True Crime Vault: There is a Monster in Me

20/20

This episode recounts the brutal 1987 murder of Susan Jeanette Adkins in Stephenville, Texas, and the decades-long investigation that followed. Initially, her ex-husband Michael Woods became the prime suspect due to a

Key takeaways

Susan Jeanette Adkins (Woods) was found murdered in her Stephenville home in July 1987 after being suffocated and drowned.
Ex-husband Michael Woods was the initial prime suspect due to a bitter split, missing car, and profanity-laced cassette tape he left for Susan.

Main topics

Murder investigation & forensic breakthroughs
Wrongful suspicion & small-town bias

Notable quotes

"I had become a walking demon. I was his servant, his slave. I was the devil."

Conclusion

The episode highlights how patience, forensic science, and survivor co

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hello, everybody. It's Deborah Roberts here with some news to share. The first episode of The Scream Murder, a new podcast from 2020, is out right now. But if you wanted to get this early, all you got to do is subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple. Our subscribers already listened to that episode weeks ago. ad-free. And this week, they're going to be able to listen to episodes one through five. As always, our subscribers have access to hundreds of 2020 episodes going back years, completely ad-free. So if you're interested, subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple now. Speaker 2 (0:38) I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore. On October 14th, The Vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that? I had a father called Vision. How is this possible? Speaker 2 (0:55) Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like Mortal Jeopardy. Streaming October 14th. Only on Disney+. Speaker 2 (1:07) Welcome back to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Speaker 7 (1:13) It's not every day in a town of 12,000 that you get a violent Speaker 3 (1:17) murder. The body was draped over the tub with chest and head submerged in water. Speaker 8 (1:25) There was the sense that there was rage involved. Speaker 7 (1:30) This was a young woman who put up quite a struggle for her life. Speaker 5 (1:33) Could it have been a fantasy game that got out of hand? Speaker 4 (1:38) I knew he had killed her. I told him. I said he killed her. She started screaming, Speaker 5 (1:42) yes, Speaker 7 (1:42) he killed her. I said he Speaker 4 (1:43) killed her. He killed her. Speaker 7 (1:45) Everybody in Stephenville was damn sure they knew who did it. Speaker 8 (1:48) And who was that man? Speaker 4 (1:51) He had left terrible notes all over the house. You'd open the microwave and there'd be one in the door. You'd open the drawer in the kitchen, another note. There'd be one in her coat pocket. Lift the lid on the toilet, there's a note. There would be one in the medicine cabinet. You said no one ever got angry at Speaker 1 (2:07) Susan. You got angry at Susan. Speaker 1 (2:11) You know, as bad as we thought it was then, I mean, it was going to get worse. He finds something much darker and much more ominous. As Speaker 6 (2:21) soon as I got in the vehicle, I knew I made the biggest mistake of my life. Speaker 1 (2:26) Sometimes there are monsters that live in the hearts of other people. Speaker 4 (2:29) Cut under your nose. Speaker 5 (2:31) Today is 6-6 of 06, the day we meet the devil himself. Speaker 8 (3:04) Deep in the heart of Texas, decades of unanswered questions about a murder found hidden in a trailer on the outskirts of the woods, a voice from beyond the grave. And a mystery that had lingered over a town for years. was about to resurface. Speaker 5 (3:25) A friend of mine called me and he said, hey, there's a guy out in Abilene who has some writings he's very concerned about that you might be interested in. Speaker 5 (3:37) He says, it's some crazy stuff. And so he gave me all of this. Of course, I had no idea what it was. And I brought it back and started reading it. Speaker 7 (3:55) It remained this mystery. Nobody ever understood it. A killing that has preoccupied so many of us for so many years. Speaker 7 (4:04) By God, I had become a monster. I was the devil. Speaker 3 (4:17) Stephenville has always called itself the cowboy capital world. It was real big on rodeos. There were a lot of professional rodeo cowboys that started here, so that was a big thing. Speaker 3 (4:33) People Speaker 7 (4:33) wear their cowboy hats and wear their boots. And it's not kitsch, it's real. This is who people are. This is an authentic and enduring way of life. In rural Texas, livestock and livestock raising is a big part of the economy. Speaker 8 (4:48) And right there, on a pedestal in the town square, not a lawman or a local hero. Speaker 6 (4:55) Oh yeah, the moolah cow. It represented a really booming milk Speaker 8 (4:59) industry. Speaker 6 (5:00) That's Speaker 2 (5:00) a Speaker 6 (5:00) lot of moolah. Speaker 2 (5:02) People go to church on Sundays and they go to lunch afterwards. A lot of people were born here, they were raised here, and they never left. So you had generations of families who all knew each other. Speaker 8 (5:20) Author Brian Burroughs grew up in a small Texas town. He was drawn to this story of a young woman from Stephenville named Susan Jeanette Adkins. Speaker 7 (5:30) She was sincere and sweet and humble and she was pretty much everyone's idea of an ideal young woman. Speaker 4 (5:39) Susan was a very shy, quiet person until you got to know her. She was hilarious. She didn't mind embarrassing you if she thought of something funny that would get your goat, but you couldn't stay mad at her because she was so cute. Speaker 8 (5:58) Susan was no rebel. She was raised in a church-going family of four. And that shyness meant that she only had a few close friends. One of them had been in band with her. Speaker 4 (6:09) Thelma and Louise, we could finish each other's sentence. We were best buddies. Yeah, she was a one in a million. Speaker 7 (6:17) Friday nights were for football. Sundays for church. Speaker 7 (6:25) And on Saturday night, everybody cruised. In Stephenville, it was called Cruising Speaker 4 (6:30) the Drag. All the kids would just drive from one Dairy Queen to the other. And you'd stop at the parking lots and wait for people you knew to pull in and talk to. I spent a lot of time making the drag with Susan and Cindy. Speaker 7 (6:50) When she got out of school at 18, she took a job at a sandpaper factory. And her life started to change in ways that she hadn't expected. Susan was very beautiful. Speaker 4 (7:02) Every time we'd go out, the guys would go Speaker 7 (7:06) for her. Speaker 8 (7:07) How did she first get a look at Michael Woods? Speaker 7 (7:11) She was driving the drag one day, and she's literally crossing the railroad tracks. And she looks down, and like an album cover, she sees this long-haired guy coming out of the sun. And so she pulls over, and they met. She fell for Michael and she fell hard. Speaker 4 (7:31) Susan had a type, and it was a kind of rough-looking, bad boy type. And they were older than her and very macho man type. Speaker 7 (7:43) It's easy to imagine that she found Michael just a little bit exotic. You know, the long hair, he played the guitar, he played rock and roll. Michael was her rebellion. Speaker 8 (7:54) So in a town of crew cuts and cowboys, Michael Woods was a rocker. To Susan, he looked like Bob Seger. To everyone else, he looked like trouble. But that didn't deter Susan. They had fallen in love. Speaker 7 (8:09) For a while there, every fiber of this woman's being was dedicated to this man. I mean, she was all in. Speaker 8 (8:16) Then Susan tells Michael it's time for them to get married. Speaker 7 (8:20) And Michael, with just this amount of thought, is like, I'm free tomorrow between 11 and 1. Speaker 8 (8:27) At first, it was Susan and Michael against everyone, even her family, even after they wed. Stephenville was not the place for his rock star dreams. And at home, eventually the power ballads faded out. Michael couldn't find steady work, and they got to quarreling. Speaker 4 (8:44) He was a great guy until he wasn't when they broke up. And it was bad. Speaker 8 (8:51) And it, of course, just got worse. Are they arguing with each other at this point? Speaker 7 (8:56) By that final year, yeah, they were fighting. He began to believe that he could have had a better life without her. And then, out of nowhere, he leaves, and he doesn't go with a whimper. He goes with a bang. Speaker 1 (9:12) She Speaker 4 (9:12) was devastated. Speaker 1 (9:13) And I can only imagine how that was. You get home in a cold house, all the lights are out, and you're wondering what happened. Speaker 8 (9:22) He's taken the car, he's taken her fur coat, and vanished in a rage. Susan is freaked out, so Cindy stays on her sofa. Roy offers her a gun, but she gives it back. Instead, he comes over and he nails her window shut. Speaker 4 (9:36) She was afraid of Michael after they broke up because he did have a little bit of a jealous, crazy streak. She was scared. Speaker 8 (9:50) Susan asks for a divorce from Michael, who's skipped town. And later that summer, it's as if she comes out of her shell a little bit. She starts going out with a new guy, a bartender. Speaker 4 (10:00) She was really starting to become happier. A whole new chapter going to open up for her. Speaker 7 (10:06) And then there's this night in late July that everybody involved remembers. Roy and Cindy take Susan to a carnival and nobody enjoys themselves for whatever reason. So Roy says, let's all go back to Stephenville and go to Dairy Queen. We both loved hot fish sundaes too Speaker 4 (10:25) much. And if Susan done something she's never done before, she looked at me and she goes, you know, I think I'm going to order me another one. Speaker 4 (10:35) She really got to enjoy it. Speaker 7 (10:42) Two days later, her supervisor at the factory called her dad and said, we haven't seen Susan for a couple of days. And he's totally not like Susan. Speaker 5 (10:52) When we walked into the house... I just wasn't ready for what we were going to see. Speaker 2 (11:04) On October 19th, 2025, the Louvre became the backdrop of something straight out of a heist movie. Now, nearly a year out, there are still critical questions to be answered. We're used to following heists in movies from the perspectives of the ever so glamorous and dangerous perpetrators. But when it happens in real life, the lines between good and bad guys aren't so clear. And even less clear is the fate of those French crown jewels. In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day like you've never heard them before, through the eyes of the people who lived them. I'll follow the investigation into how this could have happened, who could have been behind it, and then I'll join the international hunt for the Louvre jewels. Heist at the Louvre, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favourite podcast app. Or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen ad-free. Welcome to the greatest show Speaker 4 (12:07) on Earth. Speaker 2 (12:08) FX's AHS 13. Speaker 4 (12:10) What do you sense? A harbinger Speaker 1 (12:12) of our doom. The stars. Speaker 2 (12:17) Something wicked this way comes. You all got to unite! I'll drink to that. If you're gonna rise up and rule the world, you better get yourself a damn sense of humor. FX's AHS 13, now streaming on Hulu. Speaker 8 (12:41) It's late July 1987, hot and quiet in the small town of Stephenville, Texas. Joe Atkins is worried about his 30-year-old daughter, Susan Woods. He'd gotten a call from her boss that she hadn't turned up for work in two days. No one had seen or heard from her. Speaker 7 (12:57) He goes up to the front porch and the front door is ajar and he walks in and he finds her in the bathroom And she's dead and when the first cruisers start showing up in a matter of minutes later Joe's out the front yard waiting for him in tears It's not every day in a town of 12,000 that you get a violent murder. This is an all hands. Speaker 5 (13:23) So Speaker 5 (13:25) It was in the late afternoon. We heard on the police radio that there Speaker 3 (13:29) was a homicide. Speaker 3 (13:32) I walked in the front door and immediately I noticed there was a TV against that wall. And then across from it there was a little table. And on the table there was a bag of chips and a Coke can and a cigarette tray with ashes in it. Speaker 8 (13:49) In the bedroom, there are signs of a desperate struggle. Speaker 5 (13:53) When we walked into the house and saw the carnage in the bedroom, I just wasn't ready for what we were going to see. It Speaker 3 (14:01) looked like where the bed had been scooted about five or six inches towards the bathroom. Like there may have been a struggle in trying to pull somebody in the bathroom. Speaker 7 (14:11) There was a single pillow they found, and upon studying, it hit them. It was makeup from Susan's face. You could see tears in the makeup. And it was a type of thing that everyone involved, well, still remembers. Speaker 5 (14:28) This is a close-up of that pillow. You can see those smudge marks right there. That is mascara from her eyes. So her head would have been smashed hard into the pillow during this Speaker 8 (14:42) assault. Speaker 5 (14:43) That's Speaker 8 (14:43) like a death mask. Exactly. The scene in the bathroom. It's even more disturbing. That's where Susan was found. Speaker 3 (14:51) She was completely nude, so it looked like a sexual assault. The body was draped over the tub with the chest and head submerged in water. Her hands were tied behind her back with what looked like a tank top that had been twisted up. Her arms were pretty high up. My initial thought was that somebody had... use that as leverage to keep her under the water. And if that was the case, then there's probably going to be prints on the bathtub on either side. Speaker 8 (15:19) And sure enough, there were both fingerprints and palm prints. But Speaker 3 (15:23) whose? So we got good prints on both sides of the body on the tub. We just had to identify who it was. It was pretty clear that the person who killed her tried to Speaker 7 (15:35) kill her three different ways. With a pillow across the face. Clearly, with some type, it looks like an electrical cord with a ligature mark across her neck and then by drowning her. Speaker 8 (15:47) The scene was beyond horrific. Detectives took a close look at one detail, the six cigarette butts that were in the ashtray. Speaker 5 (15:58) You know, the question is, what is going on with six cigarette butts? I knew it was Speaker 3 (16:04) significant. Looked like somebody had been sitting there watching TV and smoking cigarettes and snacking. And she wasn't the kind that would let a person come in, especially a man. She was very introverted and cautious that way. Speaker 7 (16:20) Well, Susan did not smoke, nor did she drink caffeine. And so... The thought develops early on that there was a good chance that the killer had stayed there long enough to drink that coke and smoke those cigarettes. Speaker 3 (16:37) Now, if we've identified who the cigarette butts belonged to in the cokes in the other room, they say, yeah, I stopped by and, you know, we watched TV for a little bit and talked and I left. She was okay then. The way I figure it, those palm prints on each side of the body are irrefutable. A hand prints beside the body on the tub. You can't explain those. So I knew if we could find the palm prints, we had the killer. Speaker 5 (17:05) Well, there's a couple of theories going around. As far as the detectives could tell, Robbery wasn't a motive. It was straight-up sex, from what anybody could tell. There Speaker 8 (17:16) was the sense that there was rage involved. Something really violent had happened. Speaker 7 (17:22) Well, for entirely different reasons, the police and the community were thinking the same thing, Speaker 1 (17:27) that this was someone she knew. As we drove down the road, we could see strobing lights of emergency vehicles and stuff, and we got up there, closed our house, and we saw... Speaker 4 (17:37) A yellow tape, yellow police tape. Speaker 1 (17:40) I Speaker 4 (17:41) knew he had killed her. I told him, I said he killed Speaker 1 (17:44) her. I Speaker 4 (17:45) said he killed her, he killed her. And I was talking about her ex-husband, Mike. Speaker 7 (17:52) And of course, everybody in Stephen Velen was damn sure they knew who did it. And Speaker 8 (17:57) who was that man? Speaker 4 (17:58) Michael Woods. No doubt in our minds, all the pieces to the puzzle led straight to Michael. She would have let him in the house. He smoked. And he had a very volatile personality. So the whole world blamed Michael from the minute it happened. Let's just say, as that... Speaker 7 (18:17) impression and that conclusion spread around town you didn't get a lot of pushback and when Speaker 1 (18:22) the police talked to us and that's what we tell them there Speaker 7 (18:24) was no Speaker 4 (18:24) other enemy you Speaker 5 (18:26) go from the victim and start working your way out spiraling out so you know he was a rightful first suspect but Speaker 8 (18:35) detective donnie hensley who's taken the lead on the case he has no evidence to link michael to the scene or Speaker 7 (18:41) even being back in the town or even being back in the state of texas so he does What he has to do, which is he starts to look at the other possible suspects. Speaker 8 (18:50) And at one man in particular, a guy who'd been spending a lot of time with Susan after Michael had left. And some of that time, in that very same bathtub. Speaker 3 (18:59) She would have a beer, while I'd have two or three Coca-Colas. When you're investigating a case like this, you don't want to get tunnel vision and miss the obvious. I want the person that did it and nobody else. If I was them, I would be looking at me too. Speaker 8 (19:24) As Stephenville residents wake up to the news of the gruesome murder of Susan Woods. Speaker 8 (19:30) local police begin to canvas the neighborhood. Turns out the man they want to talk to is someone that Susan met 30 miles from here. His name is J.C. Bowman. Speaker 4 (19:46) JC was a bartender at a club in Granbury that I had taken Susan to, and I had introduced them, and they were casually dating. He Speaker 7 (19:56) was basically just seen as a guy who had stumbled into Susan's life at a point. It was one of the last male relationships she had before she was killed. I was bartending Speaker 3 (20:07) at North Fork in Granbury. Speaker 3 (20:11) This cute little lady came in one night wearing this shirt. Einstein, sticking his tongue out. And I had the poster at the time and she was wearing this and I said, I like that shirt. That's how we broke the ice. Speaker 4 (20:22) And the next time she came in, she gave me that shirt. I don't think it was a real hot and heavy romance, but they had fun together. It was kind of a distraction for both of them. Speaker 7 (20:35) And J.C. Bowman was apparently passably cute, and he started coming by her house at night. Speaker 3 (20:43) Neither one of us wanted a serious relationship. We