Part 1: Terror in the Daycare | 2 Minutes of Terror, 30 Years of Grief

Suspect Convictions

Kast Media

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.2 • 802 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2017

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Twenty-nine years ago a gunman entered a Texas daycare center, killed one woman and severely wounded another. Scott Reeder covered the case back then and returned to Texas last month to see the crime's lasting impact. He talked to survivors, detectives and family members of the slain woman as they prepare for the killer being released. On Dec. 7, 1988, Clyde “Buddy” Spence entered a Texas daycare center and shot two workers in front of dozens of screaming children. One worker, Joyce Marques, suffered three serious bullet wounds but survived. The other worker, her daughter in-law, Charlotte “Dawndy” Marques suffered two bullet wounds and died climbing a playground fence as she fled the gunman. After three months on the lam, Spence was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Scott Reeder, then a cub reporter at the Galveston Daily News covered the 1989 trial of Spence, where he was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The case has long haunted Reeder, a veteran journalist who now produces the hit podcast Suspect Convictions. Questions that he has asked over the years are: What impact have those two minutes of terror had on the community almost 30 years after the crime? Does a family ever reach closure after suffering such a loss? How has the trauma affected the children who witnessed the crime? And what becomes of man after 30 years in some of Texas’ most violent prisons? Reeder returned to Galveston County and interviewed the woman wounded in the attack, the sisters of the person killed, one of the children narrowly missed by the bullets, detectives who worked the case and prosecutors who have kept him behind bars. He also visited Spence in the Texas prison where he is being prepared for release into society. The answers he received were surprising and go to the heart of society’ most challenging questions regarding grief, forgiveness and healing. Sponsors: ZipRecruiter: ZipRecruiter.com/Suspect HelloFresh: HelloFresh.com, enter promo code "suspect30"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Your favorite podcast, Lost In, is back with all new episodes about people who disappear and go missing under the oddest of circumstances.
0:08.6	Our first story is about Ben Padilla, an American pilot, and a huge Boeing 727 airplane that disappeared from a runway in Africa just after 9-11.
0:19.2	Their disappearance sent governments around the world into a state of panic.
0:23.2	Was it terrorism, diamond smugglers, or was it something else?
0:27.0	We will also dig into the disappearance of three surfers in Mexico's ordinarily safe Baja region.
0:33.6	A new season of Lost In will premiere on June 10th, so hit subscribe now.
0:38.5	And be sure to tell a friend Lost In is returning this month.
0:42.5	Suspect Convictions is sponsored by ZipRecruiter.
0:45.7	Right now, listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free.
0:49.9	Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash suspect.
0:53.4	Suspect Convictions is sponsored by HelloFresh.
0:57.2	For $30 off your first week of HelloFresh, visit hellofresh.com and enter the promo code
1:04.7	suspect 30.
1:15.3	He told her to close her eyes, said that she had a Christmas,
1:16.8	he had a Christmas present for her.
1:20.8	And she closed her eyes and she felt something pressed against her breast,
1:23.7	and she opened her eyes and saw him holding the gun.
1:30.1	I thought if I showed the gun that they'd move, stay away from me. It was a bluff.
1:36.7	It meant to be. It didn't turn out that way. I mean, when my mom took me home and cleaned me, she said I had blood.
1:39.2	I had so much blood on me that it was inside my diaper. This is suspect convictions. I'm Bill Wheelhouse along with Scott Reeder. Coming up in the fall,
1:50.6	Scott will take another deep dive into a fascinating murder case. However, this summer, we're going to
1:57.1	take some shorter looks at some other crime and justice stories. Today, two minutes of
	...

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