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Man Murders Wife Then Buries Her In State Park · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to just imagine this scenario for
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a second. Imagine waking up to your baby crying.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, God. Yeah. The absolute worst way to wake up.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Right. It is like 5 a.m. It is pitch black outside.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: You reach over and your spouse is just missing from
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the bed.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That would be terrifying.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly. What do you do? I mean, human instinct is
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: absolute panic. Right. You search the house. You grab your phone.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: You call 911.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: You tear the place apart. Yeah. Right.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: But when a 23-year-old man named Joseph L. woke up
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to this exact literal scenario, he went back to sleep.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Which is just, I mean, that is wild.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: It is insane. He didn't call the police. He didn't
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: text her. He eventually got up, packed his one-year-old daughter
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: into his missing wife's car, and just went for a long,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: meandering drive.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: A drive. Just, you know, a casual morning drive while
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: your wife is missing.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it took days. And a friend literally banging
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: on his front door for him to finally pick up
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the phone. And he didn't even dial 911. No, he didn't.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: He called a non-emergency 311 information line to report his wife, Mangy, missing.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: It's honestly one of the most chilling starts to a
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: case I've ever seen.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It really is. So today we are doing a deep
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: dive into this massive stack of source materials. We are
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: talking police interrogation transcripts, trial testimonies, and hours of secretly
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: recorded audio.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a lot to unpack here.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: So much. Because our mission today is to understand the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: tragic disappearance and murder of Mangy in the quiet college
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: town of Columbia, Missouri.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: And, you know, for anyone listening, this isn't just a
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: standard missing person case. It's really not.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Right. It's way deeper than that.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's this profound, microscopic look into the hidden dynamics
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: of a marriage. It shows the insidious nature of domestic control.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: and how microscopic evidence and digital footprints eventually unravel a
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: killer's carefully scripted narrative.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Carefully scripted is the perfect phrase for it. So let's
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: just jump into the timeline. Because the days immediately following
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Mangy's disappearance, between October 8th and 10th of 2019, are
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: just a mountain of red flags.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. The behavioral anomalies are just staggering from day one. Right.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So Joseph claims they went to bed angry on October 8th.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: By October 9th, she's gone. And what does he do
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: on that day? You know, this supposedly peaceful day.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Well, he certainly doesn't act like a man whose wife
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: has vanished. He doesn't call the police, like you said.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Nothing. Total radio silence. Right.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Instead, he takes their one-year-old daughter, Anna, on these incredibly long,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: completely unaccounted-for drives.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: And we know this from the cell data, right?
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The GPS and cell tower pings show him driving
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: all the way down to Jefferson City and then out
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to this rural area near the Lamine River. And he
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: does all of this in Mangy's car.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Wait, he took her car, not his own.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Yep. He left his vehicle in the driveway.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: That makes absolutely zero sense. I mean, if you honestly
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: think your partner just went for a walk to cool off,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: you don't take their only mode of transportation and leave
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: for hours.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: You really don't. It completely undercuts his entire narrative.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: It's just like watching a slow motion car crash where
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the driver is consciously refusing to hit the brakes. If
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: your partner vanishes, the house becomes a crisis center. It
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't become a place to casually catch up on YouTube videos.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Why is he so detached?
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it takes an outside intervention to even get him
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: to react. Mengi's mother was back in China, and she
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: was calling her daughter every single day.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Which is pretty standard, right? Like a close family dynamic.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Very standard. And when she couldn't reach Mengi for two days,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: she panicked. She actually sent a local friend to check
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: on the house on October 10th.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Thank goodness for that friend.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Seriously. Because that friend banging on the door is what
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: finally forces Joseph to act. But even then, his reaction
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: is so incredibly telling.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, you mean the 3-1-1 call?
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He calls the civilian non-exigency hotline.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: It's absurd.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, you call 3-1-1 if there's like a downed
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: tree branch in your alley. Yeah. You don't call it
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: when the mother of your child is gone.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Right. But if you look at the psychology of avoidance,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: it actually makes perfect sense for a guilty person.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? How so?
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: When police finally get him into an interrogation room, he
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: repeatedly focuses on how the disappearance affects him. Not her. Him.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, right. He was complaining about his homework.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He was worried about his graduation. And linguistically, it's fascinating.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: When they ask him what happened, he doesn't say, I
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: don't know. He says, I wish I could tell you.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you. Wow. That feels like
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a massive tell.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: It is a huge linguistic tell. Investigators read those specific
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: phrasing choices as, Massive red flags of deception. It's not shock.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: It's calculated avoidance.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: OK, so clearly the timeline is a mess and Joseph
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: is acting incredibly suspicious. But to really understand what's happening,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: we need to talk about the bait and switch of
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: this marriage.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the foundational cracks in their relationship are where the
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: real story is.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Because Maggie wasn't always this isolated, vulnerable person. Her origin
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: story is actually incredibly impressive.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: It really is. She was brilliant. She came to the U.S.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: from China in 2012.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: And she got her master's degree in mechanical and aerospace.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Engineering, right? Yes, by 2014, which is an incredibly difficult field.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And she gets hired by Nova Biomaterials right out of school.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So she's this highly successful, educated immigrant engineer. And that's
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: actually where she meets Joseph. In 2015 at Novo Biomaterials.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Right. And the dynamic back then was completely reversed from
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: what it became later.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was five years older than him, and she
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: was actually his supervisor.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Which means she had the power. She was the career-driven one.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Joseph was really drawn to her work ethic. He had
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: these dreams of opening a car shop together, and he
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: saw her as a vehicle for that success.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they fall in love, they have this shared vision,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and they get engaged in 2017. And they get engaged
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: at this local state park called Devil's Icebox.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Which becomes incredibly important later on.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: It does. Keep Devil's Icebox in mind, for sure. So
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: part of the motivation for the marriage was that Mangy
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: needed a green card to stay in the U.S. and
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: continue her career.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Right. It was practical as well as romantic. But then
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: we hit this tragic reversal. Fast forward to 2019. The
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: dynamic has completely flipped.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: It's like a totally different life. Mangy has given up
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: her aerospace engineering career to be a stay-at-home mom to
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: baby Anna.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: And Joseph has actually quit his job, too, to finish
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: his bachelor's degree.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Which means they have zero income. The finances are incredibly tight.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, how does a highly educated engineer get so
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: thoroughly isolated so fast? Put yourself in Mangy's shoes. You've
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: lost your career, your financial independence, and then Joseph goes
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: after your cultural support system.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: That was the final nail in the coffin of her independence, honestly.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Mangy's mother came to the U.S. to help with the baby, right?
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for the traditional Chinese first hundred days after birth.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And Joseph could not handle it. He forces his
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: mother-in-law out of the house.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: He actually kicked her out.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. And on tape, he refers to her as a
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: criminal and a snake.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: That is so deeply manipulative.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute anatomy of control. Abusers slowly strip
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: away a victim's agency... By cutting Mangy off from her
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: mother and her career, Joseph manufactured this environment where she
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: was entirely dependent on him.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: He turned a partnership of equals into a hostage situation.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: It really is. And because she was so isolated, both
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: of them actually retreated into these secret parallel lives just
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: to cope with how suffocating the marriage had become. Right.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: This brings us to the secret lives and honestly, the
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: audio wars. Because this house was a battleground.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: So Mangy found a way to escape mentally. She kept
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: an online journal.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Which Joseph found later and translated using Google Translate, right?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is just another level of invasion of privacy.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: But in that journal, he finds out she's having an
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: emotional affair with a man back in China.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Which, I mean, you can kind of understand. She is
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: seeking the affection and validation that she is completely starved
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: of at home.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Totally. Totally. And on her final night, when Joseph is
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: interrogating her about her plans for the next day, she
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: just rebuffs him. She just replies, quote, me, me, me.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Just me, me, me. Like, I'm focusing on myself for once.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: That breaks my heart.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: It's a powerful statement from someone who had everything else
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: stripped away. But the journal wasn't the only secret.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: No, the dueling tapes are probably the most shocking discovery
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: in the whole case.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt. When police seize Joseph's phone... They
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: find 10 hours of secretly recorded arguments.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: 10 hours. He was recording her for 10 hours. But
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the wild part is, Maggie realized how toxic it was, too.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: So she recorded four hours of her own.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: It was a literal audio war. And the content of
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: these tapes is horrifying.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the things he says to her, he just constantly
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: belittles her. He tells her, oh, you think life should
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: just be marshmallow and cotton candies?
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: He mocks her English, which is classic abuse against an
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: immigrant partner. Yeah.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: And the threats, the explicit threats. At one point he says,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: you know how I conquer nature. I kill it. I
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: grab its head and break its neck.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, when you hear a husband saying that to
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: his wife. It is chilling. It shows a profound level
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: of narcissism and just pure malice.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: It's like a horrifying psychological Cold War. He's recording her
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: to build a case against her, not even realizing he's
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: actually documenting his own villain origin story. Why would he
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: hand those tapes over to the police?
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Because of that narcissism. He was so convinced of his
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: own righteousness. He thought the police would listen to him
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: threatening to break a neck and think, oh, yeah, this
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: guy is perfectly justified.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: That is delusional.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: It is. But it also gave the police his motive
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: because in an argument recorded on August 20th, 2019, they
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: explicitly discussed divorce.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: But Joseph complains about the money.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He complains that he doesn't want to spend $ 20, 000
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: to $ 30, 000 on a divorce.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: He's a broke.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: College student. They have no income. And he sees the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: price tag of a divorce.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And his search history backs it up. On August 31st,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: he is looking up filing fees for divorce.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: So he wants out. But in his twisted, broken logic,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: murder was the cheap way out.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what the police concluded. He couldn't afford to
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: leave her legally, so he chose to eliminate her permanently.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the police have the motive. They have these
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: terrifying tapes. But they don't have a body. How do
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: they lock him up?
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: This is where we get into the scripted alibi and
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: the holding charge.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, the playbook. Because when they searched his house, they
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: found a literal script that he wrote for himself.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: I have never seen anything like it. He wrote out
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: stage directions for his interrogation.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: It's like he's trying to hack human empathy. He writes down,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: don't speculate. And then he writes, there is only one
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: emotion the public will relate to, sorrow slash sadness.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: He is literally telling himself to act sad because he
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't actually feel it.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: How often do investigators see a suspect literally write out
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: stage directions for their own innocence?
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Almost never. It speaks to the utter arrogance of the killer.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: But the most damning part of the script was a
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: specific note where he wrote, quote, don't confuse past plus present.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. He had to remind himself to use
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the present tense.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, because in his brain, the cognitive load of lying
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: was too heavy. He knew she was dead. His brain
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: naturally wanted to say she was a good wife.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So he had to write a note to force himself
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: to say she is a good wife.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. For the detectives, this written document was as good
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: as a confession. They knew he did it.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: But they still don't have a body. So they execute
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: this brilliant tactical maneuver. On October 25th.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: The child abuse charge?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Yes. Talk about this because this is wild.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: So eight months prior, in February 2019, Mandy had sent
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: a photo to her mother in China. It was a
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: picture of a severe bruise on baby Anna's buttocks.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: And the mother kept that photo? Yes.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And when Mandy disappeared, the family gave that photo to
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: the police. So the police take this photo to Joseph.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: And he just admits it, right?
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: He does. He casually admits that the baby was crying.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: He got frustrated and he pinched the baby hard enough
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: to leave that massive bruise.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So the police immediately used that admission. They arrest him
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: for child abuse and the judge sets his bond at $ 500, 000.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Which is astronomical for that specific charge. But the judge
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: knew what was really going on. It kept him off
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: the streets. It protected the baby and it gave the
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: police time to build the murder case.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: And they needed that time because by February 2020, They
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: officially charge him with first degree murder. But they are
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: fighting a massive uphill battle. They are going into a
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: murder trial with no body.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Which is incredibly difficult for a prosecutor. You have to
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: prove death without a corpse.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Right. And they tried so hard to find her. Remember
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that GPS data from his phone on October 9th? It
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: put him near the Lamine River. So in December 2019,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: they bring out a massive dive team.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. based on the GPS and cadaver dogs that hit
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: on ascent on the bridge.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: And the river is like 16 feet deep, right? Yes.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: It was so deep and muddy that they actually brought
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: in heavy machinery to build a levee just so they
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: could drain a section and search the mud.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: That is an incredible amount of effort. But it was
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: a false lead.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Complete dead end. They found nothing.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Which means Joseph is sitting in jail, the trial is looming,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and Mangy is still just out there until March 2021.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: A huge breakthrough. Yeah. A hiker is out at Devil's
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Icebox State Park.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Devil's Icebox, the exact same park where Joseph proposed to her.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Which is just so incredibly dark. The hiker spots a
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: purse in the dirt, and that leads directly to the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: discovery of Mangy's skeletal remains.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Burying her where they got engaged, it speaks to Joseph's
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: ultimate need to possess and control the narrative of their
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: relationship from beginning to end. It is poetic injustice.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Well, the poetic justice comes from what they found next.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Because finding the body unlocked a microscopic clue that broke
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the whole case wide open.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: The tree DNA.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Yes. Back during the initial house search in October 2019,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the police had seized a pair of Joseph's muddy hiking boots.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Just standard procedure, you know, grabbing dirty shoes. Right.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: But they sat in evidence for nearly two years. Now,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: with the grave located, they test the mud on the treads.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: And they find these tiny juniper tree needles.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: And this is where forensic ecology comes in. They tested
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: the DNA of those microscopic needles, and it was an
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: exact match to the specific juniper trees right above Mangy's grave.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: It's like the tree itself is a silent witness that
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: waited two years to testify. He literally told Mangy on
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: tape that he conquers nature. But the forest held on
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to the evidence and handed him over to the police.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: It's incredible. He thought the wilderness would hide his secret,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: but nature caught him.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we have the body, we have the tree DNA,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: we have the tapes. This deep dive has to head
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: into the courtroom, because the trial is where two vastly
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: different stories of Mangy's final moments completely clash.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the defense had to do some serious scrambling once
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: the body was found.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the prosecution's theory, based on the autopsy.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner finds that Mangy's fourth, fifth, and sixth
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: ribs are broken all the way through on one side.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Which requires a very specific, intense amount of force.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And the prosecution links this directly back to Joseph's original interrogation,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the bizarre story he told about the night they had
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: a fight.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Right. He claimed he gave her a, quote, slow, long
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: massage using pressing maneuvers on her back.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Pressing maneuvers. And let's remember the physical difference here. Joseph
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: is six feet tall, 180 pounds. Mangi is tiny, barely
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: 100 pounds.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: The prosecution argues that there was no massage. They argue
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: that in a rage, maybe because he found out she
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: talked to her mother, he got on top of her
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: and used those pressing maneuvers to violently crush her ribs,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: suffocating her.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: The physical evidence perfectly aligns with his own lie. So
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: what does the defense do?
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Well, Joseph takes the stand.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Which is always a huge risk.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Massive risk. And he performs a shocking pivot. He looks
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: at the jury and admits that he killed her.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: He confesses.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: He admits his actions caused her death, yes. But he
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: claims it was a complete accident.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, right, the Kitchen Island story.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He claims that Maggie was actually the aggressor, that
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: she pushed him, so he pushed her back, quote, pretty hard.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: And he claims she fell backward into the Kitchen Island,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: hit her head, and he just went for a walk.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Yep. And when he came back, she was supposedly dead
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: in bed. And out of fear of the police, he
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: buried her.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Wait, I have to push back on this. If you
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: accidentally push your wife and she tragically dies, yes, you
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: might panic, you might freak out. But do you then
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: sit down And write a PR script about sorrow and sadness.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Do you carefully hide her body in a symbolically significant
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: state park? And do you wait days to call a
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: pothole hotline?
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The math of his panic simply doesn't add up.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: It's insulting to the jury's intelligence.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: It really is. By admitting to the physical altercation but
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: stripping away the intent, he was making a desperate play
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: for manslaughter. He wanted them to think it was a
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: tragic accident.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: But the ribs prove otherwise.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Yes. The prosecution used the physical evidence of the specifically
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: broken fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs to destroy his Kitchen
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Island narrative. A backward fall doesn't cause that specific crushing injury.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: His initial massage lie was the truth of how he
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: applied the force.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: So the jury gets the case on November 11th, 2021.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: What do they decide?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: They return a verdict of second degree murder.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Second degree. So they didn't believe it was an accident.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Not for a second. But they didn't find enough hard
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: evidence of long-term premeditation for first-degree murder. They believed he
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: killed her in a rage that night, intentionally, but maybe
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: didn't plan it weeks in advance.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense legally, even if it's frustrating. But the
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: sentence the judge handed down was incredibly poignant.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: It was. 28 years in prison for the murder. One
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: year for every single year of Mangy's life.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Wow. That sends a powerful message. And what about the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: child abuse charge?
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: He got 10 consecutive years for that. So he's looking
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: at a total of 38 years behind bars.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: He's not getting out anytime soon. But we have to
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: talk about Anna, the daughter. What happened to her in
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the aftermath of all this?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: It's actually a somewhat hopeful ending for her. She is
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: being raised by Joseph's mother, but she spends her entire
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: summers in China with Manji's parents.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, that is so important.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: It really is. It ensures she stays deeply connected to
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: her mother's culture, her language, and her family. despite everything
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Joseph did to try and erase that connection.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: He tried so hard to isolate Maggie, and in the end,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: her family still has a huge role in Anna's life.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It's a small comfort, but a real one.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And, you know, looking at the bigger picture, there
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: is a really devastating statistic mentioned in the source material
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: for this case.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that, about pregnant women.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Yes. The leading cause of death for pregnant women in
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: the U.S. is domestic violence homicide. Now, Maggie wasn't pregnant
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: when she was killed, but her story is just this
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Stark reminder of the extreme dangers hidden behind closed doors.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Especially for isolated individuals. When an abuser cuts off your money,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: your family, your culture, you are in the most dangerous
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: position imaginable.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: It's a textbook case of coercive control escalating into fatal violence.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: It really is. And for you listening right now, there
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: is a massive final takeaway here. We all leave an
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: incredible digital footprint behind.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Text messages, search histories, location data.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Secretly recorded audio. Joseph thought he was a mastermind. He
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: thought he could control his wife, control the narrative, and
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: even control the truth by burying it in the woods.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: But he couldn't control his own data.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly. In the end, it was his own words, his
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: voice on the tapes and his ink on a notepad
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: that literally dug his grave. The next time you delete
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a search history or send a text in anger, I
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: want you to ask yourself something. What story is your
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: digital footprint secretly writing about you?