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Hi, I'm Art Rascone, host of the new true crime podcast, Ransom. We thought fans of Vigilante might be interested in it because it tells the story of a mother fighting to get justice for her son by whatever means necessary. Here's a clip from episode one. Not a lawless emergency. Ma'am, this is Carl Everett. I live out on Longmont Road. Uh-huh.
Okay.
And I've asked myself so many times, what in the world happened?
Your life will never be the same. You will never look at another person the same because they could be thinking evil but smiling at you like they're your friend. What's your son's name? His name is McKay, M-C-K-A-Y Everett. E-V-E-R-E-T-T. What does your son look like? He's about 5'1", weighs 100 pounds, short hair. He wears braces. He's got...
Okay.
On September 12, 1995, 12-year-old McKay Everett disappeared from his home in Conroe, Texas. My name's Art Rascone, and as a news anchor based in nearby Houston, I cover the kidnapping's aftermath. It was a crime that shocked the community because of its twists and turns and how unexpected the perpetrator ended up being.
It's a story that's always stuck with me. And recently, when I looked back into it, I realized I wasn't the only one. Friends, neighbors, and law enforcement were all still haunted by McKay's kidnapping, but no one more than McKay's mother, Paulette. It became very disturbing when we thought about it in hindsight, and we, you know, we sat there and blamed ourselves for not seeing indications like that.
But, you know, we thought he cared for McKay, when in fact he didn't care for anyone. When I found out that to this day McKay's mother Paulette still feels that justice was never truly served, I knew this was a story that had to be told.
From KSL Podcasts, this is Ransom, a story of greed and betrayal, grief and survival, and how we never know what's really going on in the minds of those around us. Episode 1, The Phone Call. My name is Paulette Everett Norman. M.E.K. was my only child.
It was September 1995. Bill Clinton was in his third year of his presidency. The O.J. Simpson trial was in full swing, and in Conroe, Texas, a quiet suburban enclave an hour north of Houston, the new school year had just begun. I cooked him breakfast, and his dad drove him to school. That very morning, McKay's father, Carl, took a photo of him standing outside their home.
McKay tucked his dark, baggy t-shirt into his jean shorts, slung his backpack over one shoulder, and gave his dad a shy, closed-mouth smile. He was 12 and a half years old, at that age that he didn't want to be hugged on by his parents. But even though public affection embarrassed McKay, he'd found a workaround using his favorite football team, the Lions. He would say, "How about those Lions?"
meaning I love you, and that was the last thing that McKay said to his dad. The day McKay disappeared, Paulette picked him up after school. When he got home, he just wanted some downtime, which is understandable, you know, being at school all day. Part of our yard was wooded, and he puttered around for a little bit, and I would say just, you know, take about an hour and relax.
Haley Kahn and her mother Nancy lived across the street from the Everetts. They'd often see McKay outside, building forts in the woods or even playing music in the yard.
Was it the trumpet that he was learning? And he'd be out there for hours, just the whole neighborhood, but here, the beginnings of someone learning how to play a trumpet. He was one of those kind of kids that you can't wait to see what he's going to do next. Very creative and very, just really adventurous, but just a really sweet little boy. Back then, Conroe was the place you moved to if you wanted to live near Houston, but in more of a small-town environment.
It was kind of a magical little place to grow up because of the fact that there wasn't, you know, cars to run us over or, you know, we didn't think about strangers being around. And we had a field next door to the Everetts house that had blackberries just like crazy. So in the summer times we would, you know, pick blackberries. It was real pretty innocent. There was a lot of ownership. This was, you know, a small group of families, a few families, and this was our place.
The day McKay disappeared, after unwinding outside, he went straight to the piano. He loved the piano. He would prepare for his lessons, but then he loved to just play on the piano and have fun. McKay was a musical kid. He played piano, trumpet, guitar, and the violin. When he was four, he wanted a violin for Christmas.
And he did not like the person that I had hired to teach him violin. And he said, I'll teach myself. And so we were going on a trip one day. He said, wait a minute. And he sat down and played. And he taught himself Amazing Grace. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Yeah.
She was a prodigy in many ways, huh? Well, my mother's side of the family are honky-tonkers. And so my kids would say, when I get older, I'm going to go honking-tonking. And so I think some of that just was natural talent.
But while music came easy for McKay, he struggled with his schoolwork. That day, after McKay finished at the piano, Paulette sat down with him to go over his assignments, something they had done since McKay was in the first grade. McKay had a slight dyslexia, and when he started school, every afternoon I tutored, tutored, tutored because Carl did not want him to repeat first grade.
And he really probably should have, but Carl's ego was just not strong enough to handle that. So that meant, you know, McKay had to be tutored every day by me. And I just felt like that just isn't quite fair. But, you know, and Carl wasn't there to do it. He wanted to make the decision, but yet played no role in dealing with it. Paulette was the one tutoring McKay, in part because her husband Carl was often traveling for work
And while Paulette sometimes resented having to tutor McKay, spending so much time with him had made the two of them extremely close. I had talked so much to him because Carl was gone during the week when oil and gas was busy. So I would talk to McKay like he was an adult.
Paulette's husband, Carl, had started his own small oil company in 1983, the same year McKay was born. And Paulette had quit her job teaching elementary school to help out with the business. For a while, the Everetts did well for themselves. But by the early 90s, oil prices were down and Carl was getting burnt out. The idea of not having to work hard in the oil patch sounded good.
And recently, Carl had heard about a new way to make money. Welcome to Amway and the Amway business opportunity. As you open the kit and discover the many Amway products inside that box, how about congratulating yourself first for taking your first step towards building a business of your own? I think the draw to it was, you know, you could have the income coming in. As with any opportunity, feeling uncertain right now is only natural.
Amway is a company that sells wholesale products that members could buy and then resell at a profit. They sell everything. But Amway is a multi-level marketing program. You make money not just by selling products, but also by recruiting more people into Amway. You know, they sell you a bill of goods, but a lot of the people that got involved with that, they just dove in.
While Paulette was skeptical, Carl was one of those people that just dove right in. Before long, their garage was full of boxes of Amway products that Carl was trying to unload on family and friends. And Carl was also trying to recruit new Amway members.
In fact, on September 12, 1995, the night that McKay disappeared, Carl was hosting an Amway meeting at a bank building downtown. The plan was Carl would head to the meeting straight from work, and Paulette would carpool over with a neighbor and leave McKay at the house. I got him dinner, and he wanted ice cream after dinner.
Paulette's neighbor Randy Bartlett came over around 7:45 to give her a ride. McKay was sitting in front of the TV, eating ice cream straight out of a half-gallon tub. It was raining and I just thought the lights might go out, you never know, so I gave him a fast light. Paulette remembers waving goodbye to McKay as she left. I could see him inside the door waving bye.
You know, just a typical kid, lanky, you know, you go through that phase in life when your nose looks like it's the most prominent thing on your face. And I remember saying, you know, I've done all I can do because I went through my little mental checklist. I had done everything I could do to get him a flashlight and make sure the door is locked and the alarm system's on and blah, blah, blah. Maybe I had done all I could do on this earth for him.
And I got in the car and drove off. When they got to the Amway meeting, Paulette thinks there were probably about 30 people. Whoever showed up, showed up. And who didn't, didn't. When Carl got there, he launched into his pitch. Just, you know, sign up people and sell, sell, sell. After the meeting, the group got coffee at a nearby restaurant. Carl tried calling McKay at home but couldn't reach him.
Carl said he was worried that maybe the storm had knocked down the power lines and wanted to check on McKay. So he left early and drove back home. Half an hour after Carl left, Paulette's neighbor Randy got a phone call. He told Paulette he had to leave, but he'd give her a ride home. Paulette didn't sense that anything was wrong. She didn't know it yet, but she'd been betrayed by someone she was close to and her life
was about to change forever. In the car, Randy told Paulette that it was her husband, Carl, that had called him at the restaurant. - Randy tells me McKay's missing. All I remember doing is screaming and screaming and screaming. And when I got home, the police were there. They were already sending people out into the woods. I was on a different planet, in a different realm.
I even sunk down into the front floorboard just screaming. You could hear Paulette scream in his name. It was just a real eerie feeling. That's Nancy Kahn, the neighbor that lived across the street from Carl and Paulette. Whenever I think back on this whole situation, that is the one thing that I still can't get out of my head. It was just shrill and desperate, just pleading for him to come home if he's out there somewhere.
It was, you know, a parent's worst nightmare and you could hear it in their voices. Shortly after calling 911, Carl knocked on Nancy Kahn's door. Maybe around 10 o'clock or whatever, Carl had come and asked us if we had seen McKay. Nancy told Carl she hadn't seen him, but her husband Bill had seen something strange that night between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m. My husband had taken trash out that night.
And when he did, he saw a car go into their driveway, because our driveways were exactly across from each other. So he saw a car go in to the driveway, and he didn't think anything of it, so he put the trash cans out, and then he went back to the house. I had, you know, one more bag of trash that I wanted him to take back out to the street. And so when he did, the car that he saw go in was coming out quite fast.
and actually he said it almost ran over him or ran into the trash cans as well and then it sped off really fast and people just didn't drive fast like that so it kind of made him think you know well maybe something's going on
Then, of course, you know, when Carl came over and said, you know, McKay's missing, Bill did bring that up. He didn't get a license plate or anything, but he thought it was a Chrysler, maybe a greenish gold or some color like that. But he had seen an emblem on the back of the car in the shape of a crown, like a Crown Motors or something like that.
It was a tantalizing lead. A golden Chrysler with a crown sticker on the back left bumper leaving the Everts home. But the investigation was just getting started and the FBI was about to arrive.
That was a clip from the first episode of the new podcast, Ransom, Position of Trust. To hear more, you can find a link in the podcast description. Go to ransompodcast.com or follow Ransom on your favorite podcast app.