Original subtitles

Every community has secrets.

Pocahontas is no different.

But in Pocahontas, there's been a lot of death and murder,

more than a town its size should have.

I feel like Pocahontas has had a darkness that's always gonna be here.

There is a dark undercurrent.

There's so many skeletons in this town.

I was advised that...

...a man was dead.

A very cold and calculated killing.

Two entry wounds to the head.

He was shot once in the face and once in the neck.

Point blank.

He appeared that he was awoken from his sleep,

and went to sit up,

and was immediately shot and, and fell back.

It was shocking the way that he died.

Execution style death.

It's just awful.

Somebody wanted him dead.

The big question is why?

The Black River flows right through the middle of Pocahontas.

Northeast Arkansas,

hour and a half to two hours northwest of where the Mississippi is.

There's a lot of things that people have tried to keep hidden here.

In my personal opinion,

I think Pocahontas is cursed by the Native American Indians that were here.

I believe that has a lot to do with the black cloud over Pocahontas.

I'm a Native American myself, and they were treated very, very badly.

I believe that's the reason why Pocahontas is, um, cursed.

Travis Perkins was a big guy.

He was funny. He was witty.

He was always joking.

He would say the lights would flicker whenever I would walk in the room,

just kinda being shady or something, you know?

Like, there was something shady with me.

Just joking around and stuff, though.

One time he was calling and I answered the phone,

and he said, "Darkness, is that you?"

And that name just kinda hung like Darkness.

He'd always call me Darkness then after that.

It was so funny.

Everybody liked him.

Travis was the kind of guy

you could call day or night with any problem.

You know good and well he'll answer the phone

and you know he will come to help.

He was married for a while.

Um, I don't know how long or anything,

but I know that they had kids.

He didn't talk much about her after they broke up.

I know that it was a painful breakup for Travis.

It hurt him, you could tell that that hurt him.

And not being able to see the kids, I think, is what hurt him the most.

And then all of a sudden, he got in the drug game,

and I guess maybe she knew.

Life can be hard.

There's not always an opportunity to make a decent living

in a, in a small town.

It's very limited sometimes.

You know, there's very easy money to be made with drugs,

especially in these communities, fast money.

I suspect that Travis's divorce started him going

further into the drugs.

And then Travis started hanging out with powerful people.

Any time that you're involved in, uh, illegal activity in the drug world,

you very quickly find yourself surrounded by people

who you thought were your friends,

and you realize that they're not.

I had many conversations with Travis.

He hated the life that he was in.

But he didn't see a way out.

I was aware of what was going on.

Like I said, small town.

They were all involved in methamphetamine.

It was a big corrupt, corrupt mess.

But there's a fear, if I say anything,

if, if I tried to mention this to anybody,

what's gonna happen to me?

These are the people that are responsible for my, my freedoms,

you know?

And there's a fear of retaliation.

They were very influential people in positions of trust

or authority.

It was corruption.

There's nothing good about corruption.

We received information that a local police chief's wife

was involved in distributing methamphetamine.

And she worked in a law firm in Pocahontas.

The FBI started to investigate,

and then the case just kind of grew out of that.

Travis Perkins found himself right in the middle of what was going on.

He thought it through,

and he was going to cooperate,

tell the truth, and testify,

and move on with his life.

I received a phone call that Travis Perkins had been found dead.

Travis is laying there, uh, on the bed.

His body was positioned in such a way,

it appeared as though he was trying to stand up...

...and greet someone.

There were two spent shell casings

lying on the floor of the apartment...

...and two entry wounds to the head.

A very cold and calculated killing.

Travis Perkins had been murdered.

What we have is the outside of Travis Perkins' house,

and he lived in a commercial building...

...that was in downtown Pocahontas.

His door showed no signs of forced entry.

It was an abrupt killing.

It was done at very, very close range.

There was no question

that the individual who entered his apartment meant to kill him.

It was senseless and tragic.

Yeah, it was.

We never got an exact ballistics match

because the bullets were so damaged.

There were no hairs, or fibers, or a DNA,

or anything else that was recovered

that was usable from the crime scene as to who had done it.

I wept because I'd lost a good friend.

I originally assumed that it was some sort of overdose or something.

And then it comes out that he was murdered.

It broke my heart, uh, to be honest.

Travis Perkins, we'd crossed paths a few times.

Of course, certain circles are small.

There was a rumor that he knew too much on certain people.

And they, they tried to keep him quiet.

Travis was unfortunately in the wrong place

with the wrong people at the wrong time.

There were many theories.

Are they all in this together?

Are they covering for each other?

What was the motive to get rid of Travis?

There were a lot of questions.

When you come into this town of course it's beautiful.

It's a beautiful little country town.

There's a lot of history here.

A lot of wonderful people.

It's a small community where everybody pretty much knows everybody.

But after dark, that's when addiction comes out

'cause that's when people are out stealing to get their drugs.

There's two communities in this little town.

There's what you see today,

and then there's what you don't see

unless you're living in that life.

We started to try to figure out what was going on in his life

that would 'cause this to happen.

We came to understand that Travis, uh,

would cook meth at, uh, a number of rural locations.

We eventually came to learn that one of those locations was Bob Castleman's farm.

Bob's farm is about six miles down a gravel road off of a rural highway.

It's in the middle of nowhere.

Bob Castleman was a well-known attorney in Pocahontas.

He had previously been a municipal judge,

and he had a reputation.

Some people viewed him as a person who should not be crossed.

I think Travis was of that opinion too.

Glen Smith was the chief at Hoxie Police Department.

Gets a tip from his friend at the farm supplies store

that a couple of individuals

who looked to be buying some meth precursors.

Glen rolls out to investigate it and conducts a traffic stop.

And who turns out to be in the truck...

...but Bob Castleman and his girlfriend Rebecca Spray.

Rebecca Spray was maybe about half his age.

He was then about 60 or so.

Uh, a much younger lady.

When they pulled us over,

we'd pretty much had a rolling meth lab in his truck.

Attempted manufacture is a pretty serious charge.

So, we both were arrested.

It was huge.

Bob was a former municipal judge.

We were just like...

..."How does this happen?".

Somebody with, uh, education and influence like Bob Castleman,

it's fairly rare that individuals get into this...

...seedier side of their community.

But it happens.

And, um, methamphetamine is a powerful drug.

I met Bob when I was 19, 2001.

I was making meth, and, uh, you know,

pretty much, uh, selling it.

And when I got caught up,

I had to pay for a lawyer to keep my son.

And that's how I met Bob.

Bob is like, "Sure, I'd be glad to help you. What do you got?"

So, I told him that I have like $1,200.

He said, "Well, that's a good start."

I paid him at a nightclub.

I've passed him money under the table.

And from that day on, we was really tight.

Following day, execute a search warrant on Bob's farm.

Maybe 100, 150 yards away from the house in a wooded area,

we found the evidence we needed.

A big meth lab.

When you're cooking meth,

it has a very pungent and distinct smell...

...that you try to, uh, avoid people smelling.

And so, you know, you needed that privacy to make methamphetamine.

It was an ideal spot for manufacturing methamphetamine.

Nobody would know you were out there unless you lived there.

When we went to Bob's farm to search the premises,

we found Jerrod Castleman there...

...the son of Bob Castleman.

I interviewed him.

He knew the game was over.

As far as running the operation,

Jerrod and Travis were working together.

Um...

From what I know,

Travis Perkins would manufacture the meth at the farm.

Um, and sometimes even on the porch.

I don't think he was coerced into doing it.

I think maybe he just kind of found a friend group

that took advantage of the skills that he had in that area,

and he went with it.

Travis was doing the cooking.

Uh, Jerrod was helping to provide chemicals.

And Bob Castleman, for the most part,

was providing the, the space.

Bob refused to cooperate with law enforcement.

I encouraged him to do so,

but he declined.

But Jerrod told me some things of significance.

He told us about various drug activity

involving higher-ups in the community, including law enforcement.

They were people in positions of trust or authority.

The chief of police, his brother was also a law enforcement,

and the police chief's wife.

A local prosecutor was brother to Bob Castleman.

How can someone be a law enforcement officer for decades,

uh, be trained in, uh, drug crimes,

and get involved in illegal drug activity?

I don't know that you can trust law enforcement

after something like that.

This case was very covert.

Uh, and we had to investigate it behind the scenes.

If we had walked down to the Pocahontas Police Department

and said, "Excuse me, sir, uh, we are investigating some of you

for connections of illegal drug activity,"

our chances of gathering any evidence

would have been, uh, greatly curtailed.

We know the people that's involved, but we needed evidence.

So, we placed surveillance cameras on law via a district judge.

The police chief's wife worked in that office.

They quickly came to reveal the pattern of activity.

Travis would, uh, deliver one gram of meth,

uh, and place it in the flower bed.

And that, uh, she would also pay Travis,

through the same dead rot method, $100 for each gram of meth.

After dark, the truck arrived in an empty parking lot.

The big figure gets out of the truck,

and he'd saunter over there.

It was Travis Perkins.

So, we watched Travis Perkins' home.

- This was the drug house. - Mmm-hmm.

And it's only, uh, two blocks from the police department.

He's supplying the chief's wife with meth.

That... That threatens the community as a whole.

When we gathered enough evidence,

there was a [indistinct] issued for Bob Castleman,

his son Jerrod Castleman,

Travis Perkins, Rebecca Spray,

and police chief's wife, and others.

Chief of police was put on administrative leave.

It was big news that the FBI had come to town.

That was a huge bombshell.

The FBI does not indict you

unless they know they're gonna win.

They're not gonna indict you and say,

"Well, we'll take our chances in court."

That's not the way the FBI works.

They know they're gonna win when they come after you.

People in Pocahontas were horrified.

No one saw that coming.

You know, can you trust anything the police says?

When we gathered enough evidence from all these people

that we heard was involved,

we submit to the US attorney's office.

Now, there wasn't time to arrest them.

It was about seven o'clock in the morning

Me and Bob were still in bed, and, uh,

knock on the door was the sheriff's department

and then a couple of other FBI agents.

I've never been federally indicted.

I thought I was going to prison for the rest of my life.

I had Jerrod telling me like, "Why don't you just say

that Bob was cooking the dope?"

I would never say anything that was incriminating him.

Travis was the one that was in charge.

He was a good man. He planned on like making it, you know?

Bob's never made meth in his life.

It was all Travis.

Bob had nothing to do with it.

Very eye-opening.

Very alarming.

It was definitely like a bomb went off in town.

I mean, the whole town was talking,

and there was so much speculation.

There's no crime more disgusting than crime by people

who are supposed to be upholding the law.

It definitely, uh, changed the way

that people view people in authority.

I received threats,

that I needed to be careful,

that I don't know who I'm messing with.

It was a very worrying time.

It was a very concerning time.

But I'm not gonna let someone intimidate me.

I'm not gonna live in fear.

I'm not wanting to let it affect me doing my duty.

Before he was indicted, everybody liked Travis.

He had as much drugs as anybody wanted or needed.

You know, he had a lot of money.

He could sling that money around.

After he was busted,

Travis's life changed in the snap of a finger.

Nobody wanted to be around him.

He didn't' have any drugs,

and he didn't have any money anymore.

He just felt lonely.

That Christmas I remember I texted him to see how he was doing.

And he was alone, and it just broke my heart.

So, I went over there with the Christmas dinner.

He had tears in his eyes, and he was just...

I was like, "Nobody cared."

He didn't have anything anybody wanted anymore.

And he was scared.

When I heard the tragic news that Travis had been murdered...

I was very surprised.

This really, really changed the, the nature of what the case was.

There was a lot of speculation.

Who killed Travis?

Who had a motive?

The FBI and the local law enforcement did follow a number of different leads,

but there just wasn't anything that materialized.

The only motives that we had that made sense were within the case.

As we were approaching the trial date,

most of the defendants pleaded guilty.

Jerrod and Bob were the final two defendants that had yet to do that.

Bob and Jerrod had a reputation

of taking the law into their own hands to protect each other.

They sent a live copperhead snake through the mail

over a small financial dispute.

A copperhead is a venomous pet viper.

Bob takes it, puts it in a box,

puts some Styrofoam peanuts in with it,

wraps it up, mails it to this, this individual.

The wife comes home from work. She puts the mail in her car.

Goes up to the carport and opens the box.

And as she opens the box the snake came out.

It's a very aggravated snake at this point.

Not happy.

The sheriff's office arrived and, uh, killed the snake with a shotgun.

They blew its head off.

You literally cannot mail a poisonous snake.

It was mind-boggling.

How can someone get involved in this?

Someone, you know, who had been a judge, who'd been an attorney,

someone who was smart enough to know better than do that.

His whole life fell apart.

Started with the snake incident...

...and went downhill from there.

He was no longer able to practice law.

So, both Bob and Jerrod were convicted felons.

And Travis was witness to the illegal drug activity.

So, Bob and Jerrod had a motive.

About a week before Travis Perkins was going to testify,

that's the week in which the murder happened.

Either one could have shot Travis Perkins twice in the head.

Murder is an extreme act.

But Jerrod and Bob were staring at long prison sentences

for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine.

What's the saying?

"There's no man more dangerous than a man who has nothing to lose."

Bob Castleman and Jerrod were recorded discussing the case,

discussing, you know, who was going to plead and not plead,

and, and discussing that they hoped that Travis would not turn on them.

The prime suspect for Travis Perkins' murder were Bob and Jerrod Castleman.

But Jerrod couldn't have done it

'cause Jerrod was in jail for violating his supervised release.

We ruled Jerrod out of the equation.

So, I began paying very close attention to Bob.

Bob had a reputation of being a vengeful person.

And he had much to gain by Travis not being available for trial.

A second-grader could have figured out the motive.

That's a no-brainer.

Uh, when I heard that Bob was accused of Travis Perkins' murder,

I was scared, but I was like, "Well, they gotta know that he didn't do it."

Then the, uh, lady, uh, by the name of Kim Caudle

uh, told us that the night of Travis's death...

...Bob had taken her,

uh, down to the dog track in West Memphis.

We were able to substantiate with phone records

that Bob's phone was at the dog track back in West Memphis

the entire evening.

So, as it came to pass,

Bob also had an alibi.

The whole thing is just bizarre.

You get to a point where nothing surprises you.

Everybody was in a tight spot because of what was going on here.

But then Jerrod decided to testify.

His attorney approached us about,

uh, Jerrod offering some very valuable information.

It has to do with Travis's murder.

And he would have taken the witness stand the following day.

When we arrived that morning for court

and we were told by the US Marshals

that there had been an incident at the jail...

...immediately we started to try to figure out what happened.

Then we got the news.

Bob Castleman had taken a big razor and tried to kill himself.

Bob said to me, "If anything was to happen

and you felt like, you know, this was all gonna go south, he would end it himself."

There's no way to know whether Bob was seriously trying to kill himself,

or whether he was trying to delay the trial.

And Jerrod's testimony...

...about Mr. Castleman wasn't very successful.

But he did require some stitches.

So, we recessed court,

I believe until the next morning,

um, for him to be taken care of and then return.

They were staring at long prison sentences.

For Bob, it probably will be a life sentence.

Jerrod was still at this point mid-20s, late-20s.

So, probably would not be a life sentence for him.

Jerrod had to make a Hobson's choice here.

Um, do I tell what I know and set my moral conscience right

and set, set it right for Travis?

And do I do that at the expense of my father?

I was there when Jerrod testified against his father.

I was really surprised when Jerrod turned on his dad.

That was not what I was expecting.

He said his father confessed to him that he did it.

He had taken care of business and got rid of Travis Perkins.

It was always our feeling that Jerrod was bothered

by what had happened to Travis Perkins.

He was a close friend to Jerrod.

And Jerrod's moral compass...

...said that that's wrong. "I can't let that happen."

Bob had taken great lengths to cover up his involvement in that shooting.

One was going with Miss Caudle to the race track.

Then he left his phone with her

so that it could not be traced to the murder scene...

...and drove from the dog track back to Pocahontas.

It was in the wee hours of the morning.

And Travis lived downtown in that commercial building.

Um, so it's not surprising that nobody saw Bob.

There was no evidence of a forced entry,

so it's quite likely that his door was open that night.

One of the things that was not publicly known...

...was that Travis Perkins was shot twice.

And the fact that Jerrod knew,

would corroborate that Bob had actually shot him,

and told Jerrod the story.

FBI determined that Jerrod Castleman and Bob Castleman

both had 9-millimeter Glock firearms.

Um, same class of firearms that could have fired that bullet.

Bob then returned to the dog track that evening.

In his sentencing, Jerrod got greater than a 50% reduction.

Got the best deal that I've ever seen anyone get.

No one was ever charged for the murder.

The jury was not asked to find

whether or not Bob Castleman had murdered Travis Perkins.

They were simply asked to find whether or not he was guilty of the drug conspiracy.

And we presented the murder evidence

as evidence of why Travis Perkins was murdered.

They didn't have enough to get him for Travis's murder.

So, he got a huge sentence for this drug involvement.

This call is from a federal prison.

This call is from...

...Bob Castleman.

You know, there was no getting out of it no more.

So it's time to come clean I guess, you know.

His dad didn't want him to lie

and get himself into any more trouble.

They were very close, I know.

Jerrod and Bob were close, they were.

But I absolutely think that Bob killed him.

There's definitely a rumor that goes around town

that Bob took the fall for Jerrod. Um,

Bob and Jerrod went to a lot of lengths

and had a reputation of what lengths they would go to

to protect one another over the years.

And for that to be the final chapter of the story is somewhat ironic.

When we heard the news of Bob and he was being convicted,

people were astonished.

For our small rural community, it was big news.

It went a long way to rid ourselves

with what potential corruption that we might have had.

I'm proud we did what we did.

I think it was necessary. I think it was needed.

It does show that nobody is immune from breaking the law.

But it also shows that nobody is immune from being prosecuted.

Yeah, I miss him a lot.

Terribly.

I got, um... My second tattoo was, um, his initials on my, my ass cheek, you know.

But, uh...

So, yeah, I miss him a lot.

Bob asked me to marry him several different times, you know,

and I, you know, I was still young.

and I didn't really wanna settle down.

But, um, I wish I had have.

Maybe it would change the whole outcome of everything.

It's been a dark time and a dark cloud over our, uh, community.

It's very, very sad that Travis had passed

and that he had passed in such an awful way.

It's just sad. It just breaks my heart still for Travis.

And I can't imagine what he went through.

You know, those last moments, I...

It's just awful.

But I like to think he's in a better place

is how I have to kind of think about it.