Is Michael Perry Guilty?

In the earlier parts I told you about the murder of Sandra Stotler and how it took place so now I’m going to tell you how the murder of Arnold Jeremy Richardson and James Adam Stotler took place.

Now the state alleges that the murder of Adam and Jeremy took place on the same evening as Sandra Stotler and that just is not correct. Follow along with me now and I will explain how these murders took place. Much of this information comes from reports by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, transcripts from the trial of State of Texas v. Jason Aaron Burkett, transcripts from the trial of State of Texas v. Michael Perry, and my own personal background in law enforcement.

The first indication that the murder of the boys did not occur on the evening of the 24th comes from the answering machine on Adam’s phone in his room upstairs at the Stotler residence. A review of the answering machine found that there were no messages recorded before early afternoon on Thursday. I don’t know you but I find that highly unusual because after that time Adam gets at least three or four messages a day on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The lack of phone messages from Wednesday suggests Adam had in fact been alive through Thursday morning and had listened and erased his messages.

The next indication the boys were not murdered on Wednesday comes from the autopsies done by Dr. Shrode where he noted the presence of rigor and lividity. Rigor is a tightening of the muscles of the body caused by the cells in the muscles dying off from a lack of oxygen. Rigor becomes fully intact after about 24 hours and then starts releasing to a point of approximately 36-48 when it is completely gone.

Now lividity is a pooling of the blood in the lowest points in the body. The cells die and there is no way for the blood to pass through out the body so it tends to pool. Like rigor it generally disappears after about 48 hours.

Now here the boy supposedly died on the 24^th and their bodies were located on the 30^th and they still had signs of rigor and lividity 136 hours after death supposedly took place, and there is just no way can that occur.

Now there are two ways to determine the time of death with the highest degree of accuracy and of course neither was done in this case. Number one is a core organ temperature reading. Basically it works like a meat thermometer they place it in the liver or one of the other protected organs and they get a reading. Now a body will cool at a particular rate so based upon the outside readings of the air and the internal reading of the organs they can determine with pretty good certainty how long that body has been dead, but Dr. Shrode didn’t think it important enough to take those readings so that evidence is lost for ever.

The second ways is decomposition of the body or maggots. This is a very intriguing science and it has been a long time since I did it but it actually was fun. I’m going to create a slideshow to show you how detectives figure out time of death from maggots. There are a lot of factors that affect it. Unfortunately it does you no good if the CSI tech and the ME are to damn lazy to collect the maggots; their quick to put people to death but can’t be bothered to spend one hour more to do it right. Fortunately for Michael and Jason the ME photographed the maggots so I’m having those photographs analyzed by a forensic specialist to see if they can determine the size of the maggots. Either way according to my figures the maggots should be in the final stages of the 2^nd Instar or the beginning of the 3^rd Instar.

Regardless of the core temperature or the maggots the fact of the rigor and lividity still being present clearly indicates the boys died after the 24^th.

Now I met with the Chief of Police in Cut n Shoot in January and we had a long talk. I wanted to know what he could tell me about the “merry band of thieves” and he fed me a little information about the Burkett’s. We started going through his reports for the period of the 23^rd through 30^th of October and we found a report that no one had found before which was a gas drive-off involving a red Chevy Camaro Convertible with a tag that matched Sandra’s from the 25^th of October at about 2:30 PM. Now that adds credence to what I heard from Lynn Meriwether, Jason’s landlord’s common law wife, who said she first saw the Camaro appear on the 25th in the afternoon.

Now let me tell you what the theory of the state was in regards to the murder of the boys and then I’ll tell you my theory.

Now basically the states say that Jason, Kristin, and Michael met Adam and Jeremy at the gate of Adam’s sub-division and asked for their assistance with a friend who was in the woods and hurt from a hunting accident. According to the state Adam and Jeremy followed the other three to a wooded area about 5 miles from Adam’s residence. Once in the woods Jason indicated where the person was and Jeremy and he went into the woods on foot while Kristin stayed there in her truck, and Michael Perry got in with Adam who knew an easier way in around from another road. The state says that once in the woods Jason shot Jeremy repeatedly and then exited the wood to where Michael and Adam were waiting and when he got close to Adam he shot him repeatedly and stole his vehicle and then they returned to the Stotler residence and stole the Camaro. After stealing the Camaro they supposedly went home to Cut n Shoot got cleaned up and then went to the Nite Life bar.

Now here is my theory and I’ll tell you why as we go along. Frankly I know my theory is right because Jason’s attorney, Steve Jackson, saw exactly what I saw but he placed Michael as the shooter and not Jason and I’m going to show you why that theory doesn’t work either.

The Camaro was not stolen from the Stotler residence but was in fact driven to the meeting spot by Adam Stotler with Michael Perry riding with him; they were both kind of holding the money so to speak. Adam did not want to turn over the Camaro till he confirmed his grandmother was dead, and Jason didn’t trust Adam or Jeremy so he had Michael ride with Adam in the Camaro which was his pay for the murder. Now Jason was riding in Kristin’s truck with Kristin driving, and Jeremy was driving the Isuzu because that was how Adam and he were planning to leave. Jeremy’s job was to view the body to make sure Sandra had been killed because even as big a piece of slim as Adam was he couldn’t look at his grandmother dead.

Now Jason had been arrested with Jeremy in January after Jeremy confessed when confronted by the police so Jason knew he couldn’t trust him with his life. Jason also knew that if Adam was so low as to have his own mother/grandmother killed then he damn sure wasn’t going to trust him, so Jason made the decision before they arrived that those two had to be killed.

Now Adam and Michael were down the road in the Camaro and Jeremy walked into the woods where Jason claimed the body of Sandra Stotler was with Jason walking behind him. Once in the woods Jeremy began questioning where the body was and Jason shot him repeatedly.

Jason began walking out of the woods to where Michael and Adam were waiting with the Camaro. Adam seeing Jason walking out of the woods starts walking towards him (Jason) questioning him about where Jeremy was. Adam notices Jason has a shotgun in his hands as he gets closer so Adam starts getting suspicious and begins to start backing up towards where Michael is waiting near the Camaro and he is shot repeatedly by Jason.

Interesting theory but how do I know this you ask? During the trial of Jason Burkett it was learned that there were two sets of tracks leading into the woods were Jeremy Richardson’s body was; one set coming from where the Isuzu had supposedly been parked which belonged to Jeremy and one set coming from the passenger side of Kristin’s truck. There were no other tracks in that area to suggest Michael had exited the pickup and gotten in the Isuzu with Adam like the state theorized, so that means Michael already was with Adam.

Now the police tracked the two sets of tracks into the woods to the murder location of Jeremy Richardson. He had been shot at least three times and his wallet had been left on his body. Inside the wallet they found a picture of Kristin Willis displayed like a girlfriend picture.

The police followed the tracks out of the woods to where Adam’s body was found which indicates that the shooter of Jeremy was the shooter of Adam also. Under the body of Adam they found a cigarette butt and a DNA check confirmed a match for Michael Perry. The fact that the body fell on the cigarette actually proves that Michael likely was not the shooter. The force of a gun blast pushes a body away from the shooter so to fall on the cigarette indicates the shooter was coming from the opposite direction.

Now the funny part was that Adam’s wallet was not on his body so that indicates to me that he was the one that stuffed the wallet in between the driver’s seat and the center console and was the driver of the Camaro. Frankly why take one wallet and leave the other; they didn’t care anything about the wallets.

Ok let me stop here for now because this is a lot to digest I’m sure.

Now if you remember back I told you Kristin was one of the shooters of Sandra Stotler because of the blood spatter on her shirts. I told you at the time I explain why it had to be her murder and not the boys so let me explain it to you now. There were only one set of tracks leading from where Kristin’s truck was park and they came from the passenger side following Jeremy into the woods. This indicates Kristin remained in the truck and never exited so if she never exited the truck for the murder of Jeremy and Adam then she had to be there with Sandra.

Now before I hear a million people tell me about the DNA cigarette and Michael Perry being guilty let me tell you that originally the states charges both Jason and Michael with all three murders. The state before trial dropped the charges against Michael for the boys and Jason for Sandra Stotler. So before you all say that makes Michael guilty, and it may, but he was not charged with that crime and has no obligation to defend himself in that case and the state is not allowed to use that evidence against him. Likewise Jason was not charged with the murder of Sandra Stotler and he has no obligation to defend himself on that charge either. Now I also heard mentioned today that if either Michael or Jason were released on their charges then the state would just charge them on the other murder and it just doesn’t work that way. You have to remember the state dropped the charges after a grand jury had indicted them so the likelihood of the courts allowing them to recharge for those crimes is remote.

Now the state separated this case for a reason if your shaking your head as to why they would drop charges. By separating the cases Michael’s defense was unable to bring in anything about Adam or Jeremy. The jury was never allowed to hear Arlene Gibson tell them about Adam. This was a deliberate tactic done by the state; the old divide and conquer strategy. The state knew there was a lot of baggage in this case if taken altogether so they had to deal with the case separately.