Hi friends!
It’s finally here! The live show episode is out.
A few weeks ago, Carol and Claire St. Amant sat down for a live conversation in Kerens, Texas, the last stop of Claire’s Texas Justice Tour, and we recorded the whole thing for you. If you’re newer to the show, this one goes back to our very first season, The Labor Day Ghost, about the 1993 murder of Shelley Watkins in Corsicana. Her body was found in the Trinity River a week after she disappeared, and no one has ever been convicted of her murder. Carol has never stopped reporting on it.
Listen to 20. Texas Justice Tour: The Unsolved Murder of Shelley Watkins wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
In this live episode, Carol shares some of the updates she’s been holding onto, and the biggest one is about motive. For years, many people assumed Shelley’s death resulted from a fight with her husband stemming from a disagreement at their lake house. Carol lays out a possible motive tied to something Shelley knew about the family business. Her sister Sandy says Shelley confided this just months before she died: that she knew something that could bring the whole business down.
Sandy joins the conversation to talk about that, and so does a woman who was close to everyone at the center of the case, who describes what she was told in the days right after Shelley vanished. Both of them are really something to hear.
Carol also shared some more big news that night: there are now three law enforcement agencies actively working the case. After 33 years, it finally feels like things are moving, and the right authorities are pursuing justice for Shelley.
The whole event was part of author and journalist Claire St. Amant’s Texas Justice Tour. If you want more from her, you can find Claire’s podcast, Final Days on Earth with Claire St. Amant, and her new book, Killer Story, which goes behind the scenes of her years making true crime TV for 48 Hours and 60 Minutes. And a reminder that Carol’s book, The Labor Day Ghost, comes out in March from the University of Texas Press, so you can get your pre-order in now.
As always, thank you so much for listening and for sticking with us! Talk soon!
— Aislyn