The Murders at the Lake--must read for those that support capital punishment

[Horse with no Name]

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/investigating-the-lake-waco-murders?fullpage=1

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The crime struck Price as unbearably sad. White was poor and had had a hard life; she’d been married four times and had lived long enough to see her son vilified as a monster, only to die like this. To make matters worse, seven hours after the officers finished searching White’s home, they received a call to return to the scene: the house had been broken into again. The intruder had not taken anything of value—the TV was still there—but had ransacked the front bedroom, opening several boxes and scattering papers everywhere. The bedroom, Price discovered, had been Spence’s. “Somebody went in there looking for something,” she told me years later, recalling the strangeness of the case.

Price soon learned that White had been conducting her own investigation into the lake murders—going to bars and asking questions, interviewing figures in Waco’s demimonde, looking for evidence to prove that her son hadn’t killed the three teenagers. White had another son, Steve Spence, who told officers that she had begun to receive threats; she also thought her phone was tapped.

Price was astounded to find that a few days before her death, White had received a letter from Spence that had been sent to him by Robert Snelson, one of the men who had testified against him; he was the informant who told jurors that Spence had confessed to biting off Jill’s nipple. In his letter, Snelson wrote that he had made his testimony up. White rushed the letter over to Russ Hunt, Spence’s trial lawyer. “She was really excited,” he recalled. “She was sure it would result in her son’s exoneration.” Hunt, who still believed that Spence was innocent, made copies, one of which he sent to the U.S. attorney’s office. Leon Chaney, a private investigator who knew the case, remembered, “[White] called Hunt and me all the time; she was going to give us all these leads. On that Friday, she said, ‘I think I’ve found out what happened. I have a witness.’ ”

Two days later, White was dead. Price began to work the murder, but within days, she learned that someone—either from the sheriff’s office or the DA’s office—had been making calls to the Dallas County crime lab, where White’s body had been sent, to ask for the preliminary autopsy results. This was unusual; as far as Price knew, no one outside the WPD was on the case. Then, within a week, the DA’s office asked for all the police files on White. Vic Feazell was taking over the case and appointing Truman Simons as his investigator.