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The Diamond Ring That Exposed a 1996 Killer · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So you were looking at an empty commuter parking lot
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: in Burien, Washington. The year is 1996.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: There is no body. There's no blood.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: There's absolutely no murder weapon discarded in a nearby dumpster
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. The only thing left behind in
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: this massive expanse of asphalt is a blue 1989 Mercedes.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Just sitting there.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Just sitting there. And that Mercedes has been wiped so thoroughly,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: like so meticulously clean that... Legally speaking, a murder hasn't
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: even happened.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Wow. That is the ultimate nightmare scenario for a prosecutor. Right.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: And frankly, it's the ultimate fantasy for a defense attorney.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Because when you're looking at a space where a crime
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: theoretically occurred, but the physical biology of that crime has
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: just been erased, you are essentially trying to prosecute a ghost.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, it's wild. So welcome to the Deep Dive.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Today we are taking you into the anatomy of a
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: massive 15-year investigation.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: It's a long one.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It really is. We are going to unpack how a
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: quote-unquote perfect crime, you know, meticulously executed by a con
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: man who truly believed he was the absolute smartest person
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: in the room, was completely dismantled.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: And how it all came down to a single piece
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: of jewelry, right? Yes, exactly.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We are doing this by exploring the transcript of
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: just this phenomenal true crime documentary video. It's called The
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Diamond Ring That Exposed a 1996 Killer, and it's from
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the YouTube channel Crime and Justice.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: It's a really incredible piece of source material.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: It really is. It gives us this unprecedented, super granular
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: look into the case files, all the shifting timelines, and
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: basically this psychological warfare between a killer and the detectives
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: who just absolutely refuse.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: To let him go. Yeah, what is so compelling about
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: this specific case, I think, is the sheer psychological endurance
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: required from literally everyone involved.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: We're going to explore the legal history of what we
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: call nobody cases and the deep gemological science that makes
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: a single ring as unique as a human fingerprint.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to get into that part. And as always,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you are going to be our analytical guide through the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: shadows today, helping us break down the why and the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: how behind the police work.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I am ready. Awesome.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: So let's set the stage a bit because the documentary
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: brings us right into a very specific, very evocative environment.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: The murder books.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Yes. The room where they keep the murder books. I
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: want you to imagine you are walking into the basement
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: of the King County Sheriff's Department. There are just shelves
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: upon shelves of heavy three ring binders and these old
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: cardboard boxes gathering dust.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: These are the unsolved homicides.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And it is so vital to understand the culture of
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: homicide investigation here. These cases are never technically considered dead.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Right. They're just inactive.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are designated as inactive. They're sleeping. A murder
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: book is just a compilation of every single lead, every
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: dead end interview, every crime scene photo.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: All bound together. Right.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Just waiting for a fresh set of eyes. It's waiting
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: for an investigator who is, frankly, stubborn enough to pick
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: it up and view the puzzle from a totally different angle.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Which provides this incredibly stark contrast. I mean, when you
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: think about it, you have these dormant, silent, dusty files
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: on one hand. And then on the other hand, you
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: have the incredibly vibrant, colorful, like clockwork life of our victim.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Let me introduce you to Bob Welker.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: A man who represents the absolute antithesis of a ghost story. Exactly.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Bob was tangible. He was highly present.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: He really was. So Bob Welker is 65 years old
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: in 1996. He's a classic, old-school, all-American guy. Grew up
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: in a small town in Wisconsin, served his country in
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: the military, and then spent decades owning and operating several
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: very successful family restaurants all across the country.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: A hard worker.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Extremely. By the time he hit his mid-50s, he had
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: worked hard enough to retire comfortably. And I really want
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: to pause on that restaurant background for a second because
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: it absolutely shapes his entire psychological profile, doesn't it?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, it absolutely does. Running multiple family restaurants isn't just
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: a job. It is a lifestyle built on punishing routine
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: and extreme reliability.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Right. You can't just flake out.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: You don't survive in the restaurant business if you're flighty
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: or unpredictable. You have to be there to open the doors.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: You know, you have to manage inventory. You have to
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: handle cash deposits daily.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Every single day. Right.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: And that level of discipline became hardwired into Bob's personality.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: So by the time he retired, his entire existence was
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: governed by a very comfortable, very predictable clockwork routine.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: And he brings that routine to the Pacific Northwest. He
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and his wife, Joan, had moved out to Washington State,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: and Bob just fell in love with it. His family
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: used to tease him that he was this mountain man. Right.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: He loved the outdoors.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Loved the weather, the mountains, the flowers. He went mountain climbing.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: He even flew planes.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: He was definitely maximizing his retirement. He was living a
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: highly intentional life.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: But his biggest passion, the thing that really drove his day-to-day,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: was classic cars.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, the cars.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: He would scour auto trader ads from all over the country.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And if he found a gem, he would buy it,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: transport it back to Seattle, restore it himself, and flip it.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And he was very good at it. He was making
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: about $ 5, 000 to $ 6, 000 profit a pop on these classic
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: car flips.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: And we really should unpack the mechanics of that specific
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: hobby because it is crucial to understanding why he was targeted.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: The classic car restoration community is very tight-knit, sure, but
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: it's also a heavily cash-based ecosystem. Right. You are often
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: dealing with private sellers. You're negotiating on the spot. You're
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: buying parts at swap meets. Bob's mechanical savviness meant he
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: was deeply integrated into this world.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And it meant he had a lot of keresh on hand.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He was routinely operating a very lucrative side business
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: in physical currency.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Which is so true. Bob was known to carry just
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: massive wads of cash on him. He had a buddy,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a neighbor named John Ogden, who we'll talk about in
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a minute, who used to tell him, Bob, you really
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: got to look into a bank, man.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: A lot of old school guys are like that, though.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Bob was old school. Cash was king. He
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: drove this pristine blue 1989 Mercedes around Burien. And most
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: importantly for this entire deep dive, he wore a very
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: specific signature piece of jewelry.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: The diamond ring.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: The diamond ring. It was a massive 1.5 carat European
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: cut diamond ring. His ex-wife Joan had bought it for
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: him way back in the 1960s when they lived in
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. Bob took one look at it and fell
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in love.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: He literally never took it off his finger. Never.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And because he was constantly under the hood of a car,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: wrenching on greasy engines, banging his hands against metal chassis,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: the band of this incredibly expensive ring was heavily damaged.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: The stone itself had specific nicks and abrasions on it.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: I want to dive into the gemology of this for
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: a moment if we can.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, please do.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Because it's not just a generic sparkly rock. A European
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: cut diamond is a very specific vintage style of cut
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: that was popular from the late 19th century through the 1930s. Okay.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Before the invention of modern lasers and computer modeling, which
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: give us the modern round brilliant cut with its mathematically
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: perfect light dispersion, diamonds were actually cut by hand.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Right. Totally different process.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. A European cut has a larger culette, which is
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the flat facet at the very bottom of the diamond,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: and a steeper crown angle. It means it reflects light differently.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Wait, so it actually looks different than modern rings?
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, highly distinct. It has chunkier, warmer flashes of light
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: compared to the kind of splintery brilliance of a modern diamond.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: That is so interesting.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: And because they were cut by hand, no two European
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: cut diamonds are exactly alike. Oh, wow. Yeah. So when
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: you combine that unique antique geometry with the specific microscopic
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: nicks and scratches accumulated from decades of mechanical work, That
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: diamond becomes a physical manifestation of Bob's life.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: It's like a fingerprint.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It ceases to be just jewelry. It is a
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: highly identifiable, one-of-a-kind forensic anchor. It literally carries the physical
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: history of the man wearing it.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: That is fascinating. Okay, so Bob is living this great,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: highly visible life. He and Joan had actually amicably divorced
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: in 1994. She moved back to Illinois to be closer
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: to family, but they remained very close friends.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Very amicable. Yeah.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Bob is living alone in an apartment in Burien, but
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: he is far from isolated. Which brings us to late
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: winter of 1996. And the catalyst for this entire investigation.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: John Ogden.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Right, the 32-year-old neighbor.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. John and Bob had met about four years prior.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: John was moving into the building across the street. And
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Bob walked over to compliment John's 79 Firebird.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Classic car guys.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Naturally. Car guys naturally gravitate toward each other. And despite
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: a massive age gap, they became great friends. Bob became
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: a regular fixture at John's weekly poker nights.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And he was the guy with the cash, right?
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Bob was that guy. If you were short
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: on the buy-in, Bob would just peel off a bill
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and cover you. Just a generous, happy, entirely predictable guy.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Until he wasn't.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Right. Until he wasn't. Detective Earl Tripp, a 24-year veteran
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: of the King County Sheriff's Department, starts his shift one day. Now,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Tripp is a heavyweight. He's worked patrol, undercover, narcotics. and
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: handled probably 150 homicides in his career.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: He's seen it all.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: He is not easily rattled. But when he walks in,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: John Ogden is at the front desk adamantly demanding to
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: see a detective.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Let's look at that from a procedural standpoint for a second. Sure.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: When a citizen bypasses the standard reporting procedure, you know,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: when they refuse to just fill out a form with
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a desk officer and demand to see a major crimes detective,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: it immediately signals a high level of distress. Right.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: They mean business.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Tripp's instincts would have flared instantly.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So John sits down with Tripp and says, my neighbor
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: is missing and nobody has seen him for three weeks.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I know this man. This is completely outside his character.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Three weeks is a long time.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: A very long time. John explains that the last time
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: they spoke, Bob said he was heading out about an
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: hour away to finally pick up a 1957 Thunderbird he
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: was trying to buy.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: And John noted that there was already friction surrounding this
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: specific transaction, correct? Yes.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: John tells Tripp that Bob had been complaining that the
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: seller was giving him the runaround. Bob had put down
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: some cash as a deposit to hold the car, but
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the seller kept inventing excuses for why the car wasn't ready.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Which is always a red flag in a cash deal.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Always. So Bob told John, I'm heading out there today.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I'm either bringing that Thunderbird home or I'm getting my
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: deposit back. But the next morning, John looked out his
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: window and Bob's 89 Mercedes wasn't in its usual parking spot.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: John naturally assumed Bob was out dealing with the car.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: But days passed. The Mercedes never came back. Three weeks
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: go by and Bob is a ghost.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Imagine you are Detective Tripp taking this report. The psychology
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: of a missing persons case in the initial 24 hours
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: is usually plagued by intense ambiguity.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Right, because people just Leave sometimes.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You have to ask yourself, did this person just
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: decide to walk away from their life? Are they on
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: a bender? Did they meet someone and spontaneously go on vacation?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Law enforcement has to triage these reports.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: See, I always think of routine as the check engine
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: light of human behavior. Like if a transient person or
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: someone with a chaotic lifestyle or substance abuse issues disappears,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: it's absolutely a mystery. But maybe it doesn't trigger an
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: immediate five alarm panic for law enforcement. Right. But if
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a clockwork retiree, a guy who shows up to the
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: same poker game every single week without fail, just evaporates,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: that check engine light is flashing red.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: But I want to push back on this a bit,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: just for the sake of argument. Defense attorneys often argue
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that anyone can snap and walk away from their life.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Does Bob's high level of routine actually give investigators legal
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: probable cause to assume foul play, or is it just
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: a hunch?
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: That's a great point. It's a foundational investigative baseline, not
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: legal probable cause, at least not yet. Okay. You're right
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: that a defense attorney would argue Bob could have just
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: driven off to start a new life. But Detective Tripp
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: relies on sociological patterns. He notes that Bob was deeply
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: family-oriented and financially stable. Right. He had money. People who
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: walk away from their lives usually have a stressor. Crushing debt,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: a secret double life, a looming criminal charge. Bob had
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: none of that.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: So Tripp goes straight to Bob's apartment. He gets a
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: key from the landlord. And what he discovers inside transitions
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: this from a missing person report into a potential homicide investigation.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Because of what was left behind.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The negative space. Bob's luggage is sitting in the closet.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: His collection of firearms, which were valuable items he loved,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: are still in the safe. Wow. His passport is sitting
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: right there in his desk. He didn't pack a bag.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: He didn't prepare for a journey. It looked exactly like
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: a man who had walked out the door to run
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: a quick errand and simply vanished off the face of
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: the earth.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: And Tripp immediately pulls Bob's bank records. He finds a
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: massive cash withdrawal of $ 5, 200 on February 12th.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: But after that date, absolute chilling silence. No bank activity,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: no phone activity. For a guy who practically lived on
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the telephone hunting down obscure classic car parts all across
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the country, Dropping off the grid is highly suspicious.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And then the physical evidence, or rather the alarming state
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of the physical evidence, surfaces. Yes.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Tripp locates Bob's everyday vehicle. He runs the plates through
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the system and gets a hit. The 1989 blue Mercedes
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: had been towed to a local impound yard. It had
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: been sitting in a local park-and-ride commuter lot in Burien,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: about a mile away from Bob's apartment, for more than
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: two weeks before transit authorities towed it.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Then you have to explain what Tripp does next because
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: the forensic reality of that car is just terrifying.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: It really is. So Tripp orders the car to be
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: completely processed. They bring out the forensic team. They comb
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: every single inch of that Mercedes. They use the magnetic powder.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: They dust the steering wheel, the rear view mirror, the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: door handles, the gear shift. And? And there is not
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: a single usable fingerprint to be found anywhere inside that vehicle.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Which is the loudest alarm bell of all. Think about
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: the mechanics of dusting a car. If Bob drove that
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: car every day, his biological signature should be everywhere.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, skin oils and stuff.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. His skin oils should be baked into the steering
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: wheel leather. If a car yields zero prints, it doesn't
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: mean it's just clean. It means it has been actively,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: chemically wiped down with the specific intent of destroying biological evidence.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: You don't wipe down a car unless you were trying
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: to hide the fact that you were inside it.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: So sinister. So Tripp steps back and looks at the board.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: He has a victim who routinely carries large sums of cash,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: a victim who wears a flashy, highly identifiable diamond ring,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: a victim who was increasingly angry about a delayed car deal,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: and a victim whose car was abandoned and forensically sterilized.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Trip realizes they are officially looking at a homicide. But
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: he has no crime scene and he has no body.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: This is the exact moment the investigation pivots. They can't
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: work backward from a crime scene because they don't have one.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: They have to work forward from Bob's final known movements.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: And this transitions the case from a cold procedural hunt
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: into something deeply human and emotional.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Enter Rebecca, Bob's daughter. She lives out in Illinois. For
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: three weeks, starting right around February 23rd, she had been
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: leaving voicemails on Bob's machine. Hey, Dad, call me back. Dad,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I'm getting really worried.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Which is heartbreaking to think about.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, completely. When Tripp gets back to the station after
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: processing the wiped Mercedes... he calls Rebecca and breaks the news.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: He tells her the car was found wiped clean and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: foul play is suspected.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: And her reaction is a testament to the bond they shared.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Within 48 hours of that phone call, she leaves her
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: husband and two kids in the Midwest and flies straight
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: to Washington.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: She didn't hesitate?
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Not at all. She doesn't wait for updates. She literally
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: inserts herself into the search.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I want to spend a moment on Bob's parenting philosophy, actually,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: because Rebecca shares this detail in the documentary, and it
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: is absolutely gut-wrenching.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Bob had adopted Rebecca when she was five years old,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: after he married her mother, Joan. He taught her the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: value of absolute truth. He used to tell her, if
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: you lie to me, we're not going to get anywhere.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: But if you tell the truth, we can resolve anything.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: It's a very grounded, practical worldview. It shows a man
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: who valued transparency above all else.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: But the thing she remembered most, the lesson he hammered
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: into her constantly as she was growing up, was about independence.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: He would look at her and say, How are you
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: going to learn how to do things? What happens if
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not here anymore?
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: He would say, what happens if I just disappeared? How
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: are you going to take care of yourself?
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: The agonizing irony of that statement is just almost too
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: much to bear. He was inadvertently preparing her for the
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: exact nightmare she was about to step into.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: That's devastating. But that teaching worked. He forged her into
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: a fighter. Rebecca hits the ground in Burien like a hurricane.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: She did not mess around.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: She absolutely refuses to sit in a hotel room and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: wait for the police to call. She goes to a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: copy shop, prints out hundreds of missing person flyers with
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Bob's face on them, and she starts physically walking the streets.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Just handing them out.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Yep. She goes to all of her dad's favorite local spots,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the grocery stores, the auto parts shops, the diners.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: This is the old school shoe leather detective work that
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: modern digital surveillance still can't really replicate. Right. She is
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: tapping into what sociologists call third places. You know, you
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: have your home, you have your work. And your third
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: place is the community hub where you socialize, the diner,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: the barbershop, the local park.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: And tapping into that third place yields a massive breakthrough.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: A huge one.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Very early one morning, Rebecca walks into a local coffee shop.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: She walks up to a table of older gentlemen, holds
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: up the flyer, and asks if anyone has seen this man.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The very first guy she shows it to looks at
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the paper and says, Oh, hey, there's Bob. We know Bob.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Who are you?
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I imagine the shock there. She discovers that for the
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: past two to three years, Her father had an entirely separate,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: robust social routine that his other friends didn't even know about.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had been eating breakfast with a group of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: retirees almost every single morning at 4 or 5 a.m.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: That is so early.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I know. The 4 a.m. coffee group. I love this
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: detail so much. It highlights how crucial these informal community
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: networks are in missing persons cases. These guys sat around
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: drinking cheap coffee for hours, shooting the breeze.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: And they knew his routine.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: They knew each other's lives inside and out. And they
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: were already worried. They told Rebecca, Bob is as regular
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: as clockwork. We haven't seen him and we were getting concerned.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Rebecca immediately calls Detective Tripp.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And to his immense credit, Tripp doesn't dismiss her.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: No, he doesn't. He doesn't say, oh, let the police
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: handle it. He is down at that coffee shop within
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: a half hour. He pulls up a chair, sits down
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: with these retirees and starts conducting interviews.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: And together they establish a concrete timeline. The coffee group
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: collectively agrees. The absolute last time they saw Bob well
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: alive was on the morning of February 21st.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: And Tripp asks them, did Bob mention anything about buying
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: a car?
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Yes. And the group says, oh yeah, absolutely. He was
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: constantly talking about it. He was going to buy a
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: 57 Thunderbird.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: But here is where the record scratches.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Here is the massive glaring contradiction that fundamentally changes the
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: trajectory of the entire investigation.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Right, because remember John Ogden, the neighbor?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: John was under the distinct impression that Bob was dealing
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: with a stranger. Some anonymous guy who was giving Bob
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the runaround from afar. But the coffee group, they tell
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Detective Tripp that the 57 Thunderbird didn't belong to a stranger.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: It belonged to Mike.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Mike.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: A relatively new member of their very own coffee group.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: A guy who literally sat at their table. A guy
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: who had managed to weave himself into Bob's inner circle.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: They tell Tripp that Mike was the one selling the
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: car to Bob. And then, chillingly, one of the guys adds,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: You know, Detective, now that I think about it, February 21st,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the day Bob stopped showing up, that was also the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: very last time we saw Mike.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Let's stop and analyze this discrepancy. Because it is the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: linchpin of the psychological profile of the killer.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's look at it.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Why would Bob let his neighbor John think the seller
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: was a stranger while his morning coffee group knew the
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: seller was Mike?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Was Bob lying to his neighbor? No.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Bob was being manipulated. Someone was actively controlling the flow
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: of information. The seller was compartmentalizing his relationship with Bob.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Right.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: If the neighbor doesn't know the seller's name... The seller
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: has a buffer of anonymity if the deal goes bad.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: But he couldn't hide his identity from the coffee group
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: because that's where he met Bob. This indicates a highly premeditated,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: deceptive strategy.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. So Tripp immediately asks the group,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: what's Mike's last name? They think about it for a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: second and say, Wynn. Mike Wynn.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So Tripp rushes back to the King County Sheriff's Office.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: He sits down at his terminal and runs a search
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: for a Mike Wynn in his late 30s. And he
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: hits a wall. There are literally hundreds of men named
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Mike Wynn in the greater Seattle area.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: It's a common name. It is.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: He spends the entire afternoon trying to narrow down the parameters,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: trying to find the right guy, and he comes up empty.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: But the beauty of a con man's ego is that
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Tripp doesn't actually have to look for long. Because the
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: suspect actually delivers himself right to the front door.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the psychology of the con man.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: That very night, Rebecca is exhausted, sitting in her hotel room.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: The phone rings. She answers it. It's a man's voice.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: He says, Hi, I'm a friend of your dad's. I
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: just heard around town that Bob is missing.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Unreal.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I am so worried. Is there anything I can do
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: to help? My name's Mike Wynn.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Wynn. Y-N.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Spelled with Y. Right.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: This is a textbook story proactive maneuver by an individual
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: with dark triad personality traits, specifically narcissism and Machiavellianism.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Because he's inserting himself.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Think about his calculation here. He knows Rebecca's in town,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: plastering his face on flyers. He knows the coffee group
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: knows his name. He knows it is only a matter
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: of time before the police knock on his door. Right.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: So what does he do? He tries to seize control
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: of the narrative. He inserts himself into the investigation as
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: a concerned friend to appear cooperative, and throw the scent
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: off himself.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly brazen. Rebecca, keeping her cool, gets his contact
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: info and immediately hands it over to Detective Tripp. The
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: very next day, March 26th, Wynn actually calls Tripp directly.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: He just keeps pushing it.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: He offers to come in, offers to help search, whatever
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: the police need. So Tripp says, tell you what, I'll
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: just come to you. Tripp drives right over to the
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: apartment Wynn shares with his girlfriend.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: And as Tripp starts digging into Mike Wynn's background... a
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: very clear, very pathetic profile emerges.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Tell us about Wynn.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Wynn is in his late 30s. He's chronically unemployed. He's
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: essentially a drifter who is living completely off his current girlfriend. Interestingly,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: he actually joined the military right after high school, but
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: he washed out of basic training almost immediately.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: He's the classic family black sheep.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: A guy who constantly needs a bailout.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He is a low-level con man who survives by
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: mooching off the generosity of family and friends. And if
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: we look at the psychology of victim selection here, Bob
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Wells was the absolute perfect mark for a predator like Wynn.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Bob was a wealthy, generous retiree who missed his family
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: back in the Midwest. Bob was eager to help people out. Remember,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: he covered buy-ins at poker. Wynn saw this lonely, wealthy
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: older man with a pocket full of cash and a
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: trusting nature, and he saw an absolute goldmine.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Makes total sense. So Trip arrives at Wynn's apartment. He
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: decides to play it very low-key. He doesn't want to
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: spook him. He wants to see what kind of story
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Wynn will voluntarily construct.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Good strategy.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Wynn invites the detective in, acting super friendly, super accommodating.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Wynn tells Tripp that he's known Bob for a couple
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: of months. He says they are, quote-unquote, pretty significant friends.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Significant friends.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: He goes out of his way to mention that he's
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: been to Bob's apartment several times, they've had dinner together,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: and he's ridden in Bob's blue Mercedes.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Listen to the preemptive defense strategy there. Why volunteer that information?
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Because he knows the car was wiped.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Partially, yes. But more importantly, he's establishing a benign reason
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: for his biological presence. Ah, I see. If the forensic
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: team had found a stray fingerprint on the passenger door
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: of the Mercedes or a hair fiber on Bob's couch,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Wynn has already neutralized that evidence. He can say, of
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: course my prints were there, detective. I told you I
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: was a guest in his car and his home. Wow.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: It's a calculated inoculation against future evidence. Right.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: But then Tripp casually pivots the conversation to the 57 Thunderbird.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: And Wynn's story takes a sharp, incredibly calculated left turn.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Wynn says, oh, yeah, I remember Bob saying something about
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: adding a Thunderbird to his collection, but the guy was
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: really jerking him around on the price.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Passing the buck.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Bob was pretty frustrated, but he didn't really fill me
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: in on the details.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Total, unequivocal denial of involvement in the transactions.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: He straight up tells the homicide detective that Bob was
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: buying the car from someone else. But Tripp was just
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: sitting with the coffee guys yesterday. The coffee guys were
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: crystal clear that Wynn was the one selling the car.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: So I have a massive problem with this moment. Put
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: yourself in Tripp's shoes. You know unequivocally that this unemployed
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: con man is lying right to your face about the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: central dispute leading up to a disappearance.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Why not just arrest him right then and there? Why
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: let him keep talking? Doesn't letting him spin a web
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: jeopardize the case?
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: It is one of the most frustrating, agonizing realities of
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: homicide investigation, but it requires extreme strategic patience. Let's look
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: at the law. Tripp knows Wynne is lying, but lying
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: to a police officer about a classic car transaction is
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: not a murder charge. True. Tripp has no body. He
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: has no crime scene. He has no murder weapon. Let's
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: discuss corpus delicti, the body of the crime. Historically, the
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: law requires proof that a crime has actually occurred before
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: you can convict someone of it.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, what are you charging them with?
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It was designed to prevent someone from confessing to
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: a murder, being executed, and then the quote-unquote victim walking
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: into town a week later having just been on a bender.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: So without a body, Tripp is essentially legally paralyzed.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Without physical proof of death, an arrest is virtually impossible.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: If Tripp aggressively confronts Wynne and says, I know you're lying.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: You're going to jail. Wynn will immediately invoke his Miranda rights.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: He'll lawyer up.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: He will demand a lawyer. And the moment a suspect
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: asks for a lawyer, all questioning must cease immediately. The
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: flow of information completely stops. Tripp needs Wynn to keep
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: talking because every lie he tells is a knot he's
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: tying around his own neck.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. So Tripp decides to bluff.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: He leans in and says, listen, Mike, A lot of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Bob's friends from the coffee shop are coming down to
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the station this afternoon to take a polygraph test, just
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: to clear the air. I'd really appreciate it if you
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: came down and took one, too.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: A classic pressure test maneuver.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Tripp noted in his file that the moment he mentioned
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the polygraph, Wynn's face went noticeably flush. The blood rushed
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: to his cheeks. But Wynn tries to play it cool.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: He says, oh, sure, detective, I'm happy to do that.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: But I have an appointment this afternoon. Let me take
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: care of it tomorrow.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: And, as you might predict, tomorrow comes... And the waiting
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: room at the station is completely devoid of Mike Wynn.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Over the course of the next three weeks, stretching from
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: late March into mid-April, Tripp schedules Mike Wynn for five
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: separate polygraph tests.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Five.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: And Wynn skips every single one of them. He constantly
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: answers the phone, acts polite and says, oh, I'm so sorry, detective.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I got held up. See you next week. And he never,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: ever shows.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Just unbelievable.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Now, let me push back on you again here as
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: our expert. Defense attorneys and a lot of legal experts
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: really tell their clients to never, ever take a polygraph,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: innocent or guilty, because they are essentially pseudoscience. They measure stress,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: not truth.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Couldn't Wynn's avoidance just be a guy exercising his basic
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: legal rights rather than a definitive consciousness of guilt?
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: You make a very valid legal point. Polygraphs are largely
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: inadmissible in court for exactly that reason. They are unreliable
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: barometers of truth. However... investigators don't use them to prove
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: legal guilt.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: What do they use them for, then?
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: They use them as psychological tools to gauge behavior. An
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: innocent person who claims to be a significant friend of
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: a missing, presumed dead man is typically desperate to clear
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: their name so the police can stop wasting time on
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: them and go find the real killer.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: And they want to help.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Right. They might bring a lawyer, but they usually engage.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Wynn's behavior, the endless rescheduling, the polite excuses, the chronic avoidance,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: it signals to law enforcement that he is terrified of
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: the controlled environment of an interrogation room. It confirms every
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: suspicion Tripp has.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: But as you said earlier, suspicion isn't probable cause. Tripp
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: is stuck. Since Wynn won't come into the box for
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a polygraph, Tripp has to find an alternative way to
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: tie him to Bob's disappearance.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: So what does he do?
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: He goes to a judge and manages to secure a
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: search warrant for Wynn's apartment. He is desperately hoping to
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: find a bloody shirt, a piece of the Thunderbird paperwork,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the murder weapon, anything.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: He hits Wynn with the warrant and Wynn acts completely outraged.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: He plays the victim perfectly. Like, what the hell are
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: you doing? I've been trying to help you guys. Typical.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: The forensic team combs the apartment for hours. They toss
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: the place. And they find absolutely nothing incriminating. No physical evidence.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: No blood. No paperwork.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Trip noted in his file that he was incredibly dejected.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: He was deflated. Bob has been gone for three months
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: at this point. The trail is freezing over. So Trip
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: retreats to his desk and pulls out Bob's phone records.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: He starts physically dialing every single telephone number that Bob
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: called in the month before he vanished.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Think about the sheer monotony of that task. Dialing number
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: after number, getting answering machines, getting wrong numbers. It is
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: the unglamorous reality of police work.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: But it pays off. He dials one number, and a
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: man answers. Tripp identifies himself and says, Did a man
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: named Bob Welt call you last month? The guy on
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the other end says, Never heard of him. And hangs
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: up the phone incredibly fast.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Oh. Wow.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Tripp noted that the guy sounded way too eager to
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: terminate the conversation. His instinct tells him something is off.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: So Tripp runs a reverse trace on the address tied
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: to that specific phone number.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: And where does it go?
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: It turns out to be an RV park. A sprawling,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: heavily wooded, isolated property about 60 miles south of Burien.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: And when Tripp looks up the property owner, who does
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: the RV park belong to?
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Mike Wynn's stepfather.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Boom. The invisible web suddenly materializes.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Tripp immediately drives the 60 miles down to this damp,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: dense Pacific Northwest wooded RV park. He doesn't find the stepfather,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: but he finds a woman living on the property named
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Sharon Young. Sharon is Mike Wynn's half-sister.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, another family connection.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Tripp sits down with her, and she is surprisingly candid.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: She confirms that Wynn is the black sheep of the family.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: She talks about his chronic dishonesty, his mooching, and then
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Tripp asks the golden question. Have you seen your brother lately?
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: And this is the moment the timeline completely shatters.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Yes. Sharon says, actually, I have. He showed up here
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: with an older friend in a really nice Mercedes. I
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: totally remember it because my brother is dead broke. He
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: doesn't have friends with expensive Mercedes.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Tripp pulls out a photograph of Bob Wells. Sharon looks
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: at it and says, yes, absolutely. That's the guy. She
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: tells Tripp that Mike told her they were down in
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the area to look at a Thunderbird a friend of
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: his was selling.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Tripp must have felt his heart stop. He asks her
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: for the date.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Sharon checks a personal log she keeps at the park.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: She points to the date. February 23rd.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Let's unpack the staggering magnitude of this revelation. Mike Wynn
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: had explicitly, on the record, told Detective Tripp that the
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: last time he saw Bob Well was when they had
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: a friendly dinner together on February 20th. Right. But now,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Wynn's own flesh and blood, his half-sister, places Wynn and
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Bob together inside Bob's car at a remote, heavily wooded location,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: actively looking for the Phantom Thunderbird three full days later.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: On February 23rd.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: It completely destroys Wynn's alibi.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: It proves he was the absolute last person to see
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Bob alive. It proves he lied about the car transaction.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: It proves he lured Bob out into the isolated woods.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: It is the smoking gun.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: It is the smoking gun for deception, yes. But legally,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I have to be the bearer of bad news again,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: it still does not prove murder.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: That is insane to me.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, how can you have a suspect caught in
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: a massive lie... about being the last person with a
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: missing man in the woods and not arrest him.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: It comes back to the burden of proof. Tripp knows
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Wynn is deeply involved, but confronting him about this specific
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: lie right now would just trigger the lawyer protocol.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Because they still have no body.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They still have no body. They have no blood.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: They have no crime scene. It is entirely circumstantial. Imagine
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: bringing this to court. A competent defense attorney would just
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: smile at the jury and say, Yes, my client lied
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: to the police. He was scared.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Right. He panicked. Right.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: He's a guy with a bad track record who panicked
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: when his friend went missing. But lying isn't murder. Bob
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: dropped my client off, drove away from that RV park,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: and met with foul play somewhere else. Without the physical
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: anchor of a body, reasonable doubt is a massive gaping
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: hole in the prosecution's case.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: So despite all of this exhaustive work, despite the sister's testimony...
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: despite the forensically wiped car, despite the five skipped polygraphs,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: despite the blatant lies about the Thunderbird, the legal system
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: forces Tripp to stop.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: It's brutal.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: He has to stamp the file and designate the case
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: as inactive.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Which is an important procedural distinction to clarify. Inactive doesn't
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: mean closed. It doesn't mean forgotten. It means the investigation
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: is put on the back burner pending new, actionable, physical information.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: But for a grieving family? That procedural nuance means absolutely nothing.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: For them, it is a devastating, soul-crushing blow.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Tripp has to make the hardest phone call of his career.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: He calls Rebecca. He explains the legal reasons. He tries
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: to comfort her, telling her that cold cases get reopened
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: all the time when suspects eventually run their mouths to
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the wrong person.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Which is true, but it doesn't help in the moment.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: No. Rebecca is furious. She has been living in a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: waking nightmare for months. She knows... deep in her bones
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: that Mike Wynn was the last person with her dad.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: She knows he's lying.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: The emotional toll here is immense. When the justice system
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: tells a victim's family that their hands are tied, the
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: family often acts out of pure grief and desperation. They
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: try to force a resolution.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: And it leads to a very dramatic, highly risky moment.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Early one morning, Rebecca makes an impulsive decision. She bypasses
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the police entirely. She picks up the phone. and dials
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Mike Wynn's number directly.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, man, that is risky.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: She is hoping that if she catches him completely off guard,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: if she appeals to his humanity, he might slip up
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: and reveal something. She calmly asks him to tell her
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: more about her dad's final days.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: And Wynn's response is incredibly psychopathically cold.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: He answers the phone, sighs, and says, Look, I've already
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: told you and the police everything I know. Honestly, your
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: father was a bit of a lonely pest. I only
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: hung out with him because I felt sorry for the guy.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Listen to the absolute audacity of that statement.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: A lonely pest.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Belittling the murder victim to the victim's grieving daughter. It
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: is a classic narcissist move. Devaluing the victim to elevate himself.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Rebecca just completely loses it. The polite facade shatters. She
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: drops all pretense. She screams into the phone, you and
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I both know you killed my father. I'm not asking
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: you to confess to the police. I just want to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: know where his remains are so I can bring him home.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Just begging for anything.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Have someone call in a tip anonymously. Because you didn't
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: just kill my father, Mike. You killed off an entire family.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: It is a powerful, visceral human plea. But we have
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: to analyze how a suspect like Wynn processes this kind
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: of emotional confrontation. Suspects who fit this psychological profile, narcissistic
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: con men, rarely, if ever, take this kind of emotional bait.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Why not?
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: They do not experience empathy the way we do. They
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: view every human interaction as a zero-sum game of dominance
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: and control. Admitting anything, even anonymously, yields control to Rebecca.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Their need for self-preservation always, always overrides human empathy.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And Wynn proves your psychological profile perfectly. He doesn't break.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: He doesn't cry. He just coldly replies, well, I didn't
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: do anything, and hangs up the phone.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: He didn't care at all.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: He doesn't bite. Rebecca immediately calls Detective Tripp and confesses
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: what she did. Tripp has to scold her gently. He
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: tells her, Rebecca, you cannot interfere with an active suspect.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: You could compromise a future trial.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: He's right, but you understand why she did it.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: He understands her pain. She cries and tells him, I
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: had to let it out. The silence was killing me.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: It's a tragic stalemate. And unfortunately, that agonizing stalemate lasts
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: for years.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Eight long months pass. Nothing. In January of 1997, Earl
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Tripp retires after 25 years on the force. He packs
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: up his desk. In the documentary, he says his only
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: major regret in his entire career was leaving the Bob
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Well murder book unsolved. He felt it was a mark
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: against his professional reputation.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: For a dedicated old school investigator, a cold case isn't
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: just paperwork. It is a heavy psychological burden you carry
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: with you into retirement.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: The case gathers dust for two solid years. But then
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the murder book lands on the desks of two relentless,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: highly experienced cold case investigators, Detective John Holland and Detective
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Sue Peters.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about these two because they bring a totally different,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: highly aggressive energy to the investigation.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: They really do.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: John Holland comes from a massive family of cops. He
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: has uncles on police motorcycles, uncles on horses, uncles in
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: squad cars. He slogged in the patrol trenches for 10
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: hard years just to earn a spot in major crimes.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: He was handed this cold case just three months into
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: his new job as a homicide detective.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: His sergeant essentially dropped the dusty binder on his desk
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: and told him, review this case, which Holland knew was
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: police speak for solve this case and prove you belong here.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: And he immediately brings in Detective Sue Peters. She also
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: has police work in her DNA. Her grandmother was actually
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: a deputy sheriff, which was rare for her era. Very rare.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Peters has been on the force for 29 years. She
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: has worked patrol. She has worked deep undercover. She's worked homicide.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: But her defining trait as an investigator is that she
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: views cases as complex, multidimensional puzzles. The harder the case,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: the more obscured the truth, the more intrigued she is.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: These two crack open the 1996 murder book. They read
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: through Earl Tripp's immaculate, highly detailed notes. They see the
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: timeline discrepancy. They see Wynn's skipped polygraphs. They see the
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: sister's testimony.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: All of it.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: And they make a crucial decision. They are going to
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: start from scratch. They are going to re-interview every single
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: person in the file, moving very carefully so they don't
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: spook Mike Wynn, who is still out there living his life.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: And their first target for re-interview is strategically brilliant. They
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: go to the apartment Wynn had shared with his girlfriend,
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Wendy Allen.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: They knock on the door. Wendy answers. They introduce themselves
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: and ask if she is still dating Mike Wynn. And
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Wendy's response is basically, God no, good riddance.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Love that.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: She tells them they broke up two years ago, right
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: around the time the initial investigation stalled out. She is
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: thrilled he is out of her life. She paints a
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: picture of Wynn that confirms everything the detective suspected. She
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: says he was a total deadbeat. He lived off her
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: paycheck for over a year. He was exceptionally lazy, refused
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: to get a job, and just sat on his ass
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: watching television all day while she worked.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: And when a bitter-resemble ex-partner starts talking to homicide detectives,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: you listen very, very closely. They no longer have any
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: reason to protect the suspect.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Wendy is venting, just complaining about what a loser he was.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: And she drops a casual remark that completely changes the
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: history of the King County Sheriff's Department.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: The big reveal.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: She says, and then, of course, the absolute nerve of
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: the guy. When we broke up, he took back the
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: one decent thing he ever gave me.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: The detectives pause. They ask, what was that? Wendy. And
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Wendy rolls her eyes and says, He gave me a beautiful,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: massive diamond pendant, and he took it with him when
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: he left.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: And the alarm bells ring.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: It's deafening. A broke, chronically unemployed deadbeat who mooches off everyone,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: who can't even pay rent, suddenly has a massive, beautiful
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: diamond pendant to casually gift to his girlfriend.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: This right here is the foundational flaw of the con
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: man's psychology. Holland and Peters knew exactly where that diamond
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: came from.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Where did it come from?
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: He came off the cold, dead hand of Bob Well.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Wynn murdered him, likely to steal the cash Bob brought
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: for the Thunderbird, but he simply couldn't resist taking the
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: most valuable, flashy item on the body.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I thought of it like this. Like, that diamond is
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: like a radioactive tracer in a medical scan. You know
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: how before an MRI they inject you with a radioactive
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: dye so they can see the invisible blood vessels lighting
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: up on the screen?
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: The diamond is the tracer. Wynn killed Bob in the
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: damp woods. He left no DNA. He wiped the Mercedes
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: clean of all fingerprints. The crime itself was invisible to
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: the forensic eye. But because he was greedy, because he
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: was vain, because he couldn't resist prying that massive diamond
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: off Bob's finger, he essentially attached a radioactive beacon to himself.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: The diamond illuminates his otherwise invisible path.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy. And it highlights his supreme arrogance.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Because look, a smarter, more disciplined criminal would have taken
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: that highly identifiable ring and thrown it straight into the
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: deepest part of the Puget Sound.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Right, get rid of.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: But a narcissist views it differently. He views it as
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: a trophy of his kill and as liquid currency he
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: can use to impress a girlfriend.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: So Holland and Peters rush back down to the RV
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: park to talk to Wynn's half-sister, Sharon, again. And they
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: ask her, did you ever know Mike to own a large,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: valuable diamond? Right. She says, no, absolutely not. She's never
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: heard of that. Which makes sense. Yeah, he would keep
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: stolen property a secret from the family who knew he
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: was broke. So, but the detectives, they know human nature, right?
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: They know that if Wynn is a broke drifter, eventually,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: eventually he is going to get desperate enough for cash
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: that he will have to pawn or sell that stone.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: It shifts the entire nature of the investigation. It goes
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: from a psychological waiting game into a highly tangible literal
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: treasure hunt for a specific piece of jewelry that across
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: state lines.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: The abstract search for a killer becomes a hunt for
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: a rock. Detectives call Rebecca, Bob's daughter, out in Illinois.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: They tell her they need a pristine, exact description of
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: the ring so they can track it through pawn databases.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: And remember the technological limitations here. They don't have a
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: high resolution smartphone photograph of the ring. They only have
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: the flawed emotional memory of the people who loved Bob.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Rebecca sits down with a police sketch artist for two
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: grueling hours. She relies purely on her memory, but as
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: she tells the documentary, everybody knew that ring. It was
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Bob's absolute pride and joy. She describes it perfectly to
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the artist. A European-cut diamond, roughly 1.5 carats, with specific, tiny,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: microscopic nicks and abrasions on the girdle of the stone
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: from everyday wear and tear under the hoods of metal cars.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: That is incredible. A two-hour sketch session. yielding a highly
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: specific gemological profile based entirely on a daughter's memory of
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: her father's hand.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Armed with this sketch, the detectives start pulling pawn shop records. Now,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: explain how this worked in the late 90s, because it
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't just a simple Google search.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was incredibly tedious. Law enforcement relies on pawn
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: shop databases because pawn brokers are legally required to record
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: the name, driver's license, and address of anyone pawning an
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: item to combat fencing stolen goods. Right. But In the
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: late 90s, these databases were often fragmented by state or county.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Holland and Peters had to cast a massive nationwide net,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: sending requests to jurisdictions all over the country waiting for
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: faxes to come back.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: And their net catches a fish. They find out that
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Mike Wynn has been actively pawning items. But he hasn't
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: pawned the diamond. He's pawning tools, electronics, junk.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: However, those pawn tickets give the detectives something just as
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: valuable as the diamond. a current location.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Ah, right.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: They track the driver's license on the pawn tickets to
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: a tiny town called Honeygrove, Texas.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: He's living an hour and a half outside of Dallas.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: He's working part-time at a local construction company. He is
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: still flat broke. But months go by, the detectives are
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: monitoring him, and there is no sign of the diamonds
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: surfacing in the Texas pawn shops. It's looking like the
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: trail might freeze over yet again.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Until the phone rings in the King County Sheriff's Office.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Detective Sue Peters picks it up. It's Sharon, Wynn's half-sister
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: from the RV park. She says, Detective, I just got
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: back from a big family reunion down in Texas. Mike
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: was there. And while he was acting really sketchy, he
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: was trying to sell my Aunt Kathy a really big diamond.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: The radioactive tracer just lit up on the monitor in
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: bright red.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Holland and Peters drop everything. Because this is way out
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: of their jurisdiction in Washington, they immediately fly to Texas
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and team up with a local Texas ranger. The three
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: of them drive straight to Aunt Kathy's house in Honeygrove.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: What a moment.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: The ranger knocks on the door and introduces the Seattle detectives.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Aunt Kathy is visibly nervous. She asks if Mike is
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: in some kind of trouble, if he did something bad.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: The detectives gently ask her about the diamond. And she says, well,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I did buy a loose diamond from Mike. I don't
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: know much about fancy jewelry. He just said he needed cash.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: And she walks into the back room and she hands
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: it over to the detectives.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Holland and Peters can hardly believe it. After years of searching,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: after hitting dead end after dead end, they are physically
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: holding the anchor of the case in their hands. They
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: carefully lug it into an evidence bag. But before they
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: rush to the airport to fly back to Washington to
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: have it analyzed, the Texas Ranger looks at them and
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: suggests a brilliant tactical detour.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: I love this part.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: He says, hey. Mike Wynn lives just down the road.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Let's go confront him right now, while we are in town,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: just to see what kind of lie he spins.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: This is masterful police work. Catch him completely off guard,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: in his new environment, completely unaware that they have just
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: spoken to his aunt and secured the stone.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: They pull up to the construction site where Wynn is working.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: They introduce themselves. King County Sheriff's Office, Homicide Division. Wynn's
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: face drops. They say... Hey Mike, we just had a
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: lovely chat with your Aunt Kathy. She gave us the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: massive diamond you sold her for cash.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: You can almost hear the internal klaxons going off in
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: his head. The panic must have been absolute.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: But his outward response, the lie he invents on the spot,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: is staggeringly absurd. Wynn looks at the detectives, barely misses
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: a beat, and says, Oh yeah, that diamond. I found
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: that diamond.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Found it.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: The detectives, look at each other and ask, Where exactly
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: did you find a loose 1.5 carat diamond, Mike? And
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Wynn replies, I found it at the Berrien Park and
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Ride commuter lot. Just lying on the ground.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: This is the moment you have to just sit back,
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: and marvel at the foundational flaw of his psychology.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Let's dissect this. Out of anywhere in the entire world,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: out of any lie he could have possibly told, he
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: could have said he bought it at a flea market,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: or found it in a mall, or won it in
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: a poker game.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: Anything else.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: But he claims to have miraculously found a 1.5-carat loose
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: diamond lying in the dirt in the exact same suburban
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: commuter parking lot where he had abandoned the victim's wiped-down
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Mercedes years earlier.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: It reveals everything about his internal state. He knows the
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: detectives are investigating him for dumping Bob's car in that
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: specific lot. He knows his presence there is the missing link.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: So in a moment of panic, he tries to retroactively
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: explain why his DNA, his footprints, or his presence might
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: eventually be associated with that lot. Right. He thinks he's
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: being clever. He thinks he's covering his bases. But by
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: doing so, he anchors himself directly to the epicenter of
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: the post-murder cover-up. It shows his sheer, unadulterated arrogance. He
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: truly believed he was the smartest person in the room.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: He thought he could just invent a wildly improbable reality
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: and the cops would be forced to accept it.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: The detectives don't even argue with him. They just let
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: him spin his ridiculous web. They casually ask him to
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: come down to the local Texas police station for a
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: polygraph tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Wynn does his usual routine. Yeah, absolutely.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: 9 a.m. would be great. See you then. And of course,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: the next day, the waiting room is empty. He vanishes.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: He doesn't show up. And he refuses to return their calls.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: But Holland and Peters don't chase him. They don't need
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: to play the polygraph game anymore. They have the stone.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: They fly back to Seattle carrying the evidence bag like
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: it's the Holy Grail. They take the diamond directly to
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: a professional gemologist to compare it against Rebecca's two-hour memory sketch.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: And the results from the laboratory are undeniable.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: The gemologist confirms that it is, in fact, a vintage
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: European cut diamond. It weighs roughly 1.5 carats. But crucially,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: the laboratory report states that the girdle of the stone
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: is very, very beat up, featuring specific micro abrasions that
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: perfectly match Rebecca's description of her father's damaged, engine-battered ring.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: The detectives are ecstatic. They finally have physical evidence linking
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Mike Wynn directly to the physical body of Bob Wells.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: They take the slam-dunk evidence, put it in a pristine binder,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and march into the district attorney's office in November of 2000,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: fully expecting to file first-degree murder charges.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: And this is where the American legal system throws up
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: a massive, heartbreaking roadblock that almost kills the case for good.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: The DA sits down, looks at the gemology report, looks
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: at the timeline, looks at the file, and shakes his head.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: He says, yes, the ring matches. Yes, the guy is
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: a liar, but you don't have a body. Without a body,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: without a cause of death, We don't have a chance
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: in hell of winning this case in front of a jury.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: The DA officially refuses to prosecute.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: It is a crushing blow, but we have to look
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: at it from the DA's perspective. A prosecutor is looking
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: at the reality of a jury trial, where the burden
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Which is a high bar.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Right. A defense attorney would stand in front of that
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: jury and say, my client found a ring in a
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: parking lot. Is it a crazy coincidence? Yes. But is
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: it murder? No. Where is the body? Where is the blood?
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Bob Wells could have faked his own death and be
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: living on a beach in Mexico right now. The DA
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: felt that the absolute absence of a body created a
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: threshold of reasonable doubt that was simply too high to overcome.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: The case goes completely cold again. Holland and Peters are furious,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: but they are reassigned to active bleeding cases. But they
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: refuse to let Bob Wells go. They keep the murder
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: book on the corner of their desks. They spend every
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: spare moment looking for a way to nail Mike Wynn.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: And they come up with a strategy that is so
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: deeply patient. So psychologically agonizing, it is almost terrifying to contemplate.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: This is arguably the most fascinating part of the entire investigation.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: From 2004 to 2009, a grueling five-year span, Holland and
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Peters employ what we can call the strategy of patience.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Explain this mechanism to us, because to an outsider, it
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: seems completely counterintuitive. Instead of bringing Wynn into an interrogation
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: room and screaming at him, shining a light in his face,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: They just occasionally fly down to Texas whenever the department
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: budget allows for a flight, and they just have polite,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: casual conversations with him.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: Think of it like spooling out line to a running fish.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: If you set the hook and pull back with all
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: your strength immediately, the line snaps. The suspect gets a lawyer,
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: invokes the Fifth Amendment, and the talking stops forever.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: If you apply zero pressure, the fish swims away and
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: you get nothing. But if you apply low, calibrated, intermittent
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: pressure over the course of years... you weaponize his own
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: narcissism against him. They knew Wynn was a pathological liar.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: And the fatal flaw of pathological liars is that they
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: cannot keep track of their own inventions over long periods
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: of time.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Because it's too much to remember.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: The cognitive load is simply too high. Every time the
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: detectives visit him, Wynn tries to outsmart them. And every
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: time he tries to outsmart them, he spins a new thread.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Until he is completely, hopelessly tangled in his own web.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: I have to ask, isn't it incredibly risky to keep
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: engaging him over a five-year period? What if he slips up,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: realizes what they are doing, gets a lawyer and shuts
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: down completely?
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: It is a massive risk, but it's a calculated one
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: because they had absolutely nothing to lose. The DA had
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: already said no. The case was dead in the water.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: This psychological attrition was literally their only play.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: And it works beautifully. They record every single conversation they
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: have with him over those five years. And his story
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: about the origin of the diamond mutates wildly. First, he
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: told them he found it at the Burien Park and Ride.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Then in a later interview two years down the line,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: he forgets that lie and claims he actually bought the
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: diamond at a local estate sale in Seattle.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: He just can't keep it straight.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Then in yet another interview, he claims he bought the
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: diamond from his cousin for a few hundred bucks.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: And every single time he invents a new lie, Holland
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: and Peters take that tape, fly back to Seattle... meticulously
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: investigate the new claim and completely dismantle it.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: They literally track down the cousin. They find him, sit
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: him down, and ask, did you ever sell Mike Wynn
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: a piece of jewelry? The cousin laughs and says, I've
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: never owned a piece of nice jewelry in my entire life.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: They ask the cousin if Wynn ever owned any classic cars. No,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: he didn't even have a driver's license for half his life.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Incredible.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: It takes five grueling years of flights, recordings, and legwork
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: But one by one, Holland and Peters punch giant, verifiable,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: documented holes in every single syllable Mike Wynn utters.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the culmination of this epic investigation.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: By 2009, 13 years after Bob Wynn vanished, the dynamic
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: has fundamentally changed.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. The murder book isn't just a collection of circumstantial
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: evidence and a missing person report anymore. It is an
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: absolute encyclopedia of meticulously documented perjury. Holland and Peters take
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the case back to the district attorney. They drop the
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: recordings on the desk. They say, look at this. He
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: has lied about the car. He's lied about the timeline.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: He's lied about the diamond three different ways.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: They cornered him.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: And this time the D.A. agrees. The circumstantial web is
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: so tight it constitutes proof. Mike Wynn is finally arrested
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: and charged with first degree murder.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: The detectives finally get to construct a unified, cohesive narrative
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: of the crime for a jury. They have disproved all
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: of Wynn's alternate realities, leaving only one horrifying, logical truth.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: The prosecution lays it out for the jury and for us,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: the listener, and it is chilling. It started the day
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: the unemployed, flat-broke Mike Wynn noticed the generous guy at
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the 4 a.m. coffee shop who always paid for breakfast,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: who wore a massive diamond ring, and who carried a
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: thick wad of cash. Wynn targeted Bob. He studied him.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: He learned about Bob's passion for classic cars. So Wynn
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: casually mentioned to Bob that he had a buddy selling
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: a pristine 57 Thunderbird.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: He lured him using his deepest passion, his predatory grooming.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Bob didn't blink. He trusted the guys at the coffee shop.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: He handed Wynn a $ 1, 000 cash deposit to line up
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: the deal. But there was no Thunderbird. There never was.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Wynn was just stringing him along, putting him off week
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: after week, trying to figure out how to keep the
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: money without producing a car. But after two weeks, Bob,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: who is an old school, disciplined, highly principled guy, loses
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: his patience. He confronts Wynn. He demands the car or
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: his money back. He essentially tells Wynn, I'm not somebody
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: you can mess with.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: Bob was pushing back, asserting dominance, which forced a narcissist
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: like Wynn into a corner. Wynn couldn't pay him back
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: because he had likely already spent the cash.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: So Wynn says, OK, Bob, calm down. Let's go get
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: the car. Let's park down at my sister's trailer park.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Wynn lures Bob into his own comfort zone, the isolated,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: heavily wooded RV park 60 miles away. There are no witnesses.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: The trees are dense. Bob gets out of the Mercedes,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: looks around, and realizes there's no car. He demands his money.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: And right there in the wilderness, Mike Wynn murders him.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: He then dumps the body deep in the vast Pacific
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Northwest woods, a landscape he knows intimately from visiting his stepfather,
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: which is exactly why Bob's physical remains were never, ever found.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Wynn takes whatever cash Bob had in his wallet. He
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: physically pries the 1.5 carat diamond ring off Bob's lifeless hand.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: He gets into Bob's blue Mercedes, drives it back to
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: the Burien park and ride commuter lot, meticulously wipes the
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: entire interior clean of his fingerprints, and simply walks away
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: into the night. And just days later, he gifts that
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: stolen diamond to his girlfriend, playing the big shot.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: It is a brutal, senseless, intimate crime born of pure
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: greed and entitlement.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: The trial takes place in March and April of 2011,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: a full 15 years after Bob Well disappeared. It is
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: a grueling five-week trial, and the prosecutors systematically dismantle Mike
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Wynn in front of the jury, not with DNA, not
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: with a murder weapon. but with his own recorded voice.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: They play the tapes. The jury hears the Thunderbird lie.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: They hear the pathetic excuses for the missed polygraphs. They
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: hear the wavering, contradictory timeline. They hear the sisters' devastating testimony,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: placing them together at the RV park. And then the
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: prosecution presents the physical anchor. They hold up the beat-up, 1.5-carat,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: European-cut diamond.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: On April 5, 2011, the jury comes back. They deliver
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: the verdict. Guilty of first-degree murder.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: The judge sentences Mike Wynn to 20 years in prison.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: The reaction to the verdict is so telling about the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: different ways people process justice. Detective Peters said when she
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: heard the word guilty, she threw her arms all the
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: way up in the air in the courtroom and yelled, yes,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: we did it. They had spent over a decade chasing
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: this ghost, and they finally caught him. But for the family,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: for Rebecca, the reaction is much different, isn't it?
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: It is. We often talk about the concept of closure
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: in true crime, but closure is largely a media invention.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: There is no closure when someone you love is violently taken,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: murdered over a few thousand dollars, and their body discarded
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: like trash in the woods, never to be recovered. Rebecca
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: permanently lost her father. That wound does not close. What
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: she got that day in court was not closure, but
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: a profound sense of relief and a measure of justice
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: that the man who took him couldn't walk free.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Wynn truly thought he was going to beat the charges.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Right up until the foreman read the verdict, he genuinely
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: believed the police had nothing on him because they couldn't
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: produce a body.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: But that arrogance was always the architect of his ultimate demise.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: He thought he was the smartest guy in the room.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: And on that day, sitting in that courtroom, confronted by
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: the very detectives he thought he had successfully outsmarted for
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: 15 years, he realized, too late, that he wasn't.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to our final thought. As we wrap
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: up this deep dive, I want to return to that
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: radioactive tracer metaphor we talked about earlier. We started this
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: whole journey by asking you, the listener, how you solve
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: a murder with no body, no blood, and no crime scene.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: What does the tragic case of Bob Wells actually teach
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: us about the myth of the perfect crime?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: It teaches us that criminals fundamentally misunderstand what evidence actually is.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: They think it's just biology.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly. I want to leave you with this to mull over.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: We are completely conditioned by television and movies to think
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: of physical evidence as just biological matter. A stray fingerprint
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: on a glass, a hair follicle on a couch, a
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: microscopic drop of blood on a floorboard. But sometimes, the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: most damning, inescapable evidence a criminal leaves behind is the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: sheer volume of their own arrogance. What happens when a
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: piece of the earth, an indestructible, nicked-up, European-cut diamond simply
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: outlasts a killer's memory of his own lies? Science might
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: fail to find a fingerprint on a wiped-down steering wheel,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: but human nature, the unbridled ego of a con man,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: will eventually leave a stain that no amount of chemical
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: wiping can ever erase. Thank you so much for joining
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: us on this deep dive into truth, memory, and a
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: justice that was 15 years in the making. Catch you
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: next time.