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Mystery Body Found Buried at Blueberry Farm · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So picture this. It's May of 2002. You've got this guy,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Gordon Dare, and he's just a regular blueberry farmer in
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Ottawa County, Michigan.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Right, which is this very peaceful, you know, agricultural area,
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: lots of dense woods, sprawling farms, very quiet.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But on this specific morning, he's driving his tractor
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: down this really remote two-track dirt road, and he sees
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: something totally out of place. It's a footlocker.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Like one of those old-fashioned trunks, right?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just sitting there right off the path. Yeah. And
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the crazy thing is it's on fire. So he calls
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: 911 and his words are just chillingly blunt. He doesn't
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: say like, hey, I found a fire. He literally says,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I'd like to report a body. Wow.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: He knew right away.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: He did. He said, it's a dead person and it's
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: pretty badly burned. And when the authorities finally get there
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and open this trunk, what they find is just horrific.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: The victim is so violently destroyed that literally every trace
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: of his identity is gone.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, fingerprints, DNA, the actual bone structure of his face,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: all just reduced to ash.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Right. And for 13 long years, this guy had no name.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: His only identity was this, quote, carved into a donated headstone.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Which is just, I mean, it is the ultimate nightmare
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: for any investigator. You know, when physical evidence is intentionally
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: and frankly, literally obliterated like that, you are suddenly navigating
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: completely in the dark. Yeah.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to what we're doing today. So
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Deep Dive. We have an absolutely gripping
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: mission for you. We are digging into this wild case
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: drawn from a law and crime network documentary excerpt. It's
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: titled Prime Crime, Mystery Body Found Buried at Blueberry Farm.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: But we aren't just going to like read you a
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: true crime timeline today. That's not the goal.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not. Our mission here is to really analyze
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: how a cold case like this gets solved when the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: forensic evidence literally goes up in smoke. We're talking about
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the science of fire forensics, the psychological frameworks of extreme manipulation.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, totally. And we'll get into how investigative technology just
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: made this quantum leap over two decades, plus some really
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: bizarre loopholes in international extradition law.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Yes, all of that. OK, let's unpack this. We have
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to start right at that gruesome scene at the blueberry farm.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Investigators get there and the fire is actually still smoldering.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Right. So they know the fire was set very recently.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The air is heavy with that charring smell. The
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: victim is inside this footlocker, completely unrecognizable.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: And to really understand the challenge the detectives were facing,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: you have to look at the thermal dynamics of what
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: happened inside that box. Right.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Because fire isn't just fire to a forensic scientist.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So a typical wood fire, like a standard bonfire...
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: That can reach temperatures of around 1,100 to maybe 1,500
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: degrees Fahrenheit.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Which is insanely hot. It is.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: It's hot enough to completely carbonize flesh. And more importantly,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: it destroys the really delicate molecular structure of DNA.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: At what temperature does DNA actually break down?
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Well, DNA denatures, which just means its double helix unwinds
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: and breaks apart at much lower temperatures. Around 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So a 1,500 degree fire is just overkill.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Complete overkill. So by the time the police even arrived
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: on the scene, any hope of pulling a genetic profile
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: from the tissue was just entirely eradicated.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Man. And the medical examiner quickly realizes that fire wasn't
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: even the cause of death. Like, the fire was purely functional.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: It was just a disposal method. Right.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: The actual cause of death was blunt force trauma to
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: the head.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Specifically, they found these really vicious hits to the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: left side of the skull and one to the right.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge clue. Because that tells the forensic
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: teams a lot about the spatial dynamics of the attack.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Like where the killer was standing.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It suggests a right-handed attacker who is either facing
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the victim or someone attacking them from behind. But honestly,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: the sheer volume of weapons they found in the debris
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: is what really stands out to me.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the debris field inside the trunk was wild. They
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: found a partially burnt claw hammer right there in the ash.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: And the trauma to the skull perfectly matched the dimensions
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: of that specific hammer.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: But there's even more. The killers had placed a plastic
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: bag over the victim's head. They tied this noose-like rope
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: around his neck. And investigators even sifted out pieces of
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: a shattered wooden baseball bat.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, you've got to think about that. That's not
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: just a murder. That is the complete and total eradication
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: of a human being. It's startling.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the psychological profile you can immediately
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: build from a scene like this. In behavioral analysis, we
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: differentiate between two types of violence. You've got instrumental violence
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: and expressive violence.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: OK, break that down for me. What's the difference?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: So instrumental violence is just a means to an end,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: like shooting someone to steal their wallet. The violence is
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: just a tool to get the money. But expressive violence
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: is entirely about the emotion of the perpetrator.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So the bat, the hammer, the plastic bag, the rope,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: and then setting it all on fire.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Right. That demonstrates a profound, immense, deeply personal hatred. The
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: detectives noted right away that nobody just climbs into a
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: box and sets themselves on fire. This was an incredibly
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: intimate execution.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: But practically speaking, the killer's goal of destroying the identity
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: actually worked. I mean, no fingerprints, no DNA, no face.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a forensic nightmare.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: But there was one thing. The only piece of physical
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: evidence that survived that fire was the victim's teeth. The
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: fire didn't destroy the jaw. And this is where I
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: really need you to explain something to me. Sure. Because
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the detectives bring in this forensic odontologist, right?
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And the expert looks at the teeth and tells them
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that the dental work was likely done in Mexico or
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Central America.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Wait, I'm stuck on this. First of all, how do
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: teeth survive a fire that literally destroys the skull bone?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And more importantly, dentistry isn't geography. How can you look
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: at a tooth and know what country it came from?
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: It's a great question, and it really comes down to
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: material science and local regulatory standards. So first... Why do
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: teeth survive? Tooth enamel is the hardest, most highly mineralized
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: substance in the human body.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Harder than bone.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Much harder. It can withstand temperatures far beyond what standard
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: bone can endure. We're talking sometimes surviving heat up to 2,000
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: degrees Fahrenheit.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: So while the bone of the skull might crack and
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: calcine in the fire, the teeth, especially the ones protected
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: in the back of the jaw or by the tongue tissue,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: they often remain totally intact.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the physical canvas survives.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: But how does the dental work act as like a passport?
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Because dental practices vary wildly across the globe. It's based
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: on local health regulations, economics, the materials they have available.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: In the United States, the FDA heavily regulates the types
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: of amalgams and metals you can use in dental restorations.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: But this victim had a very specific extensive dental plate
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: on the upper mouth and massive restoration on the lower jaw.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: The forensic experts looked at the specific alloys used in
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: those fillings. They looked at the style of the bridgework.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: And it didn't match U.S. standards.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. There was a lack of certain foundational techniques that
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: American dentists use. For instance, in some parts of Central
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: America and Mexico during the 80s and 90s, dentists frequently
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: used these specific base metal alloys for crowns. Those had
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: largely been phased out in the U.S. because of different
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: aesthetic preferences and FDA rules.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: That is incredible. So the craftsmanship, the materials... The whole
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: structural approach, it all just read as foreign work.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a very distinct signature.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: And honestly, that gave the investigators a lot of hope
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: at first. Because Ottawa County actually has a really significant
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: agricultural sector. There's a robust migrant population that comes in
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to work the blueberry and apple farms. Right.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: So the detectives are thinking, OK, this is a highly
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: unique set of foreign dental records. We will identify this
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: John Doe in no time.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: But the reality of a 2002 investigation was entirely analog. Right?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: You can't just run a dental x-ray through some global
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: computer database.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. They had to do the grueling
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: shoe leather work. They tracked down between 60 and 70
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: different leads manually. They checked every single missing person's report
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: in the entire region.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: They even brought in a forensic artist from the Michigan
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: State Police. This artist looked at the structure of the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: remaining skull and drew a sketch of what this man
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: might have looked like. And then they took that sketch
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: and the dental x-rays And they actually bought ads in
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: national dental journals.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, think about the effort that takes. They are
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: physically going to dental conferences. They are setting up booths,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: pinning these x-rays to cork boards, practically begging any dentist
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: walking by to say, hey, I recognize that bridge. I
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: did that work.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: It's a massive testament to the absolute dedication of those
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: local investigators. They exhausted every single tool available to them
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: at the turn of the millennium. But despite all that effort,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: every single lead just evaporated. It was a total dead end.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: It really was.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a moment in this story that
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I found deeply moving. You have to picture this quiet
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: community in Ottawa County. And suddenly there's this brutalized, burned
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: victim with no name. And the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: decides they cannot just leave this man sitting in an
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: evidence locker. Right.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: They decide to hold a funeral for him. Yeah.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: It's a pauper's funeral. A local funeral home donated a headstone.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Because the remains were so compromised, he was just buried
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: in a cardboard box.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: It's a really powerful statement about the ethics of law enforcement.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: The core ethos of a good homicide detective is that
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: you work for the victim. And this victim's life mattered,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: even if they couldn't give him his name back yet.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: The only people standing by the grave were the lead detective,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: a few other officers, and the sheriff. And on that
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: donated stone, they inscribed, unknown to man, but known to God.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: It's such a haunting image. You have these seasoned investigators
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: standing over a grave just carrying the weight of this unsolved,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: nameless murder.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: But they refuse to let it go. And this leads
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: to a strategic move that really surprised me. The detectives
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: partner with Hope College, a local school, to produce a
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: documentary about the case. They called it Jack in the Box,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: which was the somewhat grim moniker they used for the
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: case file.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely a dark nickname.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: But my question for you is, why open your active
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: case files to a bunch of college film students? If
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the case is totally cold, What is the strategic value
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: of essentially airing your complete lack of evidence to the public?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it's an act of calculated desperation, but it's also
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: brilliant transparency. In police work, holding back what we call
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: holdback evidence is standard protocol. Right.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: You don't want the public to know the specifics of
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the murder weapon so you can verify a true confession later.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But when you have zero suspects and zero identity,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: secrecy actually becomes your enemy. The detectives realized that their
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: only path forward was media exposure. By laying all their
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: cards on the table, they were trying to artificially generate
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: a lead.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Like a psychological trigger.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The hope is that the documentary airs, it gets
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: syndicated or shared around, and it shakes the memory loose
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: in someone, somewhere.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: A total Hail Mary pass. Yeah. But even that pass
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: fell incomplete. The documentary came out around 2005. And for years...
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing. The physical evidence had reached its absolute limit.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: But here's the fundamental truth about crimes of this nature.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Physical evidence can be destroyed. Fingerprints melt. DNA denatures. But
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: a secret of this magnitude, it is a psychological parasite.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. A parasite. It is.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: It feeds on the people keeping it. The guilt, the paranoia,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: the relational friction, it never stops burning. Someone always talks eventually.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to this incredible leap forward in time.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: We are jumping 13 years into the future. It is
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: April of 2015. Detective Donker, who has kept this case
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: file sitting on his desk for over a decade, is
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: working late. The office is quiet. And he receives a
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: couple of emails.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: And the arrival of those emails represents the exact moment
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: this case shifts from an analog mystery to a digital unraveling.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So the sender's name is Deneen Ducharme. And the messages
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: are incredibly cryptic. The first email just says, I'm scarred.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Just that.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just I'm scarred. Shortly after a second email drops,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: it says, I'm scared. And then finally, a longer message follows.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: She writes, I know about this case that's possibly jack
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: of the box, and I know who's involved, and I'm
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: scared I don't know what to do.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, put yourself in Detective Donker's shoes for a second.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: You've been haunted by that headstone for 13 years. And suddenly,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: a voice reaches out from the digital void, claiming to
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: have all the answers.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Your heart has to be pounding.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. But as an investigator, your immediate reaction has
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: to be skepticism. Hmm. Is this a crank? Is this
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: someone who just watched the old documentary online and wants attention?
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Right, you have to verify. So they manage to get
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Deneen on the phone, and they quickly realize she is
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: definitely not a crank. She is incredibly credible because of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: her proximity to the crime. It turns out Deneen Ducharme
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: is the victim's stepdaughter.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the person she is pointing the finger at
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: for this barbaric overkill, it's her own mother, a woman
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: named Beverly Mallon, who also uses the name Beverly McCollum.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: That is a massive seismic shift in the investigation. For
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: 13 years, they were looking outward. They were looking at
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: migrant populations, looking at strangers. And suddenly the threat is
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: entirely domestic. The killer was inside the house the whole time.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: But before they can go chase down the killers, they
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: finally have the opportunity to name the victim. Deneen gives
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: him his name. He was a 37-year-old man originally from
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic. His name was Robert Carpio. He also
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: used an alias, Juan Cron. but his family just called
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: him Roberto.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, so getting a name from a tipster is the
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: first step. But legally and scientifically, you must verify it.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: You need proof of life and proof of death.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting. The miminism they
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: used to verify Roberto's identity highlights this massive irony about
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: his life. It's one of those details you just couldn't
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: write in a fiction script because it's too perfect.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: So Roberto had a criminal history. He and his family
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: had been involved in narcotics. and he had actually spent
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: significant time in federal prison. When Detective Donker runs the
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: name Robert Carbio through the system, he finds active warrants.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: So Donker contacts the federal probation office down in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: He asks if they have any records for Robert Carbio.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: The probation officer looks it up and says, yes, he's
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: one of ours, but he absconded a long time ago. Right.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And Donker asks for the exact date of Roberto's last check-in.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: The officer checks the file, and it says May 6, 2002.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: May 6th, the very next morning of May 7th, is
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: when that blueberry farmer found the smoldering trunk.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Precisely. And this is where the mechanics of the U.S.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: federal justice system become the weird hero of the story.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because when you are incarcerated in the federal system
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: and subsequently placed on federal probation, you are effectively a
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: ward of the state. The U.S. Marshal Service is responsible
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: for tracking you.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And to track someone effectively, they need what? Baseline biometric data.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Fingerprints, DNA were applicable and crucially full medical and
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: dental records.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait. So the U.S. Marshals actually had his original
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: dental X-rays just sitting on file this whole time. The
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: exact same X-rays the local cops spent years begging dentists
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: to recognize. Yes.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Because Roberto was a federal probationer, the government mandated a
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: complete dental intake. Donker requests those federal files immediately. hands
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: them over to the forensic odontologist who had literally been
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: waiting 13 years, and within days they have a 100%
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: confirmed match.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: It is such a profound irony. The investigation shows that
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Roberto was desperately trying to leave his criminal past behind him.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: He wanted a clean slate. But it was the administrative
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: bureaucracy of that very criminal past that preserved his identity.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: If he hadn't been a federal convict, they might never
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: have identified him.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate paradox. The system he was trying to
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: escape is what eventually gave him his name back.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: OK, so the John Doe is finally Roberto Carbio. The
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: federal files give them a last known address. Yeah. A
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: house in Charlotte, Michigan. So they have the who and
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: they have the where. But to build a murder case,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: a prosecutor needs the why.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Right. Motive.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: How does a man trying to turn his life around
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: end up beaten to death and burned in a box?
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Well, to answer that, investigators really have to do a
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: psychological and sociological reconstruction of that house in Charlotte back
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: in 2002. They have to map out the interpersonal dynamics.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: And what they find is not just a family dispute,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: but a catastrophic clash of worldviews.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Let's look at Roberto's mindset in 2002. He had served
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: his time. He was completely done with the drug trade.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: He wanted redemption. He was working two, sometimes three, manual
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: labor jobs just to provide for his family.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: He was really putting in the work.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: He was. When he came home, he didn't go out
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: drinking or anything. He just retreated to the basement to
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: read his Bible. He was deeply invested in his faith.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And most importantly, he was devoted to his nine-year-old daughter, Cicely.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: He was the one waking up early, taking her to school,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: teaching her to play softball.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was actively trying to build a wholesome legacy.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: But if we connect this to the bigger picture, that
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: trajectory of redemption was a massive threat to the existing
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: power structure in that house. You have to look at
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the other occupants. You have Roberto's wife, Beverly. You have
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: the young daughter, Cicely. And frequently staying with them is
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Beverly's 21-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, Deneen.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: The woman who sent the emails.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Now, Roberto was trying to assert a new set
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: of rules in this house. He wanted the house clean.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: He wanted a stable environment for Cicely. And he was
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: highly critical of Deneen's lifestyle.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Now, when Deneen initially spoke to investigators, she tried to
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: claim Roberto disliked her because of her sexual orientation. But
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: investigators quickly saw right through that. The friction wasn't about identity.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: It was about authority.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Definitely. You have to look at how abusive, manipulative families function.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: They operate almost like closed ecosystems or even mini-cults. In
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: this ecosystem, Beverly was the self-appointed matriarch. She controlled the
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: flow of information, the finances, the emotional weather of the house.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: She thrived on absolute control.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Totally. And suddenly, her husband comes home from prison, finds religion,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: works tirelessly, and starts demanding moral accountability. Roberta was essentially
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: an invasive species in Beverly's ecosystem. His newfound dedication to
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: being a responsible father was directly challenging her authority and
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: her quote-unquote fun lifestyle.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I like that metaphor of a closed ecosystem. Much better
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: than just calling it a pressure cooker. Because in a
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: closed ecosystem, if an outside variable disrupts the ATAX predator,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the predator eliminates the variable.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: And to make matters worse, there was a financial motive
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: brewing in the background. There were heavy whispers in the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: family that Beverly had recently received a substantial life insurance
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: payout following her own mother's death, and she was just
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: hoarding it. D-9 was furious at Beverly over this money.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: So you have a highly volatile mix, financial resentment, a
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: battle for absolute authority, and two women who view this
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: reforming man not as a father or a husband, but
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: as a rigid obstacle to their freedom.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And Roberto, sitting in the basement reading his Bible, is
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: completely oblivious to this lethal conspiracy forming literally right above
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: his head.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: It's tragic. So armed with this understanding, detectives Donker and
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Maltby fly down to Houston, Texas, where Deneen is now living.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: They need to interview the woman who sent the emails
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: in person.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Right. And this interview is a fascinating study in psychological deflection.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Deneen is genuinely terrified, but she uses that terror strategically.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: She tells the detectives, I'm worried my mom's going to
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: find out. I'm worried about who she might call to
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: come chase me.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: She paints Beverly as this omnipotent mafia-like boss who can
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: reach her anywhere.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Deneen admits she was at the house on the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: night of the murder. But her version of events is
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: incredibly sanitized when it comes to her own involvement. She
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: claims Beverly went down to the basement completely alone and
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: did all the killing.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: It's by herself.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: That's what she said. Deneen says she was just sitting
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: upstairs when Beverly suddenly came up, covered in blood, screaming,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: We killed him! And then, according to Deneen, Beverly forced
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: her and a mysterious friend named Chris to help load
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: the heavy footlocker into the family van.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So Deneen's defense is essentially, I was just a bystander
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: coerced into moving a heavy box.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Which logically falls apart when you look at the forensic evidence.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: The medical examiner noted the extreme overkill, a partially burnt
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: claw hammer, and a shattered wooden bat. That level of
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: kinetic energy, wielding two different blunt force weapons, strongly suggests
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: more than one attacker.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: For sure. The detectives know Deneen is minimizing her role,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: but she is currently their only asset. To pierce her narrative,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: they need corroboration. And that requirement leads them to the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: most tragic figure in this entire story.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Cicely, the nine-year-old girl who lived in that house. By 2015,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Cicely is a 22-year-old woman. The detectives don't call ahead
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: or anything. They just show up at her front door.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: They think they're going to interview a witness, but within seconds,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: they realize they're delivering a death notification.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: It is such a devastating moment. You have to understand
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the narrative Cicely was raised with. For 13 years, Beverly
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: told Cicely that Roberto simply packed up and moved to Canada,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: that he just abandoned them.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: When the detectives gently explain that they found her father's
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: body and that he was murdered back in 2002... Cicely's
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: reaction is deeply jarring at first. She literally says, oh
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: my god, that's the best news ever.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Wait, she actually said that?
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: She did, and to a layman, that sounds incredibly callous.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: But psychologically, it is profound. For over a decade, this
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: young woman carried the internal trauma of believing she wasn't
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: worthy of her father's love, that he chose to walk
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: away from her. Hearing that he was murdered was the
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: agonizing proof that he didn't leave her willingly.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: He was stolen.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He didn't abandon her.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: That entirely reframes her reality. But think about the psychological
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: torture Beverly inflected here. Beverly violently murders his child's father
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: in the basement and then looks her nine-year-old daughter in
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the eye day after day, year after year, and lets
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: her internalize this soul-crushing lie of abandonment.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: It is gaslighting on a monstrous scale, and it achieves
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: two things for Beverly. First, it eliminates the victim without
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: raising any questions. Second, it isolates the child. By making
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Roberto the villain who ran away, Beverly ensures Cicely's sole
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: emotional dependency remains on her. It is absolute control.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: But Cicely was not easily broken. As she got older,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the story just didn't make sense to her. Her father
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: loved her. He wouldn't just vanish like that. Cicely tells
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the detectives that a few years prior, she had actually
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: cornered her mother. She demanded the truth, saying, you need
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: to tell me what happened or you will lose me forever.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: And this is where we see Beverly's agility as a manipulator.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: When confronted, she pivots. She realizes the Canada lie is failing,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: so she constructs a new narrative that admits a tiny
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: bit of truth, but deflects all culpability.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Beverly tells Cicely that, yes, Roberto is dead, but she
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: claims it was a tragic accident of self-defense. Beverly weaves
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: this story where she and Roberto were arguing on the
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: basement stairs. She claims Roberto grabbed her feet, trying to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: pull her down. In a panic, Beverly says she grabbed
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: a crowbar and and swung it blindly backwards, striking his head.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And then, according to Beverly, Deneen came rushing down the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: stairs and finished him off.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Notice the architecture of that lie. It is brilliant in
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: its malice. She admits to holding a weapon and causing injury,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: which aligns with any potential evidence Cicely might vaguely remember,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: but she frames it entirely as victimhood-like. He grabbed her feet.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: And then she shifts the burden of the actual murder
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: onto Deneen.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She is muddying the waters. She's creating competing narratives
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: so that objective truth becomes impossible to discern.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: But Beverly underestimated human memory because Cicely possessed a piece
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: of the puzzle that neither her mother nor her sister
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: could spin. A deeply repressed memory from the night of
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: May 6th, 2002.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: This is a classic trauma response. When a child experiences
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: extreme trauma, the brain's encoding process changes. The hippocampus, which
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: normally processes chronological memory, can become completely overwhelmed by cortisol.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: So what happens then?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Instead, the amygdala, which is the brain's threat center, takes over.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: It captures highly vivid sensory fragments of the event without
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: the surrounding context.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And Sicily's sensory fragments were horrifying. She tells the detectives
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: that she remembers being scooped out of bed in the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: middle of the night. She remembers being laid down in
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the very back of the family van. She remembers a long,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: bumpy drive.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: On that two-track dirt road. Right.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: And then she remembers waking up to the sound of
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a loud explosion. She sat up, looked out the back
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: window of the van, and saw the woods on fire.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: That memory perfectly corroborates the crime scene at the blueberry farm.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Beverly and Deneen didn't just murder Roberto. They packed his
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: nine-year-old daughter into the vehicle while they drove his body
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: to a remote location to burn it.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: It is just beyond depraved. So let's look at the
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: board here. The detectives have Deneen pointing the finger entirely
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: at Beverly. They have Beverly's story told through Sicily, claiming
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: self-defense and pointing the finger at Deneen.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: It's a classic prisoner's dilemma, but both suspects are proven liars.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly. However, there is a common denominator. In Deneen's story,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: she mentioned a guy named Chris who helped move the trunk.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: And Cicely remembers a white guy in his mid-20s with
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: glasses hanging around the house that summer.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: To cut through the toxic web of this mother-daughter dynamic,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: investigators need an outside perspective. They need to find this, Chris.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: He is the tiebreaker.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: But I want you to put yourself in Detective Donker's
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: shoes for a second. It's 2015. You are looking for
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: a guy who was around in 2002. Kanine's description is
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: absurdly vague. She says he's a white guy, tall, slender,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: wears glasses, likes to play the guitar.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: That's practically half the country.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Right. She doesn't even know his last name, just that
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: it started with McMillan or something. How do you find
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: a Chris McSomething in a state of 10 million people
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: using a 13-year-old memory?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: This is where we see the transition from the analog
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: shoe leather detective work of 2002 to the digital open
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: source intelligence or OSINT tactics of 2015. You can't put
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: a vague description in a dental journal. You have to
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: hunt digital footprints.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And Sisley comes through again. She digs through old boxes.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and finds a physical photograph from that era. And Chris
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: happens to be in the background. She hands it over
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: to Donker.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: So Donker does what modern analysts do. He runs the
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: face through interstate facial recognition databases. He checks Michigan DMV records,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Texas records. But the photo is old, the resolution is poor,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: and the facial recognition algorithms return zero matches. The tech
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: totally fails.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But the human eye doesn't. Donker is staring at this photo,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: looking for literally any contextual clue. And he notices Chris's t-shirt.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: The shirt is actually on backward, but the colors are
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: really distinct, black and yellow. Donker recognizes the color scheme
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: as the Pittsburgh Steelers.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: That tiny, tiny detail is the thread that unravels the
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: whole sweater. Because Donker had previously been doing these massive,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: sweeping searches on Facebook for anyone named Chris McMillan or
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: similar variations in the Michigan area, he had scrolled past
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: hundreds of profiles. But now, armed with this specific sports affinity,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: he goes back to his search history.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: He starts clicking through profiles again. And he finds one.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: A guy named Chris McMillan. And what is plastered on
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: his public Facebook homepage, a Pittsburgh Steelers emblem.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Donker clicks on the photos, compares the modern face to
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the 2002 photo, and it's a match. Thirteen years later,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: a backward t-shirt and a Facebook-like lighter shop connect a
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: man to a brutal, unsolved murder. They track his address down,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: and he's actually still living right there in Michigan.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: You know, when law enforcement knocks on the door of
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: an accomplice 13 years after a crime, the typical response
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: is denial, lawyering up, or just slamming the door. But
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: the psychological burden of carrying a murder is heavy. Chris
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: McMillan opens the door, realizes who they are, and actually
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: invites them inside.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And almost immediately, he completely unburdens his conscience. He confesses
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: to everything. And his confession reveals the final, most sickening
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: layer of Beverly's manipulation. Because the detectives ask him the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: obvious question, right?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: They're like, why? Why? You were an outsider. Why would
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you help murder a man you barely knew?
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: And Chris explains the story that Beverly and Deneen fed him.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: They told Chris that Roberto was a monster. They claimed
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: he was a violent alcoholic who was physically and sexually
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: abusing the children in the house. They spun this narrative
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: that the family was in mortal danger and that the
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: police wouldn't help them.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Which was a 100% fabricated lie. We know Roberto was
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: working three jobs and reading his Bible in the basement. Right.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: They convinced Chris that Roberto had to be eliminated to
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: protect the kids.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: But I want to understand how a normal guy just
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: agrees to murder someone based on a rumor. How does
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that happen?
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: In psychology, this is known as moral disengagement, a theory
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: developed by Albert Bandura. Normally, human beings have a strong
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: internal aversion to violence. But if you can reframe the
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: violence as a moral imperative, a concept called moral justification,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: you can bypass a person's ethical safeguards.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: So she tricked him into playing the hero.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Beverly manufactured consent. She didn't ask Chris to commit
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: a murder. She asked him to be a savior. Once
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Chris believed he was protecting helpless children, the violence became
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: justified in his mind. He was locked in. Wow. And
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Chris's confession provides the exact choreography of what happened in
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: that basement.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: He shatters both Beverly's self-defense lie and Deneen's bystander lie.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Chris tells them it was a coordinated ambush. When Roberto
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: came down the stairs, Deneen swung first. She hit him
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: with a wooden baseball bat, shattering it against his body.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Then the matriarch stepped in. Beverly wielded the claw hammer.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Chris detailed how Beverly struck Roberto in the head with
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: such ferocity that the hammer actually became wedged into his skull.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Roberto collapsed to the concrete floor.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And then it gets worse. Chris says Beverly sat on
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Roberto's chest. She placed the plastic bag over his head
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: and pulled the rope tight around his neck, strangling him
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: until he finally stopped moving.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: And the forensic puzzle pieces lock together perfectly here. Chris'
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: narrative exactly matches the trauma patterns, the broken bat, the hammer,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: the bag, and the rope they found in the footlocker.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: It's a perfect match.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: But an accomplice's confession isn't enough to secure a conviction
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: in court. You need physical evidence to corroborate it. And
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Chris gives them the map to find it.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Chris tells the detectives that the murder was so violent,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: there was an incredible amount of blood on the basement floor.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: They couldn't just wash it away. So they bought bags
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: of concrete mix. Chris admits he helped mix the concrete
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: and pour it directly over the bloodstain to seal it.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: This is a critical moment. The investigators secure a search
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: warrant for the old house in Charlotte, which had been
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: sold to new owners years ago. They go down into
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: the basement. To the naked eye, it just looks like
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: an old floor. But they notice a specific patch, where
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: the texture and color of the concrete looks slightly newer.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: So the Michigan State Police Crime Lab is called in.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: They carefully chip away that specific layer of concrete, and underneath,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly where Chris McMillan said it would be, they find
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Roberto's blood.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: It is a triumph of chemistry. Concrete is highly alkaline,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: which you might think would destroy biological material. But once
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the concrete cures and dries, it creates an anoxic, sealed environment.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: It protects the biological material from UV light, moisture fluctuations,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: and bacterial degradation.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So it basically acted as a time capsule.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It preserved the hemoglobin for over a decade.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: It's stunning. With Chris's confession, the mashed forensics from the fire...
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: and the preserved blood under the concrete. The prosecutor finally
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: has an ironclad case. They issue warrants for first-degree murder, conspiracy,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and mutilation of a body.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: And the dominoes begin to fall. Chris McMillan, crushed by
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: the weight of what he participated in, accepts a plea deal.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: He pleads guilty to second-degree murder and burning bodies, taking
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: a 15-year sentence in exchange for his full testimony against
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: the others.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Then they go after Deneen. In a weird twist of fate,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: she's actually already sitting in a jail cell in Florida,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: on completely unrelated forgery charges. The detectives present her with
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Chris's confession and the blood evidence. They offer her a
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: plea deal to avoid life in prison. But she rejects it.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: She decides to take her chances with the jury.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Which was an incredibly poor calculation. She goes to trial.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: The state puts Chris McMillan on the stand, presents the
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: forensic corroboration, and the jury finds Deneen guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: and burning bodies. She receives a life sentence.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: So the accomplice is in prison. The daughter is in prison.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: But the mastermind, the matriarch who swung the hammer and
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: orchestrated all the lies, is gone. Beverly McCollum had vanished
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: into thin air.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Beverly's evasion tactics are genuinely astonishing. You have to remember,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: while the Ottawa County Sheriff was organizing a pauper's funeral
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: for her husband in 2002, Beverly was already executing her
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: exit strategy. Within six weeks of the murder, she sold
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: the house in Charlotte, took the money, and fled the country.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: She really is a true chameleon. She moved to Jamaica,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: integrated into the community, found a new partner and even
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: had another child. When things got stale there, she pivoted
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: to the Internet. She met a man who was 20
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: years younger than her, married him online and relocated across
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the globe to Pakistan.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: She survives by constantly finding new environments where she can
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: assert control, attaching herself to new people she can manipulate.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: And for local law enforcement in Michigan, tracking an American
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: citizen who is living completely off the grid in Pakistan
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: is near impossible. They issue an international arrest warrant, an
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Interpol red notice, but practically they are just waiting for
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: her to make a mistake.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: And finally, in 2020, she slips up. Beverly decides to
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: travel from Pakistan to Italy with her teenage son. She
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: walks into a hotel in Italy and slides her American
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: passport across the counter to check in.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: And this raises an important question about the mechanics of
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: international law enforcement. Why would a simple hotel check-in trigger
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: an arrest?
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how does that work?
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: It comes down to the Schengen Agreement. In Italy and
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: much of the European Union, Article 45 of the Schengen
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Convention requires hotels to register the identities of their guests
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: and transmit that data directly to local police.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the moment her passport is scanned, the system
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: kings the Interpol Red Notice. The Italian Carabinieri arrive at
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: the hotel and take her right into custody.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: You would think that's the final chapter, right? Book a flight,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: put her in handcuffs and fly her back to Michigan.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: But no. The legal red tape of international extradition turns
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: into a two-year nightmare.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Because extradition isn't just about handing over a criminal. It's
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: a complex negotiation of geopolitical values. Beverly immediately hires lawyers
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: and appeals her extradition to the European Court of Human Rights.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: And she leverages a massive legal loophole.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: OK, you have to explain this loophole to me because
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: it completely baffled the local prosecutors.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, so the extradition treaty between the United States and
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Italy contains provisions regarding human rights. Specifically, the European Court
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: operates under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: But the European courts have ruled that sentencing someone to
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: life without the possibility of parole, which is the mandatory
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: sentence for first-degree murder in Michigan, constitutes a violation of
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Article 3. Because it removes any hope of rehabilitation, Europe
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: views it as an inhumane sentence. Therefore, Italy legally cannot
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: extradite Beverly if she is facing that specific charge.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: So the Michigan prosecutor gets a call saying, we have
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: your mastermind, but the only way we will put her
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: on a plane to the U.S. is if you drop
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the first-degree murder charge.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: It is a brutal dilemma for a prosecutor. You have
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: the person who planned the murder and wielded the hammer.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: You have a rock-solid first-degree case. But jurisdictionally, your hands
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: are tied. The prosecutor is forced to capitulate. They drop
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: the first-degree murder and conspiracy charges, agreeing to proceed only
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: on second-degree murder and mutilation of a body just to
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: get her back on American soil. Wow.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: After 20 years on the run and two years fighting
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: in European courts, Beverly McCollum is finally flown back to Michigan.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to the ultimate climax of this case.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: March 2024. The trial.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: The matriarch is finally forced to sit at a defense table.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: And she is facing an overwhelming amount of evidence.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: The state's case is a juggernaut. They have Chris McMillan's
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: insider testimony. They have the chemistry of the blood under
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: the concrete. They have the motive of the insurance money
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: and the clash over household rules. The defense attorney really
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: only has one card to play, the passage of time.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: They try to argue that 22 years degrades memory. And
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: they try to paint Chris as the sole killer, suggesting
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: he's just blaming the older woman to secure his plea deal.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Which is the standard logical playbook when defending a cold case.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: You attack the memory and the motive of the co-conspirator.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: If Beverly had just followed her lawyer's advice and remained
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: completely silent, letting the defense poke holes in the narrative,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: there is a tiny chance she might have generated reasonable doubt.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: But she doesn't remain silent. After the prosecution rests, Beverly
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: insists on taking the stand in her own defense. When
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I read that, my jaw dropped.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Why would you take the stand when you've been a
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: fugitive for two decades?
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate manifestation of narcissistic hubris. You have
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: to understand Beverly's psychology. She had spent her entire adult
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: life successfully manipulating everyone she encountered. She manipulated Roberto. She
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: gaslit her daughter, Cicely. She weaponized Chris. She charmed new
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: husbands in Jamaica and Pakistan.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: She really thought she was untouchable.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: She did. She suffered from an illusion of asymmetric insight.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: She genuinely believed she was intellectually superior to the judge,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: the prosecutor, and the 12 jurors sitting in the box.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: She thought she could spin a web from the witness stand,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: and they would all just fall for it.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: So she gets on the stand, and her story is
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: just absurd. She completely abandons the self-defense story she told
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Cicely years ago. Now, she claims she was totally ignorant.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: She said she thought Roberto, Deneen, and Chris were just
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: going down to the basement to have a friendly chat.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: A friendly chat in the basement.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Right. Then she claims Deneen came rushing upstairs saying, we
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: killed Robert. And Beverly was so paralyzed by shock that
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: she thought she was in a bad dream. She claims
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: she just blindly agreed to drive the van. And when
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: the footlocker exploded in fire, she didn't even know what
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: was happening. She said she just felt the whole earth shake.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: She attempts to rebrand herself from a murderous matriarch to
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: a passive, traumatized victim of circumstance. But she severely underestimates
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: the skill of the prosecutor during cross-examination.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: The cross-examination is surgical. The prosecutor doesn't just attack the timeline.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: He attacks her ego. He knows she can't resist a
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: compliment to her authority. He steps up and says, you
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: were the matriarch of the family, right? You were the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: one in charge. And Beverly puffs up and proudly says,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: I was, yes. He presses further. You were the boss.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Everyone listened to what you said. And she eagerly agrees.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: It is a brilliant psychological trap. By stroking her ego
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: and getting her to admit on the record that she
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: held absolute, undisputed authority over the household, he completely demolishes
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: her defense. narrative.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Right, because if she is the all-powerful boss, it makes
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: zero logical sense that her subordinate daughter and an outsider
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: would hatch a plot to violently murder her husband in
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: her own basement without her explicit direction and consent.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: He corners her so effectively that her brain actually misfires
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: under the pressure.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, man, this part is crazy. The prosecutor says to her,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: I know that they had killed Robert that day. And
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Beverly fires back, yes, the day you killed Robert.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: A Freudian slip of massive proportions.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: She instantly realizes what she said. She starts stuttering, waving
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: her hands, going, no, I did not kill Robert. But
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: the damage is catastrophic. The jury watched the mask slip
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: in real time.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And the prosecutor hammers the final nail in during his
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: closing arguments. He points out the stark contrast between her
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: words and her actions. Beverly sat on the stand and
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: tearfully claimed she loved Roberto past death. The prosecutor reminds
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: the jury that within six weeks of the man she
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: loved past death being burned in a box, she cashed
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: out his house, abandoned his memory, and was living with
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: a new lover in the Caribbean.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: The jury doesn't buy a single word she says. They
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: deliberate for a total of 90 minutes. In a complex,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: two-decade-old murder case, 90 minutes is basically the time it
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: takes to elect a foreperson and eat a sandwich. They
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: return a verdict. guilty of second-degree murder and mutilation of
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: a body.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: The hubris failed. The digital footprints, the preserved chemistry, and
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: the unyielding truth finally caught up to her.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the sentencing. And this is where
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the emotional gravity of the entire saga anchors itself. Cicely,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: the nine-year-old girl who was woken up in the middle
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: of the night and driven to a fiery dump site,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the girl who was lied to every day of her childhood,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: is now a 31-year-old woman. She stands up in the
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: courtroom to deliver a victim impact statement directly to the
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: woman who orchestrated it all.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: It is a moment of profound psychological reclamation. For her
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: entire life, Beverly controlled the narrative. In this courtroom, Cicely
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: takes the pen back.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Cicely looks her mother in the eye and delivers this
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: incredibly powerful sentiment. She says, while you may have taken
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: my father's life, you have no hand in his legacy.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I am his legacy. My children are his legacy. Your
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: legacy will end with you, Beverly.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: It strips Beverly of the one thing she valued most,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: control over the future. And the judge echoes that exact
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: sentiment during sentencing. The judge looks at Beverly and says
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: that the murder itself isn't even the most unfathomable part
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: of the crime. The judge says, what I cannot fathom
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: is that you lied to your daughter, that her father
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: abandoned her, and you kept that lie alive for so long.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: The judge sentences Beverly to 40 to 60 years for
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: the murder and an additional 10 to 15 years for
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: the mutilation. It is a functional life sentence. She will
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: die in a prison cell.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We started this deep
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: dive looking at a smoldering footlocker on a quiet Michigan
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: blueberry farm in 2002, a nameless man buried under a
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: donated piece of stone. And we watched as that single
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: violent act spun out over 22 years, entangling cryptic emails,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the federal probation system, Facebook algorithms, Interpol hotel registries, and
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: the rigid loopholes of European human rights law. It is
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: a stunning portrait of how the pursuit of justice has evolved.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: It truly is. It perfectly illustrates the paradigm shift from
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: the analog limitations of the past to the digital inevitabilities
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: of the present. In 2002, if you burned away the
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: physical evidence, you could effectively erase a person. Today, the
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: world is too interconnected. Your digital footprint, your administrative history,
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: your biometric data, it acts as an invisible tether to
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: the truth. But beyond the technology, this case proves the
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: fundamental value of relentless police work. Those detectives didn't just
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: solve a puzzle. They restored a human being's identity. They
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: proved Roberto wasn't a coward who ran away. He was
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: a man fighting for his soul, reading his Bible, trying
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: to be a good father. They returned his love to
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: his daughter.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: We leave physical and digital footprints everywhere we go. A
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: backward sports shirt caught in the background of a photo.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: A kempel trace of blood sealed beneath a poured concrete floor.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: An old dental x-ray sitting in a federal archive. But
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: what this case ultimately proves is that the most indelible,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: indestructible mark we leave on this world is the memory
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: we imprint on the people who love us. It was
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Cicely's enduring, complicated love for the father she thought abandoned
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: her that kept his memory alive long enough for the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: truth to catch up. So I want you to mull
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: this over. We spend so much time curating our digital
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: lives and protecting our physical assets. But if you vanish tomorrow,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: what would the people in your life do to find
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the truth? How hard would they look? And more importantly,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: when they finally uncover the reality of who you were,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: what kind of legacy would they be fighting for?