[reporter] The trial of the third person
with ties to the Mineola Swingers Club
came to a stunning halt in Smith County, Monday,
when foster parent John Cantrell,
a man awarded custody of three young siblings,
who allegedly performed at the swingers club,
was arrested in Wood County.
Living in the Cantrell's house was like a torture chamber.
I never felt safe.
And so when I'm starting to see this stuff come on TV
about the swingers club,
and Margie Cantrell bringing these kids involved with it,
how could I do nothing and just sit there
when I knew exactly what those kids were going through?
[Margie] There's no words.
There's really no words to describe it.
It wasn't true, and I knew that.
[tearfully] He never ever did anything.
[Jenna] My early childhood in California,
my biological mom
was doing drugs and drinking a lot
and when CPS found us
we were malnutritioned and in soiled diapers.
Then we went through foster care
and this lady said, "Well, I'll take all of them."
And that was Margie Cantrell.
I thought, "Yes, this sweet lady
and this guy that looks like Santa Claus
wants to be our parents."
But right after I got adopted,
the abuse with both of them started.
When I was 7, that's when John Cantrell started being
very physically sexual with me.
Touching, licking, kissing,
trying to teach us how to French kiss.
John Cantrell would tell me,
"Well if you tell anybody, you're just going to go back to foster care."
Everything with Margie
went very hatefully abusive,
putting her hands around my neck
and just kind of strangling me
and telling me how much she hates me and she wishes I would die.
I was depressed.
I started drinking when I was about 9, 10 years old.
Basically I was trying to self-medicate.
[Margie] When we adopted Jenna, back in 1985,
she had a lot of problems. A lot.
A low, low mentality.
There was a time when she decided
to microwave our cat.
And somebody ran in and got the cat out.
The cat did live,
but it was horrifying.
[Jenna] In 2004, we moved to Texas.
I was 24 at this time.
There's a couple of reasons I had stayed with them for that long.
My confidence was so low
that I really felt like I couldn't live on my own.
I had no ID,
I didn't have my birth certificate,
I didn't have my social security card,
I had nothing.
Margie, she would tell me stuff, like,
"Well, nobody's going to want you anyways."
She would make you feel like you really
couldn't do anything without her.
[Margie] Shortly after we moved to Texas,
Jenna met a man down the block, David,
and they got together.
And they went on and got married.
[Jenna] Margie did not think anything would come out of this relationship.
But It's real.
It's a real love that...
Never had that, you know, growing up.
So I still get all the butterflies and everything.
[David] Me and the Cantrells didn't get along.
I could definitely tell something was shady
between Jenna and John.
Just the way they, you know, went about carrying themselves
kind of seemed kind of like hidden.
[reporter] The children were allegedly forced to dance
and perform sexual acts with each other.
[David] And then when I heard their story on the news
about what had happened with these kids,
my wife told me what had happened to her,
you know, in detail.
[Jenna] I was hoping that when I found my husband,
I would never tell him the abuse I went through
because John and Margie both told me
that if I ever said anything,
my spouse or my boyfriend would leave me.
When I told him I started crying,
and he goes, "No no, come here, come here, come here."
And he rocked me in the chair.
And he just held me.
[David] I love my wife very much.
I'm an emotional guy.
So, when I heard those kind of things, it bothered me.
It bothered me a lot.
I suggested that she tell the truth to the authorities.
So she did.
I can say that as far as like accusations go
about my mom and dad,
I knew it wasn't true.
It was straight up lies.
[Jacob] I hold a lot of anger towards Jenna.
When you are willing to lie about somebody
and potentially put them in prison,
I have no room in my life for you.
[Margie] When John was arrested, that hurt,
but I wasn't going to tell Jenna,
"You can't be part of this family. You can't come home."
There's something that is in me that just doesn't give up on them.
And then one night, the kids and I went to Walmart
and Jenna and David were there.
And I said, "Jenna, come here."
And he's like, "No." And she's like, "I can't."
And I'm like, "Jenna, come here."
And she's like, "I can't."
And then Shelby said to me,
"That's the tattooed man that was at the club.
He's the one that was molesting me at that club."
[Jenna] Next morning I get these subpoenas
and they're saying, well, these kids are saying David's name.
And they're saying that he's involved with all this.
[David] I go in with this police officer.
He thought I was affiliated with this swinger's club.
And they asked me to take my clothes down to my underwear
and stand with my arms out.
The children had said that the DJ at the club
had a tattoo of a dragon on his back.
I don't have any tattoos on my back
[Margie] Now whether he was ever at the swinger's club
to just be a swinger or to look at the place
or do anything, that's not for me to decide.
No. No. That's not David.
David's never been like that. It's completely lies.
Margie's getting back at me
because I came out about her and John.
Eventually, the police informed me that
I was no longer needed in the trial.
I knew the capabilities of this woman.
I didn't think it would go that far.
She'd have been happy if I'd have went to prison.
I didn't know nothing about the swinger's club.
[Margie] When John went to court
I sold everything we owned
so I could hire an attorney for my husband.
When we went into the courtroom
the judge heard all of their evidence that they said they had
and he said, "No, I'm not taking this at all."
And the judge said, "Mr. Cantrell, go home."
There was no evidence that was even credible,
so they dropped it.
And that was the end of it.
They threw it out because it was false,
it wasn't what happened.
Anybody can accuse anybody of anything,
it doesn't mean that it's true.
And unless you have actual proof,
maybe just don't try to ruin somebody's life
just because you don't like them.
If you don't like them, just keep it moving. Move on.
Her biological children never got abused,
because they were the real kids.
The ones that would get abused a lot of the times
were her foster kids.
And I believe in her mind she was thinking,
"Nobody wants them."
She's the only way.
She's the only hope that you have in life.
You do what she says and you'll be okay.
If you don't, there's gonna be hell to pay.
[Margie] It was a made-up story.
And I think that that's disgusting.
[Michael] In the community, some people thought
it was just unfair mudslinging
against Margie's husband, kicking against Margie.
But it just seemed such a weird coincidence,
that her husband was being accused of the same thing
that her foster kids were accusing other people of doing.
[Mike] Patrick Kelly's nickname was Booger Red.
And it was Booger Red, who was the one who had the trailer
where apparently the sex kindergarten had taken place.
[Mike] And then they'd come up to Mineola
and they'd dance on stage for money.
[Mike] Patrick Kelly's trial was actually going to be a little bit different.
For one thing, Patrick Kelly's mother cashed in her 401(k)
to get him an actual lawyer.
Patrick Kelly had Thad Davidson,
who was a bulldog of a defense lawyer,
former Marine, very dramatic, and very smart guy.
[Thad] When I first took on the case, I went to the jail
and met with Patrick Kelly.
...and organized crime.
[Patrick] I didn't even know there was a swingers club in Mineola.
[Thad] I thought he was believable.
He had no prior history of any significance whatsoever.
We looked for fingerprints...
DNA...
Blood...
Other witnesses...
Forensic investigation...
None of which existed.
[Melinda] When Thad came to me and asked for the help,
I really thought that
he was blowing this out of proportion.
But then I start looking through the evidence.
That's when I really began to realize that
Thad wasn't overly exaggerating.
I believe he was not guilty of what these kids
and the Cantrells were saying that he did.
Patrick Kelly, was a simple man,
and he lived a simple life.
The big thing for him would be after his hard week of work,
was to go buy a 30 pack of Natural Light Beer
and a family size of chicken legs,
and have the different friends and stuff come over,
and they would barbecue.
[fire crackling]
[Patrick] My world's been turned upside down with all this going on.
[Thad] Patrick Kelly, to be frank,
is a redneck, uneducated,
impoverished, living in a trailer out in the woods.
And in Smith County, that makes you a target.
Soon after I took on the case, a senior officer of Mineola PD
shows up at my office with boxes of information.
She goes, "There's all this stuff that,
we're pretty sure you don't have and have never heard of.
Did you know about this? Did you know about this?"
She gives us all this stuff that we've never seen before.
And I'm sitting there thinking, "Holy [bleep] ."
It was long hidden, exculpatory evidence.
Exculpatory reports, exculpatory interviews,
exculpatory information from June of 2005,
when the Mineola PD and the Wood County DA's office
looked at the case and said, "We don't have anything here".
Anything that tends to show a defendant is not guilty,
must be turned over to the defense.
And the state is not allowed to collect the evidence,
sit on it, hide on it, lie about it, pretend they
don't know about it, which they did.
[Melinda] We had learned before, that swingers club
had already closed down.
A few of the officers, were running license plates
to see who were swingers,
to see if any of them were local, just gossiping.
And so, if we could get those license plates,
then we could get in touch with some of those swingers
to come forward and say that if, or if not,
the defendants were at the swingers club.
So we subpoenaed the records.
Maybe three weeks goes by,
and then they finally responded and said,
as strangely as this is, they couldn't find anything.
Eh, there's no other way to explain that
other than, they were erased.
That was suspicious.
I believe the Texas Rangers made that decision
at that time to erase them.
Because, if they came forward with all the license plates,
but none of the defendant's cars,
not one car came back to them,
well that might prove our client is innocent,
and they wouldn't want to give us that.
And then we learned, another reason they would've done this.
We discovered that officers in Mineola had spoken with
the swingers club owners, Sherry and Russ Adams.
If those officers were in there,
that's not against the law,
but they would've had to have said,
there were no children in there.
And I believe by that point, Ranger Kemp was so involved,
he didn't want this case to stop.
And then we dig deeper and we find out Ranger Kemp
interviewed Sherry Adams in the DA's office,
there in the courthouse.
[Sherry] We were cramped in this little corner office
and he put them pictures out on his desk,
and he slammed them.
"I know who... you know who this is."
- "I don't." - "Well, then you know who this one is."
"No, I don't."
"Well, you know what they've done?"
"No, I don't. I don't know who they are."
He said, "You're a liar. And I'm gonna put you in jail with the rest of them.
You will rot in prison."
[Thad] I'm sitting there thinking, oh my God, this is bad.
This won't even go to trial.
There is no case here.
This is smoke and mirrors [bleep].
[Melinda] We wanted the recording of that meeting with Sherry Adams.
But there was no recording.
It wasn't in a report.
There was nothing of that.
And to destroy any evidence is illegal.
Kemp testified he wasn't sure if it had been recorded.
But then Thad Davidson found out that
Kemp had actually been interviewed,
by the Attorney General's office,
about the whereabouts of the recording.
[Melinda] In 26 years, a Texas Ranger's never
conducted an investigation on sexual assault of a child
or indecency with a child
or sexual performance by a child.
Kemp had no idea what he was doing.
Why are you allowing Margie to sit in on these interviews
and insist and push and force these kids
to say what they said.
[Thad] Kemp did not bother to check out Cantrell.
Kemp did not bother to go, let's talk about you,
let's talk about your background.
That kind of critical thinking
that should have been taking place
by Kemp, or any law enforcement agent,
of Cantrell did not happen.
[Tamara] Thad Davidson was relentless,
he called me over and over again.
He kept saying like, "I'm telling you, this is a set-up."
And so finally, I sat down with him and heard him out.
And I, I saw the passion,
it wasn't just a defense attorney that wanted to
convince me that, his defendant wasn't guilty.
No, he was trying to tell me, like,
you don't understand, there's layers to this.
And that was the first time I think my eyes
really, really opened,
to what was taking place and everything.
So, by the time we entered the third trial with,
Patrick Kelly, Booger Red, I was ready, finally,
to kind of get a different side and understand
what the truth is behind all of this.
[Thad] I believed we had a good case,
but the tide was completely against us
when the trial started.
Any time anybody gets arrested on a first-degree,
big sex offense crime, or frankly any
kind of big crime, it's all over the news.
[Tamara] This case is constantly in the headlines.
The media and the newspaper in town,
knew that people were hungry
and that they wanted more, more, more.
Give us more about this Mineola sex ring club.
[Thad] What that means is that the jury pool,
of course, knew about these cases.
If you know about it, it's going to affect you in trial.
[Tamara] Local news was a really big deal.
It was whatever was printed or reported,
was gospel in many ways.
And it did feel like it was very, very dominant,
and heavy-sided for the DA.
[reading] Defense attorney Thad Davidson
says during Friday's pretrial,
he will also ask for a change of venue.
The reason, potential jurors in Smith County
are only seeing one side of the child sex ring story.
[Thad] When the trial started,
we called Margie Cantrell to the witness stand.
We knew that John Cantrell had been indicted out
in California on child sex charges.
The issue is, well, if he's doing it, is she doing it too?
Because people are saying that she is.
We were interviewing former foster kids, now adults.
[Jenna] They were asking me what happened,
and I told them the abuse I went through and I said,
"I know what she's doing because she's done this kind of stuff before."
She was saying, "Margie Cantrell beat us.
Margie Cantrell told us what to say,
Margie Cantrell would punish us
if we didn't say what she wanted us to say
or do what she wanted us to do."
These were adults saying that.
We were ready to destroy her.
The problem is, Margie, with the assistance of her attorney
told her to shut the hell up,
"You are not going to say a damn word on the witness stand
other than 'I take the fifth amendment',"
which is what happened.
[Mike] More than 100 questions he would ask Margie Cantrell,
and she had the same answer for each one.
She would say "I'm exercising my Constitutional Right
to not answer the question,"
and this went on and on.
[Margie] People have said that John and I,
took our Constitutional Right because we were guilty.
But my attorney told us,
"You're going to plead the fifth."
They said they didn't want to keep muddying it up
with this John and Margret thing,
because he was innocent,
but he had been completely slandered,
smeared, and everything.
They want to keep it that out
and they wanted to just keep it straight on the kids,
what the jury hears, the testimony the jury hears,
and that was that.
[Thad] The nightmare didn't end.
The prosecutor, Murphy, kept talking about how
the previous two defendants had been convicted
and gotten life sentences.
It's unconstitutional. I objected.
Judge Skeen let him do that.
This was a [bleep] show agenda to a one-way destination,
which was, "We're gonna get convictions."
[Tamara] I still remember vividly, Thad Davidson
was just shot down, over and over.
And that was the first time I think my eyes,
really, really, opened, to what was taking place.
This was the first time that I thought,
"We're failing this person."
Not only we as the media, but...
these people that we trust, and these investigators,
also didn't do due diligence,
and investigate this case right.
When the verdict came back for the Patrick Kelly case,
it took probably about two hours,
and it was guilty for him.
And he was gonna be sent away like the other two,
for the rest of his life.
I felt grieved in that moment.
It was just gross in a lot of ways, like it was
very sad what happened to him.
I feel that what happened here, to my client
was a travesty of injustice, was a rape of justice.
And that the people responsible for it,
and let me be blunt,
Margie Cantrell, John Cantrell,
Ranger Kemp, Joe Murphy,
Matt Bingham, Judge Skeen,
all of these people should be held responsible.
That the harm they inflicted,
should be the harm they suffer.
I don't hide evidence. I've been here 16 years
and I try stuff fairly.
You know the defense just doesn't like the fact that
their client got convicted and got a life sentence.
I mean, let's call it what it is.
Thad Davidson was complaining about the DA.
The DA was complaining about Thad.
But the one thing that Thad Davidson said that made me...
really think was,
there's no evidence here,
and there were no grown-up witnesses.
And so I thought, wow, this could really be a story.
If these guys did it, it's one kind of story.
And if these guys didn't do it,
it's another kind of story.
So I decided to interview some of the Cantrells' other foster kids.
One of her sons called her the "puppet master."
Kids in California said that she was manipulative.
So I called her several times,
'cause I really did want to talk with her.
And it was toward the end of the reporting process
where I did get her on the phone.
[ringback tone]
I put up my back to not be taken in by this woman,
and within seconds I felt like I was being pulled along a conveyor belt
by an impossible force.
And if she's that way with grownups,
imagine her with kids.
[Margie] Michael Hall said that I was a puppet master mother.
And it really shocked me and it hurt so deep,
deeper than you could ever imagine.
Mind you, I was a mother of 15 teenagers at one time,
I was pretty regimental, yes.
Everybody had a chore and I expected it done.
Puppet master, no.
[Mike] There are so many lies in this story.
Margie knows how to
push people's buttons and manipulate them.
You go to each one of my children
and you try to demonize me through my own children?
[sniffles]
[Tamara] After the third trial, everything completely turned,
it was like the mic drop time, like, "What is going on?"
[female reporter] With the recent developments, all eyes will be
on the fourth trial in the Mineola sex-ring case.
Dennis Pittman, a friend of convicted defendants,
Shauntel Mayo and Jamie Pittman, will begin trial Monday.
[Mike] The fourth trial was Dennis Pittman.
He was local guy, been around for a long time.
Pittman has a really good lawyer, Jason Cassel,
young guy, based out of Longview.
Jason's a smart guy, he knows something's up,
he, he believes that Pittman is innocent.
[Jason] Dennis was real soft spoken and when I first met with him
he was basically like, you know, "I didn't, I didn't do this,
and I don't know why this is being said about me."
[Mike] I got there early on the first day of trial,
and I found a seat in the courtroom.
And all of a sudden I'm aware of this figure
kind of moving really slowly
to the right and in front of me,
and I finally look up and it's Dennis Pittman.
He looks like somebody in a hospital who is heavily sedated.
I just knew that this guy, you know, he was doomed.
Bingham did not pull back one bit.
He was going full boar to get a conviction of Dennis Pittman.
And of course, the three previous juries
had found guilty verdicts right away.
I think most people there thought, "It's probably gonna happen again."
But during the trial, a bombshell dropped.
[Gabby] During the first trial, I was seven.
Then there was the questioning,
going over my testimony, which sometimes lasted hours as well.
[Ranger Kemp] Alrighty.
[Gabby] During the Dennis Pittman trials,
I was going into middle school
and I wanted to move on past this.
Matt Bingham, that was questioning me,
I, you know, had heard him stating
earlier in the day to Joe Murphy that,
"I'm gonna have to treat her like a hostile witness."
Well, I had had enough of that so I
made his day worse
by finally saying, you know, what he didn't want to hear.
When they were questioning me,
that I had kind of recanted in a way, it was--
it blurted out of my mouth. I, It just came out.
[Mike] In all the times I've been in courts covering stories,
I've never seen somebody with that kind of courage.
She is absolutely fearless and I, I remember thinking,
"Where is this gonna go?"
[Jason] When Gabby testified, that was really one of the times where I thought,
you know, "Oh, you know, we got a [bleep] chance."
I needed an explanation for as to why I was changing my story
and, you know, I went to church every Sunday for three hours.
God made me tell the truth. God told me to do it.
I felt better once I had said it.
There was always, like, this knot in the pit of my stomach.
And the second that I said,
"That didn't happen. God told me to tell the truth,"
that knot loosened.
I had never in my life, you know, met Dennis Pittman.
I had never been introduced to him by my parents.
The truth of the matter is, is that it didn't happen, it never happened.
They brainwashed us.
[Mike] So, when Gabby finally said, "This didn't happen,"
I mean, if this were a Hollywood movie,
the whole case would've fallen apart right then.
Margie Cantrell would've fessed up
to making the whole thing up.
The, the judge would've declared a mistrial,
and everything would've been hunky-dory.
But this is Smith County. [chuckles]
And in Smith County you keep going.
[Jason] At the end of the day,
with the way that they tried the case
and the way that they argued it,
going after hearts rather than minds,
I just felt like they would sit there and say,
"We're gonna find this guy guilty."
[gavel bangs]
[Jason] And that's what they did.
In the back of your mind, when you believe that this guy is not guilty,
it stings, you know, that's the thing that really hurts is knowing...
[door buzzer rings]
...an innocent man went to prison.
[Gabby] After Dennis Pittman's trial,
it got to the point where I was not mentally okay
because my parents' trials were coming up really quickly.
I knew that they were next.
I was going through a lot of mental struggles
at the time that this picture was taken. I was suicidal.
I wrote a suicide letter,
stating that I couldn't do this anymore.
It was after that that, you know,
they finally, you know, started making the deals,
and making it to where I didn't have to testify against my parents.
And they make it sound like it's for my health and well-being,
but I really think that it was because
they knew if I got back up on that stand,
it was not gonna be what they wanted.
At that point, Jimmy had been behind bars for four years
and he said, "I'm done. I'll, I'll take a deal.
I will admit guilt to something I didn't do."
Shelia said the same. In exchange for the plea
and agreeing to not have contact with Gabby till she was 18,
Jimmy and Shelia were released in August 2010.
This is the new Smith County Jail.
This is the old one. That's the one I was in
for three years, 11 months and 23 days.
That recreation was the only sunlight we ever got,
and we probably got it, maybe, once a week, if we were lucky.
I was on the third floor.
Those were the infirmary windows.
[interviewer speaking]
Oh, yeah, several times.
Getting stitched up.
My memory here is straight up hell on earth.
I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy,
especially for someone being in jail
when they didn't commit a crime.
When I took the plea bargain,
my attorney told me that I had to sign my rights over to Gabby.
That was the saddest day of my life.
I always told my daughter that I would never give up on her,
and at this time I did.
She was my baby girl.
Everything in this world did not matter to me unless it involved Gabby.
[Shelia] Gabby was the love of my life,
and she's still the love of my life.
We were very proud parents.
Jimmy said he only ever wanted one and that's what he got, one.
[Jimmy] I never thought I'd be living back here in Mineola, but here I am.
Considering all the nightmares.
The media had painted such a horrible picture of us,
that we were monsters.
We were the worst scum on earth.
Little building right here is the newspaper place.
And then that building up there
is where the swingers club was.
[exhales sharply]
Just being here makes me sick to my stomach.
This is a piece of [bleep] place,
it needs to be tore down, as far as I'm concerned.
And it's a reminder of evil.
Straight up evil.
It's not none of the kids' fault that we went through this.
It's the Cantrell family.
Margie Cantrell and John Cantrell.
What do you think about these allegations that are being made against you?
- We don't even know most of them yet. [chuckles] - Mmm-hmm.
- [female lawyer] Margaret! - Yes, ma'am.
- [female lawyer] Go. - [Margie] Yes, ma'am.
- Go! - No.
Hurry up. Go.
[Mike] Everything they'd said was a lie,
sex kindergarten, the swingers club.
And that ruined a bunch of people's lives
and sent a bunch of people to prison
and ruin a bunch of children's childhoods.
- [car engine starts] - [Mike] And then we found out
why they would've done all this in the first place.
[Jimmy] They don't care who they hurt.
What family they devastate.
They're in it for the money.