“Did, uh, do you know if he made plans to go back down there that night or with anybody?”
“He didn’t, he didn’t tell me if he did; which is strange. He usually tells me everything; that’s my brother.”
“Yeah,” Detective Russ said. “What’s your thoughts on what happened?”
Josh said he could not understand what or who could have lured Trey to his death at the creek bed. He’d spent a lot of time wondering and trying to come to terms with the whole tragedy, but it was impossible to do. He didn’t have any answers. “My thoughts are, uh, it’s blank. I really have no idea who would do it. He really didn’t have any enemies,” Little Josh said as he shrugged his shoulders.
“Have you ever known him to walk that way by himself at dark time? I mean by himself at ten, eleven, twelve, one or two in the morning?”
“No,” Josh said, dumbfounded.
“That’s the big question. I’m trying to figure out how or why he would’ve went down there. ’Cause he didn’t call anybody on his phone. There’s no phone calls made on his phone after six o’clock that night when you all were still at the cookout. I mean everybody was still having fun playing basketball.”
Josh sat quietly, listening to the detective’s words. He had rehashed the night repeatedly in his mind. Trey wasn’t the type to go to the dark area near the creek bed alone. He wracked his brain trying to think of reasons Trey might have done so.
“So, he never called anybody to say, ‘Hey, meet me down there,’” Russ continued. “That’s the big question I’m trying to answer. Who he would have been going down there to meet? Was there a girl? Would he have went down there to smoke weed or a cigarette?”
Shaking his head, Josh said, “He wouldn’t go down there by himself. I don’t see him going anywhere by himself at night.”2
Little Josh thought about the area where Trey was found; it could be a scary atmosphere. He didn’t know anyone who would travel to that area alone in the middle of the night, let alone his fourteen-year-old stepbrother, and he conveyed these sentiments to the detective, who promptly agreed, “I went down there one night about six or eight days ago at one o’clock in the morning. I mean, the soccer field I think is kinda lit up, but down there where he was at, it’s pitch dark. I was even,” he paused, shaking his head, “I’ve got a gun and I’m scared down there. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Josh responded. He shuddered thinking about Trey being there alone. It was a frightening thought and everyone in the neighborhood, including Josh, was still on edge weeks later.
“So what I’m trying to figure out is why he would have went down there.”
“I don’t know.”
“As far as Trey trying to leave that night, have you heard anything about that?”
As he thought about the question, Josh remembered the conversation he’d had with both Amanda and his father during the afternoon Trey was missing when they were all desperately searching for him, “They said he, uh, went out to the back porch fully dressed. They said they stayed right there the whole night on the back porch.” Josh looked down to his lap, embarrassed, “I’m sure you already know,” he said, referring to the intimate activities his father and stepmother had engaged in on the back porch.
Gouker previously told Joshua that he and Amanda had sexual intercourse on the back porch of the home on the evening Trey went missing. He saw nothing wrong with disclosing intimate details of his sex life to his fifteen-year-old son.
Josh was embarrassed to repeat his father’s story. “They were out there having their time and unscrewed the spotlights and stuff, so I guess [Trey] thought they weren’t out there or something. I don’t know. I guess he went to leave and then walked back in.”
“I know you don’t wanna say weird things about your dad,” Detective Russ began tentatively, surely noticing the boy’s discomfort in relating the information about his father and Amanda’s romp on the back porch, “but I have to ask you, as far as his and Amanda’s relationship, did you ever see them argue?”
“I mean, yeah, they argued verbally.”
“Now what about Trey? Did he ever try to stop your dad from arguing with his mom?”
“He never really does it around me or Trey,” Josh said, referring to his father’s outbursts. It seemed that generally, if the kids felt an argument coming on, they would scatter and try to get as far away as possible. Just as often, Amanda and Gouker would go into the bedroom and shut the door if their fighting words became too intense.
“Did you and Trey ever have any problems?”
“We always, I’ve known him my whole life,” Josh explained.
“Yeah,” Russ said, leaning forward.
“Even when my dad was locked up, I saw him. We lived in the apartments and him and his mom lived in the apartments. We played the whole time we grew up.”
Watching Josh as he sat thinking, Detective Russ next focused on the night that Trey disappeared. It was puzzling to everyone that Trey was able to sneak out of the house without arousing the suspicions of either adult and any light that Josh could shed on the situation would be greatly appreciated. “Tell me about the night, after everybody left and you said something about the shower? Kind of walk through that for me if you could,” Russ requested.
“He said he was going to take a shower. We were still on the back porch, in the backyard. The cookout was just ending and he said he was going to go take a shower or something.”3
“Now was his sister there then?”
“Uh yeah, she took a shower too.”
“Were you in the house when he took the shower?”
“Uh, uh, ’cause I came over here,” he said, gesturing toward the tiny stone house in front of the cruiser.
“So on the back porch, he tells you he’s going to take a shower and you come down here?”
“He said, ‘I’m gonna go in here and take a shower…and so I was gonna come down here and calm down for a little bit and watch movies. I ended up falling asleep.” Detective Russ seized on a perceived discrepancy in Josh’s story and he wasted no time in bringing the apparent inconsistency to the boy’s attention.
“Now I guess my only concern is there’s a little difference in your story today than what you told the detective over at the gym. You told her that you were in the house when Trey was taking a shower and then when he got out of the shower you watched him put his clothes back on,” the detective said, referring to the conversation Little Josh had at Liberty High School with Detective Maroni.
“No, I came over here when Trey was taking a shower. I heard that he walked out of the door fully dressed, head to toe, which would have to be after the shower. ’Cause it was after I came over here and he said he was taking a shower.”
“But I meant in the interview you told her. She recorded it. You said that Trey took a shower and you were there when he took a shower and you watched him put his clothes back on. Those were your own words.”
“That was false.”
“So you weren’t there when he took a shower?”
“Correct. I was here.”
“And you weren’t there when he put his clothes back on?”
“No, but I knew he put his clothes back on, ’cause when he walked on the back porch and…” his voice trailed off as the detective jumped in.
“So you kinda got that from them?
“I kinda put two and two together.”
“Okay and I just wanted to ask you because it was a little different from what you said that day, but it makes sense.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
Josh continued to remain straightforward with the officer for the duration of the interview and several times during the conversation both questioned why Trey would have visited the creek bed so late. They wondered who went with him, because neither felt that he would go alone.
As the pair sat in the police vehicle, Detective Russ continued: “I mean, you understand it doesn’t make sense, Trey’s scared of the dark and he would
n’t go there alone.”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s like who would he have went with? That’s the million dollar question, honestly. I mean, I’m sure you ran this through your mind a million times.”
“It went through my mind a lot and it comes up blank every time, because I can’t picture what he’d be doing.”4
“Now, he didn’t meet you back down there? You all didn’t sneak out?”
“No,” Josh replied, knowing that he had not left his cousin Cassi’s house the entire night after he went to her house to watch movies. He understood that the police had to question everyone and it seemed that popular opinion among the police and neighborhood residents was that his dad was somehow involved.
The detective looked pointedly at Josh, “You know everybody is mad at your dad. They think he had something to do with it. I know people in the neighborhood are probably talking about your dad.”
He’d heard rumblings that they were, but Josh tried to stay away from the drama. He’d been through enough in his young life and the last thing he needed was to be involved in neighborhood gossip. However, he knew the detective was right. His dad could be a scary guy, especially to people on his bad side. Josh couldn’t fathom that his dad could do something so awful. He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.
Detective Russ suggested that they run through the circumstances surrounding Trey’s relationship with his stepfather, Joshua Gouker. Little Josh sat quietly and listened to the detective: “He’s scared of the dark. We don’t know who he would’ve went with. You have no idea who he would have been down there to meet or what would’ve got him down there. So if I say something wrong, please correct me.” He paused, looking at Little Josh. “I’m just trying to run through everything you told me. Um, your dad and Amanda never really argued a lot, maybe verbally a little bit but not a lot. There was never anything physical in front of you all. Was Trey stealing from your dad at all? You know, was he selling any weed or was he stealing any money?
“No!” Josh said, flabbergasted. He knew that Trey wasn’t into that type of thing.
“If you had a gut feeling, what does your gut tell you? Who might’ve done something like this?”
“I can’t imagine that anybody would do it to him. Honestly, I have no idea.”
“Now is your dad, does he…you don’t have to answer this. Or you may not even know this. Does he sell weed or does he use? Does he just smoke it?”
Josh looked at the detective. He knew his father had a penchant for weed. Gouker provided marijuana to his son and encouraged him to smoke it. He knew he was supposed to tell the officer the truth but he was afraid of what his dad might do. He did not want to lie either. Little Josh shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t feel comfortable answering that,” he said as politely as he could, hoping that Russ wouldn’t press the issue further.5
“Okay, that’s fine. I don’t want to put you in a weird spot with your dad or anything like that.”
Josh nodded. He was ready for the conversation to end and it seemed like the detective was ready to wrap things up as well. “If I think of any other questions, is it alright if I call you or just come by?” he asked.
“I guess, yeah, that’ll be fine.”
“Alright, well, I appreciate it. Thanks, man.”
Josh nodded and stepped from the vehicle. He hoped that something he said or did would help the detectives. He had no idea that within the next few weeks, they’d be prompted to look in his direction by an unlikely source.
Chapter 8
Escape Attempt
He had to do something. By mid-June 2011, Joshua Gouker had to be well aware that the police were becoming increasingly suspicious that the key to Trey’s murder lay somewhere within Gouker’s own household. He had spent hours speaking with the detectives regarding the murder of his stepson. During Gouker’s last visit to the police station, he appeared to convey astonishment and disbelief when he walked out the front door of the unit rather than through the back, cuffed, with a oneway ticket to Louisville Metro Corrections. It was a close call and he couldn’t take that chance again.
Gouker had failed the most recent drug test administered by his parole officer and he had been made aware that Amanda had requested an emergency protective order. The walls were closing in around him and Gouker decided he needed to get out of town fast.
As always, it seemed that Gouker plotted and planned a way to use others to further his own agenda. Over the years, his biggest successes developed from manipulating various women in his life. When he felt the police investigation into Trey’s death was coming too close to home, it was to a previous girlfriend that he turned for help when he decided to flee Kentucky with his son.
Despite the sporadic nature of their relationship, his old girlfriend Angelic Burkhead was willing when Gouker contacted her in late June and asked for her help. Concealing his intent to travel across state lines with his son, Gouker borrowed his mom’s car. He needed Angelic’s help to accomplish his plan and asked her to ride along with him to Mississippi where she would drop him and Little Josh off and then return the car to his mother.1
They planned to leave on June 13, a Sunday. Angelic wasn’t scheduled to work again until Wednesday, which would give her plenty of time to take a long road trip with Gouker and Little Josh without it interfering with her work schedule.
Although pleased to have several days traveling with Gouker, Angelic apparently didn’t want to make the drive back to Kentucky alone, so she invited her friend Jahaira Riddle along for the ride. Friends since they were pre-teens, the two were extremely close and the trip seemed like a great occasion to party with Gouker and then catch up with each other.
Passersby must have regarded this group with suspicion as they blazed down the highway toward the Tennessee/Kentucky border. Gouker, as always, emitted an air of toughness and bravado not easily missed. The two women who accompanied Gouker were examples of the bevy of women Gouker appeared to continually keep at his disposal. Angelic’s shoulder-length wavy hair, fair skin and glasses projected a bookish quality and, with her heavyset frame and slight Southern twang, she was the epitome of what one could expect to see at a cookout or country music concert in Louisville, Kentucky. That appearance sharply contrasted with her lifelong friend Jahaira, an attractive woman of Puerto Rican descent who wore her jet black hair in a tight ponytail. Jahaira’s blouse revealed the tattoo emblazoned across her left breast and her deep, raspy voice contributed to the image she projected of a hard-lived life.
Josh, skinny at age fifteen, was hunched over in the back seat of the vehicle. He stayed quiet, speaking rarely and even then often failing to raise his eyes. Had he done so, any observer might have guessed his hesitation to accompany his father on this fateful road trip. He was leaving everything that he had ever known behind. As he settled into his car seat for the ride ahead, Josh remained completely dependent on his father, the only person he felt that he had left in the world. With his mother long dead and the controversy swirling at home following Trey’s murder, Josh had no other choice but to accompany his father, to do exactly what Gouker told him to do.2
As they crossed the Tennessee border, it was smooth sailing for Gouker and his crew. The car had plenty of gas, was stocked with snacks and they were making good time according to Gouker’s plan. Gouker surely must have begun to taste the sweetness of freedom and a new life until fate intervened. Shortly after they entered Tennessee, the car broke down in a desolate area. Gouker was able to nurse the car along to the parking lot of a nearby gas station. As they pondered what to do next, Gouker convinced a passerby to give the entire group a ride to a local motel and they abandoned his mother’s car.
Despite his impoverished circumstances, Gouker had a steady stream of cigarettes and booze to keep him occupied on the trip, not to mention two women, lifelong friends, who both vied for his attention despite the strain it would ultimately place on their relationship. Throughout the evening, Josh kept primarily to himself, w
ondering how he had ended up in such a tough situation. He was a teenager trapped in a seedy motel somewhere in Tennessee with his ex-convict father and two female friends who both viewed the unemployed, harsh, violent and unaffectionate felon as a prize to be won and cherished. They were essentially homeless, alone and on the run and there was absolutely nothing Josh could do to change the situation. He was utterly stuck and stranded hundreds of miles from home.
As the hours ticked on, Gouker kept trying to formulate a plan. They needed to get as far away from Louisville as possible and they needed to do so quickly. After two nights at the motel, Angelic knew she was due at work the following day and that weighed on her mind. She did the only thing she could think of and reached out to her grandfather, begging for help to get her back to Louisville. He arranged a bus ticket for her and within hours she found a ride to the depot and headed home, leaving Joshua with his father and a woman who seemed to be Gouker’s newest love interest.
Shortly after Angelic’s departure, the remaining members of the group learned that a man staying in the room next door to them was planning to drive to Huntsville, Alabama. When he offered to give them a ride, they jumped at the chance. The group was on its way south within minutes and eventually their benefactor dropped them at a motel where they checked into a room with two double beds. Gouker prepared to settle in for the night, one step closer to his Southern escape.
Erin Specth was excited. It was the weekend of her fourteen-year-old son’s birthday and she was driving to Huntsville to spend time with him. She had previously separated from her husband and her son was now living with his father. Erin had taken great care planning the entire weekend. She would first visit with her daughter, who currently resided in the area with her grandparents. She would get a good night’s rest and then pick up her son first thing in the morning. They would spend the entire day together.
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