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Wife’s Secret ‘Slave Contract’ Exposes Husband’s Horrific Murder · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually a medical diagnosis is incredibly precise. It's
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: almost like engineering in a way. Right, yeah. Like you
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: break your arm, the x-ray shows that jagged white line,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and the doctor just points and says, you know, there
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's objective reality. I mean, it is captured on film,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: it's binary, and it's undeniable.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, broken or not broken, it's clean. But when you
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: step into the world of forensic psychology or, you know,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: into the shadows of domestic trauma and staged crime scenes,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: That x-ray machine actively lies to you.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. It's a completely different landscape.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Right. You are trying to find a fracture in a relationship,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: like a splinter in someone's mind. But the physical evidence
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: has been, well, deliberately manipulated to tell a false story.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a total fabrication.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And that is the deception we are wading into
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: today in this deep dive. We're looking at the really
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: chilling true crime case of Jeremy and Julene Simcoe.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: In this case... It really is the ultimate collision of
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: human behavior and physical forensics.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Because when a person's story fundamentally contradicts the physical reality
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: of a room, you know, you have to dissect the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: scene on a microscopic level to figure out which one
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: is actually telling the truth.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And to really understand how shocking this specific fracture was,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: we have to talk about where it happened for you
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: to get the full picture. So picture Vermilion, Ohio in
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: November 2009. Right. This isn't some bustling metropolis, you know,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: with a high crime rate. This is a rural idol
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: right on the shores of Lake Erie.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gorgeous out there.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: It's the kind of place where people move specifically to
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: buy a few acres, get away from the noise, and
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: just breathe.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: And the statistics for Vermilion at that time, I mean,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: they are staggering in their tranquility.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: We are talking about an annual violent crime rate of 0.19
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: per 1,000 residents.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Wait, 0.19?
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Precisely, 0.19. To put that in perspective for you, the
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: national average at the time was roughly 4 per 1,000. Wow.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: So statistically, your chance of being a victim of a
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: violent crime in Vermilion was like 1 in 5,352.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: That is wild. So you are literally more likely to
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: get struck by lightning over your lifetime than to be
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: murdered by a stranger in your home in this town. Exactly.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Which is exactly why the events of November 18,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: 2009 just completely shattered this community.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It completely defied the baseline reality of their environment.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: And that central contradiction is really what we are wrestling
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: with today. Because in this incredibly safe, sleepy lakeside town,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: you have this couple, Jeremy and Julian Simcoe. who are
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: absolutely obsessed with security. Right.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: They had a whole setup.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They run a tree service business. They have alarms.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: They have cameras. And get this, five guard dogs.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Five of them.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And yet on this random November morning, they supposedly experience
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a horrific fatal home invasion. But the physical evidence, the blood,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: the ballistics, the DNA, it just doesn't point to an intruder.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't. Not at all.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: It points to something much, much darker.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: It points to a meticulously constructed fiction.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So let's start right where the police started. It
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: is just after 6 a.m. on November 18th. The 911
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: dispatch center receives a panicked call from 31-year-old Julene Simcoe.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: She tells the operator that someone has shot her 36-year-old husband, Jeremy,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: while they were in their bed.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: And when first responders arrive at the property, I mean,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: they walk into a genuinely gruesome reality.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's bad.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Jeremy hasn't just been shot. He's been executed. He sustained
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: a point-blank gunshot wound. directly to the back of the head.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: God, that's brutal. But the bedroom is just one part
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: of the story, right? As investigators start clearing the rest
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: of the house, looking for this supposed intruder, they find
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: a scene that almost defies belief.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I want you to try to picture this layout. On
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the kitchen floor, sitting right out in the open, is a.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: 357 Magnum revolver.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Just lying there.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Just lying there. And just a few feet away, a
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: kitchen chair is knocked over. Next to that chair is
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a purse. Right. Then, if you go outside into the yard...
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: There's a discarded pair of black gloves sitting in the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: dirt along with some unidentified footprints. And those five guard
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: dogs we mentioned.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: They are all chained up outside.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: It is an absolute smorgasbord of evidence.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Honestly, it sounds like a badly directed stage play. Yes.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Or like a Hollywood set designer's idea of what a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: burglary is supposed to look like. It's like someone panicked
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and thought, quick, make this look like a robbery. Knock
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: over a chair, drop a weapon, throw a purse on
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the floor.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: There are just so many props that scream robbery, but
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: they just don't make logical sense in the space.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: You're picking up on the exact thing that immediately bothered
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: the detectives.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? Yeah.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: What you're describing is the concept of staging. Okay.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Staging. Right.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: In criminology, staging occurs when someone purposely alters a crime
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: scene prior to the arrival of police to, you know,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: direct the investigation away from the most logical suspect.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Right. Creating a distraction. Exactly.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If you look at FBI data on actual home invasions,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: a burglar's primary motive is speed and exit.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Get in, get out. Yes.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: They are there for valuables, and they want to leave
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: before they are caught. They do not linger to knock
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: over chairs for dramatic effect.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: And that purse on the floor is a perfect example
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of that. It looks rifled through. But when investigators actually
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: looked inside, it was still completely full of cash. Right.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: So you have to ask yourself, what burglar breaks into
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: a heavily secured home commits a capital murder, takes the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: time to knock over a purse, but leaves the cash
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: sitting right there.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: It makes zero sense.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: It contradicts the fundamental motive of a burglary.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Not to mention the security system. Like we said, the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Simcoes had a fully functional, highly sophisticated security system.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Fully functional, yet entirely untouched.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: It hadn't been tripped. It hadn't been disabled or tampered
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: with in any way, shape, or form. Furthermore, when the
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: police conducted their initial sweep of the perimeter... They found
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: absolutely zero signs of forced entry.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: None.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: No broken windows, no jimmy marks on the door frames,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: no shattered locks, nothing.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So we're supposed to believe a phantom intruder bypassed a
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: driveway alarm, bypassed the security system, and walked right through
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a door without leaving a single scratch on the property.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: And did so without triggering the five guard dogs.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't add up. And because this initial scene
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: was so baffling, so cluttered with these contradictory props... The
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: investigation essentially just hit a wall. The police did their
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: due diligence, of course. They chased down theories. You know,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: there was a strange person seen walking around the neighborhood
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: days earlier. They looked at a neighbor who had a
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: spare key.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Standard protocol.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. They even tracked down a disgruntled contractor who
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: had publicly threatened Jeremy just days prior.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Which is a solid lead.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: But every single one of those leads ended in an
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: airtight alibi or a complete dead end.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Which unfortunately leads to a profound silence. The case goes cold.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And that silence lasts for four long years.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Four years.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Think about what that does to a small town. Knowing
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: there's an unsolved execution style murder and the police seemingly
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: have absolutely nothing.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It's terrifying for the community.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But the reality was behind the scenes, the investigators
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: weren't ignoring it. They were doing the hardest part of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: police work, which is waiting.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, waiting.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: They were quietly building a baseline.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And patience is often an investigator's most devastating weapon.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Really? How so?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Well, they allow the suspect to get comfortable. They let
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: the memory of the fabricated lies fade and warp over time,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: while the rigid reality of the physical evidence remains perfectly
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: preserved in an evidence locker.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: So by November 2013, they felt they finally had enough
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: leverage to bring Juleen back in.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: And the transcripts of this 2013 interrogation are just fascinating.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: The tension is palpable.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Juleen doesn't come in alone, obviously. She brings her attorney,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a man named Rick Thomas. And Thomas immediately goes on
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the offensive.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: That's his job.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Right. He pulls out a newspaper article from October 2012
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: where the local police chief had boldly claimed to the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: press that they felt they had identified the murderer.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Effectively concluding the investigation in the public eye.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So Thomas slides that across the table and demands
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: to know why they are even there. He asks, point blank,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: are you saying she is the suspect?
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: It's a textbook defense maneuver. Establish dominance early, try to
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: force the detectives to tip their hand and reveal their evidence.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: But the investigators play it brilliantly. They don't take the
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: bait at all. They assure her she's not under arrest,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: carefully omitting the word yet, of course.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Not really.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: They frame the entire interview as a simple housekeeping exercise. Just,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: you know, clarifying a few extraneous details for the file.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: They are actively lowering her defenses.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So under this guise of housekeeping, they ask her
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: to walk through the 24 hours leading up to the murder.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And we need to break down Jalene's story step by
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: step here because she commits to a very specific timeline.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: She starts by saying, The day before the murder, they
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: were doing yard work for their tree business and canning pumpkins.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Canning pumpkins. It's a very deliberate painting of domestic tranquility.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Establishing a baseline of normalcy before the supposed chaos.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Then, she says later that evening, Jeremy took a
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: sleeping pill. Now, interestingly, this specific detail is actually corroborated
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: by the physical evidence.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, it is.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The autopsy report noted a small, relatively insignificant amount
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: of Benadryl in Jeremy's system. So that part at least
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: is true. Okay.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Fair enough.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Then she says Jeremy went outside to chain up their
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: five dogs for the night.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: And those dogs are going to become a massive logistical
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: hurdle for her story later on.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. So during the night, Julene claims the dogs
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: started barking. She says Jeremy yelled at them out the
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: window to quiet down, and then he took another sleeping pill. Okay. Okay.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: claims she was bothered by his snoring, so she decided
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: to take half a sleeping pill herself and went up
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: to sleep on a couch on the third floor of
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the house.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Notice what she's doing here structurally.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: She's placing herself in a completely different room, fizzly isolated
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: from the primary crime scene, While simultaneously placing her victim,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: her husband, in a chemically induced deep sleep.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Making an entirely defenseless.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's very convenient.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Right. Then we get to the actual moment of the murder.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Julene claims she was woken up by a loud, unidentifiable noise.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Just a noise.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She explicitly doesn't say it was a gunshot. Just
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: a loud noise. She gets up, comes downstairs to the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: second floor master bedroom. She says it's pitch dark.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: A pitch dark.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Okay. She reaches out. touches the bed, and feels something wet. Blood.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Then she claims she heard another noise out in the hallway.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: And this is the critical juncture.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Right, because her next actions are just baffling. She says
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: she heard this noise in the hallway, so she grabs
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: her own 9mm pistol from her nightstand, fires two warning
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: shots completely blind out into the dark hallway... locks the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: bedroom door, and calls 911.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Let's freeze right there and just analyze the psychology of
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: that sequence.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Please, because my brain short-circuits trying to make sense of this.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about how you would react waking up
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: in the pitch dark, realizing your partner is bleeding out,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: and hearing a deadly intruder right outside your door.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Right, your instinct is flight, or maybe you completely freeze.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Exactly. What you don't do is fire two blind shots
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: into a hallway, which immediately gives away your exact position,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and then lock yourself inside a room with no escape route,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: trapped with a dying man.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: It completely defies the basic human fight or flight response.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Doesn't it? Yes.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: When confronted with an apex threat in a confined dark space,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: an innocent person's priority is survival. You either neutralize the
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: threat or you escape.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Firing warning shots is largely a cinematic invention. Really?
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Just from the movies?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. It is incredibly rare in genuine panic self-defense situations,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: especially firing blind. Furthermore, Locking that door implies she consciously
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: knew the threat was outside the room, yet she intentionally
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: trapped herself inside it.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: It feels like she was playing a character, like she
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: was checking boxes on a list of what a brave
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: but terrified victim is supposed to do.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: And this brings us to the brilliance of how these
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: delayed interrogations are structured.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: You have to remember, Jolene had already been interviewed four
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: separate times on the actual day of the murder.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Right, I forgot about that.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: At the scene, at the hospital, and twice later at
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: her mother's house. Over four years, she had rehearsed this
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: core narrative. She had the script memorized.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So if she knows the script so well, how did
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the detectives break it?
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: By testing her memory of the margins. The peripheral details
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: she wouldn't have thought to rehearse.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Well, that's smart.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: If you read the transcripts, the investigators spend an inordinate
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: amount of time asking her deeply mundane questions.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: They ask her about the exact lengths of the dog chains.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: They ask her who specifically... usually locks the back doors
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: at night. They ask her about the physical mechanism of
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: the lock on the master bedroom door.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember reading that she actually seemed super annoyed
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: by that in the transcript.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: She did.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: At one point she literally snaps, I have no idea
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: if the chain was 6 feet or 20 feet.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Because she doesn't realize the trap. The detectives don't actually
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: care about the dog chains. Right. They are utilizing a
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: technique based on cognitive load. They are forcing her brain
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: to work overtime. committing to specific logistical facts about the environment. Oh,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: I see. Once she definitively commits to who locked the
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: door or how the dogs were chained or exactly how
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: she touched the bed in the dark, they have successfully
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: boxed her into a narrative corner.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And once she is in that corner, she cannot escape
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the physical forensics they have been sitting on for 48 months.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is brilliant.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: They literally let her build her own cage.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, they do.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Because once she locks in her story... The detectives start
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: dropping the forensic hammer and they completely dismantle this ghost
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: intruder theory using physical evidence or, you know, more accurately,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the absolute lack of it.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: This is exactly where the trap snaps shut.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to the doors. In the interview, Julene
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: definitively commits to the fact that Jeremy was the last
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: one outside chaining the dogs. Right. And that he would
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: have locked the back door because it was their standard
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: nightly practice.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: But the forensic team had swabbed dusted and processed that
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: back door entirely.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And what did they find?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: First of all, the door was found unlocked by the
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: police when they arrived.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's strike one.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: But far more damning. Jeremy's DNA and his fingerprints were
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: completely absent from that door and his hardware.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Wait, completely absent?
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Completely. If he was the last human being to touch it,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: his microscopic biological signature should be there. It wasn't.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, then there is the murder weapon itself. The.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: 357 Magnum found lying on the kitchen floor. Right.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: The problem.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Julene admits in the interview that this specific gun was
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: normally kept inside a curio cabinet in the house.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: And when crime scene technicians processed that curio cabinet, they
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: were explicitly looking for the intruder's touch DNA.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Because obviously they'd have to open it to get the gun.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If a franger broke in, rifled through a cabinet,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: and grabbed a heavy revolver, they would leave skin cells
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: or oils. The lab results came back. And they found
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: nothing of the sort.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Nothing at all.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: The only DNA found anywhere on that cabinet belonged to Julene.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Man. But the most glaring, undeniable piece of evidence is
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the gun itself.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: This. 357 was used to shoot a human being in
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the back of the head at point-blank range. But when
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the police recovered it from the kitchen floor, it was
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: wiped entirely clean.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Completely pristine. And to fully grasp why this is impossible,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: we have to talk about the physics of a point-blank gunshot.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: When a high-caliber weapon, like a. 357, is discharged, each
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: is away from biological tissue, the rapid expansion of hot
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: gases forces blood, tissue, and microscopic biological material backward.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Right, directly toward the shooter.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Directly toward the shooter and the weapon. This phenomenon is
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: known as blowback. It is a fundamental law of ballistics.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: So it's unavoidable.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: It is physically nearly impossible to fire a gun, point
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: blank into a human skull, and not have microscopic traces
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: of blood or tissue inside the barrel, on the slide,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: or baked into the grip.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: But this gun had zero blowback. Zero blood. None. And
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: zero DNA. Not Jeremy's blood, not the intruder's sweat, not
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: even the skin cells of the person who wiped it.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Which leads to a horrifying logical conclusion.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Which is?
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Someone didn't just drop the gun in a blind panic.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Someone took the deliberate time immediately after executing a man
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: to meticulously wipe that weapon down with a chemical agent
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: or a heavy cloth.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Completely erasing all forensic value.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Before gently placing it on the kitchen floor as
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: a prop.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: In a house where a woman is supposedly awake, firing
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: warning shots, and actively on the phone with 911.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The timeline she provided simply does not allow for
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: a panicked intruder to To perform a meticulous forensic cleanup.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a burglar fleeing for their life doesn't stop to
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: sanitize the murder weapon.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: They just don't.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And what about Jolene's gun? The 9mm she used to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: fire those two warning shots.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Right, the one she grabbed from the nightstand.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she explicitly told the cops that she walked into
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the pitch dark room, touched Jeremy's body, felt the wet blood,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and then grabbed her gun and fired.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: But the laboratory analysis of her 9mm revealed zero trace
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: of blood.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Zero.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: None at all. There is a foundational concept in forensics
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: called Locard's exchange principle.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Remind me what that is.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Basically, every contact leaves a trace. If you touch a
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: heavily bleeding wound in the dark, your hand is coated
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: in blood.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Right, obviously.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: If you then immediately grip the stippled handle of a firearm,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: you will transfer that blood into the grooves of the grip.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: It is unavoidable.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: But here, there was absolutely no transfer.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Zero transfer.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: So to believe Jolene's narrative, we have to believe in
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the existence of what we'll call the ghost intruder paradox.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: It really is a paradox.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Let's just list out what this phantom would have had
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: to accomplish to make her story true.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's list it.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: First, this ninja assassin had to bypass the couple's driveway
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: alarm without triggering it.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Then, they had to sneak past five chained guard dogs.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Dogs that a neighbor explicitly testified would bark aggressively if
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: you so much as crunched gravel on a still night.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Then this phantom enters a home without using any force,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: somehow bypassing an active security system.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Which is already basically impossible.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Then they inherently know exactly where to find a.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: 357 and a specific curio cabinet in the dark.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Right. And they manage to extract it while leaving only
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Jalene's DNA behind.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Right. Then they walk upstairs into the master bedroom, lean
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: over a sleeping man, and shoot him point blank in
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: the head.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Then, instead of fleeing from the deafening noise, this intruder
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: painstakingly wipes the gun perfectly clean of all blowback and DNA.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Takes their time doing it, too.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They then walk downstairs, completely ignoring the fact that
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the wife is now supposedly awake, firing her own gun
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and calling the police.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: They proceed to drop the pristine murder weapon on the
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: kitchen floor.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: They knock over a chair for effect. They rifle through
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: a purse, but completely ignore the valuable cash inside.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Naturally.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: They walk outside. And in a final act of utter
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: defiance of logic, they drop a pair of black gloves
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: in the yard.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, right, the gloves. And when those were later DNA tested,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: they contained the DNA of both Jeremy and Jalene.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: But no foreign DNA whatsoever.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: And then, poof, they just vanished. into the Ohio night,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: leaving no footprints leading away from the property, no tire
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: tracks in the mud, nothing.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Synthesizing all of this, the conclusion for the investigators was absolute.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: It had to be. In modern forensics, a pristine crime
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: scene is a massive flashing red flag.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Because real life is messy.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Real organic chaos, like a panicked, violent home invasion, leaves
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: a devastating mess. It leaves dropped items in logical places.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: It leaves transferred touch DNA. It leaves chaotic blood spatter patterns.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: It leaves forced entry marks on doors.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: But manufactured chaos leaves a script.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It leaves a scene that looks like what an
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: amateur thinks a crime scene should look like, but it
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: entirely lacks the microscopic connective tissue of reality.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: So the call is coming from inside the house.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Without a doubt.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: The physical evidence proves that there was no intruder.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Which leaves only one person in the house.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Jolene. But this is where the story pivots. Because finding
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: out who did it is only half the battle. Right.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: You need the why.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly. To understand why a woman with absolutely no criminal
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: record would stage an elaborate burglary and execute her husband
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of 10 years while he slept, we have to transition
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: from physical forensics to psychology.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: We have to look behind the closed doors of their
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: rural idols.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Up until the murder, the Simcos presented a very
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: specific image to the town of Vermillion.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: They did.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: They were successful small business owners running a tree service.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: They lived on a beautiful lakeside property. But the investigation
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: quickly revealed that their marriage was a psychological pressure cooker.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: A total nightmare, really.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Let's start by looking at Jeremy. The police peeled back
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: his public persona, and what they found was a man
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: with a deeply disturbing, violently aggressive past.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: He was universally described by his own employees and his
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: neighbors as a terrifying hothead.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And that aggression wasn't just directed outward at employees either.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: The police uncovered that Jeremy had admitted to his own
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: cousin in a private, documented conversation that he had physically
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: assaulted Jalene.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: He actually confessed to it.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he confessed to choking her, to throwing her against
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: a wall, and he explicitly stated to his cousin that
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: he hated his wife. Wow. And it gets so much worse.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: There's a documented horrific history of severe animal abuse.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Which is always a massive warning sign.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Right. When Jeremy was a teenager, he shot a dog
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: simply because it was a stray wandering near his campsite.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: That's sickening.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: And later in life, in a deeply calculated act of
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: revenge against an ex-girlfriend, he tracked down her new boyfriend's
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: dog And slid its throat.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: In forensic psychology, animal abuse is one of the most glaring,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: undeniable red flags for a capacity for severe interpersonal violence.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: This really is.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It demonstrates a fundamental lack of empathy and a willingness
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: to use lethal force to exert control, instill terror, or
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: exact revenge.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And that need for control and terror extended directly into
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: their tree business, too.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, so.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Well, a client testified that Jeremy would regularly force Julene
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: to climb 70-foot trees with heavy chainsaws.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: That's incredibly dangerous.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Exactly. While he stood safely on the ground, just screaming
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: degrading profanities at her in front of customers.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: He was an environment designed around constant public humiliation and
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: physical danger.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: And there was this dark suspicion among the clients. The
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Simcos purposely worked on weekends to be highly visible in
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the community. One client suspected that Jeremy would severely beat
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Jolene on Sunday nights.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Sunday nights specifically.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because that way she would have the entire secluded
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: week out on their rural gated property to physically heal
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: before she had to face the public again the following weekend.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Oh my God. That is a classic textbook isolation tactic
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: used by severe abusers. Is it really? Yes. If you
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: control the victim's environment and you control their social interactions,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: you completely control their reality.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: That is terrifying.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: But the physical abuse and the public humiliation were only
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: the surface layers. When investigators dug deeper, they uncovered something
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: much more systemic and deeply psychologically disturbing.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the bombshell document of the investigation. When
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: police executed search warrants on the property, they dug into
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the couple's personal files and safes. And alongside graphic pornography
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that Jeremy was apparently mailing to his clients, which, by
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the way, is an entirely separate level of bizarre boundary crossing,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: they found a handwritten 14-page document.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: 14 pages.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was explicitly titled A Master-Slave Father-Daughter Agreement.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: This document, legally and psychologically, stipulated Julene's total, unwavering submission
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: to Jeremy in every conceivable aspect of her daily life.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And here is where the context makes this truly chilling
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and frankly sickening. To understand the gravity of this contract,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: you have to understand Julene's past.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Which was incredibly tragic.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: She was a survivor of horrific, prolonged childhood trauma. She
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: had been sexually abused by her own biological father for
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: years when she was a little girl.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: This completely and utterly changes the lens through which we
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: view that document. Totally. What might, in a completely healthy
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: communicative relationship, be viewed as consensual role play between adults
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: takes on a deeply sinister, coercive tone here.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not role play when it's forced.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You have a violently controlling man with a known
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: history of choking his wife and killing animals, codifying a
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: relationship dynamic that explicitly forces his wife to daily reenact
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: her most profound, devastating childhood trauma.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: It's like he built a psychological cage out of her
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: worst nightmares. She escaped her childhood abuser, only to marry
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: a man who made her sign a contract calling him
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: father and her slave.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Is an unimaginable level of psychological torture.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: It really is, and digital forensics actually uncovered what might
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: have been the exact spark that finally blew that pressure
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: cooker apart.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: This is a detail that gave me absolute chills.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. Exactly 11 hours before Jeremy was shot
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: dead in his bed, someone on the Simcoe's home computer
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: opened a web browser... and deliberately pulled up the obituary
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of Jolene's abusive biological father.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: 11 hours. Just 11 hours before the murder.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: So what does this actually mean? Like, did she look
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: it up? Did he?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: It raises an incredibly important psychological question. And while we
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: have to speculate on the user, the implications of either
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: scenario are profound.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Walk me through that.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: If Jeremy looked it up, it could have been the
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: ultimate act of psychological warfare. A deliberate reminder of her trauma.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: To enforce the rules of the contract.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Just to keep her in line.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But if Jolene looked it up, perhaps seeing that obituary,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: seeing the face of the man who destroyed her childhood,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: staring back at her from a screen, served as a
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: violent catalyst. Oh, wow. Did it snap her out of
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: the course of control? Did she have a terrifying epiphany
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: in that moment, realizing that she had simply traded one
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: monster for another?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And that the only way to break the cycle of
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: abuse was to end it permanently.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: It's the ultimate kill or be killed mentality. Not necessarily
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: immediate physical survival, but psychological survival.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: But here is the tragedy of how this played out legally.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Because she chose to stage a crime scene and lie
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: to the police, rather than immediately claiming self-defense or battered
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: spouse syndrome, she locked herself into a web of deception.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: And that web started falling apart almost immediately.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: It fell fast.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: When someone commits a premeditated or staged act of violence,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: the psychological toll is immense. They're simultaneously managing the trauma
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: of the act, the crushing guilt, and the intense cognitive
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: load of maintaining a complex lie to authority.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: It's exhausting.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Inevitably, under that weight, the mask begins to slip.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: And it slipped within hours. We are back at the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: hospital on the very morning of the murder. Right. Julene
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: is in a room. A nurse is tending to her,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what happened to her husband. And
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the nurse distinctly hears Jolene mumble under her breath, I
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: shot my husband.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: The nurse, obviously taken aback by this, immediately asks her
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: to repeat herself.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Because who wouldn't? Right.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: And Jolene, realizing what she just said, instantly corrects it to,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: my husband was shot.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate Freudian slip.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. In moments of extreme physical exhaustion and emotional stress,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the brain's executive functioning, the part that actively maintains the deception...
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: can briefly fail.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: And the truth just leaks out.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, the subconscious truth slips past the filter before the
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: conscious mind can stop it.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the slip at the hospital. As
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the investigation dragged on, the police eventually brought in professionals
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: to analyze the 911 call itself.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: A 911 tape is fascinating.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Now, I know statement analysis isn't hard science that you
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: can just admit into court, but it is a really
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: fascinating investigative tool.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: It is. Statement analysts look for specific linguistic and auditory
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: markers of deception.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And what did they find here?
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: When they analyzed Julene's tape, they found 10 distinct markers
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: of a guilty caller compared to only four markers of
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: an innocent caller.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Wait, what do those markers actually sound like on a tape?
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: How do they know the difference between genuine panic and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: a script?
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: They look for things like inappropriate sequencing.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: For example, an innocent caller usually blurts out the immediate
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: emergency first. Like, my husband has been shot, we need
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: an ambulance.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Right, straight to the point.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: But a guilty caller often worries about secondary things or
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: establishing their own alibi before getting to the victim.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, like, I was sleeping upstairs and I heard a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: noise and then I came down.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They also look for resistance to answering basic questions
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: or over-explaining unnecessary details.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Which she did a lot of.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: But in Jalene's case, the most damning piece of audio
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: evidence wasn't linguistic. It was physical.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Jalene explicitly claimed... to the 911 operator that she was
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: actively performing CPR on Jeremy while on the phone.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Right. I remember that.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: But when the audio analysts listened closely, there was absolutely
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: no physical exertion heard in her voice.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: None.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: If you have ever performed or even seen CPR, it
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: is exhausting.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: It's a massive workout.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But on the tape, there is no rhythmic thumping
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: of chest compressions. There is no heavy breathing or physical strain.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: So what was she doing?
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: The audio proved she was just sitting there, completely still
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: next to him, holding the phone, performing a script for
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: the operator.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Which is horrifying, just sitting there.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Completely still.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: But the behavioral tells didn't stop that day. Get this.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: The very morning after she was released from the hospital,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: literally one day after the execution of her husband, Julene
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: calls the police again.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: This is perhaps the most bizarre and illuminating decision she
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: makes in the entire case.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: She reports a second break-in at the property.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: She claims that this time, while the police were away,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: someone broke into her heavy-duty safe, stole $ 2, 000 in cash,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: and completely ripped out the home's surveillance system.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Think about the psychology of this for a moment. Okay.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Your husband was just murdered in a supposed terrifying home invasion.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: You are actively being investigated by the police, and your
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: immediate response, 24 hours later, is to claim another home invasion.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: It's absurd. And she tried to give them evidence for
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: this one, too.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: She did.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: She handed the cops a small metal piece claiming it
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: was the tip of a fire poker that the thieves
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: had used to pry open the heavy metal safe. Right.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: She even had it carefully hidden in a little plastic
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: bag like she's playing detective and trying to control exactly
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: what narrative the cops saw.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: But once again, the physical reality betrayed her staging.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: How did they prove this one was fake?
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: The police brought in the actual professional contractor who installed
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: and serviced that specific safe.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: He looked at the fire poker tip she provided and
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: literally laughed. He testified that the metal seam on that
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: specific model of SACE was engineered so tightly... a thick
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: fire poker wouldn't even fit into the crack. Oh, wow.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: It was physically impossible for that specific tool to have
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: been used to pry that safe open.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to ask. Why? Why on earth would
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: she fake a second break-in when the cops are already
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: looking at her sideways? It seems completely self-destructive to invite
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: more scrutiny.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: It is a phenomenal example of a guilty party frantically overcompensating.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Overcompensating.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Yes. When someone tells a massive foundational lie like, a
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: phantom intruder killed my husband, they know subconsciously how flimsy
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: and unbelievable it is.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Because they made it up.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So they try to bolster the lie by creating
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: corroborating events. She thought, if I can show the police
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: that this property is constantly targeted by violent thieves, my
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: initial story about the intruder becomes more believable.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: But, as is almost always the case in criminology, manufacturing
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: more fake evidence just creates more opportunities for the physical
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: world to prove you a liar.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: She couldn't even keep her mouth shut socially.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: No, she couldn't.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Months later, she's at a party in town. A friend
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: comes up to her and asks a deeply uncomfortable, probing question.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: The friend asks, Jalene, do you think Jeremy knows who
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: shot him?
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: It is an incredibly provocative question to ask a grieving widow.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: It really is. And her response was chilling in its
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: stark simplicity.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: What did she say?
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: She just looked at them and said, yeah, he knows.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Notice what she didn't say.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: She didn't say, I hope he knows or I pray
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: the police catch who did it. Just, yeah, he knows.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: It implies a direct, intimate knowledge of the final conscious
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: moment between the victim and the killer.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: So we have the heavily staged crime scene. We have
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the psychological motive of the abusive, coercive contract. We have
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: the behavioral tells and the fake second break-in.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: The case is building.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: But prosecutors know that when you go to trial, judges
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: and juries want a motive that is universally understandable. Right.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Coercive control is incredibly complex to explain to a jury.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Trauma reenactment is complex. But you know what isn't complex? Money.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: The state needed a universal translator for motive. And in
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: capital murder cases, that is almost always financial gain.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And behind the scenes, the Simcos were under immense financial pressure.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Heavily.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: They wanted to expand their tree business and they desperately
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: wanted to buy a specific plot of empty land near
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: their property to do so. Right. But because of terrible credit,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: just days before the murder, a bank had outright denied
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: their crucial loan application. They were completely financially stuck.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Until Jeremy died. Right.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Suddenly upon his death, Julene pockets $ 60, 000 in life insurance money.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Which changes everything financially.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: But instead of acting like a grieving widow securing her future,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: her actions are incredibly cold and calculated.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: What does she do?
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: She flat out refuses to pay for Jeremy's funeral. No!
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: She tries to force Jeremy's grieving father to foot the bill,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: claiming she's in poverty, despite having that $ 60, 000 insurance payout
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: hidden away.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: It speaks to a profound lack of remorse. and a
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: chilling ability to compartmentalize.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally cold.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: In her mind, the man is dead, the abusive contract
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: is void, and she is now solely focused on securing
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: her assets.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: She then immediately lists their shared home, the actual scene
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: of the crime, for $ 199, 000.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Moving fast.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: And when Jeremy's own sister schedules an appointment to view
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: the property, ostensibly because she wants to buy it to
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: keep it in the family and preserve his memory... Julene
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: calls the cops on her to have her physically removed
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: from the property.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: She aggressively and completely alienated his entire family.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: She was systematically erasing him, erasing the family, erasing the
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: physical property and consolidating the cash. And this financial pivot
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: provided the state with the final, easily digestible piece of
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: the puzzle they needed to confidently take this case to trial.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And it took a long time to get there. In
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: December 2014, which is a full five years after the murder...
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: The police finally have enough to arrest her.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Five years.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Jalene is formally indicted on charges of aggravated murder, felonious assault,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: and tampering with evidence.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: And what is truly fascinating about the trial phase is
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: the baffling legal strategy her defense team employed.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. She opted for a bench trial.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: A bench trial?
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Which takes the jury completely out of the equation. It's
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: just the judge deciding her fate. Why on earth would
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: you risk giving all that power to a single person?
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: especially in a case involving this much psychological abuse.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: It's a calculated, albeit highly risky, legal maneuver.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Explain that.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Well, juries are inherently emotional. A defense attorney might think
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: that a jury would hear about the severe sexual abuse
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: from her father, hear about the disturbing 14-page master-slave contract,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: hear about Jeremy choking her and killing animals, and feel
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: profound sympathy.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Which could help her. Right.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: A jury might exercise jury nullification. which is when a
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: jury returns a not guilty verdict despite believing the defendant
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: committed the act, usually out of a sense of moral fairness.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Or they might push for a much lesser charge, like manslaughter.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, so why didn't they want that? If I were
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: a lawyer, I'd want a jury.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Because a judge, on the other hand, is purely analytical.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: A judge is trained to strictly look at the letter
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: of the law and the burden of proof.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: The defense likely hoped the judge would see purely circumstantial
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: nature of the physical evidence.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: The fact that there was no physical murder weapon directly
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: linking her hand, no eyewitness, no confession.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They hoped the judge would rule that the state
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: simply didn't meet the high burden of beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: But that strategy fundamentally required the defense to actively dismantle
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the state's forensic evidence.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: And they just couldn't do it.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: During the trial, the defense called absolutely zero witnesses. None. Zero.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: They didn't put a single ballistic expert on the stand
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to explain away how a gun could be completely clean
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: of blowback.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: They didn't put Julene on the stand to explain the
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: context of the contract or claim self-defense. They just sat
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: back and relied entirely on the desperate hope that the
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: prosecution's case wasn't strong enough on its own.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: It was a catastrophic miscalculation.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: A huge one.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: The physical evidence presented by the state, the pristine weapon,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: the total lack of DNA on the supposedly locked door,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: the statement analysis of the 911 call, the absolute physical
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: impossibility of the fake safe break-in, it all painted an inescapable,
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: scientifically-backed picture of premeditated staging.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: And the judge agreed. On October 20, 2017, which is
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: nearly eight years to the day after she pulled the trigger,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the judge handed down the verdict. Guilty.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Finally.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: She was sentenced to 28 years in an Ohio reformatory
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: for women. She tried to appeal the conviction in 2021,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: but the higher courts completely upheld it.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: It took eight long years for the physical evidence to
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: finally cut through the lies.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the end of our journey today.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: We started this deep dive looking at a seemingly perfect
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: rural idol. A safe town, a highly secure house.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: And we watched it all unravel.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We watched as a staged crime scene full of
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: theatrical props, a profound lack of microscopic DNA, and a
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: deeply disturbing 14-page secret contract systematically dismantled a five-year lie.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: It is a lasting testament to the fact that while
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: humans can easily lie with their words, they profoundly struggle
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: to lie with their environment.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: It's impossible to fake everything. Right.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: The microscopic physics of a crime scene will always eventually
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: betray the fiction of the staging.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: It's just like we said at the beginning. You can't
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: just take an X-ray of a crime scene. You have
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: to look at the contradictions. You really have to look
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: at the purse with the cash still sitting in it.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: and ask why. But before we leave you today, there
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: is one final provocative thought that I want you to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: mull over. Something that wasn't explicitly argued in court, but
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: hangs over this entire case like a dark shadow.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Consider the slave contract itself. Yeah. Jeremy forced Julene to
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: write down, to legally codify, and to physically live out
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: the deepest, darkest childhood trauma she had ever experienced.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: He thought he was building the ultimate, unbreakable tool for
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: total control.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: But you have to ask yourself, did the very act
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: of drafting that document inadvertently serve as the catalyst that
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: broke the illusion of their life? By forcing her to
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: face the exact monster of her past in the form
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: of her husband, did Jeremy's ultimate attempt at absolute psychological
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: control actually guarantee his own demise?
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: It is a haunting question. Like, if he hadn't pushed
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: her into that specific, terrifying psychological corner, would they still
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: be living on that lake today?
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: We will never truly know.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: No, we won't. But it highlights the dangerous, fundamentally unpredictable
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: nature of coercive control.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: It certainly does.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for joining us for this
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: deep dive into the Simcoe case. As a quick note,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: because the source material dealt heavily with themes of domestic
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: abuse and coercive control, we want to provide a resource.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, please do.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, the
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24-7. You can call
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: 1-800-799-SAFE or visit thehotline.org. Take care of yourselves, and we'll
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: be back soon to deconstruct another case.