Joe Cool Mystery Solved

Jake's parents were also divorced. His mother, Shirley Clow, had (and still has) a home in Illinois near the Missouri state line — a few hours from Leanne. Shirley had left Florida after divorcing Jake's father, Joe, in 1991, but allowed her son to stay in Miami. Kelley had adored Joe, who died of a sudden heart attack in 2006.

Then there were the others on Star Island: Jake's older brother, Jeff, who ran the family manufacturing business; their half-brother, Scott Gamble; and Sammy Kairy, Jake's friend. The place had a communal feel about it, with guys bursting into Jake and Kelley's apartment at all hours of the day and night, eating their food, watching their TV, lounging on their sofa. When Leanne came to visit, she was shocked. My daughter has no privacy, she thought. And Jeannette treated Kelley like a country bumpkin unworthy of her grandson.

Kelley became pregnant in early 2004. Though she lived on Star Island, she signed up for Medicaid because she had no health insurance. Jake had no money, family members would later say, and Jeannette refused to help. Taylor was born November 26, 2004, a five-pound 11-ounce girl with a sweet disposition and a shock of dark hair.

Kelley spent the next two years caring for the baby. Jake realized his dream when his grandfather gave him $220,000 to buy and refurbish a 47-foot Buddy Davis yacht located in North Carolina. In late September 2006, while Jake began installing $30,000 of fishing equipment on the boat, Kelley went to St. Louis to visit her mother. She was pregnant again.

When the young woman arrived in St. Louis, she was severely dehydrated and had to be hospitalized briefly. She flew back to Miami in early October. A few days later, she called her mom. "Jake and I are getting married," she said. "We need to get insurance for the baby."

Kelley and Jake were wed on a beach somewhere in Miami — Leanne doesn't know the location — on October 14. Kelley borrowed a dress from a friend. They said their vows before a minister and a witness — no family, because Jake and Kelley feared Jeannette's reaction, Leanne says. (Attempts to interview Jeannette Branam for this story were unsuccessful.) Several days later, Jake called Leanne and asked if Kelley could stay with her in St. Louis for a month or two while he traveled to North Carolina to work on the yacht. He didn't think it was good for his pregnant wife and their baby to stay behind on Star Island.

Kelley spent only a month in St. Louis before returning to Miami in November. For much of that time, she was depressed and fought often with Jake on the phone. "I liked Jake as a person, and he was a great fishing boat captain," Leanne says. "But he really wasn't good husband material."

Still, the young family stuck together; Jake, Kelley, and Taylor lived on Star Island as 2007 dawned. And on May 16 of that year, Kelley gave birth to a calm baby boy with sandy hair. They named him Morgan.

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Another drama unfolded in early 2007, this one in Batesville, Arkansas. It was a little colder than usual the night of January 26. Around 9:30, Kirby Archer, the customer service manager at the local Wal-Mart, prepared to finish his evening shift. He asked a cashier to help collect money ($92,000, investigators would later discover) from the registers and put the cash into a shopping cart. The 34-year-old Archer then did something odd, according to the cashier: He told her to clock out and go home. Usually she escorted Archer to a back room for safety.

As soon as she left, he took a new microwave oven to the back room and stuffed the money inside it. Next he toted it through the store to a cash register, where a co-worker rang it up — including the employee discount. Archer paid in cash, and surveillance video of the parking lot showed him loading it into his Ford pickup. Then he drove to his aunt and uncle's house and put the box in a blue 1991 Dodge Caravan. Finally he sent a text message to his second wife, Michaele: "I really messed up," he wrote. "Remember, I love you!"

Around midnight, Archer was stopped for speeding in Bono, about 30 miles down the road from Batesville. An officer wrote him a citation and let him drive off, not realizing that police a few towns away were already searching for the thief.