The Calendar That Proved a Judge's "Suicide" Was Murder

The Calendar That Proved a Judge's "Suicide" Was Murder

A river returned a clean, unreadable-by-water leather calendar that belonged to a judge declared dead three days earlier, and on its April 7 page someone had written a name, a time, and the chilling order: "Do not log." How did that small, dry object survive the Marne and sit unnoticed in evidence for nineteen years while a cold case called a suicide stood? What did that entry mean, and who left it?

In this episode, we lay out the sequence of discovered facts from April 2001 that were recorded, stored, and later re-examined: the state of the calendar when recovered, the courthouse routines that morning, the medical examiner’s time window, and a maintenance sign-in that contains a second, overlooked line. Could those details overturn the original ruling?

Person: Ronald Watson Age: 28 Location: Calloway County courthouse, Illinois Date found: April 6, 2001 (body); April 9, 2001 (calendar) Status: Ruled suicide in August 2001; questioned later

- Watson was the youngest sitting judge in Calloway County, sworn in at age 27 and dead at 28. - The calendar resurfaced from the Marne River on the morning of April 9, 2001, three days after the body was found. - The calendar’s leather spine was intact, ribbon markers had no mud, and the ink on every page was readable. - Paula Greer found Watson at his desk at 7:15 a.m. on April 6, 2001; the coffee machine was cold and the filter basket clean with no grounds. - Howard McCarthy signed into the courthouse at 4:00 p.m. and out at 4:50 p.m. on April 5, 2001, but a second line on the sign-in sheet was overlooked.

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