The Murder Police Podcast

The Murder of Goldia Massey | Part 3 of 7

August 15, 2023 The Murder Police Podcast Season 8 Episode 3
The Murder Police Podcast
The Murder of Goldia Massey | Part 3 of 7
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Strap in for a chilling journey through the eerie labyrinth of the Goldie Massey murder case. The mystery unravels in an apartment where a suspiciously removed carpet screams of hidden tales. The intrigue deepens as we navigate through the underbelly of Bourbon County, following the arrest of Goldie's son and the enigmatic statements of his girlfriend. With countless twists and turns, this episode is a rollercoaster ride of suspense.

But that's not all! Dive into the world of search warrants with us as we explain their pivotal role in solving cases, and the influence of cell phones in tracking a person's movement. We explain how cell tower activity can affect these tracking capabilities, adding yet another layer of complexity to this convoluted case. The discovery of a human arm in Lockport, Kentucky, far from the crime scene, adds another chilling dimension to the mystery. We ponder over the implications of Zach Massey's arrest and Samantha Smiley's sudden relocation. This episode is an enthralling potpourri of uncertainty and obsession, guaranteed to keep you riveted. Don't forget to show your support for the podcast and join us as we strive to bring justice for victims of such horrific crimes.

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Steve McCown:

But I'm very much you know about water and the river and all that. So we get a call excuse me, it's called and a human arm washes up in Lockport, kentucky, in Henry County, at lock number two.

Wendy Lyons:

Warning. The podcast you're about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Murder Police podcast the murder of Goldie Massey, part three.

Steve McCown:

Why did you say that? I was like there's no carpet in that front room of that apartment.

Wendy Lyons:

The apartment, the carpet has been removed from the front room so you can see enough through that sliver. We could.

Steve McCown:

I could see the entire living room.

Chris Schoonover:

It wasn't a sliver he held like an arm's length. Yeah, I could see.

Steve McCown:

I could. I mean he was standing in the doorway, but he couldn't. He couldn't obscure my view where I could see all the way in, and the carpet was gone. It was down the concrete.

David Lyons:

Which for little listeners that didn't take civics or take it seriously, that's a legal observation because you're legally where you're supposed to be.

Steve McCown:

I was not in his apartment. I was outside of his apartment looking into it.

David Lyons:

And you're a place you're legally entitled to be your field of vision. Everything carries you.

Chris Schoonover:

You should be a detective.

David Lyons:

That's a pretty good clue.

Steve McCown:

Exactly, and looking back, obviously, hans, that's 2020, but in that moment it was more of a man. I can't believe that there's no carpet. I mean we were kind of joking about it, but now I mean that was huge. You know it was. It was huge just to the fact of investigating further. Investigating further, knowing what we knew, seeing what we saw, that was it. Was it just it all added up?

Wendy Lyons:

So where did you leave it with him?

Steve McCown:

Just thank you for your time We'll get back to you if we need something. Yep, thank you very much.

Chris Schoonover:

Have a great day, right, and as Dave always I mean I knew this and as Dave and I always practice when we're working together is it's better to leave on great terms, because you're going to have to come back eventually. Oh, yeah, yeah.

David Lyons:

And again, you know one thing I picked up on. Two is that when you talked about the arm, he offered the leg, that's it. You can't overlook that. He offered additional and of course he sounds like he's like I said, he's building qualifiers and everything. Anyway, he's going to over talk, which is why that's why you never want to back that down. So God bless him.

Chris Schoonover:

So that's all we have about Massey at that point. Now, of course, I want your listeners to remember and if they've listened to your obviously your podcast several times they know in Lexington a homicide detective just doesn't have one case. So in that time we're still working several cases. Now it's Don Dunn who is a homicide detective at that time. She's up next for the homicide, so I take her on my next interview.

Steve McCown:

Yeah, in the meantime I'd caught a homicide so I was no longer working with him, Right.

Chris Schoonover:

So October 15, just two days later after he caught his homicide, I tell her that I'm looking at her son had told me that she wanted to borrow some money from her uncle. So I locate her uncle, don Dunn, and I go and interview him and he gives us a pretty good description of family dynamics.

Steve McCown:

And I think he actually gave a pretty good timeline too.

Chris Schoonover:

He did. The night that she went missing. She had texted him to borrow some money because he knew she was in financial trouble and he said I have $50 or $100 for you. That's all I have right now, but if it'll help you, stop by on your way to Rose and Jim's and I'll lend it to you. And he said that she showed up, paris was with her and then that was the last time he had seen her. But he wanted to let us know that her son, zach, has a bad drug habit and that they argue often terrible, and but if she was in any trouble whatsoever she would call him and if he hasn't heard from her, she may be on the run due to the money issue. So that didn't help us at all. It actually opened up more doors.

Steve McCown:

Right, this is what I did. I mean it really. It gave us now Zach is a suspect. It gave us, oh, goldie's on the run because he owes money, and now we got the guy that were that supposedly was the last one to see your pair of Charles. So we're, we're, we're kind of spinning wheels at this point.

David Lyons:

No shortage of rabbit holes. Yeah, right, yeah.

Chris Schoonover:

Right. So the next time I get to work on it. Three days later, on October 18th, don has caught her homicide. So now it's Franz Wolff's turn. So I take Franz, yeah, yes, franz. And I find out that Zach Massey has been arrested in Bourbon County for narcotics. So all the information we're getting is true that he has a drug issue. And we go and interview Zach Massey in the jail and I will say this Franz did, he was amazing at this interview. I don't want to say good cop, bad cop, because I know everybody thinks that Franz would be the bad cop automatically if anybody knew Franz. But he went in there with an open mind and asked Zach to go over everything, step by step, of what he told the police the telephone calls, his girlfriend's the night that his wife went missing, his girlfriend's patterns, because we found out in that interview that she actually works at Walmart. She was supposed to take Zach's mother to Walmart and get picked up by Charles, paris, charles, yeah, to back up to clarify.

Steve McCown:

So Zach had a girlfriend named Samantha Smiley. They were living together. Samantha was working at the Walmart in Georgetown and we had found out they had found out that Samantha had given Goldie a ride to Georgetown to meet, to meet Paris. So that's kind of how that came through and that interview and when Franz and Chris talked to him while he was in custody, so they got a lot of clarification on that and especially knowing that we knew that she had been, she had been taken somewhere by another person that was big and creating, and you know as well as I do and I'm sure that over this thing timelines are essential and knowing where people are, you know, not just working backwards but working from the point where you can get a good starting point forward to where you've last seen that person and now you have another person to to we have more people to talk to to verify those timelines and story.

Steve McCown:

Right, well, and we all know what. When someone says Walmart, that's a gold mine for us, because what's at Walmart?

David Lyons:

They have cameras, yeah.

Steve McCown:

So yeah, so I mean it, that when we hear those terms and in places where we know they're in public, that have cameras, that just for us that is makes it that much easier, because then we can really we can confirm what people are telling us, so right.

Chris Schoonover:

During that interview with Franz, we find out that Zach has given all of his, all of Goldie's property to her sister, including her computer, all her clothes, everything that was in his apartment, because, remember, goldie was evicted from her apartment, she moved in with Zach and his girlfriend, samantha Smiley, in Synthiana, in Synthiana.

Steve McCown:

And that's a key, because remember Synthiana, because we'll get into that in a minute and it's pivotal.

Chris Schoonover:

And remember, yeah, paris said I picked her up and says Synthiana. So now, who are you believing, right? So now I'm losing hair and I don't have a lot to lose, yeah very careful yeah, rogaine Right.

Steve McCown:

I will say this Got a nice cut for tonight too.

David Lyons:

He did, yeah, I mean, he shaped up Both.

Chris Schoonover:

That's all I wanted. Yeah, it took five minutes. I paid 20 bucks. Go pressure tooth these guys. So, of course, three days later we get to talk to Goldie Massey's sister, cheryl Cheryl, cheryl Taylor, her sailor, sailor, yes. And you don't spell Cheryl by Cheryl. It's not Cheryl, it's.

Steve McCown:

Cheryl.

Chris Schoonover:

It's like LRL.

Wendy Lyons:

Oh.

Steve McCown:

What a sweetheart. Sweetheart, yeah, I can't Absolute sweetheart Like Cheryl Lee.

Wendy Lyons:

She just goes by, cheryl.

Steve McCown:

Cheryl yeah.

Chris Schoonover:

Sweetheart.

Steve McCown:

She provides us with all of her clothes, the box she is. Yeah, a lot of clothes.

Chris Schoonover:

But here's one thing, right. So we're talking October, right, and there's few nights, if we all. Even in Kentucky, a few nights are going down to 40 degrees. Sure, Absolutely. And she provides us with a computer. So Steve and I go through the box of stuff and discover her winter clothes are in there, Her coat, Right, yeah, her coat and the computer. Really, there was nothing of significance on the computer. Cheryl is really concerned. Steve and I, You're not going out at 40 degrees without a coat, or at least sweatshirts on True. And in the meantime we're still checking the video from Walmart. Right, there's a process that everybody has to go through, even if it's Walmart that you have to obtain the video from. And once we do, we find that Samantha, when we interviewed her, said yes, I drove her to Walmart because she wanted to meet Paris at Walmart and he was going to take her into Fayette County.

Chris Schoonover:

And, sure enough, she was waiting outside of the Walmart and you see a vehicle come and pick her up A van Right, not a white wall panel, serial killer van, but a van a copriner's van, I would say maintenance guy's van picks her up and you see them pull out and go towards Fayette County.

David Lyons:

So you anchor the timeline and you get an anti-Samanic information and you validate the story.

Steve McCown:

Yeah, correct, we validated Zach's story.

Chris Schoonover:

Right, zach's story Ain't Samantha's story.

Wendy Lyons:

Yes.

Chris Schoonover:

Um, so after we interview uh Zach on the 20th, on the 21st of every next day I would say this is between the timeline between all the interviews that we've done we have enough. First search warrant for Golden Massie's phone and um Paris's phone. We can do exigent circumstances legally on those two phones. We can't go with Zach's phone because we don't have enough to say he was the last person to see her right and you need that for a search warrant. So we did do a search warrant on those phone records.

Wendy Lyons:

Where was Goldie's Did? Oh, you didn't see. You just did it on her record. You didn't physically ever find her phone, or did you find her phone we?

Chris Schoonover:

don't know where Goldie is at this point. Right, goldie might be a unicorn at this point. No phone, anything. No phone in the box of which or post.

Steve McCown:

But what we did have, what was most important that really got us to that search warrant, was Paris, charles and Goldie Massie in a van at Walmart in Georgetown at this time, and that was shortly before um he supposedly took her to her To range from correct. So that was the basis of the exigency of getting that search warrant for cell records.

David Lyons:

So you felt like there was a clear contradiction with his statement, absolutely.

Chris Schoonover:

Okay, yeah, that's the point for a judge.

David Lyons:

Yeah, you'd have to have a yeah.

Chris Schoonover:

And we don't know if she's still alive. Is he keeping her in his dungeon at his house because he wouldn't let us in? Right, and so it's. It's what a common person would believe is how you get those search warrants right. So that, and that's what it showed.

Steve McCown:

And with and to, and also to go along with that with an exigency. We're not getting like historical data and things that we're not getting call history to. We're just asking phone. We're just where's the phone at? Um, that's all that. We're just asking for locations of that phone in a certain timeframe. So we're not saying, hey, who did she call, who did he call, we're just asking where was the phone between this time and that time?

Steve McCown:

Yeah, it's like you can't ask for general dumps, right, we're not, we're not getting specific on the search warrant, but we're saying, hey, something's going on here. Can you tell us where these phones are?

Wendy Lyons:

What did that show those results of that search.

Chris Schoonover:

Well, and what I want your listeners to realize is, when you get that search warrant, you're going to get that type of search warrant. It gives you a triangular.

Steve McCown:

It doesn't pinpoint it, it does not pinpoint it so every, every, every every cell phone tower has what's called an azimuth or a sector that it hits off of. Every tower has three sections to it, so it'll give a directionality of where the call is coming in from. So like if you, if you, think of a piece of pie and it's cut into three sections. So if a phone call is made from this area it will come in this way or dialed out It'll go that way. Or if it's coming from the south, the west, so a cell phone tower is cut into three different sections or azimuths and that's how those calls, you can sort of see directionality on it. It's not foolproof, because sometimes they get bumped to other cell towers and things that nature, but for the most part in general that's kind of how they work.

Chris Schoonover:

A good example of that is real bird. That happened just this past weekend. There are so many individuals hitting off a one tower.

Steve McCown:

They probably got around to Cincinnati.

Chris Schoonover:

And then you, so that would really have a damper on the investigation.

Steve McCown:

It's determined upon how busy the tower is, how busy that sector is. It still may hit off the same tower but a different section, or it may get bumped to a different tower. But that's explainable too With cell phone experts. I mean, we we just know the basics of it on how to sort of interpret those cell phone records. But it in general you can. You can track a person by their cell phone based upon those cell towers.

Chris Schoonover:

Right. So relatively quickly the results come back and it shows that Goldie Massie's phone ceased working early morning of September 21st. More importantly, now we have all our listeners thinking that Paris Charles has done this because, more importantly, his phone was in the same exact location as her phone, but his phone remained working after the same hours on. September 21st, right, but who do we still have in the picture? We have the people that she embezzled money. We have her son, who's a drug addict, who she actually got addicted to drugs.

Steve McCown:

And we also had the fact that she could just turn her phone off and take off.

Chris Schoonover:

Right, because she doesn't. It's always there.

Steve McCown:

Right.

Wendy Lyons:

And she has the people she owes the money to Exactly.

Steve McCown:

So everything's still on the table. We get these cell phones, but is it that? Is it another little tick mark? Maybe We'll see.

David Lyons:

Yeah, so you're starting to understand the phones are together.

Steve McCown:

You know they're traveling the same path. We know they left together from the Walmart right. We saw them. We saw him pick her up at Walmart. They left together. We're seeing that travel from Georgetown to Rosengyms, around New Circle, and then Goldie's phone goes off but his stays on.

David Lyons:

Yeah, you're working towards circumstantial stuff.

Steve McCown:

Sure Right, a good plan, but everything's still on the board.

Chris Schoonover:

Oh, yeah, right. And to make things worse, once Zach Massie gets arrested, samantha Smiley gets moved out of government housing. So we just hear that late. So we also, during the investigations, you have to have more than just word of mouth. So if somebody moves out, what's the best determination of if they can tell there was issues? And I'll jump ahead and I'll let the listeners think about this and I'll tell you what Steve and I did to determine whether Zach really had anything. Zach and Samantha had anything to do with this While he was in jail. We just followed up on certain things and I'll let the listeners think about what they would do to find that answer. Yeah, please. So in the meantime, we have a huge thing happen on October 24th. I'll let Steve explain that. Did you receive the call or did I?

Steve McCown:

I think you did, but I mean I remember it.

Chris Schoonover:

So these are normal calls for me.

Steve McCown:

So what you have to understand is I live on the river in Fayette County right, so I'm like a river rat.

David Lyons:

In a van by the river.

Steve McCown:

I have poverty on the river but I'm not that guy, but I'm very much, you know, about water and the river and all that. So we get a call. Excuse me, it's called a human arm washes up in Lockport, kentucky, in Henry County, at lock number two. So how far that just roughly I think by river and again maybe in the river guy.

Chris Schoonover:

This is exactly what he told me the night.

Steve McCown:

we got that call, I think by the river 119 miles, and what I did as I went and I will tell you. I went back because USGS has a site where you can go back in years and see flood. You can see how the river runs right, so you can tell when it was flooded and when it was at flood stage and when it was so it was. I did that, but yeah, that that arm washed up 119 miles down by river, not as a crow flies, but by river, 119 miles from the bridge at Clay's Ferry.

Wendy Lyons:

Wow so like a fisherman finds it or something.

David Lyons:

Yes, yes, did it have to do any locks or dams or anything.

Steve McCown:

It was found below the lock there in Lockport at lock number two.

Chris Schoonover:

You can't leave it alone. It's still in your blood, isn't it? Oh yeah, so so they. So so they find an arm right.

Steve McCown:

I mean, they don't know anything about anything. Persons in Lexington. I mean it's just a human, it's just an arm.

David Lyons:

Well, let's take it a step further, since we're talking about river stuff and water and body parts. That's not uncommon. No, and you know, I grew up in Louisville on the Ohio River, and one of the most common things is finding a shoe on a beach with foot bones still in the tow rations Sure.

David Lyons:

And that, if it, maybe somebody with a news will do a story on that one day and scare everybody. But there are people falling off boats and jumping off bridges and drowning all the time that we never find so well as we come out to Kentucky River. Let's talk about before I retired the cars that we pulled out and found those human remains from probably back, I guess, in the 70s, and it was some, some bones in a woman's stocking and slinging from the river In a knit stocking or whatever.

Steve McCown:

Yeah, down there.

David Lyons:

And I remember Franz was joking about not having anything to do and I said if we pull something out of this river, it's yours.

Chris Schoonover:

Yeah, but then I was joking too and I got a call.

David Lyons:

But so, yeah, going back to it is yeah, it is important to go by the river miles because that's the distance traveled. If you find that out, and then again, human remains washing up or being found in bodies of water not that unusual at all. If you'd stuck with fishing wildlife, you'd have dealt with that a lot there you go, yeah.

Steve McCown:

So we got a left arm. It was severed the shoulder. No from about the bicep middle of the bicep down.

Chris Schoonover:

Can I correct some? I think what it was is an email went out and we, you and I, talked about the email. Should we make a call? Yes, Do you remember that it's coming back to me now? I didn't. I haven't done a lot of drugs at all yeah. It only takes that one One time.

Steve McCown:

So it wasn't like they found this arm and they're like, oh, my gosh Lexington, lexington's got a missing persons. You know what I mean. That kind of thing we need to call them because they haven't, I mean they they found an arm. We knew nothing of it but and.

Chris Schoonover:

I think we saw the link. You know how the link goes out to anybody with a missing persons through.

Steve McCown:

NCIC yeah.

David Lyons:

Let's talk about that for a minute. Ncic, national Crime Information Center, is when you find a person or parts of a person. How do we do that? Because this is where that magic happens, yeah.

Steve McCown:

If you enter it into NCIC and people that have missing persons that may be correlated to that, then it will come to that agency. And luckily it did for us when we got a teletype that we responded to yeah, that Henry County, down there I mean, found a human arm.

David Lyons:

Again for people who have people and loved ones that are still missing, take a little comfort and the idea that when you, when you're taken, you get a sign of missing person report, you will get all of those NCIC transactions and you'll follow up on them. You'll look and see what the likelihood is. But it was kind of a regular thing, maybe a couple of times a week sometimes or a couple of times a month, to get an NCIC transaction where they said we have your missing person, we have this body part that we believe could possibly it's a way out there, but it's done on the. They're going to err on the side of caution on going way out there than missing it. I like letting people know that those things exist.

Chris Schoonover:

Can I add to this statement? The important thing is there's also CODIS. So if you have a loved one missing, go ahead and let those detectives that are investigating your loved one death or missing person let them swab. You agree with the swab. Let them put your swab into CODIS so they can match those body parts that are located at certain locations. It would shorten the process tremendously and also assist you in knowing whether or not that your family member that was located, because we all watch the news, we all hear body found at Lake Cumberland, body found in the woods in Laurel County. It will just give you a piece of I can't say a piece of mind, but at least hope, or no hope, that they've looked at your loved one.

Steve McCown:

I think what it does? It gives you a hand up, it gives you a little bit of a hand up.

David Lyons:

Which is the whole game is hands up. Right, exactly, the whole game is hands up. You want to be in?

Steve McCown:

front of it. I think that's the most important one.

David Lyons:

We're not going to rabbit hole this, but we've done two episodes on forensic genealogy where there's the next force multiplier, and I'm just going to tell people go back and listen to the interview with Jane DNA DOE project with Karen. Zander, and then Sergeant Catalina Catalina from California when they identified somebody. I'm not going to go through the rabbit hole right now, but it's fascinating stuff that's in the works right now. Coming back to the point, swab Is my asher for an exemplar or for a sample Give it.

Chris Schoonover:

I've had loved ones. Did not agree to let me swab them in case they're missing. Their loved one was found. I absolutely have.

David Lyons:

They were probably serial killers 20 years ago.

Steve McCown:

And I'll be honest with you, not to plug Dr Craig, but what she started with Namus down in North.

Chris Schoonover:

Texas Namus, Namus, Namus.

Steve McCown:

That's huge and she really got a good thing started down there Not only missing people, but body parts as part of that. So she really got a good thing started down there, 100%.

David Lyons:

Yeah.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, did you? When you all read that there was an arm, did you suspicion that it could be golden? No, not at all. Or you're just thinking, because it's so frequent you get this type of thing.

Chris Schoonover:

I mean, this is what this is an we love this job we're going to. It's not that we live at the office and it came in in the evening, it's like before we went home. It's something you should do If you really love this. Be diligent, just be diligent, right, and so you should follow up, and then you can go home and sleep easy that you didn't miss something.

Steve McCown:

But it was. This isn't something that like didn't happen all the time. You know what I mean. We we would get NCISI hits on missing people all the time. So did we think anything of it? Not really.

Wendy Lyons:

Because you can, because it was so frequent, yeah.

Steve McCown:

Not really, but we had it.

Wendy Lyons:

So what happens.

Steve McCown:

But there is that, like I talked about, there's a, there's another tick. You know what I mean. We're, we're starting to add a few things up here and those, those ticks are going to be numbers and two and two is going to equal four at some point. You know what I mean. So we're, we're just trying to, we're trying to get those foundation blocks built for us.

Chris Schoonover:

So the arm goes to the Louisville State Medical Examiner's office and I make a call the next day, the following day. Hey, can you get prints off of that, off of the arm, because obviously her hand, the hand, was still attached to the arm. Very depressing news, they kept telling me they, or unsuccessful it was in too bad of condition to be able to be able to print and all that.

David Lyons:

They didn't try hydrating and and well, they did not.

Steve McCown:

We'll, we'll, we'll get there. Yeah, so we were just. Chris, was just kind of told ads in too bad of shape can't do anything with it, it's just not. You know what I mean.

Chris Schoonover:

So we started researching it because Steve said, no, I think there's new, and back in the day, there's no stuff. Right, right, I mean, it's just the corner and I and I'd seen this.

Steve McCown:

I'd seen him rehydrate fingers, before you know, injecting them with water, but Saline. But what you have to understand is this this arm had been in water the whole time.

David Lyons:

Right.

Steve McCown:

So it was. If you've ever seen like when you had get dishpan hands, it's nothing Kind of. Yeah, so you know, they said it. We just you know it's not good enough. So we were like, okay, we'll take you at your word.

Chris Schoonover:

Yeah, but something interesting that we did find out about where it was severed was hey, you know there's more to the story, so go download the next episode.

David Lyons:

Like the true crime fan that you are, the murder police podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims, so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The murder police podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murder police podcastcom, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters and a link to the official murder police podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of murder police podcasts swag. We are also on Facebook, instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the murder police podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars in a written review on Apple podcast or wherever you download your podcasts. Make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop, and please tell your friends.

Chris Schoonover:

Lock it down.

David Lyons:

Judy.

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Search Warrants and Cell Phone Tracking
The Murder Police Podcast