Walter Waldhauser, one of Houston’s most renowned felons, “deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison,” the former investigator stated. “He’s one of the most intelligent persons I’ve ever met. I’ve never seen somebody labor so hard to deceive others.”
In exchange for a 30-year prison sentence, Waldhauser admitted to his role in one of Houston’s most prominent murder cases in 1981.
Waldhauser was released on parole nine years later and changed his identity to Michael Lee Davis. He eventually relocated to Dallas and began perpetrating financial fraud.
He was sentenced to 60 years in prison for money laundering a decade after his release, based on evidence that he stole more than $5 million.
Waldhauser was eligible for parole seven years later because it was a nonviolent felony.
Bonds rallied his forces that year to persuade the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to refuse his release and postpone it for five years.
Earlier this year, he launched a similar campaign, asking his extensive network of friends and contacts to write letters opposing his release.
Last Monday, the parole board declined to release Waldhauser for the second time and postponed the next decision until 2021.
With a giggle, he continued, “I’ve got another five years when I don’t have to worry about the SOB being on the streets.” “I want to live longer than he does.”
After 40 years in law enforcement, Bonds, now 68, retired from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in 2008.
After spending two years investigating the 1979 murders of John and Diana Wanstrath and their 14-month-old son, Kevin, his legacy became inexorably tied with Waldhauser’s fate.
Bonds was able to prove that the murders were planned by Diana Wanstrath’s adopted brother, not a murder-suicide as previously supposed. He also revealed that Markham Duff-Smith, the adopted brother, had recruited triggerman Allen Wayne Janecka to assassinate the family in exchange for an inheritance. Duff-Smith and Janecka were both sentenced to death and killed for their involvement.
Bonds was also able to establish that Waldhauser was involved in Diana Wanstrath’s mother’s death, which had been ruled a suicide five years before.
In both occurrences, Waldhauser, who confessed, worked as an intermediary who recruited and paid Janecka.
The tale was chronicled in Rick Nelson’s book “The Cop Who Wouldn’t Quit,” which solidified Bonds’ place in Houston’s criminal history.
Is Johnny Bonds still alive?
Johnny Bonds, a retired Houston homicide detective, has been working on “Cold Justice” since the beginning. He began his career in law enforcement in 1967, and at the age of 25, he was promoted to the Homicide Division as the youngest Detective. He served in other prestigious divisions such as Fugitive Detail, Internal Affairs, and SWAT after eight years in Homicide. In 1979, he was nicknamed “The Cop Who Wouldn’t Quit” after solving the terrible triple killing of the Wanstrath family. Johnny tried to retire early, but quickly discovered that the only thing he’s actually good at is being a cop. He returned and began working as an investigator for the District Attorney’s office, where he met Kelly in 1989. In the Special Crimes unit, he became her Primary Investigator, and they worked closely together. Johnny has spent the most of his 41 years in law enforcement concentrating on homicide cases, handling over 1,000 homicides and speaking with hundreds of killers. Interrogations are his expertise, and he has a knack for persuading individuals to open up.
Kelly Siegler grew up where?
Kelly Siegler is a teacher. She was a brilliant student from an early age, graduating as valedictorian from El Maton’s Tidehaven High School.
Yolanda left Cold Justice for a reason.
“Cold Justice is going to be on Oxygen,” she said in a comment, though she didn’t explain why she made that decision. I’ve decided not to return and am instead focusing on other projects that have been offered to me.”
Yolanda McClary, what happened to you?
The TV show Cold Justice has been canceled by TNT. Yolanda McClary, a former crime scene investigator, confirmed the cancellation on her verified Facebook account.
What is Kelly Siegler up to these days?
Kelly Siegler is a former prosecutor in Harris County, Texas. She led the Special Crimes Bureau, which encompassed the Major Offenders Division, Major Fraud Division, Identity Theft Division, Asset Forfeiture Division, and Consumer Fraud Division.
Siegler has given talks on “Final Arguments,” “Jury Presentation,” “Arguing Effectively for a Death Sentence,” and “How to Pick a Jury” all throughout the United States.
Siegler was dubbed the “Giant Killer” because he tried 20 death sentence cases and won 19 of them.
Siegler received her BBA in International Business from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, and her JD from South Texas College of Law in 1985. (1987).
On _Cold Justice,_ her natural qualities as a public speaker translate nicely to the small screen.
Tidehaven High School graduate with a BBA in International Business from the University of Texas in Austin (1984). South Texas College of Law has a JD program (1987).
Was the murder of Jane Doe averted?
Oxygen is still on a true-crime kick. The cable network announced today that it had purchased Exhumed, as well as specials The Jane Doe Murders and The Case Died With Her, as well as renewing Injustice with Nancy Grace for Season 2. Read more about the shows in the sections below.
Exhumed, whose producers include Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’s spouses, chronicles a murder case in which the discovery of a victim’s remains is the key to solving the twisted crime.
“We are happy to be collaborating with Oxygen on Exhumed as true-crime enthusiasts, stated Ripa and Consuelos. “We can’t wait to delve into these intriguing instances and illustrate how exhumations have helped solve murders and offer closure to families across the United States.”
Is Kelly Siegler still an attorney?
The Oxygen Network boasts in Kelly Siegler’s bio on the webpage for her TV show Cold Justice: “Kelly has tried over 65 murder cases and has won every single one.” However, something is missing from this image. There’s no asterisk, no footnote, no link to another page to highlight a key truth about Ms. Siegler’s record: she engaged in blatant prosecutorial misconduct without remorse. This has been well known for years; as we mentioned in this piece from 2016, in the David Temple murder trial, “Ms. Siegler and her team were found guilty of 36 counts of misconduct by a court.” If the ex-prosecutor has a knack for it, “She not only has a unique ability to jeopardize her own so-called triumphs by sowing seeds of wrongdoing that take years to bloom (unfortunately for those she imprisoned). Ronald Prible, who has been on Texas’ death row since 2002, was granted a fresh trial by a federal judge two weeks ago. What is the explanation for this? Siegler cheated his way to a guilty verdict and a death sentence.
Although the judge’s ruling is lengthy, below is a summary of the evidence surrounding the murders of Esteban Herrera, Nilda Tirado, and their three children. The State discovered no murder weapon or forensic evidence on Prible, who was pals with Herrera and Tirado. Prible’s DNA was discovered in Ms. Tirado’s lips, and he admitted to authorities that he was having an affair with her. That DNA was insufficient to justify an arrest in the absence of other evidence, and the case went cold for two years. Kelly Siegler is here to help. Despite the fact that no new evidence had been discovered, the State charged Prible with murder. Prible was in federal prison at the time of his arrest, serving time on a federal bank robbery conviction.
The State’s whole case at trial hinged on two things: inmate snitch testimony and DNA expert testimony about the timeframe in which Prible’s DNA was transferred to the victim’s mouth. The validity of both pillars of Prible’s conviction were found to be shattered as a result of Siegler’s misbehavior.
The specifics surrounding the jailhouse informant testimony—a notoriously inaccurate but widely available source of information—are fascinating. Kelly Siegler had been developing a ring of informants at the federal prison where Prible was confined, the judge decided after discovery and an evidence hearing. If inmates came forward with useful information, Siegler offered to alert their individual prosecutors about their assistance, effectively providing them the opportunity to have their sentences reduced or to be released sooner. Several informants came forward with reports that Prible had unburdened himself to them after receiving facts about the Prible case from the prosecution and the news. Despite Siegler’s portrayal of Prible’s snitch testimony as the result of her own confessions, the truth is that she withheld evidence of her very active role in obtaining that evidence.
Despite the fact that the prosecution only called one informant at Prible’s trial, it came out that several others were banging on the door. Prible began hearing rumors about the snitches in his case after his conviction, and he discovered that the same ring that had been used against him may have been used to frame another murder defendant, Hermilo Herrero. Prible’s defense counsel finally got access to letters given to her by some of Siegler’s informants, as well as notes Siegler took during her encounters with these guys, after years of litigation. All of this information happened to be in the prosecution’s possession at the time “They were retained in a “work-product” folder, which meant they wouldn’t be turned over to the defense team. Because the evidence was suppressed, it was significant “The letters show, at the at least, that a ring of informants worked together to get sentence reductions in exchange for providing the State with incriminating evidence in the form of falsified confessions.”
Siegler eventually testified in the federal evidentiary hearing after first avoiding the court’s demand. Siegler, in the view of the judge, “The letters from other inmates attempting to tell on Prible were in the open file, but it is now undisputed that they were in her work product file and were not revealed to defense counsel.” To put it another way, Siegler lied under oath. The court even went so far as to say that “On both small and large matters, Siegler’s testimony was untrustworthy.”
Siegler not only obstructed the defense from acquiring information that would have allowed it to refute the informant’s testimony, but she also concealed crucial evidence about the State’s DNA claim at trial. The DNA profile discovered by the State’s DNA witness, William Watson, claimed it “would be compatible with” Prible depositing the semen in Tirado’s mouth “moments, if not seconds, before she was slain.” It’s pretty heinous. The testimony of the prosecution’s expert witness was called into question by the defense expert “It’s not scientifically sound.” Siegler, of course, had a fun day mocking the defense and abusing her expert’s statements:
But it was Siegler who spoke to the jury last. …dismissed the claim that Prible and Tirado had an affair in an emotionally charged debate, claiming that “appearance is what leads to affairs” that Prible “is creepy and gives you the creeps.” Siegler questioned the defense DNA expert’s testimony, saying it depended on Prible having “some kind of magic semen, magic sperm that somehow lives longer than any of y’alls or any other man’s in this entire cosmos.” Jurors would have to infer that to believe the defense, Siegler said “His sperm is so delicious that she strolled around for a couple of hours relishing the taste in her mouth.” Prible was described by Siegler as “so depraved” that he could murder Tirado while sexually thrilled.
Pam McInnis, the head of the Harris County crime lab, had advised Siegler that semen may live up to 72 hours in the oral cavity, which the defense was unaware of at the time. Siegler was found guilty by a federal court “rather than expose it to the defense, she buried it in her work product file.” As a result, she accepted and profited from testimony that her own crime lab had judged to be scientifically unsound.
Both pillars of Prible’s conviction have fallen to dust in light of all the evidence revealed in the post-conviction proceedings. He has every right to the new trial that has been awarded to him. There are many unanswered questions. Will the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, led by Kim Ogg, pursue the matter further by filing an appeal? Will they continue to defend the office’s gross misunderstanding of its legal responsibilities? Why, on a moral level, is the prosecutor who is guilty for this egregious and destructive misbehavior still representing the profession in front of the public? Her license to practice law in Texas is still active, according to the Texas State Bar. Kim Ogg should be examining her convictions rather than defending them on appeal, given the type of techniques she knowingly used.
Is the show Cold Justice still running?
Cold Justice is an unscripted real crime series that first aired on TNT and is now available on Oxygen. Dick Wolf’s series follows former prosecutor Kelly Siegler and a team of investigators as they re-open unsolved murder cases with the permission of local law enforcement. As of January 2015, the squad had aided local authorities in the arrests of 21 people, the filing of 11 criminal indictments, four confessions, three guilty pleas, and three murder convictions.
Despite no official word from TNT, retired crime scene investigator Yolanda McClary confirmed the series’ cancellation on her Facebook page in May 2016. She later added that the production firm is looking for alternative networks to air the show on. Cold Justice will premiere with fresh episodes on July 22, 2017, according to the Oxygen Channel. The sixth season will air on July 10, 2021, as confirmed on June 8, 2021. Cold Justice has broadcast 98 episodes as of January 1, 2022, bringing the sixth season to a close.