--:-- Valerie Borlein: A word of warning, this series contains descriptions of violence in strong language, including unbleeped curse words. Please be advised.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Previously on Camp Swamp Road.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I didn't see how this could be. I didn't see how you could stand your ground while you're chasing someone else's. Yes, it was a dead body, but it was the body of my son. You would expect more reverence for a body than he received. I didn't know what to look at first, so I just opened the first folder, and there they were: the 90 phone calls.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It's Sunday, February 9th, 2025. Across America, families and friends are gathering to watch the Philadelphia Eagles take on the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. But Jennifer Foley isn't one of them.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Through her civil suit against Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams, she had just gotten a hold of a mountain of evidence. Jennifer was poring over a mangled mess of police files, which included hours of Weldon Boyd's phone calls.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I was at my kitchen table, sitting at my kitchen table, and I was writing down the file names. I'm trying to figure out who some of these people are, because I'm not really sure what I'm looking at.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And how many hours of calls are you going through?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I mean, I think there's what, seven, eight, seven or eight hours of work. The calls are from 2023, spanning from the day of the shooting to a few days after, Saturday, September 9th, to Wednesday, September 13th.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer clicked around, and then she opened this call. Honey, 911. Hiya.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The next available operator will answer your call. You've heard this call before. It's Weldon Boyd calling 911 about Scott Spivey. But that version was from the dispatcher side. This recording is from Boyd's phone.
--:-- Weldon Boyd: Hey, I've got a guy pointing a gun at me driving. We're armed as well. He keeps throwing the gun in our faces. I don't like he's about to shoot us. If he keeps us up, I'm going to shoot him.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In this recording, you can hear things you couldn't make out in the police dispatch version. Like the sound of Boyd's powerful truck, a Dodge Ram TRX. It has a supercharged engine called the Hellcat V8.
--:-- Weldon Boyd: We're on Highway 9 headed toward Lourdes.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And for the first time, you can clearly hear another voice. Boyd's passenger, Bradley Williams, telling his friend to slow down.
--:-- Bradley Williams: My buddy's like, what the fuck? And he's got a gun aimed at us next to us.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Police had concluded that Jennifer's brother, Scott Spivey, had been the aggressor. But when Jennifer heard this version of the 911 call, it told her a different story.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: What she heard was her brother being chased. He's running from you. Leave him alone.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Like, all I can do, and that whole 911 tape is like, please, just stop. Just stop.
--:-- Weldon Boyd: But Boyd doesn't stop.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer knows how this call ends. She hears Boyd follow her brother onto Camp Swamp Road. Then Boyd's truck stops, and Jennifer hears the shots, much louder than she had heard before.
--:-- Weldon Boyd: We're out. Hey, hey. Weldon, back up. I can't. I can't put it in gear. Put it in gear.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: After they ring out, Jennifer notices something else new. Something that Bradley Williams says.
--:-- Bradley Williams: God damn it, Weldon. Why couldn't we fucking leave him alone?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In that moment, what Jennifer hears is Bradley Williams undermining his and Boyd's claim of self-defense. What she hears is that they knew they were chasing Spivey.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: After the 911 call, Jennifer moves on to the next file, and the next one, and the next. She can't stop listening.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I pulled the first all-nighter that I pulled since I wrote my thesis to get my master's. Like, that was 10 years ago. I mean, I stayed up the whole time.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer is late-night cramming because she has a deadline. In just a few hours, her lawyer, Mark Tinsley, would question Boyd and Williams face-to-face for the first time.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: I began to listen to the calls as I drove. Okay, and so I can tell you that pretty much the entire four-hour drive, I was listening to calls all the way and making notes.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Mark got them the next morning. He was about to set off on a 200-mile drive to depose Boyd and Williams under oath.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: I was like on pins and needles waiting to get the callback of how everything went.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Beyond just wanting to know how the depositions went, Jennifer was eager to tell Mark something important, something else she'd heard in the calls.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I said, I know that the stand your ground stuff comes first. I said, but at some point I want to talk to you about the role that Worry County played in this.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: And Mark was like, what do you mean? And I was like, well, I know I told you, but I don't know if you realize, like, there's like eight calls between him and the deputy chief.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer discovered that Weldon Boyd was doing a lot of talking with the deputy chief of Worry County Police.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It was like pouring gasoline on it and setting it on fire. I mean, they were explosive. The things you hear are explosive.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: That's next.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you go from I know the way to I've arrived with our top 10 ranked online MBA.
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--:-- Valerie Borlein: Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host a highly anticipated new competition show.
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--:-- Valerie Borlein: On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I want to go back to Camp Swamp Road on the night of the shooting and to what Weldon Boyd was doing in the half hour after killing Scott Spivey.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: While police are securing the crime scene and interviewing witnesses, Boyd makes a few calls. He calls his dad.
--:-- Weldon Boyd: I killed him.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Well, you know what? If he deserved it, don't worry about it.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: He calls his lawyer.
--:-- Weldon Boyd: Well, you need to not be telling your story in front of a bunch of people. Okay. Sorry.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And he calls a very close friend.
--:-- Weldon Boyd: What's up, man? Brandon, where are you at?
--:-- Brandon Strickland: I'm in the house. Can you come to Camp Swamp Road off of 9, like, as fast as possible?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: This call was to Brandon Strickland. Strickland and Boyd are good buddies. They go hunting together.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I had to shoot somebody. He held a gun at us. He ran us off the road. We stopped to try and get the stuff on the trailer because we were hauling a couch.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: He got out, pulled a gun, started shooting at us, and we had to shoot back.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Yes. I've got to be real careful with that because in my jurisdiction we're an investigating agency, so I've got to be careful that I'm not showing any... I know that.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It's self-defense. And we've got witnesses that are all saying it's self-defense.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: I just, I'm a fucking nervous wreck, dude. I'll slide out there, but I gotta be real careful, you know what I'm saying?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Okay, alright. Alright, thanks.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Just be calm. Okay.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: A few minutes later, Boyd and Strickland talk again.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Hey, Will. Hi. Look, I got the people coming that need to come, but I need you to listen to me and understand me for a second okay.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Okay.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: It might not make sense now but it make sense later.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: You come out there okay.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Yeah, I get it.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: No, I get it now. I understand.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The number two man at the Horry County Police Department is promising Boyd that he's got the right people coming. That keeps it clean.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: And what you're telling me is a case, and it's a self-defense thing.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Yeah. You're going to be fired. You just got to go through the process.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: They're going to ask you questions. They're probably going to take you to Conway and sit down and talk to you.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Okay. All right.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: But just, I'm right here. I know. I know. I understand completely.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: All right. Well, you'll be all right.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Thank you. Amen. Bye.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Strickland's lawyer, Bert Von Herman, says his client's recorded assurances are, quote, all bluster.
--:-- Bert Von Herman: Von Herman says that Strickland did nothing to influence the investigation.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: and he denies that his client helped Boyd avoid criminal charges.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Hey, bud. What's up, man? You all right?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Yeah, I'm good. It's a frickin' mess, though.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: The morning after the shooting, Strickland texts Boyd and asks that he call him.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: They would speak four times that day.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Well, dude, I didn't come here last night. I did that for you because I didn't want anybody to be able to come back and say, like that other guy's family or something, say, oh, he's friends with the deputy chief, and he was out there directing the investigation.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: You know what I mean?
--:-- Brandon Strickland: No, I understood that completely.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Even though Brandon Strickland wasn't there, he explains to Boyd what he was doing behind the scenes.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Well, and I'll tell you what happened after you called me.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Now, this is Brandon and Wilton, never to be spoke of again.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: I called my people. And the detective who met with you last night was Alan Jones, right?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I think so, yeah.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Strickland is saying that he personally picked Detective Alan Jones to manage the Camp Swamp Road investigation.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: This is the same Alan Jones who interviewed Boyd at the police station.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Yeah, country guy. Good old boy.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Well, that's who I sent out there and I called.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The same Alan Jones who wrote the police report saying Boyd's and William's actions were justified.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I was working, I was in the shadows last night. I weren't there, but I was in the shadows.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: This is also the same Alan Jones who Jennifer called repeatedly in the weeks after the shooting, begging for answers.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Well, you know, I'm a friend that will always be there for you and I don't, I didn't want you to look at it as Dan Brandon didn't even come to me, but I did it for you.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: No, that never even crossed my mind.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: I mean, I fully understand everything.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And it just, I don't know, it's just not how I expected my Saturday to go, that's for sure.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: According to a spokeswoman for Horry County Police, detectives are assigned on-call duty in advance, meaning that Jones responded to Spivey's homicide because it was his turn.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Horry County Police didn't make Jones available for an interview.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Boyd and Strickland have been friends for some time. They were both seen as small-town boys who had become successful men.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: At the time of the shooting, Strickland was on a fast track to becoming chief of Horry County Police.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Boyd had done a lot for Strickland and his colleagues.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: At his restaurant, Boys on the Boulevard, uniformed police officers eat free, and their families eat half price.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The restaurant has even donated tactical equipment to the Horry County Police Special Operations Team.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Before the shooting, Boyd's restaurant was scheduled to cook a big meal for the police.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: But in another call, Strickland tells Boyd that event might be a little problematic now.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: We do probably need to postpone the cooking for the department if I look.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Yeah, okay. We'll wait until next year.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Yeah, because they'd be like, damn, yeah, he's feeding the people.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Big Banner says, thank you.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Here, they talk about how things might have been different for Boyd if Scott Spivey wasn't a white man.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Well, Brandon and Will have been talking as glad as a white male.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Yes. That's the first, well, one of the first questions I asked.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I was like, okay, you know how to actually... Yeah, that would have changed the narrative.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Some of America's best-known stand-your-ground cases have involved older white men killing younger black men, George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin in Florida, or the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The handling of those cases was highly scrutinized, and Boyd and Strickland seem aware of it.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: You'd have still been okay, but you'd have really had people run their mouths down. White business owner shoots blackmail, you know. What a mess.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The Spivey family was unhappy with a lot of things that the Horry County Police did, but they were particularly angry about the decision to tow Scott Spivey's body in his truck.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: On another call from the day after the shooting, Strickland explains to Boyd why that happened.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Yeah, hell, they towed the truck to the PD with his body still in it.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I felt, yeah, they never took it out.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I kind of thought that was odd.
--:-- Brandon Strickland: Well, you can in some situations, but in a situation where they're looking to make sure that every guy has dotted teeth crossed to clear you, they did it that way.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It's a little hard to hear, but in talking about the handling of Scott Spivey's body, Strickland describes it as a situation where they were looking to clear Boyd.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I've spoken with several coroners in South Carolina.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Transporting a dead body in a truck is not at all the way it's done.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Some question whether it's even legal under state law.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Typically in a homicide, a coroner would be responsible for a body. It has to be under their control.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Horry County Police told the Spivey family they towed the truck with the body inside because of the weather.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It looked like rain.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Hearing these calls between Boyd and Strickland, things were starting to come together for Jennifer.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Why detectives were so cagey with her family? Why the police didn't seem to thoroughly investigate her brother's death?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Everything we thought, everything that we questioned, we had positive affirmation in those calls.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I'm realizing that Scott was never going to have a fighting chance.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Discovering these calls clarified so many things for Jennifer, but they left her with a big question.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Who didn't listen to them?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: They're here. Am I the only person that has listened to these phone calls?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Remember, these calls came from an Horry County police file.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: They had been in their possession for months.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer couldn't understand how anyone in law enforcement could hear what she'd heard and decide not to charge Boyd and Williams.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: How did it pass through SLED, Ory County Police Department, and the Attorney General's office, and no one listened to these?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And then they want to stand in front of my family and say, we looked at all the evidence, and we've come to this conclusion.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer now had evidence she believed showed blatant police corruption.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: and evidence she also believed completely upended Boyd and Williams' stand-your-ground defense.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I didn't say these things. I didn't say any of it. I just pressed play.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer was about to go public with the calls.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: She had no idea what that would set in motion.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Worry Cannon Police Department has terminated a patrol division sergeant as part of an ongoing internal affairs investigation.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Next time on Camp Swamp Road.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Body cam footage shows what some say. Is the officer coaching the shooter, Weldon Boyd, to act like a victim?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Can we trust that evidence?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Are you asking me can I trust a video with my own eyes?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I mean, look, if there is...
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Here's the thing.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Valerie, what are you asking me?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And I'm afraid that you all sleep tonight knowing that no blind eye can be turned to Scott's body anymore.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Thank you. Thank you, man. Thank you.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Hold on.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In this case, the fact from the womb to the tomb. From the beginning to the end, lead conclusively to the finding that this is a stand-your-ground case.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Camp Swamp Road is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I'm Valerie Borlein.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Our senior producer is Rachel Humphreys.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Our producer is Heather Rogers.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Editing by Colin McNulty.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Fact-checking by Nicole Pasolka.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Music, sound design, and mixing by Nathan Singapak.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Additional music by Peter Leonard.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Our theme music is by So Wiley Remixed for the series by Nathan Singapak.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Special thanks to Catherine Brewer, Miguel Bustillo, Sam Enriquez, Pia Gaccari, Carlos Garcia, Matt Quang, Jennifer Levitz, Jessica Mendoza, Bruce Orwell, Valana Patterson, Sarah Platt, and Cam Pollock.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Episode 4 will be released next Sunday.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Stand in awe as bison roam the Wild Winds Buffalo Preserve.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Perfect fall moments are waiting.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: See you soon in Steuben County.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Start planning today at visitindiana.com slash steuben.
