Free Range Presents: The Unforgotten
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Hey listeners, this is Katie Vine, the host of The Problem with Eric. Years ago at Texas Monthly, I wrote a story about an accountant who embezzled $17 million from the world's most famous fruitcake company in Corsicana, Texas. I'd love to tell you about a new true crime podcast called The Unforgotten from our friends over at Free Range about a murder that happened in that same town.

One night in 1993, a few fishermen were boating down the Trinity River when they found a mysterious package floating on the water. Inside was the body of Shelley Watkins, a young mom who'd married into one of Corsicana's wealthy families. Someone had wrapped her body in plastic, bound her with duct tape, and chained her to a pair of concrete blocks.

In The Unforgotten, Carol Dawson and my old friend and former Texas Monthly staffer Wes Ferguson dive into this troubling case, which was buried more than 30 years ago, and they turn up a story you wouldn't believe: one of power, money, sex, and silence involving an act of public corruption so over-the-top the FBI got involved. More people than you might think want this unsolved murder to stay hidden in the past.

But others are finally coming forward, witnesses with new evidence, and they're demanding justice at long last for Shelley Watkins. You can binge all 10 episodes of The Unforgotten wherever you get podcasts. Here's the trailer. When Jerry was trying to tell me they had a fight and Shelley walked out and left her girls. He said, yeah, she was upset. She just walked out. I said, Jerry, I don't think she would do that. He goes, well, she did.

Shelly was a very beautiful and vibrant and smart young woman. She didn't put up with any bullshit. She was, as we call a woman like that in Texas, a pistol. She disappeared on Labor Day night.

We had gotten a call that fishermen had found a body floating in the river and that they had tied it up to a tree. She was face down in the water and her hair was just floating on the surface. She was wrapped in plastic wrapping and she had a chain around her neck with cinder blocks and she had chains around her legs with cinder blocks.

I mean, it's so obvious that whoever threw her in there had no idea she'd ever rise again. They assumed that she was going to be underneath the Trinity River for eternity. Somebody that knows her and wants to get rid of her body does what they did. I was just so shocked. And somebody had done something really bad to my friend. Somebody had murdered Shelly. And just tossing the river like she was nothing. It breaks your heart.

And then Jerry got indicted. The evidence was not overwhelming by any means, but we felt like it deserved a trial. I thought for sure Jerry's going off to prison. And all that blew up, too. We were gearing up and getting ready to try it.

I'm sitting at my desk as an assistant district attorney. Six or eight FBI agents come running in the front door, yelling at everybody to put their hands on their desk and don't touch anything. We know what's going on. This is the real deal. These are the feds. It was certainly a tragedy that the case had to be dismissed for reasons that really were outside of the evidence in the case itself. I didn't have any questions in my mind that he did it and unfortunately got away with it.

I felt like we had a good strong case and then to have the rug pulled out from under you, oh, it was horrible. It was sickening. There was no closure romance. It was unfinished. There was enough evidence to re-indict, but nobody has the box. They just have too much money and too much power in that area. From author Carol Dawson and me, Wes Ferguson, the creator of Deviltown and Standoff, this is the story of a young mom named Shelly Salter Watkins.

her mysterious death in Corsicana, Texas, and why the quest to deliver justice for Shelly has gone so horribly wrong for so long. She does not go away. She haunts all of the people involved. They regard it as a cold case, but in fact, it's still hot.

They do intimidate me for sure. Don't ruffle too many feathers. You need to be careful there. But also, 30 years later, I'm getting freaking tired now of, oh no, we're still hoping and praying that we get some sort of closure. Don't we want to find out who killed Shelly? This is The Unforgotten. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.