transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] When we think of national parks, we picture peaceful hikes, scenic overlooks and quiet moments. But Park Predators reminds us that even in the most beautiful places, dark secrets might be lurking. This podcast explores true stories of crimes that took place in the outdoors. Places meant to bring people together with nature, but where things went tragically wrong. If you're drawn to the storytelling here on The Deck, you'll want to check out Park Predators. Listen to Park Predators anywhere you get your podcasts. Our card this week is Terry and Alan Westerfield, the King of Diamonds from North Carolina. A large part of a parent's week is playing shuttle driver, dropping off and picking up our children. It's so routine that we take for granted that second part, picking them up. So what would you do if you dropped your child off somewhere and when you returned to pick them up, they were just gone, disappeared, never to be seen again for 60 years? That's what happened to Terry and Alan Westerfield in September of 1964. Since then, the Fayetteville Police Department has tried to unravel the mystery of what happened that day. At the center of it, there's one big question still left up for debate. Were Terry and Alan ever even dropped off at all? Or was the story of their disappearance told by their stepfather, just one big lie? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Fayetteville, North Carolina is known for being a military town, through and through. Back in the 60s, it had Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base, now known as Pope Field, after the two bases merged. At the time, the Vietnam War had been raging for years, and that conflict was shaping Fayetteville.

Speaker 2:
[02:37] It was kind of the jumping off point for the guys that left from the United States and went to Vietnam. The city was bustling at that time, and was growing by leaps and bounds.

Speaker 1:
[02:47] That's Lieutenant Jeff Locklear of the Fayetteville Police Department giving us a little history lesson. Considering the town's large military presence, you'd assume that crime was rare. But it's not, not now and not back in 1964 when Alan and Terry went missing. In their case, all started with a call from their mother, Margie Westerfield Bach. She phoned police in the early morning hours of September 13th after returning home from a night out. She expected her boys to be fast asleep after a night at the movies, but they weren't in their beds. Margie's husband and the boy's stepfather, Carl Bach, had gone to pick them up from the movies, but when they didn't show up, he assumed that the 11-year-old Terry and 7-year-old Alan might have been with her.

Speaker 2:
[03:32] He figured the mom had swung by and picked him up, didn't think twice about it, returned home. Then when they started thinking about where the children are, he asked her, and she's like, no, I didn't go pick them up, and then that's really where this whole thing started.

Speaker 1:
[03:49] Now, if this happened today, we'd bring up the theater's security cam footage, roll it back, and see what we could find. But that wasn't an option in the mid-60s, so officers had to hit the pavement, and they searched up and down the streets around the theater, but with no luck. At some point, officers went to the boy's neighborhood, known as the Bordeaux, looking for anyone who knew them or who had seen them that night. Maybe they could give insight into why the boys would take off on their own, or where they might have gone, if that's what happened here.

Speaker 2:
[04:20] Normally, in a situation like this, you would expect the boy's friends to say something like, yeah, they didn't like their stepdad, or they were having problems with their mama, or one of the boys was having problems with a kid at school bullying him or whatever. But that's not what the file reflects. The file would reflect that the kids are happy. The kids like the stepdad. Life was good.

Speaker 1:
[04:44] So assuming they didn't run away, what happened to the boys between the time they were dropped off at the theater and when they were supposed to be picked up?

Speaker 2:
[04:54] So we're going to go to the theater and talk to the people who worked there and see if they saw those kids there. We're going to talk to the person that sells the popcorn in the movie theater. We're going to talk to the person that's tearing the tickets. We're going to talk to the janitorial staff there. Everybody who was there may have seen these kids. We're going to go out and talk to them.

Speaker 1:
[05:13] It turns out the brothers were regulars at the theater.

Speaker 2:
[05:17] In one of the interviews that's conducted, the lady said she knew them very well because she knew when they showed up, sometimes they like to run up and down the stairs, and she'd have to call them down a little bit and slow them down. So they knew them quite well there at the theater.

Speaker 1:
[05:32] But that woman didn't see the boys the night of the 12th. In fact, if you read some of the supplemental reports, like Lieutenant Locklear did, it appears no one did. Though something might have gotten lost over time. That or old news reports were inaccurate because at least one news report says that some employees did think that they saw the boys that day. But even if that's true, it seems that no one could place them there with 100% certainty, which made investigators ask a very critical question, the one at the heart of this case. Were the boys ever dropped off there to begin with? It turns out September 12th was a slightly unusual day because the childcare plan changed suddenly without their mom Margie knowing. That Saturday, Margie had to work, so she left the boys at home with their babysitter Barbara Temple. But around 11 a.m., their stepfather Carl showed up.

Speaker 2:
[06:27] So him showing up was not part of the plan as far as the babysitter was aware, but she was figuring, well, he's a stepdad and he says he's here now, he's going to take care of, then that wouldn't be something to be out of the ordinary.

Speaker 1:
[06:42] Now, the reason this wasn't part of the plan was because at the time, Margie and Carl, who had only gotten married the summer before, were already on the outs. Carl had moved out and was now living on base at Fort Bragg, where he worked as a military police officer, but he still had a key to the house and would occasionally borrow the family car. Even though Carl showed up that Saturday, the babysitter was still willing to stay, and she stuck around till like 12, 30 or 1 p.m. when Carl then told her to leave. After she left, Carl says that he fixed the boys some food and let them play for a bit. Then around 4 p.m., he dropped them off at the Broadway Theater, only a few miles away for a double feature. Carl says that he was back at the house when Margie arrived home from work at around 5:30 p.m. Now she wasn't psyched to find out that he dismissed the babysitter and dropped the boys at the movies, but she didn't have time to argue about it. She had plans that night. So she was out the door by 6.30. She went to the playpen, the NCO club at Pope Field and stayed there until she arrived home at 2 a.m. It's possible Margie had their shared vehicle that night because Carl was getting around in an old school looking red station wagon that he borrowed from a friend. That's how he was able to go back to the theater to pick up the boys at 7.45. He told police that he waited outside the theater in his car until 9.30.

Speaker 2:
[08:08] I would have sat there for a total of 30 seconds before I got out of my vehicle, right? Because my mom always told me, when I pull up, you better be standing there waiting.

Speaker 1:
[08:18] When almost two hours had passed with no sign of Terry or Alan, Carl said that he assumed maybe Margie had picked them up, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to investigators who have looked at this case. Carl says that he just went home after this and didn't realize anything was wrong until Margie got home. But what did he think she would have been doing with the boys during that time after he got home and realized they weren't there? Carl knew that Margie was out on the town that night. Did he think Terry and Alan were hanging out at the bar all night with their mom? The picture Carl was painting wasn't making a whole lot of sense. But by continuing to talk to people in the boy's neighborhood, investigators were starting to see a different picture come into focus. During police's continued canvassing efforts, they discovered that no one appeared to have seen the boys after 1 p.m. on the day that they went missing. Though there was one kid who tried to see them, but was stopped by Carl.

Speaker 2:
[09:24] One of the little boys in the neighborhood came over as little boys will, right? And they wanted to play with the boys, and the file would reflect that. Carl told them one of the boys was watching TV, and he came up with an excuse for the other kid, right? But basically, he kind of shoot the little boy off and said, not right now. They can't come out right now. They're tied up doing whatever.

Speaker 1:
[09:48] Lieutenant Locklear said there's another entry in the police file too. One that says Carl told the neighbor boy that both Terry and Alan were being punished. Why there are two different anecdotes isn't clear, but the timing of the visit does seem to be consistent. Lieutenant Locklear told us that it appears the kid came by at around 3.30 or 4 p.m., which would have been right around the time or right before Carl says that he's taking the boys to the movies. So this could line up with Carl's story, but if that account is correct and the boys were indeed being punished, why would Carl be taking them to a double feature? Then there was another oddity involving the red station wagon that Carl borrowed. Instead of just parking it in the driveway like a normal person would, he parked it about two blocks away.

Speaker 2:
[10:39] Although it's possible, it's not plausible to park two blocks away from your house and walk to your house. That doesn't make any sense. Detectives are logical thinkers, and if it doesn't make any logical sense, those are issues that he can't get past. In this case, that picture that's being painted is, all right, well, this doesn't feel right, and I don't like where this is going.

Speaker 1:
[11:05] His excuse for this made even less sense. He told police something about wanting to borrow the car Margie had. Lieutenant Locklear thinks that Carl hoped Margie was going to be at the house that day.

Speaker 2:
[11:18] He had hoped to have some interaction with her, so when he arrived there, he thought he was going to have a conversation with her.

Speaker 1:
[11:25] Keeping the car down the block would avoid tipping her off that he was there, and it would also avoid her seeing anything he might have been keeping in the car, which, if some neighborhood kids were to be believed, might have set off alarm bells for Margie.

Speaker 2:
[11:40] You walk by a car, you look in it just to see what's in it, just being nosy, right? So he said that there was maybe some newspapers and a blanket and some shovels or something in the back of the car.

Speaker 1:
[11:51] Lieutenant Locklear said that police did eventually search the car Carl borrowed that day and they found nothing. No shovels, no blood, no sign of Terry and Alan. But that just underscores a major problem with this case. It appears that if Carl harmed the boys, he had several hours after the babysitter left before Margie got home and even more time after Margie left that night to clean up or dispose of any evidence. And probably even more time after that, before police located and searched the vehicle he was using. With more than 60 years having passed since the boys disappeared, we really don't have a clear idea of what Carl did in that time. Carl told police that in the time between when he dropped the boys off at the theater and then went to pick them up, he had gone back to Fort Bragg. He said he had to check to see if he could keep his friend's car another night. Now, we don't know if police checked that claim out, but they did search Fort Bragg itself. Although according to Lieutenant Locklear, it would have been impossible to thoroughly search because of its sheer size. But I know they checked local ponds as well and woods. Everyone from state investigators to the FBI to army investigators helped with the search. But still, there was zero sign of the boys. Not even a single stitch of clothing was found. And therefore, there was nothing that connected Carl to their disappearance. Honestly, there wasn't even a super strong motive.

Speaker 2:
[13:25] So you start learning about any problems that's within a marriage, right? Whatever issues they have going on, that stuff a lot of times will begin to rise to the surface. And in this case, I think that's what they begin to see is, is that the boy's mom was at a point where she was kind of done with the marriage, was ready to move on, but he wasn't. That's the picture that was being painted to the detectives kind of as they done these interviews.

Speaker 1:
[13:54] This is the closest that detectives got to a why for Carl, if he was involved. That his and Margie's failing relationship may have been a factor. But why she wanted out of the marriage or what preceded this day in September seems to be unknown all these years later. Carl did have one criminal charge in his history, according to news reports. He was arrested earlier in his military career on either a robbery charge or for assault. He served some time but was eventually allowed to return to active duty. But was he violent to Margie? Was she scared of him? Would he do something to her sons just to get back at her for leaving him? I don't know. She clearly had no problem with him picking up her boys from the theater that night, which I think says something. But Margie and other family members did appear to suspect Carl and she eventually followed through with the divorce after the boys were gone. Carl for his part maintains that he had nothing to do with their disappearance. But he drew a line in the sand when it came to cooperating, turning down the polygraph that police wanted to use to help rule him in or out. So that's really where this case stalled. Three weeks into October, police were already convinced that the boys were dead, but they couldn't even prove that much. To complicate any case that they were trying to make against Carl, there were tips about possible sightings of Terry and Alan from all over.

Speaker 2:
[15:23] They got tips in from surrounding towns and stuff. Hey, I thought I might have saw those boys or boys feeding that description in the grocery store. I think one came in from maybe more county or whatever, but none of those panned out.

Speaker 1:
[15:37] Calls came in from as far away as Arizona and as close as Mississippi. They went nowhere. So within a year or two, the case essentially went cold, and Carl remained law enforcement's only person of interest in the case. There was one other person who may have been suspicious of Carl, and that's the boy's biological father, Melville. He was actually one of the first people police contacted when the boys came up missing. Early hope was that maybe, somehow, Terry and Alan were with him, but that wasn't the case and he was quickly cleared. Melville never gave up hope of finding out what happened to his sons, and he went on to start his own investigation. He followed any leads that he could find and grew desperate enough to speak with multiple mediums hoping that they could help. But no matter what he did or who he turned to, he appeared to end up in the same places as the Fayetteville Police Department with nothing.

Speaker 2:
[16:34] As I understand it, this thing consumed that man. It literally used him completely up. I heard he was heartbroken forever and he never got past that.

Speaker 1:
[16:46] Perhaps that heartbreak was too much. In 1978, Melville died by suicide. There were rumors that he kept an account of his investigation and that it had even been turned over to authorities after his death. But as far as Lieutenant Locklear knows, that's all that is, a rumor. After Melville's passing, science and technology advanced in a way I think many in the 60s could have never imagined. So over the following decades, police tried to build their case in that way. At one point, they had the boys' old home searched by a forensics team, but nothing was found. At other points, when remains were found, hopes rose that the boys might finally have been discovered, but every time those remains got eliminated, it wasn't them. Now sometimes time can be an investigator's best friend. A lot can change over the years. Memories, witness accounts, or even someone's conscious finally catching up with them. That was actually investigators' hope when they went back to Carl Bach in 2000 and sat down with him for a new interview. By the year 2000, Carl was in his late 70s, and he was sticking to the same story he gave a whole lifetime before. No new info, the end. Investigators gave it another 12 years and took a second crack at Carl in 2012.

Speaker 2:
[18:19] During that whole interview, he's sitting in his recliner, and he's got a table next to his recliner, a little, what do you call it, a coffee table or whatever. And there's 357 Magnum sitting right there within hand reach of him. So he gave the whole interview like that. So he was a pistol, no pun intended. He was this dude, he was interesting to say the least.

Speaker 1:
[18:45] Detectives were desperate to get Carl to talk before it was too late. They even floated the idea of possible immunity, I mean, something that they didn't actually have the power to give, and only the state AG could make that a reality. Now, whether Carl knew that they didn't have the power to grant immunity is unclear. But I wonder if he knew exactly what they were trying to do.

Speaker 2:
[19:08] He said, you've reminded me that I was an MP. And during that time, we used the same tactics to get people to tell us what we wanted to know. I think one of the things that doesn't get a lot of mention in this case is the fact that he was familiar with police techniques and questioning that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:
[19:27] One paper quoted a detective who said that Carl showed no emotion and wouldn't even refer to Terry and Alan by name. And he left detectives with a chilling statement. According to the Fayetteville Observer, Carl told investigators, quote, You know, I was the last one to see them alive. Was he saying that because after so many years, without contact, it feels like a pretty safe assumption? Or was he saying that because he knew something that we don't yet have confirmation of? We'll never know, because that would be the last time law enforcement spoke with Carl, who passed away in 2016, at the age of 93.

Speaker 2:
[20:09] So whatever information he had that he did not provide, he took with him to the grave. We don't have that anymore. And doesn't appear we're ever gonna get it.

Speaker 1:
[20:21] Carl lived longer than Margie, who died in the early 2000s. I hope somehow, in whatever comes after death, Margie and Melville were given all the answers that they never got in life. But now, there is no one left in the Westerfield family pushing for answers here, which is why I think it's so important we don't forget Terry and Alan Westerfield.

Speaker 2:
[20:45] One of the hopes for doing podcasts and doing any media is that somebody somewhere is listening to this and has a piece of information, no matter how small, that they would be willing to give to the Fayetteville Police Department.

Speaker 1:
[21:00] DNA is on file for both boys if remains are ever discovered. Their mother had kept locks of their baby hair, and she also provided a DNA sample for comparison. Their disappearance remains the Fayetteville Police Department's oldest unsolved case. But that doesn't mean it's too late for justice, which for Lieutenant Locklear doesn't necessarily mean an arrest.

Speaker 2:
[21:24] Justice, I think, in this case would be us locating their remains and bringing them home. Sadly enough, this case caused a lot of people to die with a broken heart. And I think that's the biggest travesty is that that lady left this world and the father did as well, not knowing where their kids are. I can't imagine what that would feel like.

Speaker 1:
[21:57] If you have any information about the disappearance of Terry and Alan Westerfield in September of 1964, please get in touch with Lieutenant Jeff Locklear directly at 910-433-1960. Or if you'd like to remain anonymous, you can call the Fayetteville Cumberland County Crime Stoppers at 910-483-TIPS. The Deck is an Audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.