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Chapter 1: What happened on September 26th, 2016?
Hello? Hey, Mr. Maples? Yes. Detective Smith, how are you?
Just fine, sir.
How's everybody doing?
Mr. McIver had an anxiety attack there at the hospital, and he's going home, going to sleep.
Tex had an anxiety attack while at the hospital. It was all becoming too much for him. Detective Smith wanted to talk with Tex.
I don't know if he talked to the ER doctor. Well, she came in to brief him. She treated Mrs. McIver in the emergency room. before they took her up for surgery. Right. And she said before she put her to sleep that Mrs. McIvor said that it was an accident.
Were you in the room when that was said?
Yes, I was.
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Chapter 2: What did Diane say before her surgery?
Maples continued to make the point that key hospital employees and himself had heard Diane say that tax didn't shoot her intentionally.
Yeah, and the last thing that she said was, before taking him to surgery and before she was sedated, Diane said that it was an accident.
I'm still trying to figure out what happened, and I understand he's probably going through a lot with the situation with his wife, but I was trying to see what would be best just to go through him to see if you'd like to come in or I can meet up and talk about what happened.
What part do you think is confusing
Well, I need to get from him exactly what happened as well. I mean, I already talked to the driver, obviously, but, you know, in most cases like this, I'd like to get everybody's opinion on what happened, not just one-sided. And the only person that would know that would be him if, you know, if it's an accident that happened or they hit a bump or something. I don't know. I wasn't in the car.
We know the gun went off. It's unfortunate the way it happened, but guns only go off one way. Particularly that gun. It's only going to go off when the trigger's pulled.
You know as well as I do how guns go off.
They don't.
Somebody puts their finger inside the trigger guard.
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Chapter 3: Why was Tex's behavior at the hospital suspicious?
That is a very first no-no. in all of life. I mean, I know you watch television shows, you watch movies, and everybody goes in and pulls a hammer back, you know, and find, you know, a single action, and they got their finger inside the damn trippy car.
I know. You know, as well as I do, that's something the DA's office is going to need is his side of the story.
Yeah. And, you know, the DA's office, that function is to prosecute. And so just about anything that he says is going to be discredited, right?
Not necessarily. I mean, we work well with those guys. I mean, I've had similar cases before.
That same day, Detective Darren Smith received a call from Tex McIver.
Mr. Smith, Detective Smith, this is Tex McIver.
Hey, sir, how are you today? Oh, horrible. I know you guys are going through a lot right now.
Oh, man, I tell you, you're not here to hear me fuss, but I'm a Vietnam guy. I put boys in body bags and stuff. Nothing hurts like this. Right. Can't even imagine. It's just awful. God, it's just awful. Anyway, I understand that we should come in to see you, or at least I should.
That would be great. I didn't want to obviously call you today because of what was, uh, what did, uh, just go on. So I wanted to give you guys a little time for that.
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Chapter 4: What was Tex's account of the incident?
No, no.
We both know that it's not a voluntary manslaughter. And, you know, it's not that sort of thing. Tex McIver is a senior partner with a very, very large, well, it's the nation's largest labor law firm, Fish and Phillips.
Tex and his lawyers were already building a wall.
And there was no disagreement. This couple never argued, never fought, never had any disagreements whatsoever. He's very, very successful. Of course, Diane was very, very successful, right? She worked for Billy Corey.
Well, ultimately what happened was unfortunate.
What I'm saying is he's not going to run it.
No, no, no, no.
What I'm saying is if you decide, you know, if you decide if you want to take it to the district attorney's office, if they want to look at it and they want to indict something, just give me a telephone call. I think the forensics are going to figure out exactly what happened.
I know what happened. I just need to figure out why it happened. The forensics are going to say that this gun probably fired and this is where it went. But that still doesn't explain how the gun went off. Guns just don't magically go off on their own.
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Chapter 5: How did the detectives view Tex's story?
We discover that Tex wanted Danny Joe to leave the hospital that morning, wanting her to claim that she was not even with Tex and Diane. This was highly suspicious. Why in the world would he want Danny Joe to leave the hospital and pretend she wasn't with them? If Danny Joe leaves the hospital and is later discovered to have been part of it, her credibility is significantly harmed.
So how do you believe anything she says? This would have allowed Tex to create a narrative that was more favorable to him. I call this Tex and the Tell-Tale Heart. Tex continues to make decisions that arouse suspicion. Still grieving, Tex did agree to sit down with police to share his side of the story. This is Brett Zimbrick, who was immediately involved in the case.
I was with the Atlanta Police Department for 33 years. 26 of those years, I was in the homicide unit as an investigator. And prior to that, I did a year of undercover narcotics work as an investigator, and then five years of uniform patrol. So the next day after the shooting, when I report to work, that's when I hear that there was an overnight shooting in a car.
Victim died as a result of a gunshot wound. Husband is the individual responsible.
Brett was in the room the day Tex and his lawyer came in to speak with police.
He's accompanied by two attorneys, his personal attorneys. Darren is the lead on the case, and I sit in the interview.
Darren is the detective you heard in the phone call earlier with Stephen Maples.
The attorney was making it clear that this is what we're here for. We're going to have Tex explain everything. what happened, how they got to that point. He's not going to be specific about right turns, left turns, where they were exactly because he doesn't recall it. So please don't pressure him.
We went through an area, I could describe my familiarity with it, but we went through an area I thought that was particularly dangerous. At night, I'd seen police vehicles there. It's a route I take from my office to her office. And I see police vehicles there with the blue lights on, and they're doing things with the vehicle that are there. Are there landmarks or anything? It was an underpass.
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Chapter 6: What were the key details from the police interview?
They made a couple of turns, and things were not going well. And I said, we'll be on Piedmont shortly. And I said, yeah, I'd like to, if you don't mind. seems to be a gun. And so I, in response to that, I had wrapped my gun in a Publix grocery sack. So if you open the console, you have no clue what you're looking at. Flashlights and stuff like that.
So Diane reaches in, pulls it out, hands it back to me. And by then we may have been on Piedmont. that kind of area. Right. And I guess I just laid back again and went to sleep. Okay. Um, Danny Joe came to a stop and uh, anyway I just It was just time to wake up. But she came to a stop and I was handling the gun. I didn't realize it was in my lap. Right.
And it went off. Okay.
He came across as a little bit saddened. Obviously his wife had just died and he appeared to feel remorse or some responsibility for that act. He was trying to relay to us that it was an accident and he made a few comments to the effect that he wanted us to be sure that we knew it was an accident.
What do you remember after the gunshot? I immediately called out. I said, is everybody all right? And Danny Joe said yes. Diane, her head was kind of slanted. She said, I've been shot. Words to that effect. And I immediately put my arms around her and tried to determine what was, how bad it was.
I think one thing that stood out to me was the fact that he made the comment in the interview that the doctors had told him that Diane had come to was responsive and told the doctors it was an accident, which I thought was kind of a weird thing. Why would she have come to regain consciousness only to say it was an accident and very little else after that?
But he made sure to say that, and if I'm not mistaken, he repeated it. He kind of admitted to being responsible for it, but wanted to make sure that the accident part of it remained in the forefront, made us continually think about the accident word.
It was over 30 years ago that Clifford Olson first called me. Secret phone calls from Canada's most notorious serial killer.
I knew I was killing the children, but I couldn't stop myself.
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