oh, my got. he shot me. it came out of nowhere. a sweet stay-at-home mom from a strong family of faith shot point blank at her own garage door. my dad is like collapsed on the ground. it was very traumatic to see, very very emotional time. her survival seemed like a miracle. i didn t know if i would live. was this some awful random crime, or did someone want her dead? that was mystery number one. someone was out there. yeah, we were scared. mystery number two, a secret 1,600 miles away. there were several text messages. it s just slowly snowballing. it was like a punch in the gut. and mystery number three? i m going to hurt you. who would they turn out to be? i m like damn, what did this lady do? faith, temptation, and a twist the size of texas. let s be very clear. justice needs to be served. i don t think it has been. carrollton, texas, just north of dallas, is the kind of place where the upwardly mobile go to buy their dreams. the sc
having an affair and that he d paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a bunch of make-believe hit men, they also had a picture of him meeting with one of them. still, a crucial element for solving this case was missing. we re still knee deep in the middle of this. we don t have the shooter identified. and everyone that we have arrested up until this point, we can only confirm that they re involved in a solicitation to have nancy killed. reporter: which is not to say that they didn t get some useful hints from the east texans. dustin hiroms, he gives us the name of michael speck. and michael speck is billie johnson s nephew. reporter: the investigators zeroed in on that name, michael speck. a search of jail recordings of billie earl johnson s phone calls soon revealed a surprise. not only did they hear billie earl talking about somebody named michael, they also heard
learned that nearly a dozen people from east texas knew about the plot to kill nancy. charlie louderman was one of them. so have you heard about the shooting in carrollton? yeah, i heard about it. everybody else heard about it, and do you know who s involved with it? yeah. who s that? billie earl johnson and mr. john. mr. john. so you know mr. john? yeah, i know mr. john. reporter: charlie louderman was one of the few who was not related by blood or marriage to billie earl johnson. billie earl johnson. he s one mad son of a bitch. reporter: charlie, who started out as a bodyguard for billie earl, says billie and mr. john tried to get him to shoot nancy howard. this [bleep] man, he tried
investigation detectives wall and turner got a lead from an inmate who claimed to know he knew the real story behind the crime. his name was billy earl johnson. the cops knew billy earl was a tough guy from east texas, an area about 90 miles from carrollton, home to those piney woods. billy was the ringleader of a colorful crew, many of them petty criminals related to billy by blood or marriage. it s certainly a strange cast of characters. but they re east texas folks. and people might depict them as the heehaw gang. a gang that was just getting by in a region struggling to make it. there s a lot of drugs, a lot of methamphetamine out there. if somebody makes money out there, has extra money, they just hand it out to each other. at his meeting with investigators billy earl was a man on a mission. he wanted to cut a deal and fast. i m 49 years old. i don t get out till 15 years. i have
immediately after hearing details only an insider could know about the nancy howard shooting. their informant was billie earl johnson. he was the patriarch of an east texas family. he claimed he d been involved in a plot to kill nancy. wall and turner wanted to talk to those family members starting with billie s stepson dustin hiroms. billie earl didn t seem to think much of him. he s so stupid. he didn t know how to put antifreeze in a pickup truck. that dude don t know nothing about nothing. reporter: dustin hiroms, remember, was the young man pulled over in nancy s neighborhood a month before she was shot.