Latest / Blood Trails / S1E8: The Murder of Chong Yang

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S1E8: The Murder of Chong Yang · Blood Trails

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: The crime scene in the murder of Chung Wai Yang
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: didn't just look wrong. It looked intentional. No warning, no struggle,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: just a single shot to the back of the head,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: footprints leading nowhere, and the hunter's gear stripped away like
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a trophy. For the Yang family, the question started immediately
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: for investigators. The answers would point toward a pair of
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: hunters who claimed it was all just a joke. That's
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: next on Blood Trails. When Maivu Yang got a text
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: from her mother one evening in the fall of twenty eighteen,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: she wasn't too concerned to read that her father hadn't
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: come home from deer hunting.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: When it first happen, it felt like a normal thing
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: that happens every year. Every year. My mom always freaks
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: out when my dad doesn't come home right.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Chung Wa Yang had been chasing whitetail at the Rose
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Lake State Wildlife Area, about ten miles northeast of Lansing, Michigan.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It was a place he'd hunted dozens, maybe hundreds of times.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Before, So when my mom started blowing all of our
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: phones November sixteenth, we just assumed it was the same
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: thing she does every year. We were not alarmed. We
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: were like, mom, Dad probably got a deer and that's
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: why he does not picking up on you, like, stop overreacting.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: But Maivu's mother refused to be mollified, and as the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: darkness deepened on that cold November evening and Chung still
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: hadn't responded to calls and messages, the Yang family began
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to realize that something was wrong.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: You know, they're married, so she has that I guess feeling.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: She's just like, no, this time is different, and like,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: your dad always calls me when he comes down from
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: the tree.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The Yang family is a big one, so there were
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: plenty of volunteers to help scour the woods. Chung's brother
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: had been hunting on a different price property that day
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: with his son Meng, so the pair drove to Rose
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Lake to put missus Yang's mind at ease. They were
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: joined by Thani Yang, another of Chunk's nephews, along with
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Thani's friend, a.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Guy named Lucas Braun.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: The Rose Lake wildlife area is heavily wooded and it's
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: easy to get turned around, especially in the dark, but
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the Yang family knew Cheng's usual hunting spots, so it
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: didn't take long for their worst fears to be realized.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: My niece texted me and said, they found grandpa. Someone
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: shot him, and I just remember like blacking out and
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: just screaming and crying because it was just kind of like,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: you know, we're supposed to have thingsgiving, like, what do
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: you mean they found grandpa.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Chong Yang was found lying face down in the two
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: inches of snow that blanketed the forest floor. The sixty
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: eight year old hunter had been shot in the back
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: of the head and the bullet had exited his left eye.
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: So during their funeral, his face had to be reconstructed
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: for that because his whole left cheek pretty much the
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: meat was blown out. It was just kind of the
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: skin left over there.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: That's Joseph Yang, an attorney who helped the family navigate
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the grueling legal process in the years that followed. He
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: also acted as the family spokesperson, and he told me
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Chong's brother and nephews could tell right away that this
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: wasn't some kind of innocent mistake.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Chong hunted with a gun with his backpack as well
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: as a traditional mom hunting knife. His backpack was missing
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: as well as his hunting knife was missing, and the
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: gun was missing as well.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Chong hadn't just been shot in the back of the head.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: His gun and backpack had also been stolen, which told
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: investigators that whoever had done this had walked up to
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the body, grabbed the nearest valuables within reach, and walked away.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: As Mavu's eight brothers and sisters gathered their family for
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the week's long morning process, she knew she had to
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: do something.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: So I remember, like my sister's everybody's coming in and
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: just crying, and I just had to like sit down
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: and be like, Okay, as much as sadness as I'm
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: feeling right now, someone has to be the rational one.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Someone has to ask the right questions. So I just
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: remember that night we were there and just watching everybody cry.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I was just like, no, I'm going to try to
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: be the rational one and find out who did this.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: True to her word, Mavu became the tip of the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: spear advocating for her father's murderer to be brought to justice,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: but she had no idea how long or how much
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of a roller coaster the next six years would be.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Chong's murder baffled the greater Lancing community as locals wondered
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: how such a quiet, peaceful suburb could experience such a
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: cruel and apparently racist crime. The case teetered on a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: knife's edge between hot and cold until GPS coordinates, a
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: can of scent killer, footprints in the snow, and a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: serious blunder by one of the suspects blew the case
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: wide open. But what happened next has been contested even
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to this day, as investigators have tried to parse fact
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: from fiction, truth from lies, and humor from homicide. I'm
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails the Murder of
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Chung Yang, Part one. Chung Chung Wa Yang was born
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: in Laos in nineteen fifty and it's safe to say
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: he lived a fascinating life.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: So my dad was a Girlla soldier, and then once
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: the US pulled out, he came in. I believe eighty
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: eight is when they officially came.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Chung was a member of the Mung community, a group
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: of people originally from Laos whose history with the Americans
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: began in the nineteen sixties during the Vietnam War.
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: I think everybody knows the Vietnam War, but what they
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: know is what happened in Vietnam. During that same time,
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: there was what's called a Secret War.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: That's Yavang, who you might remember from his appearances on
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the Meat Eater podcast. Yeah, is a chef in Minneapolis
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: where he owns a restaurant that specializes in Mung cuisine.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: He sat down with me alongside his friend and another
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: regular Meter guest, Ya Yang. Together they helped me understand
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: the history of the Mung in the US and how
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: that history intersects with the outdoor community.
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: And in the Secret War in the northern part of
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: Laos in the mountains, communists regime was kind of coming
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: down from that route, and the US sent into Cia
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: and special forces in to train hill people, these mountain peoples,
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: which were the Mung peoples, and they became a paramilitary troops.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: That's what Maivu means when she says her father was
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a guerrilla soldier. He joined as many as one hundred
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: thousand Mung men who fought alongside the American special forces
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War. They fought the ground war, flew
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: combat missions, directed airstrikes, rescued downed American pilots, fought behind
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: enemy lines, and gathered intelligence on the movements of North
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Vietnamese troops. The problem was, as you know if you
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: were paying attention in history class, the Americans eventually pulled
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: out of Vietnam. When they did, among people were in
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: serious trouble.
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: And then there was kind of a genocie of the
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: Monk people, and so when the communist troops came through,
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: they just went to the villages of the Mung people
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: and they killed them off.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: This was, he explained, an incredibly difficult time for the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Monk not only because their people were being killed, but
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: also because they felt betrayed by the US after signing
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: on to the vision and values of the American Dream.
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: The reason why they joined up was the promise was
• 7:28
  Speaker 5: made and no matter what, when loser draw, your people
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: can come to the United States and have freedom and
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: be citizens. So you had to realize that for a
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: lot of these among veterans who were part of the
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: SGU the Special Guerrilla Unit, they're true patriots. They fought
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: for a country that they never stepped foot in before,
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: and they fought for a country knowing that there was
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: a promise made, but the promise itself wasn't fulfilled until
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: many years later.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Chung was one of those patriots like Yah and Ya's fathers.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: He joined the war when he was just a teenager
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties, but was forced to flee
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Laus when it fell to the Communists in nineteen seventy five.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: Here's yeah, and.
• 8:06
  Speaker 6: That was the beginning of the among people's journey to
• 8:11
  Speaker 6: several different countries, mainly Australia, France, and the United States.
• 8:16
  Speaker 6: But that was kind of the start of the refugee
• 8:19
  Speaker 6: camps and among People's journey to the US.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Congress passed a new Refugee Act in nineteen eighty that
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: increased the number of refugees allowed into the country each
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: year and helped many mong resettle in the US. Many
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: made homes in California and North Carolina, but thousands ended
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: up in the Upper Midwest states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: like Chung's family, Michigan.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: When he first got here, he took a few construction jobs.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: He knows how to do a little construction, so he
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: did more like handyman work. He did janet herhor work.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: So he worked for like Franchina Mold, he worked for Peckham.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: He worked for Grand River North Corporation, so he don't
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: basically janitary work, maintenance work. My dad was very handy.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Through hard work and perseverance, Chong cobbled together a comfortable
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: living for his growing family. That work included what Mavu
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: just described, but Chung also took advantage of the grocery
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: store in the woods and on the water.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: My dad is the eldest grandson of the family. He's
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: always been a provider. He is like hunting has always
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: been a way to provide for everyone. He took his
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: cousins that didn't have dads hunting like he literally always
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: been like teaching people to how to hunt. So he's
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: always been a strong provider for not only in the
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: nine children in our family, he also provided for everybody.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: He just took care of everyone.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Mavu said that part of the reason Chong was hunting
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the day he died was to harvest some venison to
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: distribute to all his kids when they came home for Thanksgiving.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: But hunting wasn't just about filling the freezer.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Hunting was his way of reliefing stress. You know, all
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: the stress that is on his shoulder. So he used
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: to fish. But then my mom started fishing, and then
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: you know, she's his stress. So he was like, no,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not fishing no more. Because he was just like,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: I gotta take her with me, and I'll try to
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: go away from her. So he stopped fishing for a
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: while because like he loved it until my mom started
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: and then he hang up with his fishing pole and
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: continue hunting. Hunting was his stress relievers, so he tended
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: to do it by himself places that my dad has hunted.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: He's been hunting for over twenty nine years. He's very
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: comfortable with the environment that he hunts at, so all
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: the public state lands around Lansing area was like my
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: dad's playground. So we mushroom hunt, we forge, and he
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: goes hunting for squirrel.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: For dare Chung wasn't alone in his love of hunting,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: as Yah and Ya explained that among people have a
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: long and proud heritage of living off the land that
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: extends well beyond their time in the US.
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: The Chinese caused the meou. The word miao literally translates
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: the sons of the soil. Our people have constantly, constantly
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: been the people of the land. We are people of
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: the land, so we use the land around us for survival,
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: to build, to grow, hunting and fishing is like in
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: our blood. I mean, if you talk to any mon
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: grandpa or uncles who came in from Laos, Thailand, you
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: know area, they will tell you stories of Yep, this
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: is how you hunt, this is how you set traps,
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: this is how you set snares, this is how you fish.
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: This is what you do. You use the land around you,
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: and so it's such ingrain in our lives.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I use the word subsistence to describe how the among
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: people lived in Laos. He doesn't mean they lack necessities,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: but that they lived their whole lives close to the land.
• 11:44
  Speaker 7: If you live your entire life in Laos, you wake
• 11:46
  Speaker 7: up and you farmed, and you hunted and you fished
• 11:49
  Speaker 7: like that was your life. I mean outside of that,
• 11:51
  Speaker 7: you probably got married and raised a family to ork
• 11:55
  Speaker 7: the land and hunt and fished, right, because that's how
• 11:58
  Speaker 7: you live.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Many monk took advantage of the plentiful opportunities to hunt
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: and fish in the US, but while some were able
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to navigate the complexities of the North American model of
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: wildlife management, others struggled to adapt to a world where
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: you need to buy a hunting license and observe bag limits.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: But I also.
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: Knew cousins and uncles who are like, well why not
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: you can, like, if we can gather this, and then
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: you know, we can take all this panfish, take it home,
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: we clean it up, we freeze them. Now we have
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: food for the next you know, two to three weeks,
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: and it was no difference than harvesting from a farm.
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: I think the problem that we had in our culture
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: was there were elders who were saying, well, I don't
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: get this. I'm just going to do my own thing,
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: you know, which, Dude, tell me that's not a mom thing.
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: That's just an old person thing, right, you know.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Both Yeah and Yeah were quick to point out that
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: many of their parents and grandparents were extremely conscientious of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: wildlife regulations. He has said his father would ask his
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: kids to explain the rules to him to make sure
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: he understood them, and Mavus said Chung was always careful
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: to follow hunting laws and etiquette. But even Native born
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Americans have trouble keeping track of all the rags. So
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: you can see how there would be an adjustment period
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: for that first generation of Mung hunters.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Who settled in the US.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: The reason this is relevant to Chung's case is that
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: during those early years, the mon whether they deserved it
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: or not, earned a reputation for skirting wildlife laws.
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: And then what does that do, man? It builds on
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: more bias than, which builds on more bias, which then
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: turns into racism than, which turns to the sentence, you
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: know that sentence. They all are blaw da da da da.
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: They are those people do this, Those people do this.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: As investigators started getting tips in the weeks and months
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: after Chung's death, they found those who expressed versions of
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: this anti Asian bias. Members of Chung's family reported him
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: having run ins with white hunters in the woods, and
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: they couldn't help but wonder if racism could have been
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: one of the motivating factors.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Behind Chung's death.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Maivu made a point to say that the vast majority
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: of people in the Lansing area were anything but racist.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: She says the community came together around the search for
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Chong's killer, and most of her memories of her dad
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: in the woods are positive.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: All the times I did go hunting with my I'm
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: a social butterfly, so like every person might pass, I
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: always had that hiker etiquette where I said, hi, hey,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: you know, like just to make sure you're you know,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: you always want to be people to remember that. Oh yeah,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: I saw this little asia go work in the woods.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Chong's decision to take his daughter on his excursions wasn't
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: a light one. Maivu says that it was taboo for
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: girls to hunt, and so she especially appreciates her father's
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: willingness to include her in what was traditionally a male activity.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I never wanted to do garden with my mom, so
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: I was like, can I go with you guys? And
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: my dad would like, hurry up, go hiding the car.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So he always took me fishing and hunting with them,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: you know, even like when we were like Lettle and
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: my dad will go hunting and then he'll take me
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: my little brother, and then we'll be like cause little puppy.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: When he shot a squirrel, we'll go and grab a stick, poke,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: make sure he's dead, and then we pick it up.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: So that's great memories we have of hunting with my dad.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: He wanted to go hunting, but he had to watch us,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: so he took us with him.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: After Chunk passed, Mava was going through his things and
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: found that he kept her hunter's education certificate and.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I didn't even know that he kept it in there,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: and I found it like after he passed away, and
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: then we're going through all his stuff. So to be
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: able to like have my dad like allow me to
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: join with them, even though I was a girl. It
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: was like a great experience growing up. Like I remember,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: like when we were younger, we'll go mushroom forging. And
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: for this particular year, I decided to wear my white
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Air Force to go out into the woods. Okay, yes,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: during mushroom season. It's really wet out there, right, did
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: not think of it. So my dad piggybacked me through
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the swamps so my white Air Forces wouldn't get dirty.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And I was like a teenager, you know, my dad
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: was piggyback me through these swamps just because my smart
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: but decided to wear my white Air Force to go
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: mushroom hunting.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Chong's death was a major blow to the Yang family,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and not just because they lost a kind hearted father
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: who would carry his daughter through the woods so her
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: new shoes wouldn't get dirty. As Mavu explained, Chung was
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the oldest male in the family. As such, she had
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a special role as a provider, a mediator, and a mentor.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: My brothers lost the mentors. A lot of my uncles
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: they you know, my dad was the oldest one, so
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: my dad was always the one like they all went
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: to talk to. Because my dad's he's very soft spoken,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: he doesn't like confrontation. He likes to, you know, be
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: very reasonable. So he always is the level headed one.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Where he tried to gap the bridges. That's just all
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: he's done. His whole life was gap bridges between the
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: new generation and the old generation, make sure that everybody
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: is taken care of. So it was really hard to
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: see my brothers, my uncles, all his friends, everybody just
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: changed after my dad died, you know what I mean.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Like at my wedding, you know, like all the uncles
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: were like, you know, if your dad was here, this
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: is what your dad would have said, because this is
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: what he said to our daughters. You can definitely see
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: the depression that everybody had in my family home. Hunting
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: was different for everyone too, Like everything has been a
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: lot different without my dad, you know, because you know,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: even though like he was level headed, he also had
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: this like choker mentality where he will like make a
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: situation a little bit better with a joke here and there,
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: so we never really got to drown and sorrow. He
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: was like some ray of sunshine, some ray of reasoning
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: for everyone. So to lose that sunshine and ray for
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: everyone it was. It's still very difficult.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Unless you've experienced something like this yourself. It's tough to
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: imagine what the Yang family went through as they tried
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to pick up the pieces after finding Chong lying on
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: that forest floor. But as they work to fill the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: unfillable gap Chong had left, detectives with the Bath Township
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Police Department began to piece together what had happened to
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the father, grandfather, and lifelong mong hunter.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: That's next after the Break Part two.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: The crime scene detective Brian Miller had been with the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Bath Township Police for about six years when Chung was
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: killed in twenty eighteen. He took the lead on the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: investigation because the incident happened within the township's jurisdiction, but
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: he'd only been a detective for about eleven months. This
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: was also his first homicide investigation as the case officer
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: in charge, which turned out to be a pretty raw deal.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: That's because as I've mentioned before, homicides in a rural,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: wooded area are some of the most difficult to solve.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Evidence can be easily hidden or destroyed, witnesses are few
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: and far between, and it's impossible to say exactly how
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: large the crime scene is. The two inches of fresh
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: snow on the ground might have been a big help,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: but by the time detective Miller arrived at the scene,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: it was it was tough to tell one print from another.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: Yes, there's bootprints all over the place. I mean, if
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: you can imagine somebody either family responding, and then you
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: add on the emergency personnel, there's don't be bootprints everywhere,
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: but there's only one unique set that goes that way.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: That's Joseph Yang, again, the family attorney. Detective Miller was
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: not permitted to speak on the record since this case
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: is still in the appellate process, but Joseph knows as
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: much about Chung's investigation as anyone who wasn't in the
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: police department. I was able to obtain the entire case
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: file from the bath Township Police that included incident reports,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: tips received, emails between detectives and prosecutors, and screenshots of
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: phones and other electronic evidence. One of the first things
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Miller noticed is what you've just heard. While the Yang
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: family had left their own bootprints around Chung's body as
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: they ran to check on their uncle and brother, there
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: was one set of prints that walked off by itself.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Whoever had left them had walked back and forth between
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Chung's body and a nearby log, and then traveled north
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: away from the body towards a larger footpath. The only
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: other set of prints that could be distinguished was Chung's,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: which led back to his tree stand. Chung was wearing
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: camel clothing and a hunter's orange vest, and investigators found
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a flashlight underneath his body, along with a headlamp battery
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: pack near his head. It was obvious to investigators that
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the sixty eight year old was shot while walking home
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: after climbing down from his tree stand. Sunset was at
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: five oh nine that evening, which means legal shooting hours,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: ended at five thirty nine, assuming about twenty minutes to
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: pack up his stuff, climb down, and start walking out.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Miller estimated that Chung was shot around six pm. He
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: also spoke to at least two neighbors in the area
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: who reported hearing a shot around that time, which they
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: noted because it was obviously after legal hunting hours.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: To kind of hear something like this, this type of tragedy,
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: you know, at first you think, oh, was it a
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: hunting asding and you hear about that stuff all the time. Right,
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: something moved, they thought it was the animal they shot.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: It happens, Unfortunately it does, and for hunters that's kind
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: of a risk. But when we started hearing more details
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: and starting to give more information for protective Miller kind
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: of explaining what happened, it was a shot to the
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: system because we couldn't imagine such a mild man or
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: man being shot in that way.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Those details were more about what wasn't at the crime
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: scene than about what was actually found.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: Chung hunted with a gun with his backpack as well
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: as a traditional mom hunting knife. His backpack was missing
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: as well as his hunting knife was missing, and the
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: gun was missing as well. And you know, the defense
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: trys to said, well, he maybe he was scouting or
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: something like that.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: No, he went hunting.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: He told his family he went to hunt, and nobody
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: hunts without a gun, especially during gun season. His family
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: hunted with him all the time. They said, whenever he went.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: He had his gun, his hunting knife, and his backpack
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: with just kind of miscellaneous things that he might need,
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: and his ammal bag and stuff like that, so all
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: that was gone.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: The theft of Chung's gun, backpack, and knife didn't totally
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: rule out accident, but it definitely gave what happened a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: far more sinister.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: Edge normal accident hunting accident. You shoot, you realize in
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: that a deer, you try to help, you call authorities.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's your fellow brother, hunting brother, right. You
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: would never want that to happen to you. If you're
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: a hunter out there, If something happens, you go out there,
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: you go help them. You don't take their gun, their backpack,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: in their knife and lead them out there in the
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: cold to die alone.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: The wound in Chong's head was a grizzly one, but
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: it didn't offer as much information as you might think.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Medical examiners concluded that the wound was made by a
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: caliber larger than a twenty two, But even though they
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: were able to extract two pieces of bullet fragment, they
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: weren't able to determine a more specific caliber.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: They really couldn't get any evidentiary value of like is
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: this manufacture or something of that nature the metal which
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: is kind of a generic medal, and so they couldn't
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: get anything specific from that. I mean, based on the bullet,
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: it looks kind of like a rifle just because of
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: the size of it all. But they couldn't even say
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: what it was because the bullet was so mangled and
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: it's just generic metal that they couldn't really say specifically
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: what it was. It's kind of a theory that it
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: might have been a rifle, definitely not bugshot or anything
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: of that nature.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: The forensic pathologist, a woman named doctor Alisha Wilson, said
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the two pieces of metal found near Chung's eye appeared
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: to be quote parts of a jacket copper in other words,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: as opposed to the lead found inside a copper jacketed bullet.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: This might suggest a rifle bullet, like Joseph said, and
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it would indeed exclude the kind of all lead slug
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: commonly used in shotguns. But it's also possible that the
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: projectile was what's called a sabo slug sometimes pronounced Sabbath slug.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: These copper jacketed bullets are most commonly used in shotguns
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and muzzleloading rifles, and they feature the conical shape we
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: associate with modern projectiles. They also have a plastic base
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: designed to ter face with a barrel's rifling to spin
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the bullet and increase accuracy. In other words, while Detective
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Miller knew he wasn't looking for a rim fire rifle
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: or someone using buckshot, he couldn't narrow things down much
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: beyond that. It could have been someone using a shotgun
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: or a muzzleloader with a Sabo slug, or any rifle
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: chambered in a caliber larger than a twenty two. He
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: also couldn't know for sure which way the shot came
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: from or how far away the shooter was. The shot
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: entered through the back of Chunk's head, but the hunter
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: could have been looking to one side or the other.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: There was also no way to know whether or how
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: much he'd moved around after being hit. Doctor Wilson testified
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: that she ruled out a close proximity shot due to
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the lack of soot on the wound, but she couldn't
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: narrow the distance much beyond that. Though long and short
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of it was, the crime scene didn't offer Detective Miller
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: or his colleagues much information. They didn't find anyone else's
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: belongings on the ground, and they weren't able to match
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the foreign DNA found on Chung's body to anyone else.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: That DNA could have been.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: From a relative, coworker or the murderer. The only evidence
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: that anyone else had even been at the scene were
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: those bootprints.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: There's a path, there's a main artery that goes through there,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: and of course the investigation happens, the family goes out
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: to find them. There's bootprints everywhere in that area, but
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: there's one unique set of bootprints that kind of loops
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: up and it comes back down, and that unique set
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: of bootprints is where that spray is found.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: That spray was a can of scent killer, and it
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: was found in a plastic grocery bag next to the
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: same kind of bootprints that had walked next to Chung's body.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: But while police did eventually collect it, they didn't realize
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: at first that it was connected to the crime scene.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: And with the police officer when they scanned the area,
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: they found it and they marked it, but it wasn't
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: even anything. They thought it was just a litter, just
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: kind of trashed.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: The night Chung was killed.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Patrick McPherson found the can of Scent Killer about
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: three hundred yards to the south of the body. He
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: was scouring the woods in search of evidence, and he
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: noticed a set of prints that matched those found near Chung.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: These prints led away from the main trail to the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: west and towards some private property. The prince led him
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to the can of sent spray, but he wasn't sure
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: whether it was connected to the crime scene. That's because
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: when he followed those prints back to the main trail,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: he couldn't distinguish them from the other bootmarks on the trail.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: He didn't pick up the bag and can that night,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: but the next day Detective Miller asked him to go
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: back and retrieve it. It's possible that whoever had killed
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Chong had walked back to the main trail and then
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: veered off to the west towards private property, dropping the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: scent spray on the way. They couldn't say for sure,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: but the fact that those prince matched the ones found
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: near Chung suggested that two could be linked. Detective Miller's
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: instincts turned out to be correct. They wouldn't know it
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: for another six years, but that can of scent killer
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: became one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the prosecution of Chung's murderer Part three, Tips and leads.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: With the crime scene failing to produce any solid leads,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller turned to the general public for help. The
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: police department put out press releases asking to speak with
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: anyone who had been near Rose Lake that day or
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: who might have heard something relevant about what happened. My
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: vow was a big part of this campaign. She launched
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: a Facebook page to raise awareness about her father's case.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: She also organized yearly events commemorating his death and put
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: flyers around town soliciting leads.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: When the first happened, everybody in Cammell was a potential suspect.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: So it was very scary to like because at that
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: time I was making flyers, I was going to Roselake
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: into other public state land, and I was putting flyers
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: on people's card askinglake if they know anything, you know
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: what I mean. So it was scary to be in
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: that position where you don't know, is this the potential
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: car of the person who kill my dad? Like you
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: just didn't know.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Some of the tips they received were more helpful than others.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: One tip, for example, came in through crime Stoppers and
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: claimed that Chong was murdered by a CIA agent carrying
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: badge number four thirty five. The tipster said Cheng was
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: with a group of eight people at the time he
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: was killed, but didn't explain who those other people were
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: or why the CIA would want Chung dead. It is
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: true that the spooks ran the Mung operation in Laos,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: but there was no evidence that Chong had maintained any
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: kind of connection with the agency, and the bit about
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: him being with eight other people was obviously false, so
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the tip was deemed not credible. Many of the tips
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: that came in revolved around hunters who had expressed anti
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Asian or anti Mung bias. The Yang family told investigators
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that Chong had experienced this bias in the past, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: investigators looked at several hunters for this reason. One man,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: for example, post did a Facebook comment that said quote,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I hunt right there. People kill half year old deer,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: especially the walking white rice and soy sauces that hunt
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: out there opening day at nine am, walking out the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: woods to the Kia or Honda with a squirrel. This
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: fellow's name was Matthew Mattney, and investigators were obviously interested
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: in hearing more about his views on the case. He
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: told detectives that he hadn't hunted at Rose Lake in
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the last two years, but he did remember meeting someone
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: he believed was Chung. He said Chong had interrupted his hunt,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: but when he tried to talk to him, Chung just
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: turned around and walked away. Detectives asked Mattney if they
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: could search his cell phone, and he said they could,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: But in what turned out to be an odd bit
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: of foreshadowing, Mattney admitted that there was a text on
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: his phone to his cousin in which he was quote
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: joking about killing Chong. This could have ended very poorly
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: for Mattney, but he ended up being exonerated by the
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: same phone that could have put him in jail. When
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: detectives pulled the location information from Mattney's device, they found
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: that it hadn't been to bath Township in over a month.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: On the day of Chong's murder, Mattney had been in
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: lancing at a scrap metal junkyard, which was verified by
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: another detective. Investigators received dozens of other tips over the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: subsequent months and years.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: Many were little more than rumors.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Though they had to track down each and every one
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: of them. But reading through the case file, there's one
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: name that comes up more than any other in the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: first two years of the investigation.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Jack Kuhn.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: The first person that kind of was like on the
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: radar as of the person in interest was mentioned as
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Jack Kuhn. I guess he had this bendet against Asian
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: people because his dad was died in the Vietnam War.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller received his first tip about Kuhn in December
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, just a few weeks after Chong's death.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: This tipster said that Kuhn used to live in a
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: trailer park he owned, and Kuhn would complain that his
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: father was killed by a quote foreigner during the war. Then,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: just about a month later, Miller caught Kuhn at the
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: scene of the crime. The detective had placed trail cams
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: looking at the spot Cheng had been found. Those cameras
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: took photos of Kun walking past that spot on November
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: twenty second and twenty fifth, about a week after Chung
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: was murdered. In the photos, you can see Kun looking
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: down at the spot where Chung had fallen, and a
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: pool of blood was still frozen on the ground. This
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: was obviously suspicious, so Detective Miller got in touch with
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Kuhn and asked to have a chat. During their initial
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: phone conversation, Kun admitted that he'd been hunting at Rose
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Lake for the last twenty years, but denied having been
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: out in.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: The woods the knight Chong was killed.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: However, he described the general area of the crime scene
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: as being near one of his usual spots. Later, when
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: he met detectives at Rose Lake to show them where
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: he'd set up his tree stand, he led them directly
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: past the crime scene. He explained that there was only
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: one way in an out from his tree stand, and
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: that route took him past where Cheng had been hunting.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: This wasn't enough to arrest mister Kuhn, but it did
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: make him suspect number one, though it was never verified
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and Kuhn denied it. Detective Miller also received a tip
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: that Kuhn had used a racial slur against Southeast Asians
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: while at a DNR chech station.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: He's one of the many people that they interview to
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: make sure and check off the list, and yes, because
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: of those remarks, he was a suspect while he's a
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: person of interest and they interviewed him.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: But what was perhaps the most damning piece of evidence
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: against Kuhn is that he was seen wearing the same
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: kind of boots that had made those prints around Cheng's body.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: After a lengthy back and forth with Dick's Sporting Goods,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller confirmed that the boot tread found at the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: crime scene was most likely made by field and stream
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: swamp tracker rubber hunting boots. This was a common type
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of hunting boot at the time, though that particular model
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: appears to have been discontinued. One of Chong's nephews actually
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: had several pairs of this kind of boot, so he
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: was one of the first suspects detective Miller had to
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: rule out. Miller told other law enforcement officers to be
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: on the lookout for this type of boot, and almost
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: exactly a year after Chung's death, d n R officer
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Katie Stewara looked down and saw them on Jack Kuhn's feet.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: She was talking to Kuhn about a separate enforcement issue
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: when she noticed the pair of swamp trackers, and she
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: informed detective Miller right away. Kuhn had remained on Miller's radar,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: but this new information prompted another call down to the station.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Khon maintained his innocence throughout the course of this second
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: interview and didn't offer any further information, but what Detective
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Miller had was enough to obtain a search warrant. An
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: officer seized three cell phones, three iPads, two laptop computers,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: one USB drive, and one pair of hunting boots from
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: the trailer home where Kuhn lived.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: With his wife.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Miller received a few additional tips from Kuhn's coworkers at
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: home depot, describing how the man would sometimes joke about
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: killing someone and became quote paranoid after finding out he
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: was being investigated for Chong's murder, But none of those
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: tips turned into hard evidence, and none of the items
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: seized from Kuhn's house yielded anything either. In fact, detective
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Miller eventually determined that Kuhn probably wasn't the guy he
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: was looking for.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: The timeline didn't fit for him. He was working, he's
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: traveling back and forth, and so the timeline didn't fit
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: for the kind of that six to nine period there,
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: and then his cell phone data really didn't hit in
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: that area. Either though he lives in the area.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller confirmed that on the day of the murder,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Kuhn had left the Okamas home depot in East Lansing
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: at four eighteen PM. Then his phone received a text
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: message from his bank at four twenty two that indicated
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: he'd withdrawn some money from an ATM near that home depot. Next,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: he went across the street to Dick's Sporting Goods and
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: purchased a tree stand at four thirty four. After that,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: he drove up to bath Township and made a debit
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: card with at a gas station at four fifty one,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: and bought something else at a grocery store at four
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: fifty six. Finally, at six ten PM, right around the
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: time Chong was likely killed, his phone received another text
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: from his bank indicating he'd used his debit card again
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: at the same gas station in bath Township. When detective
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Miller reviewed the location data from Kuhne's cell phone, it
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: correlated with the text messages he'd received. He was in
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the bath Township area between five and seven PM on
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the night of the murder, but the cell tower that
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: showed his phone's location also covered his home. What's more,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: when that location data was transferred onto a map. The
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: circle of possible locations didn't extend very far into.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: The state wildlife area.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: There is a margin of error with location information, but
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: it seemed unlikely that Kun had been hunting that night.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: He just didn't have enough time to be at all
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: those locations and get out to the wildlife area on
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: the same evening. Of course, someone else could have had
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Kuhn's phone and debit card. If he planned to kill
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Cheng that night, he could have used an accomplice to
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: make it look like he was in areas where he
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: actually wasn't. Detective Miller tried to obtain surveillance footage from
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: the gas station and grocery stores Kuhn had visited.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: But they had already deleted it.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Fortunately for Old Jack, this wasn't the only evidence that
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: eventually made investigators look elsewhere. Shortly after Chung died, Kun
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: texted his wife to inform her that Chung was killed
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: quote right by my stand, which is a weird thing
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: to say if you're the one who killed him. Kuhn
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and his wife were also texting about him going to
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the gas station and the store, which indicated he was
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: indeed at those locations. When Kuhn went out with Detective
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Miller to show him his tree stand, Miller also noticed.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: That Kun walked with a limp.
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: He had a sir walk to him where he would
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: drag his foot so like he would walk and drag,
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: And that day there was snow on the ground and
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: there were no prints that looked like that the area
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: where the way that he walked would create a drag.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Finally, and this information wasn't in the case report, but
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: did come out at the trial, the health app on
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Kun's phone only showed him having walked thirteen hundred feet
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: between four pm and nine pm on the day of
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: the murder. I used on X to map the distance
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: from the parking lot to where Chung's body was found,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and it's just under a mile. This means that even
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: if Kun flew from his job at home depot to
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the wildlife area, he couldn't have gotten out to Chung's
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: body and back without walking eight times farther.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: Than his phone indicated.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: None of this is entirely exonerating, but creating all these
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: false trails and fake evidence would have required an elaborate scheme.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: And while I haven't met mister Kuhn myself, I can't
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: help but wonder if detectives doubted his ability to pull
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: off something like that. In my mind, the family's opinion
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: of the investigation carries a lot of weight. I asked
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Mavu what her experience was like working with Detective Miller,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: and here's what she said.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: At first, it was frustrating because I didn't understand why
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: they couldn't tell me everything. Like I was really angry
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: at first because again, my dad just got murdered. But
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: along the way, I started to understand why he was
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: treating everything the way he did. He was very professional
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: about everything. He did his best, you know what I mean,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Like he didn't want us to give our hopes up.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: He was a hunter like all the police officers are
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: all hunters too, So this is not only a loss
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: to my family, but it was a loss to the
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: hunting community too.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: As for Miller's decision to move on from Jack Kuhn,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Mavu thinks he made the right call.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: I was definitely say, like bath Township, they did investigate him.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: You know, everybody did their part because, like I said,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: for a long period of time, that was the first
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: name that was kind of on my radar too. During
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: the investigation, I feel like bath Township did their diligent
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: job of eliminating him as a suspect or a person
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: of interest.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Jack Kun may have been suspect number one, but he
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only person the bath Township.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: Police were looking at.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Two years into the investigation, two more names appeared on
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller's radar.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: These individuals had.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Escaped scrutiny for a long time, but thanks to some
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: help from the FBI and a shocking interview all the
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: way down in Miami, their luck was about to run out.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: That's next after the break Part four the comedians. Modern
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: technology makes our lives easier, but if you're a criminal,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: that little device in your pocket can also be your
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: worst enemy.
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: The number one thing I learned from this case and
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: begging in all the core hearings is your phone has everything,
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: Like your cell phone has everything. And so basically what
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: happened was they did a search of phones that were
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: in the area, and then they kind of did process
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: of elimination, Right have we talked to this person, that person?
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: This person.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Not long after Chung's murder, Detective Miller and his team
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: sent a search warrant to Google asking for information on
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the devices in the Rose Lake area the afternoon and
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: evening of the incident. First, they requested device IDs and
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: location data. They eliminated devices that were just traveling along
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: the road or appeared to belong to people living in
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: nearby houses. Then they sent another search warrant to Google
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: requesting personal information associated with those device IDs, but this
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: process took time. In fact, it wasn't until July of
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty, nearly two years after Chung's death, that Google
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: finally provided contact information for the owners of the devices
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: in question. One belonged to a woman who lived north
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: of the state wildlife area. She said she didn't hunt,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and none of the people living at her house did either,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: but she drove through the wildlife area on her way
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: to work every day, which is why her phone was
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: inside those boundaries in the relevance timeframe.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: The other device.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Belonged to a man named Thomas Olson, a thirty two
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: year old who had been the Clinton County Parks and
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: green Space coordinator from twenty fifteen until January of twenty twenty.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Clinton County includes Bath and most of the Rose Lake
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Wildlife Area, so Miller knew that Olson lived locally, or
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: at least he used to. Miller soon discovered that in
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: February of twenty twenty, Olson had moved to Costa Rica
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: with his wife, who was a citizen of that country.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: He was supposed to return in March of that year,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: but never boarded the flight. Instead, he stayed in the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: country and was in the process of securing residency in
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Costa Rica while working remotely as a personal trainer. Miller
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: also discovered that Olson had obtained a hunting license in
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, and the GPS data showed that he was
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: within six hundred yards of Chung's body on the night
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: of the murder. There's also a twelve minute gap in
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Olson's location data from six oh six to six eighteen
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: that evening, so it's possible he traveled even closer. I
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: should say here that the data investigators obtained from Google
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: was much more precise than the cell tower data they
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: got on Jack Coon's phone. This data is derived from
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Google apps that have GPS enabled. This can be more
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: or less precise depending on the signal strength, and it
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: can sometimes cut in and out. But anyone who's used
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: on X to navigate through the Forest knows it's usually
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: pretty accurate. When Miller interviewed Olsen's coworkers, they remembered Olson
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: saying he went hunting on the night of the incident
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: with a friend of his named Robert Roadway. Olson had
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: said it was his first time hunting, and he had
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: to borrow a Remington eight seventy Express shotgun from his boss.
• 42:43
  Speaker 8: Like, I said, that was my first time, and I
• 42:45
  Speaker 8: believe it was Rob's first time hunting anything.
• 42:49
  Speaker 9: So we're kind of like going to know what we're doing.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: That's Olsen.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: He agreed to sit down for an interview with Miller
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and FBI Special Agent Rhys McIntyre. Miller had asked for
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: the FBS help with some of the more technical aspects
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: of the investigation, such as analyzing the bullet fragments and
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: tracing cell phone data. As a federal agent, McIntyre was
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: also in a position to know that Olsen was planning
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: to fly back to Miami in June of twenty twenty
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: one to get a COVID shot. Miller had already been
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: in touch with Olsen via email, so he asked if
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: he could see Olson in person during his trip to Miami.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Olsen showed up to a Border Patrol office without a lawyer.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: He signed a Miranda waiver and said he was happy
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: to help with whatever they needed. He started by giving
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: investigators a summary of what happened on the night of
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: November sixteenth, twenty eighteen.
• 43:39
  Speaker 8: We met out at one of little lass to the
• 43:42
  Speaker 8: south of Clark Clark Road in the statement, so, I
• 43:46
  Speaker 8: think I took work off that day, maybe of what
• 43:48
  Speaker 8: day was a Thursday or Friday on Pavey Friday, I
• 43:51
  Speaker 8: believe a.
• 43:52
  Speaker 10: Friday, So I think I took workoffs.
• 43:53
  Speaker 8: We could get out there, you know before because the
• 43:55
  Speaker 8: sundown happened so quick after work. So we're going to
• 43:57
  Speaker 8: get out there, you know, like midafternoon. Like I said,
• 44:01
  Speaker 8: We hung out a little bit and we're like, maybe
• 44:03
  Speaker 8: it's better if we separate. But again I have no
• 44:05
  Speaker 8: idea what we're doing. So Rob sort of went up
• 44:07
  Speaker 8: on this hill and then I said, Okay, well I'm
• 44:09
  Speaker 8: gonna push north and I'll tell you if I see something,
• 44:11
  Speaker 8: I'll text you. You see something, me just heading towards me,
• 44:14
  Speaker 8: let me know. And but it was really there was nothing.
• 44:16
  Speaker 8: I mean, we sat there, I think I maybe moved twice,
• 44:19
  Speaker 8: and I was like all R I forget this, you know,
• 44:21
  Speaker 8: so I started to trek back. I didn't We didn't
• 44:24
  Speaker 8: see anyone. I didn't see ayone else. I'm not sure
• 44:26
  Speaker 8: if Rob so that guy or what.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Like I mentioned, Olsen was hunting with a buddy of
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: his named Robert Roadway. About a week after Miller and
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: McIntyre spoke to Olson, McIntyre caught up with Roadway at
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the Battle Creek Police Department, which is about fifty miles
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: south of Lansing.
• 44:43
  Speaker 11: Tom and I waited till they got dark out there.
• 44:45
  Speaker 11: Tom came back. He was trying to I don't know
• 44:47
  Speaker 11: if he's trying to call me or text me, but
• 44:49
  Speaker 11: I waited where it was. He came to me, and
• 44:51
  Speaker 11: then we were walking out towards where we're going to
• 44:54
  Speaker 11: leave the woods.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: The pair were interviewed almost three years after they went
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: hunting at Rose Lake, but they tell remarkably similar stories.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Rob said he saw a dough but it was too
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: dark to shoot and it soon ran away. Tom took
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: the lead trying to get back to their cars, but
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: both he and Rob claimed they got turned around and
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: it took them a while to find the road.
• 45:14
  Speaker 8: That's like I said in the statement when we heard
• 45:16
  Speaker 8: a shot and it sounded like to the north of
• 45:18
  Speaker 8: where we work as we were tracking back south.
• 45:20
  Speaker 9: But you know, we didn't think anything of it.
• 45:22
  Speaker 8: Somebody in their backyard or you know, it was just
• 45:24
  Speaker 8: weird because we were already thinking about these shooting hours, like, oh,
• 45:27
  Speaker 8: that was weird.
• 45:28
  Speaker 9: And then that was it.
• 45:29
  Speaker 11: That's all we thought that night when we were walking
• 45:31
  Speaker 11: out we heard a gunshot. We looked at each other
• 45:32
  Speaker 11: and both said, damn, somebody's poaching.
• 45:34
  Speaker 10: Is there any other reason why I stuck with you?
• 45:36
  Speaker 10: Was had you thought somebody was poaching?
• 45:37
  Speaker 12: Or no?
• 45:38
  Speaker 11: Just cause well, yeah, because we come back and back staying.
• 45:40
  Speaker 11: Somebody's dead. Yeah, you know, Tom, and I look at you.
• 45:42
  Speaker 11: Any damn somebody's poaching. Guess what twenty four hours later,
• 45:45
  Speaker 11: wasn't it could have not been a poacher.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: They had parked in a lot off Clark Road and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: then walked north into a section of the wildlife area,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: but because they got lost in the woods, they came
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: out farther west than they intended, so they had to
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: walk back down the road to get to the parking lot,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: where they saw they weren't the only ones with a
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: car still in the lot.
• 46:05
  Speaker 11: We saw the car and we said, damn, that guy's
• 46:07
  Speaker 11: lost more than us. We saw the silver cameray.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: That silver Camra was Chung's car, and Olson and Broadways
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: say they both noted it before getting into their own
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: cars and leaving. They came back the next morning, Saturday,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: and Rob says he arrived before Tom.
• 46:23
  Speaker 11: And I saw police officers around the road, and I'm like,
• 46:26
  Speaker 11: what a bunch of dicks. Sorry, because you're trying to
• 46:29
  Speaker 11: give us speeding tickets. It's like Opening weekend. You're giving
• 46:32
  Speaker 11: up speeding tickets.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Right. Rob called Tom to tell him about all the
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: commotion and that he'd spoken to a police officer. When
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Olsen got out of his car, he says he spoke
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: to the same man.
• 46:42
  Speaker 8: I gave him my phone number and address and everything.
• 46:45
  Speaker 8: Basically the recounting of the night before.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: The problem was there wasn't any evidence that either Rob
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: or Tom had spoken to anyone that morning.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: Here's Detective Miller.
• 46:56
  Speaker 13: Rob made it clear that it was a Bad Township
• 46:58
  Speaker 13: police officer.
• 46:59
  Speaker 14: Specifically, I gotta tell you, Tom, it's not true he
• 47:03
  Speaker 14: had talked to.
• 47:03
  Speaker 13: A police officer.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: The Bath Township Police Department isn't a large one, so
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: it wasn't difficult for Detective Miller to track down the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: officers who were there that day, and none of them
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: recalled speaking with either Rob or Tom. What's more, neither
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: man could recall the officer's name or provide a definite description.
• 47:21
  Speaker 13: Remember what he looked like.
• 47:23
  Speaker 9: I think he was taller, I mean, like I said, taller,
• 47:25
  Speaker 9: wet guy. But I'm not.
• 47:27
  Speaker 8: I can't give you the exactly I mean, it was
• 47:29
  Speaker 8: so quick, it was like a five minute thing, and
• 47:31
  Speaker 8: then I went out to be Rob.
• 47:32
  Speaker 14: So all that had information is recorded, though, Like there's
• 47:35
  Speaker 14: no way it could have happened with without it being recorded,
• 47:38
  Speaker 14: and it wasn't recorded, Like that's just something that it
• 47:41
  Speaker 14: didn't happen.
• 47:41
  Speaker 13: Tom, I spoke, I'm not.
• 47:45
  Speaker 10: I mean, I'm not. I don't want to lie.
• 47:47
  Speaker 9: Nothing to lie about had nothing to do with it.
• 47:49
  Speaker 14: I know, I know you had said before that you
• 47:51
  Speaker 14: had talked to I can't remember if you said a
• 47:54
  Speaker 14: police officer, but Rob said specifically a Bath Township police officer,
• 47:58
  Speaker 14: a white man, and they can of a vague description
• 48:01
  Speaker 14: that could be any one of us us. The fact
• 48:03
  Speaker 14: matter is there was only two guys out there, and
• 48:05
  Speaker 14: it wasn't them like it doesn't make sense, and that's
• 48:09
  Speaker 14: we're just never going to be able to get over that.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: This point is important beyond the fact that it might
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: indicate a willingness to lie to a police officer. Both
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Rob and Tom admitted that they were aware of Chung's murder.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: So why didn't they come forward to tell investigators what
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: they knew? Is it because they were trying to hide
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: their presence in the woods that night, or was there
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: a more innocent explanation Their story about talking to a
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: police officer wasn't the only indication that they might be
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: trying to hide something. When Tom had driven to Rose
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Lake that afternoon, he took a direct route, exiting Highway
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: sixty nine at the Bath exit and then taking Clark
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Road east to the wildlife area, but Tom's phone indicated
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: that he'd take it a much more circuitous route on
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: his drive home. Here's Special Agent McIntyre walking him through it.
• 48:57
  Speaker 15: But then all the way back that night, he took
• 49:00
  Speaker 15: a lot of off roads and cut through a lot of neighborhoods.
• 49:02
  Speaker 9: No, I mean, not that I remember.
• 49:04
  Speaker 15: Because I mean, this is definitely not one of those
• 49:06
  Speaker 15: direct paths, you know, because this is.
• 49:08
  Speaker 10: The lake area right here, and so oh, I see.
• 49:13
  Speaker 15: You know, when I zoom in and kind of like
• 49:16
  Speaker 15: follow the ant trail, there's a lot of you know,
• 49:17
  Speaker 15: smaller roads taken and cutting through a lot of neighborhoods.
• 49:20
  Speaker 10: So I was just curious why you took that sort
• 49:22
  Speaker 10: of route to get home.
• 49:23
  Speaker 8: And I don't even remember doing that the best of
• 49:27
  Speaker 8: my knowledgy, I just went right home.
• 49:29
  Speaker 15: If you weren't, by any chance, like you know, worried
• 49:31
  Speaker 15: about somebody seen you in that area or law enforcement
• 49:34
  Speaker 15: or anything, no.
• 49:35
  Speaker 9: Definitely not.
• 49:36
  Speaker 8: And we didn't know anything. We're just so I was
• 49:38
  Speaker 8: just gonna go home, or I didn't go home, I'm assuming.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: The next morning, November seventeenth, Tom's phone indicated that he
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: drove the more direct route he'd taken the previous afternoon
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: after hunting. That morning, he took the same direct route home.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Tom wasn't able to offer an explanation for his driving
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: decisions the night of Chum's murder, so Miller and McIntyre
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: moved dawn to other relevant topics.
• 50:02
  Speaker 13: What kind of boots were you were?
• 50:03
  Speaker 9: It was just like I said, part of that it
• 50:06
  Speaker 9: was a brown waiter.
• 50:07
  Speaker 13: Then have you held onto those hunt clothes.
• 50:10
  Speaker 9: No, probably not, since I moved. Probably not.
• 50:13
  Speaker 8: I may have maybe gave it and given them to somebody,
• 50:15
  Speaker 8: but I kind of just got rid of everything when
• 50:17
  Speaker 8: I moved.
• 50:18
  Speaker 9: I can't take a whole lot.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Tom had taken a photo of himself the day of
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: that first hunt, and he appeared to be wearing brown
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: waiters with boots attached, not the swamp tracker boots investigators
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: were looking for. Both Tom and Rob admitted to carrying
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: shotguns that day, but neither could remember what kind of
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: ammunition they used.
• 50:37
  Speaker 11: I don't know for sure what I used.
• 50:40
  Speaker 13: I didn't use buckshot.
• 50:41
  Speaker 11: It would have probably been a slug, which is the
• 50:43
  Speaker 11: ball at the end of the cartridge. I started to
• 50:46
  Speaker 11: get in sabot rounds for more like a rifle round.
• 50:50
  Speaker 13: Did you buy your own animal?
• 50:52
  Speaker 9: I believe I bought my own.
• 50:55
  Speaker 13: Do you remember what kind of.
• 50:58
  Speaker 8: I think I bought a couple different guinds. I think
• 51:01
  Speaker 8: one was a slug type and another one was like
• 51:04
  Speaker 8: a bug shot. Well, like I said, I don't remember
• 51:07
  Speaker 8: the one for aug I'm leaning towards the slug.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Just as an aside here, this is a great example
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: of why investigators don't release crime scene information to the public.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: If Rob and Tom had known the forensic pathologists had
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: found two pieces of copper jacket and Chung's wound, they
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: would have known to say they used buckshot or an
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: all lead slug. Instead, Rob mentioned SABO slugs and Tom
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: calls what he used a slug type. This assumes they're
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: guilty and wanted to deceive investigators, which might not be true,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: but it's still interesting how they described their ammunition given
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: what investigators knew at the time. Tom's interview wound its
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: way around many of these same topics, with Miller and
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: McIntyre repeating some questions over the three hour interview to
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: see if Tom would give the same response. Tom denied
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: knowing anything about Chung's gun, backpack, and knife and didn't
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: think Rob knew anything either.
• 52:02
  Speaker 15: Do you think there's any chance that Rob did something
• 52:05
  Speaker 15: out there that like maybe you weren't aware of or.
• 52:09
  Speaker 9: Rob, there's no way, it's just not Yeah, it's just
• 52:13
  Speaker 9: not him at all.
• 52:13
  Speaker 14: Evin, in the realm of that, I understand you're saying
• 52:18
  Speaker 14: that it's not him, and I mean it wouldn't be
• 52:22
  Speaker 14: any of us. But I think what happened is an accident.
• 52:26
  Speaker 13: Which can happen. To believe me, I know very well.
• 52:29
  Speaker 13: You know, accidents happen and people make mistakes. I've done
• 52:32
  Speaker 13: it too many times.
• 52:34
  Speaker 8: I get it, I understand. But no, I mean there's
• 52:37
  Speaker 8: just no I cannot see Rob. You know, like you said,
• 52:41
  Speaker 8: you're not yourself if you do something like that. But
• 52:43
  Speaker 8: you know, the only shot that we heard that day
• 52:46
  Speaker 8: was when we were back and packing up.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: The pair had hunted in separate locations, so they couldn't
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: have known for sure what their hunting partner was doing.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: But when the same question was posed to Rob, he
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: was even more adamant that his friend had nothing to
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: do with Chung's death.
• 53:01
  Speaker 15: Is there any possible way when y'all separated that he
• 53:04
  Speaker 15: could have got into an accident like this?
• 53:07
  Speaker 11: That is like such a that's not even appropriate question
• 53:11
  Speaker 11: to ask, because I mean, I mean, I'm not trying
• 53:14
  Speaker 11: to sound like an idiot or an asshole. Sorry, just where,
• 53:18
  Speaker 11: but like I could say that, Okay, is it possible
• 53:20
  Speaker 11: the neighbor came out of their house and did it,
• 53:21
  Speaker 11: or is it possible that somebody sat there in cancer
• 53:24
  Speaker 11: for two weeks? I strongly believe from the bottom of
• 53:27
  Speaker 11: my heart. No, Like I'm comming accidentally shoot somebody.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Another thing investigators wanted to know was whether Tom or
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Rob held any kind of racial animus.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: Towards among people.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: None of their public social media posts indicated a bias,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: but Miller wanted to make sure you ever heard Rob.
• 53:45
  Speaker 13: Make any kind of racist statements?
• 53:49
  Speaker 14: Not want me, No, No, I don't know if you've
• 53:53
  Speaker 14: kept how much, how much you've kept up with it,
• 53:55
  Speaker 14: what you know about this.
• 53:56
  Speaker 13: But this guy was among and a lot of people.
• 54:01
  Speaker 14: I think kind of hence FBI being involved to think
• 54:04
  Speaker 14: this was a hay crime, Okay, And I'm just wondering
• 54:07
  Speaker 14: if there was something there if I don't know enough.
• 54:10
  Speaker 13: About Rob to say whether or not.
• 54:11
  Speaker 14: And that's why I ask you, But could there be
• 54:14
  Speaker 14: bad blood for one reason on another from him?
• 54:17
  Speaker 12: No?
• 54:17
  Speaker 9: Rob's a friendly guy, okay, I can't.
• 54:19
  Speaker 12: I mean.
• 54:21
  Speaker 8: Not race is not going to go out of his
• 54:23
  Speaker 8: way to do anything. Yeah, even to the lesser cent.
• 54:27
  Speaker 8: You don't even say anything.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: So both Tom and Rob claim to be using different
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: phones from the ones they had in twenty eighteen. Tom
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: said he still had his old phone and was willing
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: to surrender it, but he claimed it no longer held
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: a charge and was still in Costa Rica. When asked
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: if he had any text message history with Rob on
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: his current phone, he denied it.
• 54:46
  Speaker 8: No, it's on the other phone, which is like, you
• 54:49
  Speaker 8: can't even turn it on, but that's in the ghost.
• 54:52
  Speaker 9: But no, I don't have any texting history with him.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: But Detective Miller refused to be put off.
• 54:58
  Speaker 13: I just I have this feeling Tom something else here. Look,
• 55:01
  Speaker 13: I'm totally and I appreciate it. I just I just
• 55:05
  Speaker 13: keep getting this feeling.
• 55:05
  Speaker 14: You know, I've taken hundreds of hours of courses to
• 55:09
  Speaker 14: interviews and detecting deception and help people act when they're
• 55:13
  Speaker 14: when they're not being truthful the words they choose, And
• 55:17
  Speaker 14: I'm seeing that in you.
• 55:19
  Speaker 13: Man, I have.
• 55:20
  Speaker 9: Nothing at all to hide. I'm trying. I've told you
• 55:23
  Speaker 9: everything that I know.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: At this point, they'd been talking with Tom for almost
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: two hours. It was getting later in the evening, and
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Miller figured he'd try one more thing while they had
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Tom in the room.
• 55:34
  Speaker 14: Can I look in that phone just to verify that
• 55:37
  Speaker 14: there are no messages between you and Rob?
• 55:39
  Speaker 8: Well, you know, there may be WhatsApp messages between us.
• 55:43
  Speaker 8: I don't know if I have him on what's that
• 55:45
  Speaker 8: on me particular, but you're asking from that time those
• 55:47
  Speaker 8: text messages will be.
• 55:49
  Speaker 14: And yeah, just so look, we came all the way here,
• 55:54
  Speaker 14: we gotta I was only able to obtain the audio
• 55:58
  Speaker 14: recording of this interview, so I can't tell you anything
• 56:01
  Speaker 14: about the body language of the three men in the room,
• 56:03
  Speaker 14: but Detective Miller noted in his report that Tom's hand
• 56:07
  Speaker 14: was visibly shaking as he handed over the phone.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller went silent for several minutes while Tom and
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Agent McIntyre continued discussing various aspects of the case.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: But then, dude, it's Sully.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller doesn't answer, and the next twenty seconds are
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: filled with what you might call a pregnant pause. You
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: can honestly feel the tension coming through the microphone. Agent
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: McIntyre continues the interview as Miller scrolls through Tom's phone
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: for another eight minutes, until dude.
• 56:39
  Speaker 13: The racist stuff is concerning the.
• 56:44
  Speaker 14: Racist stuff, Yeah, Hal Hitler and the Jews, And I.
• 56:50
  Speaker 9: Mean it's just a kind of a dark sense of humor.
• 56:54
  Speaker 13: Man, you think that's what at all?
• 56:57
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, if you know rot those jokes are common,
• 57:02
  Speaker 8: but none of it's like I don't even know what's
• 57:04
  Speaker 8: in there.
• 57:05
  Speaker 10: But it's common for him to have said dark kind
• 57:07
  Speaker 10: of racist jokes.
• 57:08
  Speaker 8: Well just yeah, I mean jokes that are gonna get
• 57:11
  Speaker 8: out there on the edge a little bit.
• 57:12
  Speaker 15: So well, I guess what specific mess it is like
• 57:15
  Speaker 15: in a course of the racist jokes, you know that
• 57:17
  Speaker 15: he makes us that's you know, obviously everybody does jokes
• 57:20
  Speaker 15: and whatever else.
• 57:21
  Speaker 8: But yeah, well what you said earlier is Rob a
• 57:24
  Speaker 8: racist makes those jokes. But I don't believe that he
• 57:29
  Speaker 8: honestly thinks any of that. I mean, he does it
• 57:31
  Speaker 8: for a reaction.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: It was a tough pill to swallow. Olsen had sent
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: a text that read, quote efing Jews up the ticket prices,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: so I bought one. Another text said efing and then
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: racial slur for Chinese people, while another said Hyle Hitler.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: In another text, Olsen complained about there being quote too
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: many minorities here not enough.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: Whites makes me sick.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Rob's side of the conversation was equally racist, but a
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: legal perspective, talking about putting Jews in ghettos was the
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: least of their problems. The pair had talked not just
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: about minorities in general, but about Chung Yang in particular,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: So what.
• 58:12
  Speaker 14: Do you mean what does it mean by I'm hoping
• 58:15
  Speaker 14: civilization collapses and we got basic hunter gatherers right to
• 58:21
  Speaker 14: bath to hunt more people.
• 58:23
  Speaker 8: Who said robson then, like I said, I mean, it's
• 58:27
  Speaker 8: a sense of humor thing China, your reaction boys mean.
• 58:32
  Speaker 15: By to hunt more people though, especially and even specifically
• 58:35
  Speaker 15: a saying Bath.
• 58:37
  Speaker 9: I mean playing on on this as a joke.
• 58:40
  Speaker 10: And you didn't feel that that was relevant to you.
• 58:44
  Speaker 14: I mean it's there's another one where you guys are
• 58:46
  Speaker 14: parked at a D N R range there a lot
• 58:48
  Speaker 14: and it says.
• 58:50
  Speaker 13: Going back to the crime scene.
• 58:52
  Speaker 9: Like I said, it's a joke.
• 58:56
  Speaker 13: This isn't a fucking joke.
• 58:58
  Speaker 9: I understand.
• 58:59
  Speaker 13: You gotta kidding me with.
• 59:00
  Speaker 8: This shit, I understand, But these are just jokes. I mean,
• 59:03
  Speaker 8: this is dark humor.
• 59:06
  Speaker 14: I hope you're one hundred percent sure by that, because
• 59:09
  Speaker 14: you know what it looks like a hate crime now, man.
• 59:12
  Speaker 9: There's no they have no reason to do that, absolutely not.
• 59:16
  Speaker 9: Look he's making jokes, that's all it is.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: It's worth pointing out here that just a few minutes
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: before Tom had said there weren't any text messages on
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: the phone between him and Rob. He backtracked later and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: said there might be what that messages, but he wasn't
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: even sure about that.
• 59:32
  Speaker 14: So everybody knows that Rob just makes racist jokes about
• 59:36
  Speaker 14: murdering people.
• 59:37
  Speaker 10: Rob's gonna take anything and make.
• 59:39
  Speaker 14: A joke reward for him, No way, LMAO. Haven't caught
• 59:44
  Speaker 14: yet us. One suspect has fled the country.
• 59:49
  Speaker 13: It's a joke?
• 59:50
  Speaker 12: Is there?
• 59:50
  Speaker 13: All jokes once in a while as a joke. This
• 59:53
  Speaker 13: is a freaking joke, man.
• 59:55
  Speaker 9: I'm just That's what I'm saying. I mean, these are
• 59:57
  Speaker 9: all jokes. You're lying. I'm not lying about anything.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 10: I don't know what you mean, Tom, who shot this guy?
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 9: Look, I don't know. I'm telling you the truth. Everything
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 9: that's said in there is just in ingest as a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 9: dark joke. I do not know any that other than
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 9: what I've already told you.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 13: Was it you? Was it?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: Rob?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 13: Is that something we we just?
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 8: I mean, I know it wasn't me for sure, and
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 8: I'm almost one hundred.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 9: Percent positive that how could it have been robbed?
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 14: I mean, this is we should choot cups over here
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 14: as a protest and then put Jews and ghettos goddamn jews.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 14: I mean, we killed that guy. You don't see us
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 14: crying about it. The joke, Tom, this isn't a joke,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 14: this is this is over man.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 13: I'm sorry. You need to see the fucking light here.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 10: Look it's it's These are all jokes.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 16: I mean, this is just the sense of h So
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 16: you were the only two out there in the woods
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 16: when this guy was killed, and then you talk about
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 16: it constantly and how you murdered him, and it's just
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 16: that's the joke.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 9: It's all jokes.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 12: Yes.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: When Rob was asked about these text messages about a
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: week later, he said pretty much the same thing.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 13: It's a complete joke.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 11: I know that you guys look at that and say, oh,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 11: we're gonna go chase this league as these guys did
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 11: as our sick human.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I understand the past mesage you.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 11: Guys have seen, if you've got from his film between
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 11: him and us do not look good.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: But there's nothing behind it.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 13: Okay, So that usier than just.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 11: Two close friends being idiots.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: In some of these texts, Tom and Rob joke about
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller's investigation. You can see why they'd be talking
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: about being investigated for murder. But Agent McIntyre points out
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: that they were talking about Chung long before they came
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: under any kind of legal scrutiny. In one text from
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: September of twenty twenty, they shared an image of one
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: of the reward posters Maivu had made. In another text
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: from April of that year, Tom sent Rob a picture
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: of the pair of them and hunting gear standing in
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: a DNR parking lot. The text under the photo said,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: a couple of cold blooded killers revisiting the crime scene.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 11: We have different humor than other people. It is a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 11: not tasteful joke. It's not taste well, I understand it
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 11: just got released to the public. These guys are complete
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 11: asshole as I understand it.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: But we are close friends.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 11: If there's any questioning about the tax messages, that's a
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 11: blankest nayment for it. We can go into each taxt
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 11: message and say, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff you
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 11: guys can say, I know what we've texted each other.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 11: People could look at it like all of these guys
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 11: freaking it.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 12: We're joking.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 9: We were joking, that's it.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller was clearly not buying Rob's excuse. He had
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: the pair near the crime scene on the night of
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the murder, they appeared to be lying about speaking to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: a police officer. Tom had taken a suspiciously meandering route
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: back home, and now they'd been caught either joking about
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: murdering Chong or actually confessing to the crime. It would
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: only take two more pieces of evidence, one nearly overlooked
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: item from the crime scene and one digital trail that
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: couldn't be laughed away to finally push this investigation out
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: of the shadows.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: And into a courtroom.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: That's next after the break, Part five the trial. Things
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: didn't look good for Rob Broadway and Tom Olsen, but
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: it was about to get even worse, especially for Tom.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: Remember that bottle of scent killer detectives had collected about
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: three hundred yards from the crime scene, the one they
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: found by following the same kind of bootprints discovered around
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Chung's body. They compared the DNA on that bottle to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Tom's and it.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: Was a match.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: This didn't prove definitively that Tom had been to the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: crime scene, but it did provide yet another piece of
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: evidence linking Tom to the murder.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 13: What did you drop in the woods at a water bottle?
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 8: And I think I don't know if it fell out
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 8: or not, but I had deer spray in the bag.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 13: Where do you think that fell out at them? I
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 13: don't know.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 9: Back there somewhere.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 14: There was only two sets of footprints there, okay, and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 14: one of them didn't return.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 9: I don't always tell me. I've told you.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 13: Come on, mabe, I neck the bats.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 9: There's nothing more that I can say. I mean, I've
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 9: told you everything than that.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Detective Miller hadn't confiscated either man's phone by the time
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: of this interview, but after some haggling, Tom agreed to
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: surrender his phone. That day, Rob also had his phone confiscated,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: and what they found provided the final piece of evidence
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: they needed before going to trial. Rob's Google account search
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: history only went back to twenty twenty one, so that
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: wasn't much use to investigators, but Tom's history went back
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: to the days surrounding Chong's murder, and, much like the
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: text message, it told a concerning story. Remember, Chang was
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: murdered on November sixteenth, which was a Friday. The local
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: news didn't start reporting that a hunter had been killed
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: at Rose Lake until November eighteenth, but on November seventeenth,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Tom searched for bath Township Police Twitter four times, Clinton
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff twice, and the term missing hunter twice. The
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: next day, he searched bath Township Police Twitter another four times,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: the term hunter killed once, and he read five different
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: articles about Chong's death, all on.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: The same day.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: He continued this pattern of search history over the next week,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: but he also looked up roth IRA, early withdrawal penalty
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: and deferred comp withdrawal, along with queries like United States
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: and Costa Rica extradition treaty and US lawsuit living in
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Costa Rica. On March nineteenth, twenty twenty, Tom searched how
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: to delete WhatsApp group messages and if I delete a
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: message from WhatsApp group chat, will they get deleted? On
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: July second, twenty twenty, he searched discarding Sabo and Sabo round.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: All these searches were conducted prior to him knowing about
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: being under investigation for Chong's murder. Now, you might argue
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: that those searches just proved that Tom was interested in
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: a local crime story. Tom said he'd seen police cars
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: at Rose Lake the morning after their first hunt, and
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: he'd even spoken to an officer. If his story is true,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: it makes sense that he'd search for bath Township's Twitter
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: feed to find out what had happened. But as Detective
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Miller said about the text messages, one or two searches
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: make sense. Tom and Rob seemed to be obsessed with
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: this case, and that, combined with the other evidence, convinced
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: prosecutors with the Michigan Attorney General's Office to move forward
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: with charges. On December twenty second, twenty twenty two, the
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: Michigan AG's Office announced that Tom and Rob had both
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: been arrested one count of felony murder and one count
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: of felony firearm.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: I asked my.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Vou what it was like after four years of waiting
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: to see someone arrested for the murder of her father, all.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: The years that we've been trying to find answers to
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: my dad. You know, everybody always asks me, like, if
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: you've ever seen these two individuals, what would you say
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: to them? And I always say, like, I don't know
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: what I will say. I just want to look them
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: in the eyes and see they're human, you know what
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: I mean? Like, how could you leave an elderly sixty
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: year eight year old man shot in the back of
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: the head, lying in the cold snow and just let
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: him die. I just wanted to see if they were human,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: you know, So to see that they both were very human,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: it just made it a lot harder, I guess. And
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: just to know like they were not that much older
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: than I am. We're like in the same age group.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: It just kind of like it was really hard to
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: believe like that this is happening, but.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: It was happening.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: And as my vow explained, it was like closing one
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: child in a book and opening another. Detective Miller had
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: sent all the evidence he collected to the AG's office
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: and it was up to them to put it all
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: together in a way that would convince a jury. Based
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: on what you've heard so far, that might not sound
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: like a heavy lift.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: But nine months.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: After they'd arrested Rob Broadway, and one day before his
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: trial was set to begin, the AG's office made a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: shocking announcement.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 17: A man charged with the murder of a hunter in
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 17: bath Township five years ago is free tonight. The charges
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 17: against Robert Rodway and Clinton County were dropped this morning.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 17: Roadway's attorney tells News ten he was released from jail
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 17: this morning. The case was dismissed without prejudice, which means
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 17: those charges can be refiled in the future.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: This is one part of the case I'm still trying
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: to wrap my head around. I asked Joseph Yang about it,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: and he explained that the decision was largely due to
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: the fact that investigators were able to scrape more information
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: from Tom's phone than from Rob's.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: They do not have the text messages directly off of
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: Rodway's phone. It's just off of Olsen's phone, and so
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: that's where the judge created that barrier, because Olsen's phone
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: was here, you go, do what you want, look at
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: what you want. Rodway's phone was a search warrant and
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: they were not able to get that information off of
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: his phone, and so because of that, judge felt like
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: only Olsen can have one hundred percent, whereas if they
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: want to use those text messages for Roadway, they can,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: but only Rodway's words and not Olsen's words.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: You can see how important those text messages were for
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: the prosecution. While prosecutors acknowledged that some of the messages
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: could have been made in jest, Joseph takes them more seriously.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: To me, it was tantamount to a confession two cold
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: blood killers going back to the scene of the crime.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: We killed that guy. You don't see us crying like
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: to me, that's cant amount to a confession, And the
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: defense tried to blame it as kind of dark humor
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: and stuff. You know, dark humor is a one off comment,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: not a continuous conversation continuously going back to the scene
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: of the crime.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: It's a strong argument, but it's not bulletproof, as prosecutors
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: discovered during Tom Olsen's trial. The trial began with opening
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: arguments on Tuesday, February thirteenth, twenty twenty four, and ended
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: nine days later. Tom's father is an attorney, and so
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: he was able to hire a team of lawyers to
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: defend his son. On the other side of the case,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Michigan Assistant Attorney General Richard Cunningham argued for the people,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: Cunningham had a steep hill to climb. Most of the
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: evidence against Tom was circumstantial. They hadn't found Chung's gun, backpack,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: or knife. Tom's DNA wasn't found anywhere on Chung's body,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: and they'd never found boots in Tom's possession that matched
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: the prince at the crime scene. They had never found
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: the murder weapon or even identified the caliber or projectile.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: The texts and Google searches were damning, but if you
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: squint and tilt your head could be explained. One of
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: Tom's lawyers, a man named Michael Manly, argued that the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: evidence wasn't strong enough to dispel all reasonable doubt, which
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: is the standard for convicting someone of murder.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 18: There is zero evidence linking mister Olson to this crime.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 18: There is no eye witness, none that says mister Olson
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 18: did this. There is zero DNA that links mister Olson
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 18: to this crime.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: One of the most important pieces of evidence the defense
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: submitted was a photo Tom took the day of Chong's death.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: It showed the top of the boot he.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Was wearing, and an FBI analysis confirmed that they weren't
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: swamp tracker boots.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 18: You knew exactly what boat he was wearing on the sixteenth,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 18: So to say we didn't know what boot he was
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 18: wearing is mistaken. It's mistaken, it says eleven, sixteen, twenty eighteen.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 18: And in my opening I said that picture might have
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 18: saved his life. Given the arguments that are being made,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 18: that picture may have saved his life.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: Now this isn't exactly true either. The FBI determined that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: Tom wasn't wearing a swamp tracker boot, but they couldn't
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: positively identify an exact make and model of the boot
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: he was wearing. The Olsons claimed the frog tog waiters
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: that they had supposedly found in Tom's car several years
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: later were the same ones he was wearing that day.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: That could be true based on the photo, but the
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: fact is no one could prove one way or the
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: other what the tread on Tom's boot looked like on
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: the day of the murder. The prosecution also submitted evidence
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: to suggest the swamp tracker pattern had been copied and
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: ripped off by other companies, so even if Tom's boot
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: wasn't a field and stream, it could have used the
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: same tread pattern. What we do know is that the
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: Sen spray found in the woods was Tom Olsen's, and
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: there was only one set of prints leading to and
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: from that plastic bag. Either Tom dropped it there, which
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: would suggest he was also walking around Chung's body, or
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: the murderer picked it up somewhere else in the woods
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: and dropped it on the other side of the ledger.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: The prosecution called a witness who said he'd seen two
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: men walking along Clark Road on the night of the murder.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: They matched the description of Tom and Rob, and crucially,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: one of them was carrying two firearms and wearing sneakers.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: Remember Tom and Rob.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Both said that they'd had to walk back down Clark
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Road that night to get to their cars. Here's Agent
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: McIntyre asking Tom about that witness testimony.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 15: Tom, we've smote to somebody who said that they saw
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 15: two individuals at night walking on the side of the.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 10: Road and with three guns.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 9: I mean I had mine and Rob had his.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 8: He only had one four and I can recollect. Yeah,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 8: I mean I think it would be weird if he
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 8: had an.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 14: Extra night Do you remember what the victim's car was,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 14: but you don't remember if he had two guns? Oh,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 14: you don't remember if like the details't match up.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 8: Tom, Okay, let me, to the best of my alledge,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 8: drop ahead one gun and it would be weird to
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 8: me if he had an extra gun.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately for the prosecution, the defense was able to poke
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: some holes in that testimony. The witness who claimed to
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: have seen the two men had initially said he saw
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: them around nine pm, but Tom's phone showed him driving
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: home well before this. The witness later changed his statement
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: to say he was driving home about two hours after sunset,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: which would have been around the right time, but his
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: shifting timetables likely didn't play well with the jury and
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: gave Tom's defense a leg to stand on when they
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: said there were no witnesses to the crime. The defense
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: also spent a long time pointing out the lack of
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: ballistic evidence in this case.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 18: Zero ballistics in this case zero Now, we did it.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 18: First time the detective ever saw the ballistics was when
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 18: we showed it to him.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: What mainly is referencing here is a video that was
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: played during the trial that shows a ballistic dummy head
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: being shot with a twelve gage shotgun slug from about
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: fifty feet away.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 18: These are sophisticated ballistic dummy heads. He sought for the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 18: first time of what a twelve gage shotgun I thought of? Unfortunately,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 18: it reminded me of President Kennedy in the Zapruder film.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: The defense argued that if Tom had shot Chung, it
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: would have caused a much larger wound. They also used
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to bring up the fact that Jack Kuhn
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: had a forty five caliber muzzleloader at his home, which
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: the defense said would have caused a wound more consistent
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: with the one found in Chung's head. The problem was,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: as the forensic pathologist pointed out, this experiment relied on
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of assumptions. First, there's nothing to say the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: slug had been fired from fifty feet away. Chong was
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: shot in a wooded area, but there's a large open
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: space about one hundred yards to the west and clearings
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: to the south and east. Second, as doctor Wilson testified,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: and as most hunters know, it's incredibly difficult to predict
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: what a bullet will do once it makes contact with skin, muscle,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: and bone.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: The wound can.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: Change based on the elasticity of the skin, whether the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: bullet hits a bone, the structure of that bone, and
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: of course, how fast the bullet is traveling.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: Here's assistant A. G.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 19: Cunningham to have some indication of some off the wall
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 19: demonstration that scientifically unreliable would not be something to be
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 19: follow up on. How do we know it's scientifically not reliable,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 19: doctor Wilson, Jesus, there's no way in the world you
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 19: can tell what kind of caliber made that whole.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: The boots, the witness, and the ballistics were important parts
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: of the trial, but what everyone really wanted to hear
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: was how each side would handle the text messages.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 18: Text messages jokes, they weren't even funny, and when it
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 18: started to get serious, they're like, hey, we need to
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 18: tell the truth. Cooperate. Detective Miller read it and said, hey,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 18: don't worry, they're going to do ballistics.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 13: It'll clear us. We'll we're fine. And then they don't
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 13: do ballistics, and here we are.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: The defense acknowledged that Tom and Rob sent disgusting racist texts,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: but they claimed that the men were joking and as
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: you just heard manly reference. They also submitted other texts
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: between the pair that seemed to suggest their innocence. One
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: text from Tom to Rob said, quote, but after calling
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: my dad, we decided not to as it sounded like
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: they were doing ballistics anyway, which is what will clear
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: us regardless. Another read quote, I gave them everything since
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: we have nothing to hide anyway. In another, Rob tells
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: Tom that he's quote shocked that the investigation is real,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: and Tom responds, just be open with them. It's easy
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: to just be honest obviously for us, since we already.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: Told them the truth.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: At one point, Rob tells Tom that he's been contacted
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: by the police, and Tom says, quote, what the hell
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: that's weird. Rob responds, this is how people get wrongly convicted,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: to which Tom replies, they're probably following up from last year.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: My dad will bring the hammer down. Lol.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: All of those exchanges happened after both men knew they
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: were being investigated, So depending on how smart you think
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: they are, it's plausible they could be laying the groundwork
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: for exactly this defense. But if that's not the case,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: these messages do indeed point towards innocence. The prosecution mostly
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: just allowed Tom's words to speak for themselves. However, they
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: also use those texts and his defense of them as
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: a joke to construct a crucial part of this story.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: We still haven't mentioned motive. What exactly happened in those woods.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: If Tom did what the prosecution says he did, what
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: motivated him to pull the trigger? Here's ag Cunningham.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 19: I don't think there's an intent to kill. I don't
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 19: think there's an intent to do great Baley harm. I
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 19: think that the evidence shows and the reasonable influences coming
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 19: from the odens is that there was an intent to
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 19: create this high risk of death or great bardlet harm
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 19: because he's gonna be with his fat humor steer the
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 19: double all this little chinaman boone, that's what he's all about.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 19: I think he was more surprised than ever. Was it
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 19: an accident?
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 7: Of course it not.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 19: Wasn't an accident. If there was an accident, you would
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 19: have hurt a nine to eleven call, Hey, my gun
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 19: went off accidentally. We're not talking about an accident here.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 19: We're talking about intentionally firing in a certain direction, creating
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 19: a high risk of death or great barley harm.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: Notice the needle that Cunningham is trying to thread. They
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: could argue for a first degree murder since there was
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: no evidence that Tom had planned Chung's death, but the
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: theft of the gun indicated that it wasn't an innocent mistake,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: so Cunningham aimed instead for second degree murder, which someone
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: can be convicted of if they act with extreme indifference
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: for human life. The example that's often used is firing
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: a gun into a crowd of people without intending to
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: kill anyone in particular. That's the scenario. The prosecution put forward,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: and they used Tom's texts as evidence.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 19: Depraved indifference is a term we often use. I just
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 19: don't care. He's just a chime man. He's just a chink,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 19: as he called, I'll scare the double on. This is
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 19: gonna be great, great fun. Go and tell my frat boys, Hey,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 19: I scared the double out of this guy. He's out there.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 19: I can see him. He's wearing his head lamp, but
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 19: he's got this flashlight. He's pretty easy target, you know.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 19: I'm just shoot him on buff his head on the ranch.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 13: Law.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 19: Just wan what happen?
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Tom, the prosecution said, killed Chung for a laugh. He'd
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: been joking about the man's death for the last six years,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: and that joke started on November sixteenth, twenty eighteen. The
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: jury deliberated for a day and a half and came
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: back with a verdict on February twenty second of last year.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 20: All right, jury jur number five four person, did the
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 20: jury reaching verdict?
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 12: Yes, that we have.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: Is the verdict unanimous?
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 13: Yes it is.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: Please read the verdict.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 20: On count one, we find the defendant guilty a second
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 20: degree murder, and on count two we find the defendant
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 20: guilty of a possession of a firearm during the condition
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 20: of the foundment.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: All right, thank you for person.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 12: Is that your verdict?
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 10: Yes, it is?
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: You may be seated At a hearing.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: A few months later, Tom was sentenced to twenty two
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: and a half to sixty years in prison. He is
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: currently being held at the Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee, Michigan,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: and his earliest release date is October nineteenth, twenty forty seven.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 12: Was that your verdict?
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 9: Yes?
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 12: Juring number two? Was that your verdict?
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 5: Yep?
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: Juring number three?
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 12: Was that your verdict? Yes? Juring number four? Was that
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 12: your verdict?
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: Part six? What happens next? Olsen's family is hoping to
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: get him out of prison much earlier than that. They
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: maintain his innocence and they've launched a crowdfunding campaign to
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: help pay for his legal fees. They hired a new
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: team of lawyers, and earlier this year they submitted a
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: motion for a retrial. In the motion, Olsen's attorneys argue
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: that there wasn't enough evidence to convict their client, but
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: they also submit new evidence they say is exonerating. They
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: say they found the all led twelve gage slugs. Olsen
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: hunted with on the day of the murder. They submitted
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: a purchase receipt from a sporting good store, and Olson's
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: father signed an affidavit claiming that his son stored that
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: box of slugs at his house. He also says none
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: of the slugs had been used. If those are indeed
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: the slugs Olsen was using that day, the lack of
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: copper jacket would mean they probably weren't the projectiles that
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: killed Chong. Olson's attorney also submitted a purchase receipt from
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: Dunham's showing that Tom bought frog tog Waiters prior to.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: The day of the incident.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: The judge issued her decision just a few weeks ago,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: but she said there was ample evidence to convict Tom.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: She also didn't think the new evidence was convincing enough
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: to justify a retrial. Tom may have purchased those all
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: led slugs prior to the incident, but that doesn't mean
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: he used them on that day. She denied his motion
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: for a re trial, and his attorneys have already filed
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: their case in the Court of Appeals.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they already filed with the Court of Appeals. The
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: ag and the VICTI navigate. They're gonna keep us updaused
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: so again, like that's why I'm just like, I guess
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: it's not the words celebrated. I can't even like live
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: knowing like we still got this to go through, Like
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: I'm not done yet. We still have Court of Appeals
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: to go to, and every time you sit in the
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: same room as him is nerve wracking. And to be
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: around his family members is nerve racking too, just because
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: of the way some of them treated us in court
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: was like really not nice.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: I reached out to Sam Olsen, Tom's brother and the
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: one who organized his crowdfunding efforts, but he declined.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: To be interviewed for this episode.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: Tom's case isn't over, and technically Robs could restart at
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: any time.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 4: There's no statute of limitations in Michigan for murder. You know,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: if additional evidence comes out and they're able to charge again,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 4: they will. I've talked to the prosecutor about that, and
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: I've explained to the family about that, Like, no statue
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: of limitations. So if additional evidence comes out, did the
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: prosecutors feel like they can that's actionable on the they
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: will take action on it.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: I reached out to Rob for comment, but didn't receive
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: a response. I'm not sure rob still lives in the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: Lancing area, but my vou remains concerned for her family safety.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: You know, I did send a low alert to everybody's
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: like hey, be careful, like Rodbery's still out there hunting.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: You know, she husedn't be around a gun, and so
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: it does bother me. And when Robay was out, you know,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: because Rabbi was no longer going to trial, it always
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: worried me, like if him and Olsen was gonna still
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: contact each other. And you know that was also another
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: very like thing that scared me too, like well, he's
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: out here, and also it's in there, could they be
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: doing something to us.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: Despite her fears of the two men she believes killed
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: her father, Mavu told me she appreciates everyone in the
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: Lancing community for coming around her and her family and
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: supporting them through the most difficult thing any family can
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: go through.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: I would say, like in Lancing, you know, you don't
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: have everybody's really friendly with each other. You know, there's
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: plenty of times where white hunters will help my dad,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: And there were times when my dad helped white hunters
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: or any color hunters, like I think that's the problem
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: we had in Lancing was because the community is like
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: so loving that when this happened, it was kind of
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: like shocking that these guys are being really racist towards
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: my dad with their text messages, because all the years
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: that we were there, we really encounter any of that.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: For Yah, and Yeah, Chong's story hits extremely close to home.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 5: In this case. We're talking about around twenty and eighty
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 5: and that I've been I remember too. It's still kind
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 5: of like the same message right out, you know, like
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 5: through social media, you're among person if you're hunting whatever,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 5: stay out of the woods.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: Fortunately, that very understandable fear failed to keep either man
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: out of the woods very long. Yeah, I was planning
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: a deer hunt the evening we spoke, and Ye had
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: texted me a photo of a squirrel hunt a few
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: days after. Even though Chung's case highlight it's the potential
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: for violence and division, he has said he sees the
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: larger arc of the Monk's story in the US as
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: trending towards unity.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 5: What the Mongk people have gone through and what the
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 5: Monk people are looking for. It's not exclusively to among people.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 5: It's a human thing. Mom and Dad really showed me
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 5: that at a young age. All the hurt and all
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 5: the pain that our people have gone through, our family
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 5: have gone through, it just it's not us, it's everybody
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 5: goes through this. And if somehow we can use this
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 5: as the way to connect what we can use pain
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 5: and hurt and suffering to connect to others who are
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 5: hurt and suffering and they might not look like us,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 5: maybe we get to see them as the same as us.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 5: And so what I guess what I want to get
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 5: out of all this is saying, hey, look, there's a
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 5: lot of bias stuff from both sides. But I think
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 5: that fear begets fear, that begets more fear. And this
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 5: is one of the things I love about the outdoors
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 5: and hunting. It's not like, oh, this is a white
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 5: man thing or a Black man thing, or a Mexican
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 5: man thing. Like hunting outdoors, that's a human thing. There's
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 5: something in natan nature in us.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. If
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: you'd like to see images from this episode, including photos
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: of Chong, maps of the Roselake Wildlife Area, and screenshots
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: of Tom and Rob's text messages. Head over to the
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: meeater dot com slash blood Trails. Big thanks to Mavu Yang,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Joseph yang Ya Yang Yavang, and Christy Colby, who is
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: a saint among office managers over at the bath Township
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Police Department. I am sorry to say that this is
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: our final episode in season one. I can't thank you
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: enough for all the kind emails and messages. It's an
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: honor to bring you these stories, and I don't do
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: it alone. Jake Birch is the genius behind the sound design,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: Nick Glenn is the Spielberg behind the video version of
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: the podcast, and Riva Hansen is the wizard who orchestrated
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: the rollout of Blood Trails and just generally brings order
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: to the chaos. Another big thanks to Currn Schneider for
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: green lighting Blood Trails and supporting it from the very beginning,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: and to Steve Ranella for his advice and direction throughout.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: If like me, you're disappointed that season one is ending,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: I do have some good news, thanks in part to
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: all the incredible tips you sent in too blood Trails.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: At the meaeater dot com.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to say that season two is already in
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: the works. We'll release more episodes next spring, and I
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: can't wait to bring them to you. We'll also release
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: standalone episodes if there are any updates on any of
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: the cases we covered this season, if Detective pointing here's
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: back about the John Wayne Gacy DNA test, if Sheriff
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: Larsen makes an arrest for the murder of Terry Brisk,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: or if law enforcement finds more victims of Paul Hutchinson.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: Will be sure to let you know To make sure.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: You're notified as soon as a new episode drops. Remember
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: to follow Blood Trails on iHeart Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: Get your pop casts.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: See you next time. Stay safe out there,