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Mom Drowned 2-Year-Old, Shot 9-Year-Old Before Turning Herself In · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about a major criminal investigation,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: there's this built-in expectation of chaos.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Sirens blaring, police tape everywhere.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Right. Like, we've all been conditioned by movies to picture
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the exact same scene. A frantic tactical chase through the
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: streets and a suspect who, you know, looks like they've
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: just stepped directly out of a nightmare.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: It's dramatic. And I mean, in a weirdly paradoxical way,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: it's almost comforting.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Comforting. How so?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Well, we want evil to announce itself. We want a
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: monster to look and sound and act like a monster
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: so that society has this clear warning system to see
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: them coming.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get that. But then you step into
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the reality of daily law enforcement and that Hollywood script
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: is just tossed right out the window.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: We're looking at a landscape where the most horrific crimes
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: imaginable can present themselves in the most mundane, shockingly quiet
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: ways possible. I mean, we are talking about the ultimate
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: act of violence wrapped up in everyday packaging.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Which creates this immediate sense of cognitive dissonance for everyone involved,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: from the public to the very officers who are trained
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: to handle it.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And that cognitive dissonance is exactly what we are
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: dissecting with you today. We are taking you on a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: deep dive into a highly distressing but structurally and legally
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: fascinating two-crime case out of Missouri.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: And our primary source for this analysis is is this
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: really extensive interview from the Law and Crime Network, a
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: sidebar show. It features Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Right. Now, to be clear with you right up front,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: we are dealing with incredibly heavy material today. We are
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: examining the case of a mother accused of killing her
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: two young children.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredibly tough. It is.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: But we are not here for sensationalism. That is not
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the goal of this deep dive.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: No, we are looking at the underlying mechanics. We want
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: to see When the unthinkable drops into the lap of
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: a local police department on a random Tuesday, how does
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: the system actually function?
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Our mission today is to give you this
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: really granular, behind-the-curtain look at a multi-jurisdictional police response.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: We're going to break down the highly technical application of
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: modern digital forensics, like how a timeline is built minute
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: by minute using data that you probably generate every single day.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And we're going to examine the very specific, razor thin
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: legal thresholds required for a first degree murder charge in
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the state of Missouri.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Because this case is essentially a masterclass in how modern
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: policing and prosecutorial strategy actually operate in real time.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, it highlights the massive pivot law enforcement has
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: to make going from, you know, routine administrative duties to
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: a massive coordinated emergency response in just seconds.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So let's establish the setup and look at that exact pivot.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: We're talking about a 36-year-old woman named Ashley Parmley.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: On a Tuesday morning, following an alleged murder spree spanning
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: two different Missouri counties, she didn't flee. She didn't hide.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: She just turned herself in to the authorities.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: So let's take you right into that moment. We're in
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the city of Festus, Missouri. It's a small community, you know,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: population under 12,000.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: So we are talking about a department where a Tuesday
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: morning usually consists of... Filing reports, drinking coffee, and handling
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: minor traffic complaints.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: The operational tempo was generally very low.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Right. And according to Sheriff Marshak, when you watch the
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: video surveillance of Carmley's arrival at the Festus Police Department,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: it is chillingly normal.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Just a normal walk-in.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: She casually parks her SUV in the lot. She gets out.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: The description is that she looked, you know, slightly disheveled
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and her clothes were wet, but otherwise she just walks
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: into the lobby like any other citizen entering a business.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Like she's there to ask a question or pay a
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: parking fine or something.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. There are no weapons drawn. There's no frantic running
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: or screaming.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: That's what we call them.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: She walks right up to the clerk at the front
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: desk and she just bluntly states that she has killed
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: her two children.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: You really have to pause and consider the sheer psychological
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: shock of that statement for a civilian clerk.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the clerk instantly reacts, running to
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the back to alert a detective and a police supervisor
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: who happened to be sitting nearby. Right. But this is
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: where I want to stop and look at the immediate
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: mental calculus that law enforcement has to perform in that
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: split second.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Because Sheriff Marshak provided a critical piece of insight here.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: He pointed out that people frequently walk into law enforcement
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: lobbies experiencing severe mental health crises.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Right. They do.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: In many municipalities. Police station lobbies have essentially become default
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: intake centers for community psychiatric crises.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: So when someone walks in and casually drops a confession
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: of this magnitude, the initial reaction of the police is
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: often profound disbelief.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Because they see delusions all the time.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They're conditioned by their daily experience. to expect that
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: this is likely a psychotic break or a cry for
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: help rather than a factual, literal confession to a double homicide.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because this is a massive friction
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: point in the early minutes of an investigation. I'm imagining
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the officer's mindset as being similar to like a triage
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: nurse in an emergency room dealing with a potentially unreliable narrator.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: That's a good comparison.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Like if a patient walks into the ER claiming they
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: have a microchip implanted in their brain, The nurse doesn't
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: immediately prep them for neurosurgery, right? Right.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: They assess for psychiatric distress.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: So mechanistically, how do these officers instantly decide to treat
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: this quiet, bizarre lobby confession as an active, horrific crime
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: scene rather than a delusion that just needs de-escalation?
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Well, it really comes down to protocol overriding instinct. In
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: law enforcement training, when you are presented with a threat
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: to life, even if you strongly suspect it might be
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: a delusion, You just do not have the luxury of assumption.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: You have to act.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: You have to verify the threat immediately. Sheriff Marshak detailed
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: how multiple officers, including a detective, did not pause to
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: debate the psychiatric validity of her statement.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: They didn't just sit there and ask her how she
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was feeling.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: No, they rushed straight out into the parking lot to
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: interview her further and crucially to check her vehicle.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And from a legal standpoint, this interaction in the parking
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: lot is fascinating to me. She hasn't been read her
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Miranda rights yet, correct? She's just talking? Right.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: She is not under formal interrogation. These are what the
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: courts call spontaneous utterances.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Spontaneous utterances.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She isn't in a custodial interrogation room being grilled
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: by detectives. She is volunteering information.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: So she's just offering it up.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: While Miranda protects you from being forced to incriminate yourself
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: during an interrogation, spontaneous admissions made freely in a parking
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: lot or a lobby are are entirely admissible and incredibly damaging. Wow.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: So the officers are actively assessing the physical scene while
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: gathering these immediate, unfiltered statements.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: And that immediate verification protocol leads to the first grim discovery.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This part is just awful. During this rapid, highly
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: charged interaction in the parking lot, Parmley reveals that her
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: nine-year-old daughter, Scarlett, is in the SUV.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Right out front.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: One of the officers runs to the vehicle to investigate.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: He looks inside and finds the child. And according to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the court documents, Scarlett had sustained a gunshot wound and
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: was located in the trunk of the SUV.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Just an absolute nightmare scenario.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: The officer immediately unlocks the doors, pulls this nine-year-old girl
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: out into the police department parking lot and initiates CPR
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: right there on the asphalt.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: The physical reality of this scene is staggering when you
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: break it down. I mean, you have an officer performing aggressive,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: desperate chest compressions on a child in in the parking
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: lot of their own workplace.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right where they parked their own cars that morning.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: It's a localized trauma event happening literally just a few
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: feet away from the suspect.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Because while that CPR is happening, another detective is continuing
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the interview with Parmley.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The criminal investigation doesn't pause for the medical emergency.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: They have to do both at once.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: They run parallel. The detective cannot stop questioning her just
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: because a life-saving measure is occurring, because they still don't
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: know the full scope of the threat.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And it's a really good thing they didn't stop because
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: while CPR is happening on Scarlett, this other detective is
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: pressing Parmley and he learns that the second child, two-year-old Isaac,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: is at a completely different location. Right.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Parmley tells them she left him at a local resort.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Which instantly escalates this from a localized, contained incident in
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: a police parking lot into this sprawling, multi-jurisdictional nightmare.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: The detective learns the two-year-old was left in the pool
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of a fountain at this resort. And because of the
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: rapid relay of this information, a sheriff's deputy in that
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: other jurisdiction was able to rush to the resort, recover
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the two-year-old from the water, and immediately attend life-saving measures
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: right on the scene.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: It's incredible how fast they moved.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: But that raises a massive mechanical question for me. You
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: have this incredibly intense reality unfolding. How do police dispatchers
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: and command staff manage multiple active profoundly traumatic crime scenes simultaneously.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: It's a logistical nightmare.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Especially when one is mobile, an SUV in their own
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: parking lot, and the other is static at a resort
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: miles away in a different county.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: It requires a highly sophisticated, almost militaristic command structure to
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: snap into place instantly. This is where interoperability becomes the
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: most important word in policing.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Interoperability. So getting everyone on the same page.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. You have dispatchers using CAD computer-aided dispatch systems
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: To coordinate radio traffic across different county lines, ensuring the
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Festus officers and the county deputies aren't, you know, stepping
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: on each other's radio frequencies.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So they're essentially building an emergency communications network on the fly.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Right then and there. Yeah. And simultaneously, they're securing the
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: perimeter of the Festus police parking lot.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: While CPR is still happening.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They have to turn it in. a sterile forensic
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: crime scene while it is actively being used as a
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: medical triage zone. You have ambulances arriving, EMT stepping in,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: all while detectives are trying to preserve blood evidence, vehicle positioning,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: and chain of custody.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Then, miles away... You have the rapid deployment of resources
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: to the resort to secure the fountain area. You are
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: managing evidence preservation, witness containment, and scene security in two
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: separate geographic zones at the exact same time.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: It's an unbelievable logistical lift. But once that immediate medical
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: triage and the initial scene security phases are established, the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: adrenaline starts to fade, right? And the massive methodical gears
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: of the investigative machines start turning.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: That's when the real investigative work begins.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: And this is where they have to reconstruct the timeline.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: And the timeline is everything. When people hear that someone
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: walked into a station and confessed, they often assume the
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: investigation is over, you know?
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I would think.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: The suspect said they did it, so wrap it up.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Let's go to court. But from a procedural standpoint, a
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: confession is actually just the starting line. Wait.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to challenge that assumption because it feels
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: completely counterintuitive.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: She walked in. She told the clerk. She killed her kids.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: They found one child in her car, and she directed
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: them to the other child. Right. From a layman's perspective,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you have a full confession and physical corroboration in the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: first 10 minutes.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: You do.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So why did Sheriff Marshak note that they assigned roughly
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: 18 different detectives to this specific case? Why deploy 18
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: investigators if you already have the answer?
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Well, because of a foundational legal principle called corpus delicti.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Corpus delicti.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Which essentially means body of the crime. In the American
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: legal system, you generally cannot convict someone of a crime
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: based solely on their confession.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Really? Because people falsely confess to things.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: All the time. People falsely confess due to mental illness, coercion,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: a desire for notoriety, or maybe to protect someone else. Oh,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I see. Prosecutors know that a defense attorney will ruthlessly
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: attack a pre-Miranda lobby confession.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Right. They'll tear it apart.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The defense might argue she was in a state
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: of psychosis and didn't know what she was saying. Or
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: they might even say that someone else actually committed the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: murders and she is just taking the blame.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: So the detectives have to prove her own confession is true.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it. Therefore, those 18 detectives aren't there to
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: figure out who she says did it. They are there
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: to independently, scientifically prove every single assertion she made. They
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: have to corroborate the confession with hard, irrefutable data.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And to do that, they have to build a minute-by-minute timeline.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So let's look at the chronology that we know from
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: that Tuesday morning. Sometime around a little after 9.15 a.m.,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the first incident occurs in St. Francis County.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, so this is the first scene.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Yes. This is where physical evidence suggests the nine-year-old daughter, Scarlett,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: was shot near a rural lake or pond. Crucially, the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: evidence also suggests that the two-year-old boy, Isaac, was present
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: with her at this time.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: So both children are alive and present at the first
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: scene at 9.15 a.m. Exactly.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Then we jump to around 9.45 a.m. Parmley's vehicle is
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: tracked to the area of Festus. And finally, at roughly 10.15 a.m.,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: she arrives at the Festus police station lobby.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: So we're looking at about an hour. Right.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: We have this hour-long window stretching from 9.15 to 10.15.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: You have 18 detectives working backward. How are they mapping
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: an hour of time across multiple counties so quickly?
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: By utilizing modern digital footprints to essentially build a time machine.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Time machine. I love that.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: During the sidebar interview, Sheriff Marshap talked about the unbelievable
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: amount of data his investigators were combing through. It's not
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: just interviewing people who saw a car. It's literally reverse
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: engineering everything. Her exact path using technology.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. We are talking about
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: pulling data from private ring doorbell cameras along these rural routes.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: We're talking about surveillance systems on local businesses, gas stations, intersections.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: All of it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: But most importantly, they are using location services, specifically tapping
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: into Google Maps data to track the vehicle's exact turn-by-turn path.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Which is incredibly precise.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: But wait, how do they get that data so fast?
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, don't you need a warrant, which involves a
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: judge and paperwork, which takes time?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Typically, yes, you need a search warrant. But in a massive,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: fluid situation like this, law enforcement utilizes what are called
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: exigent circumstances.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Requests.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Exigent circumstances.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Tech companies like Google and Apple have 247 law
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: enforcement portals.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. I didn't know that.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. When lives are on the line or there
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: is an immediate devastating crime that just occurred, detectives can
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: submit an emergency request to these companies. They basically state,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: we need this device's location history right this second. We
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: will send the formal warrant later, but the exigency is
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: happening now.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: So they are pinging her digital life in real time
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: to build this map.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Think of it like reverse engineering a flight data
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: recorder after a plane crash.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: The black box.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Right. They know the plane went down. She walked into
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the lobby. But they have to reconstruct every tiny steering adjustment,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: every change in altitude made in the 60 minutes prior.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Every time her SUV passed a house with a smart doorbell,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: it logged a visual timestamp. Every time her phone pinged
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: a cell tower to maintain a signal, it created a
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: geographic radius.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Every time Google Maps logged a coordinate, it left a
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: precise digital breadcrumb. These 18 detectives are stitching together all
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: these disparate data points. to create a digital ghost of
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Parmley's SUV.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: It's like watching a dot move on a map. Yes.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: They can verify exactly where she was at 9.15, exactly
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: how fast she was driving, how long her vehicle idled
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: at the resort fountain, and her exact road to the
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: police station.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: But it's not just the digital world. Traditional on-the-ground policing
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: is still playing a massive role here to corroborate the
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: digital ghost, right?
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, definitely.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: The digital data tells you where the car was, but
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: the physical evidence tells you what happened when the car stopped.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. For instance, at the initial scene near the lake
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: or pond in St. Francis County, traditional witnesses actually reported
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: hearing gunshots.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: So there were ear witnesses. Right.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, investigators found traditional security camera footage that caught a
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: vehicle matching Parmley's near that specific scene at the exact
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: time the digital data placed her phone there.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So the digital and the physical are interlocking perfectly.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: They line up exactly.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: And this brings up a really important logistical clarification regarding
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: that specific physical scene. During the sidebar interview, Sheriff Marshak
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: had to correct a misconception.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, right, about the dive team.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, and this highlights how easily assumptions spread in the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: early hours of a breaking tragedy. Early reports in the media,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and even the natural assumption of the interviewer, was that
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the Missouri State Highway Patrol dive team was brought in
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: to search the resort fountain for the two-year-old boy.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Which, I mean, if you only have a surface level
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: understanding of the events, that seems to make sense.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Right. You hear child drowned and dive team deployed and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you naturally connect the two.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: But Sheriff Marshak explicitly clarified that this was not the case.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: The two-year-old, Isaac, had been quickly recovered from the fountain
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: by the deputy who arrived on the scene.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Right. They didn't need a dive team for a fountain.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. The Highway Patrol dive team was actually deployed
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: to the lake or pond in St. Francis County, the
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: location of the initial shooting at 9.15 a.m.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: And you have to understand, the logistics of deploying a
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: specialized dive team to a rural pond are massive.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: It's not a quick process.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Not at all. It is not something a department does lightly.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: It requires mobilizing specialized vehicles, specialized gear, and highly trained personnel,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: often from a state-level agency, to an isolated location.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So why do it?
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: They aren't doing this to find a victim. They're doing
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: it to find corroborating physical evidence related to the shooting
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: of the nine-year-old.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Right, because we know from studying these types of investigations
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: that when a suspect is near a body of water
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: during or immediately after a crime, that water is almost
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: always utilized as a disposal mechanism.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, almost always. They're looking for the murder weapon, spent
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: shell casings, or perhaps a discarded secondary device.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And searching a rural pond isn't like searching a swimming pool.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: No, the visibility is often zero. The dive team has
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: to do tactile grid searches, feeling through the mud and
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: silt with their bare hands.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Wow, that is intense.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: It is grueling, meticulous forensic work. And it shows the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: extreme lengths the investigative machine will go to physically corroborate
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: the timeline established by the digital data.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: So you have this incredibly robust, multi-layered timeline being built
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: by these 18 detectives. You have the exigent circumstance digital
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: footprint perfectly matching the physical evidence pulled from the pawn,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: matching the eyewitness accounts of hearing gunshots.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: It's an ironclad timeline.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And this is where the story shifts from a police
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: procedural into a legal chess match.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is the pivot.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Because this meticulously reconstructed timeline isn't just for solving the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: mystery of what happened. It is the absolute foundational core
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: of the legal strategy for how this crime will be prosecuted.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: The data dictates the charges.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Because the detectives successfully built that granular, hour-long digital map,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: they handed prosecutors the exact weapon they needed to change
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the trajectory of this case. Suddenly, we aren't just looking
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: at what happened. We are looking at Missouri's legal definition
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: of intent.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: This is where the cold, hard data intersects with the
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: deeply subjective nature of criminal law.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Let's outline the current charges to understand why this matters
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: so much. Ashley Parmley is currently facing first-degree murder and
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: armed criminal action across two different counties because the children
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: were killed in separate jurisdictions.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: But the focus of the sidebar interview shifted specifically to
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Isaac's death. The two year old found at the fountain.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: The second victim.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Yes. Initially, the charge for his death was second degree murder.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: But as the investigation unfolded and this timeline was built,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the prosecutor upgraded the charge to first degree murder.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: That is a massive escalation.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Why? What is the specific threshold in Missouri that separates
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: those two charges?
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Well, the terminology is the key to everything here. Under
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Missouri law, specifically revised statutes, Section 565.020, to elevate a
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: charge from second-degree murder to first-degree murder, prosecutors carry an
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: incredibly heavy burden.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: What do they have to prove?
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: They must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the act
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: was committed after deliberations. And Missouri law defines deliberation as
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: a time of reflection and cool calculation.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Cool calculation? That phrase is chilling. It sounds so clinical.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: It is the legal definition of premeditation in that specific jurisdiction. Okay.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: It is designed to separate a sudden, uncontrollable crime of
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: passion from a planned execution. Cool calculation means the perpetrator
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: was not operating under the influence of extreme, sudden emotional disturbance.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: They weren't just seeing red.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It means they had the physical time and the
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: cognitive capacity to think about what they were going to do,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: reflect on the consequences of that action, and then proceed
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: to do it anyway.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's connect this back to the digital timeline. How
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: does the GPS data actually apply to this specific psychological law?
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: This is exactly why the 18 detectives building that map
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: were so vital. If both children had been killed at 9.45 a.m.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: at the pond simultaneously, a defense attorney would have a
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: very strong argument for second-degree murder.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah. Even for two victims.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, because they could argue it was a single, continuous,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: tragic moment of temporary insanity. A singular snap, right? A
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: heat-of-the-moment reaction where there was no time for cool calculation.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: But the timeline proves they weren't killed simultaneously.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Because of the digital forensics, the state can prove
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: that the first incident occurred around 9.15 a.m. in St.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Francis County.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: With the nine-year-old.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. And the evidence suggests Isaac... The two-year-old was present
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: for that first act of violence. Then Parmalee leaves that
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: scene with Isaac. She gets back into her SUV. She
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: puts the car in drive. And she travels a significant
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: distance to a completely different location, the resort in a
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: different county.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: And there, a subsequent separate action is taken that results
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: in his drowning.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: So the physical drive itself is the time of reflection. Exactly.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: The physical distance traveled on the map literally equals the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: legal distance required to upgrade the charge.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: You nailed it.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: By establishing that time lapse between 9.15 a.m. and the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: subsequent actions at the resort, the investigators have essentially handed
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the prosecutors the exact window where conscious, deliberate choices were made.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: You are looking at a geographic manifestation of a psychological state.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: That's a powerful way to put it.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: That time lapse in the car completely satisfies the legal
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: burden for premeditation. During that drive, she had time to stop.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: She had a time to pull over and change her mind.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: She could have turned around.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: She had time to drive to a hospital or walk
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: into a police station right then, before the second event occurred.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: But the GPS data proved she didn't. She drove to
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: a secondary location, exited the vehicle, and committed a secondary act.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And that is the definition of cool calculation mapped out
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: in real-time data points.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: It is literally drawn on a map for the jury.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And the stakes for this specific legal distinction, second degree
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: versus first degree... are as high as they can possibly
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: get in the American justice system.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Life or death?
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Exactly. By successfully moving this charge from second-degree to first-degree murder,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the consequences in Missouri become absolute. We're talking about life
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: in prison without the possibility of parole or, because Missouri
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: is an active capital punishment state, the death penalty.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: And that potential for capital punishment introduces another crucial layer
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: to this analysis, which is the local justice climate where
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: this will be tried.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, this was a really interesting part of the interview.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: It was. During the interview, Sheriff Marshak was very pointed
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: in his description of Jefferson County.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, he really wanted to make a clear distinction for
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the audience. He described Jefferson County as a very strict
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: law and order community. He specifically pointed out that they
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: have very aggressive prosecutors.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: And what's fascinating here is the contrast he was intentionally drawing.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: He contrasted Jefferson County with the neighboring jurisdiction of St.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Louis.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Which he implied had a more progressive prosecutor in the past.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Right. And, you know, regardless of where anyone stands on
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: that political assessment, we are not taking sides on local
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Missouri politics here. What is objectively important for this deep
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: dive is that the sheriff is publicly broadcasting the legal
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: philosophy of the specific jurisdiction where Parmley will face a jury.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: It's a signal.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Exactly. He is signaling to the public and, frankly, signaling
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: to the defense attorneys that, that this is an environment
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that leans heavily toward maximum prosecutorial aggression.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Right. In a law and order jurisdiction, prosecutors are generally
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: not looking to make plea deals for reduced charges in
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: a case involving the death of two children.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: No, they want the maximum.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: They're going to use that digital timeline to pursue the
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: maximum allowable penalty under the law.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: And, you know, as we talk about these legal thresholds
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and digital footprints and prosecutorial strategies, It can become very clinical.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: It can feel very detached, yeah.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: We can get so wrapped up in the fascinating mechanics
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: of the justice system and the technology of the investigation
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: that we risk losing sight of why the system is
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: operating in the first place. So I want to deliberately
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: pause our procedural breakdown right here. We need to focus
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: on the human cost of this tragedy.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: It is absolutely essential. The justice system isn't operating in
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: a vacuum. It is operating because real lives were extinguished.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: We have to understand who was lost. I want to
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: talk about Scarlett. She was only nine years old. She
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: was slated to start the fourth grade in August.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Such a young life.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: During the sidebar episode, they read a tribute from her
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: third grade teacher, Abby Tinnin, and it is just heartbreakingly beautiful.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Abby described Scarlett as a kind, bubbly, caring, and spunky
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: little girl. She was always the first one to join
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the teacher for classroom karaoke. She loved writing stories, she
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: loved playing softball, and she loved talking about her little brother.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: The detail that really stands out to me from that tribute,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: the one that really captures her personality, is the squirrel award.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Yes. At the end of the school year, her teacher
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: gave her the squirrel award and the reason. Because of
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Scarlett's unique ability to gather people up who needed a
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: friend and make them feel included, like a squirrel gathering acorns.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: That is so sweet.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: She was the kid who actively looked out for the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: marginalized kids in her class. And her teacher also noted
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that Scarlett had recently been baptized and was so incredibly
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: excited to share that news with her friends.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: It just paints such a vivid, specific picture of a vibrant,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: deeply empathetic child. You can see the exact type of
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: energy she brought to her room.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And then there is Isaac. He was only two years old,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Scarlett's half-brother. The host of The Sidebar Show read a
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: profoundly raw excerpt from a Facebook post written by Eislick's father.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: That was hard to listen to.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: It was. The father wrote, quote, My whole heart was
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: ripped out. Where do I find the pieces to put
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: myself back together when the most precious part of me
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: was taken?
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: There is no legal procedure, no digital timeline, and no
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: prosecutorial strategy that can ever quantify that level of grief.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: It is total, absolute devastation for a parent.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: And that devastation ripples outward. It doesn't just stay within
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the walls of the immediate family. We talked earlier about
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: how Festus is a small town, a population of under 12,000. Right.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: An isolated, horrific event like this completely shatters a community
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: of that size.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: The mechanics of community trauma in small towns operate very
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: differently than in large cities. In a major metropolitan area,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: a tragedy like this might be a terrible headline that
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: you read on your phone and eventually move on from.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: You feel disconnected from it.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But in a town of 12,000, you have personal
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: proximity to the grief. You know the teacher who gave
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: the squirrel award. You might coach the softball team Scarlett
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: played on.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: You might sit two pews behind her at the church
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: where she was baptized.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Yes. The degrees of separation are almost non-existent.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: And we saw that community response immediately in Festus. There
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: was a candlelight vigil held at the local community softball fields,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the exact fields where Scarlett was expected to be playing,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: and hundreds of people turned out to mourn.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: It shows how deeply she was connected to the town.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: GoFundMe pages were instantly mobilized by the community to help
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: cover funeral expenses and support the grieving families.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: And that ripple effect of trauma extends profoundly to the
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: professionals who have to manage the crisis. At the very
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: end of his interview, Sheriff Marshak made a specific intentional
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: plea to the public. He asked them to recognize the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: trauma absorbed by the first responders.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I am so glad he included that because it's a
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: crucial part of the story that gets overlooked when we
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: just focus on the suspect and the court case.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: We often view law enforcement and emergency personnel as these stoic,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: unbreakable figures in uniforms. But they are human beings absorbing
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: the absolute worst moments of humanity. It's called vicarious trauma.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Think about the dispatchers who have to take those frantic
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: initial calls, coordinating the multi-jurisdictional chaos while sitting in a
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: dark room miles away, feeling helpless.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Listening to the panic on the radio.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Yes. Think about the officer we discussed earlier. who pulled
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: a nine-year-old girl from the trunk of a car and
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: desperately performed CPR on the asphalt. Think about the deputy
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: wading into a resort fountain to pull a two-year-old toddler
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: out of the water.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: And think about the medical examiners who have to process
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: the aftermath in a sterile, brightly lit room.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: The emotional toll of having to compartmentalize that level of
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: horror just so you can finish your shift, go home,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: and try to be a normal parent or spouse to
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: your own family. It's unimaginable.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: It really is. Many departments mandate critical incident stress debriefings
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: for exactly this reason, because the officers carry that with
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: them forever.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: They absolutely do. It's a permanent psychological scar that alters
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: how they view the world.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We've looked at the crime,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the investigation, the law and the victims. But how do
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: we as a society consume and process these profound tragedies?
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: That's a heavy question.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I want to shift our focus slightly to the delivery
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: mechanism of the story because the way the source material
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: was presented to the public is inherently fascinating and worth exploring.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: You're talking about the juxtaposition of the news and the
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: economics of the platform delivering it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The source material for this deep dive is a professional,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: well-produced interview on the Law and Crime Network. And during
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the broadcast, the host literally has to pause the grim
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: procedural details of this double infanticide to read an advertisement.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: The Sidebar interview was actively sponsored by the personal injury
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: firm Morgan & Morgan.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Which is a massive, ubiquitous entity in the legal space.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: They're the largest injury law firm in America.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Right. And the ad read is highly polished. The host
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: talks about how Morgan & Morgan boasts a $ 120 million
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: post-pandemic verdict that came from an initial $ 20, 000 offer.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Huge numbers.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: They highlight the seamless, eight clicks or less, smartphone app-based
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: intake system for personal injury claims. The pitch is essentially
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: don't even leave your couch to sue. Right. And this
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: glossy high states legal advertising is literally funding the journalism
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: required to broadcast the tragic details of a local double
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: murder in Missouri.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: It creates a very jarring cognitive dissonance for the listener.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: You are oscillating rabidly between raw, unspeakable human grief and
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: highly optimized corporate legal marketing.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: This makes me want to push back on the entire
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: true crime ecosystem. Does the commercialization of true crime via
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: this kind of high stakes legal advertising change how we
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: consume these tragedies?
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: It's a fair question.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Does it commodify the grief of a town like Festus?
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Turn it into content? Or to look at it from
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the other side, is this simply the necessary economic engine?
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Without the massive marketing budgets of personal injury firms like
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Morgan and Morgan paying for the ad space, would networks
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: like Law and Crime have the funding to do this
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: in-depth legal reporting?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: That's the flip side of it.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Would they have the capital to get a sitting sheriff
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: on the record and explain the complex nuances of cool
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: calculation to the public?
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: That is the defining tension of modern digital media. On
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: one hand, yes, inserting a pitch for a personal injury
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: app mere minutes after describing a child being pulled from
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: a fountain feels inherently discordant.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: It feels wrong.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: It starkly highlights the commercial reality that human tragedy attracts eyeballs,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: and eyeballs attract premium advertising dollars. Personal injury law, because
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: of its contingency fee structures, has massive marketing capital to deploy.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: It's the attention economy at its most raw.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, objective, high-quality legal journalism is
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: incredibly expensive to produce. Analyzing hundreds of pages of court documents,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: maintaining broadcast studios, paying seasoned hosts to conduct interviews that
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: actually parse the difference between first- and second-degree murder statutes,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: that requires significant capital.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: It doesn't happen for free.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So you have a symbiotic, if somewhat uncomfortable, relationship.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: The high-revenue civil law sector essentially subsidizes the public's access
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: to detailed educational reporting on the criminal law sector. It's
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: an impartial economic reality of how specialized information is distributed
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: in the 21st century.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: It's a fascinating ecosystem, and it shoes one you are
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: actively navigating right now just by listening to this deep dive.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: You're part of it.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: We've covered an immense amount of ground today. We started
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: in a quiet small town police lobby on a Tuesday morning,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: dissecting the chilling surrender of Ashley Parmley and the cognitive
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: dissonance of evil presenting itself casually.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: We walked through the harrowing simultaneous realities of two separate
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: crime scenes, a police parking lot and a resort fountain,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: and the massive logistical and interoperability response required from multiple agencies.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: We examined how 18 detectives function like digital archaeologists, moving
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: past the pre-Miranda spontaneous utterances to map a tragic morning.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: We looked at the mechanics of exigent circumstance data requests,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: using ring cameras and Google location data to reverse engineer
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: a timeline.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And we explored the heavy legal thresholds of Missouri law,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: looking at how that very timeline is being used by
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: aggressive prosecutors to define cool calculation and premeditation, elevating the
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: charge to first-degree murder.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: All while trying to hold space for the profound human
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: cost to Scarlett, Isaac, the first responders, and the entire
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: community of Festus.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: In a case that forces us to look at the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: intersection of human frailty, the rigid mechanics of the justice system,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and the invisible web of technology that binds it all together.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: And that intersection brings us to our final thought.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Throughout this deep dive, we've seen how absolutely central digital
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: evidence was to upgrading the charge to first-degree murder. Google Maps,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: location services, the timestamps of movement, the geographic proof of
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: a drive between two counties.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: It leaves us with a lingering, provocative concept to explore
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: on your own.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Given the sheer volume of data we all generate, are
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: we entering an era where the legal concept of premeditation
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: is no longer just a psychological theory argued by experts
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: in a courtroom?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Has it become a mathematically trackable data point?
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: If our smart devices are constantly, passively recording our pauses,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: our stops, the physical distance we travel, and the duration
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: of our idle time, has the legal... time of reflection
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: simply become a measurable, undeniable line on a GPS map.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: And if intent can now be mapped by a satellite,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: how does that permanently change the nature of how a
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: criminal defense can even be mounted?
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: When the monster no longer looks like a monster, but
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: just looks like a normal person running errands on a Tuesday,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: perhaps it's our technology that is finally shining a light
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: into the murky waters of their intent. Thank you for
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: joining us on this deep dive. Keep asking questions.