The detectives noted that Lloyd had inadvertently placed himself in the front seat, and since they had long ago stopped believing in Teddy’s role, it made sense. Nobody pointed it out, and Lloyd continued his new tale.
“The other girl, she still wasn’t saying nothing, just like I said. I don’t know if she was crying or what. I didn’t offer her anything, because she just looked like she wanted to be by herself. I finally get the ice cream, because I did tell Helen I would get some ice cream for her. We go back to the house there, and Dick, at the time, I guess, was bickering with Teddy about something. I don’t know what it was, and he said, ‘Well, they can always meet their Maker.’ You know how that goes, and I got out and I said, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I’m taking this ice cream home. I don’t want to. Y’all do your thing. Have a good time.’ And I left. I did not go back to that house until the next day, and it was, like, out of curiosity, to see if the girls were okay or if they were still there or not—” Here he had taken to heart Katie’s suggestion that as a teenager, knowing there were going to be sex acts, he would have at least been curious to see. “Helen was with me, but she didn’t go downstairs. I did. I saw Dick raping the one girl, and her eyes were rolled [back]. Like I said, I don’t know if she was on a high or drugged or what, because Dick could get drugs all the time. I backed out. About that time Teddy come, I don’t know if he came around this way [around the outside of the house to the basement entrance], and I said, ‘Hey, I’ll see you later. I don’t want to be around here.’”
Now Lloyd offered his explanation of Helen’s supposed diary entry about them spending time with the girls days later.
“Me and Helen left for a while. I guess it was the next day, next morning or whatever, Dick and Teddy had come over to the house and asked me and Helen if we would watch two girls, just babysit for a while, you know, and that’s true, and I said, ‘What two girls?’ and he said, ‘You know, the girls that you got a hold of.’ I said, ‘You still got them little girls? What are you doing with them? I thought you were gonna send them home.’ And he said, ‘Oh, they want to stay for a while. They like getting high.’ So we went there. We stayed for a while.”
It was, of course, absurd. You kidnap two little girls, who have now been missing for days and are the objects of a mass, bicounty, hugely publicized manhunt; and you have seen your uncle raping one of them, who appears drugged; and you then, with your girlfriend, agree to “babysit” them, accepting your uncle’s explanation that they are enjoying themselves? It got weirder.
“At his house or at your house?” Katie asked.
“It was his house.”
“Okay.”
“We watched them. Helen, she played with them and everything like that. Helen always loved kids. I guess, at the time, she didn’t really know what was going on. I guess we watched ’em for about four or five hours. They weren’t hurt or anything like that. Nothin’ was ever mentioned about them having sex or anything like that or getting them from the mall. Dick finally came back upstairs.”
The detectives noted that the girls had now been moved from the basement party room at Dick’s house to an upstairs room. Lloyd had added a bizarre new scene to his narrative, and like most of his fictions, it appeared to be at least partly truthful. It corroborated things they had heard in wiretaps and interviews. Family members had several times alluded to something untoward going on in Dick’s upstairs poolroom. Then there was Teddy’s new story. Lloyd, in an effort to help himself, had just placed another rock on the growing pile of damning evidence.
He continued: “Pat, I don’t know where she was at, at the time. I don’t know if she was sitting out on the front porch and just wanted some time alone or whatever. Finally, they came back in. Me and Helen left. Dickie gave Helen a little bit of money for watching ’em for a couple of hours. We went back to the house [Lloyd’s father’s house], and I guess you could say that it kind of bugged me of what was going on.… They didn’t have no marks on them like they were punched on or tortured or anything like that. They had clothes on, so I couldn’t tell what was on their body or anything like that, but none of them said anything about, ‘Hey, are you gonna get us back up to the mall?’ or anything like that. I don’t know what they said to Helen, because Helen was the one who watched them mostly. A couple of days later it just kept eating at me, eating at me, eating at me, finally I decided it was time for me to go to the mall and get my name cleared out of this, because I didn’t want no part of it. Dick came over to the house one time, talked to Lee, I don’t know what they all talked about. He saw me, and he said, ‘Look, don’t say a damn word about nothin’. You don’t know nothin’, just get out of here. You’re talkin’ about going to Virginia for a while. Go there. See everybody and disappear.’ I took that as a hint. You know? I went to the mall. I told my side of the story. When I ended up talking to the police, I got really scared then. Left. Me and Helen hitchhiked. It took us a day and a half to get down there hitchhiking. About that time, our clothes were a little mildewy, because it was a little cold outside that night. We stayed in the woods. We got the clothes washed. We ate dinner about twelve thirty, one thirty, somewhere around there. It was late. We were in bed asleep. A car pulled up, and Dick got out of the car. The reason I know it was Dick was because he was wearing his T-shirt and it was the [his] car. He went to the back. He opened it up. He pulled a bag out, and I knew right then and there that something wasn’t right. Something happened to them girls. I was too scared to say anything, just like I’ve been all of this time. Henry came. I don’t know where he was at the time. I don’t know if he was down by the fire or where he was at. He helped him [Dick] carry the bag down there. They threw it on the fire. Came back to the house. They talked a little bit. Dick looked up there toward the window like I was, like he could see me lookin’ out the window or whatever. He got in the car. There was another man in the car. I didn’t know if it was Lee or who it was. He never got out. I didn’t see him. About that time I laid my head back down, and I said, ‘Oh shit.’ Helen said, ‘What’s wrong?’ Said, ‘Dick was just down here. I don’t know what was going on, but he threw something on the fire. I don’t know what it was.’ I didn’t want to tell her what I was thinking. We got up that morning. We ate breakfast. I told everybody, ‘Look, thank you for the hospitality and the food and everything like that. We’re gonna head down south now.’ We walked outside, and it smelled real bad. That’s why I said it smelled like rats.” In fact, it had been Dave who said this. “Helen got sick to her stomach. She brought everything up. She said, ‘What the hell is that smell?’ I said, “I don’t know.’ We left. Forty years I didn’t say nothing.”
Katie pointed out that Henry and Connie directly contradicted him.
“I understand that,” said Lloyd, confident now that he had fully stated his new version of the story, one that incorporated all that he had absorbed from the detectives. He had once more removed himself as far as possible from culpability. This was his new story, and he was going to stick with it.