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The Murder in Waukesha: The Case of Matthew Paul · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine the person you live with just vanishes, like completely
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: disappears without a trace.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: How long does it take you to call the police?
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, a few hours, maybe a full day if
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: you think they just, you know, needed to blow off
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: some steam or something.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd think 24 hours max, right?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. But Matthew Paul waited 17 days.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. 17 days. And the only reason that deafening silence
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: broke wasn't even because he finally picked up the phone.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: It was because a construction worker noticed a smell coming
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: from a golf course tree line.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: You know, the absence of panic is often the loudest
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: clue in an investigation.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Because when someone disappears, a vacuum is created, right? And
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the natural human response from loved ones is to just
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: rush in and fill that vacuum with noise, with urgency,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: frantic searches, calling everyone they know.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Just absolute chaos.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Right. Total chaos. So when that vacuum is met with
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: complete chaos, calculated stillness, you aren't just looking at a
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: missing person anymore. You're looking at a staged reality.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because we have a huge stack
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of sources today. Primarily transcript excerpts and some really detailed
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: investigative breakdowns from the True Crime Channel Beyond Evil.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. They do great work.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: They really do. And they detailed the 2022 disappearance and
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: murder of a 44-year-old woman named Stephanie Pavlons. This was
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: in Wausau, Wisconsin.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: And our mission for this deep dive is is to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: basically look at how a killer meticulously tried to orchestrate
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the perfect disappearance. But I think more importantly, we want
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: to explore how modern investigations actually work now. Like they
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: don't always need a smoking gun or a single drop
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of DNA.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: No, they really don't. And what's fascinating here is just
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: the sheer mechanics of how a carefully constructed alibi collapses.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're looking at a suspect who truly believes
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: he is the smartest person in the room.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a little.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: But he gets confronted by an investigative process that synthesizes
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: You know, digital footprints, behavioral profiling, and incredibly, the hidden
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: documentation left behind by the victim herself.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that part is just wild. But let's start with
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: that discovery. So it's September 9th, 2022. A group of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: construction workers are out at this private golf course on
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the outskirts of Wausau. And they're doing something completely mundane.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Maintenance stuff.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, literally just installing no trespassing signs.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: And one of the workers catches a foul odor coming
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: from the tall grass near the tree line. So he
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: walks over to investigate and suddenly he's dialing 911.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the scene that the forensic team encounters there
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: is it's grim and it's highly compromised.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I can imagine after that long.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Right. The body is in an advanced state of decomposition.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: It's partially skeletonized.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Which means what exactly in this context?
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: It means there's virtually no soft tissue remaining on the
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: face or the neck. And the internal organs have actually
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: been consumed by insect activity. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's brutal.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: So from a purely visual standpoint, identification is impossible. And
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: determining a medical cause of death is incredibly difficult because
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: you don't have intact tissue or bone trauma to look at.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: So how do you even begin an investigation when the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: elements have basically erased all the obvious clues? I mean,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: you mentioned insect activity. I know forensic entomology is the thing.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I've seen it on TV. But how does looking at
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: maggots actually give investigators a concrete timeline? Like, it seems
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: almost like guesswork to a layperson.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I know it sounds like guesswork, but it is actually deeply,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: deeply mathematical. Really? Oh, yeah. Blowflies have this incredible biological imperative.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: They can detect the scent of decomposition from literally miles away.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Miles?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, miles. And they usually arrive at a body within
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: minutes of death.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Minutes.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Minutes. They lay eggs, and those eggs hatch into maggots,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: which then go through distinct developmental stages. We call them instars.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: In stars. Okay, so they grow at a predictable rate then.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Right, but it's predictable based on temperature because insects are cold-blooded, right?
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: So their development is entirely dependent on the ambient thermal
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: energy in the environment.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. So a hotter day means they grow faster.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So a forensic entomologist will take the largest, basically
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: the oldest maggots from the scene and measure them. Then
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: they pull the exact hourly temperature data from the nearest
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: local weather stations for the past month.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, so they map the weather data onto the bug size.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. Okay. By calculating the accumulated degree hours, which is
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: the exact amount of heat energy those insects absorbed, they
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: can essentially wind the biological clock backward.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: That is fascinating.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: It really is. And in this case, the math pointed
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: to a highly specific window. The medical examiner used this
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: to determine she died on August 23, 2022.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly 17 days earlier. Exactly. Okay, so dental
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: records eventually confirmed that the body is Stephanie Pavlon's. But
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: there's this massive blank space on the coroner's report, the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: cause of death.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Right, because of the decomposition.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Right. There's no bullet holes in the bones, no obvious
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: blunt force trauma to the skull. There's no soft tissue
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to show manual strangulation. So the official cause of death
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: has to be listed as undetermined.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge hurdle for prosecutors later on.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. But whoever left her there tried to write
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: a different narrative for the police. They found a disposable
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: medical scalpel resting on the ground near the body.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the implication there is so heavy-handed. The perpetrator
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: clearly wanted to plan a visual cue suggesting that Stephanie
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: had walked into the woods and taken her own life.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: But the staging failed on just a fundamental level of physics.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: The scalpel was found 15 feet away from the body.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that makes zero sense. I mean, if you
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: use a blade on yourself, your grip loosens the second
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you lose consciousness. The blade drops right next to you. Exactly.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Even if there's some sort of, I don't know, dramatic
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: spasm or something. You weren't throwing a featherweight plastic and
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: metal scalpel 15 feet through thick, tall grass.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: No, it's physically impossible. The perpetrator here focused entirely on
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: the psychological prop, right? Like, oh, I need the presence
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: of the blade to tell the story.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Right, the optical illusion of the suicide.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But they completely ignored the physical reality of how
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: a body interacts with its environment during a traumatic event
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So they basically left the wires showing on their magic trick.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. It immediately signals
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: to investigators that the scene was manufactured. And once they
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: realize they're looking at a staged crime scene, they have
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: to look at the victim's social circle. They start asking,
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: you know, who benefits from her disappearance and more importantly,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: who failed to sound the alarm.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Right. Because nobody reported her missing.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Nobody.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: So they go to notify Stephanie's parents, right?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And her parents had absolutely no idea she was missing.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: They hadn't heard from her in over two weeks, but
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: they just thought she was busy.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Which is tragic, but it happens.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the person who really should have sounded that
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: alarm was her live-in boyfriend, 55-year-old Matthew Paul. They shared
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: an apartment at the Willow Park complex.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Right, and you have to look at the dynamics there.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: He essentially isolated her, and then he relied on that
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: isolation to buy himself time.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Because she worked for him.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, he flipped houses for a living, and she
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: worked for him. Plus, she didn't have her own car,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: so she was entirely dependent on him for transportation, for
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: her income, for everything. Wow.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: So total control.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Complete control. He managed her environment so thoroughly that he
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: just assumed her absence wouldn't even register in the outside world.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: That is chilling.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So fast forward to September 17th. Police arrest Matt. They
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: execute search warrants on his apartment and his truck, and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: they sit him down in an interrogation room. And honestly,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: this is where the transcript gets wild.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, his behavior is unbelievable.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: He is instantly defensive. He actually complains to the homicide
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: detectives that they're interrupting his Saturday night. He literally says
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: he wants to get through this and get about his evening.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: A woman he lived with is dead and he's worried
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: about his weekend plans. Right.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: He threatens to hire the best attorney. He claims he's
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: being targeted because he lives in an expensive apartment. Even though,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: you know, he just flips houses, it's not like he's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a billionaire.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Right. It is a textbook attempt to establish dominance in
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: the room. He wants to frame himself as a victim
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: of class prejudice, which is absurd given his actual financial standing.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Totally absurd.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: But the detectives, they recognize this immediately. They know exactly
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: who they're dealing with. So they ask him a standard
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: baseline question just to gauge his educational background. Just asking,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: you know, do you have a degree?
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And his response is so bizarre. He says, and I quote,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to answer that one because if I
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: have too much education, then I can be considered too smart.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not narcissistic, so I'm not going to talk up
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: my education or my ability to comprehend.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can't make that up.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: It's like a parody of a narcissist.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: It really is. By explicitly declaring he isn't narcissistic while
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: refusing to answer a basic question because his vast intellect
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: might intimidate them, he broadcasts his pathology to the whole room.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: He views this interrogation not as a legal peril, but
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: as a battle of wits. He is absolutely convinced he
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: can outmaneuver trained homicide detectives.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to ask about this because I see
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: this constantly in these case breakdowns, and it always bothers me.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: People always talk about the CSI effect, right? This idea
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: that criminals know how the system works because of television.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: They watch Law & Order. They know they should ask
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: for a lawyer.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the CSI effect gets brought up a lot. Right.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: So why does a guy who clearly thinks he's a genius, right,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: he voluntarily sits in a room, lets the detectives... Read
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: him his Miranda rights and just waves them. He actually says,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I live on faith because that's a hell of a
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: lot stronger word than hope. And then just signs the paper.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Why do that?
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Well, this raises an important question about the limitations of
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: the CSI effect. That theory assumes a rational actor. Narcissism
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: precludes rationality in these high stakes moments. It isn't just
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: that Matt thinks he can outsmart them. It's that he
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: genuinely cannot conceive of a reality where his narrative isn't
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: accepted as gospel truth.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. So asking for a lawyer would mean
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: admitting he's not in control.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. To demand a lawyer would be an admission of vulnerability.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: His pathological need for control dictates that he must be
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: the one to steer the conversation... to construct the reality
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: that the detectives operate within.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And he immediately tries to build that reality, right? Without
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: the detectives even asking about Stephanie's mental state, Matt just
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: volunteers that she attempted suicide back in April of 2022. Unprompted.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Completely unprompted. He spins this incredibly detailed story about her
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: taking a whole bottle of pills at her parents' house.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: He's really painting a picture of someone whose mental health
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was just spiraling totally out of control.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: And this is the danger of assuming you're the smartest
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: person in the room. He is trying to lay the
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: groundwork for the staged crime scene. He planted the scalpel
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: out by the body, so now he needs to plant
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: the psychological precedent in the interview.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Right, he's setting the stage.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: But what he doesn't realize is that modern investigations are
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: entirely data-driven. The detectives had already pulled Stephanie's medical records
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: before they even brought him in. Yeah, they know for
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: a fact that her last documented suicide attempt was in
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: May of 2021. That's nearly a year before Matt claims
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: this fictional April incident occurred.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So he's just handing them the blueprint of his defense.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Like by proactively lying about a recent suicide attempt, he
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: tells the detectives exactly how he plans to explain away
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a dead body.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the detectives are smart. They don't confront him
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: with a lie yet.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: They let him dig the hole. Right.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: They let him commit to the narrative. They need him
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: to lock himself into a rigid timeline. So they ask
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: him to walk through his exact movements on August 23rd,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: the day she actually vanished.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, so Matt claims that morning they went to a
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: doctor's appointment for his injured knee. He says they drove
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: in his truck, but Stephanie stayed in the vehicle while
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: he went inside.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Typical isolation tactic.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He tells the detectives, she's left her phone behind sometimes.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I really didn't notice. I just went in, I came out,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and she was gone. He really tries to frame this
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: as totally normal behavior for her, like she would just
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: snap and run away into the woods to vent.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Which is ridiculous, but he is attempting to contain the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: narrative to a space he completely controls.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Which is his truck.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Right, the interior of his truck. And then he adds
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: a highly specific detail to cement this timeline. When they
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: press him about her belongings, he admits she left her
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: purse in the truck.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Right, but he claims he didn't discover it until two
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: weeks later.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Conveniently.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he says he was cleaning under the floor mats
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: two weeks later and found it. And magically... Alongside the purse,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: he claims to have found a note that read, I
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: hate you. I'm tired of being used and taken for granted.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: A suicide note hidden under a floor mat for two weeks.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, come on.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: He genuinely believes if he isolates the story to that truck,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: there are no witnesses to contradict him. He says she
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: left it there, he didn't see it, and the note
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: proves she ran away.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: But he is so oblivious to the world around him.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, the detectives have a literal folder sitting on
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the table.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: The modern reality check.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Think about your own morning commute. You walk past a
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: neighbor's ring camera. You use an electronic key fob to
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: get into your building. Your phone pings three different cell
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: towers before you even hit the highway. Matt thought he
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: was operating off the grid, but he was triggering tripwires
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: we all walk through every single day.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: It's like a zipper. A killer's timeline is like a zipper.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Every single event has to interlock perfectly. If even one
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: tooth on that zipper is misaligned, the whole thing jams.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And the narrative just splits wide open.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy. And this is the moment
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: the zipper jams. The detective finally opens that folder and
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: pulls out still images from the security cameras at their
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: apartment complex on August 23rd.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: The day she vanished.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Right. And the first few images show Matt and Stephanie
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: leaving the apartment together in the morning, heading out to
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: the truck. Which, OK, that aligns perfectly with the start
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: of Matt's story. Right. But the subsequent images shatter everything
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: that follows.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Because at 11.14 a.m., the camera catches Matt returning to
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the apartment complex alone. Right. And he's carrying Stephanie's distinctive
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: water bottle.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Which she supposedly took with her when she ran away
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: from the truck.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But it gets worse for him. At 12.29 p.m.,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: so a little over an hour later, the camera catches
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: him walking into the building again. This time, he is
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: carrying a plastic bag.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And this is the kicker? Yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Clearly visible inside that translucent plastic bag is Stephanie's purse.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: The exact same purse he just swore was lost under
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the floor mats of his truck for 14 days.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can almost feel the oxygen leave the
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: interrogation room when you read the transcript.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally. The detective literally points to the photo and says,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that's her purse in a plastic bag that you carried inside.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: And Matt's reality distortion field just short circuits.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: He'd had it.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: He starts stammering like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: That's clothes I had in the back. That's not a purse.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: He's looking at a high definition photograph of her purse.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: And he's telling the detective to their face that it's
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a pile of clothes.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Because if we connect this to the bigger picture, the
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: CCTV doesn't merely prove he lied about the sequence of events.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: It proves he took possession of her most personal, essential
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: belongings on the very day she disappeared.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Right. It neutralizes the runaway narrative entirely. Yeah. I mean,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: if she vanished from a clinic parking lot, why did
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: he meticulously bag up her purse and bring it inside
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: his apartment less than an hour later?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: It makes no sense unless he knew she was never
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: coming back for it.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And when confronted with undeniable timestamped reality, his narcissism
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: just breaks down into sheer panic.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: And it's right after this, when the detective points out
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: that the purse and the water bottle don't even matter
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: compared to what happened to her physical body, that Matt
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: finally breaks and says, OK, I have to get an attorney.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but he invokes his rights far too late.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Way too late.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: He has already provided a fake timeline, introduced a fabricated
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: suicide attempt, and been caught on camera possessing the victim's
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: belongings on the day of her murder.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: But, and this is wild, the prosecution still faces a
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: massive hurdle. The camera proved he lied about the what
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: and the when, but because the medical examiner was unable
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: to determine the cause of death.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: They need the why. Exactly. The prosecution needs to prove
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the why. Yeah. They need a concrete motive because you
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: can't just say he lied, therefore he murdered her, without
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: showing why he would do it.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Right. And to find that motive, the investigation has to pivot.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: They have to stop looking at Matt's lies and start
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: looking at Stephanie's hidden truth.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Because while Matt thought he was this mastermind controlling the board...
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Stephanie had actually been quietly building an evidentiary case against
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: him for years.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: That is the most heartbreaking and incredible part of this
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: whole case. When they searched the apartment, detectives found her
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: hidden daily planner. And it wasn't just, you know, a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: calendar for appointments. It was a methodical diary of horrific
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: escalating abuse.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: I really want to focus on the psychology of this
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: documentation because domestic abusers, as we talked about, rely heavily
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: on isolation.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: They shrink their victim's world until the abuser is the
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: only source of truth, the only source of reality. And
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Stephanie suffered from severe anxiety and depression, so from the outside,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Matt constantly painted her as unstable and unreliable.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Right, that was his whole narrative in the interview.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: But internally, in the private pages of this diary, she
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: maintained complete clarity. She used that documentation as a silent
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: act of defiance.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Really was. Let me read you a direct quote from
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: one of the entries, because it's just, it's harrowing. She
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: wrote about him getting angry over what he thought was
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: smoke in the house.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Like cigarette smoke?
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but she called it fake smoke, like he was
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: just imagining it to pick a fight. She wrote, Wow.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: And she details another incident where she accidentally kicked a
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: small piece of marijuana on the floor while cleaning. She writes,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: he kicked or punched me in the tailbone, which I
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: believe is now bruised on the inside because it hurts
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: to sit, bend and squat.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: For kicking a piece of weed.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then he forced her to go on two
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: bike rides while she was injured like that. One of
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: her final entries simply reads, I feel trapped.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: You know, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde description is
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: so vital there. It highlights the manipulative cycle of abuse,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: the terrifying unpredictability that keeps a victim constantly off balance.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: She knew she was in danger. And she knew her
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: voice might be taken from her. But she didn't just
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: write these incidents down. She corroborated them with photographic evidence.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. Investigators pulled her phone data and found photos she
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: saved dating all the way back to 2020. Images of
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: a bruised and swollen eye. A severe red mark on
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: her chest. She was basically laying down an analog paper
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: trail that would speak for her when she no longer could.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: And you really have to contrast Stephanie's methodical, grounded documentation
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: with Matt's digital footprint. Because Matt flips houses for a living, right? Right.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: He understands that you can slap a fresh coat of
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: paint over structural damage to fool a casual buyer. And
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: he applied that exact same logic to his digital life.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: He assumed that deleting a search history or using an
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: alias was like painting over a stain.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's such a good point.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: But digital forensics is like tearing down the drywall. The
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: underlying structure always holds the truth.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting, because this is
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the guy who wouldn't answer a question about his degree
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: because he didn't want to seem, quote unquote, too smart.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But in the days before the police ever contacted him,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: while her parents are completely unaware and her daughter is
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: trying to reach her, Matt is on his phone literally
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Googling his own guilt.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: It's hubris, just pure hubris.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: It is. He's searching for Wausau County obituaries. He is
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: searching local funeral homes. And most damningly, he types the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: exact phrase, dead body found by construction crew.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: He knew exactly where he left her.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: He knew. And the body was found by a construction crew.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: The anxiety of the undiscovered crime just consumed him. He
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: couldn't resist checking to see if his staging at the
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: golf course had been found.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: It's like he couldn't help himself.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: He obsessively searched her surname. He was taking screenshots of
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: news articles about her body, images of her driver's license
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: from police press releases, and even photos of her prescription bottles.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: He's curating a digital scrapbook of his own crime.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: And alongside all these searches for her body, they find
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the searches for his exit strategy. He's looking up extradition
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: laws and researching different countries. Yeah. Which finally unlocks the motive.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just that the abuse was escalating to a
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: lethal point. He was trying to sever a tie.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Right. Because when digital forensic experts recovered his deleted data,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: they uncovered thousands of Skype messages. While he was isolating
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: and physically abusing Stephanie in Wisconsin... Matt was carrying on intense,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: highly sexualized online relationships with two different women in the Philippines.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He had them saved in his phone under aliases.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: One was Normaine Desioro, whom he also saved as Magan.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: The other was Sherlyn Valente, saved under the incredibly grim
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: moniker Beautiful Disaster.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Beautiful Disaster.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: And he was planning to leave the country permanently to
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: be with these women, right?
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Yes. In his twisted reality, Stephanie wasn't a partner. She
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: was a logistical complication. just a loose end that needed
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: to be tied up before he fled.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assemble the board the way the prosecution
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: had to for a second. You have a victim found
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: dumped in a remote area, a planted medical scalpel 15
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: feet from the body, a partner who fails to report
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: her missing for 17 days, an interrogation filled with provable
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: lies about a fabricated suicide attempt, CCTV footage, Catching him
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: sneaking her belongings back into the apartment. A hidden diary
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and photo gallery documenting years of severe physical abuse. A
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: search history anticipating the discovery of her body by a
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: construction crew. And a motive to flee the country for
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: other women.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: It's just an absolute mountain of evidence.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: It really is. But as we move into the trial phase,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: which takes place in November 2025, I want to talk
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: about the reality of the courtroom. Because the prosecution is
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: trying to convict Matthew Paul of first-degree intentional homicides. But
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: they don't have a single drop of his DNA on
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the victim.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: No DNA.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: They don't have a murder weapon. They don't have an eyewitness.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: And because of the decomposition, the medical examiner literally wrote
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: undetermined on the death certificate.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Which is terrifying for a prosecutor.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly. How do you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: a murder even occurred when science can't officially call it
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a homicide?
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: This brings us to the power of a purely circumstantial case. Right.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: There is a common misconception, I think, that circumstantial evidence
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: is weak. That it's just a bunch of coincidences. But
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: in legal terms, direct evidence is like a thick rope.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: An eyewitness says, I saw him do it. It's strong.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: But if that single witness is discredited, if that rope snaps,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: the entire case falls apart.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Ah, okay. So circumstantial is different.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Circumstantial evidence is a cable woven from 50 thin independent wires.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: So like a cell tower ping here, a CCTV timestamp there.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. One piece of circumstantial evidence might just be a coincidence.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: But you cannot cross-examine a timestamp. You cannot argue with
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: the biological math of a blowfly instar.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Right, the bugs don't lie.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So when you interlock the insect timeline, the digital searches,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: the camera footage, and the diary entries, those 50 thin
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: wires weave together into an unbreakable cable that points to
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: only one logical conclusion.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Which is the prosecution's theory.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Right. The prosecution argued that on the morning of August 23rd,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Matt drove her to that remote area... strangled her using
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: the chain strap from her own purse, hid her body
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: in the tree line, and planted the scalpel to stage
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: the suicide.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: It's literally the only theory that satisfies every single data
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: point without requiring any logical leaps.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: And Matt, he acts as his own worst enemy right
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: up until the very end. The judge gives him the
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: opportunity to address the court before sentencing.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't apologize. He doesn't offer condolences to Stephanie's family.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: He uses the platform to launch into an absolutely unhinged rant.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: The mask completely slips.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: It does. He attacks the prosecutor directly, saying he wants
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: to correct the, quote, puke coming out of Gordon's mouth.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Then he launches into this bizarre statistical tangent, claiming the U.S.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: has 4% of the world's population, but 20% of the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: people behind bars. He is desperately trying to reframe himself,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: not as a murderer, but as a political prisoner caught
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: in a corrupt system.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: He calls the trial a pseudo sham, right?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, a pseudo sham. He actually invokes the Netflix documentary,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: calling it a making a murderer situation right there in Wausau.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: He claims that psychopaths in suits fabricated extreme circumstantial events
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: out of their wild imagination. He calls the government a
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: tyrannical fascist dictator government.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: He's just throwing buzzwords at the wall.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Completely. But the line that is truly staggering. He stands
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: there convicted of leaving the woman he supposedly loved to
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: decompose in the woods. And he looks at the judge
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: and says, I am the only victim here. I'm the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: one being murdered.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: It is breathtaking.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: He is so deeply entrenched in his narcissism that he
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: demands the court validates his delusion even after a jury
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: has completely dismantled it. He actually expects the judge to
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: look at this mountain of evidence and say, you're right, Matt,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: we have all been fooled.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Well, Judge Ralph Ramirez, who presided over the trial, was
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: having absolutely none of it. He strips away all of
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Matt's pseudo-intellectual posturing. He points out the basic absurdity of
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: mass claims, like if you were innocent, you would have
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: left her there. The judge states, quote, he killed her
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and he left her to rot in the woods as
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: if she was roadkill.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: You know, the judge's word choice there is very deliberate. Roadkill.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's harsh. It is.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: But it emphasizes that mass actions after the death, leaving
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: her body exposed to the elements and the insects, it
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: added a layer of profound indignity and cruelty to the
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: crime itself.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And the judge reveals a detail that perfectly illustrates how
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: strong that woven cable of circumstantial evidence really was. He
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: tells Matt that the jury deliberated for less than one hour.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: One hour.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: They walked into the jury room at 3.20 p.m. and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: had a verdict at 4.20 p.m. Judge Ramirez notes that
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: in his 40 plus years of legal experience, it was
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the fastest verdict on a first degree intentional homicide he
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: had ever seen.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: A one-hour deliberation on a murder charge without a medical
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: cause of death is just astounding. But the jury didn't
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: need to debate the timeline. The cameras and the insects
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: proved it. They didn't need to debate the motive. The
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Skype messages and the diary proved it. They saw through
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: his narcissistic defense almost instantaneously. The speed of that verdict
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: is a direct reflection of how thoroughly his illusion was
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: shattered by reality.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Judge Ramirez sentences Matthew Paul to life imprisonment without any
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: eligibility for release on the homicide charge. plus an additional
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: 12 and a half years consecutive for hiding a corpse.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: He is never walking out of a prison cell.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: And honestly, Matt believed he could silence Stephanie permanently, but
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: he failed to account for the physical resilience of the
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: evidence she gathered and the digital permanence of his own arrogance.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Through her diary and her photos, she essentially testified from
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: the grave and secured his conviction.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for us? Like, why
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: does a case from Wausau, Wisconsin matter to someone listening
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: right now?
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: I think the core takeaway here is that the quote-unquote
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: paperless crime is a total myth now.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely a myth. We interact with technology constantly, and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: that technology takes meticulous notes. Between the security cameras covering
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: every building, the GPS pinging in our pockets, the deep
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: forensic memory of our search histories, and the quiet documentation
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: of victims themselves, the truth just leaves an indestructible trail.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: It really highlights the undeniable value of modern digital forensics.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Because abusers, they rely on secrecy and control. Yeah. But
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: that very need for meticulous control extends into their digital lives,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: and it becomes their undoing. The patterns they try so
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: desperately to hide behind closed doors almost always leak into
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the data infrastructure that surrounds us.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Which kind of leaves me with a final thought for
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you to chew on. If our search histories, our location data,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and our communications can so perfectly reconstruct a crime after
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the fact, I mean... weaving together a case so strong
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: a jury convicts and under an hour without even a
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: cause of death.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: How far are we from a future where AI and
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: digital monitoring could recognize those hidden escalating patterns of domestic
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: abuse before the crime ever happens?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: That's a huge question.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Right. Because if an algorithm can see the searches for extradition,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the hidden Skype accounts, and the sudden isolation of a
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: partner's phone data, Would we as a society be willing
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: to accept that level of invasive preemptive surveillance if it
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: meant flagging a victim's extreme danger and saving a life
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: like Stephanie's?