If you have come this far, you definitely want to stay in the loop.
In this episode you will hear about the profound impact good citizens coming forward with what seems like small details have on critical investigations like this one. For example, a storage shed manager not only finds it interesting that a particular shed gets an unannounced visit, but gets that visit after the cops were there.
And, how many people have offered a place for a friend to store a car for a while?
Who really solved cases? The detectives or the community?
We learn about a house on DeWeese Street (and why it’s called a shotgun house of all things), and what roll it played in Aubrey’s kidnapping and murder. Interesting things are found from ammunition to dried blood.
You will learn more about the suspect, who by the way wasn’t a talker with the law, and likely was more interested in scooting off to Mexico. And as an artist, did he find a new medium to create with? Like murder?
Take a listen as Paul Williams and Billy Richmond look for a mystery gun, and find a car in a rural area, surrounded by dead grass.
Transcript
Paul Williams: He had made the statement that he didn’t own a gun, but we kept finding a lot of 22 ammunition in his residence. We talked to the landlord and he said, “I had a 22-caliber pistol. I bought it from Mr. Salinas. The last time I saw it was in Mr. Salinas’s room.”
Wendy Lyons: Morning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.
Wendy Lyons: Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, the murder of Aubrey Nuckolls, part three of four. Into marijuana possibly, right?
Paul Williams: Well, that’s the money. Yeah, that’s the value. That’s the money. He had to get that. And another, well, I’ll get into this a little later. Another thing that I just want to… They don’t make it easy for you, but their greed or their animus makes them overlook mistakes. The money, what he could get for that marijuana, he’s pushing for this 20,000 ransom. He can’t just go, “Well, I’ve killed a guy. Let’s get away with it.” He’s got to make that extra little push and that was his mistake.
Billy Richmond: I think that was the point that we were up over the top of the hill. We’d reached the summit and we’re going down from there. Because very quickly we had a gentleman, it was a guy that I knew that contacted us. I got to talking to him. He came down and gave an interview. It was a guy I knew from the streets I guess, best I remember. This guy was I guess kind of your average guy, but he was an alcoholic.
Paul Williams: Oh, you’re talking about … The way we got ahold of him, the landlord of the suspect, when we found out who he was, we went there and found out he lived in a home, the landlord lived in the back of the house. The front of the house was like mutual property and the upstairs was where the suspect lived. The suspect lived there for … I guess the fee he paid was helping rebuild, redo the house. So they were remodeling this whole home, with the owner and his wife living in the back, the suspect living upstairs and a front two-room joint communal area. Now, the guy I was referring to-
Billy Richmond: He worked for the landlord.
Paul Williams: … he was a guy that worked for the landlord and he had a drinking problem. He did little odd jobs and things. He was just a guy that was in a rough spot in life. He pretty much would sit up and drink all night and look to make a dollar here and there. I think by most standards, he was a pretty decent guy.
Billy Richmond: A pretty decent guy.
Paul Williams: But I think either in the newspaper or on the news, he saw the coverage of this and had an ‘oh crap’ moment. He made contact with us. And initially when I called him … Like I said, I’d had dealings with him before. He was afraid that he was going to get implicated in a homicide, so he wanted to cooperate 100%. He either came to headquarters or I went and picked him up. I think you and I interviewed him. He said that our suspect, he’d kind of befriended him and had done some odd and end work for him. He said that the suspect was kind of an artistic guy in a sense and always had projects going on, and things like that. He said, well, the suspect contacted him and said, “Hey, I need your help.” I think he was going to pay him 20 bucks to help him move a heavy object that needed to be put into his vehicle. So of course with him being intoxicated probably 24 hours a day more or less, he didn’t think much of it. He saw a $20 bill so he agreed to it.
The suspect picked him up at 5:30, six o’clock in the morning, took him over to the house where we later found that the homicide actually occurred. They went into the house, that upstairs room I think that Paul was talking about … or downstairs, was talking about in that common area. The room was unlit and there was this thing.
David Lyons: And where was this house?
Billy Richmond: Dewees Street in Lexington, near downtown.
David Lyons: Got you, just to make sure we got an idea. And again, timeline-wise, what are we talking about from the time of report to your getting this information?
Billy Richmond: A month.
Wendy Lyons: Okay. So for our listeners, let’s give a chronological timeline from when the wife made contact regarding this ransom note. Bring us up to where we are with the timeline of how this transpired.
Billy Richmond: The police were contacted on the 11th of September. Fairly quickly we gathered the information from the victim’s wife. A lot of that information obviously had to do with … the evidence that was collected was that letter and so forth. And I think we got some other mail matter and some information from the wife about some of his associates, and so forth. So already calls were being made and people were being located and so forth. We couldn’t account for the vehicle, the family vehicle. So typically what we do is, a police department’s put out what’s called an ATL, an attempt to locate, trying to find that vehicle. Of course, it wasn’t found for almost a month until we located the victim in it. But very quickly I think they got into the storage unit. I think the information garnered from his wife, that was a pretty easy part. And of course, like Detective Williams said a little while ago, that really stood out. So we got on that quickly and our narcotics people went over. And that was I guess you can call it sort of a bombshell, when you find 12 pounds of high-grade marijuana. So that turned us in a certain direction on this investigation.
That happened pretty much the next day. After that we learned that it turns out the suspect went to the storage unit, trying to collect property that basically belonged to the victim that he really didn’t have a right to. And then again, you factor in that the wife had said that there was only two keys to the unit. One was in her possession and one was in her estranged husband’s possession.
Paul Williams: By the time that this happened, we actually had possession of her key. She gave it to us and we held onto it. So it was us and him, was the only one that could access it. I mean, the whole break in the case comes from the guy who was running the unit who was a good enough citizen to go, hey, the police are here. This guy’s in. There’s something wrong. Let me get ahold of him. But he had the wherewithal to get that car description and virtually a complete license number. Boy, you just don’t get breaks like that. That’s where you’re just tickled to death. That doesn’t make the case, that gives us a suspect and we can really concentrate our investigations there. It’s going to take a whole lot more to make the case. But half of any case is identifying your suspect first. Then the second half is putting enough case together to get past probable cause, make the arrest and actually push for beyond a reasonable doubt.
Billy Richmond: And we’ve said it before and even current day with all the things that are going on in their own city, with all these shootings and things, and people question the ability of the police to solve these cases, the police don’t solve these cases. The community does. In this instance, the gentleman from the storage facility came with a critical piece of information. Then later we get another critical piece of information from the gentleman that ultimately helped him unknowingly move the victim’s body. So things like that are what actually solved this case. I think we’re pretty intelligent people. Most of us are pretty savvy, especially after we’ve gotten experience on the streets and things. But the reality to this is, in any of these cases, it’s a community more so than our own smarts that solve these cases. We’re just there to put the pieces together.
Paul Williams: And assemble it for presentation.
Billy Richmond: That’s right. We’re the protectors of the evidence.
Paul Williams: There’s a couple of cases that I know right now, I know who did them. We just never were able to get enough evidence to push it over the top for the prosecutor to say, yeah, we’re going to go with it. With only them having one shot at prosecution, they’re not going to waste it on a faulty case. So I’ve got several cases, luckily, scooting over at Rob Wilson, I found out that three of my cold cases have been solved since I’ve been gone. And those were cases I pretty well knew who did them. Couldn’t prove it. They got down and hammered out the [document 00:10:04].
Billy Richmond: Especially with DNA, the technology and DNA and the processes and things. And the ability to take just a minute sample and either replicate that sample to make a big enough source to test from, or just the process in and of itself has changed so much that a lot of these cold cases are solved years later. But it just reinforces that what we did back then before technology changed, we were doing very solid police work. We just didn’t have the right person come forth in the community to give us that solid link to do just what Detective Williams was talking about, and take it and present it in a court setting. Because we didn’t want to risk failure and not being able to go back and charge that person again.
Wendy Lyons: So you’re able to locate this suspect, or potential suspect, regarding who is showing up on the license plate. And that leads you to this home on Dewees you were speaking of, right? So tell us what happens when you learn of Dewees.
Paul Williams: Everything in this case is strange people. We run into the address and it’s a single family dwelling that is under …
Billy Richmond: Renovation.
Paul Williams: Renovation, yeah. And the gentleman who owns the property is very familiar with the suspect. The suspect lives in an upstairs loft department and the suspect lives there essentially free, for work. And what they’re doing between the owner and the suspect is, they were just completely refurbishing the house. The upstairs has been refurbished, looking very well. This is probably a century-old home, what used to be called a shotgun home, very narrow, long. The term comes from the fact that you could stand in the front of the house, shoot a shotgun and hit everybody in the house for the entire length of the house, because it’s a narrow little house. They had done a lot of work and it looked quite good. But he lived in the back primarily with his girlfriend, and he had this little community area in the front. And then you went upstairs to the loft, which was where the suspect resided.
Wendy Lyons: So you all went there and discovered the home.
Paul Williams: The suspect wasn’t there, talked to the owner. Found out who lived upstairs, got background information on both of them. Found out that he wasn’t home. He owned rental property so he was out working on his rental property. The suspect oftentimes had friends that would come by and visit and they concentrated in those first two rooms. One of them was a storage room, which had just a ton of craft stuff like-
Billy Richmond: Art type stuff.
Paul Williams: Yeah, and this was one of the things that Salinas did for money. He would make Mexican pottery and sold. He had a lot of things he made with plaster of paris, and things along those lines. This is what was stored primarily in that room with his computer, in this other downstairs room.
Billy Richmond: So at some point finally we do get a search warrant. That was a key turning point. As with any case, we have to be able to lawfully go in and search an area. And with this being basically a residence of the suspect, even though we had the owner there, there’s an expectation of privacy for this person who was basically … whether it be for money or for trade of work, or whatever you want to call it, he had an expectation of privacy because that was his home. So I think, Paul, you did the search warrant, if I recall. Now, once this search warrant was executed, here comes some other connections because we found some ammunition, found a weapon.
Paul Williams: He had made the statement that he didn’t own a gun, but we kept finding a lot of 22 ammunition in his residence. We talked to the landlord and he said, “I had a 22-caliber pistol. I bought it from Mr. Salinas. The last time I saw it was in Mr. Salinas’s room. He had it up there.” And that gun did not turn up anywhere on that search warrant. We did find the ammo. The most telling thing was something in the floor of that storage room where his computer was and all of his merchandise was. There was a lot of paint splattered around. But one little patch in particular, and this just comes from seeing it a lot, I was convinced was dried blood. We collected that and it turned out to be human blood. The victim was so decomposed when we got them, back in those early days of DNA, we couldn’t get a good DNA profile on him. We had to find some kin folk to him. I think a daughter-
Billy Richmond: His daughter.
Paul Williams: … from his first marriage.
Billy Richmond: It was his daughter.
Paul Williams: … to get a good profile of him and that we were able to match it to the blood we found in that room. Obviously, he had bled in that room so that was a huge clue that we found the murder scene.
Wendy Lyons: So you’ve talked to Mr. Salinas at this point. You’ve made contact with him and he’s denied everything.
Paul Williams: He’s not going to talk to us. He didn’t deny.
Billy Richmond: He lawyer-ed up, so to speak.
Paul Williams: He’s just, “I’m not talking to you. Do what you’re going to do.” So at that point, we didn’t have enough to connect him to the homicide. We’d received information that he was planning on going back to Mexico. So we figured if we got there, we’d never get him again. So we started examining the elements of the kidnap case and what we could do to … We could definitely say that we can put him in possession of the guy’s car. We can put him in possession of the guy’s keys. We can put him in contact with him, so at that point we charge him.
Billy Richmond: And then we had the witness, the witness who helped move something very heavy, who got something wet that was red on his leg that Mr. Salinas told him, “It’s paint. This is something I made for a customer.”
Paul Williams: “Help me load it.”
Billy Richmond: “It’s lead, it’s heavy. Help me load it.” So when this witness realized that this was on his leg, Salinas quickly wiped it away, says it’s paint, throws away the rag or paper towel or whatever he used. They load what turns out to be the body in the back of this car. So where this witness was important, this witness, either through the newspaper or through television, saw coverage of this.
Paul Williams: And came forward.
Billy Richmond: And even though he was a guy who drank a lot, all of a sudden it popped in his head, holy cow, I think I helped load a body. So he wanted to talk very quickly because again, he didn’t want to be implicated in the actual murder of this victim. So he was very forthcoming with information when he talked to us. Like I said, he turned over a key piece of evidence that turned out to be-
Paul Williams: The victim’s blood.
Billy Richmond: … the victim’s blood, which was on the tongue of one of his shoes.
Paul Williams: He contacted us after Salinas was locked up. After we charged him with the kidnapping, the press got ahold of it. Well, actually the FBI released it and that press coverage of the kidnapping and everything else … at that time, we hadn’t found the body, at that time.
Billy Richmond: We had not located the body.
Paul Williams: So they ended up putting that story out. And this was the press that got the witness’s attention as, oh, my goodness. That started to connect with me. But there comes a time when you keep information from the public, because you want the advantage of moving around without people knowing what you’re doing. And the advantage of being able to talk to people before they’re necessarily aware that you’re looking at them, is a valuable technique.
Billy Richmond: Case integrity, you have to keep that close.
Paul Williams: So you try not to-
Wendy Lyons: So had the witness told you all where he had moved this body?
Paul Williams: Yes. When the witness came forward and told us, we had no idea where the actual homicide scene was. We knew the body had been stored there and moved from there. So the investigation proceeded of that location to try to determine if that was the murder scene, and it turned out to be the murder scene.
Wendy Lyons: But the witness wasn’t there when the murder actual-
Paul Williams: No, the witness was there to help move the body.
Wendy Lyons: So where does he tell you that the body was taken?
Billy Richmond: He didn’t know.
Paul Williams: He didn’t know.
Billy Richmond: He didn’t know where the body-
Paul Williams: He last saw it put in the trunk-
Wendy Lyons: Under the pretense that it’s art.
Billy Richmond: Yeah. He got his $20 and he went home. He was happy, he made 20 bucks.
Paul Williams: … in the suspect’s vehicle. He was adamant that the car he loaded it into was a blue Chevy Impala that he knew to be the suspect’s, from knowing the suspect previously. It was parked out in front of the suspect’s home. We found the body in a red Pontiac 88.
Billy Richmond: Bonneville maybe?
Paul Williams: Bonneville, yeah. It was a red Bonneville, which belonged to the victim.
Wendy Lyons: So how did you find the car?
Paul Williams: Well, when this hit the press, another witness came forward. This lady had lived in Jessamine County, a county away. She was familiar with the suspect. He had been introduced to her by another friend, on occasion had done some yard work and stuff for her and had known him for about four years. She occasionally let him house-sit when she was gone. He approaches her and says, “I have a vehicle I’m going to buy. Said vehicle is in the process of being repossessed. Until the fellow I’m buying it from gets the repossession taken care of, I need a place to stash it. I want to hide it, and then when he gets it paid off, I’ll complete the transaction with him and I’ll have a car.” The lady said, “Okay.”
Billy Richmond: Reluctantly.
Paul Williams: Yeah, reluctantly. She said, “And don’t park it up around the house. I don’t have a lot of room up there.” There was a long driveway that came into her residence.
Billy Richmond: Yeah, this was a very rural area.
Paul Williams: Yes, very rural.
Billy Richmond: … Jessamine County. It wasn’t like in a neighborhood setting. This was on a-
Paul Williams: Out in the country.
Billy Richmond: … rural two-lane road out in the country and like Detective Williams said, you turn up a pretty long driveway. When we approached that day, of course it stuck out like a sore thumb.
Paul Williams: When she hears this information, she calls the FBI, because the FBI is of course on the story as the lead investigative agency and says, “I think I’ve got information on where that car is.” She called Agent Gehart. He immediately called us and we all took a road trip. We go to her residence and as we pull in the driveway, I think it was you and me, Billy, that went down initially.
Billy Richmond: It was very, very strange because clearly, we need to go talk to her first. It’s her property. But as we got closer to the vehicle, it was very obvious something was wrong. Around this car was dead grass. Around the whole complete circumference of this car was grass that clearly was dead and it was high grass and it made sense. Paul and I knew immediately that when a body decomps, basically it puts off ammonia and other gases and it’ll kill the grass. So we knew there was a significant amount of something that killed the grass. Of course, when we stepped out of our vehicle, which is-
Paul Williams: If you walked down wind of it, it was-
Billy Richmond: Yeah, we could smell him right away.
Paul Williams: Go figure that out, yeah.
Billy Richmond: So we started making calls to other people and involved the … Well, Jessamine County was already involved to some degree. We’d given them a courtesy notice and I think they were going to send a deputy out to help us.
Paul Williams: Deputy on call.
Billy Richmond: So I think then they immediately contacted the coroner.
Wendy Lyons: Was the homeowner aware that there was a person in the vehicle?
Billy Richmond: No.
Paul Williams: Well, that’s the strange part to this. I mean, one side of you looks at it and says, well, you live there, you have to smell something. We’re talking about a body. And this gentleman was about 5’10” or 5’11,” 240, 250 pounds. He’s a large man and he’d been in this trunk arguably, well, we’ll say close to a month. We don’t know exactly.
Billy Richmond: He was also packed in lime though.
Paul Williams: Yeah. He was packed in lime, wrapped in a tarp box-
Billy Richmond: And baling wire.
Paul Williams: Tarp wrapped with baling wire=
Billy Richmond: Baling wire.
Paul Williams: … tape. And then the whole thing had bags of lime-
Billy Richmond: Dumped.
Paul Williams: … poured over it.
Billy Richmond: So we knew right off the bat when we stepped out of our Cruiser that we had somebody’s body. We didn’t know it was him.
Paul Williams: We pretty well knew we found him.
Billy Richmond: So with that, the next step in this was again, going into evidence mode, making contact with the landowner. I think a lot more information was gotten from her. But we contacted Frankfurt in regards to the body. I think the medical examiner there said, “Hey, let’s bring the car with the body to Frankfurt.”
David Lyons: Is it safe to say that until you’ve smelled the difference between a human body decomposing, that it may not be discernible from an animal?
Paul Williams: I don’t don’t know if I’d say that. I’d say, most your folks in the country between dead deer, dead cow, stuff on the road, have plenty of opportunity to smell dead stuff and there’s no differentiation. There’s no differentiation between a human body-
Billy Richmond: But this was such a strong pungent odor.
Paul Williams: But we were about at least 150 yards from the house. It was in a little low area by a creek, away from the road. And it would literally depend on if the wind was blowing.
Billy Richmond: The wind was blowing. Yeah.
David Lyons: Again, because I think we skipped ahead a little bit about, how did you access the car to discern that there was a body then?
Paul Williams: Well, I think at some point somebody accessed the trunk while we were there. When we walked up to it, the biggie was the smell. I mean, walking up to it, we didn’t smell anything. As soon as you got down wind, bam. We’re just like, oh, okay. We got something dead in or under that car. So we had to wait for a search warrant before we could get into it.
Wendy Lyons: Did you have the keys?
Billy Richmond: I think the keys were in it, if I remember right. The keys were in the car.
Paul Williams: The battery was dead. The VIN number was covered and it had no tags on. But I don’t know if the keys were in the-
Billy Richmond: There was a key somewhere in the vehicle I think that we found, and that’s when they popped the trunk and shut it right back.
Paul Williams: Yeah, popped the trunk and all you saw was just a big bed of lime. You didn’t see any body, or anything else. But there were little holes coming out of the lime and out of those holes were maggots climbing out. So we knew … Of course, when they get exposed to light and sun, they go hide. So they were running right back down the holes. So we knew that … And this tells you that he was exposed long enough in an environment where flies found him and laid eggs on him, before he was packaged and put in the trunk.
Wendy Lyons: Hey, you know there’s more to this story. So go download the next episode, like the true crime fan that you are.
David Lyons: The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters, and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast swag. We are also on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars and a written review on Apple Podcast or wherever you download your podcast. Make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends. Lock it down, Judy.
