5.Adam Creech — Direct (Part 2)

ADAM CREECH: Anthony Adam Creech. Creech is C-R-E-E-C-H.

ADAM CREECH: I'm employed with the Lexington County Sheriff's Department.

ADAM CREECH: Ten years this August 24th.

ADAM CREECH: No, I didn't. In my time at the sheriff's department, I began like most deputies do as a six lead patrol deputy. I moved through as a field training officer, a master deputy, a criminal investigator and now, I'm currently a sergeant of investigations. I currently supervise our special victim's unit.

ADAM CREECH: In August of 2014, I was a detective. I believe I had been a detective for about two months, give or take. I was relatively brand new in that position.

ADAM CREECH: I was. The original report in this case was filed on September 3rd, 2014. It was assigned to me as a missing persons case on September 4th, 2014.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct. I am the chief investigator in this incident.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. On September 4th, 2014 when I received this case for investigation, it was titled as a missing persons report. All indications at the time were that Mr. Jones and his children had possibly just left town. The initial reporting parties had no indications they could state at the time there were any concerns for anybody's safety.

ADAM CREECH: Little bit of a complicated answer to that. So earlier that day on the 3rd, there was a welfare check called in by Beth Houck. I believe she was the principal or assistant principal at Saxe Gotha Elementary School where Merah, Eli and Nahtahn all attended school. Then Master Deputy Nicholson and Constable Lawrence Markey did respond out there with Ms. Houck and attempted to do a welfare check. Nobody was home. Late that same evening, Timothy Jones, Sr. called again and spoke to Sergeant Black, one of our west region patrol supervisors, and just kind of explained what was going on. He ended up calling Master Deputy Smith, who is a south region supervisor on duty at the time, and he actually sent him to the home of Ms. Kyzer, she was Amber Jones still back then, to file the initial missing persons report at Russell Rowe Road, I think was the name of the street.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: So initially, it's pretty typical in a missing persons case just to make some phone contact with family, coworkers. I spoke to I believe it was --

ADAM CREECH: Jim McConnell first.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah. He would be Timothy's supervisor at Intel. And then I know in order, I then spoke with Timothy Jones, Sr. and then I think the following day is when I first was able to make contact with Ms. Kyzer.

ADAM CREECH: Give me a second.

ADAM CREECH: Mr. McConnell indicated to me that he believed Timothy's home life kept him pretty busy and pretty stressed. But he said, ultimately, he believed Timothy loved his children.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct. That would be what I wrote.

ADAM CREECH: Yes.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. So Mr. McConnell offered the services of Ben Wyne, Intel's internal security, I guess, kind of internal affairs. Mr. Wyne was a former law enforcement officer and he just wanted to know if there was anything they could do as a company to assist with this. Ultimately, he was able to review Timothy's work emails. I think they ended up reviewing like 12,000 emails. They didn't find anything that was of any interest to us, so that was really the extent of Mr. Wyne's involvement.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. Mr. Wyne did note that there was no personal activity on his work email. I guess from his perspective, most employees would have had some kind of personal correspondences even in their work email.

ADAM CREECH: Correct, W-Y-N-E.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. I believe I left her a voice mail on the 3rd and I was able to speak with her -- I mean, I'm sorry, the 4th and I spoke with her on the 5th.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: I did.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct.

ADAM CREECH: I did. When I got to the residence, it was kind of like it had been at the welfare check. There were no vehicles there. When I went to the front door, it was unlocked. Just as a safety concern, I checked the residence and there were no signs of anybody currently staying in the home. In fact, it looked kind of disheveled. Sheets were missing off the beds. There wasn't any apparent indication anybody was staying there at the time.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. When I spoke to Amber, she did mention to me that he had possibly applied for Georgia Technical College, I guess. And I did confirm that through an admissions counselor.

ADAM CREECH: He had not completed that enrollment, no.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. So it was a Saturday night, I wasn't working. I received a call from the front desk of the sheriff's department. Now, I know that that would have been highly unusual back then. I was so new to this that it didn't dawn on me that this was anything unusual. Sherry Fallaw was the front desk worker that night and she told me there had been an NCIC hit sent on the missing person case I had involving Timothy Jones and his five children. And she had a name and number for Under Sheriff Marty Patterson with the Smith County Sheriff's Department and requested that I give him a phone call.

ADAM CREECH: That would be correct.

ADAM CREECH: I did. I called Under-Sheriff Patterson and he told me that a couple of his deputies had been working a traffic safety check point and had stopped Mr. Jones. Upon determining that he was a missing person, they had asked him about his children. They said that they also had him detained for suspicion of DUI and possession of spice. They said when asked about his children, he had said initially he didn't have any children, which, obviously, they were concerned because of the NCIC entry and had seen a diaper box in the vehicle with his name on it. While I was on the phone with Mr. Patterson, I could actually hear Mr. Jones, Timothy in the background speaking. Under-Sheriff Patterson actually related to his deputies while I was still on the phone to ask him again and that's when his story changed and he came back and said he had three children, but they were with friends in South Carolina.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. Actually, Sergeant Laintz was not my direct supervisor. He was a supervisor on one of the other teams in the major crimes unit that was actually on call that weekend. So I called then Sergeant Laintz and told him what we had going on, what our concerns were because when I had spoken with Under-Sheriff Patterson, he had told me that there was an extreme smell of decomposition in the vehicle and that he had concerns from his experience what that possibly indicated with Mr. Jones saying that he didn't have any children. So I gave Sergeant Laintz kind of the rundown of what I had done on this case up to this point. I ended up shooting him an email summary. And he said he'd make some phone calls and they'd run down some stuff until we figured out what exactly was going on and whose ultimate law enforcement jurisdiction would be responsible going forward.

ADAM CREECH: It did. When I had spoken to Timothy Jones, Sr., he had told me that Timothy's mother had a history of mental illness and he had always had suspicions that Timothy could potentially follow in her footsteps and he always kept a close eye on him as a result.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. He said that was a possibility.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. That initial conversation with Sergeant Laintz would have been on September 6th, 2014. The following day, September 7th, 2014, I think it was about 2:00 in the afternoon -- I had spoken to Sergeant Laintz earlier that morning and Lieutenant Frier, who is the next person over Sergeant Laintz. About two o'clock, they said -- they called me back and said that there had been a search warrant conducted on Timothy's vehicle down in Mississippi and that as a result of that, they had taken some pictures of some receipts and some notes and it was giving them reason to believe that if a crime had occurred, it had occurred in Lexington County. At that point, they asked me if I'd be willing to come in even though it was my day off. And of course, I said absolutely. So I went to the sheriff's department and kind of briefed everybody else who was there and we did look at a series of notes and receipts from the vehicle.

ADAM CREECH: I did.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct, Athens, Georgia.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. That would actually be the Wal-Mart in West Columbia, specifically.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. That would be Advance Auto Parts.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. That would be the L&W Mart that I believe we had the clerk testify --

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: And that would be the Dollar General that's been spoken about previously.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. On the 4th, he had two back-to-back State Federal Credit Union transactions.

ADAM CREECH: Correct, Bypass Food Mart in Greenville, Alabama at 8:18 that morning.

ADAM CREECH: Well, before that on the 6th, at 1:06 p.m., he was at the Community Neighbor Bank in Camden, Alabama. And then at 6:09 p.m. that same night, he had a receipt for the Taco Bell in Laurel, Mississippi.

ADAM CREECH: Our initial impression based on what we knew or didn't know at the time, we didn't really know if there was a pattern or not a pattern to him going back and forth.

ADAM CREECH: No. I mean, based on what was described to me about the vehicle, I certainly -- I mean, realistically, I wasn't hopeful. I was prepared for the worst, but hoping for the best.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. The children would have been in the car that entire time. In fact, they would still be in the vehicle when the missing person report was filed and it was assigned to me for investigation.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. I made contact with investigators at several sheriff's departments throughout the state, South Carolina and Georgia, in reference to possible surveillance video and other detectives working the case, some of which have already testified, who were responsible for later meeting up with those individuals and actually getting copies of that video.

ADAM CREECH: I do. So to back track and not leave anything out since we're going fairly chronologically, I had spoken to Amber on the 5th and she said that she was going to go to their scheduled child visitation at Chick-Fil-A on Saturday at 6:00. And she had called me later that day and left me a voice mail.

ADAM CREECH: To say he hadn't showed up. And so I spoke to her again on the 7th when we had this new information developing, correct.

ADAM CREECH: I did. She said that she believed he had possibly seen a psychiatrist at one point in South Carolina. I would find out later that that was related to their divorce. She said he had a -- he may have received some kind of treatment for what -- she used the word bipolar disorder, but she said she ultimately wasn't sure. And she did mention that he all -- at that same time, that he had a history of cocaine abuse.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. Dave Lawrence from South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, he was a lieutenant then, myself and Special Agent David Mackey, who testified on Friday, the three of us got selected to drive down to Smith County and try to interview Timothy. The local law enforcement tried to interview him the night before and felt like they hadn't really gotten anywhere. So we were going to drive down and try again. At that time, we still believed if a crime had occurred, it had probably occurred in Lexington County at his residence.

ADAM CREECH: He was trained as a polygrapher. I don't think that's his primary duty assignment. He did bring his polygrapher equipment in case we decided to use it, but it's pretty unusual for us to actually use polygrapher equipment in most criminal investigations.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, I remember it being somewhere eight, nine hours. It was a pretty lengthy drive.

ADAM CREECH: We discussed quite a bit amongst ourselves. Of course, with a case like this, everybody back home was like you had kicked over a fire ant bed. My phone, I don't know if it went five minutes without going off and somebody calling to tell me something or ask me something or give some kind of direction in the case. While we were on the way, we did formulate some ideas -- some general ideas of what we planned to do with the interview once we got down there.

ADAM CREECH: We did. When we got down there, we kind of had a round table discussion with the Smith County Sheriff's Department personnel that were involved in the case and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation personnel involved in the case. I believe Special Agent Bobe, that testified yesterday, was also at that briefing.

ADAM CREECH: I did. Stacy Jones that testified last week with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, their forensic technician back then, she did drive me to where they were keeping Timothy's vehicle so that I could review it and all the evidence retrieved from the vehicle in this case.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. We knew that his dad had been used the night before in that interview. We had talked about that on the way down there, but that was not anything we ever planned because that's a highly unusual interview tactic. I guess you could call it using a third party intermediary. We didn't see where that was necessarily productive the night before, so we didn't plan on repeating that.

ADAM CREECH: Yes, I do believe it was about 7:30.

ADAM CREECH: Central time, yes.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. So this is something we'll talk about again here shortly. Just a little bit of background. So in 2014, it was not the standard practice for us to video or audio recorded interviews. Again, I had only been in investigations a couple of months, so I was pretty early with this, but had done enough to know that that was not normal procedure with the sheriff's department. We were about halfway in this trip and I received a call from Lieutenant Frier telling me to record the interview. We weren't sure what kind of recording capabilities the Smith County Sheriff's Department would have available, so we did stop at a local Wal-Mart on the way and purchased a digital tape recorder.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. We did tell him that we were going to record the interview because we weren't sure at the time if Mississippi was a one party consent state.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. Special Agent Mackey, I believe he testified to this Friday, he went over the Advice of Rights form. And Timothy acknowledged it, agreed to speak with us. I believe his words were, yes, yes, I know I'm self-incriminating myself. He agreed to speak with us. We started speaking. There was a lot of small talk, what we call rapport building, about employment, jobs, health, just kind of dropping the tension, building a rapport with him before we jumped into the topic. About 20 minutes or so into the interview, the Miranda form had been sitting in front of him, and he reached forward and pulled it and signed it.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct, probably more than anybody else in this case.

ADAM CREECH: It would.

ADAM CREECH: It could. He and I talked about at one point. He mentioned to me that people felt like he was kind of a fast talker. I never had any issues keeping pace with him, but I've got a tendency to be a fast talker, too. In fact, I have to make a conscious effort not to --

ADAM CREECH: -- get too fast today.

ADAM CREECH: He could. Sometimes you'd be talking about topic A and he would stray into topic B, but I found usually you could kind of keep him on task if you paid attention to that.

ADAM CREECH: I've heard mention that he stutters, again, that's something I'm prone to as well, so I don't know that I would have paid particular attention to him stuttering.

ADAM CREECH: I would have had handwritten notes at one point, yes.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. I don't keep any of my handwritten notes, but everything is translated in my report.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. So we tried to start the recording early in the interview, then as the interview proceeds, we speak with Timothy at some length, as Special Agent Mackey testified to, after some initial denials and beating around the bush, Timothy finally admits that he did kill the children and goes into some intimate details about what took place. We talk about that for a while and, actually, as we -- after that, we had gone back and forth with him at some length trying to parse out what the location may have been and we determined it was in Alabama between Camden and Greenville. Shortly after we had kind of gone through all that, we realized at that time that we needed to check the recorder. And to my embarrassment to this day, we thought it had been running the whole time, it actually had not ever been turned on properly, but it was the first time we'd ever used it. I know my nerves were through the roof, but I'll take the blame on that.

ADAM CREECH: That sounds about correct, yes.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. So when we initially entered the room, he was -- I can't remember if he was brought in after we were -- actually, I believe we were in there already deciding where we were all going to sit and he got brought in. He was clearly very nervous. I actually think I described him as on edge. So he sat down. So right off the bat, I knew that we weren't going to jump right in to talk about the kids because he didn't seem like he was in a place where I believed we were at a point to have that kind of rapport with him where he'd open up to us about that. So a lot of time in interviews like this, when I get a read like that on somebody, the first thing I'm going to do is talk to them about work or family. Obviously, family is not a great topic in this case. But general things so you just kind of get to know them a little bit. When we started talking to him about work, his nervousness dropped considerably. It, obviously, relaxed him a little bit, but we didn't jump straight into talking about the children.

ADAM CREECH: Absolutely.

ADAM CREECH: He told me he might have Crohn's Disease. He talked about some GI issues.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. I think there was some general antacids and that kind of medication.

ADAM CREECH: It did. I don't remember if he brought it up or we brought it up, but the topic of nonprescription drug use came up and he mentioned that he did use spice. And then he went into great lengths to explain to me that -- the difference between spice and marijuana. And he explained how spice contained an artificial version of THC. And he went into explanation about how it affected receptors on the human brain. It was probably the first time I've ever had somebody get into a breakdown of the biological effects of drugs and the chemistry behind it, so I thought that was pretty unusual.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. And I apologize, let me clarify. He did say Scooby Snax, which he made a point to distinguish from spice. I mean, they're one in the same really.

ADAM CREECH: They're both artificial cannabinoids.

ADAM CREECH: It did. And I had had enough experience dealing with spice as a patrol deputy, which I had just been very recently prior to this. Spice and bath salts were pretty prevalent at the time, so I was familiar with both.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. Time Warp is where he said he purchased his Scooby Snax from, which is a local establishment that used to be in West Columbia.

ADAM CREECH: I was. Because when we were dealing with spice pretty heavily, I believe that was one of the main locations a lot of people were purchasing it from.

ADAM CREECH: I do believe it has.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. He made very specific -- went to very specific length to explain that Scooby Snax was legal even if spice in general was not. At the time, the laws were having trouble keeping up with artificial cannabinoids on the market. I think some experts explained there were a number of versions in and once one version would become illegal, they would tweak it a little bit until it was technically a different compound with similar effects and would remarket it. And I guess Scooby Snax was the current rendition of what that was available locally.

ADAM CREECH: He did. His exact words were he used it for self-medicating, what he referred to, "Voices in my head. And he said it was used to level himself out."

ADAM CREECH: Yeah -- quell wasn't his word, that was my word in the report. It was the same context.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. He brought this up. And I had known from the night before when they interviewed him on the 7th, he brought his mother up during the interview. And, of course, I had the background from Timothy, Sr. that he had brought up during the interview. At this time, when myself and Special Agent Mackey were speaking to Timothy, he did bring up his belief that he may have inherited psychological problems from his mother. And when he talked about his mother, he got very emotional and very -- at least, appeared to be upset. And whereas the work topic calmed him down, this topic very much amped him back up. And he said, "I think I've got some of what she has."

ADAM CREECH: I do -- I don't remember if I can attribute that to Timothy or his father, but one of them did tell me that she had had a series of psychological breakdowns at Tim's age.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. And as I'm looking here, to back up on that last question, Timothy did tell me this. I think I ended up hearing it from both of them at one point.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, I didn't see it just now.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. And I'll note, just because we're a little out of order here, this is about when he pulled the Miranda form to himself and signed the form.

ADAM CREECH: I believe, if I remember, there's a little bit of crying. Certainly, his speech pattern changed a bit. His voice broke a little bit. Certainly, he had been a fairly -- it had been a fairly calm demeanor up until that point.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. And he once more, as he signed it, told us that he knew he was incriminating himself.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: We do. We started asking about the children. Kind of like talking about his mother, this topic upset him quite a bit as well. His voice began to waiver again. He actually -- I do know that he was crying a bit at this point.

ADAM CREECH: Crying heavily. His body language -- he had been fairly calm after initially coming in, that initial nervousness. His body language had kind of leveled out. At this point, he starts, I guess, vibrating, for lack of a better term, and bouncing, almost like when you're dealing with somebody who's nervous about something and they're trying to expel all that nervous energy. But that was his reaction once we start speaking about the children.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. So when we started speaking about the children, he told us that -- he told us he was afraid of the children. And he said he had picked the oldest three children, which, again, would be Elias, Merah and Nahtahn up from school on the afternoon of August 28th, 2014. And he said he had picked up the youngest two children from his neighbor, Christine Ehlke's house. He said at home later that night, he attributed -- he said that his son, Nahtahn, threatened him. And threatened was his word. And the statement he attributed to Nahtahn was, when I grow up, I'm going to kill you. And then he told me that his son, Elias, said, I'm going to -- "going to cut people up and feed them to dogs." And then --

ADAM CREECH: Oh, no, I was going to say he then -- he started telling us about Nahtahn messing with electrical outlets in the home and he believed that Nahtahn was, "Up to something."

ADAM CREECH: Not exactly. So fast-forwarding a little bit, we --

ADAM CREECH: Yes, I'm sorry. I'm getting in my own head ahead of things with some other statements that come in later.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, he did say -- I did ask him how the children could pose a danger to him.

ADAM CREECH: He said they were extremely intelligent. And then he referred to a recent incident -- turned out there was an incident report with this with the sheriff's department that's been brought up where his youngest son, Gabriel, has walked away from the babysitter's house and had been caught going up South Lake. They think maybe he was going to Saxe Gotha Elementary School. Timothy said this was not normal behavior for a two-year-old. He said this was an example of how intelligent the children were.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. He said this was the reason he felt they posed a threat to him.

ADAM CREECH: Yes, he did. He said that he believed they were conspiring to kill him the night of August 28th, 2014. He said that's why he drove them to Wal-Mart, the nearby Wal-Mart, which would be the Wal-Mart in Red Bank, and said he abandoned them in the parking lot and drove away.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. He referenced the issue with the outlets. He believed that it was Nahtahn attempting to find a way to electrocute him in his sleep.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct. Agent Mackey, for the first time in the interview, gave a very direct accusation. He said, I believe you killed those children. Timothy was surprised at this. It was like he didn't know how to respond to this. It was kind of a brief moment of silence. And after that, his behavior started to amp up again. He got more erratic. He tried to change the topic, which seemed very evasive. This was -- you know, it was like he didn't want to talk about this once confronted with it. Special Agent Mackey and I both remained very calm and focused and kind of kept him on that path because we weren't going to let him change the topic and not get into this at this point.

ADAM CREECH: Yes, he was saying he was afraid of the children. But after a few minutes of us not reacting to the outbursts, he started to calm down noticeably.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. They had described his behavior as being kind of wild and erratic the night before. I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly to what level, but the way they described it, this seemed probably the closest to that that I saw during my encounters with Timothy.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, a couple days, give or take, that sounds about right.

ADAM CREECH: He is.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. He was confronted with the Wal-Mart receipts. When he was confronted with things like the muriatic acid, specifically, and saws, he said the saws were for cutting limbs in the yard. He said the muriatic acid was etching PVC. He kind of had an explanation for everything on the receipt.

ADAM CREECH: We did. He actually very quickly acknowledged that that was his handwriting. We had him read the notes out loud. And what was notable was he read the notes and he didn't seem to show any reaction or response to what was written on the notes. It was just a very flat tone like he wasn't surprised about the content.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. So the notes, Special Agent Mackey dismissed the explanation for the notes and the Wal-Mart -- his explanations for the Wal-Mart items and said he believed they were for getting rid of bodies. And then I confronted Timothy with the blood that was found in the vehicle. As previous witnesses have testified to, there was a lot of blood in the vehicle, a lot of signs of decomposition. He had previously told the officers the night before that it was possibly from an animal. When we confronted him on the night of the 8th, he similarly said it was from an animal. I had known from speaking with Stacy Jones earlier that day that they already outsourced some of the biological samples to a local lab called Boscales Biolab and they had gotten some presumptive tests indicating the material was human. So I confronted Timothy with this after he said it was probably from an animal. And he quickly said, oh, it's from a cut. Other than the fact that he didn't have any cuts that we could see, a cut wouldn't account for that shear level of blood in the vehicle. And I confronted him with that. I told him there was enough blood in the vehicle, it couldn't have been from a cut. And he acknowledged it and didn't say anything else about it.

ADAM CREECH: We did -- or I did, specifically. There's a little bit of background in that. So one of the people we had spoken to over the phone on the way down for this interview was a behaviorist from SLED. And he had kind of given us a range of suggestions and ideas on how to approach the interview and topics to bring up. And one of the things he had suggested was to offer a minimized explanation for what had happened. Because we knew that the children were probably dead, they were dead, he had probably killed them. And that's a hard thing to get somebody to admit to in an interrogative setting. So one of the suggestions was to throw out this -- especially since he was already setting a foundation that he was afraid of the children, he thought they were going to try to harm him. So I tried to throw out self-defense as a very direct offer. And I went through a pretty detailed explanation about -- I think I specifically told him that we had no doubts he had killed them. And that if he killed them, he had to have had a good reason. And I quoted protection of persons and property act. I kind of oversold it a little bit and a little bit of that was on purpose because I wanted to gauge his reaction. And he actually got a pretty -- I described it as a him, disgusted tone and he almost kind of looked perplexed and cocked his head and he said, but they're just kids.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. In my opinion, I believe that that indicated the fear of the children wasn't as significant as he was claiming it was.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. And that was another level of rapport building on my part, is that I keyed in on that pretty early that who wouldn't be stressed in that situation, having five children and a high stress tech job and a single parent. So I tried to use that to kind of further our interactions and rapport with him and kind of use that to kind of bring the stress level down a little bit more as well since they had raised back up at this point.

ADAM CREECH: It was emotional in a less erratic way. It seemed to strike a cord with him, like he kind of shook his head in acknowledgment of what I was saying.

ADAM CREECH: And he was crying a little bit at that point.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: He does. I believe the photos are in evidence and they're photos that have been put in the media quite a bit in this case. But they were the initial photos that I had been given as part of the missing persons report. And Special Agent Mackey had started putting those pictures down in front of him. And he got really upset over being presented with those pictures, actually, raised up in his chair quite a bit. He was handcuffed in the front, so there's not a whole lot of movement he can do, but he actually rose up several inches, got really hysterical and began yelling, keep them away from him.

ADAM CREECH: At that point, Special Agent --

ADAM CREECH: He's behaving that way.

ADAM CREECH: His behavior is indicative of that.

ADAM CREECH: I did.

ADAM CREECH: This is the only one of the pictures that Timothy was depicted in and this is with -- I believe this is Gabriel in the photo. I showed him that picture -- and at this point, I kind of keyed in that Special Agent Mackey was kind of the more direct, kind of bad cop, if you will, even though I think he seemed like a pretty nice guy. But it's just that image, federal agent, he's the one getting in there saying you killed them, you did this, you did this. I'm taking a more understanding, kind of patience, non-demeaning approach, so I'm kind of inserting myself as kind of the good cop in the scenario. So when this picture came up, I -- what I -- like I said, I quote this to him myself, I said, "Tim, you know what this picture shows me? This picture shows me a man who obviously loves his children and if he killed them, he did it because he felt like he had no other choice at the time." Again, trying to give him sort of a hook to minimize what took place and start to tell us what happened.

ADAM CREECH: He is.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. So Special Agent Mackey immediately went into confronting him with the Wal-Mart receipts again. And Tim was still crying quite a bit. And just one of the wildest things I've ever seen in terms of a demeanor shift. It was like you had flipped a light switch. He just completely calmed down and he very calmly, he said, "Guys, let's cut to the chase." And we asked him what he meant. And he said, "You're not going to find them." We asked him why and he said, "Because they're deceased."

ADAM CREECH: Correct. And that had been another strategy that had been suggested by the SLED behaviorist, that if we could get him to talk about what happened to the children that one of the big things we needed to push was that we needed to find the children so that we could bring them back home, get them a proper burial, put them to rest, which I think that's where we would have gone anyways because it would have been the appropriate thing to do under the circumstances.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. That was his -- the quote that I attributed to him was this was not premeditated.

ADAM CREECH: No. The recorder was off to the side. At the angle, it looked like the red light was on, but it was just a reflection of the light in the room.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah. He went on to talk about Nahtahn and the outlets again in a little bit more detail. He said that he believed that Nahtahn was, "Up to something, "wouldn't come off it. So he PT'd his ass."

ADAM CREECH: Yes, he described it specifically like push-ups and squats and later he used the word hitting and spanking as well.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. He was talking about the outlets. He said he pushed the child for hours because he wouldn't -- wouldn't tell about the outlets.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. He said he had pushed him for hours and said, I "pushed him too far." And he said he sent him to bed and claimed that he later went to check on him and said he was deceased.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. Special Agent Mackey says, "This was not about you being afraid of your children. This is about Nahtahn coming off of it." Timothy's response was, Yes. And then Timothy said, "This was all because Nahtahn would not come off of it."

ADAM CREECH: So Timothy had earlier referenced, obviously, when he first brought up the outlets that it was because of his fear Nahtahn was trying to hurt him. He didn't bring that angle up at this point. He just seemed really focused on the fact Nahtahn wouldn't tell him what happened with the outlets and why. He actually used the word defiant to describe the child when he was talking about the PT. And then it was a really odd statement, at one point, he says, " One of the five would have grown up to do something bad. Me killing them prevented that."

ADAM CREECH: Of course.

ADAM CREECH: I did. That was my impression at the time.

ADAM CREECH: It did. I don't think that's a good rationalization of what took place.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. He went into a detailed explanation. And you guys have all heard about how he strangled the other four. He said he started with Elias. As he was strangling Elias, he stated that Elias said, "Daddy, I want to go with." He told us next he sought out Merah, who he then told us he also manually strangled with his hands. And while doing, as has been previously testified to, she said, "Daddy, I love you." And he initially told us he killed the youngest two children, the babies, the same way. Later, he clarified for us that he had actually used a belt. When we asked what belt, his response was, I don't know. I have a lot of belts. But he did admit that when he did kill the children, it was on August 28th, 2014, and it was at his residence, which was South Lake Drive, which is in Lexington.

ADAM CREECH: He did. I noted at the time that I felt like it was kind of unusual that he could be so blatant about how the four died, but he wouldn't explain Nahtahn. Looking back on it, I can see a number of reasons that could be the case. At the time, he suggested that maybe Nahtahn had electrocuted himself with the outlets. He actually used the word, "Sucked all the electrolytes out of his body." He's a pretty intelligent guy. In hindsight, I don't see where he would have necessarily believed something like that. But that was his suggestion at the time.

ADAM CREECH: That was my impression at that moment.

ADAM CREECH: He did. So we initially spoke about -- the message he had sent his father, I think was introduced yesterday, about he had too much to do and that's why he wasn't coming to town that weekend, whether or not that had to do with his dilemma about what to do with the children. He said yes. And then he went on to tell us this was also why he told his neighbor, Christine, on the 2nd that she couldn't talk to them. Because, at that point, of course, they were already deceased. He then told us at that point that he had smoked Scooby Snax that he mentioned that he uses after killing the children. He said it was to, "calm the voices in his head."

ADAM CREECH: He did. He said he used the sheets and blankets off their beds and he wrapped them up and stacked them in the vehicle.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. He did say -- I quoted him with this, I wasn't thinking. I didn't care if I get caught. We talked about whether or not he had ever done anything to any of the bodies, which he denied. But he did make a comment at that time that he was, "not very careful with them as they were already dead."

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, just --

ADAM CREECH: -- glancing at this --

ADAM CREECH: -- I didn't want to misspeak. So we did ask him -- so initially, he made a comment about what he thought should happen to him. He mentioned a couple of possibilities. I'm not going to say. And in light of this, I did make the comment -- he did make the comment of I think I need help. And then he went on to explain to us that this wasn't the first time he had thought about harming the children. We asked him as a follow-up, you know, why he didn't previously seek any help. And at the time, he seemed to interpret that as physical help with the children, like childcare-type stuff. Because then he went on to explain that he had a rocky relationship with his own father and family and that, you know, at least, insinuated that the children's mother didn't want to be an active part of their lives.

ADAM CREECH: Yes, I was inquiring more of potential psychiatric issues if those were valid. And his response was, "Because I thought I could manage it on my own." And he mentioned at that time about how he had seen a psychiatrist briefly after his divorce. And during that, we kind of asked him what his thoughts were about what happened to the children. And to me, this was a pretty notable statement of his. He said, "Part of me says I'm their father and no father should do this to his children. Part of me says fuck it, they're already dead."

ADAM CREECH: He did.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. He said he was driving around, I believe he described it as fairly aimless, but he said at the time, he was trying to come up with ideas and plans of what he was going to do with the bodies.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. The vehicle was definitely indicative that they had probably been in there for a week.

ADAM CREECH: We did. We went back and talked with him about the items on the receipt again. This time, he did acknowledge that he had purchased all those things from the Wal-Mart and that his intent had to be to use those items to dispose of the children. His exact word was, "Dispose of the evidence." He said that he had purchased the garbage bags on the -- so the Wal-Mart purchase was on the 3rd. The garbage bags from Dollar General was on the 4th. He said those were specifically purchased to get rid of the remains. Notably, he said, "I had some of my own trash to throw away, too." And then we asked him about the smell. Because some other witnesses had testified the smell in his vehicle was pretty significant. His comment to us was that you just learn to ignore that after a while.

ADAM CREECH: When I was exposed to it, it had been airing out for a couple of days, yeah, about knock you off your feet.

ADAM CREECH: He did. He said, ultimately, he just put the children in garbage bags and tossed them off in a wooded access road.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct. I did tell him that. Again, you know, he said this, he's admitted to what most people would agree is a pretty egregious thing. But at that point -- my goal at this point is that we've still got to find those children and bring them home. So I can't get emotionally invested and reactive to what he's just admitted to. I've got to stay in my role. So again, the empathetic approach to this interview -- and again, it's not my role to judge him for what he did. It's just be a finder of what happened and let's find those children and let's get them home.

ADAM CREECH: I did. I once more harped on the notion that he needed to help us put these children to rest, which is what they deserved. That they deserved better than being thrown in garbage bags in the woods.

ADAM CREECH: He did. I mean, he agreed with us that what he had done wasn't what they deserved. And I think, at the very least, he realized that at this point, he had admitted what he had done and that there was no reason for him not to help us find the children.

ADAM CREECH: Yes, I would say the more involved we got trying to find the location, he did get very engaged and very eager for us to find the spot and take us to the children.

ADAM CREECH: I did.

ADAM CREECH: We did. So there was kind of a key incident that I think occurred or, at least, he says occurred. And I think this is significant to the timeline of what happened. He had mentioned this to the officers on the night of the 7th. I don't know if it came up in their testimony or not, I can't remember. But Timothy told us -- at this point, he repeated the story, that on the night of September 6th, he was driving through Georgia or Alabama and he pulled over on the side of the road and he got stuck in the ditch. He said that he should have been caught then because he said a local law enforcement officer got out with him and was concerned that he might have been under the influence and kind of had a loose suspicion of possible DUI. He said the homeowner -- there was a homeowner, I guess a residence right there where he got stuck in the ditch had come out and talked to him already. He came out and vouched for him and said, hey, look, this guy's not a problem. Just let him call a tow truck and get wenched out of the ditch and it will be fine. He said he paid for a tow truck in cash and they came and pulled him out. But he said at that point that he knew he had almost been caught and that he needed to get rid of the children at that point. So the next day -- we had talked about receipts, the previous receipts mentioned from the Bypass Food Mart in Greenville, Alabama, at 8:18 a.m., the Community Neighbor Bank in Camden, Alabama at 13:06 p.m., which would be 1:06 p.m. He had mentioned that they were with him at the Food Mart, but they were not with him at the Community Bank. So we had a pretty reasonable belief that somewhere in between those two, he had -- would have been the disposal site.

ADAM CREECH: Sorry.

ADAM CREECH: We weren't. We tried. Of course, to an extent kind of like a needle in a haystack because I can't imagine would want to come forward and say hey, I was that guy and probably should have arrested him for DUI, but didn't.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, it was a story that didn't seem to serve any purpose one way or another, so we just kind of -- I, at least, personally took it as a probable fact.

ADAM CREECH: We did. He seemed convinced that if he got access to some kind of topographical maps or something that showed elevation changes that he would be able to find the location on a map. We're still looking at a pretty big search area.

ADAM CREECH: I think so.

ADAM CREECH: He got frustrated with the Apple device and specifically requested something with Windows or Android operating system. And I kind of remember joking with him about that because I feel the same way about Apple products.

ADAM CREECH: No. I think they're kind of clunky.

ADAM CREECH: I mean, for somebody who had just admitted to having killed their children and under the circumstances, I felt like some of his responses were appropriate.

ADAM CREECH: It is. We actually were planning on concluding the interview and realized that the tape recorder of probably the best interview we'll ever conduct was not recording.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: Certainly. Where we left off, that's where we had learned about the issue with the digital recorder. I don't remember if it was my idea or Special Agent Mackey's idea, but we asked him if he would be willing to allow us to start a second recording and be successful and actually kind of do a summary of what we had spoken about up until that point.

ADAM CREECH: I believe so, yes.

ADAM CREECH: That is correct. He does maintain during that recording that Nahtahn was an accident.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. He used it as a demonstrative aid and said --

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: I have.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. So that was a tool that was also given to us by the behaviorist from SLED. He had mentioned that on the trip down about this questionnaire. While we were in the interview, at some point over the duration of the interview, he had sent them to Lieutenant Lawrence by email. Lieutenant Lawrence printed a copy and gave them to us during the interview. And we used them during the interview was the first time I had ever seen those questions.

ADAM CREECH: It was explained to me that they had some role in that, yes.

ADAM CREECH: I did, because the first time would have been on the first recording. And then we started over, it was easy to just ask those questions again.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, I recall the answers being close enough that it wasn't -- it wasn't any real discernable differences to document.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: That was part of what he said.

ADAM CREECH: That's correct.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. I think I said elbow-to-elbow, but it's the --

ADAM CREECH: -- same idea, yeah.

ADAM CREECH: And I believe he said that he thought Nahtahn was holding a gun.

ADAM CREECH: Something like that.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, it is correct. I haven't -- since the actual recording, I haven't studied that section in much detail.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: Correct, he just said voices.

ADAM CREECH: I recognize the question portion, which is 1 through 38 -- I mean -- yeah, 38. I don't really recall the beginning portion or the ending portion here.

ADAM CREECH: I don't think I did. I think -- in fact, we actually had these printed on a -- this is a Powerpoint. We actually had it printed four slides to a page.

ADAM CREECH: Correct, he did.

ADAM CREECH: I think it's kind of odd that somebody would reference that as a weird belief. I know quite a few people who are pretty avid free masons. I don't know much about free masonry, but they're all pretty normal people.

ADAM CREECH: Sounds like it's a lot of work.

ADAM CREECH: We didn't. And that would be pretty normal. I think in almost ten years I've been doing this, I can only think of one time where we put a person on a polygraph for a criminal case. And it was actually very recently and they actually requested it.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. He had agreed to us on the night of the 8th that he'd be willing to continue to help us try to find out where the children were.

ADAM CREECH: We did. We were actually in that same room we had that initial briefing in with all the local law enforcement. It was pretty similar, except Timothy was involved in it and we were looking at a map and just trying to narrow down our search grid, for lack of better terms. And the Alabama authorities had been notified of what was going on and they were actively kind of searching the same area and we were kind of working out a game plan. It appeared that Highway 10 was kind of a direct route that ran between Camden and Greenville. And so with them being with him at point A, but not point B, it was easy to presume that if they were somewhere in between, they were probably somewhere around Highway 10.

ADAM CREECH: We didn't because it was mostly planning with law enforcement. He was given another advice of his rights. And Special Agent Mackey did have him go over the general events of the 28th, but it wasn't like a full blown interview. It was all kind of quick because we wanted to certainly take advantage of the daylight we had available and get on the road. That was going to be our plan.

ADAM CREECH: He did. He had mentioned that on the night of the 28th, Nahtahn had broken a pair of prescription glasses. And as he's mentioning this, he -- he had been pretty upbeat and enthusiastic. When he told the story about the glasses, you could kind of hear a bit of anger in his voice. You could tell it was something he was a bit bitter about.

ADAM CREECH: We do. So as it's been described by some other witnesses, we had a bit of a convoy going. I was seated in the back seat of a Smith County Sheriff's Department patrol car with Tim. The car was being driven -- in the front seat was Robert Garner, who's now the Under-Sheriff of the Smith County Sheriff's Department since Marty Patterson retired, and a Deputy Charles Johnson, who previously testified on the case. And I sat in the back of the car with Tim as we traveled to Highway 10. Because he was convinced if we could get him to that vicinity, he'd recognize the location, which he had described as just a very almost generic dirt, clay drive with gravel with some elevation details.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. He had actually drawn us a map during the briefing. And later on, when we actually find the site, the map was actually pretty accurate. He actually made a pretty particular point to denote elevation differences in the map.

ADAM CREECH: I did. Because it was important for me -- at that point, our big objective was to find those children and bring them home.

ADAM CREECH: Yeah, we were just around Camden. I don't remember if we were -- I think we were just before Camden. He had seen a left-hand turn and said, ah, that might be it. We turned on it. Got a little ways down, it was actually a residential driveway, but it was dirt, clay and gravel. I don't know that the rest of the convey knew it was a residential driveway because they didn't get that far before we turned around and backed out. He was pretty upset about it because he didn't want it to appear that he was just jerking us around and taking us on a wild goose chase. My thing was it's the first wrong turn we've taken in 160 or so miles. I was prepared for more wrong turns than just that.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. That's what I've got him attributed as saying, I know I'm prosecuting myself here, but I want to do the right thing.

ADAM CREECH: He did. I used that as an opportunity to kind of offer nonjudgmental assurance because, again, we had been pretty professional with him up to this point. I think it would be safe to say a lot of people in that position probably wouldn't have been, but we wanted to maintain because, again, at that point, his cooperation was still very important until we found those children and, potentially, afterwards.

ADAM CREECH: He did express that as a concern and I told him that wasn't going to be the case. I mean, if I was to deal with him today, I'd probably treat him no differently than I did that day.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: We did. So I don't think -- without looking at a map, I want to say maybe 10 or 15 miles further down, and we were moving at a pretty good pace, but -- in fact, we actually passed it initially because we were going so fast. Because it's just a stretch of woods, it all just looks the same. It's kind of a blink and you miss. He just happened to snatch his head around and said, we need to turn around, we need to turn around. And I was on the phone with Special Agency Mackey, as he testified, as this was taking place and as we start going up this drive, he starts saying, this is it, this is it, this is it. And prior to that, he had told me that once we get to the site, he goes, it's probably going to be very emotional for me. I mean, I guess I can absolutely see why. And sure enough, as we get further up the drive, he starts crying and sobbing quite heavily.

ADAM CREECH: Right. Initially, we got out of the car, it was a pretty intense moment. Initially, I kind of veered left with Under-Sheriff Crumpton -- I'm sorry, Sheriff Crumpton. As he described, the odor had kind of wafted into kind of a low line hollow area and I actually veered that way as well because the odor was -- I mean, we knew we were at the right spot. We had to be. And it wasn't until I kind of got down there and turned around and realized they were walking up and over to the right. And that's when I turned and saw him start gesturing toward where we would find the bodies. And it actually was a pretty accurate description as to what he had drawn for us that morning.

ADAM CREECH: Correct. We had been on scene just mere minutes and it started to get flooded with local Alabama law enforcement personnel. Helicopters were landing. There were probably several dozen people in just a matter of minutes. Sheriff Crumpton didn't want to keep Timothy there any longer than we had to because Timothy was his responsibility at the time, his prisoner. And we can't account for all these Alabama guys. And there's no need -- there was no further purpose for him to be there, so we want to go ahead and get him back. And it was understood that I was riding back with him to kind of go over what we found.

ADAM CREECH: I did. It's, you know, I think a few hours up there, but we were driving pretty fast. Driving back, it was a considerably longer trip because we were going the speed limits. We were recorded about a 25-minute-or-so portion, I think because a lot of it was just sitting. I think we were both kind of crashing at that point for a lot of that drive. We did kind of go over the findings and what we may or may not find and talk about the case for 25 minutes recorded.

ADAM CREECH: Yes. So that was before the decision would be made to rush him from the scene. We were trying to get him a cigarette because he had asked for a cigarette. We had been allowing him to smoke cigarettes the night before, that day. And I didn't care. So we were trying to arrange for him to have a cigarette, but Sheriff Crumpton was more interested in getting him out of the -- out of that area. So we had started recording and stopped it almost immediately. And then got in the car and shortly after that, we started what would actually technically be the third recording if you count the one that's only a couple minutes.

ADAM CREECH: I did.

ADAM CREECH: Correct.

ADAM CREECH: He maintained that he had tried to cut Nahtahn's leg and that was it.