Shelley's Last Days

An emerging picture of secrets, suspicions and anger

Hi there! In this bonus episode, Carol and Wes talk about an overlooked witness who says she and her husband observed a heated argument between Shelley and Jerry Mack Watkins on the same day that Shelley was killed. Carol also reads from her essay about Shelley’s state of mind in the days leading up to her death.

You can listen to “Shelley’s Last Days” wherever you get podcasts, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube:

By Carol Dawson

At last, after years of interviews, research, and investigation, we’ve been able to assemble a partial picture of Shelley Salter Watkins’s final days leading up to her murder. It’s made up of different pieces of information that we’ve gathered from disparate sources, eye-witnesses willing to come forward and share their experiences with us. These pieces, fitted together, make a kind of mosaic.

Although there are, of course, still gaps between some of the pieces, the picture that emerges tells us of a shift in Shelley Watkins’s state of mind. It shows us her concerns, her rising suspicions, her frustration with her marriage, and her outspoken anger at her husband’s behavior.

At least one of these sources remains strictly off the record, so we have not heretofore published their information. Their account in this report means they have agreed that their information can be included, although their identity will remain hidden. Another party has given us recorded permission to publicly share anything they have told us, if we exclude their real name and/or voice. Specifically, this party told us: “I don’t mind you quoting things I said, but I just don't want my name involved in it.” Which is completely understandable, considering what a small, tight community Corsicana is.

Both of these parties were witnesses originally interviewed by law enforcement. They later went on to testify before the Grand Jury during Jerry Mack Watkins’s indictment hearings, along with at least 33 other eye-witnesses or people closely involved with the case. In fact, the state listed more than 75 potential witnesses to testify before the Grand Jury, although not all of them testified.

As you’ll hear now, though, there were two vital witnesses who, for some inexplicable reason, never made it to that list. And they most certainly should have.

We’ve tried to keep these mosaic pieces as sequential as possible.

Throughout the weeks before she was murdered on the night of the Labor Day holiday, September 6^th, 1993, Shelley grew convinced her husband Jerry Mack Watkins was having an affair.

Shelley already knew of Jerry Mack Watkins’s past promiscuity during the periods of his life before she’d married him. Early on in their relationship, she’d been ambushed by the discovery that he’d fathered a child out of wedlock. Later on in their married years she expressed exasperation at the number of women in town who had reputedly slept with Jerry Mack. Now she’d come to believe that he was once again involved a sexual relationship with an unknown woman. At this time, Jerry Mack was frequently traveling out of town to Houston to attend equipment auctions, so she might have thought it was possible that he was meeting someone there or elsewhere, closer by.

It was during a vacation stay in Corsicana, the summer before that fatal Labor Day night, that a revealing moment was witnessed by Shelley’s brother Rob Salter. He said that he walked in on a romantic embrace and kiss between Kay Kirgan Bryant, a former neighbor whom Shelley had come to regard as one of her closest friends, and Jerry Mack, in the garage of the Watkins’s home, during a social evening that had included dinner at the Old Mexican Inn, a favorite local eatery, and pitchers of margaritas. Rob did not tell Shelley what he’d observed, but he was shaken enough to tell the friend who was with him on that Corsicana visit, and to tell his sister Sandy after he got home to Atlanta. Thus, Shelley remained ignorant of the transgression.

Just a short time after that kiss, a couple of weeks before Labor Day, Shelley traveled to Mackinaw Island, Michigan, for a getaway. Kay Bryant accompanied her. When they returned home, Shelley became so ill with a stomach virus that she checked into the hospital ER to receive IV fluids. Kay developed what appeared to be the same illness a few days later. She, too, became so ill that Shelley voiced sympathy for her. This suggests that Shelley still held no suspicions of her husband’s and Kay’s alleged betrayal but continued at that time to think of Kay as one of her best friends.

The week of her stomach virus bout, while still in recovery, Kay nonetheless insisted on attending the Labor Day lake-house celebration party alongside her husband Dennis Bryant.

A view of Shelley’s state of mind during this period emerges from another person’s recorded interview with us, dated December 2023. The person’s name has been changed to protect identity:

Liz: Shelly was always nice. There was one time she was ugly to me, and it was right before her [death], and it was when she was, you know, taking them diet pills, and it was a very embarrassing situation that she put me in, and I kind of lost a lot of respect for her that day.

Because she, they were at our house, we were just sitting there talking, I don’t even know, you know, what we were talking about. And all of a sudden she just pops out of her mouth and says, “[Liz], how many men have you had sex with?” You know, and I’m just sitting there like, oh, this is, you know.

Carol: She said that in front of your husband?

Liz: Yeah, and Jerry, and we’re all sitting there and I’m just kind of very embarrassed about it and thinking, Why is she asking this? I didn't say anything. I just sit there a little bit and she just says, “Well, I've had sex with 96 men.”

Carol: She named that number?

Liz: Yeah, and I thought, Who keeps up with something like that?

…and she just keeps kind of on and on. Finally Jerry looks at her and says, “Leave her alone. You need to shut up and leave her alone.” You know, I don’t even know why she did that.

Carol: Was she maybe tipsy?

Liz: No, but I think she was on them pills that she’d been taking. I think she had been abusing the diet pills there at the last. You know, I really do. Taking more than she needed to. Cause she had been acting, you know, very erratic about things. You know, and just flying off the handle. You know how people get jittery and nervous when They’re on something like that, kind of acting like that. She was jittery, shaking,

Wes: just that speed kind of thing?

Liz: Yeah. Everybody had noticed it. I don’t know if anybody would admit that, but everybody had noticed it and was kind of concerned about the situation. You know, because one thing, she’d just gotten skinny as a rail. You know. Probably not eating like she should, you know, trying to work out every day, just working, working, working. They had a whole workout room in their house that she had him put in and, you know, all that kind of stuff.”

Knowing what we’ve now learned about Shelley’s character and history, I personally consider this statement of 96 erstwhile lovers to be entirely fictitious on her part. I think it was an impulsive lie to goad her listeners. I think that perhaps she was taunting or challenging her husband, who was the real philanderer in their marriage, and that, for whatever reason, she showed no qualms about putting Liz on the spot. We have been told that she already suspected that Jerry Mack was secretly having sex with someone else. She already knew that he’d had sex with many other women, because she, the outsider from the north who had fallen in love without any prior information of her mate’s previous womanizing reputation—or even the number of his previous marriages—had eventually learned just how widespread was his promiscuousness, thanks to locals finally telling her the facts.

Fed up and wrathful with his flagrant behavior, she had already left him at least once. During a vacation in Rome, Italy, after a shopping excursion with her sister-in-law Barbara, she had entered a bar to join Jerry Mack and his brother Ronny. There she allegedly discovered a strange woman sitting in Jerry Mack’s lap, wrapping herself around his body. Shelley’s reaction was immediate; she left the bar, marched to her hotel room, packed her bags, went to the airport, boarded a plane, and flew straight home alone, without informing her companions. At the time she was seven months pregnant with her younger daughter Lane, and had to convince the airline authorities and Customs that she was a safe traveler and would not be giving birth on the flight home.

Quite late at night, Shelley arrived at Beaton Lake Estates from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Jerry Mack apparently trailed her back to Texas that same night, concerned enough to take her angry exit from him seriously.

And lately we have learned about an explosive argument that took place before lunchtime at the Watkins lake house, that Labor Day morning of September 6^th, 1993.

We know from Barbara Watkins’s statement when initially questioned by the investigators that Shelley was observed to be “real nervous and jittery” and on edge that day at the lake—“not herself,” as Barbara put it to her daughter Brandye. This comment was included in the official Search Warrant Affidavit. It’s interesting to note that her descriptor words so closely match those of our interviewee Liz, who suggested to us that Shelley was abusing diet pills, thirty years after Barbara first spoke to the investigators.

That morning argument was so ferocious and violent that it was seen and overheard by Weldon and Pam Hatley Caldwell, who were fishing in the cove next to the lake house. It occurred outdoors, in front of the other adult guests who were seated at the tables in the yard, as well as all the children present. Thanks to a breeze that carried sound toward the fight and away from the fishing couple, Pam said that she and Weldon could only discern yells, screams, shrieks, and one clear word that Jerry Mack yelled: “Bitch!” Both members of the couple physically shoved each other, watched by the Caldwells.

The Caldwells couldn’t hear what the argument was about. But whatever issue caused the confrontation, it was huge.

The very next day, on September 7th, the day after Labor Day, when Pam Hatley Caldwell arrived at work at the sheriff’s office building—Corsicana’s Justice Center—she told several people about the violent public quarrel she had just witnessed the morning before. Of course, at that time she had no idea that Shelley Watkins had disappeared the previous night, the same night of the argument. No one would know of Shelley’s status as a missing person until the following Sunday, one whole week after she had vanished.

One week later, on the following Monday when Pam first learned that Shelley was missing, she again reminded her colleagues at the Corsicana sheriff's office building about the argument. This was one day after the authorities had finally been informed that Shelley was officially missing and had actually been missing since the night of September 6^th. Only the day before, on Sunday, September 12^th, the search for Shelley had been turned over to the Navarro Co. Sheriff’s jurisdiction, following the revelation to Corsicana’s Chief of Police, that Sergeant Lewis Palos had skipped protocol four days prior and filed a Missing Person’s report, on Thursday, September 9^th, without informing anyone else at the city police station—including his boss.

No one in Navarro County law enforcement seems to have ever conveyed Pam Hatley Caldwell’s witness comments to Henderson County once Shelley’s body was found. Pam Caldwell can to this day still cite the people’s names whom she told of the argument. She is, as she states, on the record with this information, as she has been for the past thirty-one years.

To continue: We now also know that, following the recovery of Shelley’s body, the guests and family members misled law enforcement investigators by omitting any mention of the major pre-lunch dispute between Shelley and Jerry Mack. They claimed only that there was tension between the couple, and that Shelley had argued with Jerry Mack’s brother Ronny Watkins regarding the use of jet skis. Barbara Watkins added that Shelley was upset upon learning that Jerry had already taken their two little daughters home and left her at the lake.

And later that night, Shelley wound up dead—struck at least eight times on the back of her skull, presumably after she had turned her back on whoever decided to hit her—and with a furrow around her throat that indicated possible strangulation.

Shortly after Shelley’s death, several people began to strongly suspect Kay Bryant to be Jerry’s mystery lover. These included Shelley’s cousin Mike Russ, Shelley’s sister Sandy, and other members of Shelley’s family, as well as some local Corsicanans. Kay’s constant close presence at Jerry’s side during Shelley’s funeral and afterwards at the graveside ceremony struck them as inappropriate and bizarre. So did the fact she’d admitted to law enforcement: that Jerry Mack had spoken to her at 6:45 a.m. after Shelley’s disappearance to tell her that he and Shelley had had a fight the night before, during which Shelley said she was leaving him and taking their daughters with her, and that he had told Shelley she couldn’t take the girls. (This later grew more notable, since Kay had frequently expressed her desperate wish to have children, vocally mourned her inability to do so, stated her devotion to Shelley’s two daughters, and quickly jumped in to fill the void left in their lives by their mother’s murder.) Other circumstances reinforced these impressions as well, for instance, the frequent publicly observed socializing of Jerry Mack with Dennis and Kay Bryant on Cedar Creek Lake in the months following Jerry Mack’s arrest. Kay Bryant would, in fact, eventually go on to divorce her husband Dennis and marry Jerry Mack Watkins a few months after Jerry Mack’s murder trial was suspended and his case canceled by Henderson County.

Which brings us to another fact: the reasons why the case was canceled at all.

Jerry Mack Watkins was scheduled to be tried for first-degree murder on August 15^th, 1994. That same day, E. Ray Andrews was compelled to resign his position of District Attorney by the Texas Attorney General.

The previous April, following the pre-trial hearing, Jerry Mack’s defense attorney Jack Zimmermann had filed a motion to quash the original indictment on several grounds, including how three witnesses before the Grand Jury had felt intimidated during their testimonies, due to the presence and behavior of the two lawmen who had previously questioned them: Texas Ranger Ray Nutt and Homicide Investigator Larry Warrick. These three witnesses claimed that their resultant nervousness might have given the Grand Jury a bad impression of their credibility. Out of the thirty-five witnesses testifying under oath, only these three first appeared on the Motion to Quash the Indictment filed by the defense attorney. They were Jerry Mack’s brother Ronny Watkins, Jerry Mack’s sister Janice Watkins King, and Jerry Mack’s soon-to-be wife Kay Bryant.

All three had strong motives to wish the indictment overturned, considering their closeness to the accused. Nonetheless, the motion failed, and the trial date was set.

It would take a bribery scheme charge against the district attorney to finally effect what Defense Attorney Jack Zimmerman had attempted to do the previous April.

But the capper that eventually helped fulfill the motion’s purpose, after the trial date had come and gone and District Attorney E. Ray Andrews had smudged the case’s status, came in the form of a document later attached to it. That document was another Supplemental Submission In Support Of Motion to Quash, and it added one more name to the witnesses’ complaint about the lawmen: Karen Williams.

Karen Williams lived across the street from the Watkins house. She was the mother of two boys, and the wife of another state witness, David Williams. She worked in a Corsicana salon. She was not related to anyone involved in the case. Her eleven-year-old son Chad had stated that he had watched the Watkins house through his second-story bedroom window on Labor Day night. He reported seeing activity and lights to his father that night until four o’clock the next morning, and told others of his experience through the following years, as shared with us by his father David Williams and some of those others. Karen therefore seemingly had no agenda in helping to crush the indictment.

There can be little doubt, however, that the addition of her name added more weight to the effort to erase the Grand Jury’s judgment that Jerry Mack Watkins had murdered his wife. And on August 26^th, 1994, when Judge Jack H. Holland dismissed the indictment, it did just that.

Since the first time we ever read the Watkins case file, we have felt puzzled as to why, out of all the scores of potential witnesses that might have joined their names to the Motion to Quash Jerry Mack Watkins’s Indictment, Karen Williams was the sole volunteer. But it is also quite likely that she believed Jerry Mack Watkins to be innocent.

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The Unforgotten is a Free Range Production. Season 1: The Labor Day Ghost was co-created by Carol Dawson and Wes Ferguson. Wes is the Executive Producer of Free Range.