Patrick Skinner: “I met John, it was the 3^rd or the 4^th grade.

We moved over to Hansel Avenue. I had two stepbrothers.

They were already friends with John. He lived right down the street at somewhat of a diagonal about 1000 feet away.

We all kind of hit it off. We rode four-wheelers through the neighborhood…actually probably terrorized a little bit. We went fishing a lot in Joshua Creek as a matter of fact.”

Delia D’Ambra: This is Patrick Skinner today—in his mid-thirties.

He’s a husband, a father…and former best friend of John Welles.

It took me several months of searching and digging to track him down, you’d be surprised how many Patrick Skinner’s there are out there…

But I finally got ahold of him.

Patrick moved away from Arcadia several years ago, and hasn’t really been back since, but in July of 2003, he knew John Welles better than anyone.

The pair were together pretty much every day before, during and after school.

Patrick Skinner: “Through high school we rode to school together. We still went fishing a lot. Went to softball games. His girlfriend was on a softball team after school.

He certainly was not shy. I was more the introvert I would say. John, he was kind of a jokester. ”

Delia D’Ambra: By the time the boys were both 16, Patrick says he noticed a shift in John’s attitude.

His friend started standing up for himself more at home—and pushing back against his grandma’s house rules…

Patrick Skinner: “When I first met John, he seemed a bit timid to tell you the truth. He was scared to deviate. I think he was under some pretty strict supervision there for a while.

He had very strict conditions. I don’t want to say that we free roamed but my stepbrothers and I, we free roamed. We ran wild.

John not at first, no. He was, he seemed to be under his grandmother’s thumb a lot. Very afraid of consequences or deviating and doing something just a little bit wrong. As we got older, that changed. He kind of come into his own.”

Delia D’Ambra: When John turned 17 on May 1st of 03’ he was just one year away from full independence.

Patrick says that’s when John’s desire to leave his complicated family life behind became the strongest it had ever been.

According to Patrick, John was increasingly more vocal when he disagreed with his grandmother. Some of his angst even carried over into school, where he was put into behavioral reform programs.

Patrick Skinner: “He wasn’t bad. He wasn’t violent. He had, had a smart-ass mouth. That was. He had a smart mouth.

I do know he wanted to get out.”

Delia D’Ambra: “Of Arcadia?”

Patrick Skinner: “Not out of Arcadia specifically, out of the house he was living in. He, he just wanted out of that…um, there were just some strict rules there like I mean, I think it was kind of rough for him and I don’t know to the extent of how rough, but I know he was, that was his main goal, he wanted out of that house.”

Delia D’Ambra: Patrick says whenever John got the chance to be out of his grandma’s house, he used cannabis as a way to escape.

Patrick Skinner: “I never knew of him to be into anything except marijuana. As a matter of fact, he really didn’t even drink.”

Delia D’Ambra: In the wake of John’s death, Patrick was shocked to learn that his friend had other substances in his system.

Patrick Skinner: “Cocaine was a huge surprise to me. I do know he hung around some people occasionally that I did not associate with. I could see them being in cocaine…but John, no. I would have never, never thought. Never seen it. Never heard about it.”

Delia D’Ambra: All of these little bits of information that Patrick knew about John were what Desoto County detectives wanted to learn when they had him come in for an interview on July 9^th, 2003…the day after John died.

Kim Lewis: “This is Detective Kim Lewis. It is 12:26 PM. The 9th of July, 2003.”

“Present is Patrick Christopher Skinner.”

Delia D’Ambra: For the rest of this episode, you’ll be hearing excerpts of this archive tape mixed with some clips of Patrick’s interview with me in present day.

The reason for that is because portions of the 2003 interview get very fuzzy and hard to hear, but Patrick’s more recent interview with me will help fill in those gaps.

Patrick was only 16 when police first interviewed him. So, his mother Lisa, accompanied him while he spoke with investigators at the Desoto County sheriff’s office.

The conversation took place about a half hour before authorities got Pat Strader into the station for her first interview.

You heard parts of her conversation with detective Kim Lewis in the last episode.

When Kim Lewis first sat down with Patrick, John had been dead for less than a day and Patrick had no idea how his best friend actually died.

So, walking into the sheriff’s office, Patrick was unaware of what authorities knew at that time which was that John had been shot.

And just to clarify here… According to reports, all of the law enforcement investigators who were involved up until that point knew John had been shot …but, detective Kim Lewis had not yet learned the information that a gun had been found at the scene and then removed.

Only the sheriff and his chief deputy knew about that.

So, when Patrick told Kim this….

Patrick Skinner: “The first place I go is over to the four-wheeler. About two feet away from the four-wheeler was John’s gun. It’s a little six shot revolver, a .22 Magnum.”

Delia D’Ambra: That got a wild reaction.

Patrick Skinner: “They all jumped up. And it was like I set a fire under everyone. And people were screaming to other people. Phones were getting picked up and at that point I asked them ‘How did he die?’…and she said, ‘He was shot’ and that was actually the first time I found out he was shot.”

Delia D’Ambra: Once Kim Lewis got the part of Patrick’s story about finding a gun at the scene confirmed on the record, she started questioning him about what specifically happened after he picked up the gun.

Here’s his response from his 2003 interview.

Patrick Skinner: “It was dropped in the dirt and John just doesn’t leave a gun laying in the dirt. So, I thought something was wrong. I picked it up. I emptied all the shells out in my hand to see if any were fired. All the shells were live. None of them had been fired. Mrs. Strader saw me do this.”

Kim Lewis: “You said you are sure there were 6 live rounds in the gun?”

Patrick Skinner: “I’m sure.”

Kim Lewis: “Did you see them?”

Patrick Skinner: “Yes. They were like regular .22 shells, but they had a sharp red point on them.”

Kim Lewis: “Is that what you dumped out of the gun?”

Patrick Skinner: “Yes.”

Kim Lewis: “Were all six of them red tipped? Are you confident that all six were identical?”

Patrick Skinner: “Yes.”

Patrick Skinner: “I found his belt probably 12 feet away from the gun. And then Skip found his holster in the middle of the belt and gun. So, he held up the holster. I put the gun in the holster, took it back and put the holster clip in my pocket. I put the belt in the Explorer.”

Patrick Skinner: “I walked over to the water, looked down in the water and I saw John laying in the water. I looked at Skip. I made a hand motion for him to come over. I didn’t want Mrs. Strader to see. He come over, looked and he said, “That’s just a drum in the water.”…but Mrs. Strader was already walking over there and saw him. And she just flipped out.

Skip asked me if I could drive them all back. So, we got in the Explorer. We drove back up to the house. I put the gun in the back seat. That’s it.”

Delia D’Ambra: Kim was puzzled by Patrick’s version of events…

If he was sure that John’s revolver was fully loaded with six unfired bullets in it when he picked it up… That meant it couldn’t have been the gun that shot John…accidental or not.

Just based on what I’ve read in police reports and heard in the tone of Kim’s voice during the interview, it felt like Kim believed one of two things…

One— 16-year-old Patrick was misremembering…or…two–he was lying and was involved much more than he was letting on.

To shake him up, Kim confronted Patrick head on…

That part of the audio recording from 2003 is really fuzzy, so here’s Patrick’s recollection of it in present day.

Patrick Skinner: “They asked me flat out, ‘Did you kill him?’…that was their words…’Did you kill him?’’’…I’m like ‘No.’…and they were like ‘Was it an accident?’…I’m like, ‘I did not do it’…and they would tell me…

‘Look, if it was an accident we would understand. He’s like but you need to tell the truth and bring this out.’…and I’m like, ‘Look, I did not do it. Everything I’ve told you has been 100 percent the truth.’”

Delia D’Ambra: Kim changed tactics after confronting Patrick and pivoted to asking him what he knew about John’s relationship with his grandma and step uncle, Skip.

Patrick’s response to that line of inquiry definitely peaked investigators’ interest.

Kim Lewis: “Do you know if Skip and John have any problems?”

Patrick Skinner: “Not as far as I know. I don’t really know the guy.”

Kim Lewis: “Has John ever expressed to you any concerns about Skip?”

Patrick Skinner: “Said he got a temper. He said he’s like his grand daddy, if you do something wrong, he’ll just start yelling at you. Said he’s got a quick temper.”

Delia D’Ambra: Patrick told detective Kim Lewis that there were times John didn’t get along with his step- uncle, Skip.

After Mel Senior died in June of 2003, Skip—who’d rarely come out to Arcadia before then— started working at the southeast Hansel sawmill and living in Pat’s home Monday through Friday.

Tension building between Skip and John during the summer of 2003 is something Patrick remembers John brought up on occasion.

Patrick Skinner: “He didn’t mention Skip a lot to me. Just that he was there. Some non-verbal cues I guess you would say that he just maybe he felt a little uncomfortable…his grandfather had passed away and now this person is coming in and just essentially running the show at that house. Running the sawmill across the road and I think John may have kind of thought that that would be his responsibility when his grandfather passed away.

John didn’t really speak of him much. There was just always something there you could tell he either didn’t want to talk about something or was mulling over something in his head.”

Delia D’Ambra: In addition to John’s discomfort about Skip hanging around in Arcadia, Patrick says John also started growing increasingly resentful of his grandma’s strictness.

Over the years, Patrick said he never witnessed first-hand Pat discipline the boys for disobeying…but he heard it— all the way from his house.

Patrick Skinner: “I don’t know exactly what he went through at the household…but Pat was always pretty nice to me…but I’ve heard the kids, Matt and John both screaming from my house before.

As in their getting their butt tore up.”

Delia D’Ambra: “Did John ever express to you that he was angry about living with his grandmother or angry about being in Arcadia or wishing he could live with his dad or that he could live with his mom?”

Patrick Skinner: “He uh, never his mom. He didn’t really talk about his mom much.”

Patrick Skinner: “His dad, there for a while when we were younger he loved his dad obviously and liked to be around his dad but I don’t think he was around much. As he got older, he started speaking with his dad more and developed a closer relationship with his dad and he did want to go be with his dad for a time. I don’t know really what stopped that. I don’t think his dad really was in the best living situation as it was either.”

Patrick Skinner: “So, I think that just never came to fruition and he stayed at his grandparents. Although he did visit his dad a lot more as we were driving age, as we were driving age, we were free. We could go anywhere we wanted.”

Delia D’Ambra: And that was true for John, to a certain extent.

Despite the small freedoms John had outside of his grandma’s presence, she often pried into his personal life and habits.

According to Patrick, Pat often cornered him with questions about whether or not John was getting into trouble—expecting Patrick to reveal if John was misbehaving.

Patrick Skinner: “For some reason she trusted me. I was a good boy. Not that I wasn’t’, but out of all the friends, she would ask me things…’Is John smoking marijuana?’…’Is John doing drugs?’…’Is John doing this?’… ‘Did John go see such and such?’…and I’m like, ‘I don’t know. No, not that I know of’… ‘No, he’s not smoking marijuana.’…I wasn’t. I actually never tried it, but he had gotten into it. But for some reason she would always pull me off to the side and ask me questions like I’m going to just rat out my best friend, one of my best friends for anything that they were doing wrong. I never understood that.”

Delia D’Ambra: He says when Pat called him on the afternoon of July 8^th, 2003, to come help her look for John—he figured it was another case of grandma trying to keep tabs on John and going about it in a way that relied on Patrick.

Patrick Skinner: “When she called that day that’s why I didn’t bat an eye to it. I’m like here we go again, like, what does she want now.”

Delia D’Ambra: So, without much hesitation, Patrick said he agreed to help Pat search for John.

But if he’s being honest, he had zero sense of urgency about it.

Patrick Skinner: “I slept in late. I IM’d with my girlfriend at the time for probably a good part of the morning. She was up North. We didn’t like being away from each other…You know teenagers.”

Delia D’Ambra: “Teenagers…”

Patrick Skinner: (laughs) “So, and I think I may have actually been IM’ing with her when I got the call from Pat about John that she can’t find him. He went over to burn trash. Wants me to go with her to try and find him…and that’s not verbatim but it’s just what I remember about the conversation. I IM’d my girlfriend at the time and I’m like ‘Hey, got to go look for John’…and she’s like ‘What now?’…I’m like, ‘You know, his grandmother’…because she knew all about grandmother pulling me to the side and expecting me to just tell all, I guess.”

Delia D’Ambra: According to case documents, Pat made her first call to Patrick at approximately 3:15pm.

She told him she was going to get gas in her Explorer first, then she would swing by and pick him up.

Patrick was so disinterested in Pat’s request that he gave into his grogginess, and he fell back asleep briefly.

He woke up to her honking her car horn in his driveway and by the time he got dressed and walked outside, Pat was gone.

A few minutes later, at approximately 3:45pm Pat used her home phone to call Patrick again and asked him to come over and help her look for John.

Patrick Skinner: “I went over in my own vehicle.

I got in my car. I drove to John’s house. I still really didn’t’ know what was going on.

I parked outside of her house and kind of, and this is where it all gets kind of fuzzy around some of these finer details and she told me again you know John went over to take the trash, we can’t find him. We’ve looked for him for hours and called for him and Skip was there…and I didn’t know Skip real well and I’m like ‘So, we’re all three going back here? Ok.’…

We all three went in the Explorer and we went straight back to the burn pit and right away I get out and she’s yelling for John.”

Delia D’Ambra: Patrick refers to the trash pile in the woods as a burn pit, because sometimes he saw John burn the garbage as a way from keeping it from getting too nasty.

Patrick Skinner: “I don’t think he burnt it every time. They’d pile some up and burn it and but that’s where they dumped and burned their trash.”

Delia D’Ambra: Again, not something the Department of Environmental Protection would love.

But, hey, it’s the country.

Anyway, Patrick remembers after he, Pat and Skip arrived at the trash pile and saw John’s idling four-wheeler….the next few minutes of his life got very intense, very fast.

Patrick Skinner: “So, the four-wheeler is there backed up to the burn pit and think the trash was still loaded and there, I looked down and there’s a pistol right next to the four-wheeler and at the time I’m not thinking anything. Like, so I picked it up and I’m like yeah that’s kind of weird.

John took care of his things. Especially his knives, his guns. He was actually a clean freak in some ways when it came to that stuff. So, to actually find it in the sand, it was just abnormal for him to do something like that.

It was right next to the four-wheeler and I pick it up and it’s a little .22 revolver. I remember pulling a pin and the whole cylinder falling out of it and you know putting it back together.”

Delia D’Ambra: “Did bullets come out?”

Patrick Skinner: “They did and that’s part of my memory. That I, I didn’t think at the time it had been fired…based on what fell out in my hand.”

Delia D’Ambra: “So it was a six shots. So, six unfired bullets should have fallen out if it wasn’t fired. Five full bullets plus a casing should have fallen out..”

Patrick Skinner: “Right.”

Delia D’Ambra: “…if it was fired.”

Patrick Skinner: “Right and I don’t remember seeing an empty casing…but then again, I’m not sitting there counting them. I’m pulling a pin and the cylinder is falling out. It was a single action that I think you’ve got to roll and one by one. I ended up popping the whole cylinder out of it.”

Delia D’Ambra: “Would you have known the difference at that time of a casing versus a..”

Patrick Skinner: “Yes. Yes. I wasn’t familiar with the particular gun; hence I pulled the pin and it fell apart, but actually they did ask me…Skip asked me if it had been fired and I think that’s what prompted me to pull the pin. Because I’m sitting here looking and I don’t know but I let them out in my hand and I’m like no. They’re all good. Put it back together and I think I recall setting it on top of the four-wheeler seat.

Pat is still yelling for John around and so I’m kind of like, ‘What am I doing here?’…I’m just like… ‘This is ridiculous.’…So, about 10 or 15 feet away from me it was either a belt or a holster.

At that point, I’m looking at the ground and I’m like… ‘gun is here, holster is here, belt is here…something else over here’… I’m like it’s just almost like something was, bread crumbs were almost laid out to find and that’s not what went through my mind then, it’s just something I started following…and I got to the edge of this…uh…

Standing stagnant water…and I’m looking down in the water and just looking around to see if I see anything else that’s fallen down and I…I, I’m not sure what I seen at first…or maybe I didn’t want to know what I was seeing.

I could tell there was a body in the water. I had stared at it long enough and he appeared to be on his stomach…his arms were kind of like this and there was an old rusty 55-gallon drum sitting on top of him.”

Delia D’Ambra: What Patrick told me John was –”like this”—he gestured and hung his whole body like a scarecrow. Both arms spread up and out.

Patrick Skinner: “I’m still second guessing myself. I’m like, no, that’s some trash…that’s some…that’s not what I think it is. Um…I remember the, the murky, nasty water and the sediment was just settled all over his body like he’d been there for a while.”

Delia D’Ambra: “When you see John laying down, describe that drum and where it was positioned on his body.”

Patrick Skinner: “It was like an old rusty piece of a 55-gallon drum. Rusted falling apart.”

Delia D’Ambra: “Like the kind you’d have as like a burn barrel?”

Patrick: “Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it looked like to me. There’s holes in it. It’s old. Looks like it’s been there for a very long time…and it appeared to me like it was right over his back, like just behind his shoulders. That’s the image that’s burned into my head.”

Delia D’Ambra: There’s a picture of this barrel in the blog post for this episode on our website—you can link to it right in the show notes— I recommend taking a look so you can visualize it better.

After the initial shock of realizing it was his best friend who was face down in the water, Patrick alerted the only adults around him—Skip and Pat.

Patrick Skinner: “So, I said Skip, ‘Skip, come here’…and I pointed and he throws my hand down and he grabs me and he pulls me away and he grabs Pat and starts pulling us away…and she’s like ‘It’s him? It’s him. Is it him?’…and Skip’s like, ‘Yes. Its him.’…and shuffles us over, puts us, he’s like Patrick…’You drive.’…She’s hysterical. Just screaming at the top of her lungs.”

“I’m driving. I’m in somewhat of shock. I’m kind of numb at this point.”

“I’m still second guessing whether or not I saw what I saw. Here I’ve been shuffled away and they’re telling me to drive. I believe Skip actually grabbed the stuff off the four-wheeler and the gun and put it in the Explorer.”

“She settled down and Skip told her ‘Yes. Its him. We need to call the cops’”

Delia D’Ambra: It was during the short ride back to Pat’s house to call 911 that Patrick says the conversation about what to do with John’s gun, belt, holster and thigh strap came up.

Patrick Skinner: “Pat asked me, she’s like ‘Patrick please don’t tell them about the gun.”

“And I kind of looked at her and she’s like, ‘He’s a minor, he was over there by himself…like, I don’t want to get in trouble’ and I’m like ‘Yeah. Sure. Whatever.’’

Delia D’Ambra: “How many times was that brought up to you to not talk about the gun?”

Patrick Skinner: “Several times on the way back…and I just said ‘Yep. Yep. Great. Won’t say nothing. No problem.’”

Delia D’Ambra: “Did you feel weird about that?”

Patrick Skinner: “All I remember thinking was how selfish you’re trying to be right now. You’re scared you’re going to get in trouble and like you let him go off with a gun all the time. Like, he was great with a gun. He was better with, I mean he went through all the safety courses. Yeah, we were minors, but we lived in Arcadia. So, some of that was just going through my head.”

Delia D’Ambra: As soon as the trio arrived back at Pat’s house at 4:30pm, Pat got on the phone with dispatchers and the bundle of stuff the group took from the scene stayed in the explorer.

While Pat was speaking with 911, Patrick said Skip made an odd remark…

Here’s Patrick mentioning it during his July 9th interview with detective Kim Lewis.

Patrick Skinner: “He asked if I saw what looked like drag marks in the ground. “Did y’all see drag marks in the ground?” He asked me if I saw them. I said, “Yeah.”

Kim Lewis: “In what context did he say that? Was he being an investigator and trying to find out what happened? Was he concerned that somebody might see those? How did you perceive what he was saying to you?”

Patrick Skinner: “He acted like he didn’t know whether they were drag marks or not whether what it looked like to me. Like the marks on the ground, he pretty much asked me what they looked like to me..”

Kim Lewis: “And what did you say?”

Patrick Skinner: “I told him it looked like he had been drug across the ground. It looked like his feet marks to me, like, his feet had been drug across the ground.”

Delia D’Ambra: Patrick’s memory about whether or not he and Skip had a conversation about drag marks has faded over the past 19 years…but he does remember something about it coming up in their conversation immediately after they found John.

Delia D’Ambra: “Did Skip ever say to you that those are drag marks? Did you ever think that there were drag marks? What was your memory of that?”

Patrick Skinner: “At one point I do remember a little area that was a little more disturbed than the rest but I honestly can’t recall whether they were called drag marks or, but I do remember seeing the disturbed ground.”

Delia D’Ambra: On top of having some kind of discussion related to drag marks, Patrick also told Kim that Skip mentioned that he wanted to be present when police interviewed him.

Today—Patrick is unsure if Skip told him this directly or if Skip suggested the idea to his mother, Lisa.

Lisa got involved around five o’clock after the police had been called and Patrick had returned home visibly upset.

Patrick Skinner: “I get home. I walk in and I see my mom. She knows something is wrong and she asked what it is and I’m like, ‘Its John…” She’s like, ‘What about him?’…and I told her, I’m like… ‘He’s, he’s dead.’…and I lose it at that point. I’m a basket case for probably the next 45 minutes.”

“I believe my mom may have went over there because I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t get words out. I believe she may have went over there to see what was going on. I think she talked to Pat and Skip.”

Patrick Skinner: “I don’t remember him saying that to me but I almost think he said that to my mother. That he wanted to be there.”

Delia D’Ambra: Here’s Patrick telling about this information during his July 9^th 2003 interview.

Patrick Skinner: “He wanted to be like present while y’all was questioning me.”

Kim Lewis: “So he told you last night before you went home, the last time that he wanted to bring you up here or he wanted to be present?”

Patrick Skinner: “I guess he thought cops were going to be at their house today.”

Delia D’Ambra: Everything Patrick revealed to Kim in his first interview made her and other investigators start to turn their attention more on Skip.

But before Kim completely pivoted away from Patrick and started her interview with Pat, she asked him one very important question.

One that had been on repeat in everyone’s mind…except, for some reason, the three people who’d found John.

Kim Lewis: “Why didn’t anybody go in the water and get John?”

Delia D’Ambra: Patrick’s answer to that question is the same today as it was back in 2003.

Patrick Skinner: “First instinct for a lot of people is to run down and like, look I don’t know why that instinct didn’t hit me. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to process what I’m seeing and then I’m getting immediately pulled away from it. Like, I don’t know. Or maybe it was her being hysterical and…I can’t answer that.”

“I remember making this statement to the police, I made this statement that I knew he was dead. I knew he had been there a long time and I kept going back to this sediment in the water. Murky water and in a ditch like that, you stir it up it turns almost opaque and as it settles over whatever it settles, as the sediment settles out it settles on whatever happens to be in the water and from what I remember, what was under the water was covered in this silt. So, I knew it had been in the water for a long time. Or at least long enough for that silt to settle.”

Delia D’Ambra: For almost two decades Patrick has lived with a lot of internal guilt about the fact that he didn’t do things differently 19 years ago.

Patrick Skinner: “I felt actually guilty about not forcing myself down there to try and help him…but I think it’s mainly the cops that made me feel guilty about that. If you’re ever in the situation I was in, sometimes it’s hard to say what you would do until you’re put in that situation.”

Delia D’Ambra: It did not sit right in Desoto County detectives that neither Patrick, Pat or Skip had attempted C-P-R on John when he was first found.

It’s something Kim pointed out during Patrick’s interview and about a half hour later when she got a crack at Pat.

But because neither of their responses had been anything other than—’well, we assumed he was dead because he’d been gone so long’—Kim had to move on…the investigation had too much ground to cover to get hung up on that.

Like you heard in the last episode, we know Kim interviewed Pat on July 9^th… Around one o’clock, shortly after speaking with Patrick.

Investigators didn’t clear her or Patrick as potential suspects after their initial interviews…but based on some of the things they’d said…authorities felt confident the last of the prime witnesses—Skip— had to be questioned in quick succession too.

Everything in the case was rapidly evolving…and by the time Desoto County sheriff’s office got Skip in the hot seat at 2:15pm on July 9th, an F-D-L-E special agent had joined the interrogation process.

That agent, named John Smith, along with Kim Lewis wanted to know how Skip’s version of events was going to stack up against Patrick and Pat’s stories.

Based on what police had learned so far, Skip was the last person to see John alive —riding off into the woods on the four-wheeler—at 12:30 July 8^th.

Skip was the guy authorities had to pin down…

And pin down, is exactly what they did.

Male detective: “You lied to me.

Skip Strader: “I’m sorry sir.”

Male detective: “You lied to me over a couple of things which causes me to really think you’re in it up to your eyeballs in this stuff.”

Delia D’Ambra: That’s coming up in episode five– “skip”—listen, right now.