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Deadly Secrets and Dark Fortunes · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine for a second that you are driving down a
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: really quiet street in the middle of the night.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Right. Or, you know, maybe you're just sitting on your
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: couch watching the evening news.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And you see a horrific car crash. Or maybe
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: you hear about this devastating house fire in your own community.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Your very first instinct, naturally, is pity. You feel this
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: heavy knot in your stomach. You do.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: You automatically assume that those victims were just struck by terrible,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: random bad luck. Because, well, that is how the world works, right?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Accidents happen. Tragedy is just this chaotic variable in the
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: human equation.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: But today's deep dive is going to completely dismantle that
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: instinct for you. We are exploring what happens when that
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: exact human empathy you feel is weaponized against you.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: It's a dark concept. What happens when bad luck is
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: actually a meticulously crafted, cold-blooded illusion?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. To figure out how these illusions work,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: we are pulling from a massive stack of sources today.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got investigative reporting, raw court transcripts, forensic psychological evaluations,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and police interrogation logs.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: We are going to dissect two highly distinct, profoundly chilling
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: true crime cases where absolute murder was camouflaged as a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: tragic accident.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: And the motivations in these two stories, they sit on
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: complete opposite ends of the human spectrum.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Right. One is driven by this desperate, panicked desire to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: hide a taboo secret at all costs. And the other,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: that one is driven by a slow, unfathomable, lifelong greed.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: But the connective tissue here, it goes far beyond just
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the methodology of staging an accident.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Well, the real parallel lies in the psychology of the perpetrators.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: When you strip away their camouflage and you confront these individuals...
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: with the reality of what they have done, you don't
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: find normal guilt.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: No, you don't.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: You find this terrifyingly blank sociopathic indifference that is, frankly,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: almost harder to comprehend than the murders themselves.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: And, you know, why should you care about this? Why
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: spend an hour dissecting the absolute darkest corners of human behavior?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Because it reveals exactly how easily the surface level of
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: our reality can be manipulated.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It shows us how fragile the truth actually is
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and how... In so many cases, absolute forensic persistence is
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the single thing standing between a perfect crime and actual justice.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Keep your eyes open because by the end of this
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: deep dive, you're going to view the entire concept of
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: an accident in a completely different light.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Let's go straight to the scene of our first illusion.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: It is 2.36 a.m. on a very quiet, dark residential
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: street in Tyler, Texas.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: The silence of the night is just entirely shattered.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: A neighbor wakes up, grabs her phone, and dials 911.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: According to the source, her grandbaby had just woken up,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: saying they heard what sounded like shooting outside.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: So the neighbor looks out her window, and what she sees,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: it looks like a severe traffic collision.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Right. There is a car crashed up against a telephone
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: pole across the street. The headlights are glaring into the darkness,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and the engine is still running.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Based on that initial 911 call, police and paramedics are
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: dispatched with a very specific, preloaded mindset.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: They think it's a car wreck.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are responding to a single car motor vehicle
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: accident with potential structural impact.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: When the first responders arrive on the scene, their body
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: cameras are rolling. You can hear them approaching the vehicle,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: yelling out, are you OK? Can you hear me?
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: They are entirely in rescue mode.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: They are anticipating a drunk driver who lost control in
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: the dark or, you know, somebody just fell asleep at
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: the wheel.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Right. If I'm a paramedic running up to that car.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: My mental checklist is focused on whiplash, blunt force trauma,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: checking if the airbag deployed.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: You are definitely not thinking about a crime scene.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I am not. But the evidence immediately, violently contradicts that
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: rescue narrative.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: They walk up to the driver's side. The victim is
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: sitting upright in the driver's seat, her head slumped over.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: She is completely unresponsive. And then the flashlights hit the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: interior of the car.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: And that narrative of a simple car wreck just evaporates instantly.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Because there's simply way too much blood?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Far too much blood for a low-speed impact with a
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: telephone pole. In a standard collision, you know, even without
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: a seat belt, the biomechanics of the crash yield specific injuries.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Like lacerations from shattered glass, right?
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or maybe a crushed sternum from the steering column.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: But you do not see the massive arterial volume of
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: blood that the officers encountered here, pooling on the seat's
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: and the floorboards.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: The officers on the scene had to completely recalibrate their
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: brains in a matter of seconds. I mean, how quickly
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: does a traffic accident investigation pivot to a homicide?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: It is an instantaneous paradigm shift. The moment they realize
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the blood pattern doesn't match a kinetic impact, the scene
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: is locked down.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: And according to the forensic reports and our sources, they
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: found gunshot wounds.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Yes. Five gunshots have been fired in total, and four
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: of those rounds had struck the victim.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Four bullets. The inside of that car was a horrific scene.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: The sources note there was blood on the steering wheel,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: on the dashboard, on the front windshield, and coating the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: inside of the doors.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: This wasn't a tragic swerve off the road. This victim
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: had been executed right there in the driver's seat.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: That level of kinetic violence inside a confined space, it
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: leaves a highly specific evidentiary footprint.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: It does. But before the forensics unit can even begin
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: mapping that out, the authorities have to identify the person
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: whose life had been taken so violently.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Right. Her name was Ty Underwood. She was a vivacious, beautiful,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: incredibly unique, 24-year-old transgender woman.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: The sources note she was born as Tyrone Lee Underwood,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: but she went by Ty, and she introduced herself to
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: the world as Ty.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Her friends described her as an absolutely upstanding person who
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: refused to let anything get in her way.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: They actually quoted her life motto in the reporting. She
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: always said, if there was a will, there was a way.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I love that. That motto really encapsulates the immense bravery
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: it took for her to live her life authentically.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: To truly understand the gravity of Ty's story, we have
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: to look at the geographical and social context provided in
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the reporting.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she had recently moved from Lufkin, Texas. Her friends
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: described that as a podunk little country town.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: And she relocated to Tyler, Texas. For Ty, Tyler felt
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: like moving to the Big Apple.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: It was a step up for her, a chance for
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: a bigger life, taking these baby steps toward finding her
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: place in the world and living openly.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: But the reality of Tyler, Texas presents a very stark
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: societal backdrop, according to our sources.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Well, the area is characterized in the source material as
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: having a very heavy religious base. It's explicitly described as
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: the buckle of the Bible Belt.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, so a very conservative environment.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The reporting notes that while there is a decent-sized
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: LGBT population there, people generally keep quiet.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Right, they keep their heads down.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Because structurally and culturally, they do not feel safe being
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: openly who they are in that specific environment.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Which honestly just amplifies Ty's bravery. She wasn't fearful of
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: what the world thought of her.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: She lived her life to the fullest every single day because,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: as her friends noted, You just never know what might happen.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: She was unafraid of being who she was in a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: place that urged her to hide. And that vibrant, fearless
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: approach to life makes her sudden, violent death at 24
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: years old deeply tragic.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: It really frames the initial hours of the investigation. When
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: you have a victim who is a transgender woman living
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: openly in a highly conservative area, investigators must immediately consider
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: the possibility of a hate crime.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to the crime scene and how the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: police reconstructed the model.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Because the shooter wasn't standing outside the car in the
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: dark waiting for her on the sidewalk.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: No. The shooter was inside the car with her.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: The bullet trajectory analysis confirmed this definitively. Forensics doesn't just
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: look at where a bullet ends up, right?
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: They look at the geometry of the impact.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They trace the path of the bullets from where
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: they impacted the interior of the car and the victim's
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: body back to their origin point in three-dimensional space.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: And what did that show?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: The analysis showed the gunshots came from Ty's right side,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: moving toward the left at a slightly downward angle.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Meaning the killer was sitting right there in the passenger seat,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: firing point-blank at the driver.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: It's like a locked-room mystery, but moving at 30 miles
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: an hour.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Imagine the absolute sheer panic. Ty wasn't just sitting there passively.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: She was actively trying to flee while taking fire.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: The sources detail a desperate, chaotic final drive. She is bleeding.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Her lungs are failing from the bullet wounds, but she
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: hits the accelerator.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: The killer is either still in the car scrambling to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: get out or jumping out and continuing to fire as
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: she speeds away, trying to save her own life.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And the physical evidence of that panic flight was scattered
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: all over the street.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the car had clipped mailboxes. There was broken glass
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: and paint transfer on the pavement.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: She was driving away, and then in a desperate evasive maneuver,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: she threw the car into reverse.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: She actually backed up toward where the initial shooting happened
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: before ultimately wrecking into the grass.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Her escape ended right there. The car's wheels got trapped
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: in the mud, they dug into the dirt, and she
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: was stuck, unable to get away as her life faded.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Amidst all this chaos, the killer left behind some bizarre
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: physical and auditory clues.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: The first major clue was what was conspicuously present. Detectives
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: found cash sitting right there in the center console.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So that completely rules out a robbery gone
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: wrong or a random carjacking?
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. If the motive was financial, that cash would be gone.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: This was a targeted killing. The motive was intensely personal.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: And then there was the auditory clue, which, honestly, I
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: find incredibly eerie.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: It is eerie. While detectives were examining the bloody interior,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: they heard music playing.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: At first, they assumed it was just the car stash.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: left on, but it turned out it was Ty's cell phone.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: It was just sitting there on the console, playing music
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: all by itself in this silent, devastating scene, until it
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: completely drained the battery dead.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: That dead cell phone brings the physical investigation to a
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: screeching halt, and it opens up a massive digital hurdle.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Detectives know that if this was a personal, targeted attack
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: at 2.30 in the morning, the killer's identity is almost
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: certainly inside that device.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: They need to know who she was communicating with, right,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: who she was meeting out there in the dark.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: But the phone is locked. It's an iPhone, protected by
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: a four-digit PIN code.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: So you have this ticking time bomb for the police.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: They can't just plug it into a laptop and drag
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: the files over.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the high-stakes gamble of digital forensics.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Apple's iOS encryption... utilizes a hardware component called the secure enclave.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Which means what exactly for the cops?
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Well, when a phone is locked with a passcode, the
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: data on the flash storage is cryptographically entangled with that
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: specific PI. It's an AES 256-bit encryption.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: So without the PI, the data is just mathematically scrambled gibberish. Right.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: And furthermore, the system is designed to thwart brute force attacks.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: The police only get a very specific limited number of
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: tries to guess that P.I. in code.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: With every incorrect guess, the phone institutes a time delay.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: And if they hit the maximum limit, which is usually
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: 10 tries, the phone can permanently wipe the encryption key.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: If they hit that limit, the data is gone forever.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: If that data is gone, the killer likely walks free.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: The detectives are flying completely blind. They have to get
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: inside the mind of the victim to figure out what
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: four numbers she would use.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: So they build attention in the room. They throw a
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Hail Mary guess. What do they punch in?
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: They guessed her date of birth. And it works.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: The phone unlocks. The sigh of relief in that precinct
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: must have been audible through the walls.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: The moment that screen opens up, they find an absolute
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: treasure trove of digital evidence.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Text messages, instant messages, and most importantly, a massive string
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of communications on a chat application called Kik.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Those Kik messages provided a direct illuminated path from the
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: victim to a specific individual.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: And these weren't casual friendly chats. No.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: They were highly romantic, intimate conversations, complete with X-rated selfies.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: The digital footprint laid out the entire clandestine relationship.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Leading the police straight to a 21-year-old college freshman, police
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: go and speak to Ty's best friend and roommate, Kenya,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: who confirms the digital trail.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Kenya tells them the only reason Ty would have left
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: the apartment in the middle of the night was to
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: meet a guy she had been seeing.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: She gives them a name, Carlton Champion.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Carlton Champion's background plays a significant role in understanding his
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: psychology and and his status within that town.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Tell us about him.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: According to the source, Carlton had a rough childhood and
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: had gotten into some trouble as a youth. But as
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: he got older, he found immense stability and purpose through sports.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: By the end of high school, he had leveled out
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and been accepted into Texas College, located right nearby in Tyler.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: He didn't just go to college, though. He made the
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: football team.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And we have to look at the cultural context provided
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: by our sources here. In small Texas communities, football players
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: aren't just student athletes.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: No, they are revered. The community puts them on a pedestal.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: They are thrust into the local spotlight.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Carlton went from a troubled youth to a local idol.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: He was the big man on campus.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: That idol status creates a very specific, very fragile kind
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: of ego. It constructs a psychological bubble where an individual
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: feels protected by their status.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: They become heavily invested in their public image, right?
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, and intensely fearful of anything that might puncture that
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: image or cause them to lose their pedestal.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: So the police bring Carlton in for questioning. He is
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: suddenly under the hot glare of a homicide investigation. And
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: his story is a masterpiece of convenient deflections.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: He admits he met Ty, but claims it was only
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: one time.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. He takes it a
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: step further. He claims he had absolutely no idea that
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Ty was a transgender woman.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: He tells the police he thought she was a biological female.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: He also vehemently insists he had never been inside her
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: white car, claiming he didn't even know what kind of
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: vehicle she drove.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Now, if I'm the detective, I'm immediately thinking about that
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: kick app. They have all these intimate, explicit conversations saved.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Right, I'm asking him to pull out his phone right
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: there on the table.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: But Carlton tells the police that, remarkably, he had just
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: deleted the kick app from his tablet That exact morning.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Just a total bizarre coincidence.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: It is the kind of lie that looks brilliantly evasive
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: to a 21-year-old, but looks like a giant neon sign
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: of guilt to a homicide detective.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, deleting the sole messaging system that connected him
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: to a murder victim mere hours after she was killed,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: it's incredibly suspicious.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: But investigations require running down every single lead, and they
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: rarely move in a straight line.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the misdirection. While digging through Ty's
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: unlocked phone, the police don't just find Carlton. Right.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: They find that Ty had also been communicating with another man,
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: a mystery man, listed in her contacts only as George.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: George immediately elevates to prime suspect status for a very
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: compelling geographic reason. He lived right near the area where
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Ty was murdered.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: So the police have digital communication and physical proximity to
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: the crime scene. They have to pivot.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: They bring George in and interrogate him for nearly two hours.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: They are pressing him hard.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And George's reaction is the complete opposite of typical suspect behavior.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Instead of lawyering up, shutting down, or getting defensive, George
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: gets exasperated.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: He confidently demands a polygraph. His exact words to the
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: police were, hell yeah, let's go. I'm trying to get
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the hell out of here, man.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: An innocent person's righteous indignation can be incredibly powerful in
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: an interrogation room.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Now, polygraphs aren't infallible, and they aren't typically admissible in court,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: but how do they function as an investigative tool here?
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Well, a polygraph doesn't actually detect lies. It detects physiological arousal.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Like stress responses? Yes.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: It uses pneumograph tubes around the chest to measure respiration,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: a blood pressure cuff for cardiovascular activity, and electrodes on
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the fingers to measure sweat gland changes.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: So when a normal person lies... The fear of getting
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: caught triggers the autonomic nervous system.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly, causing spikes in those specific areas. But George takes it,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: and his baseline remains perfectly flat. He passes without a
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: hint of deception.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: The police determine he was not involved, and they clear him.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: George is out. So the cops are back to square
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: one with Carlton.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: But Carlton is sticking to his story. He swears he
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: never left his college dorm room on the night of
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the murder.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: He's got an alibi, even if it's just his own word.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: But if he's claiming he was in his dorm the
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: whole night, my immediate thought as an investigator is, we
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: live in a surveillance state. Every dorm has cameras. Did
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: they just pull the tapes?
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: They did the painstaking, unglamorous work of modern policing. They
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: went straight to the surveillance tapes.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: And what'd they find?
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: They pulled hours of footage from the Texas College dormitories,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: scrubbed through it frame by frame, and found the undeniable truth.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: The time-stamped footage clearly shows Carlton Champion exiting his dorm
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: building right before the time of the murder. and then
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: returning to the dorm just minutes after Ty was left
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: shot and bleeding in her car.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: The window of time is narrow, but it is precisely
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: enough time for him to leave campus, commit the murder,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: and run back.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: But, you know, video footage of a guy leaving his
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: dorm doesn't put a gun in his hand. They need
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: physical evidence tying him to the interior of that car.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: And the trap finally closes when the lab results come back.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: The forensic technicians had rigorously swabbed the interior of Ty's car.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Remember, this is the car Carlton swore to police he
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: had never, ever been inside.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: They were looking for touch DNA, which operates on Lockhart's
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: exchange principle. The principle states that every contact leaves a trace.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: So when you touch a surface, you leave behind microscopic
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: epithelial cells, skin cells.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: And the lab results returned a definitive match. Carlton Champion's
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: DNA was found on the passenger side seatbelt, and on
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: the interior door handle.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: The exact side of the car the bullet trajectory proved
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the shooter was sitting in. It is game, set, and match.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: The police bring Carlton back into the interrogation room.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: We've all seen this in movies. The detectives sit down,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: they lay out the surveillance photos, they slide the DNA
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: report across the table, and the suspect crumbles.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: The weight of reality sets in, they break down in tears,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: and they confess.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: But that is absolutely not what happens here. What unfolds
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: in this interrogation room is a chilling display of psychological abnormality.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: The police confront him with a homicide investigation. They say,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: we're investigating a murder. Did you have sex with Tyrone?
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Carlton is sitting there in handcuffs, but he isn't sweating.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: He isn't crying.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: The sources describe him as arrogant, smirking, treating the whole
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: thing like a mild annoyance. He jukes through the questions
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: without a single ounce of remorse.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Then comes the moment that genuinely shocked the seasoned detectives
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: in the room. When confronted with the fact that he
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: is going to be arrested for murder, Carlton Champion doesn't
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: ask for a lawyer.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: He doesn't ask for his parents either.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: He asks for a hamburger. I am going to read
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the actual quotes from the source text because it is
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: just staggering.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Please do.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: The detective is pressing him on a brutal murder and
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Carlton says, I'm hungry as hell. I played him Whataburger
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: at Burger King McDonald's.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: The detective asks him point blank, are you gay? Carlton says,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm hungry. Nah, I'm not gay at all.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: The detective pushes back, asking, then why are you having
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: sex with a man?
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: And Carlton just flatly denies it. He says, I wouldn't
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: having sex with a man.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, this is
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: the textbook definition of sociopathic indifference.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: To sit in an interrogation room faced Normal panic involves
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a racing heart, tears, denial driven by actual terror. This
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: is a cognitive disconnect. As the source notes....
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Someone who is able to show zero emotion when confronted
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: with evidence of murder is exactly the kind of person
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: who could effortlessly pull the trigger in the first place.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: The detective finally gets fed up and says, listen, I'm
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: going to arrest you for murder. And Carlton replies, sir,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I'm hungry.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: The detective just tells him, I don't care if you're hungry.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Be quiet.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: He never confesses. But the police don't need a confession.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: They have the texts, the video and the DNA.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: But DNA only puts him in the car. It doesn't
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: explain the trigger pull. Why did this happen?
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: The motive was hidden right there in that unlocked iPhone.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: The tone of their text messages had shifted drastically on
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the night of the murder.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Ty suspected that Carlton was meeting other sexual partners online.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: In a moment of anger, Ty texted him, I'm on
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: my way up there. I'm coming to the school.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: And Carlton's immediate reply was, no, you're not.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: There is the catalyst. Carlton Champion was terrified that his
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: secret was going to be exposed.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: He was a football star in a conservative religious town.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: where he felt he had to maintain a highly specific,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: hyper-masculine image.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: The thought of his teammates, his friends, and the campus
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: finding out that he was in a romantic sexual relationship
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: with a transgender woman caused a catastrophic psychological panic. He
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: killed her to protect his ego and his secret. He
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: was so desperate to preserve his status and hide his
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: reality that he chose to execute the person he was
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: involved with rather than face the social consequences of the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: truth coming out.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: It is murder born out of pure shame, panic, and
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: an overwhelming need for self-preservation at any cost.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Which makes his behavior at trial even more disgusting. You'd
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: think the solemn reality of a courtroom would sober him up.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: But no. The sources describe him acting a fool during
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: the entire trial. He laughed, he chuckled, he completely ignored
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: his lawyer, who was desperately tapping him, trying to get
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: him to sit up and behave.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: He treated the justice system like a joke.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: But the jury didn't see it as a joke. He
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: was found guilty of first-degree murder.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And because of his abhorrent, arrogant behavior in the courtroom,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: instead of receiving any leniency, the judge handed down a
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: life sentence. He won't be eligible for parole until the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: year 2045.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: And yet the arrogance remains intact. Unbelievably, while sitting in prison,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Carlton Champion wrote a letter to the show Crime Watch Daily.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: In it, he claimed that the police did dirty work
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: and said he is looking good, feeling good, waiting to
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: get free so I can see what the world got
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: to offer me.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: No reflection on the beautiful life he destroyed.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It is deeply important to contextualize Ty's death within a
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: broader systemic reality, too.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: The source provides a very somber statistical footnote for us.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Ty Underwood was among the first of 21 transgender women
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: reported murdered in the United States in 2015.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: That number grew to 27 reported murders in 2016. And
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: the data notes that nearly all of those victims were
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: transgender women of color.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Ty's story is a horrific, hyper-visible example of a much
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: larger systemic vulnerability.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: So what does this all mean when we look back
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: at the Ty Underwood case? We see a murder that
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: was camouflaged briefly, anyway, as a tragic car accident.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: It was a chaotic, violent crime born out of a momentary,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: intense panic. Carlton thought he could use the chaos of
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: a car crash to erase his connection to Ty.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: But the truth always leaves a residue. Whether it's the
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: bullet trajectory, the digital footprint of a deleted app, or
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: touch DNA on a door handle, the facade of the
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: accident falls apart under forensic scrutiny.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: But what if the staged accident wasn't the result of
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a one-time panicked mistake?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: That's a terrifying thought. What if someone didn't just use
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: an accident to cover up a crime of passion, but
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: actually reponized the concept of bad luck to build a career?
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: That shifts us from a crime of panic to a
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: crime of cold, calculated profits. We move from a muddy
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: street in Texas to a quiet garage in upstate New York.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: We are heading to Seneca Falls, New York.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: And the irony of this location is staggering. Seneca Falls
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: is a picturesque, idyllic town. According to our sources, it
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: is actually the very place that inspired the setting of
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Bedford Falls in the classic Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: It is supposed to be the kind of place where
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: a community rallies around you, where the innate goodness of
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: neighbors lifts you up.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: That underlying community goodness is exactly what Carl Carlson was
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: counting on when he moved there with his second wife, Cindy,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and his kids.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: He needed a place that would embrace a tragic figure.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Because Carl Carlson carried a resume of trauma that was
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: almost mythical in his proportions.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: He was viewed by many as the unluckiest man in America.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Let's list this unbelievable string of bad luck.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Decades prior, when Carl was living in Northern California, his
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: first wife, Christina... died in a horrific house fire.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Carl managed to save the children from the flames, but
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: he claimed the fire was just too high and too
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: hot for him to reach Christina. She burned to death.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: And as if that wasn't enough trauma for one lifetime,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: shortly after, his brand new car mysteriously blew up in
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: his driveway, completely engulfed in flames.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: And then after moving to New York and starting over,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a massive fire breaks out in his barn in the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: middle of the night.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: The inferno completely destroys the structure, killing his three prized
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Belgian horses trapped inside.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Wait, I have to stop here and look at the math.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: A fatal house fire is rare. A spontaneous car explosion
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: in a driveway is astronomically rare.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: A devastating barn fire on top of that.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: This isn't a string of bad luck. This is a
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: statistical impossibility. At what point do investigators or neighbors see
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: this pattern?
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: It takes years for that pattern to surface because of
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: how human psychology operates in a tight-knit community. Human nature
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: defaults to pity.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: It feels inherently cruel to look at a man who
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: just lost his beloved horses in a fire and accuse
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: him of arson, right?
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Especially when everyone knows he already lost his wife in
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: a fire. The community's empathy creates a protective psychological shield
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: for the perpetrator.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: They see a victim of the universe, not an architect
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: of destruction.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Carl even actively cultivated this image. He showed his new
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: wife Cindy a newspaper clipping from California that explicitly called
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: him a hero for saving his children from that first
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: fatal fire.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: But the shield eventually cracks, and the catalyst is the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: most horrific accident of them all. We have to talk
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: about Carl's son, Levi.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Levi was one of the children Carl pulled from that
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: first house fire in California. But surviving didn't mean he
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: was okay.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: No. The sources detail a deeply strained, toxic relationship between
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Carl and Levi.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Levi was a deeply traumatized young man, haunted by the
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: events of his childhood. His stepmother, Cindy... recounted that Levi
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: would wake up constantly in cold sweats, crying.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: He was tormented by the sensory memory of the fire,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: specifically the sound of his mother screaming as she burned
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: to death while his father got him and his sisters
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: out but somehow couldn't save her.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Despite the fact that his father was reportedly mean to him,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Levi desperately craved his dad's approval.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: By the time he was an adult, Levi was a
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: divorced father with two young daughters trying to build a
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: stable life. He wanted to make Carl proud.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: So, Carl starts paying Levi to do odd jobs around
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: the house to help him out. This sets the stage
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: for the final tragedy.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: One day, Carl offers Levi $ 50 to do some maintenance
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: work on a truck parked in their garage.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Cindy noted later that this was highly unusual, because they
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: rarely ever use that truck. But Levi, eager to please
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: his father, gets to work.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Carl and Cindy leave the house for about four hours.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: When they return, Carl says he's going out to the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: garage to check on Levi.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: What happens next is a master class in theatrical manipulations.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Carl comes sprinting out of the garage, banging frantically on
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the windows of the house, screaming at Cindy to call 911.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: The 911 tape is agonizing to listen to. The dispatcher
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: asks what's going on, and Carl says his son has
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: been crushed.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: The truck has fallen off its jack and landed directly
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: on Levi's chest.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: The dispatcher asks if he's breathing. He's not. They ask
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: him to start CPR, and the caller says his chest
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: is crushed. I saw an indentation in his chest where
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: the truck had landed.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: He says, I touched his leg to see if there
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: was any warmth and there wasn't. Levi is dead at
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the scene.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: And Carl plays his part flawlessly. The sources describe him
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: throwing himself against the barn walls, wailing, laying on the
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: ground in distress.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: At the point where law enforcement personnel actually had to
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: try and console him.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: To the outside world, it appeared to be just another
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: devastating blow in an agricultural area where tragic farm accidents do, unfortunately, happen.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner signed off on it as an accidental death.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: There was no autopsy performed. The case was closed.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: But inside the Carlson home, a creeping, terrifying doubt begins
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: to take root in Cindy's mind.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: The cracks in Carl's facade are finally beginning to show.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: She can't stop thinking about all the physical anomalies.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Cindy starts meticulously reviewing their shared history. And the physics
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: of his stories don't add up.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: For example, she remembers the night of the barn fire
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: that killed the horses. Carl had woken her up, claiming
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: he heard the fire crackling.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: But Cindy realized that physically, acoustically, the barn was far
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: too distant for anyone to hear crackling from their closed
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: bedroom window. Wow. And the truck that fell on Levi.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Why was he even working on a truck they never drove?
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: It just felt staged.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Put yourself in Cindy's shoes for a second. You are
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: lying in bed next to the man you married, a
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: man who is universally pitied as the most tragic figure
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: in town.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: And your brain is screaming at you that he is
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: actually a serial killer who just murdered his own son.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: The cognitive dissonance is Unimaginable.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: It nearly broke her grip on reality. The source material
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: reveals how deeply she doubted herself. She thought she was
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: literally experiencing a psychotic break.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: She scheduled an emergency meeting with a therapist to deal
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: with severe panic attacks.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. She even confided in a close friend, begging the
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: friend to tell her that she was losing her mind.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: She preferred the idea of being medically insane over the
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: reality of being married to a monster.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But she wasn't crazy. The turning point finally arrives when
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the police call Cindy.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Unbeknownst to her, another family member had already alerted the
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: authorities to their own suspicions. The police asked Cindy to
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: come in and talk about Levi's death.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: And her reaction. She wasn't defensive. She was incredibly relieved.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: It validated her terrifying instincts. She realizes her life and
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: the life of her young son Alex are in immediate
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: mortal danger.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: If Carl is systematically eliminating family members, they could easily
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: be next.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: So Cindy takes Alex, flees the home, goes into hiding,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: and makes the incredibly brave decision to agree to go
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: undercover for the police.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: She agrees to meet Carl under the guise of wanting
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: to reconcile their marriage. She tells him that she can
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: only come back to him if he tells her the
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: whole truth about everything.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: And she goes into this meeting wearing a civilian wire.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: She literally takes a small digital voice recorder and hides
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: it inside her bra.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: The mechanics of this civilian sting operation are fraught with peril.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: She is sitting face to face with a man she
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: believes has killed multiple people, trying to coax a confession
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: out of him while wearing a hidden device.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: During this conversation, she pushes him on Levi's death. She
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: asks point blank if he pushed the truck.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: And Carl gives her a chilling half confession. He claims
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: he didn't physically push the truck over, but he says
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: that when the truck tipped, He saw the opportunity and
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: took advantage of it.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: It's an astonishing admission. Cindy rushes the recorder back to
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: the police, expecting this to be the smoking gun that
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: puts Carl away forever.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: But there is a devastating technical failure. The tape is garbage.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: When you hide a cheap digital recorder in clothing, the
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: friction of the fabric rubbing against the microphone, combined with
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: background noise, completely distorts the audio.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: It's nothing but static. You can't make out a single
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: word of the confession.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: The police are sitting there with the most explosive piece
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: of hearsay imaginable. But legally, they have absolutely nothing but
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Cindy's word.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Which means they have to ask Cindy to do the unthinkable.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: They need a high-stakes redo.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: They need her to go back out there, meet with
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: her murderous husband a second time, and recreate the exact
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: same conversation, this time wearing a professional police transmitter.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: And Cindy agrees. They set up the meeting at Abigail's
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: restaurant in Seneca Falls. And this time, Carl is deeply suspicious.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: He is on high alert.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: When she arrives... He actually asks to search her purse
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: to see if she is recording him.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Cindy manages to keep her cool brilliantly. She declines the
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: purse search, playing it off as an insult to her
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: privacy and their marriage, which ironically diffuses his suspicion and
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: makes him feel a bit more trusting.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: And then she carefully, surgically steers the conversation back to
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: the garage. She reminds him of what he said the
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: last time.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: She says, Carl, you told me that you didn't set
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: it up that way, but when you were in there,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: you saw the opportunity, you know, after it had happened.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: And Carl takes the bait. On a crystal clear police recording,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: he confirms it. He says he panicked, but yes, he
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: saw the opportunity.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: This raises an important question. How does a father view
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: his own son being crushed to death under a truck
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: as an opportunity to be capitalized upon?
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: It demonstrates a total void-like lack of empathy. It is
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: the definition of a cold-hearted, psychopathic nature.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: With that recording in hand, the police finally have what
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: they need to bring Carl Carlson into the interrogation room.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: When Carl is brought in, he initially falls back on
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: his well-worn script. He plays the grieving, traumatized dad.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: He tells the detectives, I could not kill him. I
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: love that kid with every part.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: But these detectives are armed with the tape, and they
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: start breaking him down with pure, inescapable logic. They focus
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: on the timeline.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: They say... If you love him that much, there is
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: no way that you walk out of that garage and
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: let him lay there dying for four and a half hours.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: You walked away from him after you pushed the truck.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Carl finally breaks, revealing the grotesque reality of what happened
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: in that garage. He admits that he opened the truck
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: door to move the linkage, which caused the truck to
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: become unstable on the jack.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: The truck tipped and fell over, crushing Levi.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Instead of grabbing the jack and frantically lifting the truck
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: off his son's chest to save his life, Carl admits
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: he did absolutely nothing.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: He said it didn't register, it just blinked and he ran.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: His exact words to the police were that he ran
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: like a kid that threw a window through a glass
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: and didn't want to get caught.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: A kid breaking a window with a baseball. That is
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: his internal analogy for crushing his own son to death.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And the absolute most chilling detail of this confession is
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: what Carl did next. He didn't run in a panic
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: to a neighbor's house to get help.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: He calmly walked to the car, got in with his
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: wife Cindy, drove away. And eventually asked her, hey, hon,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: are you ready to go to the funeral?
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: He knew Levi was slowly suffocating on the floor of
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: that garage and he was already planning his funeral attire.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: It is unfathomable.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: So the detectives hit him with the ultimate question.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: What was the opportunity he was talking about? Why did
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: he leave his son to die?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: You follow the money. The true motive behind Carl Carlson's
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: entire lifetime of curated bad luck was insurance fraud.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Let's break down the exact payouts from the source text,
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: because the math here exposes the full scale of his operation.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: When Levi died, Carl collected a $ 700, 000 life insurance payout.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Levi had signed up for it through work and made
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: his father the beneficiary simply to keep the money away
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: from his ex-wife during a messy divorce. Carl knew about
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: this policy.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: That staggering payout prompted the police to start digging into
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Carl's past tragedies. They reopened the investigation into the house
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: fire in California that killed his first wife, Christina.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: A terrifying pattern emerges. The police discover that Carl had
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: taken out a $ 200, 000 life insurance policy on Christina just
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: weeks before she died in that fire.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Just weeks before. And the physical details of that fire
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: are highly suspicious. The victim died in a bathroom where
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the window had been mysteriously boarded up, trapping her inside.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: And there was kerosene spilled directly in front of the door.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Carl claimed the dogs knocked over a heater days before
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: and that he boarded up the window months prior.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: But witnesses told police the window was boarded up that
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: very morning or the day before.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: We have $ 700, 000 for Levi, $ 200, 000 for his first wife,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: and the pattern continues down the line.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Remember the barn fire? Carl collected $ 115, 000 for the death
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: of those horses.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: The brand new car that randomly blew up in his driveway.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: That netted him a $ 10, 000 insurance payout.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: When you add it all up, you have a man
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: who was working minimum wage jobs at best, orchestrating over
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: a million dollars in wealth through death and destruction.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: He wasn't just experiencing tragedy. He was treating his family
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: like a portfolio of high-risk, high-yield assets that he was
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: quietly liquidating.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: The most chilling discovery of all, the revelation that truly
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: proves how boundless a psychopathy was, involved Levi's two young daughters,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Carl's own grandchildren.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: During the financial investigation, it was discovered that Carl had
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: taken out massive life insurance policies on both of those
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: little girls.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: According to the source, he took out a $ 350, 000 policy
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: on each child. And he did this completely without the
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: knowledge of their mother.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Now, if I'm looking at this, I'm wondering how a
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: grandfather can even do that.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: It turns out there are systemic loopholes in life insurance underwriting.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: While you usually need to prove insurable interest, some policies
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: allow extended family members to take out policies without centralized
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: databases flagging the parents.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: And remember what Cindy said earlier. After she separated from Carl,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: he was absolutely adamant about getting visitation rights with those granddaughters.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: He was aggressively seeking physical access to them, and Cindy
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: was terrified because she knew exactly what he was doing.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: He was quietly setting up the board for his next accident.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: He was preparing to murder his own grandchildren for $ 700, 000.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: As if that wasn't enough to make your blood run cold,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the prosecutors found out that Carl also had a life
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: insurance policy taken out on Cindy.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: If she had stayed with him and met with a tragic,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: unforeseen accident, he stood to make over a million dollars.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: The sheer scope of his predation is horrifying. Once the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: police laid out all of this financial evidence, Carl Carlson
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: realized the illusion was finally shattered.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: On the eve of his murder trial in New York,
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Carl actually called the police himself. He decided to plead
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: guilty to murder in the second degree for the death
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: of Levi.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: In New York, that specific charge is depraved indifference murder,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: which carries the same legal weight as intentional murder.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: In court, he had to answer for his actions on
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: the record. The judge asked him, did you cause the
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: truck to fall on him?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. Did you leave while he was still alive, knowing
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: it would result in his death? Yes.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: The sources say he answered these questions as casually as
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: if you were talking about the weather. He was sentenced
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: to 15 years to life behind bars.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: The justice system wasn't done with him. Once he was
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: locked up in New York, the state of California made
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: its move.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Armed with the new pattern of behavior, they officially charged
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Carl Carlson with the murder of his first wife, Christina,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: in that fatal house fire decades ago.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: The unluckiest man in America was finally exposed as one
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: of the most prolific, patient predators imaginable.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Let's step back and synthesize the deep dive we just took.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: We traveled from a muddy, blood-soaked street in Tyler, Texas,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: to a quiet, deadly garage in upstate New York.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: We looked at Carlton Champion and Carl Carlson, two men
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: who operated with completely different motives, one driven by the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: explosive panic of a taboo secret, the other by an
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: insatiable sociopathic greed.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: But both men shared a singular fatal flaw. They believed
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: they were smarter than everyone else. They believed they could
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: hide their darkest deeds behind the comforting, unquestioned facade of
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: an accident.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: In both cases, it was the meticulous, unyielding nature of
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: forensic truth that brought them down.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Whether it is the digital footprint of an elated cake
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: app unlocking the secrets of a hidden relationship or the
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: hidden paper trail of a $ 350, 000 life insurance policy taken
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: out on a grandchild, the truth always leaves a residue.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: But the most striking takeaway is the psychology. It's the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: sociopathic arrogance that ultimately undoes them. Whether it's asking for
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: a hamburger while being charged with murder... or casually referring
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: to a son's agonizing death as an opportunity.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: That lack of humanity is what investigators eventually see through.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: We walk through life trusting the narrative we're given. We
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: are wired for empathy. When we see a car crash,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: we believe it's a car crash. When we see a
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: grieving father, we believe he is a grieving father.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: But after today, after peering into the minds of Carlton
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Champion and Carl Carlson, ask yourself a question.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: When you hear about a stroke of unbelievable one-in-a-million bad luck,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: How often is it actually the cold, calculated design of
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: the person standing right next to the victim? Keep your
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: eyes open.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the most dangerous predators don't hide in the shadows.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: They hide in plain sight, disguised by our own pity.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: We'll see you on the next deep dive.