The Unforgotten
The Unforgotten

3. Fight and Flight

4/6/202632:576,000 words
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Charles Flores makes a decision that will later help seal his fate.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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He knew he was suspected of a robbery and murder. He had the car police were looking for and connection with the crime. Things were not looking good for him. So he chose to run. We've all heard about the concept of fight or flight.

Our instinctive response in times of stress or danger.

In this case, Charles chose a little of both. But we'll get to that. For now, let's take a step back. Testing testing one thing three. Hello, hello.

Is it right?

In this episode, you'll be hearing about Charles's dramatic, sometimes violent time on the run from police.

You'll also be hearing a lot from Charles directly. By the time this episode comes out, Charles will have been on death row for almost half his life. He went in when he was 29 years old. And as of March 2026, he's 56. He's had a lot of time to think about what went down the night of January 28, 1998, and the choices he made after.

He's also thought about how he got in a situation like that in the first place. We'll let him there. The first 16 years of my life, I lived in West Texas in Midland. And then we moved to Dallas when I was about 16.

I was new and I'd never been the new kid and I didn't like it.

And I was like, no, I'll do that no more. Yeah, I dropped out. Tenth grade of it. Charles is the youngest of six. He's four brothers in a sister.

Oh, my brothers, we've all dealt with substance abuse issues. Time hasn't been kind of the family. Charles's parents are both gone. His brother Julian was murdered in a drug deal gone wrong in 2006. He was robbed and thrown out of a moving car.

In 2022, three of Charles's brothers died seemingly one right after the other. His brother Antonio was murdered after someone intentionally ran him over with their car. Another brother Jose was found dead on a feeder road off of the 635 highway. Charles still isn't sure how he died. And one, Charles's last brother died in a Texas prison of cancer.

Now his sister, his last remaining family member, is terminally ill. It can be hard for Charles to reconcile all of this with his thoughts on prison. He's been the one facing prison time for murder. He's also been the victim's family. In Julian's case, Charles heard that the man who pushed him out of a moving car got 10 years.

They don't even consider people that do drugs that were in that part of the town. They're not human. And then they're not white. We understand what I'm saying. The man who killed his brother Antonio got 25 years in prison.

I remember when I was 25. Oh, it was crazy.

I mean, I wouldn't run in people over, but I mean, I get it, right?

And he took a plea bargain for 25 years in Texas each year. You know, man, that's so conflicted into me because I've been here in 25 years, 26 years. There's harming years and man, I know, I know what it's like here. And I know people can change. And so if they gave that dude 99 years, I don't want that to happen to anybody.

Because I know what it's like, you understand what I'm saying? It's not just like, you know, oh, yeah. You know, they're all in the way like like, I know what that's like. I know how that is. So Michelle Charles Flores has been through a lot, like you say, time hasn't been kind to the family.

Why is this relevant to the story that you're telling about him? He talked about how it's difficult for him to kind of reconcile his, you know, various positions relative to the criminal justice system if that makes sense. He's obviously in prison for a crime that he says he didn't commit. He's been there for almost half his life.

When talking about the men who killed his brothers, he's astonished by how sh...

Relatively how how lenient their sentences were relative to to what he got in comparable situations.

But he also is saying he wouldn't really wish life in prison on anyone. He wouldn't wish the death penalty on anyone. So he's kind of in this very unique position where he straddles the line between, you know, being the person who wants justice for their family member and the person who is facing the reality of what that type of justice looks like in Texas. Like he's been on the side of the accused and on the side of the accuser. Yeah, exactly.

It's insane that this guy got 10 years, whereas Charles got, you know, since to death.

Yeah, and he pointed out to me too that that was another situation in which there was a murder in the course of a robbery.

It was in the course of a drug deal gone wrong. Like we talk about felony murder here in in Texas, that would make it eligible to actually be a capital case. And he was kind of ruminating on the idea that his brother's murder was also a situation in which the law of parties and the same thing that led to him being found guilty would have been applicable. But just wasn't used in the same way. Let's hop back into the story in those days leading up to the home invasion and murder of Betty Black.

Back in 1998, no one could predict all of that tragedy. Charles's dad had a small roofing and construction business in Irving, a city between Dallas and Fort Worth.

After leaving school without a diploma, Charles turned all of his attention to work, but it wasn't always what you might call honest work.

So I always had a job, all I'd do is get up and go to work, right? So I worked, I worked all the time and but I also, I got the small idea that I'd also settle a little bit of doubt while I was using it or whatever.

Any disculated right, you know, it was first it was weed and then you need to know, messing with meth and vitamin.

You are hearing from Charles while he sits in a visitation booth at his prison unit. He's behind glass and he and Michelle are talking on these closed circuit phones. He has a mic on his side, but it's obviously not an ideal setup for audio. So you might occasionally hear the phone cord brushing up against him while he's talking or you could get quiet when he moves away from the mic. So again, like I said, everybody in my circle, they did the same thing.

And in hindsight, you know, I see messed up it was my back in, I really didn't, you know, just just normal. That was normal, see to me. Remember, hard drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin were all over the Dallas area in the 80s and 90s. In 1997, one of Charles' old friends was just getting out of jail and bond for felony drug possession. This was Rick Childs. Seemingly out of the blue, Rick reached out to Charles. They'd known each other a few years back because at one point Rick lived across the street from Charles' parents.

Rick apparently wanted to work with Charles on his side business. By the time they started hanging out again, Charles was a heavy drug user and known dealer. He lived with his future wife, Myra, and her three kids in a trailer home and Irving. That's where Charles, Rick and some friends were, the night before Betty Blacks murder.

I remember that night, just being around friends, you know, friends were over at the house and we were looking for some product, or some dough.

And we couldn't find none and that's how it began. From free range productions and the Texas Observer, this is season five of the unforgotten writing shotgun. I'm your host, Michelle pitcher. And I'm West Ferguson. This is episode three, fight and fly. The night of January 28, 1998 was a Wednesday. As it bled into early Thursday morning, Charles Flores was sitting in the back room of his trailer, smoking weed and using math with his buddy Rick and two other guys named Jonathan and Jamie.

It's not important for you to remember their names, but they were the brother and cousin of Charles's wife, Myra. She was asleep in another room. From about midnight until just before three a.m., these four men stayed put in the trailer. But when the drugs ran out, they weren't ready for the night to end. Rick said he knew somebody who knew somebody who could get them some more. That was Jackie. The girl misses Blacks daughter of all.

Jackie, you probably remember from the first two episodes was Rick's girlfriend, Jackie Roberts.

I didn't know none of those people. I don't know those people from man on the moon. That's on the other side of the other side of town.

This next part is hard to narrate with much certainty.

There's some daylight between accounts of that night, but we do know some things for sure.

The brother and cousin, Jonathan and Jamie, they left, leaving Charles and Rick to whatever deal they were cooking up.

Charles and Rick then picked up Jackie from her place in Farmer's Branch. Then, three of them drove to an apartment where a friend of Jackie's lived, near the Dallas Love Field Airport. At the apartment, they were going to meet up with yet another man, his name was Terry, who would sell them the drugs for the agreed upon amount. All right, hold on, this is a lot of names, so let's make sure we all got this. It's Charles, obviously, and his friend Rick, then there's Rick's girlfriend Jackie, and they are at the apartment of Jackie's friend.

And they're meeting a guy named Terry who's selling them drugs. Right.

So I didn't know these people. I always have thinking, "Man, these damn people might be cops. I don't know."

So I gave them money to Rick, and I said, "You do the deal, right?" And I'm sitting on the couch and they're doing it kind of like in the kitchen, so he goes to the deal. He weighs it in his pace for it, and I don't do it. I said, "Okay, let's go, let's let's get out of here." And so we go back, we leave back to my house, and then when we get back to the house, that's when we realize that it's short.

In Charles's version of events, he was suspicious of the drug deal, since he didn't know any of the players except Rick.

So he handed the money over to Rick, who made the deal.

Later at the trailer, when he realized they were short-changed, Charles got mad, but he let it go after my rare woke up and came out to see what was going on. His story of what happened after that is simple. He says he kicked everyone out of his trailer and went to bed. I mean, all of us are like, "Man, just get out of here, man, I just need to eat." And so they left, and she went back to bed, and yeah, I'll just set there and lay down.

And I'm like, "Man, what the hell happened, right?"

Kind of just blew it off, you know, because I was mad at myself more than anything. I'm not wrong, you know, better than be messing with anybody that you don't know. And you know what I'm saying? But there are a few other perspectives on that drug deal, and what happened after. There were five people in the apartment when the deal went down.

Charles, Jackie, and Rick, plus Terry, who was supplying the drugs, and Jackie's friend who lived there, her name was Judy. We know the most about what Jackie said happened that night. We have a transcript of her interview with Police, and she gave a lot of detail. She said she called Terry up, and they agreed on a deal.

A quarter pound of meth for just under $4,000. Charles wasn't supposed to be there for the deal.

You don't usually let connections meet directly.

That's what middlemen like Jackie are for.

But he insisted. Saying he'd been ripped off too many times before to just hand over the money, sight unseen. Jackie said Charles and Rick weighed, and then tried the drugs before handing over the money. Charles insisted that Terry hadn't held up his end of the bargain, so Terry tossed in another quarter ounce,

and then three went back to Charles's trailer. There, she said, Charles claimed they still hadn't been given enough, and his behavior changed suddenly. He started threatening her, saying it was her job to make it right, to either get them more drugs or their money back.

Jackie said she told him she knew where she could get some cash. Her estranged husband's parents kept to stash their place, not far away. She says Rick and Charles decided to rob the place, rather than wait until morning, when she could ask for the money. Jackie's story is the backbone of what prosecutors will go with.

It places Charles at the drug deal as the ringleader, the man in charge. It explains how he knew about the cash at the black's house, and it shows Jackie as a pawn. Terry, the drug dealer, remembers it slightly differently. He said both Charles and Rick thought they were being cheated.

Terry said he threw in an extra quarter ounce because he didn't want any trouble. He also said he got a call later from Jackie, where Charles got on the phone and said he still owed them more. Jackie's friend Judy knew the least about the drug deal. She didn't even know it was happening until Jackie showed up at her apartment

with Rick and Charles until, but she left the deal go ahead. To Judy, Jackie seemed nervous at the apartment, and the way she described Ricky was "nervous" up and down. She said Charles was "cool, calm, and collected." Judy says Charles did say the drugs were underway,

but she claims Terry said, "take it or leave it." And then they left. Small differences in people's recollections will add up in the narrative of what happened that night. We want to keep them in mind, but also recall what we learned in the last episode

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We know that the morning of the murder

Rick leaves the VW bug behind Charles' trailer. According to Charles, he had told him it was okay to park it there. After all, he didn't know the car had been used in a crime earlier that day. Rick will tell police that Charles had taken the VW bug as collateral after the failed robbery. Later, Charles gets a call from his friend Ray, one of his buddies from the drug scene.

Ray tells him to watch his back, some guys in a black truck were looking for him. And word on the street was, Charles had been involved in a murder. And I was thinking, maybe some other drug people or mafia type people. I'm like, who in the hell is that? Well, they didn't know being those were the narks. Those were the farmers branch police narks.

And I don't know that. I don't know that they're cops. I'm just keeping my out for a black truck. I'm like, you know who the hell they're going to come out shooting or what? You know what I'm saying? At this point, Charles says he panics.

Ray tells him the cops are looking for the VW bug.

Charles doesn't know whether the guys in the black truck are police, but he recognizes the picture that's emerging. I know how it looks. Because I know they're looking for that car. It's involving the house that's been broken into.

I'm a murder he's been committing. And I'm sitting with the car. And I'm like, man, this motherfucker doesn't set me up. Charles told me what he did with the bug. But we also know the facts from police reports and trial records.

He tried spray painting the car to cover up the paint job, but it was a poor disguise. There's only so much spray paint in this world. And then Charles, his wife, Myra, and her brother Jonathan, tow the car to the I-30 Westbound Fronted Road,

around sunset. It's an oddly public place to do this, but they weren't exactly being criminal masterminds. Charles doused the car in gasoline and littered on fire. This is the point of no return.

He's now officially tried to destroy one of the only pieces of evidence police had linked to the crime on Bergen Lane. That alone doesn't look good for Charles. Afterwards, he shoves his true colors. That's Jason January.

He'll end up being the lead prosecutor in the case against Charles Flores. If you see me, if you're a witness and you see me burning, you know, out on the side of the road with a gas can torching a car to hide evidence. That's evidence of guilt.

You're trying to secrete or destroy evidence in a murder case. There on the side of the road, the situation escalated. A passerby, this 38 year old man named James Jordan, was driving west on I-30 just before sundown. He saw the VW and another car pulled over on the shoulder,

and a man standing outside the car. He thought someone might need help. Then he saw Charles like the bug on fire. So, the would-be goods mayor didn't decide it to chase the getaway car. Charles, speeding away with my rent and Jonathan,

fired twice out of the driver's side window.

Poor Jordan's car.

He didn't hit Jordan or anyone else,

but the chase continued for a while on surface streets.

Eventually, Jordan lost side of Charles and pulled over to call police. That is such a wild story. I don't think that I would be the guy chasing him down. Did you have any luck finding James Jordan? He's got a very common name, unfortunately.

I wasn't able to track him down. He did testify at trial. So, you got a glimpse into what was going through his mind during this kind of cinematic car chase. And he was pretty motivated by some rage.

He was mad. He thought that he was pulling over to help someone in need. And then he found out that they were up to something no good. And so, he kind of got this sort of like surge of vigilante justice and decided that he was going to make sure that this person didn't escape the law.

So, you know, you can tell kind of by the lawyer's questioning that police weren't really happy with that kind of behavior. They don't advocate for people to go on high-speed car chases when they think someone is breaking the law. But he just felt very, very strongly that he had to make sure that whoever was torturing a car on the side of the road didn't get away with whatever they got away with. Yeah, we all have priorities. He also did have a passenger in the car.

And we notably don't hear from her in the trial or I didn't see anything from her in the police report. So, it would be interested to hear the things that she was probably shouting to him in the car. It's hard to believe that Charles ever thought burning the car on the side of the road in the DFW Metroplex was ever a good idea. And besides 2020, we should just took it to a supermarket parking lot and just parked it there, but I don't know, I guess watch too much TV or whatever.

Thinking that we had to burn the damn thing and all of that, right?

So, that's how that happened. Jordan ID Charles is the man he saw burning the car. To investigators, that was damning evidence that confirmed their theory. That Charles had something to do with the robbery and murder of Mrs. Black. You couldn't find a more identifiable vehicle.

In a Volkswagen Beetle, it's like spray painted paint and purple and all this stuff. I mean, totally obvious. And everyone remembers that and lo and behold, afterwards, you know, Flores is out burning it on the side of the road and shoots at some but chases them and shoots them when someone sees it. Charles tried his hardest to fly under police's radar after bringing the car.

He hold up at home and at his friend's houses. Police have surveillance on him at one point, but they didn't catch his ultimate escape act. I decided, you know what I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna get the hell out here and I took off, took off the Mexico. By March, officials had caught on that he'd fled south. That month, articles in the Dallas Morning News announced that the police believed he'd fled to Brownsville right on the border.

Charles's photo was all over the papers and FBI ads. He was officially a fugitive, wanted for murder.

I think, man, I think it was a couple of months, two or three months, I was down there.

He spent a few months in Mexico with a friend whose family all lived there. His life kind of continued on his normal.

He partied, went to a bullfight, but after a few months, he made another crucial decision.

He came back to Texas. I asked him why he risked it, why he came back. He had friends and family in Mexico. He theoretically could have stayed forever. Because I got lonely, and I got tired of being there and I wanted to come home, and it was that simple. On April 18, 1998, Charles drove back over the Texas state line.

That night, police officers in the city of Kyle, southeast of Boston, pulled him over on the highway for suspected drunk driving. Charles gave the officers a false name and ID. His brothers, actually, he had his social security card and everything. The cops were nonetheless, but they still decided to arrest him for drunk driving.

Charles resisted, basically trying to stop officers from cuffing him and putting him in the squad car.

The Tesla on the side of the road could have ended badly, but eventually officers were able to take him in. He was booked on a DWI and two charges of assaulting a police officer for his attempts to get away. Charles bonded out before police realized who he was. Charles had so far avoided arrest for Betty Blacks' murder, despite a few close calls, but his luck was about to run out. The police officers were not allowed to take the police officers to the police station.

The police officers were not allowed to take the police officers to the polic...

You just heard a cassette tape recording from the farmer's branch case file on Charles Flores. It might have been a little hard to make out. A woman who doesn't give her name calls to say that Charles's parents had brought him back home to Irving that weekend. The tape is undated, so it's not clear when the call came in, but things came to a head on me first.

They started trailing me. They got behind me right? I remember seeing a truck right and I was going on, and then made a couple of quick turns and both of me was behind me.

Two FBI agents had been sticking out Charles's parents' house. On May 1st, the agents spotted him, arriving at the house in a blue vault though. When Charles left, the agents followed him. Pretty soon, they realized they'd been spotted. Charles started driving like his life depended on it. He went over medians, turned the wrong way on one of the streets. At one point, he blew a tire and kept driving just on his rims. "So I took off, I took off, and I was running from women and I ended up crashing the car and jumping out the car and running off."

He tried escaping on foot after he hit a man's car head on. The man's airbag saved his life, and in court lawyers described Charles's car as looking like a "accordian" afterward, so it was a serious crash. But Charles still jumped out and ran. He made it to the backyard of a man named Eddie, who was hanging out on his porch and saw Charles in the police run by. Eddie decided to get in on the action. He pulled Charles down as he tried to scale offence, an agent's placed him under arrest. "Oh, it's kind of pretty crazy, and they finally chased my ass down, caught me, kind of like cops.

You know, that would be appropriate, so that's why.

Yeah, very dramatic."

He panicked. He has never denied any of that.

That's crunch and sweating. Charles's current appeals attorney. I think, you know, there's a lot of shame and embarrassment, you know, especially for the stress it caused his family, and that it certainly didn't help, but it was just pure fear. There's nothing sort of rational, there's no planning. Charles has done many stupid things, but he's never killed anybody.

But these stupid things will haunt Charles. Not only throughout his trial, but through the decades of appeals that follow. And he wasn't done yet.

In July of 1998, two months after his dramatic arrest, he tried one more time to get out of officer's grasp.

In that head-on collision, the one that made his car look like an accordion, Charles unsurprisingly hadn't gotten out on injured. He'd heard his knee, and while being held in the Dallas County jail, he was taken multiple times to the Parkland hospital for treatment. On July 10, a sheriff's deputy was escorting Charles to the hospital in a wheelchair. Because he was in the chair, Charles had fewer restraints than usual.

He couldn't be handcuffed, he needed to be able to wheel the chair. At one point, according to trial transcripts, Charles jumped out of the chair and grabbed the deputy's gun. As they wrestled, Charles also grabbed his face and sprayed them both. He was a huge scene, and doctors in hospital staff came running. A medical intern eventually took the gun away from Charles, and other doctors helped her strain him.

He gets over to Parkland, and then he jumps at the police officers that had him in custody, grabs the weapon, gets the weapon. This is prosecutor Jason January again. In trial, he later referred to this incident as an alleged attempted capital murder. Some brave souls there fought it away from him. He gets it back, and then he grabs their mace and starts spraying mace at everyone else.

So, you know, flight is always evidence of guilt.

Charles's lawyer interprets the Parkland hospital incident differently. He been apprehended. He had been wounded. He was in the jail in a wheelchair. They took him to Parkland, and then he tried to get away. He could barely walk. He's sort of tackled by this security guard with a gun.

And he gets the guys, there's this whole, you know, in the long thing about the tug of war. And then somebody who walks over and takes the gun out of that, because he's not going to kill the guy. And you know, it's almost, I mean, I hate to laugh, but it is almost comedic. But again, it's just like this raw panic. I got to be out of here, but he's not in that mode even.

He does not commit any violence. He doesn't shoot his way out of Parkland. This time period, the months between when Charles finds out that he suspected a Betty Blacks murder,

and when he finally stands trial, are critical to investigators and prosecutors.

You heard Jason Jr. say it plainly.

Flight is evidence of guilt.

One of the things, once he had fled to Mexico and came back and fought officers in Kyle Texans,

just south of Austin, once he gets back here and he's hiding,

I believe it as parents' house or whatever.

The FBI's surrounded him and he takes him on a big car chase and ends up hitting someone head on. And then he has in the car wreck, he hurts his knee, he says. He gets over to Parkland and then he jumps at the police officers that had him in custody. January is arguing that all of the things Charles did after Betty Black was murdered could actually prove he committed the murder.

It's not fingerprints at the crime scene, but January says evidence of flight can be just as damning.

It has to do with what courts allowed to be admitted into trial.

Judges have determined that flight is "admissible to support an inference of consciousness of guilt." In other words, prosecutors control the jury everything the defendant did after the murder. If it looks like they were trying to avoid justice, then the jury can assume they were acting on a guilty conscience. They can assume that the only reason to run is because you did it. The argument against it is that he knew he was being targeted and so he ran out of fear.

Right, right. Sure, what else would you say?

It's interesting how we all know that you have to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But being how do we decide what reasonable doubt is.

In this case, it's like he was acting suspicious. You know, no tangible proof that he did any of this, but like you said, why wouldn't an innocent man run? Yeah, I think that what a lot of us who haven't been on a jury don't appreciate is how much we ask of our jurors, how much discretion and judgment we allow them to have.

So they are actively asked to weigh evidence and decide what to believe. And those 12 people making that decision together becomes the truth. So it is, you know, just kind of like in a theoretical, not really that helpful discussion. Really wild. What jurors have to contend with, especially in a case like this where there's just so much going on. Charles has been adamant that fear not guilt compelled him to run.

He's tried to explain this over the years. About 15 years ago, he was writing to a penpal who happened to be a contributor to the New Zealand herald. The writer published one of Charles's notes in 2010, under the headline, "Sell notes from a condemned man." When I met with Charles in February, I asked him to read aloud what he'd written back then. There are many things in my past that I regret and I'm ashamed of.

I've been in jail before and I've used in soul drugs.

And when I learned that I was wanted for capital murder, I did the worst thing possible that I could do.

I ran. I knew that I would be sent to prison or worse forever and this scared me. So I acted responsibly in a ran. That does not make me guilty of capital murder. I was convicted in sin and sedive because of my criminal background because I'm a brown man and because I did not come from an affluent family who could pay for an attorney. To ensure my rights were protected at trial.

Outside of court, Charles's flight and his runs with police didn't do him any favors in the public eye. In news articles from the time he was described as armed and dangerous. While he was still on the run, the Dallas Morning News was reporting on his criminal history, which included a 1994 conviction for robbery and cocaine possession. One article referred to him as "a big, tough, capital murder suspect." In the spring of 1999, more than a year after Betty Black was murdered in her former French home, Charles Flores went to trial.

Next time on the unforgotten. The jury that is being invited to convict because someone's just a bad person. Oh, he's a bad thing, so we'll get him for this. That was for. He was a dangerous criminal before and during and after. And the hypnotized witness drops a bombshell that changes everything. Again. Once it became obvious that the next door neighbor was going to change the file.

I knew at that point that it wasn't a fair trial. Thank you for listening to the unforgotten, a free-range production.

Season 5, writing shotgun, was created in association with the Texas Observer...

Editing by Aslan Gattis, audio engineering, and sound assigned by Austin Sysler with East Side Studios. I'm Executive Producer West Ferguson, for our newsletter at unforgottenpod.com. [Music]

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