The Doorstep to Hell | Chapter 3

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Both the Department of Natural Resources and the Walton County Sheriff's Department were on hand to search the wells and waterway.

In 2015, investigators followed a tip that Justin Gaines had been buried in an abandoned well in Walton County, Georgia.

After three days of searching, drilling wells, and using cadaver dogs, authorities came up empty.

This would be one of many similar attempts to find Justin, all providing false hope, all ending in disappointment.

Since Justin Gaines disappeared 16 years ago, his family has had no choice but to move on with their lives the best they can while waiting for closure.

But closure doesn't come easy when there have been no arrests made for his death.

He's still officially listed as a missing person.

With no body found, the family can't even properly lay him to rest and say their final goodbyes.

For Erica Wilson, not being able to say goodbye yet means there is still a chance that Justin could return to her one day.

Until then, she keeps that hope alive and the proverbial candle in the window lit to guide him home.

Everything I hear, of course, is Justin's gone.

All these stories of him being murdered.

But, I mean, I'd wonder what he'd be doing now.

You just never know.

A lot of people that have missing children declare him dead and, I mean, it's probably what happened.

But, I mean, that's just like, in my mind, giving up hope.

Until I have closure, I mean, if I don't have hope, what do I have?

I try to think of positive things or maybe things that might have happened or I would like to have seen happen, you know.

The best story would be someone was threatening Justin and said,

we're going to kill your family or whatever and Justin said, man, I got to pretend I'm dead because I don't want them to kill my family and he's protecting us.

You know, that's how I would like to believe it.

I mean, I know that's probably not the case, but I wish it was.

Hi, yes. Is this the anonymous line? I can give you some information.

Yes, ma'am.

This was the first time investigators had heard anything about Justin possibly being involved in drugs in any way, either using or selling them.

And while it was hard for some to wrap their heads around this information at first,

it did seem to give some possible explanation of why he might have disappeared if there were drugs or drug money involved.

That was the first indication that I had of any possible drug dealing.

Bob Pulno had hoped that by putting requests out in the local news media, the anonymous caller would reach back out.

But that still hasn't happened.

This call came into Texas EquiSearch, the firm that was helping to search for Justin.

I know a girl named Tabitha.

She said that she was with him earlier that night at Wild Bill's and then she left and went home.

After she was already at home, Justin called to try to get a ride and Tabitha could not come back and get him.

But then she also mentioned that he owed Chino a lot of money.

I don't know that it's Chino or what, this is just what I've heard.

Is it Chino like C-H-I-N-O?

That's what I'm assuming, that's what she said, Chino.

And that he owed a good bit of different people some money about drugs.

I was going up Club Drive one day and we crossed over Pleasant Hill.

After you go on down a little ways, there are like apartments there, kind of like the projects looking.

And my daughter even said, Mom, look, there's where Tabitha said Chino lived.

And my daughter's 13 and that freaked me out, that my daughter would know this stuff.

You know, my heart just goes out to this family.

And when I heard this, I said, I don't care if you're lying to me or not, I'm letting somebody know because this could be life or death for this boy.

That's what she said.

Okay.

And I said, well, if that's so, then your number should be in his cell phone.

She goes, well, they haven't found his cell phone yet.

Now, I don't know if y'all have or not, but if so, then her number should be in there and she's already should have been questioned.

But I don't know if she's just a little shit stir or she's just running her mouth, but she acted like she knew it.

Okay.

And you don't want to leave no information, no name or number or anything?

I don't have any idea her number.

You don't want to leave your name or number?

Well, I just, I just don't want, I don't know.

I guess not.

I just hope that this could, y'all could investigate this Chino person and just see what's behind it.

I don't have any idea, but that's what I've heard.

All right.

Well, thank you for calling.

Oh, sure, sweetheart.

Good luck to you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Who is Chino?

Who is Tabitha?

How did this woman's 13-year-old daughter know anything about this?

And most importantly, is there really any truth to any of this information or is it merely rumor?

One of my first thoughts was focused on the name Chino.

It obviously sounds Latino, but I also know that Chino is slang for Asian,

most notably someone of Chinese descent.

And I also know that several people saw an Asian man at Justin's table that night.

Our eyewitness Susan also claimed that the Asian man and Justin went out back to the club's smoking section for just a brief time.

So could that be Chino?

Could that have been a drug deal she was witnessing?

And was Chino in the black car with Justin as he left the club?

I asked Bob Pulno about Chino.

No.

Why is that?

I'm not going there.

I'm just letting you know I know him.

Okay.

I can't get into that.

Fair enough.

Who would say that?

Do you think that's the same person?

I found a lot of Chinos in Atlanta, a lot of them.

Only one of them is involved in this case, but that's it.

So don't go looking for Chino, you know.

And that's all that needs to know about that right now.

That's where we're going to have to leave it.

I know that's something that investigators don't like loose ends,

but you're going to have to leave it there unless you find out on your own.

Okay?

and we'll see if we're on the same page at that point.

But we can't, I can't go beyond that.

Is it because he feels I don't yet know enough about this case

or Chino's relevance to share more with me?

Does he not fully trust me yet?

Is it for my safety?

All I know is I really want to find Chino now.

And what about the name Tabitha that the caller mentioned?

Who is she?

How does she play into this case?

Was she in Justin's room?

Tabitha?

There were several.

but there were three Tabithas in Justin's phone,

and one he allegedly called that night looking for a ride home from Wild Bill's,

if you're to believe the caller.

If that's true, then they must have been somewhat close

for him to feel comfortable enough calling her at that late hour asking for a favor,

though Bob is again tight-lipped with details.

The caller said that Tabitha was with Justin at some point inside the club

but then left before he did,

so I need to try to find out who she is and what she knows.

There really is a lot of information I feel could be obtained by speaking with this caller.

Hopefully, this tip being played in its entirety will jog someone's memory

or provoke that caller to again reach out to law enforcement or even to me.

Perhaps somehow she'll hear this

and know how important this information could be to this case

and to finding Justin.

I've now heard that Justin Gaines may have been involved in drug dealing,

but I don't know to what extent or if that's even true at all.

Bob Pulno seems to think so,

but for whatever reason isn't sharing all the information he has about this with me yet,

namely who Chino and Tabitha are.

The anonymous tip also revealed that Justin owed money not only to Chino

but to several people for drugs.

and he didn't know what he was doing.

Justin was in over his head.

He owed a lot of money, as that caller said,

to different people higher up that he had tried to get in the door with.

Correct. And a lot of money.

Most people I've talked to said that, yeah, Justin liked to drink,

but he didn't use drugs, not even weed, as Mike and Patrick Heiser told me.

Justin was always very street smart, I would say.

So, you know, he was very non-reactionary to it,

very non-confrontational towards it.

Like, it could be there and he would choose not to partake or want anything to do with it,

But I don't know that Justin ever smoked weed, actually.

I remember him drinking. I don't ever remember him smoking.

Katie Kuhn shared something else with me when I asked if Justin had ever used drugs.

Because I'm sure him and I smoked together at some point back in the day.

But anything past that, not to my knowledge.

But I don't know what he was doing when I wasn't around.

You know, it's easy for people to hide things around their friends and family

when they're not there all the time.

And just not do those things when those people are around.

She wasn't with Justin all the time,

so who knows what he was doing when she wasn't around.

Several of his friends had begun pulling away from him after he started college,

in part because of some of the people he was now hanging out with,

like his roommate Chris.

Chris wasn't good newts.

What kind of drugs?

Weed.

The Chris that Patrick is referring to

is the same one that drove Justin to wild bills the night he disappeared.

Justin was certainly around people who were using drugs,

though I haven't heard anything yet confirming he was selling them.

And yeah, I know, it seems like I'm talking about weed

like they were shooting heroin or something,

but remember this was 2007,

well before weed was legalized in half the country.

It was a bigger deal then than it is now.

And no one's ever claimed that he was only selling weed.

Patrick also tells me that wild bills was a place you could score drugs if you wanted them.

Or if you were dealing, it was pretty easy to sell them there too.

You could do anything you wanted to.

You could do anything you wanted to.

If you wanted it, it was there.

If you knew the right people.

Security did their best job to actually keep that out,

and a lot of times they did,

but if you wanted drugs, you could find them.

You go out to the parking lot, come back in with your wristband, you were fine.

You're talking about a massive building.

With no controls.

Could this be why the owners and management of Wild Bills

initially didn't want to release the surveillance footage from the club?

It took police intervening before it was obtained.

As I digest the new information concerning Justin,

I think back to a few things I've heard so far,

some of which didn't seem to make sense at the time.

Justin, Chris, and Amanda not being seen on the Quick Trip security footage

or by the staff, despite Chris claiming they went there.

The four and a half hour period of time between leaving Justin's parents' house

and arriving at Wild Bills at nearly midnight.

It's also odd to me that Justin seemed adamant about going inside

even though his friends decided to leave.

Yet just over a half hour later,

he was looking for a ride home from the packed club.

Something just doesn't add up there.

But if I add in the theory of Justin dabbling in drug dealing,

things start to make more sense.

Justin made a trip out back to the club's smoking section before returning

just a few minutes later, even though he didn't smoke.

And finally, Justin getting into the car with several strangers

and his phone data showing a final ping four miles in the opposite direction of his house.

Former FBI agent Mike Rising, who now heads up the cold case unit

at the Walton County Sheriff's Office,

is really the only investigator left officially working Justin's case.

He's kind of the last hope.

I was transferred to Miami and worked, was on a similar squad,

kidnappings, violent crime, bank robberies there.

He worked in the FBI's first drug squad, was recruited to their SWAT team,

worked undercover ops, tracked serial killers and arsonists, you name it.

He's got the stories to go with the resume.

on the waterfront in Chicago.

Called Banco Sheriffs was the name of the undercover case.

The guy cocked a revolver in my ear and said,

you move, I'm going to blow your fucking brains out.

I got into a gunfight with some guys and got medevaced.

that some podcaster was being welcomed into the investigation of Justin Gaines.

Rising, alongside Bob Pulno,

make up practically the entire knowledge base of Justin's case at this point.

There's little that these two men collectively don't know.

When I sat down with both men at the Walton County Sheriff's Office,

they took me deeper into the complex spider web of this case

and gave me their theories on the person they feel is spinning that web.

That's probably recorded in 15 different reports.

Nearly every theory surrounding this case, every scenario,

every rumor involves the name Dylan Glass.

Because he's the one who confessed to his role in the murder of Justin Gaines.

But who is this man?

And if he confessed, why hasn't he been charged with murder?

The name Dylan Glass was first heard in connection with this case

shortly after Erica Wilson reported Justin missing.

When a woman named Bridget sent her 15-year-old brother a MySpace message

claiming that Dylan, who she quasi-dated at the time, had killed Justin.

that he had information that Dylan Glass killed Justin Gaines.

through her online message board.

She then put Josh in touch with Bob Pulno.

I stepped out of that interview and had a message on my phone.

He said that his sister's boyfriend, Dylan Glass, killed Justin Gaines.

who, if you'll remember, was the same eyewitness who saw Justin Gaines

getting into the car outside of Wild Bill's.

And allegedly, all this information originated with a girl named Christy.

She, like Bridget, was a teenager who was close to Dylan.

Dylan, Christy, and Bridget all lived in the Conestoga trailer park.

It was low income, even for a trailer park,

and just a few years ago was permanently closed due to code violations and leveled.

Many of the residents of Conestoga lived in squalor,

and many of the trailers were falling apart, dilapidated, and unsafe.

By the mid-2000s, Conestoga was known locally as a very rough place.

It was rampant with crime, drugs, prostitution,

and there were even rumors of devil worship within the park,

giving way to the nickname, The Doorstep to Hell.

outside the trailers at the trailer park.

he learned that Dylan's mother, Tammy, was addicted to crack cocaine.

There was no real home life, at least not a good one,

and these factors may have played a key role in the path Dylan would choose in life.

that he would learn to fight at a very early age without any reservation

for the purpose of robbing, subduing the victim,

and taking whatever they had on them.

Dylan sold and used narcotics.

He stole and eventually got involved in gangs.

Walton County authorities were all familiar with Dylan, and for good reason.

He had no reservation about hurting someone.

From all I've gathered in the past 15, 16 years in the case,

I've seen no remorse for any of the crimes that he has committed.

He will admit to you that he's committed some crimes,

but he would always stop short of any involvement

in one of the more serious crimes, such as murder.

a thug, a gangbanger.

Most of his body, including his head and his face, are covered with tattoos.

But even after all I've heard of Dylan, is he really a killer?

the experience to cover up.

People who knew his mother well and Dylan have told me

that his mother is known widely as the cleanup woman.

She would come after Dylan and clean up crime scenes

to get rid of blood and DNA, if possible,

and use bleach and other means of cleaning up an area.

But as I spoke to people about Dylan, that's actually something I heard too,

that his mother was known to clean up after his crimes.

Aside from Justin Gaines, Dylan has never been accused of murder.

However, in 2015, he was charged with conspiracy to commit murder

in an unrelated case.

and you would never know that he's lying.

and he's been questioned numerous times.

But in the fall of 2015, while serving time on an unrelated offense,

Dylan spilled his guts to authorities.

It is possible that he hoped his pending sentence for gang-rape

would get reduced in exchange for his cooperation.

But he said what he said.

Dylan's story begins after Justin left Wild Bill's

and arrived at a house party in Snellville,

located several miles southeast of the club.

The house belonged to a man named Andy Pickens,

who was at the time dating Dylan's mother, Tammy.

Andy Pickens owned a small painting service.

He was also a drug dealer, often hosting small house parties.

People would hang out, drink, and slip off into a room

or into the basement to use their drug of choice,

be it weed, coke, meth.

Nothing was really off limits.

And if you needed to score something, chances are you could find it at Andy's.

Leon was a local thug, a small-time dealer.

He was also allegedly at Andy's house party that night that Justin disappeared.

Criminal intelligence analyst Carissa Durow,

who joined Mike, Bob, and myself in our face-to-face,

shared a surprising connection in this case.

It involves Heather, the woman in the black dress.

Yes.

to be in the parking lot of the pool hall earlier that night

where Justin and his friends were drinking before heading to the club.

Things suddenly start to make a bit more sense to me now

as to how these people are all connected.

Heather and Leon were dating.

Bob believes he has Heather on video at Wild Bill's that night,

but it's hard to be sure because the footage is so grainy.

Leon was also seen on camera arriving and leaving.

Knowing the connection between Leon and Heather,

several theories have arisen.

Was Heather used to lure Justin to Andy Pickens' house that night

so that he could be robbed for the cash that he was said to have been flashing around,

as some have speculated?

Or was it to face some kind of punishment for the drug money he might have owed?

Did he just end up there with Heather

and she had no idea that anything was going to happen to him?

I've even heard that Justin was flirting with a girl

that someone else was interested in at the party

and that's how this all started.

It gets a little murky here due to some conflicting eyewitness accounts

and Dylan Glass' story isn't really clear on that either,

which is odd to me.

According to various accounts,

Dylan, Justin Gaines, Leon, and several others

ended up in the garage of the house in the early morning hours.

And that's where things took a turn for the worse.

Mike and Bob explain.

and Justin was a big boy, healthy boy.

But Leon also was a pretty big guy.

and Leon begins choking Justin.

and cut off his hair

and that snot was coming out of his nose

and he said blood was coming out of his mouth eventually

and he was fighting for his life.

According to statements she would later make to police,

Tammy's account is by far the most vivid and disturbing telling

of what happened to Justin Gaines that night.

and he could not breathe at all.

Justin stood up and Leon still had the choke armhole on his windpipe

and went down with him

at the point where she said, and he went down with him.

When she said those words, she was sobbing.

I saw visible tears floating down her face

and even one of the detectives said,

what are you so emotional about?

And she said, we're talking about my son.

And that's when she was saying that Justin was dead

and that Dylan got down on his knees over Justin

and took his earring out of his ear and put it in his own ear

and went through his pockets

and Dylan and Leon were arguing over who gets the necklace

and who gets the watch and who gets the money

and who gets the dope coming out of his pockets.

a mid-level dealer who goes by the name New York.

He instructed the others on what to do next.

and said, roll him up.

And they rolled him up in painter's plastic,

which Andy Pickens left in the van for his work as a painter.

And they rolled up Justin in the plastic,

loaded Justin into the van.

She said the whole thing had been planned.

Those were her words.

It had all been planned, to back the van in,

the engine running, and to take him in the plastic

and that New York was giving the orders.

Tammy said that she heard the van doors close

and then heard what sounded like a gunshot.

but one aspect they have in common

is the claim that Justin was shot inside the van.

He handed the gun to New York,

and New York was in the passenger front seat

and reached back and shot Justin in the head.

I don't know if that's true.

Tammy's saying that she just heard the gunshot.

who heard a commotion followed by a gunshot.

After they leave, people that were involved downstairs

in the confrontation are making comments.

We just killed that kid.

and not speak up?

especially when these paranoid people who are on drugs

and they see for themselves the carnage

that can be inflicted on them

and they're scared to death to get involved.

And that's why this has gone on for so long.

It's the fear.

simply because he owed someone money,

what would happen to you

if you ratted these people out to the police?

Fear is a powerful silencer.

But to Mike Rising, all hope might not be lost.

too many witnesses.

The general story does not change.

To me, there's no such thing as a conspiracy

that can't be broken.

When you've got more than two people,

somebody's eventually going to talk,

and there are a lot of people in this.

and his mother Tammy backed up his story.

Even though some of the details differed,

the general story was the same.

They both said that after Justin was choked out

and they thought he was dead,

he was wrapped in the paint tarp

and placed in Andy Pickens' 1986 white Chevy work van.

Justin began to thrash around when he started to come to

and then was shot in the head, killing him.

He was then transported to Lake Lanier,

just northeast of Atlanta,

where Pickens owned an old run-down houseboat,

a party pad.

and Dylan would come there and party a lot

and do drugs with his friends.

who was at the houseboat that night as well

and owned one of his own in the same marina, Sunrise Cove.

He was also at Pickens' house earlier that night,

according to witnesses,

when Leon is said to have choked Justin out.

According to Tammy's statements,

it was Justin and Wilkie who were fighting,

and Justin was getting the best of him,

prompting Leon to step in.

Why they were fighting is unclear,

but it has been suggested that it was over a woman,

as I've mentioned before.

Once at the houseboat, details are sketchy.

There are several accounts that Justin's body

was placed into a large black metal toolbox,

the kind you see on the back of a work truck,

and then dumped in the lake.

Just a few days later, the water level dropped

and the box became visible,

so his body was moved to Walton County

and dumped in an old well.

It's worth noting that the winter of 2007

had one of the lowest water levels on record for Lake Lanier,

so this is possible.

And thanks to the marina's guard shack records,

we do know that Andy Pickens' van

was at the Sunset Cove Marina early that morning,

and Martin Wilkie's vehicle passed through the security gate

at the same time as Pickens' van.

was logged in by the security guard at that marina

on November 2, 2007,

between 6 a.m. and 6.30 a.m.,

the first time that van had ever been to the lake,

and it had never shown up afterward.

Pickens denied ever having the van at the marina.

Pickens had the cargo area flooring

replaced in that van several days later,

and the man who did the work noted

that it smelled strongly of bleach.

Out of curiosity,

I used Carfax to pull the records on the van,

and I could see that the last reported mileage

was just over 93,000,

and the last record on file was August 20, 2007,

when the registration was renewed.

Then it simply disappeared.

Mike Rising and Carissa Drewo think they know why.

It was that evidence in itself

that it happened that quickly

because it was a functional van.

that Andy Pickens completely redid the floor

and painted the walls and so forth

and changed the ceiling in that houseboat

before it sank.

and a freshly cleaned van with new flooring

crushed.

Though Dylan Glass, Leon, and others

were repeatedly questioned,

no charges were ever brought against anyone,

and Justin was still listed as a missing person.

But in September of 2015,

nearly eight years later,

Dylan Glass talked,

and news broke that two arrests

had finally been made.

before being stuffed into a black metal toolbox.

Tonight, a 57-year-old man is charged

with concealing a death in the case

as investigators scoured high shoals in Walton County

looking for Gaines' remains.

The Wilkie arrest warrants...

and she's charged in connection with the case.

Investigators say they begin making progress in this case

once federal inmate Dylan Glass started talking.

Glass' mom, Tammy Ballew...

Dylan Glass is ready to talk once again,

this time to me.

And he's ready to tell his side of this story.

They threatened me with life sentences.

They locked me up on charges.

They're not telling the world that...

if he even act like he has remorse,

you don't think a motherfucker gonna lie to him?

I wrote and created the series and the original score.

Executive producer is Jason Hoke.

Associate producer is Leo Culp.

Sound engineering by Shane Freeman.

Special thanks to Erica Wilson and her family.

If you have any leads on this case, please contact me at info at seankype.com and if

you love the series, please leave a review and tell your friends.

Follow Waveland on Instagram at Waveland Media for more on this series and upcoming new shows

and you can also find me on social media at seankypeofficial or at seankype.com.

As always, thanks for listening.