back there when I come back by I notice There's an opening in the trees and a dirt driveway cut through the forest It takes me deep into the woods trees arching over it until finally I reach a clearing with an old wooden house with three chimneys That looks like it hasn't changed since the Civil War The whole place feels like it's of another time and it is literally John doesn't follow daylight savings So his property's on a time zone separate from the world around it the front door of the house opens and a man comes founding out of it There's no nice to meet you back know how you doing no handshake John just takes off around the side of the house with a pack of dogs following him He's a redhead with red goatee and glasses looks a bit younger than his 48 years in ratty jeans and ratty sneakers And a Sherwin Williams t-shirt that he probably got for buying a can of pain at the hard work Presumably he's giving me a tour, but I'm scrambling to keep up with him He's naming the plants all around us as we move goldenrod russian sage a climbing ladybanks rose There are stone walls everywhere wildly colored bushes a giant bed of purple petunias stretching for hundreds of feet There are apple trees leaning on trellises tilted at a precise angle to lengthen their stems There's a sweet smell floating on the breeze the smell of the thorny aliagnis bush John tells me John's 13 dogs are running around freely and they have a dog house that is an actual house with two floors and a small swimming pool outside Made of stone. You're not afraid to walk about 110 feet on you John and I go past his workshop which I'll later learn is filled with disassembled clocks as well as the rare machines and tools and chemicals He uses to restore them we go past a big trailer and two old school buses one yellow and one blue They're filled with lumber for John's house that he's aging to get the wood as close as possible to what they use to build the house 200 years ago We go through a small gated cemetery where the people who built this place have been buried since the 1880s having finished life's duty one foot stone reads They now sweetly rest Later will also meet John's mother Mary Grace McLomor.

I'm sorry I'm enjoying myself very much. I'm enjoying myself very much. I'm glad yes She's a tiny brittle looking woman who I swear to you can go a whole conversation without blinking once She's been on this lander whole life forever seems about right. This is old area.

Yeah, where we live it real old How old? Since time I reckon Rosemary that the winter killed at old house. It looks like Nosferatu Finally John and I reach a hill we come to the crest and there it is the maze stretching out below us Though he and I have completely different reactions to it. Oh God here we go see the brown from here Oh my gosh, John's upset.

They've been in a drought for weeks a d1 drought He's been monitoring it and he sees the hedges turning brown, but I'm just in awe the maze is so cool. Oh my gosh the climate change And you may see climate change, but this is an incredible approach John. You know we're gonna have to get the damn cutters I said before y'all came out here I was gonna get out here and do something that never happened I just got miserably depressed and said hosk through it. I'm like I have chills I have chills look at all the brown bushes over here on this side.

I don't even see the browners all these green This is incredible. I like it Enter the maze and John rearranges the position of three gates inside Put this one here to set a new solution John built the maze as a series of splits one path comes to an end then it splits left and right each of those paths end Then they split left and right over and over again. You have to choose which way to go John and I are walking through trying to reach the middle You know I designed this thing myself, so it was designed by Madman. That's what people tell me I do feel like I'm walking around in your brain or something just imagine what it gets over you right?

Saved on John's computer as a comic and when I think about it now I realize it captures his worldview perfectly It's three drinking glasses with arms and legs and cute little faces each with the same amount of liquid inside The first one smiles and says I'm half full the next one frowns and says I'm half empty the last one throws both arms up and says I think this is piss Later John will take me on a tour of viv county and this worldview will be on full display He'll rattle off a constant stream of grievances as we go Historic buildings are being demolished overnight dollar generals and wal-mart are popping up in their stead serving a populace It's getting fatter and more tattooed by the day no positive comment no matter how innocuous survives is virtuosic negativity At one point I mentioned that the landscape around here is really quite pretty there you go There's our legacy going down the road from lumber truck Carving away that pretty landscape one tree at a time and the afternoon it'll start to thunderstorm something John has been saying all day that they desperately need to combat the drought So that's good right we're getting running what about ten weeks to like now if everything's died Everything I say beautiful butterfly. Yeah, we don't have as many butterflies as we should have this year either It's something else it disturbs me. It's a comprehensive tour off on the right is where I went to high school I like to call it Auschwitz. Yeah, so the crematorium see the long low killing facility on either end It looks like a high school with a baseball game going out in front Before the john-dorens should town there back inside the maze john and I have stopped walking for a second We fit dead end after dead end and now john is creaning his neck and scoping on our options He scouts his direction.

It is it's kind of funny to be lost in something you designed yourself, isn't it? Oh We're stuck. Hmm. Are you really lost?

We put an opportunity actually lost in our own lives. Isn't that exciting? I see what I do. I'll see what I do Evidently while the various gate combinations create 64 different solutions There was one combination that leaves you with absolutely no way out Oh god, it's possible to set it where there is no solution and accidentally did that it's like a null set or something No, there you go.

I can't tell if john's being straight with me john seems so smart and in control It's hard to believe he could accidentally be stumped by his own maze. I can see him engineering the situation and make things more I don't know literary conjuring this garden path metaphor that he knows I won't be able to resist On the phone before I got here john it said he could introduce me to jake goodson jake again is in his early 20s He's one of the guys john hires to work on his property and who john first heard about the murder from jake's the one who learned about it from kabram outside the little cesars pizza But now that i'm in woodstock all of a sudden john can't reach jake He's been working long hours at the local steel mill john says a job that won't be around much longer by the way once our supply of cheap Fossil fuels and plows but anyway john's called jake's wife and his brother too trying to reach him But still no luck eventually I head to my hotel and john and i check in later on the phone no word great No, I can't get a hold of it. Don't you dare nurse. I know you're almost scared you you ain't got time for a bullshitch Shoulder got the pot John keeps emailing me updates none of them thing so far he writes an hour later just a subject line quote So far the null set a 38 p.m I had to leave bib county to find a hotel So i'm in bessimer a small city about 15 miles down the highway where the far reaches of the Birmingham metro area dissolve into the rural counties like bib to the west I'm at a best western just off the exit ramp behind a waffle house Even though i'm exhausted from traveling i turn on the lamp and pull out the bedtime reading john's given me bedtime reading That's what he called it There's William Faulkner's short story arose for Emily narrated by the gossipy collective townsfolk of imaginary jefferson, mississippi Who tell the tale of miss Emily gerson an unmarried middle-aged outcast who lives alone with her father and after he dies holds up in her house for years There's the gita mopasant story at the necklace about a woman who longs for a much grander more spectacular life than the one she has And gets it for a single night only to have to pay for it dearly every day for the next 10 years And then there's the renegade by surely jacksen about a woman who recently moved from the city to a small country town Whose family dog lady is accused one morning of killing a neighbor's chickens The woman listens in growing dread throughout the day as townsperson after townsperson laughs at the torture and death that will befall lady of the result Including finally the woman's own children who described to ladies face in gleeful detail how they would use a spiked collar to chop off her head I notice a unifying theme to all these stories a creeping sense of foreboding in these places that are allegedly home-to-play society and undercurrent of depravity Morning comes no word from jake in the meantime.

I try to come up with some other ideas The obvious one in a situation like this would be to contact the victims family But at this point I still don't know if anyone's actually died and so that's an awkward phone call to make I can't get local hospital records. I try but they're not public did it with death records in Alabama also not public Again, I found no obit or news story about any of this in the papers I was able to find two Dylan nickels in vib county both of the right age early 20s One spelled his first name dy l an the other spelled it di l o n It looked like dy l n had played football at vib county high school a few years earlier But other than that he had basically no footprint online, which is strange for someone his age Like maybe that means you're dead Di l o n on the other hand appeared to be alive and well and actively maintaining his facebook page Not only that he'd gone to capenbert's high school and was facebook friends with him Which made both john and me wonder if somehow the rumor got messed up and maybe dylan wasn't the dead guy Maybe he was the friend with capen who got in his throat cut and kept quiet about the whole thing So I held off on contacting him So too afraid to talk to the cops too afraid to talk to the birds or the nickels is I lay out another idea to john My thought is we believe the murder happens sometime in the summer of 2012 If we can somehow narrow the time period to just a couple weeks, maybe We can go to the public library and look through the archive of vib county's local newspaper the centival press The old issues aren't online. So maybe there's an obituary or some other clue in there that I haven't been able to see John has an idea for how we can nail down a more precise date What is this uh just every time I spent a dollar working on this damn place He shows me a notebook a makeshift ledger where he keeps a detailed track of all the projects on his property We sit on his twin bed and he flips through and shows me his whole system How he notes the people who worked each day a rotating crew of young guys and handyman types from around town What they were working on how much he paid them The red means it was for the yard, of course if it doesn't have the red it's a house If you see a letter m with a circle around it, that means we were planting the maize John's pretty sure they were laying the slate area behind his house when word was going around about the murder Whenever they were working on that that's probably what happened. He says yard shed rock roof tar yet working dog pan slate and bridge This is what this event will happen right around its time period August of 2012 August 7th August 8th $900 500 and then August 12th the same You paid him 20 bucks on August 12th.

Oh, yeah, that means somebody'd have enough gas to go home. Oh Can we pinpoint any closer than August? What do you think? Uh probably pinpointed 27th and 21st with Sam Rielke who it's not close to she's gonna get 27th and 21st 7th and the 21st So we're off to the library to the microphone machine in the back room Though by this point i'm noticing that john's been acting kind of weird weird for him like evasive I'm trying to get him to look through the newspaper archive with me, but instead he's just wandering over by the bookshelves avoiding me You're not interested to see this?

You're saying and I was this is our thing. We're trying to figure out this guy died. It's not my thing We put two faces in photo page Then as we're going through issues all right center real news I don't know feels like he's trying to rush me through this like he doesn't want me to be as thorough as i'm being or something What if we go all the way in September don't find anything I bet there's no well You probably don't even know to go past. Yeah, let's do September.

Hmm Look at this from page. This is this is Wednesday September Getting the broken microfilm wheel with my finger I read through every issue of the center will press mid-July through September It gives a pretty detailed snapshot of the summer of 2012 in did county, Alabama Some cousins drove in from Forsyth, Georgia with a four-tier cake for Kelsey Connell's sweet 16 party 1,965 people called complaints into the sheriff's office 20 people violated probation and police discovered 14 illegal piles of garbage The mayor of center will start a campaign for reelection Some brothers went off to space camp together a guy hired a hitman to unsuccessfully try and kill the west block and police chief And gene ingrams served chickens out for lunch one day to banyan joe Russell You know what did not happen in the summer of 2012 according to the reporting of the center will press A murder by a guy named capen bird or the death of a guy named dill and nickels After looking at every police blotter every obituary we've got nothing nothing nothing nothing We're gonna hit that or not. What's up? They're fine.

Oh, yeah But john doesn't seem to care that we're not making much progress. He's goofing off one afternoon I find him in a shop with tyler goodson jay goodson's brother tyler does work on john's yard too He's here to chop up a fallen tree But it's also clear he and john know each other pretty well They chat easily and tyler has a pile of belongings that he's keeping here at john's house Well, he's trying to get a permanent place to live Tyler has a shirt on you know he must be going to court at least that's what's mom will tell me one day today apparently He's not in the docket because he's standing here shirtless in tattooed with an anatomical heart in his chest That says misery loves company sharpening a chainsaw tooth by tooth John's pointing to the bottle of wild turkey on the work bench I bet he got hit like I do john is getting drunk tyler is filing away telling stories about run-ins with the cops I am standing in an antique clock shop in the middle of the woods I take a drink then tyler and john show me the 19th century french carriage clock that restoring that they found in the junk yard It's pieces scattered about the bench and at one point suddenly for no apparent reason and certainly not because I asked john yanks Up his shirt and flashes me The entirety of john's chest is tattooed and his shoulders too though It's all perfectly covered when he's wearing a t-shirt flashing is quick So I can't take it all in but I see a glimpse of what's possibly a beaker and maybe a clock type thing It takes me aback because john has made clear to me how much he loads tattoos They're one of the things he hates about shit town I believe he wants called them an expression of hopelessness but some compute that's your entire chest john And nipple piercings. Oh, we're gonna talk about that Then as if of course this is the next logical subject of discussion john gets on the topic of the small quantity hazardous waste generators regulation Of 1998 and its effect on the electroplating trade I'm a gold chloride and you know keep laying up the solution with a single stop testing sign ID buff for the pH around 10.4 And tyler and I give each other a look john meanwhile is on his own plane. He's rolling You know, it's usually operating 140 160 degrees Fahrenheit, you know two or three amps per square foot Do you have a spare coin john asks he wants to make me a souvenir.

I dig out a dime for my pocket He starts futzing around in the back room of a shop Untangling wires filling up beakers like a drunken mad scientist Smells like almonds. Yeah, I'd say it's about this point that I asked myself Is john fucking with me is he just a bored guy who contacted me on a lark and never expected me to actually follow through Is this murder not real and he knows it? It's not only the fact that he is right now pouring potassium cyanide into a bucket in front of me That makes me wonder this It's all the little moments from our conversations over the months that i've ignored or written off as just one of john's quirks For example the couple times months in when he casually raised the possibility that you know what maybe thill nickels didn't actually die He's either died or he's been paraplegicized. It's one of those two or the times he seemed kg about putting me directly in touch with jake goodson He doesn't know this is being investigated.

He might get real scared and get real quiet If you call it would you want to elude to the fact that I had spoken to you or all the times john offered to reimburse my employer for my travel expenses to alabama No matter how much I told him I'd never let him do that because he was so worried that the investigation might turn out to be a goose egg Well, that's like you're broke. I mean public radio is broke. We're not broke. We're good.

We're good. We are very lucky We're good and then just so many odd little interactions I've had with john the poetry recitations he's given me the never-ending emails about every topic imaginable the long personalized lectures on climate change The uncomfortable moments like this one when I was talking to john about how he would explain to people in town what I was doing down there If they saw me with him, so everyone right here. Thank you. I'm sucking you damn dick That would be a really good way to introduce me to your neighbors Now john's acting as if he's not interested in the murder.

I'm possibly breathing in dangerous chemicals. What am I still doing here? Which i'm sure he does pretty good. Oh my goodness the dias escape In the shop tyler continues to sharpen the chainsaw and john drops my dime into a bucket in a large sink Hooks up wires to a car battery runs them into the bucket and then zaps it cranking up the current until the dime turns gold I'm 80 10 going one day, but you'll have a souvenir from shit town Alabama Oh my fucking god playing a dime Shit For thousands and thousands of years.

We did not have clocks or calendars or any method for telling time in the way we think of telling time now And time was happening nonetheless as humans we must have sensed it Maybe we heard it the rhythm of it as we sharpen to tool It's amazing if you think about it the sheer variety of methods We've concocted over the centuries to keep track of time. We pour sand through a glass We swing pendulums back and forth. We count the cycles of radiation coming off an atom. We count miss sippies When john was a teenager he became fascinated with what was possibly the very first formalized way humans came up with to keep track of time Watching the sun and the stars and the faces of the moon he built his own version of something called an astrolabe Which he's showing me what we're standing is the zenith that's this point over here The astrolabe looks kind of like a clock crossed with a compass It's a flat dial with a map of the night sky laid over it and a pointer or I guess a site attached on top of that You pick a star in the sky and aim the site at it twist the sky map until it aligns with the site in a certain way And then the dial shows you your direction as well as the month day and time It's a beautiful complex device And as a kid John Long to figure it out to put himself inside the brains of the people who puzzled through the earliest versions The greek astronomer Hipparchus who devised the mathematics behind it or the 10th century islonic scholars who refine the invention to help them time their daily prayers John wanted to go through what they had to go through to create an astrolabe Which is why he made his own designed specifically for the coordinates of this house It hangs on the wall of his mother's bedroom.

That's what he's showing me his astrolabe when Skyler Goodson happens to walk in the front door Oh the skyler's here come collect her money That's what jay's fault. Oh you brought spaghetti. There's Jack running his ass over here Skyler is the wife of Jake Goodson the guy I've been desperately wanting to talk to she's 21 outgoing She has her little son with her who's crawling on all fours at our feet pretending to be a dog We make some small talk and eventually as casually as I can I ask her You don't happen to know about the incident John and I have been talking about do you? She knows John says quietly but Skyler seems confused The big fight between capen burton that dude John tells her that resulted in the dude's death I can see Skyler recognizes what he's talking about.

Yes. She says yes Hey, strata told us that he killed him cold-blooded murdered him He told you that too? Yes She says she was with Jake when it happened The little Caesars seen capen for the first time after he vanished for a while capen telling them he claimed self-defense and gotten off According to Skyler it all went down just how John said it did Oh he pretty much in those words pretty much said that he had murdered the guy and just Use the word murder? Yeah Hey kill that he had killed him so now murder killed Uh he probably used a little bit of everything like it was a casual conversation like hey, hey Ben Well, this is going on in my life I got arrested because I murdered somebody and yada yada yada and let me tell you about it And it was just like there was nothing to it That he had just beat him to death And I can't just I just can't imagine sitting there and repeatedly hitting somebody into the guy I mean either What did you guys say?

I mean what were you like? Just stood there Just stared at him It didn't sound like it was something that you should be having casual conversation about it Seems like he should have still been in hiding Skyler says she'd actually heard about the murder before talking to k-brum That it was kind of an open secret That's the thing that freaks around most about this even a couple years after it happened The fact that so many people know and still have done nothing The complicity I mentioned my trip to the library tour I hope that there'd be some record of this in the newspaper But she has no illusions about that Most of it's probably hidden it's not even in there What do you mean? No This town has a way of forgetting information and hiding information If somebody won't want people to know about it then it won't be there John stands by as Skyler talks He's uncharacteristically quiet a small grin on his face I'm hanging on Skyler's every word I can't believe I'm finally getting a first hand account of all this But John is calm Matter of fact Like what's the big surprise? It's a shit town This is what I've been telling you all along This girl Love is calm And go to get each other Rose's farm a tree And you see there's nothing There's nothing in every web As town is produced by Julie Snyder and me With editing from Iberglass Joel Lovell, Sarah Canig and Neil Drumming Whitney Dangerfield is our digital editor Starly Kying is a story consultant Fact-checking and research by Ben Phalen Seth Linde is our director of operations Mixing by Lyra Smith Matt Tierney is our technical director The S-count staff includes Emily Condon, Elise Ferguson Julie Whitaker and Kimberly Henderson Music for the show is composed by Daniel Hart, Trey Pollard, Elado Negro Nick Thorburn and Matt McKinley Music supervision by Damien Graf Special thanks to Tracy Chan and Koy Wong At Studio Rodrigo Rich Orris, Jack Hitt Anjilani, Sarah Dockery, Jordan Fickland, Doddung Anthony Roman and Belera Deval Who did the incredible art and illustrations for our website S-townpodcast.org That's S-townpodcast.org Where of course also on Facebook and Twitter And you can follow us on Instagram At S-town podcast A reminder that you don't have to wait for chapter 2 All seven chapters are available right now S-town is a production of cereal and this American life She will grow old and die The roses in her garden fade away Not one left for her grave Not rose for Emily