Latest / Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment) / Typical Tuesday: Kidnapping, Hostage and Ransom...Kristi's Story

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Typical Tuesday: Kidnapping, Hostage and Ransom...Kristi's Story · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:25
  Speaker 1: are you looking for that last-minute Christmas gift?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Are you a day late and a dollar short?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Well do, I have a deal for you.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Your kids are guaranteed to love it and that is with my chemistry set.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: You can get your kids my chemistry set right now.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: That is called my First Meth Lab and that is a nice little kit that you can actually start a family business.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Picture this your kid making meth, selling it on the streets, and you get a dentist degree.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: All of his clients become your customers.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: So let's get out there.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Let's buy your kid the my First Meth Lab right now, for a very limited time.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: If you buy one, you get one free.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: That's right, folks, buy one, get one free.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Myfirstmethlab available at all your local retailers.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure where that came from.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: That was really just trying to test the levels on the mics, but I'm going to leave it in there, because why not?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So, you guys, this is the Murders to Music podcast.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: My name is Aaron, I'm your host and thank you guys so much for coming back for another week.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: If you guys didn't catch last week's episode, episode number 30, stripper to Strength, you've got to check it out.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: So we had a guest on the show, cassie.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Cassie spent some time in her younger years working in the sex industry.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: She was a stripper, she was a dancer and then through that time there was a lot of lessons learned for her.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: A marriage came, marriage went, kids came, and you can hear that transition and she tells you all the details between what she was doing as a stripper to what she's doing now.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Now she's a mom, she's a wife of 13 years, she is an autopsy technician and, yes, that means all the stuff you would imagine that autopsy is all about.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: She's like literally elbow deep in it Talks about all of those things on the show.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Check it out from Stripper to Strength, episode number 30.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Before we get going on this week's show, I want to share just two things that occurred over this past week.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Back in an episode where I spoke about the cartel and the cartel investigation that I did, I mentioned my coworker and my coworker at the time was the co-lead on that case and you know, when I recorded that interview, he and I were not necessarily seeing eye to eye.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't really care for him, he didn't really care for me and we.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I speak about that in the episode.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: However, this past week I received a random text message from him and I haven't spoken to him in three years.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Here's what it says hey man, I'm working graves these days and I've been doing a down and dirty officer-involved shooting roll call training, where I kind of talk about the process, what to expect, what to go through, and I show the PowerPoint that was made for us for our grand jury.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I'll pause there and tell you this officer was involved in an officer-involved shooting that I investigated.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: He goes on to say I just wanted to say thank you for that night.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: You came up to Graves' roll call and gave the overview of the case and told everyone that me and my partner did a good job.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: It meant the world to me at a very weird time.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I know we butted heads a few times, but you taught me a ton of shit and I probably wouldn't be where I am now without that.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I've heard you're doing well, but I wanted to wish you the best.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I hope that your work life and family life balance has evened out and you guys have a Merry Christmas with you and your family.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I thought that was super cool.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So to get that and he and I had a very contentious relationship, but to get that message from him out of the blue literally water under the bridge all our past I sent him back a nice text message and basically you know that restored that relationship.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you're listening, I don't know if you have that heartache or that hang up that's out there.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: But if you do, man, we are not guaranteed another tomorrow.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Working in the homicide industry for so long, we're definitely not guaranteed another tomorrow and every single day somebody is getting a phone call that the loved one's not coming home or their friend or family member is no longer with us.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Make those amends where you can Make up those relationships, make up lost time.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Another former co-worker from years ago reached out and said hey, brother, I listened to a couple of your podcasts last night.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: It's very good.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Look forward to listening to some more.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I always felt like I was the only one having mental health difficulties, which makes it even tougher.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I was the same way in which that before it began with me, I didn't believe in the mental health mumbo jumbo.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I'm thankful for it now that I understand it.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure thankful is the right word, but you understand what I mean.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I would probably never wish it upon anybody, but keep up what you're doing.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: It will help others that also think they are alone.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Just a reminder that you guys are not alone out there.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: No matter what world you're in law enforcement, or a plumber, or a dentist, or a doctor, or serving up fries at McDonald's, you're never alone, never alone.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: So recently, during the last I don't know two years, I have been seeing somebody for some vocational training, and I'm eligible for it.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: The gal that I'm seeing is a counselor like, imagine, your college counselor but helps people that come out of the workforce, need to be retrained and put back into the workforce, and I've been.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I've been required to see her and go talk to her.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: So I have been.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: But I'll tell you guys, this is really, really frustrating because, um, you know, when I talked to her, she's like oh, you were a cop.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, you're probably never going to make any more money than you're making right now at your current job and you don't have a lot of skills.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So, you know, just stick with it.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you were to go into the workforce, you'd probably only make you know half of what you're making now, because all you are is a cop and you just don't, you know, have any skills and it is so degrading to hear that.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: It is so marginalizing because we have so many skills that it takes in the real world.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And I told that to her.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Finally, after the third or fourth time that she was putting me down, you know, I said basically I don't want to work with you anymore.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I feel like I've got no hope or no future with you and because you feel like I'm just a dumb cop, you feel like all I do is write traffic tickets or you know, I don't know what you're imagining on a cop and this is probably a 65 year old lady, 70 year old lady.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I said I don't know what you're imagining cops do, but I was able to take nothing, absolutely nothing, and make heads and tails out of it and paint a picture and prosecute people.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: You find a soda bottle in the middle of the street.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: You have no idea how that got there.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: It was my job to take that soda bottle, backtrack it to the person who littered the car.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: They were in the gas station they got gas at where they purchased it, the credit card they used.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: How long they've had that account?
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Where they grew up their mom and dad's names.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: It was my job to backtrack that and she just didn't get it or doesn't understand it, so it was super frustrating.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: The whole reason I tell you that is I'm going to start some episodes and some recordings that I'm going to call typical Tuesdays, and a typical Tuesday episode just so you know when you see it in the title is going to be an episode where I talk about a case or I talk about something that we did, and it will demonstrate and highlight police work.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: There will be a connection in there that somebody can get something from.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: It's not just story time or war stories, but it's something that I think everybody should understand.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: This is what really happens behind closed doors.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: This is what your people are doing every day, so there's a more of an understanding as to what cops really do.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: So here we go, I'm gonna tell you about this story.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: So this case came out, guys, in 2015.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: In 2015, I was working as a detective and I was assigned to the major crimes team.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: It was seven o'clock or so on a Friday night.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I had already worked a full 40 hour shift.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: We had an active homicide going that I was leading and I got home on that Friday night got home about six o'clock and at about seven o'clock the phone rings and when the phone rang it was my sergeant and he says hey, we've had a kidnapping and abduction and there's some ransom and we need you to come in and help investigate this or lead this case.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So with that, we've all seen the television movies, right, or the movies or the TV shows where there's the hostage and there's the ransom and you find the people, there's a ticking time bomb and they have to have this solved by a certain amount of time or the person gets killed.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: So these are not cases that we got all the time, but when you apply the investigative techniques to them that we implied to all of our other cases, you know you just again, like that soda bottle, you pick it up, you figure out where it came from, where it was sold, and you just kind of backtrack and before you know it you're holding the answer in your hand and it's right there in front of you.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: So I went into the police department that night.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I got there about 7.40 pm or so.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: It's a Friday night, granted, I had already worked all week long.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I had already worked all week on this murder and I am now taking on this brand new investigation.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: At 7.40 or so on a Friday night in July of 2015.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: When I got to the police department, I spoke to one of the patrol officers and he said hey, he said at about 2.30 this afternoon, a dad comes in and says that his daughter is missing and she's not responding to her phone calls or text messages.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: He says that this is father no-transcript and that she is dependent on medication.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: So we're looking for somebody who's living a vulnerable lifestyle, who is out and about in the community, and our first concern, or his first concern, that officer's first concern, was we have a missing person out there that may need medication, may need medical assistance, et cetera, but she lives this high-risk lifestyle, you know, and we can't pick our victims right.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: We can't always have the Sunday school teacher is the one that's getting, you know, raped, abused or kidnapped.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes our victims put themselves into a lifestyle and that is just the way it is, and because they put themselves in that lifestyle, they find themselves to be in the victim role more often than maybe the normal, average everyday person.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So that is the first thing that this officer takes is this missing person report.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Well, within a couple hours of the missing person report, the father comes back and says hey, I received this message and it said this hello Daniel's family, I have your daughter's phone.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I have your daughter.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: For everyone's sake and for her sake.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: The truth has hopefully passed through her lips.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Do not act irrationally quickly or without thinking first.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I am serious and this is not a joke.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: If the police have been contacted, make no further contact with them, file no reports, no reports of threats, and if you do, she will pay dearly.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I have her.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I know the truth and there's truth in what I'm saying.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: If you comply, she will be free to go.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: If we find out you have lied or she has lied, betrayed, deceived or snitched, it will be up to her to pay immensely.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: So that is the message that the family received hours after filing this initial missing person report.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Well, by the time this comes in, it's about 4.30 or 5 pm and that initial police officer, he went and he tried to do what's called an exigent ping, which means we ask our dispatch center to track and locate a phone.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: So in this case he asked for that ping to be on the victim's phone, but he learned that the victim's phone was off and there was no service to it, so there would be no way to track for the victim's phone.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: It was unable to track the message that came in because it was used through a third-party app called TextNow.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: So it's a messaging app that is text now.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: So it's a messaging app that is virtually untraceable in the common ways that we would think by pinging it or what have you, because it's sent over wifi and it's a messaging app.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: So we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to trying to find this person right.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: So they do a little bit more investigative legwork and then ultimately call a sergeant around 6 pm.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Sergeant calls me at 7 and I go in at 740 and I lead this investigation.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: We judge people and when I was talking to that initial officer that took the initial report, I'm like, hey, so what's the take on this?
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: You know, is this a dad killed his daughter and he's filing some missing person fake report?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Is this a bunch of crazy people?
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: And the dude's, like the officer's, like no, you know, dad's pretty squared away.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I don't get any bad reads from him.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Um, he's genuinely concerned about his daughter.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: In fact, he brought in mom and he brought in the brother and the brother also received the same threatening message.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Um, you know this point.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: There's been no ransom demands, but that's what they're alluding to in some of these messages and the family seems pretty legit.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I'm like, all right.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Well, it's always the weird ones, the weird fact sets that take off right, and that's the way this case went.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So I started the investigation and I start taking a look at the victimology and I'm like who is our victim?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: So we got to dig into that because that'll tell us our victim's lifestyle and it'll tell us maybe some potential contacts that she might be with.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe she's pissed somebody off, maybe there is a reason why somebody is trying to kidnap her or hold her for ransom.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Is she involved in drugs?
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: If she's a prostitute, is she involved in a drug world?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Who is her pimp, et cetera.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So I dig into this young lady and her name's Christy.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: So I dig into Christy's background and I find that, yep, she's got known prostitution.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: She's got these known circle of friends that are all kind of shitheads.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I dig into those people and find some addresses.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I start calling in detectives.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: By the time this was over, we spent 34 hours investigating this.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Before we solved it.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I had 19 different police agencies involved and 45 detectives were on the ground working for 34 hours straight.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: That is the resources that we put into this case.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: So I start calling in detectives and it's my job to lead the investigation and use my training experience to eliminate the most probative leads first, and then we can work down to the more stupid stuff.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So get the low-hanging fruit right.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So we start sending detectives out to these different addresses and locations, looking for the victim, looking for any evidence, and we're coming up short.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, in the background, I have our dispatch center continuing to ping the phone and we're not getting a whole lot of results.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Every now and then we'll get a ping and the ping will show that it's out by the Sandy River, or an hour later it's in the heart of Portland River, or an hour later it's in the heart of Portland, or an hour later it's in Mount Hood.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So these pings are all over the place and that inconsistent pings.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: It's really hard for us to locate the phone because the ping says it's within 1.92 miles of this area.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: It could be in any direction.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: So now all of a sudden you got a four mile circle.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: This person could be in and it.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: So now all of a sudden, you got a four mile circle.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: This person could be in and it's really really hard to search those areas and track them down.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: And you got to understand at this point.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: It's getting dark, it's getting late and it's harder to see things.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So as we continue searching and developing this case, all of our leads are coming up dry.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: We're getting nowhere.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: The family's continuing to get messages.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: We have your daughter stand by your phone, don't contact the police, we will be in touch with our demands.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: So they're getting these messages and the family is upset.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Obviously they're up all night long.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: They're up all night long.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: We're up all night long investigating this.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Out of those 19 agencies, we had Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, gresham Police Department, portland Police Department, clackamas County Sheriff's Office, our major crimes team was activated.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: We had FBI, we had DEA, we had all kinds of people involved in this, and some of those agencies have some super secret shit that they can do to locate cell phones and locate people.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: So we turned those specialists onto all that we had, which was very, very little, and they came up dry.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: By this time it's the middle of the morning.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: So we're really not having any luck.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: We continue looking, we continue talking to families.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: We bring the family back in for questioning because now we start to think, well, maybe is this a murder, is this a murder cover-up, is this something that is sinister, that doesn't meet the eye?
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: So we bring the family in, we search all their phones, based on consent, we do an in-depth interview with every family member.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: We go out on the street, we start taking people off the street that are friends of the victim and we bring them in.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: We interview them.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: We go back, we search the family's house.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: We search their surrounding property, we search their outsheds, we search their vehicles.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: We go to extended family.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: We're searching their houses.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: We're looking for blood.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: We're looking for a crime scene.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: We're looking for some explanation as to what this is.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: We start thinking is there a potential that the family's involved and these messages are just some way to cover up and further their scheme to defraud or their deceptive behavior?
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: So as we get into this, we again are continuing to get nowhere.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: But the threatening messages are continuing to come in and they still are not putting a dollar amount on it, but they're giving the family directions and telling them what they need them to do and they'll be there watching.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: So this is totally like your television show that you've seen.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: This is totally like the movie that you've seen, where we're talking about hostages.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Now we have a victim out there somewhere in the Portland metropolitan area that is being held captive against her will.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Likely, in those circumstances, there is a torture or there is some kind of pain element that's involved.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Besides that, she's mentally ill, she's off her medication, doesn't have her meds with her and lives a high-risk lifestyle.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: So these are all things that we're considering as we continue this investigation.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: You know, and I think it's super important to mention at this point, see back in 2011,.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I was involved on December 23rd.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: I was involved in a fight that was occurring in the city of Gresham.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: When we arrived on scene in this fight, there was a bad guy who had two butcher knives and he is swinging them around trying to stab people who are within an arm's reach of him.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: There was three of us on scene that night.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: All three of us brought our guns up and all three of us were trying to kill the bad guy and we couldn't get a shot off because of our close proximity and the other people who were around us.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: But all three of us were trying to eliminate that threat.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Now we ended up taking him to jail that night because he ended up dropping the knife.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: So we took him to jail.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: But about a week and a half later Portland Police Department stopped a car on Powell Boulevard and they heard some noises in the back of this van and when they opened up the back of the van, the guy they stopped the back of the van uh, this the guy they stopped, the driver was our dude from the, from the almost shooting you know earlier, when they opened up the back of the van, this guy had his girlfriend back there duct taped to a chair.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Face was duct taped.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: He had her kidnapped, hostage and was likely going to go kill her.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: In the back of my mind, this is what I have to remember, this is what I'm calling from and the memories that I'm calling from, and this is what I'm envisioning as we're putting all of our efforts into this case.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: By this time it is 10, 11 o'clock the next day.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: So we've all worked 40 hours.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: We all went home for an hour.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: We've come back from 7 pm and it's now 11 o'clock in the morning the following day.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: So 11 o'clock on Saturday.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: So when I interviewed the dad, this is what he tells me.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: He says it's Thursday night at 11 pm.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: My daughter says she needs to go to a meeting at a restaurant in Gresham.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I drop her off at a plaid pantry parking lot and she is going to go to a meeting in the back room of this restaurant.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: That's there, he says I think it's a little bit weird and I drop her off and I leave.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: He said, and within about 10 minutes I realized that the restaurant looked closed.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: There was no cars in the parking lot.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Something doesn't seem right.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: He says so I doubled back and she was gone.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: He says I searched for about half an hour 45 minutes and I absolutely couldn't find her anywhere.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: He said so then I went home and I was texting with her and she was texting.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: He said at about two 30 in the morning she said I'm here and he heard some noises outside and thought that it was her sleeping in their RV which was parked alongside the house.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: He says that in the morning he got up and he realized that the RV had not been slept in and that his daughter was nowhere to be found.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: He said it's then that he began to text her and try to call her and wasn't getting any response.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: And then at about you know, two o'clock in the afternoon two 30 is when he came to the police department to report it.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: So, taking his story, we went back and we took a look at all the video surveillance from the plaid pantry and sure enough, we cooperated his story.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: He dropped her off about 11 o'clock or so.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: She he drives away, she immediately walks away, he comes back, searches for half an hour, drives away, and that's what we got right.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: So she wasn't seen with anybody, she was by herself, she just walked off towards the West.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: So that is what we're working with.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: When I go to dad, when we interview the everybody else, they all kind of have, you know a, she's got some mental health issues, she's on drugs, she's a prostitute.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: We don't have a lot to do with her, uh, but I'm really worried about her cause.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I hope she's okay.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: She lives a high risk lifestyle.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: That's what we're getting.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: We learned that she's a dancer.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: So we went to the club where she dances.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: We interviewed all of her people, all of her other fellow dancers, and none of them knew anything about it.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: They didn't know what we were talking about With very little to go on.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: We started taking a look at that TextNow app Remember, that's the app that all these things are coming in on.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: So by this time there's people there in their law enforcement compliance center.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: So we get a hold of them and we're like, hey, this is what we have.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: We have an exigent circumstance.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: We have a missing person who is a hostage and likely in danger.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Can you help us out?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: They were able to provide us with the IP address where these messages were sent from.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: So, using the IP address, we were able to work backwards, just like that soda bottle, and we're able to identify who the service provider was ISP, the internet service provider.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: From there, we were able to identify what the person's name was.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: From there, we were able to identify an address where this IP address was located and we noticed that all of the threatening messages were coming from the same IP address.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: So now we have an address, a physical address, where our hostage is being held.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: So we contact the Portland Police Department SWAT team and we say, hey, we've got this situation going on.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Can you come in for a consult?
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: So we brought them in for a consult.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, part of those 45 officers were dispatched to that house in a plainclothes element to do surveillance and just get data and do some reconnaissance on the house.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: We had another team of detectives who were researching everybody ever associated with that house, doing criminal histories on them, getting pictures of them, getting workups, getting their associates, getting their associates criminal histories and workups because we're trying to put this piece together.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: If you ever watched Chicago PD and they got that bulletin board with the strings attached, that's basically what we're trying to put this piece together.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: If you ever watch Chicago PD and they got that bulletin board with the strings attached, that's basically what we're doing right now.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: So we're putting this entire thing together, we're taking a look.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: So we've got multiple elements happening.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: We have a surveillance element, we have an intelligence element that's digging into it, we have a SWAT element and we have a crime scene element that's preparing to go in and process this crime scene of this hostage situation.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, we have the parents that are continually calling us because they're worried and they want nothing to do with our concern, which we totally get because we're parents too.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: All the cops involved in this are parents or have loved ones, and we want to get to the bottom of this, just as bad as they do.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So we have these multiple elements that are out there.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: At the same time, when we talked to the Portland police, we learned that there's infants that potentially live in that house and Portland police department didn't want to do anything with it.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: They're like you know what?
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: The risk is too high.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: We don't want to go in and do this.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: We're choosing to bow out.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: The Gresham SWAT team can do it.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: So we were able to gather the Gresham SWAT team East it.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: So we were able to gather the Gresham SWAT team East Metro County SWAT team and we went out to the house to serve the search warrants on this house.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: And if you're a cop and you're you know why did they get search warrants?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: We could have done it under exigency.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: I totally understand the exceptions to a search warrant.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: We could have done it under exigency, saying that there's likely a person in this house being held against their will in harm's way and we can go and boot the door for them.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: However, in this case, we had already written multiple search warrants, so it was very, very easy and we were actively on the phone with the judge when we got this information.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: So we just did a telephonic addendum, meaning I call the judge and I'm like, well, I'm talking to the judge.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, this is what we got that just came in.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Can we go boot a door?
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, no problem.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: So we all roll over to this house, right, and this house is in the heart of Portland and it's in kind of a seedy neighborhood.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: We go up on the house and at first we have our undercover units that are all around watching surveillance.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: We got this house covered 360 degrees.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: They have no idea that we're there.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: They have no idea that we're there.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And then it's time to make our presence known.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: So we pull up to the front of the house with a Bearcat, which is a big armored vehicle, lots of lights, sirens, and it absolutely means we're there to take care of business.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: There's about 25 or 30 cops all dressed in raid gear and we're standing by with the SWAT team and we're outside the house.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So in this situation not like the TV, where we're going to boot the door and go in we are going to call people out to us.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: So we do.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: It's called the surrounding call out.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: So in this case we start making announcements inside the inside the house, through the loud speaker, through our PA address system, public address system, and, before you know it, we get some compliance and a guy comes to the door, he comes out to me, I take him into custody and I walk him back and start interviewing him and I said hey, here's the deal.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: We're here for Christie.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Uh, can you tell me who's inside the house?
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: He's like yeah, there's one girl inside the house.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Where is she at?
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: She's in the garage.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: What is she doing?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Hanging out.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Well, this is what we've got.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: We were told there's a hostage situation.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: We were told that she's being held against her will and we've been receiving threatening messages from somebody at this house saying that, uh, they're her captives, they're her captors and they are making some demands.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: He says I don't know what you're talking about.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: We've been here all afternoon and I know nothing about this.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: So this, uh, we continue to call into the house and Christie comes out.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: So we bring her out and we talk to her and we go in and search the house and there's nobody else there.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: And we go in and search the house and there's nobody else there.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: There's no chair wrapped with duct tape.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: There's no chains, there's no nothing.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: There's no guns, there's no weapons, there's no signs of injury or assault or hostage situations or anything.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: So everybody comes back to the police department and we go back and we interview Christy and Christy first says I don't know what you're talking about.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Then she says somebody else had my phone today and they must've sent some messages.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Then she says all right, it was me.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: She said I was mad at my family and I wanted to scare them.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: So I sent all these messages and told them that I was being held hostage and I was going to make demands.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: But I never really made any demands, but it was all just kind of a hoax to get attention from my family and see how much they loved me.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: So by this time we're in this 32 hours straight.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Everybody is exhausted.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: There's been a huge waste of resources and energy spent on this case, all for a hoax.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: How frustrating, how frustrating.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day she walked away without any charges and you think we could be able to charge her for wasting our time.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: We didn't because of her mental health situation.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: The parents were pissed off because they said that their daughter is crazy and she is not welcoming their lives or home anymore the people that she was with at the house in Portland, those people that we like blew up their front door.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Those people said we just met her, uh, the other night, two nights ago, and she seemed really nice.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: We brought her home and she's been hanging out here playing video games and hanging out and talking and, you know, chilling with the family.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: And, uh, if they're going to pick up a stranger, like they would pick up a stray cat, I'm going to question their, their mental health themselves, like you know, their judgment and reasoning and decision-making skills.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: But that's another story.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: So they're like hey, we just picked her up like a stray cat.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: She came home, she's been hanging, living in the garage, you know, and that's what we've been doing.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: So, with all of that, this is a total hoax and it's been a ton of wasted time and resources.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Why do I tell this story?
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Because this is a typical Tuesday.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: This is like what we did all the time.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it panned out, sometimes it didn't.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: No matter how outlandish or crazy the story, we have to put the full investigation into it and, you know, sometimes we rescue people and we save people and other times we find out.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: It's been a colossal waste of time.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: This is the stuff that kept me away from my family.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: This is the stuff where the adrenaline spikes and you're living in the red all the time.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: This is the stuff where that sympathetic nervous system is firing, firing, firing for 34 hours straight after an entire 40-hour work week.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: This is a lot of energy expended on a complete hoax.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: It's a typical Tuesday.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: So for that vocational educator, trainer, counselor who thinks that I'm dumb and that I can't do anything else except bumble my way along, drag my knuckles, maybe write a traffic ticket and blow a whistle at an intersection, give me a break.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: There is so much more going on in our worlds and we're so much more valuable as a detective, a high-speed detective unit.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, that's a typical Tuesday for us.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: That is just the work that we do every day and I wanted to share that story with you guys.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: It's one of a few hostage cases that I worked in my career, and this one turned out that everybody was okay and obviously she's a mental health patient and that's what we get to work with.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Again, like I said earlier, we don't get to pick our victims.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the show coming up next week.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you the details, but I am going to tell you it's a pretty freaking rad show.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: And this show is cool because the guest I'm going to have on it is a retired Alaska State Trooper.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Guest I'm going to have on it is a retired Alaska state trooper.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: He retired probably in the late eighties, but they don't make cops like that anymore.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: This guy is 100% badass, even at his 75 or 80 year old age.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Whatever he is right now.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: He has a fricking stud and he's going to tell you all about a shooting that he was involved in and it's a well-known, well-documented shooting that he was involved in on a serial killer.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: He's going to tell you about that.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: He's going to tell you about his time in Fallujah, tell you about a time in Vietnam.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: He's going to tell you about the losses.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: But the most coolest thing about it is you've got this 80-year-old guy, 75-year-old guy, who is going to talk to you about PTSD, pts.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: And for somebody of his age, of that generation, to talk about PTS and to even acknowledge its existence is such a huge cultural shift.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Because the defense mechanism during his era was I'm okay, it's all right, let's just move on.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: You shoved it down into a box.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: I'm okay, I'm good, let's go.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: And after seeing war and seeing he's going to talk about he won four different gunfights as an Alaska state trooper.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: He's going to talk about those things and talk about the loss of experience, but he's also going to talk about the impact that it's had on his life and how PTS is such an important role.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: No matter where you are in this world, whether you're a cop, whether you are a plumber just like I've always said no matter what your role is, what your career path is, or whether you're a stay-at-home mother or father, pts is real.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Trauma is nothing more than your body's response and relationship to a set of circumstances or experiences that you've encountered or it's been encountered around you.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: So I can't wait to have him on the show.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: It's going to be pretty awesome and I'm super excited about his generation.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Such a badass dude talking about feelings, feelings that's what we're going to talk about.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for sticking around.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: I hope you liked the typical Tuesday.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: That's just the way we did our job.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, that is the Murders to Music podcast.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you.