Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised
To look at this happy holiday gathering of family and friends ….
you´d never know that six month from this moment. missouri mother of three jacque waller would be gone. lured to her fate. the prime suspect a man without remorse. its a twisted game of cat and mouse.
the end of it all…the mystery of what happened to jacque waller.would be reveald in the most disturbing of ways.
Cheryl Brenneke , Jacque´s sister
Growing up st.genevieve missiouri mom cheryl brenneke had trouble connecting with her younger sister jacque
Cheryl: i got married when i was 16 and she was ten ,so i was busy starting a family raising kids.so we were never close
but that would all change in an adulthood when jacque then in her 30 s married to a man named clay waller ,made an announcement.
Cheryl :when she learned she was pregnat . that´s when we bonded. we finally had something in common ,then we were stuck together at the hip
but it was also then that cheryl started learning more about the man jacque was about to make a father, he was a little awkward but with jacque it worked to his advantage.
Cheryl : he had a speech impediment she felt sorry for him. she said you know.. “i feel sorry for him”
jacques parents felt something else.
Mom Ruby Rawson ,Jacque ,Dad Stan Rawson.
Ruby : i always knew he was kind of a jerk
Stan:i didn´t like him the first minute i seen him , he was not compatible with my family.
But at least he seeam able to provide for their daugther.
at one point clay was even a deputy for the cape Girardeau county.
though he only held the jobs for abpout a year.
after that clay jumped around from job to job b ut then jacque was manager at a major insurance firm and perfectly able to provide for her and for the family on that suddenly included triplets.
Cheryl : she loved those triplets.
If onyl they were the only ones who needed mothering ,she was taking care of her husband.
cheryl: it was like having another child .i seriously do not think he changed one diaper,she would seriously get 9 or 10 times an night and still work 40 hours a week.
After months even years ,jacque started pulling away spending more time with her sisters family .
of course it wasn´t just clay´s unwillingness to help that had her seeking distance.
Cheryl: she knew that he had a lot of affairs and he denied everything.
But there were something that jacque knew to be true. according to her clay had become both emotionaly and physically abusive..
Cheryl : she wanted to divorce but she said she had to do it slowly to get out of it safely.
Ruby : the last christmas that they were toghether ,he came to the house and i knew they had been having problems , i said to him” i´m suprised you´re here “and he said ” i´m hanging by my fingertips”
it was the day before jackie´s 39th birsday what was to be her last year of life.
Cheryl: over that year is when things got worse and worse.
as jacque become more determined to leave . clay became more unghinged .
Cheryl: she had to be very carful in to form form a plan.
fearing for her life ,jacque waller starts kepping a diary on her work computer of all the treat clay was making towards her and he r triples.
starting from not long before that big christmas gathering
Cheryl: we were sitting here one day and she and she looked me square in the eye and she said cheryl ” i know what he is capable of and i just don´t want to be dead.
But then a blessing in disguise going into that spring ,clay lost another job and the couple lost their house.
cheryl:she was like, “oh ,this is awesome.you get your place i´ll get me a place” she just felt like everything was lining up for her break.
she took the kids then five years old and moved in with cheryl and her husband bob.while clay moved over an hour away to jackson crashing in a house owned by a friend. Both clay and jacque moved on in other ways as well ,both starting new relationships.
cheryl: she thought he was accpeting the separation that he was going to be accepting the divorce: she said ” i just think we´ve really turned a corner .i really do .”
All that was left to do was finlize the devorce a process jaque and clay agreed to discuss in person just after the memorial day June 1st.
jacque son maddox had stayed with clay over the weekend and the plan was for jaque to meet her her soon -to be ex at her attorney´s .
Before picking up the boy ,jacque called cheryl just after the meeting.
cheryl: she said ,” just left the attorney´s office and i´m pulling up to clays and i´m gonna grab maddox and i´ll be on my way home.
The last time cheryl would ver talk to her sister .
she told her sister she was picking up her son maddox from her estranged husbands house.but three hours after that call jacque waller still wasnt home .
cheryl :and i just got this sick sick feeling by this time it´s like 6:30 or 7:00 and i start blowing up her phone and i leave messages “
but no response.so then she tried to calling the man jacque said she was going to see.
cheryl: i finally said clay waller if i don´t hear from my sister in five minutes i am going straight to the police and he said ,so well you know the phone rings.”hey sheryl what´s going on ?! i said ” you know exactly what´s going on. where is my sister?you´ve done something to her .” well i if i see her i´ll let you know. i´ll tell her to call you .” click.
sheryl wasn´t about to wait around for that call.after leaving jaque´s other two triples with their parents in saint-genevieve she hops iin her car and makes the hour -long drive to jackson.
cheryl: i walked in the jackson PD and i just said ” i know clay waller has killed my sister”
She had no evidence ,but police were listening.In fact jackson- police sent a sergeant out to question clay .
Clay tells the officer jaque met him at a drugstore sometime after 11: a.m . then had lunch. after that they split up until three when they met back up a t the attorneys´s office. He says after the appointment jacque came over not to pick up her son hwo clays says is actually staying with his girlfriend in Illinois but because she just wanted to discuss the divorse.
He says when he got back to his house sometime after 6:00 her car was gone.
The story sound suspicious and just hours later authorities begin assembling a teams of investigators known as the major case Squad.
Capt. D.James: the major case squade consisted like seven different departements and it was developed with the goal of taking the elite detectives,crime-scene people from each agency and putting them together .
and almost immediately the team finds one very big clue . jaque´s car abandoned on this interstate one tire flat.
as though it had been blown our.maybe she flagged down the wrong person for help.
Capt. D.James:it was possible that someone could have kidnapped her from the side of the road.
But that scenario became a lot less likely when investigators took a closer look at the car at the flat tire.
Angel:it had clearly been punctured while stationary roadside.
the whole scene was staged . Not even 24 hours after jacque disappeared ,clay waller had lawyer´d up .
so detective quickly apply for warrants to search jacque´s car.
And clays truck and the house where he was staying.
Lieutenant Jeff bonham and agent bryan ritter of the FBI were there during the subsequent searches .
LT Jeff Bonham ,Cap GIRARDEAU PD.
LT.J.Bonham:we happen to be standing by the car and agent ritter saying” that´s looks like a blood spot on the back of the car .
and when investigators searched clays truck , more blood smeareds on the inside of the inside of the driver´s side door.unbelievably when the result comes back……
Capt. D.James: turns out to be fisch blood.
Angel: he recorded him self with his cellhpone doing this .saying he had just put that fish blood there ,basically it´s a test for law enforcement.
But then that wasn´t the only DNA police found. back at clays house. team members arrived to find the hallway carpet missing and that´s not all.
Brian: we located what we believe to be blood on the walls and the hallway.
basically everywhere you see a tag.
brian: there was a violent confrontation ,absolutely.
but investigators still had to determine where the blood came from ,what happened to that missing carpet and of course .what happened to jacque
then …
LT.J.Bonham :i´m loocking around the in the basement and i see this crawl space and there appears to be like a disturbed pathway where the dust and dirt is i was like” hey.we got to look in this crawl space.
for days after mother of triplets jaque waller disapeared her estranged husband clay left her this voicemail.
but just one day after that , investigators find traces of blood in clays hallway . the carpet torn up and a rescently used crawlspace in the basement.
This recreation recorded by the major case Squad shows how FBI agent Brian Ritter crawled throught the narrow space beneath the floorboards of that blood-stained hallway.
LT.J.Bonham: he crawls back and says “you guys are not believe it ” he goes “the carpet and the padding´s cut up and its all back here in this crawlspace.
agent Ritter find the carpet but no body.
several of those pieces were soaked with blood.and the blood come back to jacque.
Brian: i think we all had a very strong suspicion that she was dead.
but wihtout a body there still wasn´t enough to prove anything.so investigators begin searching for clues by reconstructing the last day jacque was seen alive.
it start in this drogstore around 11 so´clock that day. jacque is seen walking up to meet clay.
Approximately two hours later jacque is caught on this ATM surveillance video.
Capt. D.James: thats the last time that we know that she was alive.
but it´s not the last we see of clay. hours after that.he spotted inside this toystore wearing a completely diffrent outfit,than the one in that drugstore.
Angel:clay had pulled up into the parking lot to meet his girlfriend at the toystore who had maddox.
and that´s clays truck outside with the trash can in the back. what you cant see is the small boat he´s towing.
but you can definitely see it here in a video from later that night
Capt. D.James: we found the carwash video where he was washing the boat , you can tell that he was looking to see if there was something on the boat , like blood.
and when police released images of the boat to the public.
Capt. D.James: we had a young man and a young women that was out b the mississipi river,saw a small boat of that description across the river.
floating next to a remote sandbar known as Devil´s island.
Capt. D.James: so we searched that island. multiple times.
But investigators could not find no signs of jacque ,still they felt clay knew way more than what he was saying
So days after jacque disappeared agent Ritter convinces clay to come in for a formal interview . though there was no audio recorded clay tells Ritter that the blood in the hallway that was quote:
whitch according to clay was:
Brian: i think we all knew we were on the right track but we knew we more, without a body to feel comfortable going forward.
and so over the next several weeks investigators keep a very close eye on clay.
Capt. D.James: early on in the investigation we put a tracker on his truck at that point.
unfortunaly all it revealed was that clay a former sheriff´s deputy himself knew the tracker was there.
Capt. D.James: i mean there was times where he would go and sit for a while in a vacant lot so it would cause us to get search teams to go to that area and seaching. he was playing with us. the whole time.
Soon ,pictures of jacque were everywhere and with the entire community focused on the case , clay waller became increasingly frantic.
Ruby: he laughing it off he thinks it´s funny.
Stan: he would come by and honk horn and say “you guys aint´gonna find nothing “
Capt. D.James: i had search crewds from all over the country here,clay would drive by them and give them the finger gesture and just laugh
.But all that breeziness was about to backfire.by that time ,the court had already awarded custody of jacque´s triplets to her sister cheryl. and apparently clay had some strong opinions about that.posting a comment online that read in parts quotes:
cheryl: he just couldn´t help himself. he had to keep taunting people.
Capt. D.James: i saw the post coming across topics and i called agent ritter to look at it. i knew at that point when agent ritter saw it ,that he had commited a federal crime.
finally .four mounths after jacque disappeared ,clay waller was under arrest.not for her murder.but on a federal charge for threatining her sister´s life. but would the suspect finally come clean.
from the first few hours jacque waller went missing ,police started to look at her estranged hsuband clay waller ,but still the suspected killer ran free.
Stan: was i afraid of clay ? no, i wish to god he would come up here.
nearly five months after jacque disappeared ,clay was arrested on a federal charge for threatening her sister online.
And thats not all .According to prosecutor angel woodrufff.
Angel: in the situation like this where you have a major crime if it gets to the point where your primary suspect appears to be a danger to the community then we start looking really hard at anything we can charge him with.
And at the same time clay is busted for making those threats investigators also dug up allegations of stealing over 50 .000 dollars from a previous job and harassing a former friend .before clay is taking away,detectives try to learn more about jacque´s disappearance.
As he´s done since the begining,clay denies his involvement claiming he´sthe real victim here.
In fact he has he´s own theories pointing the finger for whatever happened to his wife at a former associate named Gary.
The proiblem with that is police have already diproven it. at the end of it all clay stands firm that he did not kil his wife.even claiming to have proof that willexonerate him.
Clay eventually to the federal charge of threatening jacque´s sister.
and sentence to five years behind bars.
At the same time prosecutors work to make sure he will also s face justice for jacque.
Angel : we couldn´t even prove that she was dead ,so we scraped together every singl bit of circumstanstial evidence that we could until we got to the point where “okej. were ready”.
the blood in his house, the surveillance videos,the fact that clay actively tried to hinder the investigation. and there was so much more.
After nearly two years of turning over every rock prosecutors finally felt comfortable enough to prove their case.
Angel: he was charged with murder in the first degree and tampering with physical evidence.
But despite woodruff´s best without a body ,getting a conviction was no guarantee .
Christoper K. Limbaugh. district attorney,Cape GIRARDEAU CO.
Christopher K : there´s no such thing as a slam-dunk case.
plus .even though jacque´s family wanted clay to face the stiffest punishment possible. there was something else they wante more.
Angel: stan and ruby rawson indicated, the msot importantthing to them was to get jacque back.
So when clays attorneys approached the prosecutors to make a deal
Ruby: we told them we will accept a plea , because we want to find her.
The deal was.clay waller would plead guilty to second degree murder and accept a sentence of 20 years in exange for revealing what he did with jacque.
When the time came clay would lead the investigators right back to a place they´d surch before . a remote sandbar on the Illinois side of the mississipi river known as devil´s island.
Brian:knowing clay and how we dealt with him for two years. we weren´t hundred procent that he was telling the truth so we were still pessimistic about being able to locate her .
when the team got the location,clay only reinforced those fears .
Capt. D.James: he couldn´t pinpoint where she was at.it was a large area .he says ,she´s here somewhere.
then a clue in one of the gruesome details of clays crime.
Brian: one key thing he had told us was , he had put a bag of fertilizer on her body when he buried her.
Angela:one of the detectives indicated, if you have too much fertilizer it kills the roots of a tree .
and that´s when they see it .
Capt. D.James: one of my detectives and agent Ritter was studying the area they saw three trees and one of the trees was completely dead.
and there buried under that tree. the end of one very long road.
Brian: we started to dig down and we first found her knee ,we can feel the skeletal remains with the blue jeans. the next day we recovered her and it´s was the first step for her trip home
Not the homecoming anyone really wanted.but at least one part of the mystery was solved.
cheryl: and then it hit us that we now had to tell the kids .that we had to tell them that their mommy was dead and that their dad did it .
but there was still another part of clay pea agreement left of fufill as part of his deal to get just 20 years for murdering his wife, clay would have to confess on camera to every btutal detail of his crime.
A cross made of driftwood stands where jacque waller was finally found ,discovered only after her husband of nearly 18 years admitted to putting her there.
but leading investigators to the body was only half of clays deal.in exange for pleading guilty to second -degree murder.he also had to give a full videotape confession of his crime. Clay says the wheels wete really set in motion the year before jacque died .when she first started talking about splitting up.
But here´s where investigators really start to question the confession based on statements from jacque´s loved ones.
Prosecutors have always believed that after meeting with their divorce attorney the next day clay lured back to his place by saying he their son maddox but what clay says really got jacque to his house that day….
It was a stunning claim and interrogators weren´t buying it. Nor did they believe what clay said next ,that after going back to his place for sex they ended up in the kitchen where all started by accident.
Brian: when he claims that jacque was getting into the frigerator he was getting something out of the frigerator at the same time and raised his head up and then hit her nose with his head and that caused her nose to bleed.
In the hallway where investigators found all that blood,police says that´s also where jacque probably mad about the innocent accident started provoking him.
the point of no return.
the attack was almost for the moment upon a crime of passion brought by an accident in the kitchen and jackies threats.
The problem with that claim, clays owns statements from just moments before.
And that still wasn´t the only thing that didn´t add upp .
but jacques autopsy told a different story.revealing muliple fractures to her face and scull ,consistent with blunt force trauma.
Angel:we knew the information that would let us know if he was and he lied.
but one thing she does believe is clays claim that after he killed jacque , he put her body in a trash can.loaded it into the back of his truck then drove to meet his girlfriendand five years old son at the toystore.
clay says after that .he took jacque across the river to Devils Island where after dumping her into the pre dug grave he says a few final words.
In the end clay´s confession was hard for many to accept .after turning his three children into orphans,lying his way through the confession and even blaming the victim,because of his plea deal clay will still only serve a maximum of 20 years,
Capt. D.James: obviously it´s too ligh for what he did ,but i stand behind the family.
and as it turns out prosecutors still had one more trick up their sleeves .
Brian: it was a new twist in the investigation.
clay waller has admitted to murder the mother of his three children but investigators still aren´t convinced they´ve heard the whole truth
and they certainley haven´t heard much regret
Capt. D.James: when i he tried to blame it on jacque, it was her fault. typical clay waller thought nothing of anyone except himself.
and if there´s any doubt about that jailhouse call recorded just before his sentencing stand.
relative: “you need to be alologetic and remorseful”
clay: i´m not!i´m gonna stand up in court tomorrow and tell everybody to **** themselves. why should i care.what they´re going through if they dont care what i´m going through . you understand?
relative: no, i don´t . you´re not the victim here ,clay”
clay: ” it happened two years ago.i just want to move on.,i´m sorry im going to jail. that´s it .
unfortunately clay didn´t have to show remorse as part of his desasl and for pleading guilty to second -degree murder .he can´t be sentenced to more than 20 years.
clay walker jailhouse call.
clay: when i walk out them doors,they can´t do nothing more more to me.i mean , i don´t think they can. can they?
Turns out ,they could..
during his confession clay lets slip that he du his wifes grave in Illinois the night before the murder.then came back to misouri, to take her life as luck would have it that was a violation of the rarely used interstate domestic violence act.
Brian: it was close travel across state lines with the intent to commit to domestic violence which resulted in a federal charge being violated.
His punishment for that crime ,a much heftier 35 years in federal prison and that sentence won´t even begin until after he serves out the 20 years for murder.
cheryl: he shot himself in the foot over and over because he thinks he´s the smartest person in the world.but heis absolutely not .
before clay is taken away to serve out his time he´s forced to stand up in court and listen to jacque´s loved ones give victim impact statements the most dramatic testimony coming from his own son.
According to Angel clay had no reaction to this .and didn´t impact him at all .she said.
infact there is one final chapter chapter to the derange story. written by clay himself.
Brian: we learned that clay had written a book detailing the murder of his wife and his actions after . he title the book.:
” if you take my kids ,i kill you.”
one last slap in the face to the f amily he tore apart.
christopher k. limbaurgh: it just show you that clay waller s depravity knows no bounds.
but while jacque´s family remains forever fractured by what clay has done ,they are far from broken.
the kids he orphan has now been officially adopted by jacque´s sister cheryl and her husband bob.