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Typical Tuesday: "The Barn at 13 Below"...A Story of Survival · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: My name is Aaron, I'm your host and you guys are in for another amazing show.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: This is going to be a typical Tuesday show, which means you are going to get a story about what our life was like on a typical Tuesday afternoon.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: You're going to get to hear the ins and the outs and you're going to think man, I had no idea that stuff happened in my safe little community.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: But it does, and I'm going to tell you all about it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: But before we go there, here's what I really want to talk about.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about what's happened since the last time you and I spoke.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: So the last time we were here together, I was talking about shitty days and lies and issues that I was having surrounding the workers' comp process.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Well, those issues are still there and I'm still going through them.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: So it's not like we've had some great resolve, but what did happen is, a couple days after recording that episode, my wife and I took a vacation to Chicago, and if you guys have never been to Chicago, you should totally check it out.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: So I went to Chicago back in October for work and when I was there, the city was absolutely beautiful.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It is well lit, the skyline is gorgeous.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: If you stay downtown, the streets are super clean, there are police everywhere, so you feel super, super safe in the city.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: It is just an awesome, awesome city.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I went to the South side of Chicago and got somebody thought I was Leroy Brown, but I wasn't and I got mistaken for him.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: So I totally get it.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: But anyway, so back in the city, when it's got back to the main part of the city, we had a lot of fun.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: We went out and listened to music.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: We ate some great food.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: I got to go listen to some blues music at Buddy Guy's Legends Bar.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: If you've never been there and you like blues, buddy Guy is pretty freaking, phenomenal and his bar is pretty awesome.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: We went on a Wednesday night and they have a jam session, so I got to get up on stage and play drums with Real Chicago Blues Guys and just had an amazing time.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It was way, way cool.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And then on Friday night we went back and watched a Buddy Guy concert and that was pretty awesome too.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: So all in all, it was a really good trip.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: It was a nice distraction and I really got to kind of unwind and decompress a little bit there, so that was really super cool, since it is January and right now the temperature outside is a little bit frightful, a little cold.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I want to take you back to about 2017, january of 2017 to be exact.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: So during that time I was a detective assigned to major crimes homicide, child abuse and we have on-call status, which means for a period of time usually a week or two at a time certain detectives are on call.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: If something happens during the off hours, they're the ones that get the call and they handle the case or they decide if they need to activate the major crimes team and bring in a lot of help.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: So it was my weekend on call and it was early, early Saturday morning and my partner, detective Dan, and I were on call and I received a phone call early in the morning and I was told patrol officers are at an apartment in the city, that a door had been kicked in, somebody had a gun pointed at him.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: There was a lady there claiming to be a victim, who was a drug user, meth user, and she was claiming that she was a victim of a kidnapping.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: The story sounded super convoluted.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: They had one person detained and they needed us to come and help because they thought maybe there was a kidnapping or something that occurred.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So we responded into the city and when we got there I went directly to the scene and I remember the scene.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: The scene is in the heart of what's called Rockwood.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Rockwood is a pretty crappy neighborhood in the middle of our city and Rockwood, I would say, is probably one of the worst, most crime-affected neighborhoods in the city of Portland.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: If I had to guess, when I get to this apartment there's lots of police everywhere I go inside the apartment.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: The victim has been taken to the hospital.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: The lady, the male subject, was there with us.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Still, he was in a patrol car somewhere and I went into the apartment and I spoke to the other witnesses that were there and here's what I learned.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I learned that early that morning, saturday morning, the people are asleep inside the apartment and all of a sudden they hear banging on the door and somebody screaming for help.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Well, they go open the door and this is a neighborhood where people usually won't open the door for to help others because it's such a bad neighborhood and a bad apartment complex.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: But in this case it was a female voice.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: The male inside opened up the door and the female came barging in and when she came in she was really upset.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: She was screaming he's after me, he's behind me, he's going to get me.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: And the next thing, you know, he closes the door and then somebody's banging on the door trying to kick the door down.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So the guy inside the apartment tells the girl you know to go and hide.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: And he yells through the door you know, leave us alone, I have a gun, don't come in here.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And the guy outside the door is banging, banging, banging and finally kicks the door open.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Well, the guy inside is now looking through the doorway to a silhouetted white male adult.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: This male adult is about six foot two, six foot three, probably 220 pounds of solid lean muscle and he wants the girl and he's after her.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Well, the guy inside says yeah, I've got a gun pointed at him, get out.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: There's a tussle, somebody gets hit and then the by this time the police arrive and they take the guy into custody and that's where we're at so far.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: So after learning this, we're not quite ready to talk to the guy in the back seat yet and really get a full statement from him, because we don't know what's going to happen.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: We don't know what his role is, so we get enough just to understand that he was in a dating relationship with the female and that they had an argument ensued and he went up to the apartment.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: We don't want to get a whole lot of details, because the suspect is the last person that you interview and the reason being is you're going to build your case as you learn more and gather more evidence, so the last you may only get one interview and you want to do that at the end.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: So ultimately, uh, he was, you know, put on ice, if you will.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: We took him back and put him in a cell to let him just kind of hang out for the day while we investigated this case and figured out what was going on.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Well, by this time the young lady was done at the hospital and she came back to the police department and she was covered in bruises from head to toe.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: There was bruises on her arms, bruises on her chest, bruises on her legs.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: The bruises on her legs and ankles were lateral, meaning they were kind of in a line, but they were very wide bruises.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: So imagine, like a three or four inch black and blue mark, you know, across the shins from one side to the other.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: So she's got all these bruises on and now it's time to interview her and get her side of the story bruises on.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And now it's time to interview her and get her side of the story.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: So I interview her and she's a nice gal, um, and she tells me this story.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Well, before I tell you the story, let me describe her to you.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: She is a female, about 115 pounds, soaking wet, about mid twenties, about mid-20s, cute, long hair.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Looks like she's maybe been on and off the cusp of drugs, trying to maybe get clean, but falling back into her demon ways.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: And that is what I'm looking at here.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm not judging a book by its cover, because everybody comes and I strip all the opinions off and I just want to hear the story and see if we can find evidence to support the claims.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: So as I sit down and interview her, she tells me, she says, hey, this guy's name's Austin.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: She says Austin and I dated, and we dated for a period of time six months and he became very close to my family, close to my sister, close to my mom, and over that six months, while he was close to them, he was very violent with me, especially during sex or romance type times.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: He was very, very violent with me and it got to a point where I just couldn't handle it anymore.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: He was very, very violent with me and it got to a point where I just couldn't handle it anymore.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: She said so about four or five days ago.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I took off from him and I went to a friend's house and she said I was trying to hide and he didn't know where I was.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't long that he found me.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: And she says he showed up at my friend's house and my friend told him that I was there.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So now he wants to, austin wants to talk to me outside.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So we go outside and Austin's got his car which I've been in a thousand times and we go get in his car and he wants to talk in his car where he can be private.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: And he says he wants to try to make up.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: And when I got into the car he started backing up kind of away from the front of the house.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And she said I thought that was really weird because people could see us if we're in front of the house, but if we're kind of at the end of this little dead end street, then nobody can see us.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: So she says he starts talking to me about, you know, making up and getting back together, and I tell him I'm not interested and he starts to drive away with me, she said.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: So I reach over to try to get out of the car and the door handle and the window handle has been taken off, so I'm stuck in this car, the door is locked and I can't get out of this car.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: She said I'm yelling at him, I'm screaming, he's hitting me, I'm trying to defend myself, I'm hitting him back, she said.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: And then he just takes off driving, she said and we?
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: He drove so fast and so reckless.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: He's trying to.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: He said he's going to kill us.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: If he couldn't have me, then nobody else could.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: And he's trying to drive us into trees, trying to drive us into bridge embankments.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And then by this time it's, you know, the middle of the night, it's dark and I'm beat up and he takes me to some house.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know where the house is, but it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And he takes me to this house and he sexually assaults me multiple times and it happens in the basement and there's a couch in the basement, a brown couch, pulled the pillows off, laid the pillows on the floor.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: That's where the assault occurred.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: All my clothes are there and then when we were done, I was naked and he took me from that room.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: We were in the basement of this house that I've never been in before.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: He took me from this basement of the house outside and it was cold.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Now I'm going to stop here and let you guys know that when we investigated this case, the day we investigated this case, we investigate over about a 24 hour period, straight from Saturday into Sunday, at about noon, um, it was 13 degrees was the average temperature, so we're talking a very cold period of time.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: So she says he took me down, uh, and I think I was in a barn.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: She says it was thin walled wood, looked like this big barn.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: She said it was really, really cold and inside the barn he had another room constructed and it was like a small room inside the big room and in that small room he had eye bolts into the walls and a rope and he had me tied up, that I was in this room for three days.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I was tied up to the wall.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: He would come down, he would abuse me, he would bring me some food, but I was naked the whole time.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: She said I was really, really cold.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: He would bring me a blanket that I could cover up in, but I didn't have any clothes.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: She said I remember laying there on the floor and I looked and she said between where the yeah, the two by four wall is, you know, the stud for the wall and the concrete floor of this room.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: She says there was tons of spider eggs and spider nests and a web of nests there.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: And she says you know, I was so disgusted by this whole thing.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: She said but on the third day, which was Friday this is now she's talking about Friday, the day before we got the call out.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: She says now, on Friday, uh, he came down and he said hey, I need to go to my probation officer in Salem and you need to go with me because I can't leave you here.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: My parents don't know you're here, nobody knows you're here.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, I can't, I can't leave you.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: So she says that he brings her some clothes they're not hers she gets dressed and then he sneaks her to his car the car with no door handles or doorknobs on the inside and then drives her down to Salem.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Well, en route to Salem, he's threatening her, saying that if you leave, if you try to run, if you try to hide, I'm going to hurt and kill your family.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: So she's scared because she knows that he has a relationship and knows how to find her family and her mom and everybody else.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: So what he had essentially done is, over the period of time, like a lot of domestic violence predators do is they groom the family, they groom the friends, they try to get everybody onto their side and this is a power and control tactic.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: So they have the power and control over the victim and this also leaves the victim isolated and insulated from any of her support network.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Anybody that she could call on has now been separated from her and they're going to side with the suspect.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: So, as she's sitting in this seat getting driven to Salem, knowing that she's going to essentially a law enforcement agency, she says she has to determine whether she's going to try to run and hide and get away and risk her family getting hurt, or is she going to acquiesce and be a victim?
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: So she decided that her family's life was more important than hers and she was going to just stay in the car.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: So he pulls up out front of the probation office in Salem and he gets out and goes inside and she's left alone in his car.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Now the driver's door can unlock, she can get out.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: That way she could escape if she wanted to.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: But she chose to sit there and wait for him, not knowing if he was going to come back out or not.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe he was going to get revoked and go to jail.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: But within an hour or two he comes out and he gets back in the car and she's still there waiting for him.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: So in her mind she says she's scared because maybe she lost her only opportunity to escape and get away.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And she just didn't know what I mean.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: She'd already been tied up and held captive and hostage for three days, repeatedly abused physically, sexually, mentally, and didn't know.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: You know what was going to happen here.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: So they go to the local Walmart and he says I'm going to take you inside with me, but you are going to act normal and you're not going to cause attention.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So he takes her inside the Walmart, they have to do some shopping and ultimately they leave together.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: She says that he then drives them back to Rockwood and back to the you know Rockwood area and they spend the night and she's held captive, she's restrained again, she's tied up, not allowed to go anywhere.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And then the next morning, but she says, she tells him hey, you know, I'm dope sick, I need some methadone and I need to go to the methadone clinic.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: So he agrees to take her to the methadone clinic because she's already been good so far, right, she's had the chance to escape and she didn't.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: So he believes that she is not a flight risk and he takes her to the methadone clinic.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Well, at the methadone clinic they get there and she goes in, and he goes in with her, and but she has to go to the back to get her medicine by herself.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: She can't have him come back there.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So she goes back to see her provider and when she does, she asked to go to the bathroom and escapes out the back door and she runs and she runs and she runs while he realizes something is up.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: So he goes out and he sees that she's running.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: So he's chasing her from a distance.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: She runs to the apartment, goes inside and he shows up shortly thereafter kicking the door down.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: So that is how the whole thing unfolded.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Now, listening to this story, I have to think it sounds like something off of television.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: It sounds like something that's concocted and made up and it's just literally outlandish to think about somebody getting domestically violence controlled and then sneaks away and then kidnapped in a car with no door handles or window latches, taken to a remote location in the middle of nowhere, sexually assaulted, taken down to a barn and tied up in some makeshift room with ropes laying amongst spider eggs and spider nests, and then getting into a car, driving to a police department essentially the probation office not escaping, going to Walmart, not escaping, coming back, spending the night the following morning going to the methadone clinic.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Then she escapes.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: This whole story is like unbelievable, right, and that's why it's a typical Tuesday, because we're like does this stuff even happen in the real world?
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a case where this is what's being reported.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: But just because things are being reported doesn't mean we don't have to prove it.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: So we start our investigation and this is where that 24, 36 hour investigation comes in.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: So we start taking a look and we look at everything from you know where did this whole thing start?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: So we look at the uh, try to identify who the suspect is and what remote houses or locations he might have access to.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And sure enough, we find that his parents have a house out in the middle of nowhere.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: On Google maps it looks like maybe there's an outbuilding.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: So we drive the victim by and she's like, yep, this is where I came, this is where I was at.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So now we have a place to go back and search.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: So we put a team right in a search warrant and we secure or we put surveillance on the house and we have a team right in a search warrant.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Then we talk about well, what happened in Salem?
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: There's cameras all down the corridor of I-5.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: So we start pulling up cameras and sure enough, we see his car going past the cameras on the dates and times that she says that he's going to be there.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: So now things are starting to at least fall in line with her story.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So then we go down to Salem and we check in with the probation officer.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And, sure enough, he checked in and we checked the video there and the car's in the parking lot and she's in the parking lot.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: So then we go to Walmart, we pull the Walmart video.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Sure enough, she's walking all over Walmart with him and they go back out and they leave in his car and all of the times that she is saying, even though she's in her victimized state, all of the timestamps that she's giving us and data points she's giving us, we're now confirming with physical evidence.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: So things are starting to back up her story, if you will.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Well, by this time we have to do something with him.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So we arrest him on the charges of the burglary and the trespassing for kicking in the dude's door.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: That'll at least be enough to hold him in jail.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: So we're not just holding him in our cell.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: So he gets transported off to jail and the victim is there.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: We have a victim's advocate come in from the courthouse to help her.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: We have some resources for her.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: We're making sure she's getting food and she's safe medically and her world is well calling the people she needs to have called.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: So then it's time to collaborate with some surrounding agencies, because this house that's in the middle of nowhere is actually in another county.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: So we got to get with them.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: We got the search warrants written in another county.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Now we got to go out and serve these search warrants.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: So we don't know if we're going to hit friend or foe at this house.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So we go out to the house.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: We hit the house with a search warrant At this time.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: It was not a SWAT warrant, it was a bunch of detectives.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: We go out, we contact the family.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: They're very supportive of their kid, said they don't know anything about a girl.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: There's been no girl there, they have known nothing about anything we're talking about and we got the wrong people.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: So we detained kind of an avocado color, a big entertainment center with a really old television in the middle of it and the couch cushions were all laid out on the floor of women's clothes, some tall boots that come up to the knee, like she described she was wearing.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: There was a pink towel there.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: The pink towel had some kind of crusties on it and she says that's what was used to clean up the semen after the sexual assault.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: So now we've got a crime scene.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So now we process that crime scene, we collect all this evidence.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: But there was the talk of the barn.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: So we look outside that back door and, sure enough, 150 yards down the hill, in the middle of the big open field, is this old, dilapidated barn.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: It's about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, 40 feet tall, 30 feet tall, big hayloft up top and we walked down there and this barn looks like it couldn't hold up the weight of its own walls.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: There was was not a door on either end.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: It was a big open room that the wind was just howling through and I remember being it's so cold that day.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: But sure enough, in the corner of that room was a smaller room that had been constructed.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: So we go into that smaller room and in that room was eye bolts attached to the wall.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Rope attached to the eye bolts drug out into the middle of the room.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: There was a twin mattress in there.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: There was a brown blanket that was in that room described by the victim and looked along the wall between the wall studs and the concrete floor and there was tons of spider eggs and spider nests.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Everything our victim was saying was coming true.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: You know, a story can be one thing and you got to ask okay, well, is it just possible?
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: She's been in this room before.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: You know she knows this room, she's describing it, trying to set them up.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: But you've got to have a commonsensical view to some of these things and you have to take a look at who the suspect is.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: So when we do the suspectology and dig into this guy a little bit.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: We realize that he was recently arrested and spent time in prison for rape and for sexual assault, and he had been released about six months prior to this incident, which means she met him shortly after he got released from jail from serving time on rape, which is why he was on probation.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: So we take a look at his previous rape case and, as luck would have it, the fact patterns are similar to what we're looking at in this case.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Well, the victim would have no way to know that, so it's lending more and more credibility to her when we go back and talk to the suspect and now we tell him everything we've got.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Look, this is the report that's being made.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: This is the physical evidence we have.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Here's the video we have.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: This is the evidence we've collected from your parents' house.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: This is the evidence we've collected from the barn.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: This is an injuries that the victim has on her.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Here's the story.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: You know, tell us your half of what's going on.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Well, this guy has been around the block and there's no way he's going to talk to us.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: So he basically told us to fuck off and that was the end of the conversation with him.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: So that's fine, we will, and so he goes off to jail and we do whatever we do and then we present this case to a grand jury.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: A grand jury ultimately hears the facts and determines that a felony crime was committed.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: This person committed the felony crime and this person is the victim of that crime.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: So now we have him for rape, kidnapping, assault, I mean all kinds of stuff.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: So now it's time to make sure we can take care of the victim right, because we can't forget about her.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: We've been focusing on the suspect some recently.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Now we've got to make sure we can take care of the victim right, because we can't forget about her.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: We've been focusing on the suspect some recently.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Now we've got to make sure that victim has got the appropriate resources housing, care, shelter, money, all the stuff that they need to stay alive and well and functioning.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Then we were able to give her a lot of that stuff.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Make sure that we want to do that for two reasons.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: One, we want to make sure that she's taken care of.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: We also want to make sure that we keep her friendly, because we want to make sure that we get her to trial so she can testify and then ultimately, a jury would be able to decide whether or not he was guilty of this, but if they can't hear her testimony, then you know it's all hearsay.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: So trial comes and we prep for trial and I'm working with a very good prosecutor in this case.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I absolutely love her to death and working with a great prosecutor, and we feel solid about our case.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: We feel solid about the evidence.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Detective Dan did an amazing job in this case and he and I worked a lot of long, hard hours together to knock this out.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: All of our criminalists worked because now this is a case that, like I said a minute ago, you hear about on television, yet it's unfolding within the four walls of our city and we're the ones in charge of making sure this case goes from nothing to something and at least be presented to a judge or jury.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: So now we're at trial and we're able to present a lot of this evidence.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: But there was a problem at trial, and can you imagine what that was?
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: The problem at trial is the question was asked by lay people who don't understand the domestic violence cycle and system and what duress is.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Well, if she's alone and can get away, why didn't she run?
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: If she is in Walmart, why isn't she screaming for help?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: If she has all these opportunities.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: She was really complicit in this thing.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: This is all a lie, this is all bullshit and made up and she's just trying to get him in trouble.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: But she was really complicit because she had all these quote unquote chances to escape.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Well, during testimony I had to testify to the domestic violence cycle, domestic violence abuse patterns, control, duress and explain delayed report and explain why victims oftentimes won't take the opportunity or the chance to escape.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: For two reasons.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: One, they want to make sure, especially in situations where family members have been threatened, they want to make sure those family members stay safe.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And oftentimes we are willing to sacrifice ourselves for the ones that we love, and that is not an uncommon thing.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: But we see that over and over again in domestic violence, sexual abuse cases, sibling, sexual abuse, all of that.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: So that is the one thing.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: The other thing is she would not be in this relationship if she didn't care for him a little bit.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of Stockholm syndrome going on, where the victim starts to side with the suspect.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: It doesn't make her any less of a victim, it just she's starting to align with the suspect's thought patterns because he is being nice to her when he wants to be, and it's the same reason we stay in domestic violence relationships.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: So I had to explain all of this on the stand.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: When it came time for the defense to cross-examine me, it was surprisingly easy.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: They did not put up a big fight, they didn't really try to put on a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: They pretty much asked me some softball questions, pointed me to the answers they wanted and we were done.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: We were off the stand.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: At the end of this.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: He was convicted of all of these charges.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: There was one charge he wasn't convicted of.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: It was a nothing charge.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was, but anyway, there was one thing he wasn't convicted of, but everything else he was convicted of and he got sent back to prison.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: So now it's his second time in prison for at least his second conviction on rape charges and kidnapping and that type of stuff.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: So this is a bad dude.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: The victim goes on, she ultimately has a baby and uh lives a life and bad guys in jail and she is happy and satisfied until it was about three or four years later that uh, an appeal was made.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Later that an appeal was made, the case got overturned on appeal and he got out of jail.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: So all of that testimony that I gave regarding domestic violence stuff, while none of it was inaccurate, none of it was made up, none of it was lies, the court did not swear me in and recognize me as an expert witness and they considered that expert testimony.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: And if you're not sworn in as an expert in that court then your testimony is irrelevant.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: And because my testimony was irrelevant, it's like it was never heard and without that information, then this case got overturned on appeal.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: So guess what?
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: The bad guy got out of jail.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: He gets out of jail and he goes on to living his life.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: So within about a year or so of him out of jail, um, he is finding himself in a part of the city where he's being drunk and stupid and trying to beat people up.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: And remember, this guy is a physically fit dude, he is very capable of beating somebody up.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: But he's out there and imagine this cocky, jock, muscle six pack, you know, thinks his shit doesn't stink, star of the football team turns shitbag.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: That's what we're looking at.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: So this guy's out there and he's trying to beat people up.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Then he tries to carjack somebody and during the carjacking process the passenger in the car, a nice old lady was armed and she realizes that this guy is trying to commit a felony and hurt somebody.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: So she shoots and kills him and he dies, which, uh, is not a bad day for society.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: So he dies and, uh, she is good, she's totally, it's a justified shooting, she's totally fine and this guy was really causing up a stink that night and that is the way the cookie crumbles.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is the day before that and no conspiracy theorists when I say this, all right guys, but the day before that he was stupid and got shot and killed.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: He filed a lawsuit against me and the city for, you know, in false imprisonment or false imprisonment or something like that, I don't know something stupid trying to get some money.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: And then it was the following day that he got himself killed.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: So that's the way that that ended.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: The victim out there is, last I heard, still doing good, has her daughter and life is good for her and she's changed her life around.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: She was clean.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: The last time that I heard from her or spoke to her she was off the drugs and kind of living a good life and survived that episode and, you know, was looking better to looking forward to a better future.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: This case exhausted us.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: We worked this case for about 36 hours straight when we, from start to finish, we were able to take this case from a convoluted.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: What the hell happened?
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Who's making up the story?
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Through collecting all of the evidence, through making the arrest, searching the houses, serving the search warrants, collecting the evidence, sending it off to the lab, finding semen on that towel, finding the semen and secretions on the couch cushions, finding all the evidence and the DNA evidence and everything we needed from the little constructed room down in that barn on that very, very cold day.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: You know the victim is very lucky that she didn't die due to exposure during this time.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: You know, the one thing the suspect did right is paid her some attention, gave her some food and gave her that blanket, or she very well could have froze to death.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: So this is just another story about a typical Tuesday right, and when I talk about moving a needle and you know, when I'm frustrated through this whole PTSD thing and my change in lifestyle or whatever, I feel like I really used to move a really big needle and impact people's lives drastically and now it's a little bit different for me and it's not bad.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: It's probably good, but for me it's really really hard to adjust to.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: So that's why I hope this podcast is helping.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Now, maybe not stories like this, right?
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: The podcast is educational, entertaining, provides value.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: This might just be educational because I'm telling you what we did on a daily basis.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: This is not war stories.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: It's not like living the glory days.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: This is what life was like.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: This is what the world was like.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: This is also the type of stuff that contributed to the PTSD and the trauma that I had.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: It was these cases, over and over and over again, that caused me to end up in that hospital room getting diagnosed with PTSD.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: So educational, value, entertaining, and maybe it's entertaining.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: You guys all watch true crime stuff.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's some entertaining value there.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: This is what we did.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: This was our world.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Detective Dan is a rock star, but if you're listening to this, I love and miss you so much.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: You're a good dude, so that's what we had going on.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: That is the typical Tuesday the story of the barn at 13 Below.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming back for another week.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I love you.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Share this information with your friends.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Share the podcast.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Check us out on Instagram at Murders2Music.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Join the conversation, let me know what you think, ask questions.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I'm here for you.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, that is the Murders2Music podcast.