Latest / Crime Night / A Pedometer Cracked the Oso Murders

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A Pedometer Cracked the Oso Murders · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine for a second that you commit like the perfect
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: murder in the middle of a vast, unforgiving mountain range.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: You hide the bodies in the deep earth, You push
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the victing's vehicles off a huge cliff and a heavy timber,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and you steal the security cameras. Right.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: You think you have completely defeated the.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Wilderness exactly, but then you are totally undone by a
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: crumpled McDonald's receipt and a smart phone pedometer silently counting
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: steps in a dead man's pocket.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It is just wild. I mean, it's the ultimate collision
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: of isolation and modern technology. We're looking at the Cascade
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Mountains in western Washington today.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, specifically, the area is shadowed by the twenty fourteen
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: oh So landslide, right.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And that landslide was a horrific natural disaster
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: that wiped out an entire mountain side, burying homes and
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: just leaving this massive, permanent scar carved into the earth.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: The woods out there are dense, the quiet is really heavy.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: So if someone wants to make a problem disappear, that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: landscape gives them a terrifying advantage. The wilderness can based
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: swallow a crime scene hole.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: It can, but the truth doesn't just vanish because you know,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: microscopic errors always get left behind.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the mission of today's deep dive.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: We're exploring a really chilling true story where that rugged
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: terrain hit a double murder. But this isn't just about.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: A crime, No, it's a masterclass in how tiny details
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: unravel a grand cover up. I want you to step
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: into the shoes of a homicide detective on day one
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: of a baffling disappearance. You have to rely on this
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: weird tension between digital ghosts and human error.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where half
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the pieces are buried under a mountain and the picture
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: in the box is just a total lie.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: That is a great way to put it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So the timeline begins on April twelve, twenty sixteen. The
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: victims are Patrick Shun and Monique patent Nod, and by
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: all accounts, they lived a really beautiful life. They actually
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: met at burning Man.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They were fiercely devoted to each other and they
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: ran this peaceful little hobby farm right by the river.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: They raised animals, love the outdoors, just living their dream.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: But then suddenly the farm goes completely silent, and.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: That silence was the very first red flag for their
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: inner circle.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Right on the night of April eleventh, Patrick and Monique
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: were supposed to go to an Iron Maiden concert with
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: their close friends Mike and Suzanne, but they never show up.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Which is weird enough on its own.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then the next day, Patrick misses his shift
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: at work, so Mike drives over to check on them,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and he finds their beloved dog, Cairo, just running loose
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: outside the house.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Which, for people who worship their animals the way they did,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: a loose dog is a massive anomaly totally.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Mike is unsettled enough that he immediately checks the trail
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: camera at the front gate, hoping to see who came
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: on the property. He pulls the SD card and just
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: hands it straight to the cops.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: But that turned out to be a dead end, right.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, incredibly frustrating. The card was totally full, it had
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: stopped recording long before any of this even happened, and
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: when police sweep the property, they realized the couple's vehicles,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: a land Rover and a jeep, are both gone.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: So that's the initial puzzle. How do you interpret that? Absence.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Wait, I got to ask, though, if you see two
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: cars missing in an empty house, what did your first
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: instinct just be that they went on a spontaneous weekend trip?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Why panic immediately?
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: You might think that, sure, but the dog running loose
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: completely shatters that theory. You don't abandon your pet to
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: go off the grid for a few days.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Ah. Right, that makes sense.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: And the detectives felt the exact same way. That broken
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: pattern prompted them to pull expedited cell phone records for
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the couple, and the digital footprint they found it killed
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the vacation theory instantly.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: The data from April eleventh paints a super strange picture.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Monique's phone gets home at eleven zero four am and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Patrick's phone gets there at three zero seven pm, And
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: after that, both phones just stay motionless on the property
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: for hours.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: While messages from friends and family are just pouring in.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Right, and the network data shows the read receipts triggering
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: like the messages is being opened, but nobody is typing
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: a reply.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: So someone is staring at the screens, but it definitely
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: isn't Patrick or Monique. And then that weird stillness is
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: followed by movement that sends a total chill down the
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: investigator's spines.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at three two six am, under total darkness, both
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: phones travel together up this desolate logging road deep into
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the landslide zone, and then the signals just vanish.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Because nobody goes up a treacherous logging road at three
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: in the morning.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: For fun exactly. So if the digital trail leads up
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the mountain, the physical hunt has to follow. The terrain
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: is so wild, they coordinate a helicopter search. Just picture
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: looking down at this vast green ocean of Washington timber,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: looking for one anomaly.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Until they catch a flash of metal.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they find Patrick's land rover, but it is dangling precariously,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: completely nosed down, balanced on a stump over a ninety
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: degree cliff face.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: It's terrifying just picturing that.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And it gets weirder. Someone draped a camo tarp over
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: it and wedged a four x four wooden post underneath
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it like a makeshift jack to push it over the edge.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: And then two hundred and sixty eight feet straight down
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: that cliff resting in the brush is Monique's jeep.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: So the search team's repelling down must be assuming they're
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: about to make a grim discovery, right, like the bodies
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: have to be in those cars, that's.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: What they thought. They pry open the land rover and
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the seats are empty, but there's blood pooled in the back,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: heavy rope tarps and shell casings.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: So a violent scene but no victims, right.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: And then in Monique's jeep at the bottom they find
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: her wallet, bags of dog and chicken feed, a bloody
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: shopping list, and this is the crazy part, a crumpled McDonald's.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Receipt, and that one piece of trash becomes the entire
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: foundation of the homicide investigation.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Because it had a timestamp April eleventh, ten four one am.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Detectives go straight to that McDonald's, pull the drive through
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: video for that exact minute, and there is Monique sitting
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: in her jeep paying for her food with Cairo, the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: dog in the passenger seat.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Which perfectly sinks with her phone data showing her arriving
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: at the gate at eleven o four am. But since
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: the groceries and animal feed were still in the jeep
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: at the bottom of a cliff, the forensics tell a
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: very dark story.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: She made it to her gate, but she never made
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it inside.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Her house exactly the blood, the shell casings, the untouched groceries.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It all proves they were ambushed the second they arrived
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: at their property line, which narrows the focus intensely. Who
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: was waiting for them at their own date.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: We have to introduce a neighbor named John Reid. After
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the twenty fourteen landslide, John's property, which bordered Patrick and Monique's,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: was condemned. He took a massive FEMA payout, but the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: deal was he had to permanently leave the dangerous land.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: But he took the money and stayed anyway.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Yep. He basically became a heavily armed squatter and he
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: kept using a shared road easement that was Patrick and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Monique's driveway. The friction escalated super fast, locked gates, illegal logging,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: police getting called all the time.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Have you ever had a dispute with a neighbor? Oh?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Sure, we all have.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Right a fence line, debate a loud dog, You naturally
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: assume the person across the fence is rational. Patrick and
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Monique thought thought they were dealing with a stubborn nuisance.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: They had no idea John Reid was actually lethal.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It's like the boiling frog scenario, or like a stress
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: tracture in a foundation, you see a tiny crack, assume
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: its normal wear and tear, and you don't realize the
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: whole building is compromised until the roof literally caves in.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what this was. A lethal situation simmering slowly.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: But Suzanne, the friend who reported the missing, she sensed
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the danger instantly. A few days after they vanished, she
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: drove up to the property line and she sees John
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Reid and his violent felon brother Tony leaving the victim's
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: gate in a red truck.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Suzanne is an amazing citizen detective here. She didn't just wave.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: She pulled out her phone and secretly filmed them.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: And when police watched that video, they zoomed in on
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the truck bed. Sitting right there is a heavy four
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: by four wooden post and thick steel cables.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Which perfectly matches the makeshift jack at the crime scene
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: on the cliff that gave them the probable cause for
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: a massive search warrant on John's property.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: What they find is creepy empty underground bunkers that used
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: to be weed grow rooms, blood in the bathtub, and
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: a barrel in the garage filled with clothes soaking in
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: diesel fuel.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Which is a stark contrast to Patrick em Monique's house.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: When they search the victim's home, it's spotless, no struggle.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Only two things are missing or out of place.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Patrick's computer is gone and on the kitchen floor the
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: raw cat bowl was used to feed their cat. Now, wait,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I got to stop you here, in the middle of
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: a massive double homicide, why does a mismatched cat bowl
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: even matter? Isn't that just a meaningless detail?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: You think so, But it breaks down the killer's incredibly
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: disorganized psychology. Think about it. He murders them at the gate,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: adrenaline is rushing, and he spots the trail camera.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, and he realizes he might be on video.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Right, he doesn't know the SD cart is full. He
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: assumes it uploads wirelessly to the house computer. So covered
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: in blood, he breaks into the house to steal the computer.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, that part makes logical sense for a cover up.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: But while he's in there, in the middle of hiding
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: a double murder, he hears a hungry cat meowing, and bizarrely,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: he just stops what he's doing to feed it, grabs
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: the first bowl he sees. It shows a mind that
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: is violently erratic, jumping from cold blooded murder to domestic
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: caretaking in an instant wow.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: That is deeply unsettling. So with the physical evidence piling up,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the brothers realize they're caught. They flee to Phoenix, then
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: cross into Mexico, funded by their parents, who drained their
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: bank accounts for them, but.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: The pressure of being fugitives fractures their alliance.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Washington State had a moratorium on executions at the time,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and Tony realizes he might avoid the death penalty if
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: he flips, so on day thirty five, he surrenders and
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: tells police everything.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: He details this gruesome, calculated ambush. He claims he just
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: helped clean up, but says John ambush. Monique then waited
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: four entire hours for Patrick to get home and shot
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: him in the back of the head.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: So cold, Tony leads them out into the woods to
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: a muddy spring where they toss the phones, and then
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: to a shallow grin under an uprooted tree where the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: couple was buried. They were actually found seemingly cuddling recovering bodies.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: There is incredibly taxing, not just the terrain, but the
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: media presence was insane news choppers were swarming.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: The disrespect of those helicopters circling was awful. So Detective
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Defont Knot pulls off this brilliant trick away from the grave.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: He lays out a blue tarp and a clearing and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: meticulously arranges a row of sticks on it from smallest
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: to the largest.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: It looked like crucial forensic evidence from the air exactly.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: The news cameras all zoomed in on these random sticks,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: completely distracted while the team recovered the bodies with dignity
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: under the tree canopy.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: That is just brilliant, and it highlights the contrast between
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: the smart investigators and the sheer cognitive breakdown of the killers.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Remember those clothes soaking in diesel fuel?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Right, Tony said, they went to the garage, stripped off
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: their bloody clothes and doused them in diesel to burn
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: the DNA, But they never lit the match. Why leave it?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Adrenaline dump The amygdala hijacks the brain. Under stress, they
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: remember the broad plan destroy clothes with fuel, but the
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: fine detail of actually lighting it was totally wiped from
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: their working memory.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And it gets dumber. Before they stripped off those clothes
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: right in the middle of the cover up. They decided
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: they were hungry.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Oh this is the craziest part.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: They drive to a seven to eleven at midnight to
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: buy energy drinks, wearing the exact same bloody clothes they
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: were about to soak in diesel, caught on high def
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: security cameras with the time stamped receipt.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: They planned a murder in the woods, but completely forgot
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: about the surveillance state they live in.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable. So Tony's in custody, but John is a ghost
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: until day one hundred. He gets captured outside a barber
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: shop in Porta Panasco, Mexico, and when brought to trial,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: he pulls a desperate card. He claims self defense.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: He testifies that Patrick and Monique arrived together, pulled guns
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: on him, and he had to shoot them in a
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: synchronized fight.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: But if there are no living witnesses, how do investigators
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: definitively prove to a jury it wasn't self defense.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: That is where where the ultimate digital trump card comes in.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: The Apple Health app data from the victim's phones.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: The ones pulled from the MUDs.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, your phone's internal pedometer doesn't need a cell tower.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: It logs your physical steps locally, and the data showed
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Monique's phone permanently stopped moving at exactly eleven point aero seven.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Am, just minutes after the drive through, right.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: While Patrick's health app recorded movement all day until three
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: points er seven pm. This irrefutable digital footprint proves scientifically
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: they died four hours apart, completely destroying John's synchronized ambush.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Lie Wow, and John Reid is convicted of aggravated first
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: degree and second degree murder. It brings closure, though obviously
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: it doesn't prow him back. Their family shared such touching
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: memories like Monique raising baby sheep inside their.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: House and Patrick putting potatoes in his niece's Christmas stockings
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: as a joke.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that niece actually got a tattoo honoring Detective font
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Nod's mantra from The Manhunt, The Truth Never Dies.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Which perfectly sums it up. A perfectly planned cover up
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: in the wild, undone by microscopic human errors, a McDonald's receipt,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: a'm yowing kat and a pedometer, which leaves.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: You with this final thought. We all leave a silent
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: digital shadow every second of the day. It brought justice here,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But ask yourself as you walk through your life today.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Who else might be reading this story. Your devices are
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: silently writing about you.