Latest / True Crime California / TCC #7 The Murder of Debbie Dorian

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TCC #7 The Murder of Debbie Dorian · True Crime California

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Speaker 1: Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
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indie podcasts. Hey, guys, welcome back to I think episode seven. Eventually,
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I'm gonna have to stop saying what episode it is
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because I'm gonna lose track. I can't believe it's been
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seven episodes already. It's absolutely crazy. Thanks everybody who's been listening.
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I don't know a lot of subscribers already. You guys
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are amazing. I'm not trying to brag. I'm like, honestly,
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very pleasantly surprised and super super grateful. So thanks everybody
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for listening. What you're listening to is true Crime California.
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This is a podcast about murders another you know, criminal
1:04
activity in the Great Golden State. And I am coming
1:08
to you during a crazy windstorm. I don't know how
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many people know, but I live in Los Angeles, in
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Burbank specifically, and we are having like eighty mile an
1:19
hour wind gusts, which is not normal. We've definitely had
1:22
windy days before and even like exceptionally windy, but never
1:26
like this. This is nuts. My back fence just fell over,
1:30
like it's down. It's done, Dunzo, like ripped out of
1:33
the ground. It's absolutely bonkers. So if you hear some
1:37
deep rumbling in the background, it's just the wind. It's
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not my dog's for a change, although it could be
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them as well, but as of right now, it's the wind,
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and that shit is loud. I was actually at the
1:47
Annenberg Beach House today. I'm a caterer and I was
1:50
there doing a walk through because we're gonna start catering
1:52
like weddings and events there, which is amazing. It's literally
1:55
on the beach in Santa Monica. And while we were there,
1:59
a brush in Pacific Palisades was just just like up
2:02
on the hill broke out and we saw it. And
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with the wind, it's been spreading. I know people who
2:08
are having to evacuate. It's just nuts. It really really sucks.
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And this year's been really dry. We had two years
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of like wet, wet, wet, so everything grew, then I
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dried out and now it's gonna burn, which is such
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a bummer. So anybody who's up there out there, I
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hope you guys are all okay. To my friends who
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live in the area, stay safe. If you need somebody
2:28
to watch your animals, you know where to find me. Anyway,
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this week, I am doing, as promised, a lesser known case.
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Now I didn't explicitly promise that in any previous recordings,
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but in the description about this podcast it says that
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I'm gonna do cases that are very well known in
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cases that are a little bit less well known. And
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this one I think was well known in certain circles
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but was fairly new to me. And it does have
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some like TV shows and things like some amount of coverage,
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but it doesn't have, you know, the same coverage that
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like the Wonderland murders or poly class have like, for instance,
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so comparatively, pardon me, this is a much less well
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known case, but still like a really interesting case. And
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so this week we're doing another case from the nineties,
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and this is the case of the murder of Debbie Dorian.
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Debbie Dorian was a twenty two year old college student
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at Fresno State who was murdered in her apartment in Fresno, California,
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most likely August twentieth, nineteen ninety six, but unfortunately was
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not found until two days later when she was found
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by her father, which super sucks. So this is the
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case of her very tragic death and it takes some
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really interesting twists and turns as well, and the most
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surprising thing, well, I won't get ahead, but it's an
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interesting case for sure. So let's just get into it
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and talk about Debbie and her life and where she lived.
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One of the things I like about this podcast is
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I sort of get to talk about the state and
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the cities. I love California. I love talking about it.
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I love its history. So it's fun to sort of,
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you know, discuss the different areas for people who are
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or are not around from around here. Debbie was a
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third or fourth generation Californian, specifically from Fresno. Now, Fresno
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is very much in central California. It's surrounded by farm
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towns and farming. It's pretty rural. Oh did you guys
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hear that something just fell over? Okay, sorry, guys. My
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son's basketball hoop just took a dive in the backyard,
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as did one of my plant holders. But I already
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got all the plants off of it, so I wasn't lying.
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It's very very windy, and now our power is flickering,
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so let's hope we can record this anyway talking about Fresno.
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So Fresno is definitely, Like you know, it's it's in
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the middle of nowhere. Basically, it's like in the very
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middle of California. It's not near the coast, it's not
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really near anything. And it's interesting because as of twenty twenty,
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Fresno is the fifth most populous city in the state,
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which is significant because California is the most populated state
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in the USA with about I think just over thirty
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nine million people, and Fresno has just over five hundred thousand,
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so just over half a million people live in the city.
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So it's not by any means a small town, but
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it is sort of in the middle of nowhere, and
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it's definitely not any sort of tourist attraction, you know,
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like San Francisco's on the water, they have the ports,
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they have like all the fun like the pier and like,
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you know, it's just sort of a thing. Los Angeles
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I don't think I need to explain. Even Sacramento. It's
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like a capital city. So Sacramento is kind of gnarly.
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Having lived, you know, grown up near there, I can
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say that, but at least like it still has a
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tourist draw. I would say Fresno stocked in cities like
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this that are sort of just in the middle of nowhere.
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They really don't have any sort of tourism or any
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sort of draw for anybody who doesn't live there. And
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this was especially true in the nineteen nineties when Fresno
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was honestly like a really scary place. I remember growing
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up and being like stay away from Fresno. They had
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a ton of gang activity, ton of violent crimes, property crimes.
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Things were a bit of a mess. Like even police
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at the time were like, yeah, no, things were really
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bad here in the nineties. Even today, actually Fresno is
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way higher than the national average for crime and also
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higher than the average in California by like quite a bit.
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But back then in the nineties, it was even worse.
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Like I said, I watched this interview with a detective
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who worked in Fresno in the nineties, and he was like, yeah,
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our city was completely overrun with crime. So for a
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cop to admit that, like, it's got to be it's
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got to be bad. Now that being said, even you know,
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back then at this time, there there were nice areas
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in the city just like anywhere, like any city, even
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like the hardest cities in the country, are going to
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have like little enclaves you know that are kind of safe.
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And Debbie grew up like a pretty safe and stable
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home life. You know, she wasn't like out on the streets.
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You know, she had a fairly normal, like suburban childhood.
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She was a fun, hard working young woman who graduated
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from Bullard High School in nineteen ninety two and immediately
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went to college studying economics. Now, her plan upon graduating
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Fresno State was to go to grad school at San
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Francisco State College, so like just up the road a
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few hours. So, you know, she very much in control
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of her life, knew what she wanted to do. She
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was close with both of her parents. She was very independent,
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so when she went away to college, she eventually ended
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up getting an apartment by herself instead of staying at
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home or living with roommates or you know, in the dorms.
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Which is funny because Fresno State College is literally less
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than five miles from her high school. So she absolutely
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could have lived at home while going to college and
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just chose not to because she was wanting to like
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start her life. Now, going to Fresno State made a
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lot of sense if you live in a city that
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has like a decent college and you don't have to
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move away, and you don't have to spend the money
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on like a private school or like a UC or whatever.
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Like it's the best thing to do because you still
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get a good education and you don't have to pay
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a ton of money. And again, she stayed in her hometown,
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which I think is really nice because, like, transitioning to
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college can be really scary. You're leaving home, You're leaving
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everything you've ever known. It's nice to be able to
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stay in the city where you grew up, you know.
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But it's interesting because she chose to stay near home,
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but not stay home. She wanted to have her own life,
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which I think is really great. So she's twenty two,
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which means she's getting towards the end of her undergrad
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and things are starting, you know, she wants to go
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to San Francisco State's checking out Sacramento State as well.
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She's sort of casting a wide net to see where
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she wants to go to school. Now. On the morning
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of August twenty second, nineteen ninety six, her father, Peter,
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drove to her apartment to check on her because she
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had not shown up at his house that morning. Their
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plan was to go to Sacramento State to look at
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the campus as Debbie, you know, was going to graduate
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at the end of that year, so she's scouting schools.
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They're sort of getting ahead of things. Now she's in August,
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so she's going to graduate what May or June if
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she wants to go right into grad school, she's going
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to be looking at these colleges and then applying to
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them immediately and then going. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but
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that's sort of like, you know, the order of things.
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So she clearly is a very organized and really on
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it person, which I wouldn't know anything about personally, but
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I do respect that she is. Like so she was
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so on target with her goals. Now, her father, Peter
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arrives at her apartment and he noticed that not only
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is her door unlocked, but it's partially open. And I
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don't think it was like open open, like enough to
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see it with the naked eye, but when you got
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to the door, you could tell that it was not
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fully closed. And I assume this is the case because
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they made a point to say the door was open.
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But also nobody had called the police or checked on
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her prior to Peter's coming over, and she did live
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in an apartment complex, and there'll be more about that later.
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So if the door had been like open open, I
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think somebody would have noticed, would have checked on her,
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would have called the you know, management company, maybe even
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the police, you know. But as it was, it was
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just barely open and enough to make Peter worry. So
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he goes inside and he finds what I would not
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wish on my worst enemy, and that is his twenty
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two year old daughter, Debbie dead inside. She's laying face up.
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She's wearing only a T shirt and nothing else, so
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she is naked mostly, which is fucking horrifying. Her hands
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and feet are bound with duct tape, and her face
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is covered in that same tape. The tape is covering
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both her mouth and her nose so that she could
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not breathe. And I will just say that this is
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what killed her, which ugh, I mean to really think
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about what that is like and what that must have
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been like is just harrowing. It's awful. Peter immediately ran
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out of the apartment, found a neighbor to call police.
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He later said that he knew he had to keep
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some level of composure to ensure that the police would
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come quickly. If he'd been like openly losing it, he
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wouldn't have been, you know, it would have been more
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difficult for him to communicate what he needed. And also
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I think he was probably in some amount of shock,
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to be fair. You know, like this is not an
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easy thing to come upon, so I feel like he
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was probably having almost like an out of body experience.
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But he later said that like he had enough presence
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of mind to know that he needed what hit my mic, sorry,
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you know, he knew that he needed to communicate calmly
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so that he could get the help he needed as
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quickly as possible. Now, unfortunately, Debbie was already dead at
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this point, but I do think that his thought process
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made a lot of sense. The police come, they find Debbie,
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and they pretty quickly they determined that she had been
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raped before she died. Now, luckily there is semen at
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the scene, which they dutifully collect, which is good because
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this is nineteen ninety six, so you know, DNA is
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not great, but it exists, so they know to collect
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this kind of evidence and to hold on to it.
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This story, of course, makes the news, as Debbie was
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a very pretty young white college student, so perfect for
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a news story in the nineties. Like I said, this
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place was overrun with crime. But they definitely pick and
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choose who they want to sort of highlight, and she
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was a good candidate for that. And this of course
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terrifies people in the area. Like I said, you know,
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she doesn't live in a bad area, so for this
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to happen to her feels particularly traumatizing, I think for
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people who live in this city and feel like they've
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found a safe place to be and it's just not
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the case. Police did what they could, and they did
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work really fast, processing the DNA on the scene to
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the best of their ability given the year's nineteen ninety six.
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They took note of a few other things that the apartment,
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mostly that the door had not been forced open, which
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unfortunately comes into play later and we'll talk about that.
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So they of course began looking at anybody who knew
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Debbie because maybe it was somebody that she let inside deliberately.
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So that was kind of their thought process in the beginning,
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but it does have broader implications later. They didn't really
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get very far with this line of investigation, but about
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two months after her murder, police did arrest a suspect
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named Maurice Dixon. I hate to admit that I couldn't
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find hardly any information that explained how they got to
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the point of arresting him. I think maybe he knew
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her and do you want to call out that. Also, he
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was a black man, so it was probably like a
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pretty easy choice. I do also know that his DNA
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ended up being a partial match to that at the scene,
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So based on that partial match, he was arrested on
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suspicion of murder. But about two weeks later and he
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was in jail the whole time. After taking a more
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specific DNA test, he was found to definitely not be
14:19
a match. Now, as I'd mentioned, back then, DNA technology
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was not what it is today. They had multiple tests
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back then to sort of narrow down suspects, while now
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we can get like exact matches from touch DNA, so
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the difference is pretty insane. So he took at first
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what was called a DQ test, which indicated that he
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might be a match. Now, not every person who takes
14:42
this test is going to potentially be a match, so
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that gave police like a good starting point, like, okay,
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let's arrest him, let's detain him. Potentially he knows her,
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maybe he was in the area. I don't know. But
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with the whatever info they had that got them to
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this DNA point, the DNA again pointed to him. Now
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fortunately for him, but unfortunately for the case. The second
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test that was much more specific said he definitely was
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not the perpetrator, and this was a one in three
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million kind of deal. So not a match. Definitely not
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a match. So now police are back at square one,
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and they have no real leads, no suspects. They're pretty
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much just like at a loss, and pretty quickly, very unfortunately,
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the case goes cold and it stays completely cold for
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six years. So now I'm going to talk about a
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nearby town called Visalia. Visalia is also in California. It's
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in a different county than Fresno, but not very far away,
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like maybe forty miles, which when dealing with rural areas,
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really isn't that far, at least in terms of drive time,
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because there's not the same kind of traffic that you're
15:53
going to see in bigger cities. Now, I said six years,
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and we will get there, but as of right now,
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we're in nineteen ninety nine in Visalia, which is like
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not a huge town but not tiny and again surrounded
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by like farming. It's very rural and does have a
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decent amount of crime. So it's nineteen ninety nine and
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there's a young woman around eighteen years old who's riding
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her bike home from her job at an ice cream store.
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While riding, she is approached by a man in a
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hooded jacket who pulls a bandana over her nose, grabs
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her bike handles like the handlebars, stops her in the street,
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and puts a gun into her side. He tells her
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that he doesn't want to hurt her, but he will
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if she doesn't do what he says. He then pulls
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her off of the street into some bushes or like
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sort of between them and like a tree behind the
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bushes basically, and begins fondling her breasts. He then masturbates
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onto the street or sort of does this while he's
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fondling her, and then runs away. This poor woman, after
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it's over, goes to her sister's house and tells her
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what happened, and her sister immediately calls the police. Police
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arrive on the scene and they take a DNA sample
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from the semen on the ground, which is just so gross,
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it's just awful, and they also get details from the victim.
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Over the next four years, there are another seven or
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eight attacks similar or worse than this one. Now, this
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includes an attack in January of two thousand and two
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where a woman was waiting for a bus again and vicealia,
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when she was approached by a man in a hooded
17:31
jacket who put a gun into her side and fondled
17:34
her while she stood there terrified. Now there isn't a
17:38
ton of information about the other attacks, but I can
17:40
tell you that they include forced oral copulation, attempted forced
17:45
oral copulation, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, and other really terrible charges.
17:53
All of the attacks took place, or most of them
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took place, or at least started outside in like public locations,
18:01
but sort of off the beaten path, and all of
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the victims, except for the woman at the bus stop,
18:06
were moved to a new location before being assaulted. All
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of these assaults also involved a gun, a man in
18:14
a hooded jacket, and often included a bandana. So police
18:18
are seeing a definite pattern here, but they have no suspect. Finally,
18:24
in two thousand and two. After this most recent attack,
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and there is one more after this in two thousand
18:28
and two. But after this attack that occurred in January,
18:32
police upload the DNA from the nineteen ninety nine attack,
18:35
which they very much believe to be connected to this one,
18:39
into CODIS and they get a match. But it's not
18:46
the type of match that you're thinking. Police. Instead of
18:50
getting a match to a person, they get a match
18:53
to an unsolved case, and that case is the murder
18:58
of Debbie Door. That's right. Police were able to tie
19:06
the sexual assault in nineteen ninety nine to the Debbie
19:09
Durian murder in nineteen ninety six. Now note that I
19:14
do not say they found her killer, because that is
19:17
up for debate and will get into that later. But
19:19
the presence of semen, unfortunately does not mean that the
19:22
person whose semen it belongs to was her killer, and
19:26
we'll talk about that. However, that little note aside, I think,
19:32
based on the fact that the other location of this
19:34
DNA was it yet another crime scene, gives us a
19:37
good idea of the truth and what this guy is about. Now,
19:41
the hand of justice can be quite slow, so it
19:44
wasn't until two thousand and nine that police put together
19:47
a case of nine charges or nine separate cases against
19:51
an unknown John Doe perpetrator. This is a pretty uncommon
19:56
thing and it was the first time this ever happened
19:57
into Larry County, which is where Vicelia is is located.
20:01
So they didn't even charge anybody in Debbie's murder at
20:05
this point, only in these Visalia attacks, even though they
20:09
knew at least one of the attacks was connected to
20:12
her case. They only charged for these attacks, and it's like,
20:17
how do you file charges against no one? You are
20:19
only filing them against DNA with the hope that eventually
20:23
that DNA is going to be linked to a person. Now,
20:26
I think part of the reason they did this was
20:29
to drum up leads in the case and to let
20:31
the purp know that they were not giving up on
20:33
solving these attacks and that they were actively searching for
20:37
this guy. Unfortunately, even after this, nothing really happened. Now
20:43
seven years later, in twenty sixteen, so twenty years after
20:47
Debbie's murder, two retired detectives who had originally worked on
20:50
Debbie's case came back onto the case, which was declared reopen.
20:55
And these two men came back on because this was
20:58
like the case of their lives. They didn't want to
21:01
see it unsolved. They wanted it to be solved in
21:03
their lifetimes. So they came out of retirement they came
21:07
back to this case. And I believe that this is
21:10
due to some new information about the case coming up,
21:13
which apparently was good enough to bring these guys back.
21:16
But I'll tell you right now, I don't have any
21:18
specifics on what that was. And again, in just a moment,
21:21
this will all come together and we'll all kind of
21:23
know why that is. So the case has reopened, and
21:27
as I'm sure we all remember, in twenty eighteen, a
21:32
very big case was cracked thanks to the use the
21:35
brand new use of genetic genealogy. Now the case I'm
21:40
talking about is, of course, the Golden State Killer or GSK,
21:44
also known as Euron's the Original or the East Area Rapist,
21:49
the Original Nightstalker. This man had many different names. His
21:53
legal name is Joseph James DeAngelo, and he was caught
21:57
for his insanely terrible crimes using familial genealogy. And the
22:03
way this works, I'm just gonna kind of dumb it down.
22:05
I'm sure most people who know anything about true crime, No,
22:08
but I found a way that kind of, in my opinion,
22:10
makes it simple to understand. Basically, when police have a
22:14
DNA profile but nothing to compare it to directly, meaning
22:17
no matches in codis or any other database, they can
22:19
now start using familial DNA to narrow down their pool
22:24
of suspects, even if they don't have anybody in mind.
22:27
So what they can do is they can use the
22:29
DNA they have and compare it to the DNA people
22:32
upload online for genealogy purposes, and they use that to
22:36
figure out who their purpose within a few people. So like,
22:39
if there are three brothers, they can narrow it down
22:41
to the three, which they've done multiple times at this point,
22:45
but they narrow it down to like three brothers, but
22:47
then from there they have to do the legwork to
22:49
figure out which one it is, and that can be
22:51
based on like where they were or I mean, you
22:54
can get a DNA profile from the three brothers and
22:58
only one will perfectly match. So the genealogy gets you,
23:01
like really really close, but it doesn't get you all
23:03
the way there. And obviously it's much more complicated than
23:07
just like going to ancestry dot com. Like police can't
23:09
actually do that. There's a particular kind of database that
23:13
can be used, so it's not like they're just wildening
23:15
out with all of our DNA. But for the purposes
23:18
of explaining how this works, I sort of just simplified,
23:20
and to be honest, I don't fully understand all of
23:22
the laws or implications, but I know that essentially that's
23:25
how it works. So anyway, once GSK is caught using
23:29
this method, police nationwide did a collective hmmmmm, and then
23:34
started using this to solve other cold cases, including Debie's case,
23:40
which also included all of these sexual assault rapes and
23:44
attacks in Visalia. Now, I do know that they did
23:47
have this man in mind before they compared his DNA
23:50
the suspect. I do not know how or why. And
23:53
again I kind of mentioned that the reason that I
23:55
don't know how or why is because that information is
23:58
not yet availab because the trial for this man has
24:03
not even started. Now in twenty twenty five. That being said,
24:10
somehow police were alerted to a man who lived in
24:13
the area at the time of the attacks. Now, this
24:15
man did not have any DNA in the database, but
24:17
they used this new method and were able to narrow
24:19
down their search to his family and with this information
24:23
they were given a search warrant that allowed them to
24:25
collect DNA from his trash, which they did, and when
24:30
they did, they found that it was a perfect match
24:34
not only to the Vicelia attack, but to the Debbie
24:37
Dorian crime scene. So here we have two perfect matches
24:44
between the two cases. It's the same guy, and the
24:47
man is fifty seven year old Nikki Stain and it's
24:51
nick e Y Stane. And I tell you this because
24:55
he has active Facebook profiles at an online presence. So
24:59
if anybody wants to go look and kind of see
25:01
what this guy's about, you can do that. And I
25:03
don't really care because fuck this guy. Now. At the
25:05
time of Debbie's murder, he was a twenty nine year
25:08
old married father of two living in Vicealia, which is
25:13
beyond horrifying that that is. I mean, there's no good suspect,
25:18
but like to be doing the shit while you have
25:19
a wife and kids, It just adds another layer to it.
25:23
And as far as the attacks, there's a map that
25:26
shows where they all took place. And wouldn't you know,
25:29
Nicki's house is not even a mile from most of
25:31
the Vicealia attacks. And maybe under two miles at most
25:35
from all of them. So he's just kicking back in
25:38
his own backyard doing this shit, which is great because
25:41
it's just another sort of like gotcha for the police.
25:44
Right now. Once police matched the DNA, they arrested Nikki
25:48
at his job managing a Charlie's Philly stakes in a
25:52
nearby mall. His employees actually had to call the owner
25:55
of the business to tell him, like, hey, the police
25:57
just came in and arrested the manager, which was a
26:00
shock to everybody because he had no record. He seemed
26:04
like a family man. I think he was twice divorced,
26:07
but like he was like a very normal guy. Now
26:12
things from here get a little bit murky, because again
26:15
we're entering into a time where the evidence is still
26:19
being kind of kept hush hush because they haven't gone
26:21
to trial yet. But basically, I've read that at some
26:24
point he did admit to the attacks and visalia, but
26:27
denied having anything to do with Debbie's murder. Now, in
26:31
other articles, I know that he's pled not guilty at
26:33
all charges, So I don't know. But what I do
26:36
know is that this man lived a very dual life.
26:41
On the one hand, he's a twice divorced father of
26:43
two adult children who has pictures of his extended family
26:46
on his Facebook page, where he posted all sorts of
26:49
family friendly content, including him cooking for his family at
26:52
all holidays and get togethers now. On the other hand,
26:56
he had another Facebook page under the name Nick steal Steel.
27:03
This profile is super gross and includes all sorts of
27:07
like honestly like pathetic posts trying to like pick up
27:10
random women. It's such like an old person on Facebook
27:13
move to post like sexy posts on your own timeline,
27:17
as if you're talking to like an audience, where like
27:19
nobody's reading any of it, you know, It's like it's
27:22
just one of the It's almost like I would feel
27:24
bad for him if he wasn't who he was now.
27:27
On one of his like gross posts, he posts a
27:30
fireplace he apparently had installed in his bedroom barf, and
27:35
in another he's talking about finding someone to go have
27:37
drinks with, which again like barf. Criminal psychologists interviewed about
27:42
this case said actually that having this sort of dual
27:45
life is really common for criminals who have like sexual
27:48
motivation to their crimes. They have this dual life and
27:52
they're just sort of narcissistic enough to think that they
27:55
can get away with it. So this guy has just
27:58
taken all the boxes that point to guilty. I mean,
28:01
we've got DNA, but even beyond that, we've got the proximity,
28:06
We've got these weird dual facebooks, we've got just you know,
28:11
he just seems gnarly. So he was arrested on my birthday,
28:16
January twenty ninth, twenty twenty, which I love for him
28:19
and for me. His trial has not officially started, but
28:23
I do note that the pre trial hearings to determine
28:25
if he'll be charged have taken place, and as of
28:28
October of twenty twenty four, they were still kind of
28:32
ongoing when a judge finally decided to allow all of
28:35
these cases to be tried together. Now. Prior to that,
28:38
there had been multiple hearings where victims and witnesses, including
28:42
Debbi's father, testified in order to determine if Nikki should
28:45
be charged for the sex crimes and the murder, and
28:48
also if they should be charged together. One of his victims,
28:52
one of the women who've been fondled I believe the
28:54
first one from nineteen ninety nine, took the stand and
28:57
talked about how the attack forever changed her life, how
29:00
she lives in fear that she'll be attacked again. She
29:03
also talked about how the assault felt like it lasted forever.
29:07
You know, this has been you know, over twenty years
29:10
of her life. That feels like they've been stolen from her,
29:13
which is very, very sad. Debbie's father also says, you know,
29:19
he has the day he found her body burned into
29:21
his memory, which I fully believe, and he recounted that
29:24
in precise detail while on the stand. Now, another witness
29:29
also came forward, and this was Debbie's neighbor. Now, this
29:34
neighbor saw Niki Stain knock on Debbie's door two nights
29:40
before her body was found. He also saw her open
29:44
the door to Nicki. Whether or not she let him
29:47
in wasn't discussed in what I read, but I can
29:50
tell you that he positively identified Nicki as the man
29:53
at the house, pointing him out in the courtroom and saying, yes,
29:57
that is the man that I saw at her apartment
30:00
that night. And this very well could be the last
30:03
time anybody saw Debbie alive. And it also tracks with
30:07
the timeline of her having been dead for two days,
30:10
she didn't go to work during that time, nobody had
30:13
heard from her, and then her father had to come
30:15
and find her body. So everything aligns timeline wise as well. Now.
30:22
The first hearing ended and the judge decided that Stain
30:25
could be charged with all of these together. The second
30:28
hearing came and went and that judge ruled that he
30:30
could be tried. Oh sorry. The first one was to
30:32
determine if he could be charged at all, they said yes.
30:34
The second one was to determine if he could be
30:37
tried together, which his attorney said would get in the
30:39
way of him getting a fair trial due to all
30:41
of the emotion. But it really seems like nobody cares
30:44
about that because we have DNA evidence, eyewitness testimony, living victims.
30:49
I mean, it feels like a very slam dunk case.
30:52
That being said, Stain's team is going with the defense
30:56
that he and Debbie did in fact know each other
30:59
and that on the night of her murder or sometime
31:02
just prior to her murder, they had consensual sex, but
31:05
he was not the one to kill her and apparently
31:08
wasn't there when she died. His attorney won't give any details,
31:11
but does say that there's proof they were not strangers,
31:15
which is cryptic and concerning, because if they have proof
31:19
of that, I still don't think it's gonna do enough,
31:22
especially since you know they have proof that he attacked
31:25
at least one other woman, So it feels still not
31:30
that important, but it certainly could be, and it's definitely intriguing,
31:35
so I'm interested to see. I'm gonna keep an eye
31:38
on this case. But I did want to say, you know,
31:41
even if she did know him, that can actually lend
31:43
credibility to the idea that he killed her after attacking her,
31:46
because right now, it's honestly kind of weird that he
31:49
killed her but hasn't at least as far as we know,
31:51
killed anybody else, or as far as we know, killed
31:54
anybody before her, because it's very uncommon for a criminal
31:59
to start their crime their career with a crime like this.
32:02
I mean, it does happen, but my thing, my thought
32:06
process is that maybe he killed her to avoid getting
32:09
caught because she knew him, whereas these other women have
32:12
no idea who he was, so he covers his face
32:14
up enough attacks them, and then he doesn't have to
32:17
kill them because they're not going to be able to
32:20
identify him. They can't say for sure it was him,
32:22
and he only left DNA at the one crime scene,
32:25
which is a good thing he did because it tied him,
32:28
you know, that's kind of what got him. But anyway,
32:32
that's my kind of thought process. It's like if if
32:35
he did actually know her in a way that makes
32:37
it more likely that it gives him a motive to
32:41
kill her, essentially, so I'm interested to see how that
32:45
sort of a line of defense is going to work
32:47
out or potentially backfire. For now, though, that's all I
32:52
really have. This is an active case with you know,
32:56
only a suspect. He's not officially the perpetrator. I'll be
32:59
sure to update once we know how things end up.
33:03
I know this is a little bit of a shorter
33:04
case this week, but I found it really interesting and
33:08
I found it to be frustrating that this man was
33:11
able to attack these women for so long and that
33:15
he was never caught. It just goes to show that
33:18
there's a lot of crime in central California. It's you know,
33:23
it's just it's a it can be a scary place.
33:26
It can be a scary place. I want to eventually cover.
33:28
There was like a serial killer in some areas around there.
33:32
That I mean, he killed people for like years and
33:34
years and he was finally caught like a couple of
33:36
years ago. But the case is really interesting because it's
33:39
all like gang activity in these areas, which I don't
33:42
think people think about gang activity and like farming communities,
33:45
but it's actually very prevalent in California and part of
33:49
that is why he got away with it for so long.
33:51
But anyway, I'll cover that case eventually. For now, I
33:54
just want to kind of finish talking about Debbie, you know,
33:57
because I think it's really horrible that she was killed
34:01
so young. She was clearly a very intelligent, driven, smart,
34:07
hard working young woman, and I think it's really awful
34:12
that it's taken this long, you know, thirty years almost
34:17
for her family to potentially see justice. I'm glad that
34:22
her parents are still alive to see this case go
34:25
to trial. And I promise you guys, I will update
34:29
you once we have a resolution or if anything else
34:33
of interest happens with this case. And again, I want
34:38
to mix in these smaller, lesser known cases because I
34:42
think it's important to cover true crime that maybe hasn't
34:45
been done. One hundred times to talk about victims who
34:48
maybe don't get the same exposure, especially when their cases
34:51
aren't solved. So I hope everybody enjoys this. If you
34:55
feel like making yourself sick to your stomach, feel free
34:57
to look at this guy's Facebook pag. They're horrible guys,
35:02
A loser. But yeah. I'll update once we have a
35:06
resolution to this case, and I'll be back next week
35:09
with another case. Thanks to all my new listeners, you
35:12
guys are amazing. I really appreciate you, guys. I promise
35:15
I'm gonna be keep putting out content every week. There
35:19
won't be skipped weeks unless you know I've got the
35:21
flu or something horrible. I want everybody to I hate
35:25
having to wait for podcasts. I hate when they don't
35:27
post for like weeks at a time. It makes me insane.
35:30
So I promise not to do that to you guys,
35:32
and please like, rate, review, share with your friends and family,
35:35
join me on Instagram, and until next week, everybody, stay
35:39
safe and have a nice have a nice week. Stay
35:42
out of the wind if you're anywhere near me. Bye.