Latest / Crime Night / The Amber Spradlin Case: Demanding Justice in Floyd County

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The Amber Spradlin Case: Demanding Justice in Floyd County · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So if you've ever taken your car to a mechanic
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: because the engine was smoking, you know, the gears are
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: grinding and the check engine line is just flashing red.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: On the dashboard, right, a total disaster.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And the mechanic comes out, slaps a piece
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: of black electrical tape right over the check engine light
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and says, well, there it's fixed, just.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Completely ignoring the smoke pouring out of the hood.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, you know that specific feeling of just utter disbelief.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: You're staring at the tape, You're staring at the smoke
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and realizing they aren't even trying to solve the problem.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: They just want you to stop looking at the warning signs.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Which is terrifying when you apply that to real life.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And look, if you've ever felt like the systems
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: that are literally designed to protect you operate exactly like
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: that terrible mechanic, then you really need to hear this.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: It is a really unsettling realization to arrive at, because
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: you know, we all generally operate under this shared social contract,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: right like, when the worst possible thing happens, the authorities
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: are going to step in secure the scene. Look at
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: the physical evidence objectively and piece together the truth.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: That's the expectation exactly.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: But in the case files we're diving into today, as
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: an investigator, I'm looking at four distinct true crime investigations
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: from across the country, and the geography shifts from eastern
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Kentucky to Arizona up to Massachusetts, and.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: The details of these crimes very.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Wildly, wildly, but they all share this very distinct, very
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: chilling commonality. We are looking at massive bureaucratic inertia and
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: systemic codes of silence that actively try to basically sweep
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: physical reality under the rug.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the mission for our deep dive today is
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: to really explore what actually happens when the official story
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: completely contradicts the physical.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Evidence, and maybe more importantly, why relentless public pressure, like
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: a massive amount of friction is sometimes the absolute only
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: path to forcing a system to just do its job right.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: So, to start, we're looking at a case out of Prestonsburg, Kentucky.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: This is the murder of thirty eight year old called
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Amber Spradlin. And this is a situation where the official
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: narrative requires, frankly, an active denial of reality.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Amber's story is just deeply tragic. She had faced
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: some really significant hardships early in life, lost her immediate family,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: but by June of twenty twenty three, she was really
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: finally finding her footing. She had her own place, right, yeah,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: her own place, a new job at a local restaurant,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and she was putting herself out there. So one night
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: she attends this small gathering at the home of doctor
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Michael McKinney the second.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Who is a very prominent, wealthy local dentist in Prestonsburg, right.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And he also happens to own the restaurant where Amber worked.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, so to set the scene for you, there were
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: only six people at this house overnight and the next
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: morning Amber is found dead on.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: The couch, and as a criminal investigator looking at the scene,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: it is horrific.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It's brutal.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: She suffered a sustained attack. The medical examiner found twelve
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: distinct stab wounds to her face, her neck, her head,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: her torso the killer used such extreme violent force that
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: the metal blade of the knife actually broke off and
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: was lodged inside her neck, which is just unimaginable force,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: it really is, and the handle of the knife was
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: completely missing from the scene. They couldn't find it. Meanwhile,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: another man who had been at the house, a guy
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: named Roy, is found covered in his own blood.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And he later fails a polygraph test on all the
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: major questions about the murder.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, he fails it entirely. So it is a chaotic,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: extremely violent crime scene. But the response from the local
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: authorities is what just brings this entire investigation to a
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: grinding halt.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Because doctor Michael McKinney made a phone call.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: He did. He called the local police chief, a man
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: named Randy Woods, and that phone call lasted for eight minutes,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: eight minutes, eight minutes, and it occurred before anyone inside
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: that house ever dialed nine to one one for an
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: ambulance or for police dispatch.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Let that sink in. But the response from Chief Woods
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is the part that defies all logic. When Amber's family
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: desperately tried to find out what happened to her, Chief Woods,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: who by the way, wasn't even the primary investigator on
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the case, allegedly told a family friend that everyone just
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: needed to settle down.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, settle down.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: According to the sources, he claimed Amber wasn't murdered at all.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: He told them she died of aspiration, which basically means
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: she just choked on food or liquid in.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Her sleep, which completely ignores the literal broken knife blade
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: lodged in her neck, right, the missing handle, the defensive wounds.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, calling a brutal stabbing with a broken weapon
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: aspiration isn't just a simple mistake.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: No, It's like standing in a completely flooded basement and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: telling the homeowner they just spilled a glass of water.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: It requires an active, intentional denial of physical reality.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: It does, and you have to ask, how does an
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: investigative system just accept that initial.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Premise, especially considering the McKinney house had security cameras pointing
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: directly the living room couch where Amber was killed.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: But conveniently, by the time investigators began processing the scene,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: the cameras, the digital recording divine, the hard drive, all
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: of it was simply gone missing entirely.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: The system stalled out because, well, the easiest path for
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a small town department dealing with a prominent, wealthy citizen
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: is often just the path of least resistance.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Right, And if you look at the timeline, the dentist's
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: son MK left the house during a highly critical window
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: that morning. In fact, he called nine one one at
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: six am to request that the bloody man Roy be
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: taken to the drunk tank.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And that call happened hours before anyone officially reported Amber's body.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. MK also had these unexplained scratches running all the
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: way down his arms, but for months no arrests were made.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: The narrative was just frozen.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: But the community refused to let it stay frozen. Amber's
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: family and friends, they refused to accept that black tape
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: over the check engine light. They organized vigils, they rented billboards,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: protested outside official buildings.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: And it was that continuous loud friction that kept the
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: pressure on while the State Crime Lab slowly finally processed
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: the physical evidence.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Which is the crucial turning point because eight months later
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the lab results came back and they found ystr DNA
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: under Amber's fingernail. Yes, okay, stop right there, because I
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: want to make sure we understand the mechanics of this.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Why is ystr DNA so important here as opposed to just,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you know, a standard DNA test. There were multiple men
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: in that house.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Right, how does this specific test break the case open? Yeah, exactly,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: it's a really great question. So standard DNA profiling looks
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: at a mix of genetic material, but y STR testing
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: specifically isolates the Y chromosome, which is only passed down
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: from mail to mail, so from father to son.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, yeah.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: It completely strips away any female DNA like Amber's own DNA,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: which might totally crowd the sample. It allows forensic scientists
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: to pinpoint a specific male family.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Lineage, so in this case, the YSTR DNA under Amber's
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: nails match the McKinney paternal line exactly.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And since MK was the only McKinney with fresh scratches
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: down his arms who fled the scene early that morning,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: the physical evidence finally overpowered the bureaucratic silence.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: MK was indicted for her murder and his father was
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: actually indicted for tampering with those missing security cameras, which
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: is huge. It is The family's relentless pushback even sparked
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a movement for Amber's Law, which aims to secure funding
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: for heavily backlog state crime labs. So you know, families
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: don't have to wait eight excruciating months just to prove
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: a murder actually happened, right.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: It proves that when the narrative is completely absurd, you
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: have to force the system to look at the science.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: But you know that brings us to a totally different
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: kind of failure. What happens when the official narrative isn't
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: just absurd but actively ignores blinding contradictions that are right
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: in front of the investigators.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that transition takes us to Gilbert Arizona and
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the case of forty year old Nick Cordova.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: So, if Amber's case was about a small town system
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: protecting a prominent citizen, Nick's case is about investigators just
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: accepting the easiest possible story, regardless of the glaring holes
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: in it.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Right, and Nick's murder is this absolute nightmare scenario that
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: was captured in real time picture this It's May of
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Nick is working late at his HVAC business,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Gilbert Air. He's sitting at his desk and he's on
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: a FaceTime video call with his wife, Alicia, and their
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: young children.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: A totally normal evening.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Completely normal, and suddenly Alicia hears this massive commotion on
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the other end of the line. She hears her husband
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: screaming for help. He's clearly being attacked. She immediately rushes
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: to the business, but by the time she gets there,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Nick has been shot execution style.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: And the only other person there at the scene is
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Nick's business partner, Dave Sweetman, right, and Dave tells the
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: responding officers a very specific, neat story. He claims two
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: unknown men in green shirts and face masks stormed into
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: the business.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: To rob them mister random robbery.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Right. Dave says the men pointed a gun at him,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: so he surrendered his wallet and literally emptied his pockets,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: giving the robbers all his money. He claims the masked
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: men then knocked him unconscious, executed Nick, and fled the scene.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: But the moment you look at the physical evidence, Dave's
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: entire narrative just fractures. While an officer is patting Dave
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: down at the scene, like just moments after he claimed
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: he gave the armed robbers every single cent he had,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the officer finds over one thousand dollars in cash tucked
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: away in Dave's front pocket.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Over a grand just sitting there.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Wait, I need to understand this. If the police physically
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: pull one thousand dollars in cash out of a man's
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: pocket right after he explicitly stated the robbers took all
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: his money, how do they legally justify clearing him as
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: a suspect. Do they just ignore the cash?
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Well, it really comes down to something we call investigative
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: tunnel vision. Okay, when police arrive at a chaotic, bloody
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: scene and a witness hands them this neat, tied up
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: narrative like oh, masked robbers did it, it creates an
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: anchor in the investigator's mind.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: So they just lock onto that story exactly.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Investigators often subconsciously look for evidence that confirms that anchor
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: rather than evidence that challenges it. So a glaring contradiction
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: like a thousand dollars in a pocket is written off
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: as Oh, the witness is just confused or he's in shock,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: rather than a blatant sign of deception.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Wow, but the contradictions just keep piling up. Alicia actually
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: had to fight a brutal legal battle just to get
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: access to the business's surveillance footage.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And when she finally saw it.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: When she finally saw it, it showed Dave walking right up
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: to the front door and deliberately peeking through the closed
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: blinds mere moments before the killers pulled up in their truck.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Right, And as an investigator, I can tell you don't
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: just peek through the blinds unless you are anticipating someone's arrival, and.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Then you have the motive, which is astronomical. In the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: months leading up to the murder, Nick had discovered that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Dave was draining tens of thousands of dollars from their
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: company accounts. Nick was terrified he was He had confided
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: in his wife that he felt he was being followed.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: He even expressed this very specific fear that Dave might
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: hire someone to kill him.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Why because Dave had convinced Nick to take out massive
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: key Man life insurance policies on each other.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: With combined payout of eight million dollars eight million. A
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: partner draining the company funds an eight million dollar insurance motive,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: a blatant lie about the stolen cash, the crime scene,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and video footage of him checking the blinds right before
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: the hit men arise.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: It's all right there.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Yet the police reviewed the footage, saw the two masked
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: men enter, and seemingly concluded that Dave's robbery story was
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: just good enough they cleared him. The case remains completely
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: unsolved today. While Dave received an undisclosed insurance payout and
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: literally moved on to start a new business.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It really highlights the danger of a system just accepting
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: the surface level story. But you know what if a
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: system doesn't actively ignore the truth, what if they just
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: lose it entirely through sheer blinding incompetence. Because sometimes the
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: failure isn't a malicious cover up, it's a catastrophic lack
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: of basic protocol. And that brings us to another case
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: located in that exact same town of Gilbert, Arizona.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Right, the case of nineteen year old Rachel Hanson. And look,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: if you're listening to this and wondering how an investigation
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: can completely derail before it even really begins, this case
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: is an absolute masterclass in lost evidence.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: It really is. So. Rachel was shot in her apartment
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: in June of twenty twenty two, and the suspect pool
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: surrounding her death is incredibly chaotic.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: It's a mess.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Right. You have a sub letter named America who was
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: allegedly using the apartment to traffic drugs. You have the
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: wealthy owners of a local horse ranch who had recently
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: fired Rachel and were literally holding her beloved horse dash
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: for ransom over unpaid boarding fees.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: And you also have a figure known in the files
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: as scary Gary. Yeah, this is the very erratic father
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of Rachel's fiance. Gary had a documented history of threatening Rachel,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: including a specific threat to shoot her in the head.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: And on the night she was murdered, Gary called his son,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Rachel's fiance and told him to leave Rachel's apartment immediately.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: And what was his excuse for that?
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Gary later told investigators that the Holy Spirit had instructed
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: him to make that call, which conveniently saved his son's
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: life while leaving Rachel completely lone and vulnerable when the
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: killer actually arrived.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is a massive, tangled web of potential suspects,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: but the most crucial detail of this entire case actually
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: occurred the night before the murder.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: This is the part that just blows my mind.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Rachel was asleep in her apartment when she woke up
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: to find an unknown intruder standing right over her bed.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: She screamed and the intruder panicked and fled the apartment.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: But in their rush to escape, they inexplicably left an
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: item sitting right there on the kitchen counter.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: An unopen jar of kusher dill pickles.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, and this jar of pickles is not a minor
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: detail not at all.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Look in a case where the crime scene yields almost
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: zero physical evidence regarding the shooter, an abandoned item brought
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: into the home by an intruder the night before is
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: a forensic gold mine.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Let's break down exactly why that is. Because a casual
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: observer might just see a random grocery item. But what
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: does a forensic investigator see when they look at that
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: glass jar?
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, they see a perfect canvas for identification. Think about
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: the physical properties of a glass jar. Glass is non porous,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: making it an ideal surface for capturing and retaining latent fingerprints.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Right now, Sometimes cold condensation from a refrigerator can degrade
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: a print on the glass itself. But you also have
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: the metal lidges exactly. The ridges on a metal lid
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: are designed to create friction for your hand. Gripping it
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: or trying to twist it open is almost guaranteed to
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: leave behind touch DNA in those grooves.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, that jar has a barcode, Investigators can scan it,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: identify the exact batch, trace it to a specific local
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: grocery store, pull the receipt data, and then pull the
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: store's CCTV footage to see exactly who purchased that specific
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: jar in the days prior.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: It is a direct, undeniable map to the intruder, and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Rachel's mother even saw the jar sitting on the counter
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: the next day when she visited the apartment. She intentionally
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: left it exactly where it was, assuming the police crime
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: scene technicians would obviously process it. But when the police
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: files were finally released to the family heavily redacted, of course,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: there was absolutely no mention of the jar. When Rachel's
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: mother confronted the department, they looked at her and claimed
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: they quote never saw pickle jar.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: They lost it.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: They completely lost it, which.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Forces us to confront a very difficult reality regarding institutional trust.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Whether the police lost that critical piece of evidence due
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: to a lack of resources, terrible training, or simple wilful ignorance.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: The ultimate result for Rachel's family is identical to a
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: deliberate cover up, because.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: The incompetence robbed them of the one physical link to
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: her killer exactly.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: But as devastating as that incompetence is, our final case
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: file demonstrates what happens when the failure isn't just a
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: mistake or laziness or tunnel vision.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Right, we are moving to Massachusetts to the case of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: twenty three year old Sander Birgmore. And this case is
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: about a systemic rot that went all the way down
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: to the foundation of a police department and the truly
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: incredible ledal maneuver it took to bypass it.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: So. Sandra Birchmore was found dead in her apartment in Canton, Massachusetts,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one. She was two and a half
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: months pregnant. She was discovered with a Duffel bag strap
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: wrapped around her neck, and almost immediately local authorities and
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: But a neighboring police chief in Stoughton, Massachusetts, Chief Donna McNamara,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: began hearing some very disturbing rumors about one of her
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: own officers, a man named Matthew Farwell. Chief McNamara launches
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: an internal affairs investigation, and what she uncovers is horrific.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Sandra had been enrolled in the Police Explorers program, which
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: basically operates like a junior police academy, since she was
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: just thirteen years old.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: And the investigation revealed she had been systematically groomed and
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: sexually abused by multiple officers, primarily Matthew Farwell for years.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Chief McNamara's findings showed that the Explorers program was essentially
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: being used as a hunting Farwell's twin brother and a
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: former deputy chief were also implicated.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: But the true story of institutional failure begins when the
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: State Police are brought in to investigate the death. The
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: State Police gained access to Sandra's.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Laptop and they read through thousands of saved text messages
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: between Sandra and Farwell.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Thousands messages where Farwell explicitly acknowledges taking her virginity when
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: she was underage, Messages where he vividly details his violent
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: sexual fantasies about choking her.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And this is the part that is just so hard
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: to process. State police read a digital trail of statutory
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: rape and violent fantasies, and at the end of their
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: official report they conclude there was quote no criminal conduct.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: They claimed there were no direct threats of harm.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I mean they investigated their own profession and effectively cleared it.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: And when Chief McNamara took her massive binder of evidence
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: detailing the statutory rape and handed it over to the
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: local district attorney, the DA declined to press charges.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: If you're listening to this and wondering how a district
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: attorney can look at an entire hard drive full of
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: explicit confessions to statutory rape and just decide not to prosecute, Like,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: how does a prosecutor legally justify walking away from that?
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: What is the mechanism there?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: It comes down to a very real, very frustrating legal
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: hurdle involving the sixth Amendment, the confrontation Clause. The Constitution
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: guarantees the accused the right to face their accuser in court.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: The DA's office argued that because the primary witness, Andrew,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: was dead, any statement she made or texts she saved,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: would be classified as hearsay by a defense attorney because
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: she obviously could not be cross examined on the stand.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: So the DA just throws their hands up because the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: victor is dead, completely ignoring the incredibly high probability that
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: she is dead because Farewell killed her to silence her
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: about the pregnancy. Exactly, It's a closed loop. The system
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: investigates itself, finds a loophole, and protects its own. It's
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: like a student grading their own final examine pen. The
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: structure itself guarantees a pre score regardless of what actually happened.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: It's exactly like that, and in most situations throughout history,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: that is exactly where the story would end. The officers
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: would quietly resign, the DA would cite legal complexities, and
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the case would be buried forever.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: But Sandra's family refused to let the silence hold. They
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: filed a massive wrongful death lawsuit. Chief McNamara stepped in
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: front of the cameras and held a scathing press conference,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: publicly exposing the officers in her own department.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: That intense public friction finally forced the gears of a
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: much larger machine to engage. The FBI stepped in, and.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: The strategy the FBI used is brilliant. They look at
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the local authorities refusing to touch a murder charge against
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a police officer, and they realized they have to bypass
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the state entirely.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: They systematically dismantled the official narrative of suicide. First, they
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: brought in an outside independent medical expert, doctor William Smock,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: who specializes in assixiation and strangulation. Okay, he reviewed the
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: autopsy reports and focused heavily on a time any fragile
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: bone high up in the neck, called the hyoid bone.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Why is the high odebone the key to proving murder
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: versus suicide.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Here because of the physics of pressure. In a typical hanging,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: the pressure from the ligature is generally forced upward, pushing
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: up under the jawline. But doctor Smock demonstrated that the
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: fracture in Sandra's hyghoid bone was completely inconsistent with that
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: upward angle. Yes, the bone was fractured in a way
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: that proved it was subjected to direct horizontal compression. Someone
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: had to have their hands around her neck squeezing inward.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: He proved to a medical certainty that it was manual strangulation.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: But proving she was strangled is only half the battle, right,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: They still had to place Farwell in the room at
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the exact time of death, and.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: They didn't do it with eyewitnesses. They did it with
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Sandra's phone, specifically the Apple Health app.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: The digital forensics in this case are just astounding. The
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Apple Health app doesn't just count your daily steps. It
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: logs micro movements, changes in elevation, and precise timestamps of
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: physic activity.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly detailed.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: The FBI extracted that data and found that Sandra's phone
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: recorded her final physical movements at exactly nine four zero pm,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: and just.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Three minutes later, at nine point four to three pm,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: the building's surveillance cameras captured Matthew Farwell exiting the building.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: The data scientifically proved he was standing in the room
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: when she took her last breath. And because the local
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: DA refused to prosecute, the FBI utilized this profound legal maneuver.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: They didn't charge him with state level murder.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: No, they charged him with a federal crime, killing a witness.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: It carries the death penalty, and it completely circumvents the
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: local systems that tried to protect him.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: If we step back and look at the totality of
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: these case files, the lesson is incredibly stark. Justice is
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: not a passive automatic machine. It requires tremendous friction.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, when police chiefs lie about stab wounds, or when
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: investigators lose forensic gold mines like a pickle jar, or
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: when district attorneys looked for loopholes to protect officers, it
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: is only the loud, relentless voices of families, ethical insiders,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: and independent advocates that force the truth into the light.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: That brings up a deeply profound thought for you to
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: ponder as we close out this analysis. In every single
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: one of these investigations, the human systems failed the people
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: trusted to objective truth just look the other way.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: It put the tape over the check engine light exactly.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: But what ultimately caught the perpetrators, or at least exposed
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the lies wasn't a sudden burst of human morality. It
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: was our digital footprints.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: It was Sandra Birchmore's Apple Health app silently logging her
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: final steps.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: It was Alicia's FaceTime call capturing the audio of Nick's
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: final moments. It was a security cameras recording a man
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: checking the blinds, or a suspect fleeing a dentist's house
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: at dawn. As you go about your week, consider this.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: In a world where institutional trust is eroding and human
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: systems are constantly tempted to put tape over the check
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: engine light, will your data be the only thing left
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to speak for you when you no longer can