A community demands answers when three teenagers are found brutally slain in a scenic lakeside park, and it breathes a collective sigh of relief as righteous local lawmen quickly zero in on the perpetrators. But when the dust finally settles, many are forced to ask: who pays the price when ego eclipses justice?This is Part 2 of 2. Make sure to listen to INFAMOUS: The Lake Waco Murders Part 1 before diving into this one… you’re going to want to know the first part of this wild and twisty case. And for more information on the 2025 Crime Junkie Tour, please visit our website! Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-lake-waco-part-2 Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies. Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: What happened after the Lake Waco trials?
Welcome back, crime junkies. I'm still your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm still Britt. Let me jump right back into our story, right where we left off in part one. And if you haven't listened to that yet, you're definitely going to want to do that first. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Otherwise, you won't know what's going on. But if you have, dive in with us, won't you? Water's fine.
When we left off, four men had been convicted of the murder of three Texas teenagers. The cop who put them away had become a celebrated hero. But, and isn't there always a but, for those who looked closely at the case... there were holes. It wasn't nearly as solid as clickbait headlines might lead you to believe.
And no one was leading the charge for the men's exoneration harder than the mother of one of the men on death row. This is Lake Waco, part two. For all the confessions, the bite mark evidence, the jailhouse informants, David Spence never wavered on his innocence. And though his word clearly held no weight with the jury, David's mother, Juanita White, stood steadfast by her son's side.
He may have committed other crimes, by no means was her son an angel. But like David's lawyers, she believed in his innocence here, in this case. A mother's opinion doesn't tend to go very far once a jury has spoken. So there were very few people by her side as she tried to fight for her son in the months after the final Lake Waco trial.
There was a PI and one of David's trial lawyers who both believed in Juanita and in David, and they would take her calls if she heard rumors or if she got tips about her son's case. Specifics may have been TBD, but she was determined to learn every last detail of what actually happened that night.
And she stopped at nothing, even hanging out in some questionable places, spending her free time in Waco's seediest establishments, cozying up to Waco's seediest people. People who could have been involved in the murders or people who knew people who could have been involved. But in the time since the trials, there hadn't really been anything that was going to move the needle.
Not until one day in 1986 when, like manna from the heavens, Juanita and David got a letter that they believed would finally prove his innocence. The letter writer was a guy named Robert Snelson. He was one of the jailhouse informants who had testified against David and helped put him on death row.
His specific testimony had to do with overhearing David bragging about doing something particularly cruel to one of the victims, which was big because the act was accurate. It was something that the jury was made to believe Robert would have only known about if he heard it from the real killer, i.e. David.
But in this letter, Robert told David and Juanita that his entire story, every last bit of his testimony, was false. He made it up, and he'd eventually say that all of the informants made up their stories, too, because they were getting breaks in their own cases in exchange. Of course they were.
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Chapter 2: Who was Juanita White and what did she do?
Okay.
Much, much, much, much, much later, Simon says that Price called them bite marks. I don't think she agrees with that. But somehow it is decided that they are bite marks or at least potential bite marks. Then if you ask Simon's how it went, he'll say that he looped Price in and then they mutually decided that they should get a mold from Calvin. But Price strongly disagrees, basically saying,
says that he went rogue, already had the mold when they had their very first conversation about this.
I'm sorry, I am Team Jan Price.
Yeah, someone's lying, right? Like, who is, like, the big question with some very big consequences? Yeah. Like, also Team Jan. But regardless of where you or me or any of the crime junkies fall at the moment, Simons and Price do end up agreeing that they should take the mold they now have to an expert.
I don't know if Homer, the first guy they used in the last episode, is busy or what, but a Dallas-based forensic odontologist, Jim Hale, comes to the rescue. He says, yep, you're totally right. Whoever spotted these first, we still don't know. The injuries in this autopsy photo are bite marks. And drumroll, please. The bite marks are a match to Calvin.
But that doesn't mean he acted alone because now Simon starts hearing another name from his informants, a 19-year-old named Joe Sidney Williams. This dude is supposedly Calvin's, like, crime buddy. And all of this must feel a little convenient for Price because she goes to the courthouse to see what favors are being exchanged with informants for them coming forward.
Right. What's the incentive?
And what she finds is that a whole lot of Simon's informants are getting their charges just straight up dismissed. But she has to find out on her own because she learns that he's been telling his informants not to talk to her if she comes by. So, so much for that joint effort. She's part of the team. Yes, she's getting peeped and for good reason.
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Chapter 3: What did the letter from Robert Snelson reveal?
Yeah. So they try and hold on to it for a while. During 2001, Jan arranged for Dannon to come and meet the whole family and explain... what he'd been doing, the issues that he had been having with the untested evidence, all of it. Because it really was just like him and Jan up to this point.
And this meeting shook many of Jill's family members to their core because a lot of them had believed all along that justice had been served. And hearing all of the issues that we just spent the last, you know, 30, 40 minutes going over left them a little, not even a little, a lot rattled. The rug got pulled out from under them. And they were wanting answers.
So Dannon started working with one of David Spence's lawyers. We haven't talked about him yet. Another guy had come in at some point. This guy's named Walter Reeves. And they worked together to get that evidence that was at the one lab being like held up. They get it moved to an accredited lab. They successfully did that in late 2012.
They got it moved to a lab called Arkansas Genomics in Little Rock. But then Dannon just like dropped off the grid.
What?
Yes. So this is where, like, we had to do our own little crime junkie investigating. So because we started this whole thing talking to Jill's family, they told us they had no idea how to get in touch with him or what needs to be done to allow them to obtain any evidence that might still provide answers. They said they have no idea where the evidence even is now.
So I did not I could not end the episode that way. I was like, we have to figure it out. And I actually do have some answers. OK. So we tried to locate the Arkansas Genomics, but it turns out that they've since shut down. According to someone that our team spoke with at the Arkansas Secretary of State's office, Arkansas Genomics has not filed any annual reports or paid any fees since 2014.
So 10 years.
Yeah. And like only two years after the stuff was sent there. So we went and spoke with the company's registered agent, and she indicated that she doesn't know whatever happened with the evidence. She said that she'd pass a message along to the former owner, who is also her ex-husband. We never heard back from him. But we did have luck finding Dannon, although it took some, like, serious digging.
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