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The Juniper Needle - DNA Proof in the Mongshi Ji Case · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In October 2019, a murderer made what he thought was
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: a perfectly calculated escape.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: He had disposed of all the evidence. He had crafted
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: this whole narrative. And he really believed he had completely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: vanished into just the noise of everyday life.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Which is what they all think, honestly.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But what he didn't know, what he couldn't possibly
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: have realized in that exact moment, was that the mud
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: on his boots contained the microscopic memory of of a single,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: highly specific juniper tree.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: It's wild to even think about.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: It really is. So if you're joining us today, you
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: are about to go on a fascinating journey into the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: absolute blind spots of the criminal mind. Our mission for
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: today's deep dive is exploring the hidden, inescapable trails of
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: evidence that killers leave behind.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: The invisible witnesses, basically.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: We have this stack of true crime source material detailing
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: three distinct cases, and we're going to extract the most
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: mind-bending investigative breakthroughs from them. Today, we aren't talking about
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: eyewitnesses who take the stand and point a finger.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: No, we are talking about the silent ecosystem that watches
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: everything we do.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Which is a terrifying reality for anyone who thinks they
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: can outsmart modern justice.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: It really is. I mean, perpetrators almost by definition suffer
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: from this profound narcissism. They believe they're the exception to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: the rule, you know. Right.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Like the rules don't apply to them?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are so convinced that their intellect or their
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: planning will allow them to just erase their tracks. But
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: the underlying scientific realities dictate something entirely different.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Because science doesn't really care about your alibi.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't. There's this foundational concept in forensic science
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: called Locard Exchange Principle. It basically states that every contact
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: leaves a trace.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Every contact leaves a trace.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And traditionally, we thought of that as physical, like
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: a fingerprint on glass or fiber left on a jacket.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: But what we are looking at today is how that
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: principle has totally evolved. The traces aren't just physical anymore.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: They are genetic, they're systemic, and they're digital. Science and
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: data possess an immutable memory, even when the humans involved
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: do nothing but lie.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And the three stories we have on the table today
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: are going to completely change how you view your interactions
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: with the world around you. We're going to start with
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: a husband who thought he committed the perfect crime, undone
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: by the cellular biology of a plant.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: The botanical CSI stuff is just incredible.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It really is. And from there, we'll look at the
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: decades-old serial killer, a phantom who basically terrorized California, finally
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: cornered not by a detective on the street, but by
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the family trees of distant relatives who were just casually
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: looking into their heritage.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Which was a massive paradigm shift for law enforcement.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Definitely. And finally, we'll examine a college student's tragic
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: end solved by the digital echoes left on a piece
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of wearable tech just sitting quietly in an empty apartment.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: It really highlights the evolution of the perpetrator's blind spots.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Like you can meticulously wipe down a crime scene with bleach, right?
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: But you can't bleach a cellular tower log and you
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: definitely can't bleach the DNA of your third cousin.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: That is perfectly said. So let's look at how a
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: perpetrator completely misunderstands their environment. We are setting the scene.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: In October 2019, in Columbia, Missouri.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: The victim at the center of this is a 28-year-old
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: woman named Menke G. And everything in the source material
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: paints this picture of an incredibly brilliant, driven person.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was a Chinese immigrant holding a master's degree
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: in mechanical and aerospace engineering.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Just a powerhouse.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, totally. She had studied at one of the top
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: universities in Shanghai. And if you know anything about the
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: academic environment there, the competition is notoriously intense. You don't
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: get to the top without immense intellectual horsepower and, you know, discipline.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Right. She arrived at the University of Missouri in 2012.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And she was so exceptional that after she graduated, she
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: was hired directly by one of her own professors. to
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: work at a biomaterials company called Nenova.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: She's basically the textbook definition of the American dream achieved
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: through sheer merit. And her parents had her during China's
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: one-child policy, meaning she was the absolute focal point of
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: their family's love, their resources, and their hopes for the future.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Her family's attorney even described her as the kid all
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: parents would want. She was the anchor.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: But while she is working at Nenova, and she's actually
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a supervisor there, She meets a 23-year-old student named Joe Elledge.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Joe is studying engineering at the University of Missouri, and
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: he is working at Nenova in a subordinate role to Menke.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Which is an interesting dynamic right from the start.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they start dating. And from an outsider's perspective, things
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: move at breakneck speed. I mean, a year and seven
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: months in, Joe proposes on a trail in Rockbridge Memorial
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: State Park at a very specific scenic spot called the
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Devil's Icebox.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Keep that location in mind.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, very important. And just two weeks after that proposal,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: they get married. But the sources note this wasn't just
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a whirlwind romance fueled by, like, pure passion. There was
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: a bureaucratic ticking clock driving this timeline.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Right, because Menke's visa was about to expire. And to
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: understand the psychological underpinnings of this relationship, you really have
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: to understand the immense crushing pressure... of the U.S. immigration system.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So stressful. It is.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: The green card process fundamentally shifts the power dynamics in
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: a marriage. It's a reality that can be very difficult
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: to grasp if you've never had your entire existence in
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: a country completely dependent on paperwork.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Because it's not just about love at that point. It's
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: about legality. It's about your ability to literally stay in
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the life you've built.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Menke was highly educated. She was fully capable of
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: supporting herself financially. In fact, she was the sole income
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: earner in the household because Joe had actually quit working
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: to finish his degree.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay. Yeah.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: But despite being the breadwinner, despite being the intellectual powerhouse
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: of the relationship, the legal framework rendered her entirely dependent
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: on Joe.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Because she needed a sponsor.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She couldn't secure permanent residency on her own merit
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: at that specific stage. She needed her American husband to
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: act as her sponsor. And for a certain type of personality,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: a controlling personality, that legal dependency is a weapon.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: It creates a profound vulnerability. And the isolation that comes
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: with that vulnerability only deepens over the next year. About
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: five months into the marriage, Manky gets offered a massive
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: career opportunity, like a huge new job.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: But right at the same time, she discovers she's pregnant. Right.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So they make the decision that she should turn down
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the job offer to become a full-time mother.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Which completely severs her from her professional support system.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's huge.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Now, you have a woman who is geographically isolated in
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: a foreign country, professionally isolated by leaving her career, and
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: legally tethered to her husband for her residency. Her world
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: shrinks dramatically.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: There's a pressure cooker. They have a baby girl in
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: October 2018. And by the fall of 2019, her one
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: real consistent connection to her past, to her support system,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: is a daily ritual. a phone call with her mother
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: back in China.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: And when you are that isolated, a daily ritual is
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: essentially a proof of life.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. When that ritual breaks, it is the loudest alarm
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: bell possible. On October 9th, 2019, Mengqi misses that call.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And her parents immediately know something is terribly wrong.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: They do. They don't just wait around either. They send
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: a family friend who lives nearby to physically go check
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: on the apartment. And what is so striking here is
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Joe's reaction.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is so telling.
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  Speaker 1: It is only after this friend physically shows up at
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the door asking questions that Joe finally decides to report
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: his wife's missing. He had waited an entire day. But
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: the way he reports it, this is where the psychology
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: of guilt just screams out.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: He doesn't dial 911. He dials the non-emergency 311 line.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering behavioral tell.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, help me understand this. He calls 311. Like,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: you call 311 to report a stray dog or, I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: don't know, a broken street lamp.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, noise complaints, things like that.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: You do not call 311. to report that the 28-year-old
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  Speaker 1: mother of your infant child has vanished into thin air.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: What is the psychology behind a perpetrator trying to act
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: so casual in a life-or-death situation that they actually expose
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: their own guilt?
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: It comes down to cognitive load and the performance of innocence.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: The performance of innocence. Yeah.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: When a person is genuinely panicked about a missing spouse...
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  Speaker 2: They don't have to think about how to act. Their
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: autonomic nervous system just takes over. Right.
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  Speaker 1: They just react.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The fight or flight response triggers. They are frantic.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Their heart rate is elevated. They dial 911. They demand
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: immediate police intervention. It is chaotic and visceral. But a
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: guilty perpetrator is not experiencing panic about the missing person.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: They are experiencing anxiety about getting caught. Wow. Wow. they
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: are trying to direct a performance.
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  Speaker 1: So he's overthinking the script.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He thinks, well, if I call 911 and scream
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: for help, the police will rush over with sirens blaring,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: they'll lock down the scene, and the scrutiny will be
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: intense and immediate. He doesn't want that.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Because he has something to hide.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Right. He wants to sell the narrative that this is
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: just a minor domestic dispute, that she probably just walked
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: off to clear her head and will be back later.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: He thinks calling the non-emergency line makes him look like
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a calm, rational husband who isn't jumping to conclusions.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: But it completely backfires.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: It completely miscalculates human nature. By trying to avoid looking suspicious,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: he exhibits this sociopathic lack of distress that makes him
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: the prime suspect instantly.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: It's performative apathy. And the alibi he gives the responding
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: officers is just as poorly constructed. Joe tells them that
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: he gave Maggie a massage the night before they went
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: to sleep. And he woke up to find her gone.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Just gone.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But all of her essentials, her phone, her keys,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: her car, and her wedding ring are still in the apartment.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: And what is his reaction to that? finding his wife
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: missing without her belongings?
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: This part is so bizarre.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: He tells police he decided to take their one-year-old baby
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: on long, leisurely drives through the countryside. He literally states
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: that he opened Google Maps, looked for areas that were
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: shaded green to indicate nature, and drove out there to
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: look for walking paths.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: You have to look at the sheer absurdity of the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: logic he expects the police to swallow here. Your wife vanishes.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: She leaves her infant behind, which every single person in
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: her life stated she would absolutely never do. She doesn't
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: take her car or her phone. And your instinct is
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: to buckle the baby into a car seat and go
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: scout scenic hiking trails. It defies every known human instinct.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: It really does. The police, operating under the direction of
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Boone County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Knight, saw through this immediately.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, they knew right away.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: There's this one moment in the initial interview where a
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: detective asks Joe a very basic practical question. He asks,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: did you lock your door when you left the apartment?
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Joe says yes.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Which is a trap.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: A huge trap. Yeah. The detective just calmly points it out.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: He says, if she comes home, how is she going
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: to get back in? You've got her keys, her car,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: her phone's inside the house. You locked the door and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: took off. She can't even call anybody.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Joe is just paralyzed by the question. He has no answer.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: But in his arrogance, while spitting this incredibly thin narrative,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Joe willingly gives the police access to his phone and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: his devices.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Big mistake on his part.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Huge. And what the digital forensics team extracts from those
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: devices absolutely shatters the illusion of a happy young family.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: It reveals the true architecture of their marriage. What the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: police unearth are hours of secret audio recordings. They find
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: 10 hours of recordings on Joe's phone and and nearly
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: four and a half hours on Menke's phone.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Just the fact that there are 14 hours of secretly
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: recorded audio between a married couple tells you how deeply
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: toxic the environment had become.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not normal.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Not at all. People don't record their spouses in secret
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: unless they are gathering ammunition, or they are terrified and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: trying to prove their own sanity. And the content of
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: these recordings is just unvarnished, suffocating emotional abuse.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: The audio provides a real-time masterclass in coercive control. We
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: hear Joe systematically utilizing gaslighting, verbal degradation, and isolation tactics
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: to break down Mengi's sense of reality.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: It's so hard to listen to.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: It is, and you have to view this through the
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: cultural context of their situation, too. After Mengi had their baby,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: her parents flew in from China to stay with them.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: In Chinese culture, it is a deeply ingrained... Highly respected
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: custom for grandparents to stay and help the new mother
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: for 100 days after a birth.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Right. It's meant to be a time of healing and
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: familial bonding.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But for Joe, this was a massive threat. He
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: despised the fact that Menke and her mother, Karen, would
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: speak Chinese in the apartment.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: The assistant prosecutor, Yao Li, noted during the trial that
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Joe always assumed the absolute worst whenever they spoke a
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: language he couldn't understand.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: If they were speaking Chinese, he assumed they were mocking
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: him or conspiring against him. It was a direct threat
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: to his need for absolute dominance.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Because the presence of her parents provided Menke with an
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: external reality. They were a support system that loved her
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: and didn't bend to Joe's rules. They undermined his complete authority.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So he had to get rid of them.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Right. When her father eventually had to return to China,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: leaving just her mother, Karen, to finish out the 100 days,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Joe's behavior escalated dramatically. It culminated in an event the
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: prosecution referred to as the cutting board incident.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: I want to look closely at this cutting board incident. Yeah.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Because if you just read a summary, it sounds like
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a petty domestic squabble over cooking.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Right. Sounds trivial.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: But when you hear the audio and understand the context,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: it is a terrifying display of psychological violence. Mickey's mother
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: was in the kitchen making traditional Chinese dumplings for Joe's birthday.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: And Joe apparently decides he doesn't like the specific way
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: she is using the cutting board.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: He completely explodes. Yeah. He uses this microscopic perceived slight
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: to demand that his mother-in-law pack her bags and leave
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the apartment immediately, effectively banishing her from the country.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: And Menke is caught in the middle, desperate to maintain harmony.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: She is pleading with him, trying to de-escalate. But Joe
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: is entirely unyielding. And the things he says on tape
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: are chilling.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: What is he saying?
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: He tells Minky, you're not the god, I am god. Yeah.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: He attacks her intelligence, calling her brainless. And he specifically
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: weaponizes her gender, telling her, you think you're so empowered
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: because of this society, you're still a woman.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I am god. That is malignant narcissism laid bare. He
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: isn't just demanding respect. He is demanding total, unquestioning submission.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: The source material details how this escalated to the point
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: where he actually forced Minky's mother, Karen... to physically kneel
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: on the floor and bow to him before he forced
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: her to leave the United States before the 100 days
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: were even up.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: You really have to understand the gravity of that act.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: In Chinese culture, making an elder kneel and bow to
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: a younger person is an extreme, profound violation of respect.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: It's so degrading.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: It is a calculated degradation. Zhou wasn't just being rude.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: He was orchestrating the ultimate humiliation to demonstrate to Mengqi
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: that her culture, her family, and her entire identity were
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: subservient to his power. He was systematically dismantling her support structure.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And amidst this torrent of verbal abuse, there was one
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: specific quote Joe makes on the tape that stands out
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: because of what happens later. He is lecturing Mengi about
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: how he deals with problems. And he says, you know
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: how I conquer nature. I kill it. I grab its
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: head and break its neck. That's how you conquer nature.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Prosecutor Dan Knight zeroed in on that statement during the trial.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see why.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: It wasn't just hyperbolic anger. It was a projection of
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: his worldview and a direct cryptic metaphor for how he
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: viewed Menke. She was an unruly element in his life,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: you know, like a force of nature that refused to
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: completely submit.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And in his mind, the only way to deal with
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: something that won't submit is to break it. It is
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: a violent ideation spoken aloud long before the physical violence
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: actually occurred.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: So the police have this terrifying audio. They know they're
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: dealing with a highly volatile, controlling, narcissistic husband whose wife
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: has vanished. Yeah. A little over two weeks after she
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: goes missing, they make their move.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: But they don't arrest him for her disappearance yet.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Right. They don't have enough physical evidence yet. So they
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: arrest him for child abuse.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Which is a very strategic move.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Menke had previously noticed severe, unnatural bruising on their
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: baby's buttocks and had taken photos on her phone. When questioned,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Joe actually admitted to police that he had severely pinched
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the baby because she was crying and he was frustrated.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Which is a brilliant tactical maneuver by law enforcement. In
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: a nobody homicide investigation, time is the enemy.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Right, because they can run.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: The suspect can flee. They can destroy evidence. They can
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: tamper with witnesses. By utilizing the child abuse charge, the
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: prosecution legally removes Joe from the streets and places him
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: securely behind bars.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: It gives them breathing room to build a murder case
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: without him interfering. Because at this point, they have no body,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: no weapon, and no crime scene.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: But they do execute a comprehensive search warrant on the apartment.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And while they are going through his belongings, they find
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a gold mine of psychological evidence. They find a notebook
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: tucked inside Joe's backpack. And it's not a diary. It's
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: a script.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: A literal script.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: He had literally written down bulleted reminders for himself on
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: how to answer questions from the police and the media.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And one of the most damning bullet points is a
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: specific instruction to himself to always speak about Menke in
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the present tense. rather than the past tense.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Which perfectly circles back to our earlier discussion about the
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: cognitive load of a guilty mind. Right.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Because if you genuinely believe your wife is just missing,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: if you think she ran off to clear her head
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: or is lost, you don't need a cheat sheet to
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: remind yourself she is alive. You naturally use the present tense.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: You'd say, she's a good person. I hope she is safe.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The only conceivable reason you would need to write
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: down a physical reminder to stop using the past tense
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: is is if your brain already knows, as an absolute
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: immutable fact, that she is dead.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: He is having to actively, consciously suppress his knowledge of
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: her death to maintain the charade. His subconscious keeps slipping
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: into the past tense because he knows she's gone, so
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: he has to create this manual override. It is evidence
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: of premeditated deception.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But alongside this notebook, the police collect something physical. It
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: seems almost minor at the time. Acting on a gut instinct,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Investigators confiscate a pair of Joe's muddy hiking boots. They
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: bag them and tag them, just in case.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: And that just in case becomes the fulcrum of the
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: entire case.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It really does. Because for over a year, the physical
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: search for Menke yields nothing. Investigators trace cell phone pings
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that show Joe spent roughly 45 minutes parked near the
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Lamine River on the day he claimed she disappeared. Dive
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: teams search that river for months.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: They use sonar, they use dogs, they dredge the water.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Nothing. Menke's parents in China are living in an agonizing limbo.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: The pressure on prosecutor Dan Knight is immense, and he
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: makes the incredibly bold decision to charge Joe with first-degree
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: murder without a body, relying entirely on the audio recordings,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: the notebook, and the circumstantial timeline.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Which is a massive legal gamble.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: A huge gamble.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: It's one of the hardest things to do in criminal law.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Because without a body, the defense has an automatic, built-in,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: reasonable doubt. They can stand in front of a jury
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: and say... The state hasn't proven a murder occurred. They
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: haven't even proven she's dead. For all we know, she
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: fled an unhappy marriage and is living under an assumed name.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's tough to beat.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: You need an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence to overcome
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: that hurdle.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: But then the ecosystem that Joe thought he had conquered intervenes.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: More than a year after she vanished, a hiker is
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: walking off the beaten path at Rockbridge Memorial State Park.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And I want to point out the chilling irony here.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: This is the exact same park where Joe had proposed
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: to Mankey at the Devil's Icebox.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: The hiker's walking through dense brush and sees a flash
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: of color in the dirt. It's a purse. He uses
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: his walking stick to flip it over, and he sees
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a pair of shoes. And then he sees a human skull.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Mankey has finally been found.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It provides the vital missing piece for the prosecution, the
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: cause of death. When the medical examiner conducts the autopsy
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: on the skeletal remains, they discover that Mankey suffered four
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: severely broken ribs.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: And these weren't hairline fractures. The breaks went entirely through
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: the bone. This indicates a massive catastrophic blunt force blow
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: to her back. It destroys any notion that she simply
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: walked away.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: So the state now has a body and they have
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: evidence of a violent homicide, but they have a geographic problem.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: They need to definitively tie Joe Elledge to that specific
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: remote grave site in the state park.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Remember those muddy boots the police took on a hunch
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: over a year ago? Dan Knight decides to send them
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. And this
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is where we dive into the science, because this is
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: where the invisible witness takes the stand.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: We are entering the realm of botanical forensics, which is
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: a fascinating and highly specialized field.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Tell me about it.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Well, we are all familiar with human DNA testing, but
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: plants leave microscopic genetic traces just like humans do. The
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: prosecutor brings in a plant population geneticist named Christine Edwards
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: and her colleague Alex Lin.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: So how does this actually work? Because they examine the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: dried mud on Joe's boots, and they find 12 different
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: types of microscopic vegetation caked into the soles. Specifically, they
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: isolate five tiny juniper tree needles. How do you go
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: from a dried-up needle on a boot to a murder conviction?
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: It requires a deep understanding of cellular biology. Every living
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: organism contains DNA, the genetic blueprint, right?
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: But extracting it from a plant is significantly different than
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: extracting it from a human blood drop. plant cells have
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: rigid cellulose walls that are designed to withstand the elements,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: making them tough to break open. Furthermore, forensic botanists aren't
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: usually looking at the DNA in the nucleus of the
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: plant cell. They are often looking at the DNA inside
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: the chloroplasts.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: The chloroplasts. Why the chloroplasts?
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Because the chloroplasts are the structures that conduct photosynthesis. And
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: there are many chloroplasts in a single cell, meaning there
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: are many copies of that specific DNA, which makes it
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: much easier to recover from degraded samples, like a dead
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: beetle stuck to a muddy boot for a year.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That makes sense.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: What Christine Edwards and Alex Lin knew is that within
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: a species of tree like a juniper, there are genetic variations.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Think of it like human hair color or eye color,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: but on a molecular level. These variations are called genotypes.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: And crucially, these genotypes can be unique to a specific
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: individual plant or a highly localized population of plant.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So they hypothesize that if they can get a usable
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: genotype from the needles on the boots, they might be
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: able to match it to the exact environment where Mankey
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: was buried. Alex Lynn actually travels out to the crime
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: scene in the state park.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he does.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: But he can't just scoop up handfuls of dirt and
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: pine needles from the ground around the grave. Why not?
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Because of scientific rigor and cross-contamination, if you pick up
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: needles off the forest floor, you might be picking up
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: genetic material that blew in from a mile away. or
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: material from five different trees mixed together. To prove a
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: definitive link in court, you have to get a pure
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: sample directly from the source.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's smart. So Lynn identifies a specific juniper tree
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: that is physically overhanging Menke's shallow grave. And to get
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a pristine sample, he uses a 15-foot-long pole bruner to
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: reach high up into the living canopy of that specific tree,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: snapping off fresh living needles.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: They take these control samples back to the lab in St. Louis,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Extract the DNA, map the genotype of the living tree,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: and then compare it to the genotype extracted from the
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: dead needles found on Joe's boots.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: And the statistical result is astonishing. The lines of the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: genotype match perfectly. The botanical experts testify that the needles
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: on Joe's boots didn't just come from a general forest,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: and they didn't just come from a random juniper tree.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: They came from that exact individual juniper tree whose branches
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: hung directly over Manky G's grave.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: It is unbelievable. Prosecutor Dan Knight noted this is only
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: the second known murder case in history to ever successfully
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: use tree DNA as evidence.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Second case ever. Yeah.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: It completely obliterates Joe's carefully constructed narrative. He can't claim
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: she ran off to China. He can't claim she was
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: kidnapped by a stranger. The microscopic, invisible cells of a
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: tree placed him standing directly over her body in a
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: remote forest.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: It forces this profound realization about our relationship with the world.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: We tend to view nature as a passive, inert backdrop
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: to our lives. But in reality, it is a complex,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: active biological database.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: It really is. Every time you step off a paved road,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: you are interacting with that database. You are taking microscopic
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: pieces of it with you, and you are leaving pieces
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: of yourself behind.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Joe Elledge was recorded on tape boasting about how he
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: conquers nature by breaking its neck. But in the end,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: nature was the silent witness that stood up in court
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and conquered him.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Poetic justice, really.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Faced with this insurmountable, irrefutable botanical evidence, Joe and his
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: high-profile defense attorney, Scott Rosenblum, realize their missing person defense
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: is dead on arrival. They have to pivot radically at trial.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Joe actually takes the stand in his own defense and
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: changes his entire story. He admits that he buried her
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: in the park.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Wait, he just admits it?
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but he tries to claim her death was just
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: a tragic, unforeseen accident. Ah, of course.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: And this is where we see the defense attempt to
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: weaponize the couple's documented marital issues to mitigate his culpability.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Joe testifies that on the night of October 8th, they
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: got into a massive screaming argument. He claims Menke had
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: been engaging in an emotional online affair with a man
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: back in China, and he confronted her about it.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: According to his new narrative on The Stand, Menke became
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: physically aggressive and lunged at him. He claims he simply
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: pushed her away to defend himself, and she tragically stumbled backwards,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: hit her back on the kitchen countertop, breaking her ribs,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: and then fell to the floor and hit her head.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: He literally tries to look the jury in the eye
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: and claim that after suffering four completely shattered ribs from
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: hitting a counter, she just picked herself up, went to bed,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: and peacefully died in her sleep from the internal injuries.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: It's so absurd.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: He says he only found her dead the next morning.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: And because he was in extreme panic about how it
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: would look, he made the incredibly rational decision to drive
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: her body to a state park, dig a grave, bury
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: her and spend the next year lying to the police
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and her grieving family.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: It is a narrative built on absolute medical impossibility. It
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: completely ignores the physiological reality of the trauma she suffered.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: The pain of a single broken rib is excruciating. It
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: makes it difficult to breathe or move. Four completely shattered
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: ribs where the bone is broken all the way through
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: would induce unimaginable agony and likely compromise the lungs. She
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: wouldn't just dust herself off and go to sleep. It
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: would require desperate, immediate medical intervention.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, the defense's narrative ignores the profound physical disparity between them.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Joe was significantly larger and stronger than Mengi. The prosecution
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: rightfully argued this was a culmination of months of his
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: growing rage, his need for absolute control, ending in a
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: horrific premeditated physical assault.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Ultimately, the jury is swayed by the science, but they
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: do split the difference on his psychological intent. They don't
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: convict him of first-degree premeditated murder, likely believing the fatal
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: assault happened in a moment of explosive rage rather than
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: calculated plotting. But they do find him guilty of second-degree murder.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: And during the penalty phase, the jury delivers a sentence
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: that is deeply poetic. They sentence him to 28 years
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: in prison.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: One year for every year of Minky G's short, vibrant life.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: It's a devastating tragedy that leaves a young daughter caught
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: in the middle, stripped of her mother. But the case
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: itself stands as a monumental testament to how the truth
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: will literally cling to the soles of your shoes.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: It really does. Joe Elledge forgot about the physical ecosystem.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: But what happens when a perpetrator's blind spot isn't physical dirt,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: but the systemic architecture of society itself?
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: That is exactly where we move next. We are transitioning
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: from a killer who tried to hide his crime in
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: a localized state park... to a killer who exploited the sprawling,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: fractured jurisdictions of California in the 1970s and 80s. Joe
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Elledge was caught by botanical DNA. But our next subject
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: operated decades before human DNA testing even existed in a courtroom.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: We are moving from the biological code of a pine
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: tree to the ancestral code of human bloodlines, and how
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a monster who had been a ghost for 40 years
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: was finally brought into the light. Let's talk about the
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: reign of terror of the man initially known to police
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: as the East Area Rapist, And later, as the original
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Night Stalker often abbreviated as Eurons.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Between 1976 and 1986, this single unidentified individual committed over
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: 50 rapes and 13 murders across 15 different jurisdictions in California.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: He began his attacks in Northern California, primarily around the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: suburbs of Sacramento, and over the years migrated south to
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange County. The sheer scale and
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: duration of his crimes are just staggering.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: The volume of his offenses over such a vast geographical
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: expanse is precisely what made him so incredibly difficult for
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: law enforcement to catch. You have to put yourself in
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: the investigative mindset of the late 1970s.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally different world.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: There were no computerized, interconnected... databases. Law enforcement agencies in
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: different counties or even neighboring cities operated in rigid silos.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: A string of violent home invasions in Sacramento wasn't naturally
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: or easily linked by detectives to a double homicide occurring
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: hundreds of miles away in Santa Barbara years later.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: It was all on paper.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The killer intuitively understood and exploited these jurisdictional boundaries.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: The map was his shield.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: And his modus operandi, his M.O., was something straight out
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: of a psychological horror film. We need to look closely
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: at the mechanics of his crimes, because this wasn't just
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: about physical violence. It was about absolute paralyzing terror. He
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: wouldn't just break into a house randomly. He would meticulously
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: stalk middle-class neighborhoods, specifically targeting homes that backed up to parks, canals,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: or open trails, giving him a dark avenue for escape.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: But it's what he did before the attacks that is
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: so chilling. He would enter the targeted homes days in
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: advance when the occupants were at work or school.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Wait, he'd just go in beforehand?
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Yes. It was a reconnaissance mission. He would unlock a
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: specific sliding glass door or window to ensure easy entry later.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: He would memorize the layout of the house. He would
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: even take the time to unlace shoes he found in
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: the closets and hide the shoelaces under couch cushions or mattresses.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: planting the bindings he intended to use during the attack.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: He was literally setting the stage for a nightmare. And
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the attacks themselves were designed to induce maximum disorientation. He
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: would strike in the dead of night. He'd wake sleeping
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: couples by shining a blinding high-powered flashlight directly into their eyes.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: They couldn't see his face, only a blinding halo. Then
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: he would force the female victim to physically tie up
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the male victim using those pre-hidden shoelaces. Once the man
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: was bound face down on the bed, the killer would
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: step in, and violently reinforced the knots, ensuring escape was impossible.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: And then he employed a psychological tactic that is viscerally
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: horrifying to even think about. The dish stacking.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Yes. It is one of the most infamous signatures in
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: the history of serial crime. He would walk into the kitchen,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: gather plates, bowls, and teacups, and meticulously stack them precariously
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: on the bound man's back.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: He would lean down and tell the man, If I
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: hear these dishes rattle, if I hear even a clink,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I will come back in here and kill every single
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: person in this house. And then he would drag the
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: woman into the living room to assault her.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: The psychological cruelty of that specific mechanism cannot be overstated.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is weaponized helplessness. It isn't just a threat.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: It's an evil analog alarm system designed to completely paralyze
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and emasculate the partner. You are forcing a person to
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: lie rigidly, agonizingly still in the dark, listening to the
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: trauma of their loved one happening in the next room.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: knowing that the slightest twitch, the slightest attempt to play
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the hero and save them will result in a massacre.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate expression of sadism. He isn't just
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: extracting terror from the primary victim of the assault. He
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: is feeding off the psychological torture of the bound partner simultaneously.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: The physical assault, horrific as it is, is almost secondary
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: to the absolute subjugation and control he is exerting over
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: their minds. He is breaking their will to fight back.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: And he thrived on the terror he caused the community.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: He was having a twisted dialogue with the public. The
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: sources note that he would actively monitor the media coverage
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: of his crimes, reading the newspapers and watching the nightly news,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and then adjust his tactics just to prove a point.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was obsessed with his own press.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: When the local papers reported that the East Area Rapist
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: only targeted women who were home alone, he read that
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: as a direct challenge to his omnipotence. Almost immediately, he
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: escalated to targeting couples. proving that a male presence in
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the house was no deterrent to him.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: It reveals a profound, malignant narcissism. He viewed law enforcement
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: and the media as adversaries in a game only he
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: could win. He was communicating through his actions, saying, you
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: think you understand my parameters. I have no parameters. I
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: am untouchable.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: There is a specific anecdote in the source material that
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: perfectly captures this arrogance. In 1977, as the attacks in
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Sacramento are reaching a fever pitch, The community holds a
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: town hall meeting. People are terrified. Hardware stores are sold
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: out of deadbolts and firearms. At this meeting, a local
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: man stands up, furious and protective, and vows to the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: crowd that no one is going to terrorize his family.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: He publicly states that if the rapist ever tries to
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: break into his house, he will shoot him dead.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: And just months later, that very man and his wife
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: become the next victims of the East Area Rapist.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: The implication is terrifying. It is almost certain that the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: killer was sitting in the folding chairs at that very
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: town hall meeting disguised as a concerned normal citizen. He
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: watched this man make a public vow of protection marked
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: him as a target and then systematically dismantled that protection
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: just to prove he could. The hubris is astounding.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: It perfectly highlights the terrifying reality of his existence. He
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: blended seamlessly into the fabric of society. He wasn't a
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: cartoon monster living in a cave. He was a highly functional,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: organized offender who walked among his victims in broad daylight,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: observing their routines and exploiting their vulnerabilities.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And we must take a moment to honor the survivors
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and the victims whose lives were forever altered or ended
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: by this phantom. Survivors like Jane Carson Sandler, who endured
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: a horrific attack while her three-year-old son was sleeping in
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: the next room. Thirteen-year-old Margaret Wardlow. and the victims of
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: his brutal escalation to double homicide when he migrated to
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Southern California, Sherry Domingo and Greg Sanchez, Dr. Robert Offerman
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: and Deborah Manning, Lyman and Charlene Smith, Keith and Patrice Harrington,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Manuela Withun, and 18-year-old Janelle Cruz.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: It's just a devastating list.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Decades passed after that final murder in 1986. The trails
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: went ice cold. The police had composite sketches of a young,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: athletic man in a ski mask with a high-pitched voice
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: but they yielded nothing. The case file was gathering dust.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Enter Michelle McNamara.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Michelle McNamara represents a vital paradigm-shifting moment in how we
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: approach cold cases. She wasn't a sworn detective. She was
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: a true crime writer, the author of a blog called
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: The True Crime Diary, and she was married to the
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: comedian Patton Oswalt. She possessed an incredibly unique intellect, what
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: her husband described as a mind for the darkest, most
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: obscure details of true crime, the way some people obsess
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: over baseball statistics.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: She was the ultimate citizen sleuth, and she became utterly,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: totally obsessed with finding this needle in a haystack. But
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: her most brilliant early contribution wasn't discovering a new piece
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: of evidence. It was an act of linguistic reframing.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: The name change.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly. She realized that because this killer's crimes were spread
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: across so many jurisdictions, the police had labeled him with different,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: confusing names. The East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the Diamond Knot Killer. Because of this, the general public
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: didn't grasp the unified magnitude of the monster. So in
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: a 2013 investigative article for Los Angeles Magazine, she rebranded him.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: She coined the name the Golden State Killer.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: It was a masterstroke of marketing for justice. By giving
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: him a unified, menacing statewide moniker, she forced the public
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: and the media to look at the totality of his crimes.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: It drummed up massive, renewed public interest, framing these disparate
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: attacks as the work of one prolific state-spanning predator.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: She signed a book deal and poured her entire soul
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: into tracking him. She gained the trust of veteran, grizzled
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: investigators like Paul Holes, poring over old, digitized files, physically
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: walking the suburban neighborhoods when the attacks happened decades prior.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: But this grueling investigation took a profound, tragic toll.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: It really did. The emotional weight of immersing herself in
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: the survivor's trauma, the endless frustration of dead-end leads, the
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: late nights awake scrolling through online message boards— It consumed
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: her physical and mental health.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: So sad.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: In April 2016, at the age of just 46, Michelle
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: died suddenly in her sleep from an undiagnosed art condition
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: complicated by a mixture of prescription drugs she had been
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: taking to cope with the immense stress and anxiety of
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: the hunt.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: It is one of the great tragedies of modern true
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: crime that she did not live to see the culmination
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: of her relentless work. But her husband, Patton Oswalt, and
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: her investigative partners, Paul Haynes and Billy Jensen, refused to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: let her work die with her. They ensured her book,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: All Begun in the Dark, was finished and published.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Her advocacy kept the pressure on, keeping the case alive
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: in the public consciousness just long enough for technology to
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: finally catch up with the killer's biology.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: And this is where we have to walk through the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: technological leap that finally brought him down, because it is
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the definition of an invisible witness. For decades, the police
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: had the killer's DNA saved from rape kits and crime scenes.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: But traditional DNA databases like CODA's are limited.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Very limited. They are useless if the killer has never
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: been arrested for a felony that forced him to put
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: his DNA into the system. If he's not in the database,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: you just have a string of letters with no name attached.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The evolution of DNA in this case is a
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: timeline of forensic breakthroughs. In 1996, early PCR DNA technology
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: formally linked several of the Southern California murderers to a
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: single offender. In 2001, a massive leap occurred when DNA
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: officially linked the Northern California rapes to the Southern California
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: murderers confirming what some investigators had long suspected. It was
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the exact same man.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: But his identity remained a complete cipher. He was just
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: John Doe in a government server.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Until 2018. The revolutionary, unprecedented use of genetic genealogy. I
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: need you to explain how investigator Paul Holes and genetic
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: genealogist Barbara Rae Venter actually used this to break the case.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Because it sounds like science fiction.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: It is one of the most elegant applications of data
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: in forensic history. Instead of relying on a closed criminal
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: database to find a direct match to the killer, investigators
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: took the killer's DNA profile from a decades-old crime scene
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: in Ventura County and reformatted it. it to mimic a
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: consumer DNA test.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: They then uploaded that profile to an open-source public genealogy
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: website called GED.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: GED matches in a police tool, right?
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: It's where regular people go to build their family trees.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's a platform where everyday people who have taken
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: a 23 and more ancestry test can voluntarily upload their
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: raw data to find distant relatives or trace their heritage.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: The investigators were no longer looking for the killer himself.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: They were looking for pieces of his genetic code scattered
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: among his distant relatives. They were looking for his cousins.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: But wait, I need to understand the mechanics here. If
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: you upload a profile and it says, hey, you share
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: a tiny bit of DNA with this random person who
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: lives in Florida and they are your third cousin, how
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: does that possibly help you find a serial killer in California?
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: It seems impossibly broad.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: That is where the staggering, painstaking labor of genetic genealogy
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: comes in. The genetic link is measured in units called centimorgans.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: The more centimorgans you share with someone, the closer the relation.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: When they uploaded the Golden State Killer's DNA, they didn't
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: get a brother or a son. They got distant hits,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: third and fourth cousins, people who shared maybe a great, great,
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: great grandparent with the killer in the 1800s.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: So it's like having a puzzle with 10,000 pieces. and
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: you only have three corner pieces.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: A better metaphor is a complex game of Sudoku combined
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: with a GPS triangulation system. If you find two third
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: cousins in the database who share DNA with the killer,
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: but they don't know each other, you know that their
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: family lines must intersect at some point in the past.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Genealogists use census records, birth certificates, obituaries, and marriage licenses
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: to build massive family trees backward in time until they
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: find that intersecting ancestor, the great-great-grandparent. Once they find that
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: apex ancestor, they turn around and build the tree forward,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: tracing every single descendant, every branch of the family down
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: to the present day.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: So they are building a biological map of thousands of people.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And then they apply the demographic filters of the crimes.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: They look at all the living males on that massive tree.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: They eliminate anyone who was the wrong age in the 1970s.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: They eliminate anyone who lived in New York or Texas
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: when the crimes were happening in Sacramento and Santa Barbara.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: They eliminate anyone whose physical characteristics like eye color were
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: which they could predict from the DNA, didn't match the
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: survivors' descriptions.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: And after months of painstakingly building these trees and filtering
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: down the branches, the triangulated lines converge on a single leaf.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: They zero in on a name. Joseph James DeAngelo. And
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: when you look at who this man was, his biography
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: is both chillingly mundane and the ultimate explanation for how
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: he got away with it.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: He was a 72-year-old man living a quiet, unassuming life
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: in Citrus Heights. a suburb of Sacramento situated right in
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: the geographic heart of his original hunting grounds. He had
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: a meticulously manicured lawn. He yelled at neighbors who parked
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: too close to his driveway.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Just a grumpy old man.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the crucial horrifying detail was his profession in
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: the 1970s. During the height of the East Area Rapist attacks,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Joseph James DeAngelo was a sworn active duty police officer
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: in the towns of Exeter and Auburn.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Which explains literally everything. It explains how he knew advanced
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: police procedures. It explains how he knew how to clear
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: a house, how to handle firearms, how to manipulate bindings.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: It explains how he comfortably and confidently navigated suburban neighborhoods
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night without arousing suspicion. He
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: was likely doing it in a patrol car or using
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: his badge as a shield if questioned.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: He had the ultimate insider knowledge. He knew the limitations
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: of the radios, the response times, and the investigative blind spots.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: But the irony is how his law enforcement career ended.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: He wasn't fired for being a suspect in the rapes.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: He was fired from the Auburn Police Department in 1979
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: for shoplifting.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And not just shoplifting a candy bar. He was caught
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: stealing a hammer and a can of dog repellent from
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: a local drugstore.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: The literal tools of his dark trade. He was stealing
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: the physical items he used to control guard dogs in
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: the yards of his victims and to pry open windows.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering systemic failure that he slipped through
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: the cracks because the offenses seemed like minor misdemeanors on paper.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: No one connected the shoplifting cop to the prolific serial
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: rapist terrorizing the neighboring county. To secure the final legal
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: proof required for an arrest, law enforcement didn't just knock
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: on his door. They surveilled this 72-year-old man for days.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: They waited for him to discard an item, a tissue,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: or a swab in the trash. They collected it, extracted
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: his DNA, and ran a direct comparison against the semen
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: left at the crime scenes in the 1980s. It was
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: a 100% perfect match. The ghost finally had a face.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: And the courtroom scenes that followed his arrest were incredibly powerful.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: In 2020, facing an avalanche of biological evidence, D'Angelo agreed
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: to a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. He
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: pled guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder and in
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: a unique legal maneuver admitted to over 160 uncharged crimes,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: including dozens of rapes where the statute of limitations had
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: legally expired decades ago.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: The sentencing hearing in Sacramento was a profound historic moment
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: of emotional reclamation. For 40 years, Joseph James D'Angelo had
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: operated in the shadows. He had silenced his victims, bound them,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: threatened to kill them, and controlled their lives with an
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: invisible aura of fear. Now, in a brightly lit cavernous courtroom,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: bound to a wheelchair and looking frail and aged, the
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: dynamic was entirely inverted. He was forced to sit silently
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: and listen while survivor after survivor took the podium and
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: looked him directly in the eye.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: It was incredible to watch. Jane Carson Sandler, who was
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: attacked in 1976, told him that she was no longer
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: a victim, but a survivor who had gone on to
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: achieve the rank of colonel in the Air Force. Debbie Domingo,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: whose mother was brutally murdered, stood up and said she
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: had waited decades for the day he would be exposed
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: and humiliated.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: And perhaps most poignantly, the sister of Janelle Cruz, his
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: final known murder victim, spoke about how she would spend
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: the rest of her days fishing, relaxing, and living completely
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: free of the fear he had instilled in her while
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: he withered away in an iron cage.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: And throughout all of those statements, the spirit of Michelle
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: McNamara was constantly invoked and recognized as the vital catalyst
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: that kept the fire burning until the science could catch him.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: It is a narrative arc that speaks to the inescapable
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: interconnectedness of humanity. The Golden State Killer relied on darkness,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: physical masks, and the anonymity of a sprawling, disconnected state.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: He thought he was a solitary island.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: But he was eventually defeated by the biological reality that
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: none of us are islands. His own distant family's innocent
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: desire to know their roots provided the genetic map that
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: led law enforcement straight to his front door.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Which is the perfect transition to our final case. Because
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Joe Elledge forgot about the physical ecosystem of the forest.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Joseph D'Angelo exploited the systemic ecosystem of the 1970s, unaware
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: that the genetic ecosystem would eventually map his bloodline. But
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: today's criminals leave a very different kind of code. We
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: are moving from the biological bloodlines of the past to
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: the digital data streams of the present.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: We are transitioning to digital DNA. Every single day, we
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: are constantly generating a digital footprint, an invisible trail of
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: data breadcrumbs that details our thoughts, our movements, our financial transactions,
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: and our intentions.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Yep, it's everywhere.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: And just like D'Angelo underestimated the permanence of his biology...
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Modern perpetrators consistently and fatally underestimate the permanence of cloud architecture.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Let's introduce the victim and the suspect in this final tragedy.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: The victim is 21-year-old Allie Costio. She is a student
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: at Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi. And when you
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: read the accounts from her friends and family, Allie is
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: described as radiant. She's bubbly, spirited, a girl who fully
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: embraced college life.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: She loved the football tailgates, the sorority culture, the vibrant
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: social scene of Oxford, Mississippi. She even ran a dedicated
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Instagram account just for posting pictures of beautiful sunsets. She
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: is radiating youth, positivity, and a desire to connect with
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: And in stark contrast, there is the suspect, Brandon Thiesfeld.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: He's also a student at Ole Miss, originally from Fort Worth, Texas.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: He was actually Allie's freshman year crush.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: If you look at him on paper, he seems like
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: a typical privileged college student. He came from a well-off family.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: He played soccer. He liked hunting in the outdoors. He
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: blended perfectly into the collegiate environment. But the reality of
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: their relationship, hidden beneath the surface of campus life, was
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: incredibly dark, toxic, and unbalanced. And it culminated in a
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: horrific act of violence on July 20, 2019. Deputies are
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: out on a routine morning patrol of a remote area
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: around Sardis Lake, A rural, heavily wooded location outside of town,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: populated mostly by primitive hunting and fishing camps.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: It's the kind of place that is pitch black at night.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Near a picnic table, they make a devastating discovery. They
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: find Alia's body. She had been shot 11 times.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: The ballistics immediately tell a story about the psychology of
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: the crime. The sheer volume of gunshot wounds. 11 shots
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: fired into a single victim indicates an extreme level of
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: personal rage, overkill, and determination. This was not a robbery
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: gone wrong. This was not a stray bullet. It was
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: a deliberate, furious execution designed to ensure she did not survive.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: And the killer made a crucial, arrogant assumption right at
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: the start. When crime scene investigators process the area around
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the picnic table, they realize Allie's physical cell phone is
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: completely missing. The killer clearly took it or destroyed it.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: operating under the assumption that if the physical phone is gone,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the communication history, the GPS data, and the evidence of
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: their relationship are gone with it.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: But when police execute a search warrant on Allie's apartment
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: back in Oxford, they find her Apple Watch sitting quietly
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: on her nightstand. And because of the way modern smart
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: devices sync, all of her text messages had backed up
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: and populated onto the watch.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: It is the digital equivalent of Locard's exchange principle. He
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: tried to wipe the scene clean, but the data had
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: already transferred.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: I need to stop and ask about the mechanics of
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: this because it is wild to me. If a perpetrator
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: in this day and age commits a calculated crime, takes
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: the physical iPhone and crushes it or throws it into
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: the bottom of a lake, How does the Apple Watch
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: back in the apartment still have the texts? Doesn't the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: watch need to be tethered to the phone via Bluetooth
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: to work?
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: That is the exact misunderstanding of cloud architecture that traps
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: modern criminals. They experience a physical tunnel vision. They focus
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: on the hardware, the phone in their hand. But the
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: phone is not the source of the data. It is
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: merely a terminal.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: A terminal.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Right. An Apple Watch does use Bluetooth to connect to
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: a phone when it's nearby, but when the phone is
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: out of range or destroyed, the watch doesn't just go blank.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: If the watch is connected to a known Wi-Fi network,
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: like the one in Ali's apartment, it connects directly to
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Apple's iCloud servers using token-based authentication.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: So it bypasses the phone entirely.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When a text message is sent or received, it
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: isn't just bouncing between two phones. It is routed through
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: remote servers. Those servers then pushed that data down to
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: every authenticated device logged into that Apple ID.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: That's incredible.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: So while Brandon was out at Sardis Lake disposing of
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: the physical iPhone, the iCloud servers were silently beaming exact
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: copies of every single text message down to the watch
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: sitting safely on her nightstand. The watch became the invisible
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: digital witness that spoke for Allie when she no longer could.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: And what that watch told the investigators was the deeply troubling,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: heartbreaking story of a one-sided manipulative relationship. We need to
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: dive into the content of these texts because they establish
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: the entire motive for this execution. Okay. In April 2019,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: months before the murder, Ally texts Brandon a photo of
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: a home pregnancy test. The result is inconclusive, but she
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: tells him there is a faint blue line.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: And Brandon's response to this news is immediate, ice cold,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: and entirely focused on his own self-preservation. He doesn't offer
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: emotional support. He doesn't ask how she's feeling or what
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: she wants to do. He texts back, we can get
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: a pill. No kid at all. It will ruin my life.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: It will ruin my life. That one sentence is the
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Rosetta Stone for his entire motive. His reputation, his college lifestyle,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: his freedom from responsibility. It has all the matters to it.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: It's all he cared about.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: But Allie, whose friends told investigators she would have loved
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: to be a mother and have a child, is deeply
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: conflicted and distressed. And the texts show her spiraling. she
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: starts sending these massive, highly emotional text messages to Brandon.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: She texts him detailing heavy drinking binges, saying she drank tequila, champagne, beers,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and wine in a 48-hour period, essentially hoping her body
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: would just decide for her and induce a miscarriage.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: When forensic psychologists analyze digital communication like this, they look
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: at the volume and the cadence of the messages. The
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: dynamic here is incredibly asymmetrical.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by asymmetrical?
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: Allie is sending these long paragraph-style messages, laying bare her
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: emotional turmoil. The texts about the extreme drinking are a desperate,
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: glaring cry for help. She's practically begging Brandon to intervene
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: to show that he cares about her well-being, to come
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: to her rescue. She's deeply emotionally invested in seeking validation.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: But Brandon's side of the conversation is a masterclass in
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: emotional manipulation. He gives these brief, sporadic responses. He ignores
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: her long, agonizing texts for hours or days, and then
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: sends a one-sentence reply just to keep her on the hook.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: He promises to come over to her apartment to finally
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: talk about it, and then completely ghosts her, leaving her waiting.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: It is a calculated power imbalance. He is utilizing intermittent reinforcement.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: By withholding affection and communication, he creates a dynamic where
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: she is constantly starved for his approval. He knows she
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: is desperate for resolution, and he uses that desperation to
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: manipulate her actions and keep her waiting on his terms.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: solely to exert influence over the outcome of the potential pregnancy.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: And as the timeline moves into July, the digital trail
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: transitions from emotional manipulation to the chilling premeditation of a monster.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: While Brandon is back home in Fort Worth, Texas for
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: the summer, he leaves a web search history that is
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: impossible to explain away.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: It's so incriminating.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: He uses his devices to search Google for information on
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. He literally types in
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the search query how to get away with crimes. And
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: most damning of all, He is researching the ballistic mechanics
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: of hollow-point ammunition and how a Glock pistol operates.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: This digital footprint completely undermines any future defense strategy, that
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: the murder was a spontaneous act of passion or a sudden,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: drug-induced panic. He is actively, methodically researching the mechanics of murder,
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: the specific tools required for a murder, and the psychology
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: of infamous killers who avoided capture. He is writing the
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: script for a homicide.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: It's meticulous, cold-blooded planning. He legally purchases a. 40 caliber
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Glock pistol while he is in Texas. And then his
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: narcissism takes over. He makes an incredibly arrogant post on
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: the social media app Snapchat. He takes a photo of
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: the new Glock pistol resting on the console of his
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: truck and adds the caption, finally taking my baby back
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: to Oxford.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: It's a boast. It is a display of lethal power
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: broadcast to a digital audience, masking a sinister, violent reality
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: that only he fully understands in that moment. He is
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: telegraphing his intent, disguised as bravado.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: On July 19th, he arrives back in Mississippi and initiates
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: the final calculated trap. He texts Allie, who still desperately
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: thinks they're going to meet up to work things out
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: and have a meaningful conversation. He texts her a very
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: specific tactical question. Is your house private right now?
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: You have to look at how that question is interpreted
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: by the two different parties. From Allie's hopeful perspective, He's
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: asking if her roommates are gone so they can finally
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: have an intimate, uninterrupted, serious conversation about their relationship and
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: the pregnancy.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: But from an investigative perspective, reading it after the fact,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: he is conducting a threat assessment. He wants to ensure
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: there are no witnesses. He needs to know if anyone
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: will be there to place him at her apartment or
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: see her leave in his truck.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Security cameras around the college town square catch Allie
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: leaving a bar around midnight. By 1.30 a.m., digital location
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: data puts both of them out at that remote fish
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: camp at Sardis Lake. And the ballistics evidence processed at
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: the crime scene tells a horrifying story of her final moments.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: The lead crime scene investigator noted a crucial detail about
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: the 11 spent shell casings recovered near her body. They
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: were not clustered together in one tight pile. They were
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: trailing in a wide arc around the picnic table.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Meaning he wasn't just standing in one place pointing the
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: gun and firing blindly in a panic. He was physically
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: circling her as he shot.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: It implies a pursuit. At the very least, it implies
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: a methodical, terrifying execution where he is changing angles, tracking
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: her movements, and ensuring the job is done. It is
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: a profoundly cruel, aggressive, and calculated physical act that mirrors
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: the calculated digital planning.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: After murdering Allie, Brandon flees the scene. He gets in
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: his pickup truck and heads north on Interstate 55, aiming
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: toward Memphis, Tennessee. But his getaway, after all this meticulous
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: digital planning... is thwarted by the most ridiculous, arrogant, physical
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: detail imaginable.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part's amazing.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: He is fleeing a murder scene in a custom pickup
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: truck equipped with a highly visible vanity license plate that
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: literally reads, Take it.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: Which is an absolute gift to law enforcement. When detectives
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: identify a suspect and put out a blabber, on the
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: lookout alert to highway patrol, they're usually looking for a
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: generic silver sedan or a white Ford F-150. A vanity
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: plate that aggressive and recognizable makes the vehicle stand out
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: like a beacon to every single patrol car, weigh station,
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: or traffic camera on the interstate corridor.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: His need to be noticed betrayed his need to escape.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: The Memphis Fugitive Task Force spots the truck easily at
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: a gas station. When they swarm him and make the arrest,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: the murder weapon, the. 40 caliber Glock he posted on Snapchat,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: is sitting right there in the truck. And he still
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: has Allie's blood on his clothing. He is caught red-handed,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: surrounded by physical evidence, but fundamentally doomed by the digital evidence.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Facing this insurmountable mountain of data, the defense attorney, Tony Frazee,
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: has an incredibly difficult job. The state of Mississippi allows
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: for a capital murder charge, which carries the death penalty,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: because prosecutors successfully argue that Brandon lured Ally to the
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: lake under false pretenses, which legally constitutes kidnapping prior to
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: the murder. The defense has to craft a narrative to
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: save his life.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: So his lawyer tries to argue that it wasn't premeditated.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: He floats the narrative that Brandon and Allie were just
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: hanging out at the lake, that they were doing cocaine
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: and drinking alcohol, and that Brandon simply snapped in a
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: sudden drug-fueled rage. To support this, the defense points to
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: a handwritten letter found in Brandon's apartment. It was addressed
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: to his parents, and in it he wrote that he
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: had terrible thoughts and knew he was either going to
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: prison or going to die. The defense argues this is
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: a suicide note, proof that he was in a state
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: of absolute panic and mental collapse, not a calculating cold-blooded killer.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: It is a desperate, very weak defense when stacked against
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: the immutable reality of server logs. You cannot effectively argue
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: to a jury that a murder was a sudden cocaine-induced
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: heat of passion when your Google search history from a
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: week prior shows you meticulously researching hollow point bullets and
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: the tactics of Ted Bundy.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: You just can't.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: You cannot claim it was a spontaneous argument gone wrong
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: when your text messages show you carefully assessing the privacy
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: of her apartment to lure her to an isolated location.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: the premeditation was permanently etched in the cloud servers. The
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: suicide note reads less like a panic attack and more
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: like the self-pitying realization of a narcissist who knows his
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: life as he wanted it is over.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Ultimately, the prosecution offers a plea deal. They do this
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: primarily to spare Allie's grieving family the grueling, years-long emotional
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: toll of a highly publicized death penalty trial and the
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: inevitable appeals process. Brendan Thiesfeld pleads guilty to first-degree murder,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: and the judge sentences him to life in prison without
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: the possibility of parole. His life is effectively over.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: But there is a postscript to this.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The postscript to this entire tragedy, the detail that
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: just completely breaks your heart and highlights the absolute senselessness
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: of it all, is revealed during the medical examiner's autopsy. L.A.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Costule was not actually pregnant.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: It adds an excruciating, devastating layer of tragedy to the crime.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: Brendan Thiesfeld destroyed two lives— extinguishing a bright, beloved young
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: woman and throwing his own life behind bars forever over
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: a situation that was entirely a phantom anxiety.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: He executed her over a what-if.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: It underscores how his profound self-obsession, his narcissism, and his
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: complete lack of empathy blinded him to reality.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: It is a devastating end to a beautiful young life.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: But as we pull back and look at the totality
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: of these three stories, Mankiji, the Golden State Killer, and
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Ali Kostil, a very clear, unifying lesson emerges. for anyone
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: listening today.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The era of the perfect crime, the idea that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: a perpetrator can operate in a vacuum, is largely a myth.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: The environment around us, both natural and manufactured, is constantly
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: recording our presence. We are tethered to ecosystems we barely understand.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Whether it is the microscopic cellular DNA of a plant
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: clinging to the mud of a boot, connecting a husband
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: to a shallow grave in the woods.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Or strands of ancestral genetic code sitting in a public database,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: linking a retired police officer to a decade of historical terror.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: Or the silent, invisible synchronization of text messages to a
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: watch on a nightstand exposing the cold, calculated intent of
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: a college student, the truth always leaves a trail.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: The modern investigator is no longer just a detective with
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: a flashlight looking for physical fingerprints on a doorknob. They
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: are data analysts looking for the echoes of our existence.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: They are looking in the canopy of the trees, they
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: are tracing the bloodlines of distant cousins, and they are
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: parsing the architecture of the cloud.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: We often think of privacy in very traditional physical terms.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: We think of locking our front doors, closing our blinds,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: or maybe opening an incognito tab on our browser. But
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: with every single step we take in nature, every relative
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: who submits a fun DNA test to see where their
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: ancestors came from, and every text message we send into
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the digital easer, we are constantly leaving indelible pieces of
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: ourselves behind.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: The invisible witnesses are always watching, recording, and remembering.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: So if your digital, physical, and genetic footprint was laid
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: bare on a table today, what story would it tell
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: about you? Think about that next time you take a
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: walk in the woods or hit send.