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Man Scalps Girlfriend, Orders Pit Bull To Attack Her · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So when you are pushed to the absolute edge of survival,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: you know, when you're trapped in a scenario where the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: walls are literally closing in.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: And the person standing between you and the door is
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: someone you once completely trusted. What happens to your mind?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, we like to think we'd yin fight.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: We imagine we just scream or run or instantly see
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the danger coming from a mile away. Exactly.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Like we'd be the action hero of our own life.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But the darkest corners of human behavior, they don't
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: usually operate like a horror movie. The true monsters out there,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: they don't wear masks.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: No, they don't.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: And they definitely don't announce their intentions. They wear the
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: faces of boyfriends, of adoptive mothers, of friendly neighbors just
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: passing you on the sidewalk.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: It really is. It is the ultimate betrayal of the
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: social contract. I mean, we navigate our daily lives going
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: to the grocery store, checking social media, dropping the kids
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: off at school. With this baseline assumption that the people
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: around us are bound by the same fundamental rules of empathy.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Right. Like we all agree on the basic rules of society.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And when someone completely devoid of those restraints steps
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: into your life, the resulting shockwave is just catastrophic.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And that shockwave is exactly what we're wading into today.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So welcome to this deep dive.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Glad to be here.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: We are opening up the investigative files today, pulling directly
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: from the archives of True Crime News and Crime Watch Daily.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: to examine three incredibly harrowing, distinct cases.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: But I want to be super clean with you right
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: now as you listen. Our mission today isn't to just,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: you know, rubberneck at a car crash.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, far from it. We are going to really unpack
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: the terrifying psychology of extreme abusers. Yeah. We need to
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: examine the massive, gaping, systemic blind spots that allow victims
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: to be hidden in plain sight, sometimes literally right next
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: door in your own neighborhood.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Which is wild to even think about.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: It is. And finally, we're going to explore the absolute
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: cutting edge forensic science that is finally dragging long dormant
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: killers out of the shadows. So we're looking for the
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: mechanics behind the madness.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Right. Which means I really need to give you a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: very clear, very serious warning right at the top of
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the show. The details ahead are highly graphic.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Very graphic.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: They are deeply disturbing. We're dealing with extreme domestic violence.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the systemic torture of children, and brutal assault.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's heavy material.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It is. So if you need to hit pause or
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to step away, please do. But if you are ready
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: to look at the unbelievable lengths people will go to
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: survive the unsurvivable and how justice sometimes has to literally
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: claw its way out of the dark, let's get into it.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: We're starting with the story of escalation. And it begins
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: in the most ordinary, mundane way imaginable.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Well, the most profound dangers rarely start with a physical blow.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: They start with a whisper, a casual text message. Just
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: a subtle boundary being tested to see if you'll actually
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: push back.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's look at Marilyn Stanley. We are in Burlington, Kentucky.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Marilyn is a 27-year-old single mother. She is raising her
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: young son. She's working at a book warehouse, basically just
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: living her life. And then she meets a 31-year-old man
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: named Zachary Gross.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: And how do they meet?
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: On Facebook.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Right, of course.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: It's the modern town square, right? You exchange some messages,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you look at a few curated photos, and you think
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: you have a sense of who someone is.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: But that initial digital distance, it creates this false sense
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: of security.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: You're interacting through a screen, which feels safe, but you're
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: also only seeing the meticulously constructed avatar of this person.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just the highlight reel.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So initially, they start casually seeing each other. But
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: within just a matter of months, the dynamic undergoes this
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: radical shift.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: It gets intense fast. Right.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: The casual dates turn into an intense demanded exclusivity. He
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: basically dictated that they weren't supposed to go see anybody else.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Which, you know, on the surface, I think some people
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: might confuse for romance. Like, oh, he's so into me,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: he only wants me.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Right. They romanticize the possessiveness.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But I've always thought of domestic violence escalation like
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the compounding interest of a terrible debt.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good way to put it.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't go bankrupt all at once. First,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: it is a small restriction on your time. You owe
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: him your Friday night.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Then it errs your passwords. Then it errs who you
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: are allowed to speak to. And you just keep paying
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: into this system, hoping to satisfy the debt of his insecurity,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: until you realize you have zero autonomy left.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: You just totally drown.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You are spiritually and physically bankrupt. It's like the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: boiling frog analogy.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to frame it. Because it
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: highlights the economic nature of abuse of control.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Exclusivity in the hands of a predator is not about
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: mutual loving commitment. It is entirely about ownership.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about claiming property.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's about establishing a perimeter around the victim, cutting
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: off their supply lines to outside prospective friends, family, colleagues.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Anyone who might point out how toxic it is.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: And Marilyn's mother, Linda, she actually saw that perimeter closing immediately. Yeah,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: she didn't need to see a physical bruise to know
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: something was deeply wrong. She stated plainly to investigators, she said,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't trust him. I didn't think he was any good.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Just that visceral maternal instinct.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly, that maternal alarm bell. But Marilyn, like so many
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: people caught in the early stages of this compounding debt,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: she tried to manage it. Right.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Until the management just becomes impossible. Because the physical escalation
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: in this case was remarkably steep.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: It really was.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: It starts with him kicking her out of his house
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: during an argument.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: And this is a classic test of power controlling the
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: physical environment. Right. Then it escalates to actual violence. She
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: is physically pushed down a set of front porch steps.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Which is a massive escalation. I mean, a push down
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the stairs can easily be lethal.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: It absolutely can. And it shatters the barrier of physical
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: touch as a weapon.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Once that barrier is broken, the subsequent acts of violence
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: become much easier for the abuser to rationalize.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the seal is broken.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So the violence quickly escalated to severe beatings, leaving
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Marilyn with a broken nose and two black eyes.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: And Marilyn actually tried to make excuses for the injuries
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: at first. She told her mom she fell or, you know,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: had an accident.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Which is so common. It is.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: But I want you, the listener, to really think about
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the intense psychological pressure cooker you have to be in
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: to lie to your own mother... To protect the man
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: who just broke your nose.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: The shame and fear just overwhelming.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But eventually, the violence hits a threshold that Marilyn
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: couldn't ignore or excuse away anymore. Gross choked her. He
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: strangled her until she lost consciousness.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: And strangulation is the absolute most critical red flag in
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: the domestic violence matrix.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, statistically. Once an abuser puts their hands around a
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: victim's neck and restricts their airway... The victim's odds of
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: being murdered by that partner in the future increased by
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: over 700 percent.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: 700 percent.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate assertion of godlike control. It's them saying,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I can decide if you take your next breath.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: And that was the breaking point for Marilyn. She woke
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: up from being choked out and finally drew a line.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: She told him like, dude, you said you're going to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: kill me like I'm done.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Good for her.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Right. She tried to close the account. She tried to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: walk away from the debt.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: But as we know, the most dangerous time for a
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: victim of domestic abuse is the exact moment they attempt
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: to leave.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Because they're losing control.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The abuser's primary currency control is suddenly worthless. And
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Zachary Gross was entirely incapable of accepting her autonomy.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: No, he completely lost it.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: His obsession just metastasized overnight. He began stalking her, tracking
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: her movements. He even applied for and got a job
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: at the exact same book warehouse where she worked.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: He infiltrated the very place she went to earn a living,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to sustain herself and her son.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: It's suffocating.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: He effectively made it so she couldn't breathe without him
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: being in the room. And while he is stalking her
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: at work, he is also bombarding her phone.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And this brings us to a text message that we really,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: really need to dissect. I'm going to quote this verbatim
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: from the investigative files because the linguistics here are staggering.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. He writes, To my love, BFF, soulmate, lover, I hate, hate,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: hate that you are scared of me because you shouldn't
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: have to be scared of the one you love. I'm
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: here to protect you and give you all that you
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: need and everything you need. And then some, I love
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: you with all my heart.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Wow. The pathology in that single message is just dense.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Right. I am having a really hard time squaring this.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Walk me through the mechanics of this kind of brain.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: It's complex for sure.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Like how does a man who just broke a woman's nose,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: pushed her down the stairs, And strangled her to the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: point of unconsciousness. Literally take the words, I am here
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to protect you. Is he just blatantly lying to manipulate her?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Or does he actually believe his own narrative?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, almost clinical manifestation of narcissistic cognitive dissonance. Oh, yeah?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: You asked if he believes it? In a terrifying way, yes,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: he likely does. Within the warped architecture of his own mind.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: He has to.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? He actually believes it?
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: If he acknowledges that he's a violent monster, his ego collapses.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: So his brain constructs a fantasy where he is the tragic,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: misunderstood protagonist. When he says, I hate that you are
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: scared of me, he is actually centering his feelings about
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: her fear.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: He's an apologizing for causing the fear, right? He's complaining
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: that her fear is an inconvenience to his self-image as
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: the soulmate.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: That's incredible. He lays the victim of her being terrified
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: of him.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And when he offers protection, we have to translate
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: that from abuser speak.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: What does it actually mean?
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: He means, I am here to protect you from a
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: world that doesn't understand our intense, volatile bond. It's a
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: total inversion of reality.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, up is down.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: He manufactures the trauma by beating her and then positions
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: himself as the only soothing balm for that exact trauma.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: It creates a trauma bond.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Which is so hard to break.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Very. The victim becomes biologically and psychologically addicted to the
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: very person hurting them because the abuser completely controls the
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: release of relief.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So, he turned up the heat. She tried to jump
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: out of the pot and he slammed the lid shut
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: by surrounding her at work and bombarding her with this
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: psychological warfare. This tension is unsustainable. It has to snap.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And it finally does at six o'clock in the morning.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: The ambush.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Zachary Gross shows up at Marilyn's doorstep at 6 a.m.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: And this isn't some like tearful plea for her to
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: take him back. He is a one man siege.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: He's there for war.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Exactly. She opens the door, perhaps thinking she can reason
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: with him quietly so he doesn't wake her son. Or
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the neighbors. The second the door opens, he punches her
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: straight in the face.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Does immediate violence.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: She screams. And her scream, her audacity to react to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: his violence causes him to completely unspool. He jumps onto
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the roof of her car.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: He jumps on it with such force that the metal
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: roof literally caves in. He grabs a tire iron, smashes
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: out the windshield, shatters the back window. Glass is just everywhere.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: It is a display of pure, unadulterated rage designed to terrorize.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Property destruction in these contexts, it's a proxy for physical
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: violence against the victim.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: He is showing her what he's capable of doing to
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: a steel car with the unspoken threat of imagine what
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: I will do to your body.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And in the middle of this chaos with a
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: caved in car and a broken face, Marilyn makes a
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: decision that people on the outside constantly misunderstand.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Is so important to talk about.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: She agrees to get in a car and go to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: his house to meet him. Now, if you are sitting
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: at home right now, you might be screaming, why would
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: you go to his house? Run the other way. Right.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: It seems counterintuitive.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: But I want you to step into her shoes for
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: a second.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: This is a critical point of empathy and understanding. To
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: someone who has never navigated a lethal domestic threat, appeasement
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: looks like compliance or foolishness.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like she's just giving up.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: But in reality, it is a highly evolved instantaneous risk assessment.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Marilyn knew with absolute certainty that if she defied him
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: in that moment, he would likely kill her right there
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: in the street.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: She knew what she was dealing with.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Her instinct was de-escalation. By giving him what he demanded,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: her physical presence, her submission, she was trying to buy
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: herself time. She was attempting to manage an active hostage
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: situation Where she was a lone hostage negotiator.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: It was pure survival instinct. She was choosing what she
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: perceived as a 90% chance of being beaten at his
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: house over a 100% chance of being murdered on her
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: front lawn.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So she goes to his home. She walks through the door,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: hoping the appeasement worked. And the second she is inside,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: isolated from the world, he sucker punches her in the face. Again.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: The violence resumes immediately because the appeasement was never the
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: actual goal for him.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And let's reveal the trigger for this entire 6 a.m. ambush. Like,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: why did he cave in her car roof? Why is
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: he hitting her?
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: It's almost unbelievable.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: The investigative files reveal it was all over a single
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: photograph on Facebook. Marilyn had taken her son to the park.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Another man, a friend, had taken a picture of them,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: posted it on his own Facebook, and tagged Marilyn in it.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: That is a tag.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: It perfectly illustrates the terrifying fragility of the narcissistic abuser.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: A simple, innocuous digital tag by a third party completely
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: shatters Gross' illusion of total ownership. It proved that Marilyn
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: existed in the world outside of his control, that other
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: men could perceive her, interact with her. That realization triggers
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: a homicidal level of narcissistic injury. It wasn't jealousy. It
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: was a perceived theft of his property.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: So she realizes reasoning is impossible. She tries to protect
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: her face, turning her back to him so his fists
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: are slamming into the back of her head instead.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: He's just taking the blows.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: She makes a desperate break for the front door. She
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: gets there. She's grabbing the doorframe, trying to throw her
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: body weight outside. But he catches her.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: He's just too strong.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: He is bigger, stronger. He physically picks her up midair,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: peeling her fingers off the doorframe and drags her back
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: into the depths of the house. This begins a two-hour
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: ordeal of continuous torture.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Two hours is an eternity in the context of physical trauma.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: The sustained adrenaline, the physiological terror. The body is simply
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: not built to endure that kind of prolonged assault without
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: going into profound shock.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: He drags her into the bedroom. He throws her on
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the bed, straddles her waist, pinning her arms securely at
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: her side so she can't even swat his fists away.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: She's totally trapped.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Now, Marilyn, anticipating how dangerous he was, had actually brought
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a small pink knife with her in her pocket for protection.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Smart move, honestly.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: But during the struggle, it falls out. She drops it.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: She is completely defenseless. And then, Gross decides his own
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: fists aren't enough. He introduces a new chaotic element into
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the attack.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: The dog.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: His pet pit bull named Capone.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: This elevates the assault from a severe beating. to an
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: act of intricate, multi-tiered sadism.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Animals, particularly highly protective breeds, will often mirror the aggressive
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: energy of their owners. Gross creates an environment of absolute
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: chaos and violence, and the dog joins the frenzy.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: It's horrific.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: While Gross has Marilyn pinned down, rendering her immobile, he
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: allows or encourages the dog to attack her. The dog
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: targets her head and literally bites off the top half
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: of her right ear.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. The pain must have been blinding. Between
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the blunt force trauma to her skull and the tearing
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: of her ear, Marilyn's body circling shuts down. She loses consciousness.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: It's her body protecting itself.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: And I want you to brace yourself because what happens
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: when she finally comes to is a scene of psychological
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: warfare that defies belief. She wakes up on the bedroom floor.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: The dog is nowhere to be seen. Zachary Gross is
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: kneeling on the floor directly in front of her.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Just watching her.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And he is smirking.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: The smirk implies satisfaction. It implies a job well done.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: He leans in and says to her, look at you,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: you're bald now. Nobody's going to want you. Go look
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: at yourself in the mirror.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: The calculation in that statement. He isn't screaming in a
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: blind rage anymore. He has moved into a cold, predatory
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: gloating phase.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Marilyn is disoriented. She refuses to look in the mirror.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: She can feel that her head is completely wet. Her
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: vision is blurry. She just sees red everywhere. She assumes,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: based on his words, that he must have gripped her
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: hair and ripped it out in massive splotches. She doesn't
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: fully comprehend the physical reality of what has just occurred,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: but Gross isn't finished extracting his toll.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: He demands absolute submission.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: He orders her to lay on her side on the floor.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: She complies, terrified. He stands over her and calmly announces,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to break your ribs.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: It's just so clinical.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: He lifts his boot and stomps directly onto her ribcage.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: She gasps, but they don't break. So he raises his
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: foot and stomps again with all his weight. This time,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Marilyn audibly hears the bone crack.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: It is the methodical nature of it. It's not a
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: flurry of blows, you know. It is a clinical application
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: of pain to assert dominance over a specific body part.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: After two hours of this nightmare, his rage seemingly burns
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: itself out or at least shifts into something even more unsettling.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: What does he do?
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: He suddenly plays the role of the caregiver. He helps
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: wipe the blood off her face. He uses the third person,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: telling her, it's okay, he's done, he's not going to
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: hurt me anymore.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: This circles right back to that cognitive dissonance and the
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: trauma bond. Having completely destroyed her physically, he now demands
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: gratitude by offering meager comfort.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: It's so twisted.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: He is trying to instantly rewrite the narrative of the morning,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: positioning himself as the calm center in the aftermath of
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: a storm he created.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Marilyn, barely clinging to consciousness, begs him to call an ambulance.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: She knows she is critically injured, but he flat out refuses.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Of course. Why?
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Does he say he's afraid of going to jail?
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: He tells her he won't call 911 because they would
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: take his dog.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: His primary concern, his only stated priority, is the animal
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: that participated in her mutilation. He shows zero concern for
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the woman bleeding out on his floor.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: It confirms her absolute worthlessness in his eyes. She ranks
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: below his pet.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Instead of getting medical help, he enacts this bizarre degrading ritual.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: He forces a t-shirt over her bruised body to hide
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the damage. He pulls a hoodie over her head to
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: conceal the catastrophic trauma to her skull. Then he hands
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: her a plastic shopping bag.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: A plastic bag.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Marilyn asks what is inside it. She feels the weight,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the texture through the plastic, and assumes it is the
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: clumps of hair he ripped out. He doesn't answer.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: He just leaves her wondering.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: He puts her in his car. drives her into her
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: mother's neighborhood, and drops her off on the street short
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: of the driveway. And before she can stumble out of
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the car, he looks at her, battered, bleeding, clutching this
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: plastic bag, and he asks her for a kiss.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Asking for a kiss in that moment is perhaps the
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: most chilling detail of the entire ordeal. It's disgusting. It
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: is an extraordinary display of entitlement. He believes that despite
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: systematically destroying her, he is still owed her affections. It's
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: a test to see if her spirit is completely broken,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: to see if she will still comply with an intimate
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: demand after being tortured.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: She gets out of the car. She stires up the
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: street to her mother's house. Her sister, Ashley, happens to
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: be near the door. Ashley hears a weak, gargling voice say,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Help me!
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, that poor family.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: At first, because of the hoodie and the surreal nature
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: of the moment, Ashley actually thinks it's some kind of sick,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: ghoulish prank. Then, Marilyn lifts her hand, pressing her own
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: severed ear against the sidelines. of her head. Blood is
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: cascading down her forehead.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: The visual of that is apocalyptic for a family member
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: to witness.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Marilyn holds out the plastic bag and tells them, my
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: hair is in this bag. Her mother calls 911 immediately.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: It isn't until the paramedics arrive and secure Marilyn on
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a stretcher that her mother finally opens the plastic shop-up
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: bag to see what Gross had actually done.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't just hair.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: It wasn't clumps of ripped-out hair. Zachary Gross had used
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a knife. Nearly 50% of Marilyn's scalp skin, tissue, hair follicles,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: everything was sitting in that plastic shopping bag. He had
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: literally scalped her.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: I want to pause the narrative here and really bring
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: in the clinical analysis. Forensic psychologist Dr. L. Schlesinger reviewed
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: the minutia of this case. And his insights cut right
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: to the terrifying core of Gross' motivation.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, please share that.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: People often get bogged down in clinical labels, arguing over
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: whether a perpetrator is a psychopath, a sociopath, or a
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: malignant narcissist. Slesinger points out that the label almost distracts
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: from the action. What we most focus on is the staggering,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: archaic level of sadism.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Right, because I was reading through the files, and scalping
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: in modern domestic violence cases is essentially unheard of. It's
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: not a common method of assault at all.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The lead detective on this case had 20 years
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: of experience investigating horrific violence, and he testified he had
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: never seen anything even remotely resembling a scalping.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: It's medieval.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Dr. Schlesinger makes a vital point. Gross had a knife.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: He had Marilyn pinned. If his primary goal was to
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: eliminate her, he could have easily stabbed her in a
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: vital organ and killed her in seconds. But murder was
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: not the objective.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: It was about sending a message.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: It was about a perverse form of branding. His rage
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: was triggered by the profound humiliation of seeing her tagged
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: by another man on Facebook. He wanted to ensure that
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: she felt that exact same profound, permanent humiliation. He wanted
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: to disfigure her so severely that, in his own words,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: nobody's going to want you. It was an act designed
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: to permanently erase her identity as an attractive woman. to
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: mark her as damaged goods so that no other man
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: would ever look at her again.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: That is just evil.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: It is a grotesque manifestation of ownership. It's him saying,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: if I cannot control you beautifully, I will control you
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: by making you monstrous.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: But there is a detail about the scalping that I
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: found fascinating, and honestly a little confusing. When police interviewed Marilyn,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: she could recount the dog biting her ear, the punches,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: the stomping on her ribs. Right. But she had absolutely
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: zero memory of the knife cutting her scalp. she couldn't
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: remember the actual act of being scalped. Later on, Gross's
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: defense attorneys tried to weaponize this amnesia, implying she was
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: making it up or that she was too intoxicated to remember, which.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Is a fundamental misunderstanding or intentional misrepresentation of neurobiology. Dr.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Schlesinger explains this phenomenon perfectly. What Marilyn experienced is a
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: textbook psychological defense mechanism known as dissociation, specifically trauma-induced amnesia.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Can you break down the mechanics of that? Like, how
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: does your brain just turn off the recording device while
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: your body is being mutilated?
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Think of the brain as a highly complex circuit breaker box.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: When a human being is subjected to an overwhelming, agonizing
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: stimulus like a knife slowly removing their scalp, the sensory
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: input floods the system.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: It overloads it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Yes. It is too much pain, too much terror, too
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: much violation for the conscious mind to process in real
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: time without entirely shattering. So The brain as survival mechanism,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: governed largely by the amygdala, steps in and flips the
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: main breaker.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: That is incredible.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: It chemically alters how memories are encoded. It essentially disconnects
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: the conscious awareness from the physical sensation to ensure psychological survival.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: The body feels it, but the mind retreats to a dark,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: quiet room to wait it out.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: It just hides.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Dr. Schlesinger even notes that therapists often advise against
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: aggressively trying to recover these specific memories because the firewall
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: the brain built was put there to save her sanity.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: The body sacrificing the physical memory to protect the core consciousness.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: But while her mind protected her, her body was in
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: critical condition. The medical reality she faced at the hospital
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: was devastating. We are talking about 50% of her scalp
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: removed down to the bone. She had a severed artery
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: that was bleeding profusely.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: The surgical intervention required was massive.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Dr. William Kitzmiller, a highly specialized plastic surgeon, had to
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: be brought in. And he testified that simply reattaching the
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: scalp replantation wasn't even a viable option because the tissue
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: in the bag was too damaged and the time lapse
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: was too great.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: That's heartbreaking.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: To save her life and cover her exposed skull, they
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: had to perform agonizing skin grafts. They shaved the skin
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: from her upper thighs to patch her head, meaning she
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: woke up with her head reconstructed, but her legs entirely
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: scarred as well. She was in excruciating full body pain.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: And while Marilyn is lying in a hospital bed, fighting
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: off infection and enduring multiple surgeries, Zachary Gross is busy
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: constructing an alternate reality.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, the audacity of this man is breathtaking. He gets arrested, obviously.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: He's sitting in a jail cell. And what does he do?
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: He uses his phone privileges to call a nationally syndicated
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: radio show.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: He wants an audience.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: He wants a massive audience. He gets on the air
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and confidently declares his innocence. He says, the news said
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I held a girl down and scalped their hair off,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: but it's been proven now that my dog did that.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: He tries to pin a surgical scalping on Capone, the
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: pit bull.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: It is the final desperate gambit of a narcissist who
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: believes he is the smartest person in any room. He
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: is completely underestimating the rigors of forensic science.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Because forensics do not care about your radio interview, the investigators,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: specifically Detective Brian Cochran, didn't buy the dog bite theory
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: for a millisecond. When the crime scene unit entered Gross' home,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: the story was painted clearly in blood.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: The scene told the truth. There was a gruesome, heavy
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: trail of blood leading from the exact spot on the
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: bedroom floor where she was pinned, trailing all the way
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: down the hall, and into the bathroom where Gross had
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: tried to force her to look at her reflection in
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the mirror. There was blood pooled on the floor, smeared
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: on the walls, dripped into the bathtub, and coating the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: towel rack.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: But blood only tells you someone bled. It doesn't tell
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: you the instrument used. They needed the weapon.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: And they found it. Tucked away, hidden inside a dresser drawer,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: they found a small pink knife. It was the exact
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: knife Marilyn had brought for protection and dropped during the struggle.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't just sitting there. It was coated in
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: dried blood. And when they sent it to the lab,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the horrific truth was confirmed. Tangled in the blade were
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: strands of Marilyn's hair and microscopic pieces of her flesh.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: The tragic irony of that is heartbreaking. The one tool
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: she brought to assert her agency and protect herself was
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: usurped by her abuser and used to inflict the ultimate violation.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And the medical testimony at trial absolutely dismantled his dog theory. Dr.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Kitzmiller took the stand and explained the fundamental difference between
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: a canine attack and a bleeded attack. A dog's jaw
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: is designed to puncture, crush, and tear.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Right, it's not a clean cut.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: A dog bite leaves jagged, uneven, shredded flesh.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Kitzmiller showed the jury the photographs of Marilyn's skull. The
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: wounds weren't jagged. They were precise, straight, linear cuts. The
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: edges favored a sharp object slicing through tissue. A dog
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: does not peel a scalp off in a clean line.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: A knife does.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: And the prosecution didn't just rely on the physical evidence
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: of this one night either. They established a pattern. They
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: introduced Gross's criminal record, which was extensive. Yeah, he had history.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: This wasn't a good guy who had a sudden singular
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: lapse in anger management. He had a documented history of
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: violence against women, assault in the fourth degree, domestic violence convictions,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: spouse abuse. He was an escalating serial abuser whose pathology
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: finally culminated in mutilation.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: The most powerful moment of the trial, without a doubt,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: was when Marilyn herself took the stand. She had to
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: step down from the witness box, stand in front of
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the jury and physically remove her hat to show them
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the permanent grafted disfigurement of her scalp.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: That takes so much bravery.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And while she is doing this, standing there incredibly vulnerable,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the jury is watching Zachary Gross's reaction.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Which was unsurprisingly devoid of any human empathy.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: He showed zero remorse. He was restless acting out. At
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: one point, he made such an inappropriate, aggressive hand gesture
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: toward a witness that that the judge immediately held him
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: in criminal contempt of court right then and there.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: But the detail that haunts me is what Marilyn reported seeing.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: While she was testifying, she looked at him and he
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: looked back at her and he winked.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: A wink. It is the ultimate predatory flex. Even surrounded
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: by bailiffs, facing decades in prison, he is trying to
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: maintain psychological dominance over her.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: It's sickening.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: He is sending a silent message that the cage is temporary,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: that his claim on her fear is permanent. He was
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: telling her it's not over.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: But the jury saw exactly what he was. They deliberated
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and quickly returned a guilty verdict for assault in the
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: first degree. At sentencing, the assistant prosecutor argued for the
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: maximum penalty of 20 years. And even then, standing before
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the judge, Gross refused to break character.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Still playing the victim.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: He had actually called into Crimewatch daily from behind bars
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: right before sentencing, still stubbornly blaming the dog. still categorically
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: denying he ever touched the knife.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: And the judge handed down the maximum 20-year sentence, tacking
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: on an additional 34 days for his courtroom contempt.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: For Marilyn's mother, Linda, 20 years felt like an insult.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: She told reporters she wished it was life without parole,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: because the reality is, a 20-year sentence means Zachary Gross
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: will eventually be released.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: That's a terrifying thought.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: He is a documented sociopath, and Marilyn will have to
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: live the rest of her life knowing the calendar is
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: ticking down to the day he walks out. As a
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: tragic footnote, the dog, Capone, was impounded and ordered euthanized
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: by the state, though he remained in a shelter for
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: a long time, pending legal appeals by animal rights groups.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: But we cannot end this segment on Zachary Gross's terms.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: The counterweight to his unbelievable cruelty Is Marilyn Stanley's resilience.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Despite the trauma, despite the permanent physical scars, she stood
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: before the cameras and delivered a message of profound defiance.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: She said, he hasn't gotten me and he won't. He
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: hasn't gotten my pride. He hasn't got my life and
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: I won't let him.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: She survived an act designed to erase her identity and
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: emerged with her voice stronger than ever. She is an
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: absolute titan of survival.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Truly.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Now, we are going to shift gears. We just spent
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: significant time examining a very specific kind of isolation. In
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Marilyn's case, the isolation was acute, violent and physical. She
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: was literally dragged into a bedroom and held hostage by
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a man's physical strength. Right. But as we open the
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: next file, I want you to consider a different, perhaps
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: even more insidious kind of trap. How do you trap
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a victim when they don't live on a remote farm
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: or a secluded cabin? How do you completely isolate human
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: beings when they live right in the middle of a bustling,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: densely populated suburban neighborhood?
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: You don't use a lock and key on the front door.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: You use the system itself as the lock. You weaponize bureaucracy.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: You identify the legal frameworks designed to protect vulnerable children,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: like the foster adoption process and homeschooling legislation. And you
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: contort those systems into a shield that hides your abuse
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: from the outside world. You create a bureaucratic black hole
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: right in the middle of suburbia.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And that black hole swallowed a 16-year-old girl named Natalie Finn.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: The scene the investigators documented in the files is just
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: utterly soul-crushing. We are in West Des Moines, Iowa. Emergency
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: services receive a call. They rush to a suburban home,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and they find Natalie lying on a cold linoleum floor.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: God.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: She's surrounded by urine-soaked sheets. She is unresponsive. She is dying.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: When the medical examiner conducted the autopsy, the official cause
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: of death was listed as cardiac arrest. But that is
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: a clinical end point. The agonizing process that caused her
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: teenage heart to stop beating was extreme, prolonged starvation.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Starvation in a suburb.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: She had been systematically deprived of calories until her body
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: began consuming its own organs for survival, eventually triggering a
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: fatal heart attack.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: And I need to clarify something crucial here. This was
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: not a tragedy born of profound systemic poverty, where a
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: family simply couldn't afford a loaf of bread. This was
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: an act of intentional, calculated deprivation.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: It was murder.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: The perpetrators were her adoptive parents, Nicole and Joseph Finn.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: And the immediate question everyone asks is, how? How does
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: a 16-year-old girl slowly starve to death in an American
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: suburb without a teacher, a guidance counselor, or a school
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: nurse noticing she is wasting away?
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Because she wasn't in a school. The Finns utilized the
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: legal pretext of homeschooling.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: The loophole.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. By filing basic paperwork claiming they were educating their
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: children at home, They effectively severed Natalie and her siblings
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: from the mandatory reporting network. Teachers are mandated reporters. If
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: a child shows up to algebra class visibly malnourished, the
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: teacher calls Child Protective Services.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: But if they never go to class?
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Homeschooling laws in many states lack robust, unannounced oversight. It
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: provided the Finns with the legal authority to close the blinds,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: lock the doors, and slowly execute a child out of sight.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: The justice system did respond to the horrific outcome. Nicole
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Finn was charged with first-degree murder, held on a $ 1
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: million cash bond, and faced a maximum penalty of life
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: without parole. She was also hit with kidnapping, child endangerment,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and neglect charges. The state recognized that locking a child
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: in a room and withholding food until they die is murder,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: full stop.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: But as horrific as Natalie Finn's death is, the investigative
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: files reveal that her case was not an isolated anomaly.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: It exposed a terrifying systemic pattern of exploitation. Because.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Literally four miles down the road from where Natalie Finn died,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: just a 10-minute drive away in the exact same suburban sprawl,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: another adoptive mother was operating a parallel house of horrors.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: This brings us to the Knapp household. The matriarch, Mindy Knapp,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: was ostensibly a pillar of the foster and adoption community.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: She was raising nine adopted children in her home, including
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: a young girl named Malaya.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Malaya never crossed paths with Natalie Finn, but if you
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: put their testimony side by side, they read like the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: exact same nightmare. Malaya described her daily existence as living
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: in a literal house of horrors.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: It's chilling.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: And the tactics Mindy Knapp used to isolate these nine
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: children are genuinely terrifying because of how bureaucratic and calculating
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: they were. This wasn't just throwing a deadbolt on the door.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: You noted in your analysis that she used a deliberate
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: strategy of legal erasure.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. When you adopt a child, they often come with
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: a history of biological family, previous foster parents, social workers
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: who knew them. Mindy Knapp understood that those connections were
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: a threat to her absolute control.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: So what did she do?
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: She legally changed all of the children's first and last names.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: But she went a step further. She petitioned and managed
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: to change all of their social security numbers.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Wait, let me stop you there. How is that even possible?
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: How does a single parent systematically change the social security
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: numbers of nine children without tripping massive alarms at a
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: federal agency?
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: It is shockingly easier than one might assume if you
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: know how to manipulate the paperwork. You can request a
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: new SSN for an adopted child by claiming it is
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: necessary to protect them from a previously abusive biological family
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: or to solidify their new identity to prevent identity theft.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: So she used the system meant to protect them.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Mindy Knapp exploited this protective loophole perfectly. By changing their
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: names and SSNs, she effectively severed their digital and bureaucratic
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: tethers to the past. She scrubbed their previous identities from
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: the system. If an old foster parent tried to look
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: them up, they simply didn't exist anymore.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: She turned them into legal ghosts.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: And then she weaponized that bureaucratic isolation psychologically. She sat
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: these children down and convinced them that the world had
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: forgotten them. She told them that nobody wanted them, that
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: nobody knew where they lived, and that if they ever
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: managed to cry out for help, there was absolutely no
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: one on the outside who would care or listen.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: In that vacuum of total isolation, the physical torture thrived.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: And the details Malaya provided to investigators are deeply disturbing.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: She recounted nights where one of her sisters was punished
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: by being literally hung from her bed overnight.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Hung from the bed.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Mindy would suspend the child with her hands tied to
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the headboard and her feet tied to the footboard, leaving
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: her suspended in midair for hours. If any of the
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: other eight children tried to sneak in and help her
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: or loosen the ties, they would be severely beaten as well.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: The deprivation was systematic. Food and water were regularly withheld
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: as punishment, mirroring the Finn household. The children were subjected
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: to forced, grueling physical exercises in the yard for hours
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: on end, and if they faltered, Mindy would dump freezing
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: water on them.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: It sounds like a POW camp.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: It really does. And crucially, she was highly aware of evidence.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Whenever the abuse resulted in visible bruising or injuries, she
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: would lock the injured child in their room for days,
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: ensuring they were entirely hidden and from the brief glimpses
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: the outside world might catch through a window.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: But the detail that I find the most depraved, the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: one that really elevates this from physical abuse to cult-like
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: psychological destruction, is how she manipulated the children against each other.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Mindy didn't just inflict the pain herself. She engineered a
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: gladiator dynamic in the living room.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate perversion of the maternal instinct.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: She would accuse a child of an infraction, like stealing
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: a piece of food. But instead of punishing them herself,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: she would instruct the other siblings to extract a confession.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: She made them do it.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: She forced these terrified, starving children to physically assault their
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: own brothers and sisters. They were ordered to punch, slap, kick,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and beat each other with belts. And while this orchestrated
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: violence was happening, while siblings were weeping and striking each
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: other to survive, Mindy Knapp would stand in the corner
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: with a camera recording the entire thing on video.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: That is a highly sophisticated brainwashing technique. historically utilized in
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: prisoner of war camps and extreme cults.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to break their bonds.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: By forcing the victims to become perpetrators, she shattered the
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: only remaining support structure they had, which was their solidarity
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: with each other. It guarantees that the children fear their abuser,
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: but it also guarantees they fear the child sleeping in
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: the bunk next to them.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: They can't trust anyone.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: They can never organize. They can never trust each other
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: to plan an escape because they are constantly betraying each
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: other to survive Mindy's wrath.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: But the human spirit can only be compressed so far. Malaya,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: enduring this constant terror, finally reached a breaking point. She
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: realized the conditioning was a lie. She felt she was
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: going to die in that house, just like Natalie Finn
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: died down the road. And her escape is like a
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: scene out of a suspense thriller, yet it relies on
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the simplest tool. A bicycle.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: The courage required to execute this escape cannot be overstated.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Mindy was forcing Malaya to do grueling calisthenics in the
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: front yard. Mindy was standing on the porch, watching like
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: a warden. Malia knew she had a small bicycle nearby.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: She kept exercising, waiting for one tiny singular lapse in
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Mindy's attention. Finally, Mindy turned her head away for just
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a few seconds.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: That was her moment.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Malia didn't hesitate. She bolted for the bike, jumped on,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and pedaled as hard as she physically could. She didn't
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: look over her shoulder. She just rode straight through the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: suburban streets until she reached the urban police station.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: To break through years of intense psychological conditioning that explicitly
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: told her the police wouldn't care and take that leap
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: of faith is extraordinary.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: She walks into the precinct exhausted and tells the officers everything.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: The police, coordinating with the Department of Human Services, finally
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: move in. The investigative files include the actual police body
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: cam footage of the raid. You can hear an officer
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: on the tape saying, we'll just kick the door in,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: and they breach the house, arresting Mindy Knapp.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Finally.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Now, if you were listening to this, you were probably thinking, good,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: they have the testimonies, they have the video she took
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: of the kids beating each other, they have the parallel
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: of the murder case just four miles away. Throw away
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: the key. But I have to warn you, the legal
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: resolution of this case induces absolute rage.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: The disparity is staggering.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Mindy Knapp, the architect of the suburban gulag who hung
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: children from beds and forced siblings to torture each other
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: on tape, went to court. She pleaded guilty to two
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: counts of assault causing bodily injury or mental illness and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: her sentence. The judge handed down one year of probation.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: She didn't serve a day in prison. I have to
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: push back on the legal framework here. How on earth
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: does the justice system view Nicole Finn's actions as first-degree murder,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: but Mindy Knapp's orchestrated, multi-year systemic torture of nine children
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: as worthy of a slap on the wrist. How do
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: they justify this logically?
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly difficult to accept. Emotionally, but legally, the
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: line is rigidly drawn at the presence of a corpse.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: So because nobody died?
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: This case exposes a terrifying statutory vulnerability. The legal system
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: is largely reactive, designed to punish ultimate fatal outcomes rather
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: than proactively monitor for holistic abuse. In the Finn case,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Natalie died. A fatality triggers the system's maximum leverage homicide statutes.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: But in the Knapp case, despite the horrifying psychological damage
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: and physical pain, no one died. The injuries, under the
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: strict definitions of the penal code at the time, were
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: classified merely as assault.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Just assault.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Without a death or permanent catastrophic physical maiming that meets
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: a very high statutory bar, the prosecutors are severely constrained
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: in what they can charge. The system essentially looks at
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Malaya and says, we believe you and what happened was terrible.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: But because she didn't actually kill you, our hands are
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: tied by the sentencing guidelines for simple assault.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Which is a catastrophic failure of imagination by the legal system.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: And the immediate real world consequence is absolute terror for Malaya.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Because when Mindy Knapp walked out of that courthouse on probation,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: she returned home.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: She went right back.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: And she still had legal custody of several of the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: other children. Millay was safe, but she had siblings still
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: living in that house with a woman who had just
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: beaten the system. The investigative reporter covering this story for
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: The Files, Mike Dilva, actually drove to Mindy's house to
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: confront her.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: He knocked on the door. Someone opened it a crack.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: He identified himself and asked for her response to the
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: allegations that she forced the children to beat each other.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: A voice from deep inside the house just yelled goodbye.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: The door slammed shut.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: And the blinds are drawn again. It highlights the urgent
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: need for legislative reform regarding the oversight of adopted children
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: in homeschooling environments. When you combine the financial subsidies that
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: are sometimes provided to adoptive parents with the near total
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: lack of educational oversight granted by homeschooling laws, you create
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: a dark, unregulated ecosystem.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Where abusers can operate with near impunity.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Provided they don't cross the line into murder, exactly.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: It is maddening. But we are going to step away
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: from the systemic failures of the present. and delve into
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: a case where the justice system did everything right. The
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: detectives cared. They threw every resource they had at the case,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: but they were defeated by time. We are going to
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: look at a case where the killer was a ghost.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: This is a really fascinating one.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: When traditional shoe leather detective work hits a brick wall
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: that lasts for 40 years, science has to step in
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: and rewrite the rules of the game.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: We are shifting to a fascinating intersection. The deep history
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: of 1970s police work colliding with the absolute bleeding edge
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: of modern genetic sequencing.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Let's set the scene and go back in time. It
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: is 1976. We are in Hermosa Beach, California. The files
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: describe this town as an upscale, close-knit, quiet, coastal enclave.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: It has the kind of place where people leave their
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: doors unlocked and everyone knows everyone's daily routine.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Pretty idyllic.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: The victim is a 32-year-old woman named Karen Kloss. She
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: was a beautiful, beloved member of the community. raising two
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: young boys aged 11 and 5. She also happened to
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: have a high-profile connection. She was the ex-wife of Bill Medley,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: who was half of the massively famous musical duo The
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Righteous Brothers.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: You know, the voice behind Unchained Melody, it added a
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: layer of media intensity to the case, but at her core,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Karen was just a devoted mother going about her normal
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Tuesday morning.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: The morning of the murder starts entirely without incident. Karen
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: drives her child to school and drops him off. She
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: is scheduled to meet some neighborhood friends for a casual
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: coffee date later that morning, but she never shows up.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Which is unusual for her.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Now, in a sprawling metropolis, a missed coffee might be
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: brushed off. But in Hermosa Beach, among her tight-knit friends,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: a missed appointment is an immediate blaring red flag. Her
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: neighbors decide to walk over to her house to check
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: on her. They approach the front, knock, get no answer.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: So they walk around to the back of the house.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: They find the sliding glass door left slightly open.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: Oh no.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: They call out her name into the house and they
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: hear a strange muffled sound coming from inside.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: The timeline of these events is incredibly compressed. By arriving
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: when they did, the neighbors were literally interrupting a brutal
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: crime while it was actively in progress.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: They realize something is deeply wrong. Frightened, they run back
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: around to the front of the house to find a
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: telephone or get help. And as they round the corner
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: to the front yard, the front door of Karen's house
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: swings open. The neighbors literally cross paths face-to-face with the
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: killer leaving the house.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Just unbelievable timing.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: The investigative report details their description. A white man wearing
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a trench coat with bushy, unkempt long hair and a
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: scruffy beard. He walks out, looks directly at these terrified women,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: and with chilling, sociopathic calm, he smiles, says, hi, ladies,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and casually walks away, vanishing into the neighborhood.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: The sheer audacity of that interaction. He has just committed
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: an unspeakable act of violence, and his heart rate is
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: low enough to offer a polite greeting to the witnesses.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: The neighbors instantly call 911. The police rush to the scene,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: and what they find inside the house is a living nightmare.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Karen is found lying nude on her bedroom floor. She
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: had been brutally raped, her hands were bound, and she
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: had been strangled. The killer was sadistic. He used her
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: own pantyhose and her bra as the ligatures to strangle her.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: It's just horrific.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: But unbelievably, when the officers reached her, she was still breathing.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: The neighbors had interrupted the killer before he could finish
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: the job. Karen was rushed to the emergency room in
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: a deep coma. Tragically, the anoxic brain damage from the
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: strangulation was too severe. She fought for several days but
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: passed away at the hospital.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: To understand why this case went cold, we absolutely must
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: contextualize the investigation within the severe limitations of 1970s forensics.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Detectives Larry Brandenburg and Tom Harris were brilliant, dogged investigators.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: but they inherited a crime scene that was entirely hamstrung
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: by the protocols of 1976.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Right, because we are so used to modern CSI, the
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Tyvek suits, the laser scanners. What was it actually like
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: processing a scene in 1976? It was primitive by comparison.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Cops were often smoking cigarettes at the scene, cross-contaminating everything.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: But the critical failure here was procedural, because Karen was
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: found alive and breathing. The scene was classified as a
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: medical rescue, not a homicide recovery.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Ah, so the priorities were different.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: The paramount goal was saving her life. Consequently, the police
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: did not take comprehensive crime scene photographs of her body
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: in the position it was found. They didn't meticulously document
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: the state of the bedroom before the paramedics rushed in
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: and moved everything. By the time she died days later,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: the pristine context of the scene was lost forever.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: And DNA wasn't a thing yet, right?
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, in 1976... DNA analysis as a forensic tool simply
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: did not exist. It was science fiction.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: But what did they actually have to work with? They
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: had the terrifying eyewitness description of the bushy-haired man, which
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: they turned into a composite sketch. And they had physical
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: evidence recovered from the bedroom, the pantyhose, the bra, and crucially,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: a towel found next to where Karen had been lying.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: The towel had a distinct semen stain on it.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: But back then, that wasn't as helpful as it is now.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: But in 1976, a semen stain is incredibly frustrating evidence.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: You can test it to determine the perpetrator's blood type,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: say type A or type O, which might eliminate a
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: fraction of the population, but it cannot identify a specific
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: individual in a clue you can't read.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: They did everything they could with the tools they had.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: They interviewed hundreds of people. And as the decades rolled
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: on and DNA technology finally emerged in the late 80s
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: and 90s, the detectives didn't forget Karen Claus.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: They went back to it.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: They went back to the evidence locker. They extracted the
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: DNA from that towel. And used it to officially clear
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: the obvious suspects that always surround a domestic murder. They
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: tested Karen's current husband. They tested Bill Medley. They tested
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: a boyfriend she'd been seeing.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: And the results.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Their science cleared them all definitively. The DNA on the
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: towel belonged to an unknown male. And despite the relentless
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: dedication of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, despite re-interviewing witnesses
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: and chasing rumors, the trail went completely, agonizingly cold. For
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: 40 years.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: For decades, her son, who was 11 when she was murdered,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: spoke in the files about how the unresolved trauma scarred
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: his entire life. Bill Medley talked about how he spent
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: 40 years hearing a voice in the back of his
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: head urging him to let it go, to accept that
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: they would never know.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: But they couldn't let it go.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: But the Sheriff's Department refused to let it go. And finally,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: after a lifetime of dead ends, a lead forensic biologist
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: at the lab makes a phone call to the detectives
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: and suggests a Hail Mary play. She asks them, have
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: you ever thought about running this through familial DNA?
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: That quotient represents a monumental leap in the philosophy of
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: forensic science. Familial DNA testing changed the entire landscape of
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: cold case investigations.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Let's really break down how this works because it can
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: sound like magic. I think of traditional DNA testing like
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: a fingerprint matching system. You find a fingerprint at a
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: crime scene, you run it through the FBI database, and
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: you cross your fingers hoping that your specific bad guy
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: has been arrested before and is sitting in that database.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: It's a one-to-one match. But familial DNA fundamentally alters the
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: search geometry.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Instead of a direct match, you are searching for
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: partial genetic harmony.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: I call it a genetic dragnet. You aren't just scanning
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: the water hoping to catch the exact fish that committed
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: the crime. You throw a massive net into the system,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: looking for any feature from its school that happens to
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: swim by.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: The biologist runs the killer's DNA profile through the database,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: but instead of looking for an exact match, the computer
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: algorithm is programmed to look for partial allelic matches. It's
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: looking for the killer's brother? his son, his father, or
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: a first cousin who might be in the criminal database
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: because they got arrested for a DUI or a burglary
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: years later.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: And then the detective work starts again.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Once the computer flags that relative, the detectives become genealogists.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: They build out that person's family tree, trace the branches
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: backward and forward, looking for a male relative who is
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the right age and lived in the right area in 1976.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: They use the relative's DNA to triangulate the ghost.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: It is brilliant. And in the Claus case... They extracted
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: the old DNA, ran it through the familial database, and
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: nothing happened. Wait, really? Nothing? Initially. The relative wasn't in
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: the system yet, but they kept running it periodically, waiting
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: for a fish to swim into the net.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Now, I want to pause the celebration of this science
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: for a moment, because the investigative files highlight a major
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: controversy surrounding this technology, and I think we need to
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: examine it critically. There are intense arguments regarding the civil
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: rights implications of familial DNA. The critics ask, Is there
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: an ethical line being crossed here?
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: It's a huge debate.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: The core argument is about genetic privacy. Is it a
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: violation of the Fourth Amendment to track a citizen down,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: investigate their life, and subject them to police scrutiny simply
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: because their second cousin committed an unrelated crime and ended
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: up in a database? You are essentially becoming a suspect
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: by biological association through no fault of your own.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: It is a profound and highly valid ethical debate. The
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: privacy concerns touch on deep fears of a surveillance state
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: where our biology is constantly monitored. However, we have to
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: weigh that theoretical ethical debate against the undeniably tangible, often
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: miraculous results it produces in solving the most heinous, intractable
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: crimes in human history.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Right. There's a balance.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: California was the first state in the nation to legalize
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: familial DNA testing, specifically for cases of this magnitude. If
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: we look at its track record, it is astounding. This
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: exact technology was used to finally identify and capture the
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: grim sleeper serial killer Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who had
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: been murdering women in Los Angeles for decades with impunity. Oh, wow.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: It was used to catch a prolific serial child abductor
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: in Cleveland. The counter-argument from law enforcement is compelling. The
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: overriding public safety interest in catching active serial murderers and
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: rapists vastly outweighs the abstract privacy concerns of searching an
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: already existing database of convicted felons for partial matches.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: And in the Karen Kloss case, that technology finally, after
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: 40 years of silence, delivered a hit. A relative of
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: the killer committed a crime, was swabbed, and entered the system.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: The biologist called the lead detective and literally asked, are
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: you sitting down, we got a hit. They finally had
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: a name to match the bushy-haired man who smirked at
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: the neighbors in 1976.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: The genetic triangulation pointed directly to a man named Kenneth
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Eugene Troyer.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: And when detectives pulled Troyer's file, he fit the profile flawlessly.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: He wasn't some quiet local who made a one-time mistake.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Kenneth Eugene Troyer was a highly violent, dangerous California prison escapee.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: He was already a known suspect in several other brutal
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: sexual assaults in the region during the 1970s.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: He was a textbook predator.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly the kind of monster the neighbors interrupted that morning.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: But as the detectives geared up to finally close the
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: cuffs on him, they hit a massive final twist. They
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: couldn't arrest Kenneth Eugene Troyer because he was already dead.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: He had met a violent end decades earlier. The records
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: show that in 1982, just six years after he murdered
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: Karen Kloss, Troyer was killed in a massive shootout and
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: standoff with police during a completely separate incident.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: So Troyer died in 1982. Meanwhile, Karen's sons, Bill Medley
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: and the entire community of Hermosa Beach, spent the next
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: 34 years agonizing in the dark, wondering who did it,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: wondering if he was still walking the streets, looking over
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: their shoulders.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: The psychological toll of that delayed justice is immense. But
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: the identification, even of dead man, provided something invaluable.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: It provided absolute closure. Bill Medley expressed profound relief. He
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: said the voice in his head telling him to search
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: was finally silenced. Her sons finally had the definitive answer
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: about who took their mother from them. And the L.A.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department fulfilled a 40-year promise.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: They did what they set out to do.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: The lead detective on the cold case squad summed it
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: up perfectly. He said, Number one, it's our job. Number two,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do. And it's what we
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: do here. It's our purpose. They close the book on
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: a ghost.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: If we step back and weave the threads of these
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: three distinct stories together, a really profound thematic tapestry emerges
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: about the nature of human resilience and the evolution of justice.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: We moved from the visceral, bloody, immediate survival of Marilyn Stanley,
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: fighting off a sadistic partner and his dog in a
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: locked bedroom.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: To the bureaucratic nightmare.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. We witnessed the desperate, terrifying bicycle escape of
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: young Malaya Knapp breaking free from a suburban house of
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: horrors shielded by bureaucratic loopholes. And we traced the agonizing
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: 40-year technological wait for Karen Claus's family.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: It's a lot to take in.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: These cases highlight two fundamental truths. First, the almost incomprehensible
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: biological drive of victims to survive and reclaim their voices.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: And second, the sheer lengths to which society must continuously
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: push itself. whether legally by challenging sentencing guidelines, technologically through
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: genetic sequencing, or morally by refusing to close cold cases
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: to protect the vulnerable and balance the scales of justice.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: It really forces you to look at the world around
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: you with a sharper lens. Because the monsters we dissected today,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: they aren't lurking in some cinematic gothic castle surrounded by lightning.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: They are mundane. They are on Facebook, sending texts filled
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: with heart emojis and promises of protection.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: They look just like us.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: They are the smiling adoptive parents living four miles away
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: in a beautiful suburban cul-de-sac. And sometimes they are literal
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: ghosts from 1976 hiding in the microscopic gaps of our
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: genetic history.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: But as the darkness evolves, so do our tools to
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: fight it.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Our societal awareness of how domestic violence escalates, recognizing
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: that a push on the porch leads to a knife
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: in the bedroom, is getting sharper. Our vigilance regarding systemic
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: loopholes demanding better oversight for unmonitored homeschooling must get sharper.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: And our scientific tools, like familial DNA, are literally giving
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: us the power to reach back through time and pull
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: the truth out of the darkness.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: The relentless progression of those tools is the only reliable
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: counterweight we have against the endless escalation of human cruelty.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: And that leaves me with a final thought, something I
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: really want you, the listener, to mull over as you
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: go about your day. We just saw how familial DNA
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: can reach across half a century to solve an entirely
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: cold case. As these scientific tools become exponentially more advanced,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: as we develop algorithms that can map massive family trees
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: in minutes, or trace a killer from a single microscopic
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: skin cell left on a doorknob, will the very concept
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: of a cold case eventually cease to exist entirely?
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: It's an incredible possibility.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Will every single secret, no matter how deeply buried, eventually
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: be laid bare by the relentless march of biology? And
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: perhaps more importantly, if we are rapidly achieving this level
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: of perfect infallible hindsight in the justice system, how do
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: we apply that exact same brilliance, that same technological and
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: systemic innovation to preventing the abuses happening right now? How
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: do we build a system smart enough to intervene behind
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: those closed suburban doors before the 911 call ever needs
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: to be made?
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: That's the real challenge.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: It is. I want to thank you so much for
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: joining us on this intense deep dive into the true
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: crime files. Keep looking closer, keep asking the hard questions,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: and we will see you next time.