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Young Mom Washes Up On Shore Near Florida Naval Base · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's deep dive. And before we even really
• 0:03
  start unpacking the sources we have today, I want you
• 0:06
  to just imagine a scenario.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, laid on me.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: So imagine you're trying to build a new life, right,
• 0:12
  you are working tirelessly for your future, doing everything by
• 0:15
  the book, and then you just vanish into thin air.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Oh wow. Yeah, that's a terrifying thought, right.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: And the question is how quickly would you are carefully
• 0:25
  constructed routine life end up revealing the dark secrets of
• 0:30
  the people around you?
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Oh? Almost instantly, I'd say. I mean, routine is a powerful.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Thing, exactly. And that's our core mission for this deep dive.
• 0:37
  We're taking a single, really chilling source today. It's a
• 0:40
  transcript from the lawn Crime Networks Prime crime series.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, detailing a case from two thousand and nine.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the two thousand and nine disappearance and murder of
• 0:47
  a young mother near a Florida naval base. And we
• 0:50
  are going to unpack the sheer anatomy of a circumstantial
• 0:53
  murder case.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Which is fascinating because you know, when there are no
• 0:56
  eyewitnesses to the actual crime, investigators have to piece together
• 1:01
  a totally invisible puzzle, and they have to.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Do it by navigating this really messy intersection of human error,
• 1:08
  digital footprints, and microscopic physical evidence.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Well, to really get a grip on this, we need
• 1:13
  to anchor ourselves in the setting. So we are in Pensacola, Florida,
• 1:17
  and it's October of two thousand and nine.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Right, And Pensacola isn't just any.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Town, no, not at all. It is a quintessential naval tone.
• 1:25
  The military presence there is huge, and it creates this
• 1:28
  unique environment where very rigid military discipline ends up clashing
• 1:33
  with well, a hidden double life.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the friction between those two worlds is what
• 1:38
  sparks this whole tragedy. So let's just dive right into
• 1:41
  it and look at the victim, Samirra Watkins, because her
• 1:43
  routine is what breaks this case open so fast.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, her victimology is incredibly important here.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: So Samira was twenty five years old. She was a
• 1:51
  single mother to a four year old boy, which you know,
• 1:54
  is a massive responsibility on its own, absolutely, But on
• 1:57
  top of that, she's the oldest of five siblings in
• 1:59
  a very tight knit family. She's working as a manager
• 2:02
  at a local McDonald's, and she was actually attending college
• 2:05
  to become a dental assistant.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, just think about the logistics of that. To
• 2:09
  manage a fast food restaurant, raise a cobbler alone, and
• 2:13
  go to school. You have to be meticulously.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Organized, you do. You have to run your life's like
• 2:18
  a tightly wound clock. And so her timeline starts on Thursday,
• 2:23
  October twenty ninth, two thousand and nine.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, so walk us through that day, right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So she finishes her shift to McDonald's, comes home around
• 2:30
  eight zero zero pm and changes her clothes, and she
• 2:34
  tells her sister Sylvia that she's going out to see her.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: New boyfriend, a guy she knew was Ricky, right.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, military guy named Bricky. She actually asked Sylvia for
• 2:42
  a ride, but you know, Sylvia is just exhausted and
• 2:45
  already in bed. So Samarra decides to drive herself in
• 2:48
  her red Ford Taurus.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: And this is around nine zero zero pm.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, around nine zero zero pm, and that is the
• 2:54
  very last time her family ever sees her.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: So she just drives off into the night.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and the very next day things get weird fast.
• 3:01
  Sylvia tries calling Samira's phone and at first the phone rings,
• 3:05
  but it just goes to voicemail, which.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: For a busy mom maybe isn't a huge red flag
• 3:09
  an hour one.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Right, But by Friday afternoon, the phone stops ringing entirely.
• 3:14
  It just goes straight to voicemail. The phone is dead.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: And that transition from a ringing phone to a dead phone,
• 3:21
  that is a huge, terrifying shift for a family member.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, so Sylvia calls nine to one one immediately.
• 3:27
  And I want to pause here because you know, you
• 3:29
  always hear about police kind of dragging their feed, telling
• 3:32
  families to wait forty eight hours before they'll do anything.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the mythical forty eight hour rule, which is actually
• 3:37
  a total Hollywood invention exactly.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: But here the police took it seriously on day one,
• 3:43
  and I'd love for you to break down why they
• 3:45
  reacted so fast from a procedural standpoint.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Well, what's fascinating here is how quickly a person's strict
• 3:52
  routine becomes the loudest alarm bell. In law enforcement, they
• 3:56
  use this concept called victimology.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Right, I've heard that term. What is it actually mean?
• 4:00
  In practice?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Basically, they evaluate a person's entire lifestyle, their habits, their
• 4:04
  psychological state, their responsibilities. If you have a person with
• 4:07
  a transient or chaotic lifestyle, maybe someone struggling with addiction. Sadly,
• 4:11
  police might not view a twenty four hour absence as
• 4:14
  an immediate crisis.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Because vanishing for a day is part of their normal
• 4:18
  baseline exactly.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: But Samara's baseline was entirely inflexible. You don't just spontaneously
• 4:24
  abandon a management job, a college program, and a four
• 4:27
  year old child to take a silent weekend.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Trip, right. The stakes are just too high.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: So when a highly responsible mother goes dark, investigators immediately
• 4:35
  assume an external, catastrophic event has interrupted her life.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I always think of it like an incredibly complex clock. Right,
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  if you have dozens of gears turning for work and
• 4:45
  parenting in school, and just one single gear stops the
• 4:50
  whole house, here's the silence immediately.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. Her out of character silence instantly
• 4:56
  signaled to everyone that something was horribly wrong.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Sylvia even explicitly told the police. You know, Samira never
• 5:03
  made comments like I just need to get away. She
• 5:05
  wasn't fleeing her.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Life, which means the family isn't going to just sit
• 5:08
  around waiting for the police. They went looking for answers themselves.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Right, and they start by retracing her last known steps. Okay,
• 5:14
  let's unpack this because this is where the story takes
• 5:16
  a crazy turn.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they had straight for Ricky's place, right.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. On Friday, Sylvia and a cousin drive over to
• 5:23
  the apartment complex where this rickey guy lives. They knock
• 5:26
  on his door around noon, but there's no answer.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: So they do what anyone would do.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: They lock on the neighbor's door. They asked the neighbor, Hey,
• 5:34
  have you seen Ricky? And the neighbor's response just completely
• 5:37
  breaks a reality they thought they knew.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: What did the neighbors say?
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: The neighbor looks at them and says, there is no
• 5:42
  one named Ricky who lives there. The man in that
• 5:45
  apartment is named Zachary Lyttleton. Wow. And it gets worse.
• 5:49
  The neighbor casually mentions that Zachary is actually in the
• 5:52
  middle of moving out. He's upgrading to a bigger house
• 5:54
  for his wife and kids.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Oh Man, So within thirty seconds, her family discovers her
• 5:59
  military boyfriend and is using a fake name, is secretly married,
• 6:02
  and is actively fleeing his current address.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: It's just wild, And suddenly you realize this guy Zagri
• 6:09
  has a massive motive because Samira wasn't just his secret girlfriend.
• 6:15
  She had recently found out she was pregnant.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: And a secret pregnancy for a military man in a
• 6:20
  naval tone is a career ending disaster.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly, Sylvia actually told police about a conversation Samira had
• 6:27
  with this guy. When Samira told him about the baby,
• 6:30
  his reaction was horrific. He allegedly told her get an abortion,
• 6:35
  or I'm a punch in your stomach.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: See this raises an important question about the military environment.
• 6:39
  Under the uniform conn of military justice, adultery isn't just
• 6:43
  a messy civil issue.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Wait, really, it's like an actual crime.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, if it's deemed prejudicial to good order and discipline,
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  it's a punishable offense. He could face a court martial,
• 6:55
  he could lose his rank, lose his pay, basically face
• 6:58
  total ruin. So Zachary was backed into a corner of
• 7:01
  his own making, and his wife was arriving in town
• 7:04
  in a matter of days.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So if you were a detective and you're looking
• 7:07
  at Zachary Lyttleton, he looks incredibly guilty. He lied about
• 7:10
  his name, he threatened violence over a pregnancy, and he
• 7:13
  has a secret wife coming. But they actually had another
• 7:16
  suspect who was on paper way more.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Terrifying, right, William Peters. He was Samira's ex boyfriend and
• 7:21
  the father of her four year old son.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: And William wasn't just a bad ex. He had literally
• 7:26
  just gotten out of prison for battering Samira. She had
• 7:29
  an active restraining order against him, and he had documented
• 7:32
  anger management issues.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: So this is where investigators have to be so careful
• 7:36
  not to develop tunnel vision. Statistically, in cases of violence
• 7:39
  against women, the perpetrator is overwhelmingly an intimate partner or
• 7:44
  a violent X.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So isn't it terrifying how easy it would be to
• 7:47
  arrest the X based purely on his past record. I mean,
• 7:51
  you have the violent X on one hand and a
• 7:53
  lying cheater on the other.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: It would be so easy. A lazy detective would have
• 7:57
  looked at William's rap sheet and just locked him up.
• 7:59
  But they did their due diligence. They investigated William's alibi, and.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: His alibi actually held up right, it did.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: He worked on a night time janitorial crew. His mother
• 8:08
  confirmed he was home by eleven zero zero pm that Thursday.
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  He even asked her to plug in a deep frier
• 8:13
  so he could make food, and then he just watched
• 8:15
  TV and went to sleep, which is.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Such a specific, mundane detail, it feels very real. But
• 8:20
  I think the most striking difference was just how the
• 8:22
  two men reacted to the police.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, the behavioral contrast is night and day.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when police told William that Samiro was missing, his
• 8:30
  emotional reaction was incredibly genuine. He wasn't defensive. He was
• 8:35
  just devastated about his son losing his mother.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Genuine grief is really hard to fake, especially when you're
• 8:41
  under the stress of a police interrogation.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: But then you look at Zachary. Detective Jonathan Lark decides
• 8:47
  to call Zachary's phone, and he deliberately plays dumb. He says, hey,
• 8:51
  is this Ricky.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: And Zachary immediately says, no, this is zach So he
• 8:55
  instantly admits the fake identity, probably without even realizing he
• 8:59
  just stepped into it.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Right, And then Thorpe asks him about Samara, and Zachary's
• 9:04
  response is just baffling. He plays coy and goes Samara
• 9:07
  a Sammy.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: That is a classic linguistic distancing technique. He's pretending he
• 9:12
  barely knows her.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he claims they only hooked up quote once or twice,
• 9:16
  and that she was just a friend. He completely denies
• 9:19
  knowing she was pregnant, which.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Is absurd given the threats he had made. But you
• 9:23
  have to remember Zachary was a military police officer himself.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Oh right, so he thinks he's the smartest guy in
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  the room exactly.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: He thought he could outsmart the local cops. He believed
• 9:33
  his cavalier attitude would just deflect all the suspicion. But
• 9:37
  if we connect this to the bigger picture, suspects often
• 9:40
  detrade themselves, not with what they say, but the tents
• 9:44
  they used to say it.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting because Zachary completely
• 9:49
  slips up with his words, doesn't he He does.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: During the interview, he starts talking about Samara in the
• 9:54
  past tense. He literally says she wasn't no feisty type.
• 9:57
  She had good tendency to be a good woman.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: She had good tendency past tense.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, And in a missing person case where the victim
• 10:05
  is presumed alive by everyone hoping to find them using
• 10:08
  the past tense reveals a hidden consciousness of guilt.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: But let me ask you this, because I always wonder,
• 10:13
  couldn't someone just be pessimistic, Like maybe they just assume
• 10:16
  the worst has happened after a few days.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: It's possible, sure, But when you combine it with the
• 10:21
  act of deception and the cognitive load of lying to
• 10:24
  the police, his brain is just defaulting to the reality
• 10:27
  it knows he knows she's dead, so his language reflects
• 10:30
  that even as he's trying to pretend she's just missing.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: And his arrogance during this interview is just off the charts.
• 10:37
  He literally asks the police, y'all feel like I had
• 10:39
  the mind to do something to her? You want to
• 10:42
  know if I'm responsible for her being missing? Yeah, basically
• 10:45
  taunting them.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: It's hubris, and that hubris is exactly why suspects like
• 10:50
  him end up volunteering extra, unprompted information that sinks them.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, why do they do that?
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Because he just freely admits out of nowhere that he
• 10:59
  has new cell phones.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Wait he just offered that up?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he tells them, I have a my regular phone,
• 11:04
  and then I have this boost mobile burner phone that
• 11:07
  I use for the girls. So my wife doesn't find out.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: He thinks by admitting to a lesser sin, like being
• 11:12
  a cheating husband, it makes him look honest and cooperative.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: But it completely backfires because once the police have that
• 11:19
  Burner phone number, they pull the records and they find
• 11:22
  out he called Samir eleven times on the day she vanished.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Wow, eleven times.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But here is the massive problem the police were facing.
• 11:31
  Despite all his weird verbal slips and the Burner phone,
• 11:34
  they had absolutely no physical crime.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Scene right because he had been moving out exactly.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: They searched his apartment and it was spotless, it was
• 11:41
  totally clean. They needed a body to prove a crime
• 11:44
  even occurred.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And unfortunately, nature was about to deliver exactly that.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this part is incredibly grim. So it's November third,
• 11:52
  two thousand and nine. A couple of jet skiers are
• 11:54
  out on the water right near the Pensacola Naval Air.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Station, right on the shore line.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they spot this foul smelling black duffel bag
• 12:03
  that had just washed ashore. They immediately call it in
• 12:06
  and when the police open it, they find Samirra's body inside.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's just horrific.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: It is. She was in a fetal position, wearing only
• 12:13
  a bra, and her head was wrapped in duct tape
• 12:16
  from her chin all the way up to just below
• 12:19
  her eyes. The autopsy confirmed she was suffocated.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: It's so brutal, and you discovering the body obviously transitions
• 12:25
  this from a missing person case to a homicide investigation.
• 12:29
  But the specific items found inside that bag are what
• 12:32
  really shifted the psychological profile of the.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Crime, right, because there were cleaning supplies in the bag
• 12:37
  with her. They found a bald up chlorox wipe and
• 12:40
  a paper.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Towel exactly, and that is so telling. It transitions the
• 12:44
  crime from a spontaneous heat of the moment mistake into
• 12:48
  a premeditated panic cleanup.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Because he took the time to wipe things down.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Right, if you accidentally harm someone in a rage, you
• 12:55
  usually just flee the scene. But to use cleaning supplies,
• 12:59
  buying the victim with duct tape and force them into
• 13:01
  a duffel bag that requires sustained methodical effort.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: The juxtaposition of it all is just crazy to me.
• 13:07
  You have this pristine, disciplined military base right there, and
• 13:11
  this horrific, chaotic reality just washes up on its literal
• 13:16
  shores and.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: The autopsy revealed one more tiny crucial detail, didn't it, Yes.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: The golden clue. Yeah, So the medical examiner realizes that
• 13:24
  Samir is missing exactly one of her signature gold hoop earrings.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: And she wore those all the time, constantly.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: They even checked the McDonald's surveillance footage from that very
• 13:32
  night and she clearly had both earrings on when she
• 13:35
  left work.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: So the question is why did it fall off?
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Well, think about the mechanics of the struggle. If someone
• 13:41
  is suffocating you, it's an incredibly intimate, close quarters fight.
• 13:45
  She would be thrashing right fighting for air exactly, and
• 13:49
  in that kind of violent struggle, an earring can easily
• 13:53
  just snag on a shirt or an arm and get ricked.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Off, and the killer, being totally consumed by the adrenaline
• 13:58
  of the murder, wouldn't even notice a tiny piece of
• 14:01
  metal hitting the floor.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I always think of it like the dark true crime
• 14:05
  equivalent of the Cinderella Slipper. It's this tiny, seemingly insignificant
• 14:10
  little item that ultimately holds the power to definitively identify
• 14:15
  the villain.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: That's a really powerful way to look at it. But
• 14:18
  you know, finding the body was a turning point, sure,
• 14:21
  but finding an earring on the victim isn't enough. They
• 14:23
  had to find the matching earring in the killer's possession, which.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Meant they had to trace Zachary's exact footsteps and totally
• 14:30
  unravel his alibi because he claimed he was just home
• 14:33
  all night packing boxes.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: And that alibi fell apart almost immediately, didn't it?
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Oh? Completely? The police started interviewing his friends. He had
• 14:41
  a navy body who came over at nine to one
• 14:42
  five the next morning to help him move.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And what did the buddy find.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: He walks in and Zachary's drawers are just pulled out.
• 14:49
  His clothes were everywhere, entirely unpacked. He'd clearly been awake
• 14:53
  all night, but he was not packing.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Huge red flag.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And then they talked to a female friend of Zachary's
• 14:59
  who says he showed up at her house at five
• 15:01
  am that morning asking to do laundry.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Wait, five ye am, Who does laundry at five am
• 15:07
  unless they're desperately trying to wash away biological evidence.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I know, it's almost comical how obvious it is. Yeah,
• 15:13
  and the nail in the coffin came from his own
• 15:15
  military supervisor.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: What did the supervisor say.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Zachary actually admitted to his boss that samir did come
• 15:21
  over to his apartment that night. He claimed, Oh, she
• 15:24
  wanted to stay over, but I told her no and
• 15:26
  took her home.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Wow. So he just completely blew up the lie he
• 15:30
  told the detective about not seeing her exactly.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: But you know, witness testimony is one thing. The police
• 15:35
  needed hard data, so they brought in NCIS, the Naval
• 15:38
  Criminal Investigative Service.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Ah, right, because NCIS has the tech experts.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they brought in their cell phone tower mapping analysts.
• 15:47
  Now we also remember this is two thousand and nine,
• 15:49
  so this isn't like modern GPS where there's a little
• 15:51
  blue dot on.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: A map, right, It's more about which sector of a
• 15:54
  cell tower the phone is pinging exactly.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: It's about synthesizing old school SLEW thing with the emerging
• 16:00
  two thousand and nine tech. The tower data showed Samirra's
• 16:04
  phone moving from her McDonald's shift directly over to Zachary's.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Apartment, putting her exactly where he said she wasn't bingo.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: And then later that night it tracks Zachary's found leaving
• 16:14
  his house and heading straight toward the naval base, the
• 16:17
  exact area where the body was dumped.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: The digital footprints don't lie, but how did he physically
• 16:22
  transport her?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Well, the police found Samirra's red Ford Taurus parked in
• 16:26
  a random driveway about ten miles away from the water
• 16:29
  way across town.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: He must have driven her car to dump the body
• 16:33
  and then abandon the car.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they found his DNA right there on the
• 16:36
  steering wheel. But here is the fatal flaw in his plan.
• 16:40
  It's two thousand and nine. There's no uber right, He's
• 16:44
  just abandoned a car ten miles from home in the
• 16:46
  middle of the night. How does he get back?
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, he has to call a cab exactly.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: The police just start calling every taxi dispatcher in the
• 16:52
  city asking for their logs, and they find out a
• 16:55
  cab picked up a guy from a waffle house at
• 16:58
  four twenty am.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Let me guess where that waffle house was.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: About a mile away from where the car was abandoned.
• 17:04
  So they pulled the security footage from the diner. And
• 17:07
  you watch this tape and it's just the sheer hubris
• 17:09
  of this guy.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: What's he doing on the tape?
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: He is standing in the diner, borrowing a phone to
• 17:14
  call the cab, and in his hand he is holding
• 17:17
  a plastic tub of Chlorox.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Wipes, the exact same wipes found in the duffel bag.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: The exact same ones. And while he's holding them, he
• 17:25
  looks directly into the security camera overhead.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: It is crazy how panic just creates this intense tunnel vision.
• 17:33
  A trained military police officer totally misses a glaringly obvious
• 17:37
  security camera in a brightly lit diner.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? I mean, think about
• 17:42
  your own digital exhaust for a second. Your phone pings,
• 17:45
  the cameras, you walk past, the digital logs of the
• 17:47
  cars you take. It's almost impossible to move through the
• 17:50
  modern world in dissiply.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: It really is. You leave a trail everywhere.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: And his trail led the police right to his new
• 17:56
  front door. On November sixth, they execute a search. Aren't
• 18:00
  on the new home he just moved into with his wife?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: And what do they find in the new place?
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: They find matching textured paper towels, They find the tub
• 18:08
  of Clorox wipes, and hidden among his things, they find the.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Smoking gun, the other gold hoop earring, Yes.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: The missing earing he had literally just packed it up
• 18:19
  with his stuff and brought the evidence into his new life.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: That is unbelievable, So they have enough to arrest him.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: They do. The trial actually begins on June twenty seventh,
• 18:27
  twenty eleven, and the prosecutor was terrified because at the
• 18:31
  end of the day, it is a one hundred percent
• 18:33
  circumstantial case.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Which is always a huge hurdle with jury's there's this
• 18:37
  massive misconception that circumstantial evidence is somehow weak or just speculative.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's no video of the actual murder. Yeah,
• 18:44
  and there was no bloody crime scene, right, But.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: People don't realize that a mountain of circumstantial evidence is
• 18:49
  often stronger than a single eyewitness. Human memory is flawed,
• 18:53
  but a matching earring DNA on a steering wheel and
• 18:56
  cell tower data that doesn't lie.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Prosecutor just methodically built this timeline, placing puzzle piece after
• 19:04
  puzzle piece, and the piece that truly sealed his fate
• 19:08
  was his computer search history.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, the search history is always the most damning part.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: It really is, like, why do people still google their crimes?
• 19:16
  Did they think the delete button actually works?
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: It's absurd? What was he searching for?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, the jury sees this list of queries. Before she vanished,
• 19:25
  he was searching how to cause an abortion? And does
• 19:28
  drinking vinegar cause an abortion?
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Oh? That is so cruel. It really highlights the psychological
• 19:32
  torment he was putting her through before it escalated to murder.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: It does, and then the searches get worse. He looks
• 19:39
  up how long does it take for a body to decompose?
• 19:42
  And putting a body in a landfill?
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: This cold calculated premeditation, and the.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: One that really gets me. Given his police training, he
• 19:49
  googled how to pass a polygraph?
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Wow, he knew exactly what was coming. How did he
• 19:54
  act in the courtroom while all this was being presented?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: He was incredibly arrogant the reporters there. He seemed almost
• 20:01
  borderline confident, like he was more concerned with his outfits
• 20:05
  than the reality of the evidence.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Juris hate that they can sense that kind of narcissism instantly.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: They really can, and they did not buy his act
• 20:12
  for a second. The jury went back and they deliberated
• 20:15
  for only three hours.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Three hours for a circumstantial murder trial. That is lightning.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Fast, it is. They found him guilty of first degree
• 20:24
  premeditated murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison
• 20:27
  without parol.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just such a tragedy. You think about Samira,
• 20:31
  this young woman who was just working so hard to
• 20:33
  better her life and her trusting nature was completely exploited
• 20:36
  by a guy using his military uniform as a mask.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's heartbreaking, and it just reminds you that trying
• 20:42
  to operate a double life requires a totally flawless memory. Right,
• 20:45
  you have to remember every lie, but the truth, the
• 20:48
  truth only requires the facts to.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Exist, absolutely, the truth just waits to be found.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: A single gold hoop earring and a silent ping off
• 20:56
  a cell tower ended up speaking for a woman who
• 20:59
  was totally silenced.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: It's a powerful legacy for the investigators who wouldn't let
• 21:04
  it go.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: It really is. And we've spent this entire deep dive
• 21:07
  looking at how the physical world and the digital world
• 21:11
  basically betrayed Zachary Littleton.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: They absolutely did.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: But you know, it makes you wonder if you were
• 21:17
  to suddenly vanish tonight, what story would your last twenty
• 21:22
  four hours of digital day to tell about you.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a chilling thought.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Would it point to your deepest secrets? Or just confirm
• 21:28
  exactly who you claim to be.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: I guess we'd all like to think it's the latter.
• 21:32
  Thank you for joining us on this exploration of the facts.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Everyone, We'll see you on the next
• 21:37
  deep dive.