The confession tapes

I love my country.

But these, um... police officers...

they, um...

they killed me in '97.

They, um...

mind-raped me and made me believe I killed someone I loved.

People look you right in the eye and lie to you

and destroy you and do it on purpose.

As a television reporter on the scene,

I've asked the question many times, "Did you do it?"

And this was the first time that somebody actually said, "Yes."

You feel any remorse about what happened?

I wanna apologize to the family for what I've done.

I've committed... a crime that I can't take back.

Police say Myers beat and strangled Haught

before setting fire to the Mill Inn early Thursday morning.

And I have played that night,

that moment, the questions that I asked, over and over in my own head.

He says he's sorry and he didn't mean to do it.

I have no idea what kind of pressure

and what kind of questions need to be put upon someone

in order to go from, "No, I really didn't do it,"

to, "Okay, yes, I did."

The police didn't give a damn.

It was all a set-up.

You don't know what goes on behind the closed doors.

You don't know what's being said.

I loved Teresa very much.

And I'm very sorry for the hurt I've put on my family, her family.

Usually, if somebody says, "I did it," you take them at their word.

But things aren't always as they seem.

I met Wesley second grade.

I mean, I don't know how old I was in second grade.

I can't do the numbers in my head, but...

We just used to play in the creeks and fish down in the pond.

His mother and father's just as much of a mother and father to me.

I think he was like ten years old when I met him the first time.

His mother and I worked in Charleston County.

I was the music teacher, and she was the art teacher.

He wandered over into my room and brought his guitar

and sat down and played a song for me that he had written and sang.

Grew up, I had a great family.

Then I was married and my wife, she was pregnant,

and a child was born.

About three months after that, my wife,

because she had knots on her neck and you could feel them,

we went to the doctor, and I knew as soon as I walked in there,

and the look on his face... that it was cancer.

And she had AML leukemia.

It destroyed her.

Before she died...

she actually told me to go find somebody.

And, uh, we separated.

I met Teresa at the Mill Inn. Her mom ran it then.

We danced.

I've been told I look pretty good on the dance floor.

Then we... started seeing each other.

Everybody drank back then. It was a different time.

And I smoked pot and drank like a fish and all that other kind of thing.

And there was occasionally a little cocaine around.

It was always a love-and-hate relationship with Teresa and Wesley.

You know, whether they were mad on Wednesday, they were great on Friday.

And they always ended up back together. For whatever reason, love is like that.

I tried to get him away from her

'cause I didn't like any of those people that hung out there in that area,

that part of North Charleston.

Didn't like them, didn't trust them.

They were the lower-lifes.

Hanging around that crowd, he was...

he was in pitiful shape, as far as drinking and just partying and...

It's just that lifestyle they had down there.

I drank a lot. Everybody drank a lot.

I normally drank until I would...

black out.

I've never seen him actually punch her or hit her.

I've seen probably Teresa be the more of an aggressor on some occasions,

trying to get something from Wes,

back from Wesley, or something along those lines.

They loved to hate each other. It's the only way I could put it.

She was a pretty tough girl.

And she would fight man or woman, it didn't matter.

And especially if she'd been drinking some.

It was a road to nowhere.

And I didn't wanna see him go down there.

But... love is blind.

I was at my mom and dad's.

In fact, there was ice skating of some sort.

And Dad and I watched a little bit of it.

Then I went to bed because I had work the next morning.

When we arrived, there was heavy smoke and fire

coming from the front of the structure.

And we went in. We was hitting the hot spots.

There was a lot of flame, a lot of smoke. You couldn't see.

I happened to notice something laying on the floor.

At first when I seen it,

I thought it was a mannequin, and I had... I had to take another look.

And that's when I realized that it was a human body laying there.

And I called the battalion chief on the radio and notified him

that I had a victim inside that was deceased.

I was heading to Texaco to go to work.

She slept in the bar quite often,

so I was gonna go by, like I normally did, to check on Teresa and that.

Parked my truck, got out, and was met by a fireman,

and I asked what was going on.

And he informed me there had been a fire, and I asked about Teresa.

He said, "That's my girlfriend's car sitting there."

And I walked over and told the arson investigator...

that this man walked up and stated that that was his girlfriend's car.

And he said, uh...

"Well, there's a body in there

but we don't know who it is 'cause it's been burned."

And, uh...

"Do you have any pictures of her?" And I did in my glove box.

So I run to the truck and got a picture and took it to him.

And, uh, they informed me it was Teresa.

And...

I... started crying.

That's when Detective Payne showed up

and said he wanted to talk with me.

He said, "Well, we need to eliminate you so we can move on."

I said, "No problem. I didn't do it."

I like to get out of the office. I like to see where it happened.

I like to see the people, the place, take pictures.

I gotta feel the case.

And so, I don't hesitate putting on blue jeans

and going out and knocking on doors and talking to people and...

seeing for myself.

It was obviously a very serious case.

His girlfriend had been murdered with a wine carafe,

and the police collected a number of things from the scene.

One of the things they collected

was the hair purportedly found in Teresa's hand.

The watch that was found at the crime scene

under or near Teresa's body.

There was a bloody dollar bill...

and the wine carafe, in pieces, that had blood spatter on them.

It wasn't the kind of case where there was overwhelming evidence.

That afternoon, I went to Shores,

and everybody was talking about what happened,

who done it, what's going on.

I had a few drinks, and Paul attached himself to me.

Well, I was coming home from work,

and there was everybody at Shores, and it was emotional.

He had a picture of Teresa, he was talking about wanting to be with her.

Just how much he missed her and all that kind of thing.

And at the time, I'd had some friends that committed suicide and things,

and I was very concerned for Wesley.

That particular night, everybody knew what had happened.

As soon as he walked in, everybody, you know, come to him.

So I think he wanted to go to a place that wasn't known.

And he said, "Let's go find another place to drink."

Well, I knew that the Joker was open, so we went to the Joker.

It's a strip joint.

At that time of night, that's all that's left that's open, more or less,

especially down Dorchester and all that kind of road back then.

It wasn't like he was up there dancing with the girls

and sticking dollars in their drawers or nothing.

We just sat down at a table with a cold beer and, you know...

We ended up back at Teresa's house, a couple blocks from the bar.

And he went upstairs to her room,

and I stayed downstairs and slept on the stairs,

because that way he couldn't step over me

and get out of the house without waking me up or something.

That next morning, I went home and my dad said,

"The police have been calling for you. They need you at the station."

Then I went down there,

and they asked if I had a problem taking a lie detector test.

And I said no.

I told them I would do anything to help them get this solved.

Well, they got me back in the back room, and they started asking me questions.

In the last 24 hours, how much alcohol have you had in your body?

Probably a case of Budweiser.

When you say "case," how many beers are you talking?

Twenty-four.

In most domestic-type murders...

the husband's always the first one to be dragged in.

Well, that's natural.

Nobody likes to ask people these questions.

This is why I get paid to do what I do. Okay? And I gotta ask you.

The obvious question I'm gonna ask you first is, did you kill her?

No, sir, I didn't.

Okay. Why wouldn't you?

I loved her. And I'm not that... I'm not someone that would kill nobody.

Is there any reason, Wesley,

that you can think of that I won't be able to clear you?

- No. - Okay.

Is there any physical evidence that you know of,

that she was in possession of, that would tie you to where she was found?

- No. - None at all? Okay.

Did you kill her and not mean to?

- Did you...? - I did not kill Teresa Haught.

- Did you get in a fight with her? - No, I did not.

Okay.

Eliminating me is what they kept telling me.

The boyfriend's always, or the husband is, a suspect.

But... they said, "We do this, we can move on and get the real murderer."

And I believed them.

When was the last time that you saw her alive?

3:30 and... I left there about 15 minutes later. At the bar.

Okay.