Deep Dive
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2006 was an active year in the John Wells case, probably the most active it had been since late 2003, which was a good thing because the three-year anniversary of John's murder was looming and the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office and Florida Department of Law Enforcement were still no closer to figuring out who killed John. They had strong suspicions and some shaky circumstantial evidence, but nothing to really hang their hats on.
Things had sat at a standstill, and the state attorney's office had made it clear they would not be moving forward with filing any charges until investigators could prove more. But in 2006, the detective who'd taken it upon himself to keep the case from going completely cold was Kurt Mays. Kim Lewis was not a point person anymore, and the FDLE special agents who'd assisted with the case early on had officially wrapped up their involvement.
The agency filed a final report in June 2005 that said, quote, End quote.
So, Kurt Mays was pretty much going it solo for DCSO, and he was up against tough odds. Unfortunately, Kurt declined my request for an interview for this show because he still has close connections with DeSoto County Sheriff's Office that he doesn't want to compromise. But based on what I've read in his reports from 2006, it's clear that he went back to square one at the start of that year. I guess with the intention to see if by starting over, he could find something new.
In late April of 2006, Kurt asked Patrick Skinner to once again come into the sheriff's office to discuss John's case. Their interaction was video recorded. Patrick, I hate to pester you, but I'm still trying to figure out what happened to John. By that point, Patrick had graduated high school and moved on with his life. He stayed in Arcadia, but didn't have plans to remain there long.
For a half hour, Patrick went over with Kurt all of the same information he'd told authorities years earlier. The interview was very basic, no drama, really laid back. Kurt started the conversation with a pretty candid question, to which Patrick gave an honest reply. Have you ever felt like you were set up? I've never felt like that since then. Or just... That you was kind of set up to be there? A little bit, yeah. A little bit.
The pair talked through scenarios of how it would have been possible for Skip and Pat to have committed the crime. But most of the conversation was one-sided, with Kurt speculating a lot. From watching the tape, it's obvious that the way Kurt is asking his questions, he's hoping Patrick will confirm his theories. But Patrick doesn't. He was unsure what to say.
He told Kurt he felt Skip could be responsible and that John's grandma was a weird lady, but he just didn't have enough facts to say they had conspired to kill John. Kurt agreed. At the end of the interview, Kurt thanked Patrick for his time and turned off the recorder.
A week later, Kurt took another run at Pat and Skip, trying to get them to agree to polygraphs, but they declined. Their main reason for denying his request? Helen Huff, John's mother, was suing them. On May 1st, 2006, two days before Kurt contacted Skip and Pat, Helen had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Pat and Skip, seeking $15,000 in damages.
Once Pat and Skip and their attorneys were served with those papers, Kurt Mays had no chance of getting his prime suspects to open up about anything.
In Helen's lawsuit, in which she represented herself, she claimed that Pat either intentionally or negligently murdered John. She also claimed that Skip murdered John, which is kind of contradictory to the first point because there can only have been one actual trigger man or trigger woman, but Helen just wanted to make sure her bases were covered. So she accused her mother and Skip just for good measure.
The filing was obviously accusatory, but Helen had the right to sue in civil court and DeSoto County took it seriously. So with that litigation ongoing, Kurt was walled off from Pat and Skip. And to make matters worse, 24 days after the suit was filed, that's when Skip died of a heart attack. Whatever information he might have known, he took with him to his grave.
And the only person left for Kurt to focus on was Pat, but she wasn't going to budge. So his next stop was re-interviewing Matt Wells, John's older brother. Kurt didn't record this conversation. But I do have two transcribed reports that provide a pretty detailed summary of what they talked about. During their chat, Kurt tried to shake up Matt and questioned him harder about his alibi on the day John was killed.
Matt again reiterated that he was 45 minutes away in Avon Park at college when his brother was killed. Kurt suggested, though, that it was possible Matt drove over and killed John and then returned to school, something Matt denied. Now, this is certainly a scenario I've considered too and explored.
In my interview with Mac, John and Matt's dad, I learned that the brothers' relationship had never been great. In fact, the older they got, the more they fought.
And he was always constantly complaining and causing him to be upset. If he was going to be upset about anything, it would have been Matt, his older brother, that he had been upset about. Matter of fact, I didn't take them both at the same time ever.
Helen mentioned in her interviews, too, that there had always been friction between Matt and John.
They always had a rivalry going. It was always a thing was, well, Matt gets to do it, why can't I? During Patrick Skinner's 2006 interview with Kurt, he'd expressed the same thing. That portion of the interview tape is fuzzy, but Patrick said, quote, his brother was the one of them that told everything John did, ratted on him all the time, got anything he wanted, end quote.
Kurt asked Patrick point-blank if he saw Matt at the Southeast Hansel property at all on the morning or afternoon of July 8th, 2003, just in case Matt was lying. But Patrick said no. Matt didn't show up until later that night after Skip picked him up from school and brought him back to Pat's. I can't ask Matt for myself because he's declined to do an interview for this podcast.
So the only thing I could do was try and check his school records from back in 2003. Staff at South Florida State College did some digging after I emailed them. All they could tell me was that Matt Wells was an enrolled student for the summer term in 2003.
His school transcript records show that he attended classes from May 7th until July 31st, but due to privacy laws, the school was not able to tell me whether Matt was present or absent for his class on July 8th. So I'm left to trust that what Matt told Kurt in his 2006 interview is in fact the truth. I have to trust him when he said he wasn't in Arcadia and didn't have anything to do with John's murder.
At the end of Matt's conversation with Kurt, he said he believed his brother had taken his own life because he was depressed over Mel Sr.'s death. Matt said he didn't know why the evidence didn't point to that, but for him, John choosing to end his life was the truth that Matt had come to believe. A week after questioning Matt, Kurt got a strange phone call from Manatee County Sheriff's Office, a department just a few miles west of Arcadia.
A deputy from that neighboring agency told Kurt that a young woman had filed a report with their office regarding domestic violence, and she said that during a heated fight, her boyfriend said he knew what happened to a teenage boy who was shot in a pasture in DeSoto County in July of 2003. That tip set off some bells and whistles for Kurt,
The next day, he sat down to interview the young woman, to learn everything he could about her boyfriend's bold claims. "Ask me what his body looked like. That's what he kept saying. Because John was a nice guy. Because John had a problem."
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In late October 2006, a 19-year-old woman came into the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office and spoke with Detective Kurt Mays. I'm not saying this young woman's first or last name in order to respect her privacy. For more than an hour, she detailed a violent and tumultuous relationship she had with her 19-year-old boyfriend named Kevin Gregory Callahan.
This young woman wanted to talk to Kurt because she said she and Kevin had had a big fight. She said he threatened to kill her and her family.
During his fit of rage, this woman said Kevin had left her house, then called her home phone, ranting about how he'd have no problem killing her because he'd already killed people before in his life. The more and more that I wasn't paying attention, the worse he got. So I was like, he kept asking me about John and the Green Explorer. I'm saying he probably treated himself about 10 times. And he keeps asking about John and the Green Explorer. Ask me about John and the Green Explorer.
Ask me about John and the Green Explorer. That's what this woman said Kevin kept screaming at her over and over. She said when she asked Kevin what he was even talking about, he went on to suggest that he knew details of a murder of a boy named John who lived in Arcadia in 2003. Asked me what first I thought was wrong. And he goes, then asked me how later on I found out that he got shocked.
Kurt wasn't sure what to make of the information. He advised the woman to get a restraining order against Kevin and to never speak to him again. Then he peppered her with questions to vet her story a little more.
What he learned was that Kevin was originally from Arcadia, but had moved to Ocala and racked up a criminal record for drugs, traffic violations, and domestic violence. He has slapped me. He has physically grabbed me and threw me across the room onto his bed. He has. She told Kurt she had no idea who the John kid was that Kevin had been referring to. She wasn't from Arcadia and had no idea what anything about a Green Explorer meant.
She figured Kevin was just trying to intimidate and threaten her into getting back together with him. After their fight ended, the woman said she asked a friend of hers from Arcadia what Kevin could have been referring to, and that's when she learned that a 17-year-old boy named John Wells had been shot in Arcadia in 2003. The fact that Kevin had mentioned John and a green explorer was key for Kurt Mays. It gave this young woman's story a little bit more credibility.
You see, Kurt knew that John Wells had driven a bluish-green Ford Explorer, and that detail had not been published or released in any media coverage about John's death. So Kurt figured, more than likely, Kevin Callahan knew John Wells, or at least knew him enough to know what kind of vehicle he drove back in 2003. And as it turns out, Kevin did know John.
According to police reports filed in 2003, Beth Flowers, John's ex-girlfriend, and Patrick Skinner both mentioned that John knew two young men that were slightly older than him who were known to be involved in drug use. One of those young men's names was Kevin Callahan, and the other was Danny Jones.
Now, originally, these two guys' names were redacted from the interview transcripts in reports. But when I listened through the video and audio recordings police conducted with Patrick and Beth back in 2003, the boys' names were not redacted. I've also had several people confirm their identities outside of official records.
Based on my research in this case, I can confirm law enforcement initially questioned both Danny and Kevin, but nothing about their statements stuck out. Danny told police that John had been at his house on the night of Monday, July 7th for a small party, but then left to make it home in time for his curfew. Danny said before John walked out, the two made plans to go fishing together in Joshua Creek later that week.
Kevin told police he was also at that party and remembered seeing John. Beth Flowers, John's ex-girlfriend, didn't go to that party but knew about it and heard there was cocaine being passed around. I was at somebody else's house, just a couple houses down, and so I was like, hey, did you see John over there? And I was like, yeah, I guess he's hanging out with Danny or whatever. And, you know, there's like some rumors or hearsay that they was over there doing stuff that they weren't supposed to, but he wasn't really into stuff like that.
Other than telling police they were with John the night before he died, Danny and Kevin's initial interviews with law enforcement in 2003 were very brief. What's interesting to me is that after looking into Danny and Kevin a lot more, I've found some information that I think is important to bring up. Remember when I said in an earlier episode that John had been arrested for cannabis possession in May of 2003, two months before he was killed?
Well, he wasn't alone when he got stopped and busted. He was with Kevin and Danny. I've confirmed that information from Kevin himself, who's sitting in prison. According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Kevin is currently incarcerated at a state prison. He got there because in 2016 he was convicted for trafficking methamphetamine and a judge sentenced him to almost seven and a half years in prison.
He's scheduled to be released in October of this year, 2022. So when I wrote him an email about the John Wells case, the 35-year-old had nothing else better to do than to reply. And let me preface this by saying, Kevin Callahan is not an awesome guy. Court records show he has a documented history of domestic violence, drug arrests, burglary, battery, and stalking dating back to the early 2000s.
He has been in and out of jail since he was 19 years old, and has had at least four women press charges against him for financial and violent crimes. He has never been named a suspect or person of interest in John's murder. But in his written exchanges with me, he talked about what little he did remember about John. Here's a voice actor reading his verbatim responses from a series of emails we exchanged in September of 2021.
He was a really good person. He liked to fish, box, and listen to music. He liked to play pranks too. He was a positive influence. Sorry, I don't have too much. I had a kid that was just born, so I was limited to hanging out. The incident in Charlotte I remember, he was just riding around, hanging out, smoking, out enjoying the night. We had no destination, just a little road trip. When we got pulled over, he was quick to take the charge. I don't know why he did it, but not many people would do something like that.
After a few more messages back and forth, I asked Kevin if he'd be willing to get on a phone call and let me record our discussions further. His reply to that request was extremely agitated and defensive.
I don't see how I seem to be the only mother to get bothered about this . When I went out one time, seems like everyone forgets he had a car and had multiple friends. I was probably the one who was with him the least, an occasional blunt and some catch with the football when he was around. Other than that, I know nothing he had going on, except he came from a decent family and liked weed and fishing and coke on occasions. I can look you up when I get out, but I feel you are badgering me and honestly, we only got high together. That's as far as we got.
So I've been trying to figure out why out of everyone, I'm the most harassed and I was the one who was around the least. I've been locked up since 2015. I probably won't make it long when I get out either just cause I have to make money and get back what was taken from me. In the end, I only know what I told you. Maybe you can tell me why you're so persistent with harassing me if you read the records. You would know I wasn't around all the time and wasn't in his life. Like that one trip don't make us lifelong companions.
I never got the chance to ask Kevin directly if he was involved in what happened to John, or why he allegedly made the claims to his former girlfriend that she said he did, because our communications stopped after that. Kevin began to make remarks and ask me questions that made me feel uncomfortable. He also asked for a photo, which I vehemently said no to. Unfortunately, I've had no luck in getting in touch with Danny Jones despite multiple attempts to contact him.
It should be noted, Danny has never been named a suspect or person of interest in this case either. All I know is that Kevin and Danny were both in Arcadia on the day John died, and they had connections to drug use and drug dealers that they may have exposed John to. I asked Beth Flowers, John's ex, if she felt like John's association with Danny and Kevin could have contributed to his murder.
Patrick Skinner also said something similar.
John didn't really have, neither one of us really had any enemies. I mean, we, for the most part, got along with everyone. The reason I even bring Kevin and Danny up is because they are those rabbit hole leads that pop up when you're doing investigations like this. And based on what I've read in Kurt Mays' reports, it appears they were spoken with a few times in 2006 and in the years following, but eventually they were cleared.
Kurt's official verdict, based on what he wrote in his reports, was that Kevin Callahan was just lying to his girlfriend when he made those statements about knowing what happened to John who drove the Green Explorer. Kurt indicated in his report that Kevin just seemed like a loose cannon who wanted to scare people in order to have control over them. I certainly got a tiny taste of that in his last email to me.
For now, I have to put the Kevin and Danny theory to rest because I just can't chase it any further. Could those boys have known John was going to be in the woods at exactly 12:30 on July 8th and gotten into it with him for some reason? Sure, but no one can prove that, and few people close to this case believe that. I don't think someone would have just happened to be back there. That main gate is the only way to drive in.
While I was chasing down Kevin and Danny's information, I took a trip back to Arcadia. My associate producer David Payne and I wanted to poke around a few more places for clues and interviews. But what we ran into when we got there was completely unexpected. That means somebody committed a crime and didn't get caught for it, and therefore they're still out there, and what kind of danger is that to anybody else?
There's the Ford Explorer. Oh my gosh, no way. Let's get a picture of that. That's the Explorer. That is definitely the same Explorer from back in 2003. This is Pat Strader. There are a couple of people over there talking to my neighbor, want some information. I want somebody to come tell them to stop it however legally you can do it.
That's on the next episode of CounterClock Security. Listen right now.
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