Devil’s Island: Missouri’s Jacque Waller case

- look at this happy holiday gathering of family and friends you'd never know that six months from this moment Missouri mother of three Jackie Waller would be gone lured to her fate when she went inside he's too late the prime suspect a man without remorse it's a twisted game of cat and mouse he was playing with us the whole time and at the end of it all I had so much faith in the prosecutors in the law enforcement the mystery of what happened to Jackie Waller there was one tree within that area that was dead will be revealed in the most disturbing of ways to be that brazen after the fact to write a book you can't do that growing up st. Genevieve Missouri mom Cheryl brenneke had trouble connecting with their younger sister Jackie I got married when I was 16 and she was 10 so I was busy starting a family raising kids and my children was just like irritating younger brothers and sisters to her so we were never close but that would all change an adulthood when Jackie then in her 30s and married to a man named clay Waller made an announcement when she learned she was pregnant that's whenever we bonded we finally had something in common then we were stuck together at the hip but it was also then that Sheryl started learning more about the man Jackie was about to make a father he was a little awkward but with Jackie it worked to his advantage he had a speech impediment she felt sorry for him she said you know we I'm an enabler and I'm codependent and I take care of him I feel sorry for him Jackie's parents felt something else I always knew he was kind of a jerk and dad what did you think what did I think about him I didn't like in the first minute I seen him he was not compatible with my family but at least he seemed able to provide for their daughter at one point clay was even a deputy for the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Office though he only held the job for about a year did you know him yes he kind of had a little streak about even I didn't particularly care for what do you mean by that a little streak he had kind of a deceptive demeanor about him after that clay jumped around from job to job but then Jackie was a manager at a major insurance firm and perfectly able to provide for the family one that suddenly included triplets hi she just embraced it from the word go I mean we would be in the car with three screaming kids and I would really be wanting to jump out and she would just start laughing she's loved being a mother to those triplets if only they were the only ones who needed mothering she was taking care of her husband oh absolutely it was just like having another child I seriously do not think he changed one diaper she would seriously get up 9 or 10 times a night and still work 40 hours a week after months even years of that Jackie started pulling away spending more time with her sister's family of course it wasn't just clays unwillingness to help that had her seeking distance she knew that he had a lot of affairs did she ever confront clay oh yeah and she'd say he denies ever for everything but there were some things that Jackie knew to be true according to her clay had become both emotionally and physically abusive she wanted to divorce I told you that yes but she said that she had to do it slowly to get out of it safely the last Christmas that they were together he came to the house and I I knew they had been having problems I said to him I said I'm surprised you're here and he said I'm hanging on by my fingertips it was the day before Jackie's 39th birthday what was to be her last year of life over that year is when things got worse and worse and worse as Jackie became more determined to leave clay became more unhinged he probably knew she was starting to move on her way and as you know now it's the most dangerous time the first 24 hours was the most in it dangerous and that she had to be very careful in to form a plan fearing for her life Jackie Waller starts keeping a diary on her work computer of all the threats clay was making towards her and her triplets starting from not long before that big Christmas gathering they read in part Friday December 3rd I told him that I was going to file for divorce he said that he had a feeling that one of us would not be around to watch our kids grow up Friday March 18th clay told me that I did not deserve to live he told me that a divorce would be my death sentence and perhaps the most chilling entry of all Wednesday March 23rd clay told me that if he couldn't get me he would kill our kids he would take them for a weekend fishing trip and then he would personally tell me they'd drown so he could see my face were you afraid for her absolutely we were sitting here one day and she looked me square in the eye and she said Cheryl I know what he is capable of and I just don't want to be dead but then a blessing in disguise going into that spring clay lost another job and the couple lost their house she was like oh this is awesome you get your place I'll get me a place she just felt like everything was lining up for her break she took the kids than five years old and moved in with Cheryl and her husband Bob while clay moved over an hour away to Jackson crashing in a house owned by a friend both clay and Jackie moved on in other ways as well both starting new relationships she thought he was accepting the separation that he wasn't going to be accepting the divorce she said I just I think he we've really turned a corner I really do all that was left to do was finalize the divorce a process jackie and clay agreed to discuss in person just after Memorial Day June 1st Jackie son Maddox had stayed with clay over the weekend and the plan was for Jackie to meet her soon-to-be ex at her Attorney's Office before picking up the boy Jackie called Cheryl just after the meeting she said I just left the attorney's office and I'm pulling up to clays and I'm gonna grab Maddox and I'll be on home the last time Cheryl would ever talk to her sister she told her sister she was picking up her son Maddox from her estranged husband's house but three hours after that call Jackie Waller still wasn't home and I just got this sick sick feeling by this time it's like 6:30 or 7:00 and I start blowing up her phone and I'm leaving her messages but no response so then she tried calling the man Jackie said she was going to see is he responding nothing I finally said clay Waller if I don't hear from my sister in five minutes I am going straight to the police and he said so well you know the phone rings hey Sheryl what's going on I said you know exactly what's going on where is my sister you've done something to her you told him that yes What did he say well I will if I see her I'll let you know I'll tell her call yeah click Sheryl wasn't about to wait around for that call after leaving Jackie's other two triplets with their parents and sainte-genevieve she hops in her car and makes the hour-long drive down to Jackson I walked in the Jackson PD and I just said I know clay Waller has killed my sister she had no evidence but police were listening most agencies will tell family members look you got to give this 24 hours at least it had only been a couple hours at this point due to the circumstances of the advantage the divorce attorneys something just didn't seem right from the get-go with this case so we started working in fact jackson-police sent a sergeant out to question clay the interaction is recorded when was the last time you saw yeah clay tells the officer Jackie met him at a drugstore sometime after 11 a.m. then had lunch after that they split up until 3:00 when they met back up at their Attorney's office he says after the appointment Jackie came over not to pick up her son who clay says is actually staying with his girlfriend in Illinois but because she just wanted to discuss the divorce no I have time you actually saw her here this is she walked off yeah people kind of look poor in your car the yeah I went down the hill he says when he got back to his house sometime after 6:00 her car was gone should I keep trying to call I mean probably the story sounds suspicious and just hours later authorities begin assembling a team of seasoned investigators known as the Major Case Squad the Major Case Squad consisted like seven different departments and it was developed with the goal of taking the elite detectives crime-scene people from each agency and putting them together the best of the best it is and almost immediately the team finds one very big clue Jackie's car abandoned on this interstate one tire flat as though it had been blown out maybe she flagged down the wrong person for help I mean it was possible that someone could have kidnapped her from the side of the road but that scenario became a lot less likely when investigators took a closer look at the flat tire we had somebody come in from Missouri State Highway Patrol who could tell us that the room was not in any way damaged so she hadn't ribbon on a flat tire it had clearly been punctured while stationary roadside the whole scene was staged when was your first contact with clay before we started circus that hang on I want to call my attorney and immediately after he got over the phone he made a comment that we couldn't search the car or his house not even 24 hours after Jackie disappeared clay Waller had lawyer DUP so detectives quickly apply for warrants to search Jackie's car clays truck and the house where he was staying we had one later that afternoon lieutenant Jeff Bonham and agent Bryan Ritter of the FBI were there during the subsequent searches what did you find well we happen to be standing by the car and agent Ritter looks irenna so saying that's it looks like a blood spot on the back of her car and when investigators searched clays truck more blood smeared on the inside of the driver's side door both samples are sent to the lab and unbelievably when the results come back turns out to be fish blood that's right fish blood it's big head carp specifically clay had intentionally put on the door of his truck and just how does she know that he recorded himself with his cell phone doing this saying that he had just put that fish blood there basically it's a test for law enforcement Jamie but then that wasn't the only DNA police found back at clays house team members arrived to find the hallway carpet missing and that's not all we located what we believe to be blood on the walls in the hallway basically everywhere you see a tag something that happened in that hallway there was a violent confrontation absolutely but investigators still had to determine where the blood came from what happened at that missing carpet and of course what happened to Jackie then I'm looking around in the basement I see this this crawl space and there appears to be like a disturbed pathway where the dust and dirt is I was like hey we got to look in this prospect for days after mother of triplets Jackie Waller disappeared for a strange husband clay left her this voicemail but just one day after that investigators find traces of blood and clays hallway the carpet torn up and a recently used crawlspace in the basement did you think Jackie could have been under there that was a good possibility yes this recreation recorded by the Major Case Squad shows how FBI agent Brian Ritter crawled through the narrow space beneath the floorboards of that blood-stained hallway he crawls back up and says you guys are gonna believe it he goes the carpet runner and the padding's cut up and it's all back here you know in this crawl space so he didn't find a body but he found the carpet that's correct which was a huge piece of this investigation yes huge because several those pieces were soaked with blood did the blood come back to be Jackie yesterday conclusion I think we all had a very strong suspicion that she was she was dead but without a body there still wasn't enough to prove anything so investigators begin searching for clues by reconstructing the last day Jackie was seen alive it starts in this drug store where around 11 o'clock that day Jackie is seen walking up to meet clay approximately two hours later Jackie is caught on this ATM surveillance video that's the last time that we know that she was alive but it's not the last we see of clay hours after that he spotted inside this toy store wearing a completely different outfit than the one in that drug store that's clays truck outside with the trash can in the back what you can't see is the small boat he's towing but you can definitely see it here in a video from later that night we found the carwash video where he was washing the boat you could tell that he was looking to see if there was something on the boat like blood and when police released images of the boat to the public we had a young man a young woman that was out by the Mississippi River saw a small boat of that description across the river floating next to a remote sandbar known as Devil's Island so we searched that Aden multiple times but investigators could find no signs of Jackie still they felt clay knew way more than what he was saying so days after Jackie disappeared agent Ritter convinces him to come in for a formal interview though there was no audio recorded clay tells Ritter that the blood in the hallway that was quote the result of an accident in the kitchen which according to clay was not a big deal the carpet the blood was it enough at the time did you believe to move forward with a murder case against him I think we all knew we were on the right track but we knew we needed war without a body to feel comfortable going and so over the next several weeks investigators keep a very close eye on clay early on an investigation we put a tracker on his truck at that point unfortunately all it revealed was that clay a former sheriff's deputy himself knew the tracker was there I mean there was times where he would go and sit for a while in a vacant lot so it would cause us to get search teams to go that area start searching he was sending you on a cat-and-mouse chase he was he was playing with us the whole time soon pictures of Jackie were everywhere and with the entire community focused on the case clay Waller became increasingly frantic what's clay doing during this time he's laughing the dog along he thinks it's funny he would come by and honk horn say you guys ain't gonna find nothing but fools and all that stuff I had search crews from all over the country here the clay would drive by them he would give them a finger gesture and just laugh but all that breeziness was about to backfire by that time the court had already awarded custody of Jackie's triplets to her sister Cheryl and apparently clay had some strong opinions about that posting a comment online that read in part quote you are dead I promise if those kids get hurt I will get you 5 10 25 years from now you have it coming he just couldn't help himself he had to keep taunting people I saw the post coming across topics and I called agent Ritter and look at it I knew at that point when agent Ritter saw it that he had committed a federal crime finally four months after Jackie disappeared clay Waller was under arrest okay good lucky thank you not for her murder but on a federal charge for threatening her sister's life but would the suspect finally come clean from the first few hours Jackie Waller went missing police started looking at her estranged husband play Waller but still the suspected killer ran free was I afraid of him clay no I was listening to God he would come up here nearly five months after Jackie disappeared clay was arrested on a federal charge for threatening her sister online and that's not all according to prosecutor angel Woodruff in the situation like this where you have a major crime if it gets to the point where your primary suspect appears to be a danger to the community then we start looking really hard at anything we can charge him with and at the same time clay is busted for making those threats investigators also dig up allegations of stealing over $50,000 from a previous job and harassing a former friend before clay is taken away detectives try to learn more about Jackie's disappearance as he's done since the beginning clay denies his involvement claiming he's the real victim here in fact he has his own theories pointing the finger for whatever happened to his wife at a former associate named Gary the problem with that is police have already disproven it at the end of it all clay stands firm that he did not kill his wife even claiming to have proof that will exonerate him clay eventually pleads guilty to the federal charge of threatening Jackie's sister and is sentenced to five years behind bars at the same time prosecutors work to make sure he will also face justice for Jackie we couldn't even prove that she was dead so we scraped together every single bit of circumstantial evidence that we could until we got to the point where okay we're wetting the blood in his house the surveillance videos the fact that clay actively tried to hinder the investigation and there was so much more after nearly two years of turning over every Rock prosecutors finally felt comfortable enough to prove their case he was charged with murder in the first degree and tampering with physical evidence but despite Woodruff's best efforts without a body getting a conviction was no guarantee there's no such thing as a slam-dunk case plus even though Jackie's family wanted clay to face the stiffest punishment possible there was something else they wanted warm stan and ruby rawson indicated that the most important thing to them was to get Jackie back so when clays attorneys approached prosecutors to make a deal we told him we will accept a plea because we want to find her you want Jackie home we want her home the deal was clay Waller would plead guilty to second-degree murder and accept a sentence of 20 years in exchange for revealing what he did with Jackie he came right down until the time when he was going to go on trial and he realized that he was pretty well cooked when the time came play would lead investigators right back to a place they'd searched before a remote sandbar on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River known as Devil's Island knowing clay and how we dealt with him for two years we weren't a hundred percent sure that he was telling us the truth so we were still pessimistic about being able to locate him when the team got to the location clay only reinforced those fears he couldn't pinpoint where she was at it was a large area he says what she's here somewhere then a clue in one of the gruesome details of clays crime one key thing he had told us was he had put a bag of fertilizer on her body when he buried her one of the detectives indicated if you have too much fertilizer it kills the roots of a tree and that's when they see it one of my detectives and agent Ritter was studying the area and they saw three trees and one of the trees was completely dead and they're buried under that tree the end of one very long road was Jackie dug up by hand out there yes I did it myself we started to dig down and we first found her knee we can feel the skeletal remains with the blue jeans the next day we recovered her and it's the first step of her trip oh no not the homecoming anyone really wanted but at least one part of the mystery was solved and then it hit us that we now we had to tell the kids that we had to tell them that their mommy was dead and that their dad did it and what was their reaction we just all cried together and then we just assured him that we would love him and take care of them and that we would do our best to raise him that Cheryl and her husband Bob's sitting in silence with the triplets as their mother is finally laid to rest I leave you now for a little while for a home that awaits us all her funeral was on the day of our 50th wedding anniversary [Music] but there was still another part of Clay's plea agreement left of fulfill as part of his deal to get just 20 years for murdering his wife clay would have to confess on camera to every brutal detail of his crime how exactly was jackie murdered well a cross made of driftwood stands where Jackie Waller was finally found discovered only after her husband of nearly 18 years admitted to putting her there but leading investigators to the body was only half of clays deal in exchange for pleading guilty to second-degree murder he also had to give a full videotape confession of his crime clay says the wheels were really set in motion the year before Jackie died when she first started talking about splitting up in other words says clay she was warned I was not gonna sign for her safety she came in about May first and said I wanna go good boy that's it okay what they did you dig the hole is you better but here's where investigators really start to question the confession based on statements from Jackie's loved ones prosecutors have always believed that after meeting with their divorce attorney the next day clay lured Jackie back to his place by saying he had their son Maddox but just listen to what clay says really got Jackie to his house that day she saved me one last thing it was a stunning claim and interrogators weren't buying it nor did they believe what clay said next that after going back to his place for sex they ended up in the kitchen where it all started by accident when he claims that Jackie was getting into the frigerator and he was getting something out of the frigerator at the same time and raised his head up and then hit her nose with his head and that caused her nose to bleed she in the hallway where investigators found all that blood police says that's also where Jackie probably mad about the innocent accident started provoking him yeah it was he says the point of no return that she said you never gonna see these kids to hear clay tell it the attack was almost for the moment upon the passion brought on by an accident in the kitchen and Jackie's threats I wasn't pre-planned to kill my wife that day it wasn't the case at all the problem with that claim clays own statements from just moments before the data the hold the day before was not premeditation well I guess you could see it that way and that still wasn't the only thing that didn't add up how many times did you punch her once just once but Jackie's autopsy told a different story revealing multiple fractures to her face and skull consistent with blunt force trauma we new information that would let us know if he was telling the truth and he lied but one thing she does believe is clays claim that after he killed Jackie he put her body in a trash can loaded it into the back of his truck then drove to meet his girlfriend and five-year-old son at the toy store he was at the Toys R Us what if Jackie's body in the back of his truck and his there yes clay says after that he took Jackie across the river to Devil's Island where after dumping her into the pre dug grave he says a few final words where's my family in the end Clay's confession was hard for many to accept after turning his three children into orphans lying his way through the confession and even blaming the victim because of his plea deal played with still only serve a maximum of twenty years what do you think about the 20-year sentence well obviously it's too light for what he did but I stand behind the family and as it turns out prosecutors still had one more trick up their sleeves it was a new twist in the investigation clay Waller has admitted to murdering the mother of his three children but investigators still aren't convinced they've heard the whole truth and they certainly haven't heard much regret when he tried to blame it on Jackie it was her fault there's typical clay Waller thought nothing of anyone except himself and if there's any doubt about that just listen to this jailhouse phone call between clay and one of his relatives recorded just before his sentencing stand up in court tomorrow tell us himself why should I care what they're going through they don't care what I'm going through you understand no I don't you're not the victim o'clock it's happened two years ago I just move on I'm going to jail unfortunately clay didn't have to show remorse as part of his steal and for pleading guilty to second-degree murder he can't be sentenced to more than 20 years walk out them doors they can't do that more to me I mean I don't think they can candy turns out they could during his confession clay lets slip that he dug his wife's grave in Illinois the night before the murder then came back to Missouri to take her life as luck would have it that was a violation of the rarely used interstate domestic violence act it was close travel across state lines with the intent to commit to domestic violence which resulted in a federal charge being violated his punishment for that crime a much heftier 35 years in federal prison and that sentence won't even begin until after he serves out the 20 years for murder he shot himself in the foot over and over and over because he thinks he's the smartest person in the room but he is absolutely not before clay is taken away to serve out his time he's forced to stand up in court and listen to Jackie's loved ones give victim impact statements the most dramatic testimony coming from his own son Maddox he was determined his voice was going to be heard clay had no reaction to this he did not think it impacted him at all no in fact there is one final chapter to the deranged story written by Clay himself we learned that clay had written a book detailing the murder of his wife and his actions after what was the book's title he titled the book if you take my kids okay one last slap in the face to the family he tore apart I think it just goes to show you that play Wohlers depravity knows no bounds but while Jackie's family remains forever fractured by what clay is done they are far from broken the kids he orphan has now been officially adopted by Jackie's sister Shirl and her husband bond they are such good kids and I would say the biggest positive comment that I can ever hear and I hear it pretty regularly is the new people that meet them say they would have never known that these children had been through so much and I can testify to that fact having had the opportunity to sit down with them myself that's a good picture oh my goodness you all look like your mom in such different ways what do you want people to know about your mom I want people to know that she was nice funny caring yeah she was really nice and caring and she just loved everyone the children now twelve or just five when it all happened but they still have vivid memories from that time Maddox in particular do you remember giving your victim impact statement yes why was that important to you I just one help make a difference is that the case like I already knew what happened to everything I'm like and I thought I should just do the message just so he knows like I don't care for him anymore it is like he died he gets that he has ruined the bond between us and him and that he he's never gonna have that back like he took my mom away and that so I was trying to show him that you can't undo that Bob all the triplets are angry with their dad and they miss their mom they are now being raised in a house full of love their mother's memory kept alive by the very woman who kick-started the investigation into her death Jackie's sister Shirley we just love them so much they never have to doubt that did a good job at Cheryl [Music]

Channel: True Crime Daily

Views: 434,291

Rating: 4.7336783 out of 5

Keywords: Jacque Waller, Clay Waller, Devil's Island Illinois

Id: E-T1c9-i8uE

Length: 36min 34sec (2194 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 19 2019