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He Left His Dead Girlfriend's Body in Bathtub for Weeks · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to just picture a completely ordinary
• 0:02
  suburban landscape for a second. Like, imagine you're driving through
• 0:06
  Clinton Township in Michigan, right, Okay, Yeah, you turn off
• 0:10
  Hayes Road right near of seventeen mile Road, and you
• 0:13
  pull into this place called the Crosswinds Condominiums, right, and
• 0:18
  it is exactly what you'd expect. It's the kind of
• 0:21
  place that forms the backdrop for I mean millions of
• 0:25
  people's lives. Yeah, totally ubiquitous, exactly, ye, quiet, its manicurity,
• 0:29
  It's just the absolute definition of everyday, mundane life.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: The kind of place where you know, people wake up,
• 0:35
  drink their coffee, commute to work.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they come home, maybe wave to the neighbors across
• 0:40
  the lawn, right. And there's this profound expectation of safety
• 0:43
  in a place like that, like an expectation of utter
• 0:46
  normalcy that's just built into the pavement.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Well, and the architecture of a place like Crosswinds is
• 0:51
  actually designed to reinforce that exact feeling. Oh you mean,
• 0:55
  like we see those identical doors, the shared walls, those
• 0:57
  neat little driveways, and we assume, well we assume because
• 1:01
  we kind of have to write, yeah, for our own
• 1:03
  sanity exactly. We assume that behind every single one of
• 1:07
  those doors, the exact same, basic, predictable human existence is
• 1:12
  playing out right, right, We completely rely on that unspoken
• 1:15
  social contract. We need to believe that our proximity to
• 1:18
  other people, you know, living just inches away through some
• 1:23
  dry wall and insulation, that it creates this sort of
• 1:26
  invisible safety.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Net, like if something goes wrong, someone's going to hear.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: It, right, someone will notice, someone will call for help.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: But then you look at one specific door in that complex. Yeah,
• 1:36
  and the sources we're diving into today they revealed that
• 1:39
  behind one of those perfectly normal doors, that invisible safety
• 1:43
  net was just a total illusion and absolute failure of
• 1:46
  the net completely because for seven uninterrupted months, this this
• 1:52
  totally horrifying, macabre reality was playing out. Yeah, and it
• 1:57
  was completely undetected by the outside world.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's it's hard to even wrap your head around.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: It really is. So today our mission for this deep
• 2:03
  dive is we are tearing down the facade of that condominium.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: We really need to.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: We're going to explore the absolute anatomy of concealment. You
• 2:11
  need to understand the chilling, literally minute by minute timeline
• 2:15
  of a murder, and we are going to dissect the
• 2:20
  incredibly complex legal battle that tried to define this microscopic
• 2:25
  line between like a sudden, uncontrollable snap and a cold,
• 2:29
  premeditated kill, right.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge legal distinction.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Massive. Yeah, And above all, we really are going to
• 2:36
  unpack how a human being can simply vanish from society
• 2:39
  without a single solitary alarm bell ringing.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: And you know, the two people at the center of
• 2:45
  this total collapse of the social fabric are a fifty
• 2:47
  two year old woman named Courtney Winters.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Who went by the name Jerry, Yes.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly, she went by Jerry, and a man named Matthew
• 2:53
  Lewinsky who was in his late thirties when all this started.
• 2:56
  And honestly, the core facts of what occurred behind that
• 3:00
  or they're difficult to process even for seasoned investigators who
• 3:03
  have seen it all.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the timeline alone is just staggering.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: In December of twenty twenty, Lewinsky strangled Winters to death.
• 3:09
  He then kept her body inside his home, first in
• 3:12
  his bathtub and later down in his basement. And he
• 3:16
  did this for.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Seven months, seven months.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Seven months, and the secret was only revealed Like the
• 3:22
  authorities only became involved at all because Lewinsky suffered a
• 3:25
  really severe medical emergency of his own in July of
• 3:29
  twenty twenty one.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: See reading through these core documents in the reporting. I
• 3:33
  hit a massive psychological wall with that timeline.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely everyone does.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Because seven months, that is over two hundred days of
• 3:43
  waking up, making breakfast, watching TV, going to sleep.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: With a decomposing body in your house.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you are separated from your neighbors by just
• 3:52
  mere inches of building material. Right, You're carrying this immense,
• 3:55
  grotesque secret, and my brain just rejects the premise that
• 3:59
  the world keeps spinning, you know, Yeah, like the male
• 4:01
  keeps getting delivered, people are walking their dogs while that
• 4:04
  is happening just on the other side of the glass.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Well, the rejection of that premise is a very natural
• 4:09
  human defense mechanism, you think, so, oh for sure. We
• 4:12
  don't want to believe that that level of compartmentalization is
• 4:15
  even possible for a person.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's terrifying.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: The most terrifying aspect of this deep dive isn't just
• 4:21
  the physical brutality of the crime, as horrific as that is, right,
• 4:25
  it's the systemic isolation it's the profound social disconnection that
• 4:30
  allowed a crime of this magnitude to stay hidden in
• 4:34
  plain sight for the better part of a year in
• 4:36
  a busy suburb exactly. It represents a massive failure of
• 4:41
  community observation. It kind of forces us to look at
• 4:44
  how incredibly blind we can be to the realities existing
• 4:48
  right next door to us, you know, as long as
• 4:49
  the grass is cut and the.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Blinds are drawn, Yeah, out of sight, out of mind completely.
• 4:53
  So I want to understand how a secret of that
• 4:56
  magnitude is born, we really have to go back to
• 4:58
  the night that the secret was created. We do, and
• 5:01
  looking at the timeline the inciting incident is so jarring
• 5:05
  because it doesn't start with a home invasion or some
• 5:08
  like cinematic, high stakes confrontation.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: It starts with the most mundane domestic ritual imaginable. It
• 5:15
  starts with a cup of tea.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And to really contextualize that night, we have to
• 5:19
  look at the baseline of their dynamic leading up to.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: It, right, Because they had a history.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: They did. Winters and Lewinsky had been involved in a
• 5:26
  romantic relationship for roughly a year, okay, but the relationship
• 5:30
  had officially ended a month prior in November of twenty twenty.
• 5:34
  Got it, And by all accounts presented in the source
• 5:37
  material from multiple different perspectives, this was a highly turbulent,
• 5:42
  deeply fraught dynamic.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the sources make that very clear.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: The emotional residue of that breakup was still very very fresh.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because the sources indicate just a
• 5:52
  tremendous amount of latent friction. Here. We had this year
• 5:56
  long turbulent relationship that ends, and then right in the
• 6:00
  middle of December twenty twenty, Jerry Winters arrives completely unexpectedly
• 6:05
  at Lewinsky's condo. Yeah, no warning, right, there's no plan.
• 6:08
  She just shows up at the door, and.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: An unannounced visit from an ex partner immediately introduces a
• 6:14
  baseline of tension into any environment.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, why, absolutely, the physical space is his, the intrusion
• 6:20
  is hers, and the conversation they have right when she
• 6:23
  arrives immediately escalates that tension to a critical level.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: It goes zero to sixty. Right.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: According to the statements Lewinsky later gave to the detectives,
• 6:32
  Winters arrived and informed him that she had undergone an abortion. Wow,
• 6:37
  and prior to this specific conversation, Lewinsky had been operating
• 6:41
  under the belief that she might be pregnant with his child.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I'm really trying to put myself in that living room.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: It's heavy.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: You can imagine the immense emotional weight of a disclosure
• 6:52
  like that just dropping into the space between two people
• 6:55
  who have already severed their relationship.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: It's a massive, life altering piece of information.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it instantly triggers a severe verbal argument. But
• 7:04
  and this is where it gets weird. The sources show
• 7:07
  that the argument doesn't immediately turn lethal, right, it doesn't.
• 7:10
  The timeline fractures right here Lewinsky tells the police that
• 7:14
  he actually leaves the room. He walks away from the argument,
• 7:17
  goes into the kitchen and begins making tea for her.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: And that specific detail, the transition into the kitchen is
• 7:24
  crucial for understanding the behavioral sequence here.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Why is that.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Because he physically removes himself from the immediate vicinity of
• 7:31
  the conflict, Right, he engages in this deeply ingrained, mundane
• 7:35
  caretaking task. Boiling water, selecting a mug, preparing the tea.
• 7:41
  These are very methodical actions.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a de escalation tactic.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Almost psychologically speaking, Yes, this is a moment where the
• 7:49
  tension could theoretically diffuse. He's creating physical space, right, But
• 7:53
  the environment he walks back into has fundamentally changed during
• 7:56
  his brief absence.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Because he walks back into the living room, I'm holding
• 8:00
  this tea, and according to his own account to the investigators,
• 8:04
  Winters has completely undressed.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: She is sitting naked in a lazyboy style recliner right
• 8:10
  in the middle of his living room.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: And consider the semiotics of a lazy boy recliner for
• 8:14
  a second.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a specific image.
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  Speaker 2: In the American consciousness. That piece of furniture is the
• 8:19
  ultimate symbol of lethargy, you know, of relaxation of safety
• 8:24
  within the home.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's where your dad falls asleep watching the football.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Game, exactly. And in this incredibly bizarre, highly charged moment,
• 8:32
  that symbol of domestic comfort becomes the staging ground for
• 8:35
  a violent terminal escalation.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: The juxtaposition is just so stark, it really is. You
• 8:41
  have the hot tea in his hands, you have the recliner,
• 8:44
  you have an unclothed ex partner, and then suddenly the
• 8:47
  verbal conflict violently breaches the physical barrier.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it turns physical very fast.
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  Speaker 1: Lewinsky claims the argument reignited. He suggests it might have
• 8:56
  been because she saw something on his phone that upset
• 8:58
  her while he was in the kitchen.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: That was his claim.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: He tells police she slapped him. He retaliates and slaps
• 9:04
  her back. She bites him, and then the entire nature
• 9:08
  of the altercation shifts from a mutual physical scuffle to
• 9:12
  a lethal, unidirectional application of force.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the dynamic completely changes.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: He places his hand on her throat and he applies pressure.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: This is the moment the threshold is permanently crossed.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: He places his hand on her throat and he maintains
• 9:27
  that downward pressure until she ceases to move. And, according
• 9:30
  to his own directed mission during his interrogation, this process
• 9:34
  took approximately five minutes.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Five minutes. Yes.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, he claimed to the investigators that he was actively
• 9:41
  crying while he did it.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: What.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And he repeatedly insisted that she quote egged him on.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop and push back forcefully on
• 9:50
  the way he frames this narrative.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, please do.
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  Speaker 1: Because he places a hand on her throat for five
• 9:56
  minutes Yeah, I want to use an analogy here to
• 9:59
  really grasp the mechanics of what is happening, because I
• 10:02
  think the human brain struggles to conceptualize duration in the
• 10:06
  context of violence.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: That's a great point. Time distorts it does.
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  Speaker 1: It's like watching a car crash in slow motion where
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  the driver sees the wall coming, has five full minutes
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  to simply lift their foot off the gas and hit
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  the brakes right, but consciously chooses to keep their foot
• 10:21
  pinned to the floorboard until the impact.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Five minutes is not an instant, it is not a reflex.
• 10:27
  It is a massive window of time.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I completely agree with that assessment of time, which is
• 10:32
  what makes the psychology of his confession just a study
• 10:35
  and profound cognitive dissonance. Yeah, how so, look at how
• 10:39
  Lewinsky constructs the narrative for law enforcement. He explicitly mentions
• 10:43
  making the tea right. He is painting a picture of
• 10:46
  himself as a host, a pacifier, a caretaker.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I was just trying to calm things down.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly, And he makes a point to mention crying during
• 10:54
  the strangulation, which suggests he was overcome by a wave
• 10:57
  of emotion. You know, positioning himself almost as a passive,
• 11:01
  helpless participant in his own violent act. Oh yeah, But
• 11:04
  the most revealing framing is his insistence that she egged him.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: On, which is just its victim blaming in its purest form.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: It is he is actively, aggressively attempting to minimize his
• 11:16
  own agency. He is admitting to the mechanical, physical act
• 11:20
  of strangulation, but he is psychologically displacing all the moral
• 11:25
  and legal responsibility for that act entirely onto the victim
• 11:28
  and the chaotic circumstances.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: It's like, I am killing you, but you made me
• 11:32
  do it, and I am the one suffering and crying
• 11:33
  while it happens. It is an incredibly dark inversion of reality.
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  He wants the police to believe this is a chaotic
• 11:41
  He the moment fight where the breaks just gave out,
• 11:43
  but the sources were looking at they pulled no punches
• 11:46
  on this next point. Biology, anatomy, and medical science tell
• 11:50
  a much colder, much more calculated story about what it
• 11:54
  actually takes to extinguish a human life in this specific
• 11:58
  manual manner.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, evense of a momentary loss of control, it shatters
• 12:03
  completely when it collides with the stark medical reality of strangulation.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: During the eventual trial, the county medical examiner, doctor Mary Piatraangelo,
• 12:13
  she provided testimony that served as the absolute lynchpin for
• 12:16
  understanding the mechanics of this murder. Right, she didn't just
• 12:19
  confirm the cause of death. She meticulously explained the physiology
• 12:23
  of what happens to the human body when a person
• 12:25
  is strangled in the exact manner Lewinsky described to the police, and.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: The timeline she laid out in court is chilling. It
• 12:31
  strips away all the emotion, all the excuses, and leaves
• 12:35
  just the cold biology.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: What did she say?
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Doctor p Trangelo testified that a person being strangled with
• 12:40
  that level of force would typically lose consciousness within about
• 12:44
  thirty seconds.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Thirty seconds. We need to freeze the timeline right at
• 12:49
  that thirty second mark, Yeah, because within half a minute
• 12:52
  of sustained pressure on the carotid arteries, the brain is
• 12:56
  deprived of oxygen to the critical point that.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: The victim they're out cold.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: At that exact measurable moment, the victim is unconscious. They
• 13:05
  are entirely neutralized as any sort of physical threat or antagonist. Right,
• 13:09
  they cannot argue, they cannot slap, they cannot bite, Their
• 13:12
  body goes completely limp.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Which means, and this is the part that is just devastating.
• 13:18
  If we follow his own five minute timeline, for the
• 13:21
  next four and a half minutes, Lewinsky was exerting sustained,
• 13:25
  exhausting lethal pressure on the throat of an unconscious woman
• 13:28
  who was offering zero physical resistance.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: That biological fact is the crux of the medical reality
• 13:35
  versus the legal defense of quote unquote snapping. Death by strangulation,
• 13:39
  particularly manual strangulation, requires sustained uninterrupted pressure for at least
• 13:44
  five full.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Minutes its work.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: It is profoundly prolonged physical effort. It requires muscular endurance.
• 13:53
  It requires a continuous microsecond by microsecond choice to maintain
• 13:58
  the grip, to not let.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: To actively ignore the fact that the person beneath you
• 14:03
  is no longer fighting back. Exactly, I want to ask you,
• 14:07
  the listener, to try a sensory experiment right now, or
• 14:11
  you know, the next time you have a moment.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: This is a good exercise.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I want you to sit in complete uninterrupted silence for
• 14:17
  five minutes. Do not look at your phone, do not
• 14:21
  turn on the radio. Just exist staring at a wall
• 14:25
  for five.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Minutes, and it feels like an eternity when you do nothing.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: It really does. Think about waiting for a microwave to
• 14:31
  count down two minutes. You get impatient, you shift your weight,
• 14:33
  you stare at the numbers. Right now, take that vast
• 14:36
  expanse of time, those five entire minutes, and imagine physically
• 14:40
  exerting immense trembling force against the throat of another human being.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Your forearms would eat, yes, your.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Muscles would fatigue. You would likely have to shift your
• 14:49
  weight or readjust your group to maintain the leverage.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: You'd have to consciously push through the physical strain.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: And you would watch the person's face change color. You
• 14:58
  would watch them go entirely within the first fraction of
• 15:01
  that time, and you would actively have to decide over
• 15:04
  and over and over again to keep squeezing.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And what's fascinating here is how this precise medical timeline
• 15:11
  translates directly into the adversarial arena of the courtroom.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Right because this became the whole case.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, this specific physiological process is exactly why the Micomne
• 15:21
  County Prosecutor Carmen DeFranco anchored his entire case on this
• 15:25
  five minute.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Duration, it's hard to argue with biology.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: It is the legal system and a jury. By extension,
• 15:32
  they have to differentiate between a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, which
• 15:36
  is often codified in a legal context as acting in
• 15:38
  the heat of passion, and a calculated, deliberate decision to kill.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Because the defense's entire narrative was built around that word snap. Right,
• 15:47
  They argued that the abortion revelation, the argument, the biting,
• 15:51
  it all caused him to snap.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: But the prosecutor's counter argument is deeply compelling. Can a
• 15:56
  snap biologically last for five minutes?
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Oh? I mean? Commons says no.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: A snap implies a momentary break from reason, a sudden,
• 16:04
  blinding explosion of emotion that dissipates as quickly as it arrives,
• 16:08
  like a punch exactly. Prosecutor de Franco argued that five
• 16:12
  minutes of continuous physical exertion cannot by definition be an impulse.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: It's a project.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: It is a conscious, deliberate, sustained choice. It provides ample
• 16:24
  time to reflect on the action being taken, to realize
• 16:27
  the fatal consequence of that action, and to actively choose
• 16:30
  to proceed anyway.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: And this timeline was the fundamental building block for the
• 16:35
  prosecution's aggressive pursuit of a first degree premeditated murder charge,
• 16:40
  rather than allowing a concession to a lesser charge of manslaugh.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Right, they were not going to budge on that.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And the prosecution didn't just rely on the medical examiner, right.
• 16:47
  They used Lewinsky's own admissions to bolt that argument to
• 16:51
  the floor.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, his own words doomed him.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: He told investigators that after those five minutes were up
• 16:56
  and he finally let go, he did not attempt CPR. No,
• 17:00
  he made no frantic effort to revive her. He didn't
• 17:03
  grab his phone to call nine one one or yell
• 17:05
  for a neighbor.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: He stated to the police, and this is a direct quote,
• 17:09
  it was clear that she was gone.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: He knew exactly what he'd done.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: He recognized the absolute finality of his action, and action
• 17:15
  that again he sustained long past the point where she
• 17:18
  was capable of interacting with him. There was no panic
• 17:20
  of a tragic mistake. There was just the cold realization
• 17:23
  of a completed task.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: God, So the five minutes ticked down, the act of
• 17:28
  violence concludes, and Lewinsky is left standing in the quiet
• 17:32
  of his suburban living room next to a lazy boy
• 17:34
  recliner with the body of a woman he dated for
• 17:37
  a year. And what he decides to do in the hours, weeks,
• 17:41
  and months that follow is what shifts this entire story
• 17:45
  from a tragic, albeit somewhat common, domestic homicide into a macabre,
• 17:51
  incredibly disturbing, almost gothic cover up.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: The mechanics of concealment that Lewinsky implements here are deeply unsettling,
• 17:58
  primarily because of.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: How methodical they Right, he doesn't just run away.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: No, once the reality of her death set in, his
• 18:04
  self preservation instinct just overrode any sense of moral or
• 18:08
  legal obligation. He made a conscious, deliberate decision to hide
• 18:11
  the crime.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And what was his first step logistically, His.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Very first logistical step was to move Winter's body from
• 18:19
  the recliner in the living room into the bathtub in
• 18:22
  the main floor bathroom.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Just the physical reality of moving a deceased adult is
• 18:27
  a massive, exhausting undertaking.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: It's dead weight, literally, right, But it's.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: What he does next that baffles me. He just leaves
• 18:35
  her there in the bathtub for a month. Yeah, I
• 18:38
  cannot fathom the psychological architecture required to do that.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I would actually push back on the idea that
• 18:44
  he viewed the bathtub as a permanent hiding spot.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, how so it functions.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: More as a staging area, a place born of immediate
• 18:51
  convenience rather than long term strategy. It's close to the
• 18:55
  living room. It contains messes, true, But you are completely
• 18:58
  right to question the psychological detachment.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: A main floor bathroom is a space of daily utility.
• 19:03
  It's associated with hygiene, with the routine of getting ready
• 19:07
  for the day. You brush your teeth there exactly and
• 19:09
  for roughly thirty days he is occupying that condominium. He
• 19:14
  is presumably using the sink, looking in the mirror, navigating
• 19:18
  that space.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Fully knowing that a decomposing corpse is resting just inches
• 19:22
  away behind a shower curtain.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: The ability to compartmentalize that visual and sensory reality is staggering.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: But the one thing you cannot compartmentalize is biology. The
• 19:33
  sources are very grim on this point.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: After a month in a room, temperature, bathroom decomposition and
• 19:40
  the resulting odor became undeniable, overwhelming problems they always do.
• 19:45
  The bath cub was no longer viable. The reality of
• 19:48
  death was aggressively intruding on his living space.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: And the environmental conditions forced him to adapt to strategy.
• 19:56
  So he physically moves the remains from the main floor
• 19:59
  down a flood of stairs into the basement.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Is seeking a cooler, darker environment, right to try and
• 20:04
  slow the natural, unstoppable processes of decay.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, but relocating the body to the basement was only
• 20:11
  the first phase of his concealment efforts in that space.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting. And I mean
• 20:17
  that in the darkest, most grim sense of the word,
• 20:20
  because he doesn't just lay her in the basement and
• 20:22
  lock the door. Yeah, he actively systematically begins to mutilate
• 20:26
  the body over the course of the subsequent months. Yes,
• 20:30
  the sources detail the physical inventory of the macab toolkit
• 20:34
  the police later recovered from that basement.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: What did they find?
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: A blue handled knife, multiple bottles of bleach, heavy duty
• 20:41
  rubber gloves, and a large tarp.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: The transition from a crime of passion to this methodical
• 20:47
  sustain operation of dismemberment is chilling.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: It's like something out a horror movie. It is.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: The police reports and the trial testimony indicate that he
• 20:55
  used that blue knife to remove large significant sections of
• 20:59
  skin and flesh from her back, her shoulders, and her
• 21:02
  torso god over months, he was peeling away the layers
• 21:06
  of a human being, exposing internal tissues, organs, and eventually
• 21:09
  the skeletal structure itself. It's just this isn't a hasty
• 21:13
  burial in the woods. This is an immense, visceral, horrifying
• 21:17
  undertaking that requires daily interaction with the remains.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I need to pull the camera back for a second
• 21:21
  and just picture the absolute banality of the environment surrounding.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: This right context is everything Here.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: You have this quiet, manicured suburban street. Just outside the
• 21:32
  small basement windows, you have cars pulling into driveways, people
• 21:36
  bringing in groceries, maybe kids riding bikes on the sidewalks.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Thus, normal life happening.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and just a few feet away, down a set
• 21:44
  of wooden basement stairs, a man is putting on rubber gloves,
• 21:48
  taking a blue knife, and systematically dismembering a human being.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: While breathing in the sharp chemical fumes of bleach mixed
• 21:56
  with the smell of decay.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: The duality of that existence, the thin membrane between ordinary
• 22:01
  life and absolute horror, is staggering.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: And as investigators, we have to ask the mechanical why
• 22:07
  why do this? Why engage in such a psychologically taxing,
• 22:10
  physically demanding process that sounds exhausting, it would be prosecutors
• 22:14
  stated unequivocally that this was a highly capulated effort to
• 22:17
  conceal and permanently dispose of the body piece by piece.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because there are reports in the sources suggesting that
• 22:22
  he took some of these removed sections of flesh and
• 22:25
  threw them into a dumpster behind a nearby restaurant.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Right, he was treating a human being as refuse, trying
• 22:32
  to erase her physical existence from the world, bit by bit,
• 22:36
  spreading the evidence out to avoid detection.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: But here is the detail in the source material that
• 22:41
  absolutely stops me in my tracks. What's that he wasn't
• 22:44
  entirely successful at hiding it. The bubble of his concealment
• 22:49
  actually leaked out into the neighborhood.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, the smell.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: The neighbors noticed. They reported a lingering, distinctly foul smell
• 22:58
  that persisted around his u in it for weeks, and
• 23:02
  some of those neighbors were disturbed enough that they actually
• 23:05
  called the authorities.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And this is a critical, deeply frustrating juncture in the timeline.
• 23:11
  The community's sensory awareness was successfully triggered.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: The invisible safety that we talked about the beginning. It fluttered.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, they smelled the unmistakable odor of severe decay, and.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Yet nothing happened. I know, I genuinely cannot wrap my
• 23:23
  head around this mechanical failure of the system. Yeah, people
• 23:26
  smell something awful enough to pick up a phone and
• 23:28
  call the police. The police presumably dispatched someone or log
• 23:32
  that call, and the source remains unidentified. A woman's body
• 23:37
  continues to decompose and be actively mutilated in a basement,
• 23:41
  while the world outside just shrugs its shoulders and goes
• 23:44
  back to watching TV. How is that possible?
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Well, we naturally want to condemn the neighbors or the
• 23:49
  police in a moment like this, But the sociology and
• 23:52
  the legality of suburban environments are incredibly complex.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: OH explain that.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: First, you are dealing with a severe manifestation of the
• 24:00
  bystander effect, compounded by the physical architecture of a condominium complex.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Right, the share wolves.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly When you live with shared walls and shared ventilation,
• 24:10
  sensory information overlaps and becomes confused.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: A terrible smell could be a dead raccoon trapped in
• 24:17
  the crawl space. It could be a severely backed up
• 24:19
  sewer line, or it could be a neighbor hoarding garbage.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: You don't automatically jump to murder.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: No, the human brain is neurologically wired to seek the
• 24:28
  most benign, ordinary explanation for an anomaly, because to assume
• 24:32
  the worst. To assume murder is to accept that your
• 24:34
  own sanctuary is deeply compromised.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: It's the illusion of normalcy acting as a blindfold. If
• 24:40
  you admit the smell as a corpse, you have to
• 24:42
  admit you live next to a killer.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Precisely, and from a strict law enforcement perspective, there are
• 24:48
  massive constitutional limitations to suburban policing.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, the Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.
• 24:57
  Police officers cannot simply kick down every single door in
• 25:01
  a multi unit condominium complex because someone reported a vague,
• 25:05
  bad smell in the courtyard.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Right they get sued.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Absolutely without a warrant, without a visible crime scene through
• 25:11
  a window, without highly specific probable cause pointing directly to
• 25:16
  Lewinsky's specific unit their hands are legally tied in.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Many respects, So what can they even do.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Unless luency answers his door and freely gives them permission
• 25:24
  to search his home, or they have overwhelming articulable evidence
• 25:28
  to present to a judge for a warrant. An odor
• 25:31
  complaint in a dense neighborhood often just ends up as
• 25:34
  a long nuisance call with no immediate resolution, and.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Because of those constitutional protections acting as this unintentional shield,
• 25:40
  Lewinsky continued living in the condo.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Yes he did.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: When he was interrogated later, the police asked him the
• 25:46
  obvious question, why didn't you report the death? Why let
• 25:51
  this nightmare go on for seven months?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: And his answer was very telling, baffling.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: He claimed he didn't report it because he didn't trust.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: The police, which is a remarkably hollow, self serving rationalization
• 26:03
  when viewed against the totality of his action.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Ye, that it's a weak excuse.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: We have to differentiate between panic and acclimatization.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, what do you mean by that?
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Concealment of a body by an amateur is typically a
• 26:15
  panicked short term strategy. Someone panics hides a body in
• 26:19
  a shallow grave or the trunk of a car and
• 26:22
  runs away.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: They flee the scene, right, But.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: This was fundamentally different. This was a sustained, methodical, daily
• 26:28
  routine of covering up a murder. He didn't flee, He stayed.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: He lived there.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: He built his daily life, his routine of sleeping and
• 26:34
  eating around the undeniable presence of a mutilated corpse in
• 26:38
  his basement.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: So, if the legal system's hands were tied regarding the smell,
• 26:43
  and if he was managing to hide it so thoroughly,
• 26:46
  and if he was managing to adapt his own mind
• 26:48
  to the horror of it, why was he caught at all?
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: That is the big question.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: The answer isn't some brilliant cinematic piece of detective work.
• 26:56
  It's a sudden, bizarre unraveling of his own mind and body.
• 27:01
  The pressure finally breaks the container.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the physical and psychological toll of that existence finally
• 27:06
  reaches critical mass. On July twenty six.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Twenty twenty one, seven months later.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: After seven continuous months of this grim, deeply secret existence,
• 27:16
  Lewinsky suffers a complete and total breakdown, like a psychotic
• 27:20
  break something like that. He is found wandering the common
• 27:23
  areas of the condominium complex. He is dressed only in
• 27:26
  his underwear, and he is mumbling incoherently to himself.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: His physical state and his mental state have simultaneously collapsed.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: The breakdown is so severe that emergency services are called
• 27:36
  and he has transported to Henry Ford Macombe Hospital. And
• 27:39
  he isn't just observed in the er. He is admitted
• 27:42
  directly into the intensive care unit. He is hooked up
• 27:45
  to medical equipment monitors ivs. He is deeply critically unwell.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: And that hospitalization, that sudden removal of the guard from
• 27:54
  the gates, is the catalyst for the discovery.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: It all unravels.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: The very next day, July twenty seven, twenty twenty one,
• 28:02
  Lewinsky's sister and brother in law make the decision to
• 28:05
  go to his condominium.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And it's crucial to understand their motivation here. Yes, very
• 28:10
  they aren't going there because they suspect he is a murderer.
• 28:13
  They haven't been tipped off, No, not at all. They
• 28:15
  are going out of pure ordinary familial concern. Yeah, they
• 28:19
  know he is lying in the ICU and they want
• 28:21
  to check on his home, maybe gather some fresh clothes
• 28:24
  or personal belongings.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: From him, or just make sure the property is secure
• 28:27
  while he's incapacitated. You know, normal family.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Stuff, normal family stuff. So the brother in law unlocks
• 28:32
  the door and goes into the house, and, for whatever reason,
• 28:35
  maybe looking for something specific, maybe checking the utilities, he
• 28:38
  decides to go down the wooden stairs into the basement.
• 28:41
  I cannot even begin to fathom the sensory assault of
• 28:44
  what he walked into.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: The smell alone must have been unbearable.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: He expects to find laundry or storage. Instead, he discovers.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: The remains and the state of the remains.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: The sources say he sees the body found entirely nude,
• 28:57
  lying face down, arms splayed apart, partly wrapped in that
• 29:00
  plastic tarp, surrounded by the bottles of bleach in the
• 29:03
  blue handled knife.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: It is an unimaginably devastating traumatic discovery for a family
• 29:09
  member to make.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, without a doubt.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: The person you love and are worried about is suddenly
• 29:13
  revealed to be capable of absolute monstrosity.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: The family immediately calls the police, and finally the authorities
• 29:19
  crossed the threshold of the condo.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: The invisible net finally catches something exactly.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: The crime scene is secured and eventually the mutilated body
• 29:28
  is positively identified as Courtney Jerry Winters.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And you know, the irony embedded in this discovery is
• 29:35
  just crushing. What do you mean, think about it? The
• 29:38
  only reason this killer's horrific crime was exposed is because
• 29:41
  his family cared enough about his well being to check
• 29:44
  on him. Oh wow, Yeah, they loved him enough to
• 29:46
  show up at his house. Now, contrasts that with the
• 29:49
  reality of Jerry Winters. Right, for seven entire months, while
• 29:53
  her body was degrading in that bathtub and being sliced
• 29:56
  apart in that basement, she was never reported missing by
• 29:59
  a single person.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: It's a staggering fact.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Not one single person, no family member, no friend, no employer,
• 30:07
  nobody filed a missing person report during those two hundred
• 30:10
  plus days.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: The outside world completely failed to register.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Her absence completely.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: It is terrifying to think about the logistics of a
• 30:17
  life like that. Yeah, you could just vanish, you could
• 30:20
  violently cease to exist, and the world just keeps turning
• 30:23
  without a single missing poster being stable to a telephone pole,
• 30:27
  without a single police officer knocking on doors asking for
• 30:30
  a recent photograph. Yeah, how does a human being in
• 30:33
  the modern era become so entirely totally disconnected from the
• 30:37
  fabric of society.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Well, this raises an important question, and it's a recurring,
• 30:42
  deeply problematic issue in domestic homicide investigations.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear it.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: The source material notes that Winters was highly marginalized. She
• 30:51
  reportedly utilized multiple aliases, she operated under various social security numbers,
• 30:56
  and used different dates.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Of birth, so she was hard to track on paper.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, her own family had not seen or spoken to
• 31:03
  her for months prior to her death. She was entirely
• 31:07
  estranged or isolated from any formal systems of support, employment,
• 31:11
  or community tracking.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: She was effectively a ghost in the system long before
• 31:15
  she was actually killed.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and while we don't know the exact origins of
• 31:19
  her isolation, we have to recognize that extreme isolation is
• 31:23
  very frequently a result or a deliberate control tactic of
• 31:27
  turbulent abusive relationships, right like a.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Partner cuts you off from family, makes you quit a job,
• 31:31
  moves you away from friends.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Precisely, whether she was isolating herself due to her own
• 31:36
  complex life circumstances, or whether the relationship dynamics forced her
• 31:40
  into the shadows, the ultimate result for law enforcement is
• 31:43
  exactly the same.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: They don't know she's gone.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Right. When victims are disconnected from family, from stable employment,
• 31:50
  from a consistent social circle, the timeline for justice is
• 31:54
  massively delayed.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because nobody's looking for them.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Think about it. If an accountant with a family is
• 32:00
  expected at work on Monday morning and they don't show up,
• 32:03
  the police are involved. They're pinging cell phones within forty
• 32:06
  eight hours.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Right, there's an immediate alarm.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: But if someone has absolutely no one expecting them to
• 32:11
  be anywhere at any time, they can lie dead in
• 32:14
  a suburban basement for seven months.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: That is just deeply, deeply sad.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: The physical discovery by the brother in law brought an
• 32:22
  end to the concealment, but it was just the very
• 32:25
  opening salvo of the legal reckoning.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, the legal battle was just beginning, and the.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Subsequent legal battle would drag on for five long years,
• 32:34
  and the entire trajectory of that battle would hinge heavily
• 32:38
  on what happened in the hours after the discovery while
• 32:40
  Lewinsky was lying in that hospital bed in the ICU.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: See, the machinery of the justice system moves very quickly
• 32:46
  once a body.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Is found, right, it shifts into high gear.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Once the remains were discovered and tentatively identified on July
• 32:53
  twenty seventh, detectives immediately drove to Henry Ford McCombe Hospital
• 32:57
  to confront Lewinsky.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: To get hist of the story.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, they find him still in his hospital bed, still
• 33:03
  hooked up to the ICU monitors and IV drips, And
• 33:07
  during that interview in the hospital room, he speaks to them.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: He doesn't ask for a lawyer.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: No, he provides a highly detailed, comprehensive confession. He details
• 33:16
  the argument about the abortion, the five minute strangulation, the
• 33:19
  physical effort of moving the body to the tub, and
• 33:22
  his subsequent actions with the knife and bleach in the basement.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: As a lay person, you read that and think, Okay,
• 33:27
  we have the body, we have the murder weapon, and
• 33:30
  we have a detailed confession on tape. This is an
• 33:32
  open and shutcase.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Book him, right, you'd think so.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: But that hospital bed interview created a massive, complex legal
• 33:40
  loophole that ended up tying up the appellate courts for years.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: It really threw a wrench in the gears.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: The defense counsel assigned to Lewinsky looked at the transcript
• 33:49
  of that hospital interview and immediately filed emotion arguing that
• 33:53
  Lewinsky had not been properly advised of his Miranda rights
• 33:56
  at the outset of the questioning.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: And this creates a fascinating, a highly technical intersection of
• 34:02
  constitutional law and criminal procedure.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Explain the miranda thing, because people hear it on TV.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: All the time, right, we all know the phrase from television.
• 34:10
  You have the right to remain silent. That's the Fifth Amendment,
• 34:13
  which protects individuals from self incrimination. And the Miranda warning
• 34:18
  is the Supreme Court's mandated procedural safeguard for that right. Okay,
• 34:22
  but here is the critical legal nuance. Police are not
• 34:27
  legally required to read you your Miranda rights every time
• 34:30
  they talk to you. Wait, really, really, Miranda is only
• 34:33
  legally triggered during what the courts call a custodial interrogation.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, I want to make sure I understand the mechanics
• 34:39
  of that. A custodial interrogation means you have to physically
• 34:43
  be in police custody, meaning you are not legally free
• 34:46
  to get up and leave, and you have to be
• 34:48
  actively questioned about a crime by an agent of the state.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: That is the exact legal test. Okay, So the debate
• 34:56
  in the courtroom becomes a highly specific, almost philosophical argument.
• 35:02
  Is a man lying in an ICU bed hooked up
• 35:05
  to life saving medical machines technically in police custody? Oh wow,
• 35:09
  I see, he physically cannot leave the room because of
• 35:12
  his severe medical condition. Right, his body is tethered to monitors.
• 35:16
  But have the police formally legally detained him?
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Are the FIVEY lines acting as handcuffs?
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly? A circuit court judge looked at the specific circumstances
• 35:27
  of that hospital room, the presence of the detectives, the
• 35:29
  medical immobility of the suspect, and initially sided with the defense. Really, yes,
• 35:34
  the judge suppressed the confession, ruling it entirely inadmissible at
• 35:38
  a future trial because the detectives failed to properly administer
• 35:41
  the miranda warnings before he started spilling the details of
• 35:44
  the murder.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: So in one ruling, the prosecution suddenly loses their most
• 35:47
  powerful piece of evidence, the killer's own detailed recorded words gone.
• 35:52
  And a prosecutor isn't going to just accept that massive
• 35:54
  loss and go to trial handicapped. No, So they hit
• 35:57
  the pause button on the entire trial and appeal the
• 36:00
  judge's ruling.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Right, they file what is known in the legal system
• 36:04
  as an interlocutory appeal.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Interlocutory Okay, what does that mean?
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: This means they are pausing the trial process to appeal
• 36:11
  a lower judge's ruling on a specific piece of evidence
• 36:14
  to a higher court before the actual trial even begins. Ah,
• 36:19
  I see, so the case gets elevated to the Michigan
• 36:21
  Court of Appeals, and appellate courts do not move with
• 36:26
  the urgency of a trial court.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I can imagine they move at their.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Own, highly deliberate, agonizingly slow pace.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: The appellate judges have to review the lower court transcripts,
• 36:37
  read extensive, highly technical legal briefs submitted by both the
• 36:41
  prosecution and the defense, and analyze decades of state and
• 36:44
  federal case law regarding the exact parameters a hospital bed interrogations.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: And this bureaucratic process takes years, years, years, where the
• 36:52
  calendar pages just keep turning. Lewinsky is sitting in a
• 36:56
  cell in the Macombe County jail, sometimes even being shuttled
• 36:59
  to neighboring facilit because of jail construction. The victim's family,
• 37:03
  the community, the entire mechanism of justice. Everything is put
• 37:07
  on a shelf gathering dust while lawyers argue over the
• 37:10
  definition of the word custody.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: And if we connect this to the bigger picture of
• 37:13
  the criminal justice system, it highlights how incredibly protracted and
• 37:18
  painful modern criminal litigation has become.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, justice delayed is justice denied? Right?
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Well, when foundational constitutional issues like Miranda rights are fiercely
• 37:29
  and properly contested, the delay is immense, but it is
• 37:32
  a necessary feature of ensuring a fair trial.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: True. True, you don't want to rush a bad conviction. Right.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Eventually, after years of legal wrangling, the Michigan Court of
• 37:42
  Appeals reversed the lower judge's decision. They did, Yes, they
• 37:45
  ruled that the hospital interview did not meet the strict
• 37:48
  legal definition of a custodial interrogation.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the confession is back in.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, thereby reinstating the confession and ruling that prosecutors could
• 37:57
  use it in front of a jury.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: But that exhaustive appellate process pushed the actual trial date
• 38:02
  all the way down the calendar to May of twenty twenty.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Six, nearly five and a half years after Jerry Winters
• 38:08
  was killed in that recliner.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: So we finally crossed the finish line of the pre
• 38:12
  trial phase and arrive at May twenty twenty six. The
• 38:16
  trial begins in a Macomb County courtroom before Judge Rachel Rancilio.
• 38:21
  The prosecution, led by McCombe County Prosecutor Peter J. Lucido
• 38:25
  and Assistant Prosecutor Carmen DeFranco, builds their case on two absolute,
• 38:31
  unshakable pillars.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: What were they?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: The five minute biological timeline of the strangulation and the
• 38:37
  undeniable physical evidence of the seven month mutilation and concealment.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Right, the things you just cannot argue away exactly. Prosecutor
• 38:44
  de Franco's courtroom strategy is razor sharp and incredibly precise.
• 38:49
  He utilized the medical examiner's clinical testimony to firmly anchor
• 38:52
  the concept of premeditation in the minds of the jury.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Right, the thirty seconds versus five minutes.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, he looked at the jury box and explicitly told
• 39:00
  them there is absolutely no impulse here. This is conscious thought.
• 39:04
  Five minutes of conscious thought to squeeze the life out
• 39:07
  of someone.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: That's a powerful statement.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Very then he pivoted and used the brutal graphic reality
• 39:13
  of the basement, the bleach bottles, the blue knife, the
• 39:17
  sustained exhausting effort over months to dispose of the body,
• 39:21
  to prove that Lewinsky was highly calculating, deeply rational in
• 39:25
  his desire to hide his crime, and entirely comprehensively aware
• 39:29
  of his guilt.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: The defense attorney, Elijah Hoaks had a monumental, almost impossible
• 39:35
  task here.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: She really did.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: She couldn't deny the physical fact of the case. The
• 39:39
  mutilated body was found in his basement, his DNA was everywhere,
• 39:42
  the detailed confession was now admitted into evidence.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Everything was stacked against her.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: So the defense strategy had to pivot entirely away from
• 39:49
  the physical act and focus solely on his state of mind.
• 39:51
  Right and to achieve that. They attempted a highly controversial strategy. Yeah,
• 39:56
  they essentially put the deceased to victim, Jerry Winter's, on trial.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: This was a deeply controversial, heavily criticized, but historically utilized
• 40:03
  defense tactic in homicide cases. Oakes brought in an expert
• 40:07
  witness who specialized in intimate partner violence. The core of
• 40:11
  the defense strategy was to argue to the jury that
• 40:14
  male victims of domestic abuse are vastly underrecognized, both by
• 40:18
  society at large and by the legal system.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: The defense called witnesses to the stand who described previous
• 40:25
  alleged threats made by Winters against Lewinsky. They highlighted an
• 40:29
  incident where Lewinsky had allegedly called the police because Winkers
• 40:33
  threatened to come to his house armed with a gun.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They actively painted a picture for the jury of
• 40:39
  Winters as a highly controlling, volatile, and deeply abusive partner.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Okay. It is extremely important for us to note here
• 40:47
  that the prosecution and several other witnesses called during the
• 40:50
  trial pushed back fiercely on this characterization of Winters.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: They suggested the relationship was much more of a mutually
• 40:57
  toxic dynamic, with one whitness is even testifying that Lewinsky
• 41:01
  seemed happiest during the periods when he was with her.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Right, So it wasn't one sided.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: But the defense wasn't trying to prove she was a monster.
• 41:09
  They were building a narrative of cumulative, overwhelming psychological pressure.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: They argued that months of alleged abuse culminating in her
• 41:18
  sudden arrival had the devastating disclosure that she had an abortion.
• 41:23
  Thereby abruptly ending what Lewinsky thought might be his potential child,
• 41:27
  created an emotional pressure cooker that finally exploded.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Defense attorney Oakes made her goal very clear during closing arguments.
• 41:35
  She explicitly argued to the jury she pushed him to
• 41:38
  a point where he.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Snapped, there's that word again, snap.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Yes. The defense was asking the jury to look at
• 41:44
  the entire context of the toxic relationship, to weigh the
• 41:47
  emotional devastation of the abortion news and find that Lewinsky
• 41:51
  acted in the heat of passion.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: You were trying to get a manslaughter show.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Yes. They were desperately seeking a conviction for manslaughter, which
• 41:58
  carries a maximum sentence of fifth teen years in prison,
• 42:01
  or perhaps a compromised verdict of second degree murder, rather
• 42:04
  than the mandatory inescapable life without pearl sentence that accompanies
• 42:08
  a first degree premeditated murder conviction in Michigan.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the jury.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: It's a huge burden.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Think about the impossible crushing weight placed on the shoulders
• 42:17
  of those twelve ordinary citizens. They have to sit in
• 42:20
  a closed deliberation room and weigh this abstract, highly psychological
• 42:26
  concept of cumulative emotional pressure and alleged abuse against the hard, cold,
• 42:31
  undeniable physical evidence of a five minute strangulation and a
• 42:36
  seven month grotesque dismemberment in a suburban basement.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: And the prosecution vehemently rejected the defense's attempt to focus
• 42:43
  the trial on Winter's past behavior. Right, DeFranco argued passionately
• 42:47
  that absolutely no amount of prior arguing, no history of
• 42:50
  toxic dynamics, and no level of emotional distress regarding a
• 42:53
  pregnancy justifies the conscious physical decision to hold your hand
• 42:57
  on an unconscious woman's throat for five minutes until she
• 43:00
  is dead and then methodically mutilate her body with a knife.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when you put it like that.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: The jury was forced to legally define premeditation. Is premeditation
• 43:10
  only sitting in a room planning a murder for weeks?
• 43:14
  Or can pre meditation be the conscious cold choice made
• 43:17
  in the third minute of a five minute strangulation to
• 43:19
  not release your grip.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: So, after five and tense days of testimony and evidence,
• 43:24
  the jury was handed the case. They deliberated for several
• 43:28
  hours across two separate days, and their final decision was
• 43:32
  absolute and clear.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: What did they decide?
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: They entirely rejected the defense's manslaughter theory. They found Matthew
• 43:39
  Lewinsky guilty on all counts, most importantly first degree premeditated murder.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: The jury ultimately looked at the prolonged duration of the
• 43:47
  violent act itself and the incredibly extensive, cold calculated nature
• 43:51
  of the seven month cover up, and they concluded that
• 43:53
  this was not a momentary snap born of passion right.
• 43:55
  It was a murder consciously chosen, executed and hidden.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: And only one fourteenth, twenty twenty six, Joje Rancilio handed
• 44:02
  down the only sentence allowed by law, mandatory life in
• 44:05
  a state prison without the possibility of parole, alongside concurrent
• 44:09
  sentences for the mutilation and concealment charges.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Prosecutor Lucido spoke to the press afterward and called the
• 44:15
  verdict the final chapter in a long, difficult, and gruesome
• 44:18
  pursuit of justice, and.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: That brings us to the final reality of this horrific narrative.
• 44:23
  Matthew Lewinski will spend every single remaining day of his
• 44:27
  life inside a Michigan Department of Corrections facility.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Yes he will.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: The Crosswinds condominiums on Hayes Road are back to normal.
• 44:35
  The yellow police tape is long gone. The terrible odor
• 44:39
  that the neighbors smelled is just a faded, unpleasant memory.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Another family probably lives in that exact unit right now.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Exactly, completely oblivious to what's soaked into the concrete.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: And we are left with the legacy of Courtney Jerial Winters,
• 44:51
  a fifty two year old woman who died violently and
• 44:54
  silently in a recliner. Yeah, she is remembered in the
• 44:57
  public record almost entirely by the horrific sensation circumstances of
• 45:01
  her death, the five years of complex legal maneuvering, the
• 45:03
  high level appellate fights over miranda rights, the grotesque clinical
• 45:07
  details of what happened in that basement. These are the
• 45:10
  grim markers that define her legacy in the eyes of
• 45:12
  the law in the media.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: When you synthesize all the facts from the sources we've
• 45:17
  explored today, the ultimate takeaway is really a testament to
• 45:20
  the undeniable power of physical evidence over narrative.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: I agree completely the.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Brutal, unforgiving timeline of human biology thirty seconds to pass
• 45:29
  out five minutes to die, combined with the monstrous, highly
• 45:34
  logistical lengths taken to systematically conceal a body with bleach
• 45:38
  and tools, it ultimately formed this impenetrable wall of truth
• 45:42
  that the defense is narrative of a momentary snap simply
• 45:46
  could not break through.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: The justice system despite the agonizing half decade delay. Ultimately
• 45:52
  functioned correctly in recognizing that continuous sustained physical force combined
• 45:57
  with continuous sustained concealment equates to ant tenuous, deliberate choice
• 46:01
  to murder.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: We started this deep dive by looking at a perfectly
• 46:04
  normal suburban door. We assume the invisible safety net of
• 46:08
  community was there, humming quietly in the background. But the
• 46:11
  most chilling part of this entire case isn't just the
• 46:14
  monster operating in the basement with a blue knife. It
• 46:17
  is the stark, terrifying realization of how easily and how
• 46:21
  quietly a human doing can slip entirely through the cracks
• 46:25
  of modern society.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: It's sobering.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I want you to mull this over as we are today.
• 46:29
  Look around your own life, look at your neighborhood, look
• 46:32
  at the very periphery of your social circles. Who is
• 46:35
  completely disconnected, who was living silently on the edges, And
• 46:38
  if they were to disappear behind a closed door tomorrow,
• 46:41
  who would actually know