‘Real-Life Breaking Bad’ Uncovered In New ‘Paper Ghosts’ Season.

Author and investigative journalist M. William Phelps says the story featured in the fifth season of the true crime podcast “Paper Ghosts” has such a familiar ring, it had him wondering if has already been told in a fictional format. “The parallels between this case and the television series ‘Breaking Bad’ seriously made me take a look at if the TV producers used this case as the basis for their show,” Phelps says.

The story in the season titled “The Texas Teen Murders” will take listeners back to 1983, when two teens were found murdered, execution-style, on a hill in Weatherford, TX. Michelle “Shelly” Cauliflower, 14, and Vincent Tejerina, Jr., 16, were out on their first car date but failed to come home. The next morning, Vincent’s father found the teens shot dead inside Vincent’s car. The investigation was botched with rumors and speculation running rampant throughout the town and into the surrounding areas.

Over the next 42 years, law enforcement got close to finding answers but always backed away. Their deaths were just two in a series of local teen murders, strange “suicides” and “accidents” which still need to be accounted for and explained. The investigation was botched with rumors and speculation running rampant throughout the town and into the surrounding areas.

Phelps has spent several years putting together a case and uncovering answers families have been waiting on for decades. Over nine episodes, the podcast will dig into more than 100 hours of his interviews with scores of witnesses and experts, including law enforcement and anonymous sources no one has spoken to before. The result is a season that Phelps believes will crack open a narrative of what likely happened and who is responsible.

“The answers go all the way up to the top of the law enforcement chain and there are people out there who need to answer for these crimes,” he says. “We all know the hierarchy of sheriffs’ departments in this country and how they seem to have their own version of justice. In Texas, they say, everything is bigger — and that certainly includes all the corruption.”

Phelps is the writer, host and executive producer of “Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders,” which debuts this week via iHeartPodcasts. A bestselling author of nearly 50 true crime books, Phelps also hosts the “White Eagle” podcast and hit weekly show “Crossing The Line With M. William Phelps.”