Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / True Crime Documentary - The Devil in the Details

Transcript

True Crime Documentary - The Devil in the Details · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:05
Speaker 1: I didn't even know.
0:06
Speaker 2: I God, every frog begins with a promise.
0:16
Speaker 3: Howard Patrol was immediately suspicious that this horrible accident was
0:21
Speaker 3: not an accident.
0:23
Speaker 2: A quick fortune, easy money, or a life transformed overnight.
0:29
Speaker 4: She's bleeding profusely, can't get the bleeding stop.
0:35
Speaker 2: But behind these illusions, like calculated deceptions, carefully hidden in
0:41
Speaker 2: plain sight.
0:43
Speaker 5: They're absolutely worre whispers in the community about her dad.
0:46
Speaker 2: Sometimes these criminals are backed into a corner and feel
0:50
Speaker 2: their only way out is to kill.
0:54
Speaker 1: He wanted his wife, he wanted a girlfriend, and when
0:57
Speaker 1: those things were threatened, he was unwilling to use it.
1:10
Speaker 6: H Yeah, you touched a N one one, You ran
1:34
Speaker 6: off the group, you ran off the bridge. This I
1:39
Speaker 6: don't even help my wife.
1:40
Speaker 7: I don't.
1:41
Speaker 6: This is crazy, all right, she tripped in the vehicle.
1:46
Speaker 6: Brow her out, Help me.
1:49
Speaker 8: God, you worth thousands of cases, and then there are
1:58
Speaker 8: certain cases that just with you forever. Miss gugis On
2:04
Speaker 8: being one of those cases that I don't think anybody
2:07
Speaker 8: in this area has ever forgotten it.
2:19
Speaker 5: Chester is a community where, for the most part, people
2:22
Speaker 5: still know each other. People know their neighbor and know
2:26
Speaker 5: their neighbor's neighbor. I'm Travis Jenkins. I grew up in Chester.
2:31
Speaker 5: I've worked with Chester News and Reporter full time since
2:33
Speaker 5: two thousand and three, so twenty two years.
2:38
Speaker 2: In the tight knit community of Chester, Judy Orr was
2:42
Speaker 2: a much loved figure.
2:45
Speaker 9: Judy loved her family.
2:46
Speaker 5: She was a very kind and giving person and just
2:49
Speaker 5: a very sweet natured lady.
2:53
Speaker 3: I'm Candice Lively. I'm the Deputy solicitor in Chester County.
2:57
Speaker 3: Judy was a very important woman in the community because
3:01
Speaker 3: she was involved with her church. She knew a lot
3:05
Speaker 3: of important people in the community just because of her kindness.
3:08
Speaker 3: She would volunteer. She was just someone that most people knew.
3:14
Speaker 3: Judy did have quite an affinity for the motorcycle groups
3:19
Speaker 3: that she was involved with.
3:22
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, tragedy struck when Judy's husband, Todd,
3:27
Speaker 2: was killed in a motorcycle accident.
3:30
Speaker 3: Her husband, when he unfortunately passed away, she really missed
3:34
Speaker 3: that part of her life of.
3:36
Speaker 7: Being connected with that community.
3:40
Speaker 2: After the death of her husband, Judy continued playing a
3:43
Speaker 2: part in the Christian biker group and around twenty eleven,
3:48
Speaker 2: she met fifty two year old fellow biker James Baldwin.
3:54
Speaker 3: James Baldwin is someone that Judy medical when he was
3:57
Speaker 3: a dispatcher for Chester County Sheriff's Office, and he had
4:01
Speaker 3: also had some experience as a police officer in a
4:05
Speaker 3: neighboring county that would be York County.
4:09
Speaker 1: My name is doctor VICKITHA Corda's Deci and I'm a
4:12
Speaker 1: consultant forensic psychologist. Judy became a widow. It's only natural
4:17
Speaker 1: for somebody to want companionship and someone to love again
4:22
Speaker 1: in their life, and she made the decision to move
4:25
Speaker 1: on after a substantial period of being single. She was
4:31
Speaker 1: loving and caring and she wanted to be able to
4:34
Speaker 1: share that with a partner. She wanted to be able
4:38
Speaker 1: to enjoy companionship once again and felt like she could
4:42
Speaker 1: move on from her loss.
4:45
Speaker 2: While Judy was financially secure after the death of her husband, Todd,
4:50
Speaker 2: James Baldwin was an ex deputy and Local nine one
4:53
Speaker 2: one operator.
4:55
Speaker 3: Judy was definitely better off financially whenever she met James Baldwin.
5:00
Speaker 3: She had the house that her husband left her, she
5:03
Speaker 3: had plenty of money from everything she received from the
5:06
Speaker 3: proceeds of her husband's passing. Jamie is not financially in
5:11
Speaker 3: the same situation, he was always filing insurance claims. He
5:15
Speaker 3: was always looking for ways that he could make money
5:20
Speaker 3: because he just didn't make much money doing what he
5:23
Speaker 3: was doing as a dispatcher.
5:27
Speaker 1: James Baldwin was somebody who was looking for opportunities, opportunities
5:34
Speaker 1: to further themselves in their own wealth. There is evidence
5:37
Speaker 1: of him trying to defraud insurance.
5:43
Speaker 3: He's actually waiting for financial money to come in from
5:46
Speaker 3: some motorcycle accident he had where he was claiming that
5:52
Speaker 3: Department of Public Safety was at fault for having electrical
5:56
Speaker 3: box in the wrong place on a street and he
5:59
Speaker 3: ran into it and damaged his bike and he was hurt.
6:05
Speaker 10: My name is Fiona Hotston Moore and I'm a forensic
6:08
Speaker 10: accountant and expert witness. In my experience of fraud, they
6:13
Speaker 10: do tend to be serial forwards. This so they do
6:16
Speaker 10: it once and they get away with it. They perhaps
6:19
Speaker 10: in their mind don't tend to do it again, but
6:21
Speaker 10: then circumstances are such that they do do it again.
6:24
Speaker 10: And I think you need to bear in mind the
6:27
Speaker 10: Ford triangle, which means there needs to be motive, opportunity
6:31
Speaker 10: and rationalization and if those three factors are in place,
6:35
Speaker 10: then quite often affords that will repeat the previous fraud.
6:42
Speaker 2: James Baldwin's background as a nine to one one operator
6:45
Speaker 2: and ex deputy meant he was quickly embraced by the
6:48
Speaker 2: Chester community.
6:52
Speaker 5: I definitely think that James Baldwin's background and law enforcement
6:56
Speaker 5: would have made other people trustful of them, and I
6:59
Speaker 5: think that that probably just grew because again, so many
7:03
Speaker 5: people knew Judy and so many.
7:05
Speaker 9: People loved or liked her. She had a lot of friends.
7:09
Speaker 9: She was very well known in the community.
7:13
Speaker 2: In March twenty twelve, Judy and James married, and Judy
7:18
Speaker 2: was happy to spend lavishly on her new husband.
7:23
Speaker 3: Judy really did enjoy spending money on Jamie. He was
7:26
Speaker 3: very charismatic and at the time she's just such a console.
7:30
Speaker 3: I think she just loved all the attention. It had
7:33
Speaker 3: been a long time since she had had a serious relationship,
7:37
Speaker 3: and so she did. They actually went and bought a
7:40
Speaker 3: beautiful new Harley Davidson motorcycle for him, and anything and
7:45
Speaker 3: everything he wanted for it, she paid for it. She
7:49
Speaker 3: basically set him up in this house and paid for
7:53
Speaker 3: and did anything that he wanted. He was living the
7:58
Speaker 3: kind of life that he wanted to live, but because
8:00
Speaker 3: Judy had the money and not him.
8:04
Speaker 2: In June twenty sixteen, James Baldwin persuaded Judy to take
8:09
Speaker 2: out a twenty five thousand dollars life insurance policy.
8:16
Speaker 3: James Baldwin did take out the accidental life insurance policy.
8:20
Speaker 3: It just seemed like a normal thing to do, and
8:22
Speaker 3: she had unfortunately lost her husband in her lifetime, and
8:25
Speaker 3: she understood the importance of having money whenever you have
8:30
Speaker 3: an unfortunate loss like that. Jamie had been in some
8:33
Speaker 3: motorcycle accidents in the past and he said, you know
8:36
Speaker 3: these are Having an insurance policy is important.
8:40
Speaker 10: An accident only life policy only pays out if the
8:44
Speaker 10: person dies in an accident, so it does not pay
8:47
Speaker 10: out if they die of natural causes or some terminal illness, etc.
8:52
Speaker 10: It's much cheaper and easier to obtain and therefore potentially
8:57
Speaker 10: more liable to food forty link claims when someone actually
9:01
Speaker 10: dies in an untowards circumstance.
9:04
Speaker 2: In December twenty sixteen, Judy and James Baldwin were getting
9:09
Speaker 2: ready for an event with their Christian biker group.
9:13
Speaker 3: Jady Baldwin loved Christmas that was our favorite time of year.
9:18
Speaker 3: They would go with their group, their Christian biker group,
9:22
Speaker 3: on different trips to raise money for charities.
9:25
Speaker 7: They had one that was their biggest.
9:27
Speaker 3: One each year, which was around Christmas, where they would
9:30
Speaker 3: collect toys for children who were in need. They were
9:34
Speaker 3: going to go to Kentucky actually for the twenty sixteen Christmas.
9:40
Speaker 7: That's whenever things fell apart.
9:47
Speaker 2: At eleven four pm on the evening of December fourteenth,
9:51
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, Chester Police receive a nine to one to
9:56
Speaker 2: one distress call.
10:01
Speaker 6: We ran off the group, He ran off the bridge.
10:06
Speaker 6: I don't even help from my wife now, just explasively, alright,
10:10
Speaker 6: she trapped in the vehicle, threw her out. Oh God.
10:20
Speaker 2: Highway Officer James Calvin Riker Junior was asked to respond.
10:26
Speaker 8: My name was James Calvin Riker Jr. We enforced all
10:30
Speaker 8: traffic laws and crashes in South Carolina and we would
10:34
Speaker 8: get called out to work more complex collisions.
10:39
Speaker 9: The early hours of the fifteenth, I was at home.
10:43
Speaker 9: I was sleeping.
10:44
Speaker 8: Got a call from my supervisor and stated that the
10:47
Speaker 8: troop here in Chester, South Carolina was needing assistance with
10:51
Speaker 8: one of the cases that they had responded to.
10:55
Speaker 2: The supervisor, explained jeep had crashed on old Richburg Road
11:00
Speaker 2: just outside of Chester.
11:03
Speaker 8: It's a two lane road, but it is dark. There's
11:07
Speaker 8: no really ambient lighting out in that area. You are
11:12
Speaker 8: as we would say, in the country at that point.
11:16
Speaker 2: The couple traveling in the jeep were Judy or Baldwin
11:20
Speaker 2: and her husband, James Baldwin.
11:25
Speaker 4: I'm Randy Newman, sixth Circuit Solicitor. So according to James Baldwin,
11:31
Speaker 4: some parent car comes into his lane or truck runs
11:36
Speaker 4: him off the road and he says that he blacked
11:40
Speaker 4: out at some point. When he comes to, he reaches over,
11:44
Speaker 4: doesn't feel her in the seat, crawls out of the
11:47
Speaker 4: vehicle and finds her lying in a creek, not underwater,
11:53
Speaker 4: just in a couple of inches of water. Unable to
11:56
Speaker 4: get her, come to and calls nine one one.
12:01
Speaker 2: Judy or Baldwin was pronounced dead at the scene. James
12:06
Speaker 2: Baldwin was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
12:10
Speaker 5: The news of her death actually got to was the
12:13
Speaker 5: next day, but even at that point there were already
12:16
Speaker 5: sort of whispers in the community that there was more
12:18
Speaker 5: to the story.
12:20
Speaker 8: I felt like there was something different about this case.
12:23
Speaker 8: But I got the internal nudge that I needed to
12:26
Speaker 8: go actually to the hospital and talk to mister Balwin
12:29
Speaker 8: as soon as possible. When I first had a conversation
12:34
Speaker 8: with the unseen supervisor, what he was saying that mister
12:39
Speaker 8: Baldwin had told him at the scene was not matching
12:42
Speaker 8: up with what the damage was or the lack of damage,
12:46
Speaker 8: so pretty close early on in the investigation, I felt
12:50
Speaker 8: like something wasn't adding up with what he was saying
12:54
Speaker 8: and what was being presented at the scene itself.
13:02
Speaker 3: James Baldwin at first when he called nine one one,
13:05
Speaker 3: he claimed that there was a car accident he swerved
13:09
Speaker 3: to miss a truck that had come into his lane,
13:11
Speaker 3: that he went off the road and must have lost
13:15
Speaker 3: consciousness because he kind of comes to when the jeeps
13:19
Speaker 3: stopped and realized that his wife was not next to
13:23
Speaker 3: him in the passenger seat of the vehicle.
13:26
Speaker 2: While James Baldwin was taken to the hospital with minor injuries,
13:30
Speaker 2: officers began to notice inconsistencies between evidence of the scene
13:35
Speaker 2: with James Baldwin's version of events.
13:39
Speaker 8: I knew the story that was being told did not
13:42
Speaker 8: line up with what was being presented at the scene.
13:46
Speaker 8: I spoke with the onseen supervisor. He was telling me
13:50
Speaker 8: that he had some concerns with what mister Baldwin had
13:53
Speaker 8: told him. The on scene supervisor was saying that mister
13:58
Speaker 8: Baldwin had told him he felt like miss Judy was
14:01
Speaker 8: ejected out of the vehicle and that's what caused her death.
14:05
Speaker 8: I asked him if he could send me a couple
14:07
Speaker 8: of pictures of the vehicle. He showed me those pictures
14:11
Speaker 8: and I knew that was not the case from the
14:13
Speaker 8: lack of damage to the vehicle.
14:17
Speaker 2: Officer Riker decided to go straight to the hospital to
14:20
Speaker 2: interview James Baldwin.
14:23
Speaker 8: He did say that he tried to get her up
14:26
Speaker 8: the embankment, but also said that he found her in
14:30
Speaker 8: the front of the vehicle, which would have been in
14:32
Speaker 8: the water, and she was basically.
14:35
Speaker 7: Pulled towards the driver's side of.
14:37
Speaker 8: The vehicle, which would not be in the direct path
14:41
Speaker 8: to try to get her to the top of the embankment.
14:44
Speaker 8: So that was a little strange, but you know, maybe
14:46
Speaker 8: he was disoriented. I was trying to give him, you know,
14:49
Speaker 8: the benefit of the doubt at that time when he
14:52
Speaker 8: is telling me this story.
14:56
Speaker 2: During the interview at the hospital, James Baldwin's story what
15:00
Speaker 2: happened that evening began to change.
15:04
Speaker 8: He started adding more stuff to it to try to
15:06
Speaker 8: fill in those gaps and those questions that he was
15:09
Speaker 8: being asked. So his story was that back at the
15:14
Speaker 8: house there was an incident there where miss Judy had
15:18
Speaker 8: fell off of a ladder while trying to decorate a
15:21
Speaker 8: Christmas tree. He was outside at that moment. When he
15:25
Speaker 8: came back inside, he saw that she was laying on
15:27
Speaker 8: the floor, was bleeding a lot, and decided that she
15:33
Speaker 8: needed to go to the hospital to get stitches.
15:36
Speaker 4: So, according to James Baldwin, they are decorating for Christmas.
15:41
Speaker 4: She is on a step ladder decorating the tree. James
15:45
Speaker 4: Baldwin said, she fell and bumped her head. She's bleeding profusely.
15:51
Speaker 4: Can't get the bleeding stop. Gotta take her to hospital.
15:55
Speaker 8: And as he was traveling down Old Richburg Road, a
15:59
Speaker 8: vehicle was in his lane of travel where he took
16:02
Speaker 8: evasive action, ran off the right side of road, kind
16:05
Speaker 8: of overcracked it and went off the left side of
16:07
Speaker 8: the road, down in abankment and into a creek, where
16:10
Speaker 8: he said that he doesn't remember really what happened after that,
16:14
Speaker 8: except when he woke up that Miss Judy was not
16:16
Speaker 8: in the vehicle and then he found her outside of
16:20
Speaker 8: the jeep itself.
16:22
Speaker 2: Officer Riker noticed a lack of emotion from James Baldwin.
16:27
Speaker 9: I knew he was a police officer.
16:29
Speaker 8: I knew he was in public safety, and maybe that
16:32
Speaker 8: was just the way somebody actually responded to that behavior.
16:37
Speaker 8: I asked him point blank that night if he did
16:40
Speaker 8: anything to hurt Miss Judy. That was the only time
16:44
Speaker 8: that I saw emotion out of him during this interview
16:48
Speaker 8: is when I was accusing him of doing something to
16:51
Speaker 8: Miss Judy.
16:53
Speaker 2: After interviewing James Baldwin at the hospital, Officer Riker joined
16:58
Speaker 2: his colleagues at the scene of the accident.
17:02
Speaker 8: This is a rule two lane road out in the country.
17:06
Speaker 8: There's a bridge there that covers the creek itself. But
17:10
Speaker 8: I was able to see the path of travel that
17:13
Speaker 8: mister Baldwin went off the right side of the road,
17:15
Speaker 8: and even when I got there, he should have stayed
17:18
Speaker 8: in a straight path, which would have taken him straight
17:21
Speaker 8: into the woods. And so when he goes off the
17:23
Speaker 8: left side of the road, he has to make a
17:25
Speaker 8: control movement to straighten up the vehicle, drive down the embankment,
17:31
Speaker 8: get to the creek bottom, and then kind of angle
17:33
Speaker 8: it back to the right, And so it does not
17:36
Speaker 8: add up with what he is telling us.
17:39
Speaker 3: Highway troll was immediately suspicious. They see accidents all the time.
17:45
Speaker 3: Number One, They didn't see damage to the vehicle. They
17:47
Speaker 3: thought that that was very suspicious. And the fact that
17:50
Speaker 3: the windshield was intact, nothing was really damage except for
17:54
Speaker 3: just the front little grill piece on the jeep. There
17:58
Speaker 3: was no indication of a huge turn or some type
18:03
Speaker 3: of movement by the vehicle to avoid a truck coming
18:06
Speaker 3: into his lane, which he claimed.
18:10
Speaker 8: I can see the fresh marks in the dirt off
18:12
Speaker 8: the right side of the roadway, and I'm like, this
18:15
Speaker 8: doesn't happen when you're traveling at normal highway speeds of
18:19
Speaker 8: fifty to fifty five miles an hour. So just seeing
18:24
Speaker 8: the jeep, its location, the path of travel that it
18:28
Speaker 8: took to get to its location, the amount of blood
18:31
Speaker 8: that was in the vehicle and on the outside of
18:34
Speaker 8: the vehicle.
18:36
Speaker 7: Just did not.
18:37
Speaker 8: Add up with her getting ejected out of the vehicle.
18:41
Speaker 2: Despite the concerns of the officers at the scene. James
18:45
Speaker 2: Baldwin's background as a deputy and nine to one to
18:47
Speaker 2: one responder meant local officers were quick to believe his
18:51
Speaker 2: version of events.
18:53
Speaker 3: Here in Chester County, with it being such a small county,
18:56
Speaker 3: people are in the community who work in law enforcement.
19:01
Speaker 3: It's hard to look at them and think that they
19:03
Speaker 3: could have had anything to do with injuring a family member.
19:09
Speaker 3: I think that there's just that inherent small town field
19:12
Speaker 3: that there's just no way Jamie bard One could have
19:14
Speaker 3: done something to hurt this wonderful woman that everybody worked.
19:20
Speaker 1: It is highly likely that when James called nine one
19:24
Speaker 1: one and his colleagues responded to that that they would
19:29
Speaker 1: have quite quickly believed his version of events. He was
19:33
Speaker 1: a trusted colleague, he had worked within the profession for
19:36
Speaker 1: as long as he did, and that unconscious bias that
19:40
Speaker 1: would have been present which would have rationalized their decision,
19:44
Speaker 1: which was, well, actually, he's one of us. He should
19:49
Speaker 1: be telling the truth. He is telling the truth, and
19:51
Speaker 1: therefore there's no need to question this any further.
19:57
Speaker 3: On the night when the jeep went off the road,
19:59
Speaker 3: the share Sophie did send an investigator to the home.
20:03
Speaker 3: He looked in the window, and you could immediately see
20:07
Speaker 3: there was blood on the floor. In the main area
20:11
Speaker 3: was a huge, wide, open main area. There was a
20:14
Speaker 3: ladder and a huge Christmas treek. Unfortunately, he only took
20:19
Speaker 3: about forty pictures, not that anymore, but looking at the
20:24
Speaker 3: scene without having anybody else come in there, he went
20:28
Speaker 3: and reported back that what he saw, and based on
20:32
Speaker 3: what mister Baldwin had told him, he believed that Judy
20:35
Speaker 3: had fallen from the ladder and hit her head on
20:39
Speaker 3: the mantle or somewhere in that area, and that's what
20:42
Speaker 3: caused her head injuries.
20:44
Speaker 7: So that fit with what he believed.
20:47
Speaker 3: At the time Jamie Baldwin was telling everyone.
20:52
Speaker 2: Satisfied with James Baldwin's story that there had been an
20:55
Speaker 2: accident at the home, the investigator allowed the scene to
20:59
Speaker 2: be cleaned up.
21:01
Speaker 3: The only person who had walked into that home that
21:03
Speaker 3: was law enforcement was the investigator from the Sheriff's office,
21:07
Speaker 3: and he also told a friend of Jamie Baldwin, you
21:11
Speaker 3: can go ahead and clean up. I'm sure you don't
21:14
Speaker 3: want it to look like this. Whenever mister Baldwin gets
21:17
Speaker 3: back to the house, he gave a card to this
21:21
Speaker 3: female by the name of Terry Keane, who said, you
21:23
Speaker 3: can call these people, they'll clean up the blood.
21:28
Speaker 2: On the morning of December fifteenth, the community of Chester
21:32
Speaker 2: learned of Judy or Baldwin's death and there was immediate
21:36
Speaker 2: suspicion around what happened.
21:39
Speaker 5: We found out about it the next day. Gets around
21:41
Speaker 5: very quickly in the town as small as Chester.
21:44
Speaker 3: Law enforcement had two different versions of what could have happened.
21:49
Speaker 3: Highway patrol was thinking, this is not a car accident,
21:52
Speaker 3: and then you had law enforcement with the Sheriff's office saying, well,
21:56
Speaker 3: it looks like it was possibly an accident from a
21:59
Speaker 3: fall that happened at the house.
22:02
Speaker 4: They took his statement, They went to the house and
22:05
Speaker 4: they did I guess the bare minimum. And this guy
22:09
Speaker 4: was a former dispatcher at the Sheriff's office. They never
22:14
Speaker 4: at any point thought that he's not being truthful.
22:20
Speaker 2: A local pathologist performed an autopsy to try to confirm
22:24
Speaker 2: the cause of death.
22:27
Speaker 3: The biggest issue happened whenever the autopsy was done. The
22:31
Speaker 3: findings of the pathologist was that she had died from
22:36
Speaker 3: a blunt force trauma to the head, but in their
22:40
Speaker 3: opinion that it was probably because of the fall.
22:45
Speaker 5: There're absolutely were whispers in the community about her death.
22:48
Speaker 5: There were just questions about I guess Hol's and Jamie's story,
22:54
Speaker 5: his I guess connection to.
22:56
Speaker 9: The law enforcement community.
22:57
Speaker 5: I think a lot of those things were brought up
22:59
Speaker 5: his question students that people had about whether or not
23:02
Speaker 5: this was being looked into as thoroughly as it should
23:04
Speaker 5: have been, and whether or not there was more to
23:08
Speaker 5: the story, which most people seem to think that there was.
23:13
Speaker 2: While local law enforcement were quick to believe James Baldwin's
23:17
Speaker 2: version of events, the coroner, who knew Judy personally had doubts.
23:25
Speaker 3: Terry Tinker our Corner and the family, after hearing everything,
23:30
Speaker 3: strongly believed that it didn't fit with what they were
23:35
Speaker 3: actually seeing from the pictures that were taken at the home.
23:40
Speaker 7: That this didn't make sense how she could have such.
23:42
Speaker 3: A severe head trauma falling from basically a three step ladder.
23:47
Speaker 3: So there were just a lot of questions.
23:50
Speaker 4: I think it was just he was taken out his word.
23:53
Speaker 4: They felt like they didn't have anything to show otherwise,
23:57
Speaker 4: and so they weren't moving along the way the family
24:01
Speaker 4: wanted them to or the way the coroner wanted them
24:03
Speaker 4: to do.
24:05
Speaker 5: I mean to be honest, there were a lot of
24:06
Speaker 5: people who said that he had killed her, that they
24:09
Speaker 5: believed that Jamie had murdered Judy.
24:17
Speaker 2: In early twenty seventeen, the investigation into the death of
24:22
Speaker 2: Judy or Baldwin was still ongoing, with a coroner and
24:27
Speaker 2: the sheriff still in disagreement about what happened.
24:32
Speaker 4: I started getting calls early on from the community, Hey,
24:36
Speaker 4: this isn't right. Somebody needs to do something.
24:39
Speaker 3: This case was very tricky, simply because we had an
24:43
Speaker 3: initial disagreement or kind of this impasse between investigating agencies.
24:52
Speaker 2: The fact that key people investigating the case knew both
24:55
Speaker 2: James Baldwin and Judy or Baldwin personally complicated Matt.
25:03
Speaker 3: So initially that was hard to get over that hump
25:05
Speaker 3: of thinking, we've got to look at this as investigators
25:10
Speaker 3: and not as friends of one another. We've got to
25:14
Speaker 3: dig into this and do it's fair for this family.
25:18
Speaker 1: When you're emotionally involved with anyone, whether that's the victim
25:22
Speaker 1: or the perpetrator, it is hard to detach yourself, especially professionally,
25:28
Speaker 1: when you are being asked to offer an opinion.
25:32
Speaker 2: And therefore the whole town.
25:35
Speaker 1: Was impacted and in some way, shape or form.
25:39
Speaker 4: Then we get a call from the judge, local judge.
25:42
Speaker 4: He wants to meet with the coroner and the sheriff's office.
25:45
Speaker 4: So it's kind of like those two guys are getting
25:47
Speaker 4: called to the principal's office.
25:52
Speaker 2: After meeting with the judge, the coroner continued the investigation
25:57
Speaker 2: with the help of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Vision
26:00
Speaker 2: known as SLED.
26:04
Speaker 7: SLED is a.
26:04
Speaker 3: Multi jurisdictional investigative agency. So most places like Chester, who
26:11
Speaker 3: you know, we're small rural community. We don't have our
26:13
Speaker 3: own drug testing labs. We don't have a DNA testing lab.
26:17
Speaker 3: So whenever we have a complex case, then you want
26:20
Speaker 3: to bring in someone who has all of these individuals
26:24
Speaker 3: who have specialized training.
26:27
Speaker 2: SLED began by re examining the photos taking at Judy
26:31
Speaker 2: Orr's home where James Baldwin had told police she fell and.
26:36
Speaker 7: Hit her head.
26:39
Speaker 3: We basically went back through every little inch of every
26:42
Speaker 3: photo that was taken by that sheriff investigator to try
26:46
Speaker 3: to break things down. They tried to find the ladder,
26:49
Speaker 3: so he's saying, oh, I don't have the ladder anymore.
26:52
Speaker 7: I took it to this attorney.
26:53
Speaker 3: That I was going to have sue because it was
26:55
Speaker 3: a defective model of the ladder. We wanted to measure
27:00
Speaker 3: how high would Judy have been from the ground if
27:02
Speaker 3: she fell from the ladder and all of a sudden,
27:05
Speaker 3: he's just well, it's just I can't find it.
27:09
Speaker 2: The sled team also decided to examine the data from
27:13
Speaker 2: the jeeps internal control system, known as the black box.
27:18
Speaker 8: So the black box has been termed kind of referencing airplanes.
27:23
Speaker 8: The black box in a vehicle is designed to analyze
27:28
Speaker 8: certain components, certain data, and the sole purpose of it
27:32
Speaker 8: is to deploy airbags. It does give us a lot
27:36
Speaker 8: of information in regards to vehicle speed, breaking, acceleration, temperature,
27:42
Speaker 8: oh Domino reading.
27:45
Speaker 2: The black box data records any unexpected changes of speed
27:49
Speaker 2: that would occur in a car accident, which are recorded
27:52
Speaker 2: as events.
27:55
Speaker 8: There has to be a change in velocity for five
27:57
Speaker 8: miles an hour over a certain time frame, which I
28:00
Speaker 8: think was one hundred and fifty milliseconds for an event
28:03
Speaker 8: to even occur, and in this case there was no
28:07
Speaker 8: events recorded. If there was any speed involved.
28:14
Speaker 9: An event would have occurred.
28:16
Speaker 8: And when it told us nothing was on that module,
28:19
Speaker 8: to us, that was a red flag.
28:23
Speaker 2: The data from the black box, along with other evidence
28:26
Speaker 2: collected on the road, began to cast even more doubt
28:30
Speaker 2: on James Baldwin's story that he swerved to avoid an
28:34
Speaker 2: oncoming vehicle.
28:36
Speaker 8: There's no doubt that they were traveling down Old Richburg Road.
28:40
Speaker 8: We have high impressions where they ran off the right
28:42
Speaker 8: side of the road. But if somebody's traveling off the
28:45
Speaker 8: roadway at fifty five miles an hour, that there's going
28:48
Speaker 8: to be some tearing into that land that dirt, especially
28:54
Speaker 8: as soft as it was, and that was not the case.
28:58
Speaker 2: As well as showing James Baldwin was not driving fast
29:02
Speaker 2: on the road, the damage to the car suggested it
29:06
Speaker 2: was driven down the embankment at a very controlled slow speed.
29:12
Speaker 3: They were able to pull all of this data out
29:14
Speaker 3: of there to determine that he was not going that fast,
29:18
Speaker 3: that he never had an impact that would have caused
29:22
Speaker 3: the airbags to go off. That was immediately apparent to
29:25
Speaker 3: them if all this horrible accident, he runs off the road.
29:29
Speaker 7: So the black box ended up.
29:31
Speaker 3: Being super critical for highway patrol to basically say this
29:35
Speaker 3: was not an accident. I mean they felt comfortable saying
29:38
Speaker 3: it looked like it was a very intentional act by
29:42
Speaker 3: the driver to pull off the road and down into
29:45
Speaker 3: the ravine in a very slow manner.
29:49
Speaker 2: While SLID continued their investigation, James Baldwin moved out of
29:54
Speaker 2: Judy Orr's family home and in with his female friend,
29:57
Speaker 2: Terry King, and police had allowed to clean up the
30:02
Speaker 2: blood the night Judy died.
30:05
Speaker 3: Whenever we learned that Jamie Baldwin had moved in with
30:08
Speaker 3: Terry King, it was right after we started really really
30:12
Speaker 3: investigating the case with SLID, and Judy's family were pushing
30:15
Speaker 3: him to get out of the family home or getting out.
30:17
Speaker 7: Of Judy's home.
30:19
Speaker 3: So he moves in with Terry and at first I
30:21
Speaker 3: think he just used it as, oh, I have nowhere
30:24
Speaker 3: else to go, But of course I was thinking, obviously
30:28
Speaker 3: this is his girlfriend. Of course that's where he's going
30:30
Speaker 3: to go. But that's how he kind of played it
30:31
Speaker 3: to everybody else.
30:34
Speaker 2: After James Baldwin left the family home, SLED had an
30:38
Speaker 2: opportunity to re examine the potential crime scene.
30:42
Speaker 4: We were very fortunate in this case that we were
30:44
Speaker 4: able to go back to the family home after a
30:48
Speaker 4: year or so. Ms Baldwin's son had actually taken over
30:52
Speaker 4: the family home luckily he had not painted or any
30:56
Speaker 4: that thing. They found blood spatter over the top of
31:02
Speaker 4: the fireplace consistent with someone thrusting or hitting someone with
31:09
Speaker 4: something in blood flying off of the object, so.
31:13
Speaker 3: That shows that it was more of a blow or
31:15
Speaker 3: something of that movement that would have caused her blood
31:20
Speaker 3: to be that high. We had the DNA tested and
31:22
Speaker 3: it was her blood and there's no reason why four
31:25
Speaker 3: foot nine woman would have blood almost twelve feet up
31:28
Speaker 3: in the air.
31:31
Speaker 2: After finding forensic evidence that contradicted James Baldwin's story of
31:35
Speaker 2: Judy falling from a ladder, sled made another crucial discovery.
31:42
Speaker 3: One of the items that was very critical that was
31:45
Speaker 3: taken from the scene was a Santa stocking holder. It's
31:52
Speaker 3: one of these iron stocking holders, very heavy. We took
31:56
Speaker 3: that to our forensic pathologist, doctor Ross.
32:01
Speaker 4: When she saw it, she immediately said, that's it. We asked,
32:05
Speaker 4: you know, okay, he said, she fell off the ladder.
32:08
Speaker 4: Could she have fallen off the ladder and hit this,
32:11
Speaker 4: because it's a stockingholder, it would hang off the mantle
32:16
Speaker 4: and she said, absolutely not. This was blunt forced trauma.
32:19
Speaker 4: She was hit with this item.
32:24
Speaker 2: In June twenty seventeen, six months after Judy's death, police
32:29
Speaker 2: were called to the home of Terry King.
32:33
Speaker 3: I get a call from York County Sheriff's office telling
32:38
Speaker 3: me that Terry King's residents had burned out. I learned
32:45
Speaker 3: that there had been other problems going on between Terry
32:48
Speaker 3: and Jamie at that time. Terry had actually called the
32:51
Speaker 3: police after she told him to leave. Then a knife
32:55
Speaker 3: ends up stuck in her tree that actually had carved
32:59
Speaker 3: into it the letters bitch. She was terrified. She called
33:05
Speaker 3: the police. They came and took pictures of it. They
33:07
Speaker 3: suggested police put up some type of like a deer
33:11
Speaker 3: camera or a camera so we can see maybe who
33:13
Speaker 3: it is. She felt it was Jamie Baldwin, but of
33:16
Speaker 3: course she got to have proof. She did put up
33:19
Speaker 3: these deer cameras. She went out of town for a weekend.
33:23
Speaker 3: While she was gone, she gets a call that her
33:27
Speaker 3: house is on fire. They look at the camera. You
33:31
Speaker 3: can see a man coming into the property. Then he
33:35
Speaker 3: walks back out, gets in his vehicle and leaves. The
33:39
Speaker 3: house goes up in flames, and they were able to
33:43
Speaker 3: determine that this person was Shames Baldwin, so he was
33:48
Speaker 3: arrested for arson and fraud because he was going to
33:51
Speaker 3: try to sue the insurance company for his contents that
33:54
Speaker 3: were still inside of her home.
33:58
Speaker 10: It might experience in cases such as James Baldwin, people
34:03
Speaker 10: undertake small fords, whether that's an insurance ford or some
34:06
Speaker 10: other ford. They get away with it, they become bolder
34:10
Speaker 10: and they didn't undertake another ford, and so on. So
34:14
Speaker 10: when insurance companies are looking at paying out on claims,
34:19
Speaker 10: they will look at previous claims to see if there
34:22
Speaker 10: is actually a history and therefore where they need to
34:24
Speaker 10: go back and review previous claims.
34:28
Speaker 2: While James Baldwin was out on bond for second degree
34:31
Speaker 2: arson and burning personal property to defraud insurers, he was
34:37
Speaker 2: indicted for the murder of Judy or Baldwin.
34:41
Speaker 3: By that time, it was clear throughout the community that
34:46
Speaker 3: everyone believed that this was not an accident. As a
34:51
Speaker 3: matter of fact, because of other community involvement in Facebook
34:56
Speaker 3: and social media, we knew that we're probably going to
34:59
Speaker 3: have getting a jury pool that wasn't going to be
35:03
Speaker 3: biased in favor of Judy, So we actually had to
35:07
Speaker 3: change venue to another county so we could try the case.
35:20
Speaker 2: In October twenty nineteen, James Baldwin stood trial for the
35:24
Speaker 2: murder of his wife, Judy or Baldwin.
35:29
Speaker 9: We were there for every day of it.
35:30
Speaker 5: I know there were a lot of other media, TV
35:33
Speaker 5: and newspapers that were there. There was obviously a lot
35:35
Speaker 5: of interest in that case for a lot of reasons,
35:38
Speaker 5: Partly I think because people knew Judy, but also because
35:42
Speaker 5: the arrest took so long. The investigation felt like to
35:45
Speaker 5: a lot of people that dragged on for so long,
35:47
Speaker 5: longer than it should I have, so that kind of
35:50
Speaker 5: built a lot of intrigue.
35:53
Speaker 4: The thing I remember most is is the family Judy's friends.
35:57
Speaker 4: They showed up every day. It's his heartbreak breaking for them.
36:03
Speaker 5: The atmosphere was interesting because one side of the courtroom
36:08
Speaker 5: you have the family and friends of the victim, and
36:11
Speaker 5: then on the other side of the courtroom you have
36:13
Speaker 5: the family and friends of the accused.
36:15
Speaker 9: And I distinctly remember just being struck by the fact
36:18
Speaker 9: that the.
36:19
Speaker 5: Side where Judy's family and friends were sitting was filled,
36:23
Speaker 5: I believe to overflow, like they literally had to bring
36:26
Speaker 5: chairs in and sat it in the back of the
36:27
Speaker 5: courtroom to accommodate all of her friends and family that
36:30
Speaker 5: attended and they were there every day.
36:33
Speaker 9: I didn't attend a trial.
36:34
Speaker 8: There was a full gallery side of miss Judy every
36:39
Speaker 8: day of the trial. So again I think they goes
36:42
Speaker 8: back to what kind of person she was in what
36:45
Speaker 8: the community thought of.
36:46
Speaker 5: Her, and the most people I recall sitting on Jamie's side.
36:51
Speaker 9: Of the courtroom was one one person.
36:58
Speaker 2: After an intense eighteen month investigation, the prosecution knew they
37:03
Speaker 2: had to convince the jury that Judy's death was not
37:07
Speaker 2: an accident.
37:10
Speaker 3: Whenever you have a start of a case, it's an accident,
37:13
Speaker 3: and then you learn as you're going on with the
37:16
Speaker 3: evidence that an accident completely does not fit the scenario.
37:20
Speaker 3: Then you have to really take your time to make
37:22
Speaker 3: sure that you go back and explain away or explain
37:27
Speaker 3: to some extent why it was missed on the front end.
37:33
Speaker 5: But the most compelling part was when the SLID investigator
37:37
Speaker 5: was brought in and unveiled the findings of the black box.
37:41
Speaker 5: Jamie's story was she following I'm taking her to the
37:44
Speaker 5: hospital and they will run off the road by a
37:47
Speaker 5: truck and they swerved wildly and plowed down an embankment
37:51
Speaker 5: and hit something hard. But when SLID got the results
37:56
Speaker 5: from that black box. It demonstrated that the car came
37:59
Speaker 5: to a stop, it slowly turned and drove five miles
38:02
Speaker 5: an hour down the embankment, and at that point his
38:06
Speaker 5: story completely fell apart.
38:10
Speaker 2: For the prosecution, one of the most challenging aspects of
38:13
Speaker 2: the case was addressing the conflicting opinions of law enforcement.
38:20
Speaker 3: The worst part about the case for me was having
38:23
Speaker 3: to cross examine or treat hostily individuals who were typically
38:29
Speaker 3: on my side, but the bottom line is they didn't
38:32
Speaker 3: do their job. The worst part was having to ask
38:35
Speaker 3: that investigator, oh, you actually handed the girlfriend of mister
38:40
Speaker 3: Baldwin a card letting her know that this cleanup company
38:43
Speaker 3: will come and clean up the blood from the crime scene.
38:46
Speaker 7: That was not good. That was a moment where I
38:49
Speaker 7: could feel the jury beside me going what he did what?
38:53
Speaker 7: It was just kind of a very uncomfortable moment.
38:57
Speaker 2: The relationship between James and Terry King was a key
39:01
Speaker 2: argument for the prosecution.
39:04
Speaker 7: That was very important.
39:05
Speaker 4: I think it leads us to motive, although there's several
39:09
Speaker 4: other things that lead us to motive, but somebody who's
39:13
Speaker 4: got a girlfriend and is in a marriage, that becomes
39:16
Speaker 4: an automatic issue.
39:20
Speaker 3: The relationship between James Baldwin and Terry King was a
39:23
Speaker 3: really big piece of our case because it showed the
39:28
Speaker 3: intentions of the defendant and why he would have wanted
39:34
Speaker 3: Judy gone, So it was a big motive. Also, the money,
39:41
Speaker 3: the twenty five thousand dollars insurance policy was a key
39:45
Speaker 3: argument for the prosecution.
39:48
Speaker 5: I definitely remember the act only insurance policy that was
39:52
Speaker 5: taken out before Judy's murder that was prominently mentioned during
39:57
Speaker 5: lead your trial as a possible motive.
40:01
Speaker 3: You know, you think of twenty five thousand, you're like, wow,
40:03
Speaker 3: you know, that's not a whole lot. But for someone
40:06
Speaker 3: like Jamie, who at the time was getting ready to
40:09
Speaker 3: possibly be out on the street without a house, without
40:12
Speaker 3: a motorcycle because everything had been bought for him by Judy,
40:17
Speaker 3: any money was going to be critical to him.
40:22
Speaker 2: The prosecution argued, control was another key factor in the case.
40:28
Speaker 3: James Baldwin was definitely someone who always wanted control. Judy
40:32
Speaker 3: was someone who he was able to manipulate and control
40:35
Speaker 3: from the beginning. Because it had been years since she
40:37
Speaker 3: had been in a relationship, she desperately wanted to have
40:41
Speaker 3: someone who loved her and that she could spend the
40:44
Speaker 3: rest of her days with She actually confronted Jamie about
40:49
Speaker 3: this friendship he was having with Terry King and told
40:53
Speaker 3: him absolutely this has to stop.
40:57
Speaker 7: And if not, then you're gonna have to leave.
41:02
Speaker 3: And we believe that's what probably led to the huge
41:06
Speaker 3: argument that happened on the night that she ended up dying,
41:09
Speaker 3: was he wanted to go to Kentucky. She did not
41:12
Speaker 3: want him to go, and she knew Terry King was going,
41:16
Speaker 3: So we believe that's whenever Jamie felt he was losing control,
41:20
Speaker 3: Judy was finally standing up for herself and she wasn't
41:22
Speaker 3: going to let it happen, and that's whenever the argument
41:26
Speaker 3: and her eventual death took place.
41:32
Speaker 1: James Baldwin wanted to have it all. He wanted his wife,
41:35
Speaker 1: he wanted a girlfriend, and when those things were threatened,
41:40
Speaker 1: he was unwilling to lose it. So he used whatever
41:47
Speaker 1: means necessary to get what he wanted so that he
41:50
Speaker 1: could stay stable, unsustained.
41:55
Speaker 4: I think he felt like that was all his life
41:57
Speaker 4: as he knew it was getting ready to change because
42:00
Speaker 4: Judy wasn't gonna put up with that. She wasn't going
42:02
Speaker 4: to allow him to live in her house and have
42:07
Speaker 4: a motorcycle and all the stuff that she's buying him
42:10
Speaker 4: and have a girlfriend, so he was going to have
42:13
Speaker 4: to make some changes. He kind of saw his golden
42:16
Speaker 4: egg going away, so to speak.
42:20
Speaker 2: On November fifth, twenty nineteen, after a week long trial,
42:25
Speaker 2: the jury retired to consider their verdict.
42:29
Speaker 4: It's always nerve wracking. That's something that you never get
42:31
Speaker 4: used to. You're sitting there and you look at the
42:34
Speaker 4: family and they're on pins and needles waiting to hear
42:37
Speaker 4: She really got to think about what the family's going
42:40
Speaker 4: through and what they're thinking during that time, because we
42:44
Speaker 4: know it could go either way.
42:47
Speaker 7: I was so nervous because you just never know what
42:49
Speaker 7: a jury's going to do.
42:53
Speaker 2: When the jury returned, James Baldwin was found guilty of
42:59
Speaker 2: the murder of Judy or Baldwin.
43:04
Speaker 7: We all break down. We could hear them crying behind us.
43:08
Speaker 3: Tears came to my eyes from just overwhelming emotion and
43:13
Speaker 3: also just feeling like it was the right thing.
43:16
Speaker 7: It was definitely the right verdict.
43:20
Speaker 4: I don't think he really reacted a whole lot. There
43:24
Speaker 4: was a lot of relief from Judy's family and finally
43:30
Speaker 4: it's over and we can breathe.
43:34
Speaker 8: I think back now like, I'm just so grateful and
43:36
Speaker 8: thankful for miss Judy's sake and her family's sake that
43:41
Speaker 8: I went straight to the hospital was able to get
43:43
Speaker 8: that statement, lock him down in what his events were,
43:47
Speaker 8: what he was saying happened that night. I think that
43:50
Speaker 8: help in the court proceedings during his trial in ultimately
43:54
Speaker 8: with him being found guilty for her death.
43:59
Speaker 2: James Baldwin's exploitation of Judy for financial gain, which eventually
44:04
Speaker 2: resulted in her murder, led to him being sentenced to
44:08
Speaker 2: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
44:13
Speaker 7: Greed was a.
44:13
Speaker 3: Huge motivation for him, and it was something that had
44:17
Speaker 3: driven him for a long time, and so when you
44:21
Speaker 3: look at his decision that night to take Judy out
44:25
Speaker 3: of the equation, he clearly was thinking about the fact
44:29
Speaker 3: that this is going to put me in a situation
44:31
Speaker 3: where I'm going to be set. He was going to
44:34
Speaker 3: have the house, he was going to keep his bike,
44:40
Speaker 3: he was going to get twenty five thousand dollars, and
44:44
Speaker 3: he was going to have his girlfriend.
44:49
Speaker 1: James has always been in a position of powace, so
44:52
Speaker 1: to have been confronted by Judy would have represented.
44:57
Speaker 7: A level of threat for him. He stood to.
45:00
Speaker 1: Lose everything, everything that he'd managed to gain within the relationship,
45:04
Speaker 1: which wasn't his.
45:06
Speaker 7: It was her.
45:07
Speaker 1: House, her finances, and so he stood a lot to lose.
45:13
Speaker 1: He wanted to have it all his way.
45:17
Speaker 5: I think you actually go beyond greed when you're willing
45:19
Speaker 5: to kill somebody to collect money, especially a person that
45:22
Speaker 5: you purport to love and take care of. I think
45:24
Speaker 5: you've actually gone beyond greed at that point, and you've
45:28
Speaker 5: veered into either being manly, unwell or evil.
45:35
Speaker 2: The murder of Judy or Baldwin by her husband, James
45:38
Speaker 2: Baldwin was not only devastating for Judy's family, but a
45:43
Speaker 2: traumatic experience for the people of Chester.
45:48
Speaker 3: Whenever I've looked back on this case, I'll be honest,
45:51
Speaker 3: Initially I was shocked. I was like, what have I
45:52
Speaker 3: gotten myself into coming to Chester Dawny, because I was
45:56
Speaker 3: completely blorn away by the fact that the share of
45:59
Speaker 3: him the corner or having these issues.
46:04
Speaker 5: Not every deputy solicitor like Candice Lively, and not every
46:09
Speaker 5: corner like Terry Tanker, would have been willing to buck
46:12
Speaker 5: the system a little bit because they thought there was
46:14
Speaker 5: more going on there than they were being told there
46:17
Speaker 5: was more to the story than what was written on
46:20
Speaker 5: incident reports.
46:21
Speaker 9: They knew that there.
46:22
Speaker 5: Was something else going on, and that they didn't just
46:25
Speaker 5: accept the pad answer and say, Okay, well he's not
46:28
Speaker 5: guilty or it was an accident or whatever.
46:32
Speaker 4: So you know, I'm a firm believer everything happens for
46:35
Speaker 4: a reason. So have we not had a corner and
46:38
Speaker 4: a sheriff pumping heads, and have we not called and slid,
46:42
Speaker 4: We may have never known what really happened to you.
47:15
Speaker 6: In books,