Latest / True Crime with Gavin Fish / Could These 3 Weaknesses Create Reasonable Doubt for Kouri Richins? Defense Attorney Weighs In.

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Could These 3 Weaknesses Create Reasonable Doubt for Kouri Richins? Defense Attorney Weighs In. · True Crime with Gavin Fish

• 0:02
  Well, guys up in Summit County, Utah, the county of my
• 0:06
  childhood, the place where my people are from, Cory Richens is
• 0:12
  on trial for the murder of her husband, Eric Richens.
• 0:16
  And the thing that has occurred to me on this one, because we
• 0:18
  have seen so much evidence throughout the investigation and
• 0:23
  leading up to the trial, it feels like there's just a
• 0:27
  mountain of evidence against Corey Richins.
• 0:30
  However, if there's anything that I've learned reporting on
• 0:34
  trials, it is that you cannot count on a jury to see things
• 0:38
  the way the prosecution wants them to see it.
• 0:42
  And are there holes? Are there ways where the defense
• 0:46
  might be able to eke in some reasonable doubt?
• 0:51
  And who better to have here to talk about this is former
• 0:55
  prosecutor and defense attorney Josh Ritter from Courtroom
• 0:59
  Confidential. So stick with me and we will.
• 1:03
  We'll get into it. This video contains mature
• 1:18
  themes and discussions intended only for adult audiences.
• 1:21
  Viewer discretion is advised. Hello there, my friend, and
• 1:27
  welcome back to another true crime conversation with me,
• 1:31
  Gavin Fish. If you'd like to cut through the
• 1:33
  sensationalism and the fluff of true crime, you have found the
• 1:37
  right place. Boy, I'm glad you did.
• 1:41
  Thank you for joining me. Wherever you're joining me from,
• 1:43
  please tell me in the comments where you're joining me from.
• 1:45
  I love reading through that. And Speaking of being glad about
• 1:50
  something, I am extremely glad today to be joined by my friend
• 1:55
  Joshua Ritter from Courtroom Confidential to help us dig into
• 1:59
  this case. Josh, welcome.
• 2:01
  Thank you so much for having me, I've been looking forward to
• 2:03
  this. I'm glad you're here.
• 2:05
  You know, when, when I started thinking about there was a case,
• 2:09
  I don't know if you if you followed the murder of Kirby
• 2:12
  Carpenter down in Mississippi. It was, it's at the hands of,
• 2:17
  well, allegedly at the hands of Jeff Spence, who's a local to my
• 2:21
  area. And it came back as a hung jury
• 2:25
  and I could not believe it. And that's that seems to be
• 2:28
  about the umpteenth trial where I thought they have got so much
• 2:32
  evidence stacked against this defendant and a jury still can't
• 2:37
  convict. Is it possible that this might
• 2:41
  happen in the Cory Richins case? I mean it, it's possible to your
• 2:45
  point, it can happen in any case.
• 2:47
  I mean, I, I, I have this conversation with clients all
• 2:50
  the time. Like the, the most unpredictable
• 2:53
  thing in the world is, is 12 jurors.
• 2:56
  If you, if you really are heading to trial, it is because
• 3:00
  you've exhausted every other option because it it, listen, we
• 3:05
  have a very, we have a great system in this country.
• 3:07
  It's the best system, I think on earth.
• 3:09
  And I truly do believe that. But at times it does feel like a
• 3:13
  crapshoot and things can happen. You can barely get 12 people to
• 3:17
  agree on what they want for lunch.
• 3:19
  So try getting them to agree on something as complex as a
• 3:22
  circumstantial murder case and who knows how it's going to turn
• 3:26
  out. Let now I've been doing this
• 3:28
  long enough that I have faith in the system.
• 3:30
  And I think that you can generally see which what what
• 3:34
  direction a trial is going in before it ends up in the hands
• 3:38
  of jurors. But sometimes they do incredibly
• 3:40
  unpredictable things. And like you said, we both could
• 3:42
  sit here and probably list case after case where we were
• 3:45
  shocked, even if that shock comes down to a hung jury, which
• 3:48
  is not entirely, you know, happened, seems to happen more
• 3:52
  often then we would hope too. So, yeah, I mean, I, I agree
• 3:57
  with you. I think that the evidence in
• 3:58
  this case is fairly convincing. But is there room for a clever
• 4:04
  defense attorney to to cause enough questions and enough
• 4:08
  doubt that some of those jurors might not be so convinced?
• 4:11
  Absolutely. Yeah, I when, when I'm thinking
• 4:15
  about these things, I go back to my time I served on a jury in a
• 4:19
  double homicide case like 20 years ago, maybe closer to 25
• 4:23
  years ago. I may have shared this with you
• 4:25
  and my, my viewers who watch me all the time, They've heard this
• 4:28
  story way too many times. But it, it was a double
• 4:31
  homicide. And I sat in the jury box juror
• 4:34
  #2 looking at this trial for an entire week and thinking, man,
• 4:40
  this is going to be the easiest decision of our lives.
• 4:45
  And it was coming up on Thanksgiving and like, good,
• 4:47
  we're going to be able to go out of town for Thanksgiving like we
• 4:50
  were planning. We get into the jury room and it
• 4:53
  was like 8 of those people were sitting in a different trial.
• 4:57
  I could not believe it. And, and I think that sometimes
• 5:00
  like personal, there are personal hang ups right?
• 5:05
  In in the case of that jury that I was sitting on, this was a
• 5:08
  young man who was a juvenile being tried as an adult.
• 5:13
  And they were just people that were hung up on that.
• 5:15
  Like we, I can't put a 17 year old in prison for the rest of
• 5:19
  his life, even though it's pretty convincing that he shot
• 5:22
  two men, right? It's just.
• 5:25
  Oh, that kind of stuff happens all the time.
• 5:27
  When I was early in my career as a prosecutor, they would tell
• 5:31
  us, you know, even when you had an acquittal, even when you'd
• 5:34
  lost, go talk to the jurors because maybe you're going to
• 5:37
  learn some information. And I quickly found that that
• 5:41
  was never helpful because some of the stuff that people got
• 5:45
  hung up on was stuff that would, it would drive you nuts if you
• 5:49
  knew what they were thinking about.
• 5:51
  One, I'll tell one quick story. I want to like spend our time
• 5:55
  telling war stories. But and it because it just
• 5:59
  sticks with me to this day about I had a a trial early on where
• 6:04
  it was about some young, young women who had been assaulted
• 6:09
  while walking to school. A guy had run up, grabbed them,
• 6:12
  assaulted them and then ran off and it happened to two or three
• 6:16
  different girls and they identified this guy.
• 6:19
  Well, they the way that they did it was with a six pack photo
• 6:22
  array of 6 pack lineup on, on pictures.
• 6:26
  And I thought the whole thing went incredibly well.
• 6:28
  I thought the, you know, the witnesses did fairly well and we
• 6:31
  had positive ID's and then we got this guy and he, you know
• 6:35
  everything about it. I felt very confident and it
• 6:37
  came back not not guilty, thank God, but a hung jury.
• 6:42
  And I'm like, what in the world? So I went and talked to the
• 6:45
  jurors and said, I remember this one juror.
• 6:47
  I'm like, what more would you have wanted to know?
• 6:50
  Like because I thought, was there some piece of evidence I
• 6:54
  held back because I took it for granted.
• 6:56
  Like what more would have you wanted to know to convince you?
• 6:58
  And this one juror goes, well, where did you get the other
• 7:02
  pictures in the photo array? Where did those pictures all
• 7:06
  come from? And I just remember being like,
• 7:09
  wow, these people are back there sometimes, not all the time, but
• 7:14
  sometimes just talking about the most wild off the wall stuff.
• 7:18
  How are you going to predict that?
• 7:20
  So you're you're right. I mean, it's just sometimes you,
• 7:24
  you sometimes you've lost the case before you've even begun
• 7:28
  your opening statements because somehow somebody made it on that
• 7:31
  jury that is just never going to be convinced.
• 7:33
  Yeah. Well, getting to the Corey
• 7:36
  Richins thing here, let's let's bring up Miss Richens, Misses
• 7:43
  Richens photos here. There were a couple things that
• 7:46
  I was going through, you know, leading up to this trial for the
• 7:50
  two or what three years leading up to this trial.
• 7:52
  We cover the case. We read the affidavits of
• 7:56
  probable cause, a lot of the filings along the way.
• 8:00
  The and, and I know that the prosecution's this is like the
• 8:06
  first thing that I, I know I titled this video three things
• 8:09
  that could possibly go on some I can't, can't remember exactly
• 8:11
  what, what title I put on here. But anyway, one of the things
• 8:15
  was that there's no the, the prosecution believes that she
• 8:21
  put fentanyl in his Moscow Mule, but there's no direct evidence
• 8:25
  that that is the case because the glass got washed and a
• 8:29
  couple of other things, right? I want to, I want to pick your
• 8:32
  brain a little bit and I'd like to focus on victims here.
• 8:35
  We should have Eric's picture up here.
• 8:39
  I'd like to talk a little bit about like direct evidence
• 8:42
  versus circumstantial evidence and talk a little bit about what
• 8:47
  each one is. And you, you even said, you
• 8:51
  know, this is a circumstantial case.
• 8:52
  So, you know, if you watch TV, you're watching Law and Order,
• 8:55
  you're watching, you know, Lincoln Lawyer or something like
• 8:58
  that, You go, Oh no, dear, it's a circumstantial case.
• 9:00
  This is never going to go. But almost every case I've
• 9:03
  covered has been almost entirely circumstantial.
• 9:07
  There's hardly ever direct evidence tying A defendant, at
• 9:12
  least in in my areas. I've been covering these things.
• 9:14
  So can you real quick just define as an attorney, a learned
• 9:18
  person, what is the difference between direct and
• 9:22
  circumstantial evidence? Sure.
• 9:26
  And you're right, most evidence is circumstantial and most cases
• 9:31
  are are circumstantial. Direct evidence is the the way
• 9:35
  the law defines it is direct evidence is where the person
• 9:39
  testifying, you don't have to draw any conclusion from their
• 9:42
  testimony. So a person says I was looking
• 9:47
  and I saw clouds in the sky and raindrops coming down from those
• 9:50
  clouds. That is direct evidence.
• 9:52
  I saw it directly of it raining. Circumstantial evidence is, and
• 9:57
  I'm using this example because this is the one they always give
• 9:59
  in court when they're trying to explain this to jurors.
• 10:02
  Circumstantial evidence would be you're sitting inside, you can't
• 10:06
  see outside. Somebody comes into the to the
• 10:09
  house, they are covered in water, they're wearing a
• 10:13
  raincoat and they're and they're and they're drying out an
• 10:15
  umbrella. All of that is circumstantial
• 10:19
  evidence that it's raining outside, though you didn't
• 10:21
  directly see it raining, but you because you have to make one
• 10:26
  extra step, a logical step from everything that you saw to draw
• 10:32
  the conclusion that it was raining outside.
• 10:35
  So many things, when you think about it that way, are
• 10:38
  circumstantial evidence and what went and when people are trying
• 10:41
  to say the circumstantial evidence is not as strong, I go,
• 10:45
  well, guess what is circumstantial is DNA.
• 10:49
  We think of DNA as being about the strongest evidence out there
• 10:51
  that exists. That's circumstantial evidence.
• 10:54
  If you find DNA on a on a desktop that the logical
• 11:00
  conclude the the direct evidence is that they found DNA, right?
• 11:04
  The logical conclusion is that somebody left it there, meaning
• 11:08
  that somebody had to have been in that room and touched that
• 11:10
  desktop to have left it there. But you do have to make one
• 11:14
  logical step away from the direct evidence of they
• 11:18
  collected DNA, they collected a fingerprint.
• 11:22
  That is the direct evidence. The circumstantial conclusion
• 11:25
  you can draw from that is somebody left that fingerprint
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  there by touching that object. And so when you begin to think
• 11:31
  about it that way, there's, there's plenty of circumstantial
• 11:34
  evidence that we find and accept and is very convincing to us.
• 11:38
  And so in this Case, No one, there's no eyewitness to Cori
• 11:41
  Richins putting fentanyl in his class.
• 11:44
  Even if there was fentanyl found in the glass tested for it, you
• 11:49
  still have to draw the conclusion that she put it
• 11:51
  there, right? I mean, all you would have was
• 11:54
  that they they tested positive for fentanyl, still doesn't tell
• 11:57
  us who had access to it and who put it there.
• 12:00
  So, yeah, this is a circumstantial case, but it's
• 12:03
  got a lot of compelling circumstantial evidence.
• 12:08
  I think where people begin to kind of not even criticize but
• 12:14
  begin to kind of point at the weaknesses, if there are any in
• 12:18
  the prosecution case is that this case is heavily reliant on
• 12:23
  motive. That it it, yes, we don't have a
• 12:27
  an eyewitness to her doing it, but the reason we're telling you
• 12:31
  she did it is because look at all the other motive evidence
• 12:35
  saying she's the only one that had a reason to do it.
• 12:38
  Yeah. OK.
• 12:39
  So say you're the defense attorney on this one.
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  And, and by the way, one of the things that I get a kick out of
• 12:45
  in our little, in our little hobby of being true crime
• 12:50
  watchers is just the, the ease at which we will kind of direct
• 12:58
  our negative feelings, our hate toward defense attorneys.
• 13:02
  It's really easy for us to like, oh, they're representing this
• 13:06
  evil person. Therefore that evil is rubbed
• 13:08
  off on them, right. But, but you know, I, I was in a
• 13:12
  jury selection one time where Judge Lobaugh, I remember his
• 13:15
  name, said, you know, there's going to be presentations from
• 13:18
  the prosecution and the defense. And our system is set up so that
• 13:21
  if I told them right now they have to switch places, they
• 13:24
  should be able to the prosecutor should be able to defend this
• 13:27
  person and the defense should be able to prosecute this person.
• 13:30
  That's, that's the way the system works, right?
• 13:33
  So if you're the defense attorney and we withhold our
• 13:37
  judgment from you for being the defense attorney of Corey
• 13:40
  Richens, how do you poke holes in in that problem that there is
• 13:45
  no direct evidence that ties Cory Richens to the poisoning
• 13:50
  via fentanyl of her husband, Eric Richens?
• 13:53
  What would you do to plant that reasonable doubt?
• 13:58
  Well, yeah #1 and they're already doing this is they're
• 14:02
  trying to make it as though an element of the crime is that you
• 14:06
  have to show that she had access to the fentanyl, that she, they,
• 14:11
  they, they want to make a big argument of the fact that they
• 14:14
  cannot, the prosecution, I mean, cannot place fentanyl in Corey
• 14:18
  Richman's hands. And that's true.
• 14:21
  And that's a, that's just a, that's just the state of affairs
• 14:26
  for the prosecution. And they're going to have to
• 14:28
  somehow convince yours other than that.
• 14:29
  But I think the defense is doing a fairly admirable job of making
• 14:33
  it almost sound like that is requisite to a conviction is
• 14:37
  that you have to be able to show she had fentanyl, you know,
• 14:40
  access to fentanyl in her hands herself.
• 14:44
  The other is they've already got a built in kind of advantage
• 14:49
  here with one of their witnesses going backwards on the
• 14:51
  prosecution, the Crozier the the drug seller is already saying, I
• 14:57
  didn't even sell fentanyl at that time.
• 14:59
  I think they're going to try to exploit that to to a great
• 15:04
  degree with with the same similar argument of saying look
• 15:08
  at even the even the star witness for the prosecution
• 15:11
  can't put put fentanyl on the state the table here.
• 15:15
  And then I think that all doves dovetails into.
• 15:19
  I think their overall argument is that, listen, this is not a
• 15:24
  case where he's got a bullet hole in his head.
• 15:26
  This is not a case where he's got a knife sticking out of his
• 15:28
  chest. This is a case where he died
• 15:31
  from an overdose of a drug that is an epidemic in our society.
• 15:36
  There are thousands of people who die every single year from
• 15:40
  fentanyl overdose, and that is a tragedy.
• 15:42
  But we don't charge every single one of those cases as a murder
• 15:46
  because this is an unfortunate world we live in where people do
• 15:50
  accidentally overdose from fentanyl.
• 15:53
  And you know what, ladies and gentlemen, sometimes that
• 15:55
  happens with people who take drugs recreationally and are not
• 15:59
  quote a quote drug abusers. And this is the unfortunate case
• 16:03
  here with with Eric is that he happened to get himself a a hot
• 16:09
  dose of whatever it was he was taking that happened to be laced
• 16:13
  with an incredibly powerful drug and it unfortunately took his
• 16:18
  life. But don't all of a sudden say
• 16:19
  that Corey is guilty for it. Those are the arguments.
• 16:22
  That I think they're, they're going to make and I think it's a
• 16:25
  good argument. The end you, you brought up
• 16:29
  exactly. The second kind of point that I,
• 16:31
  that I found was that the, the drug supply chain is rather
• 16:35
  murky, right? And you know, they're saying
• 16:38
  that he died from fentanyl poisoning, but what was the
• 16:42
  actual delivery of that? It's there's that they've got a
• 16:46
  lot of video, they've got text messages, they've got lots of
• 16:49
  things that are pointing in the direction of where that supply
• 16:53
  chain was. But I do think that the defense
• 16:56
  can also kind of point, like you just said to we don't know who
• 17:01
  who is recreationally using drugs.
• 17:03
  Your children could be doing it right now.
• 17:06
  And it and it's so prolific and it's so available that why would
• 17:10
  you why would you think that my client was doing this besides
• 17:13
  the whole 7 and a half, $1,000,000 in debt and trying to
• 17:16
  change his insurance policy, you know, all those things.
• 17:20
  Yeah. So actually let me ask you
• 17:23
  another legal question here. The one of the things that I
• 17:27
  think jurors have a problem with when they when they get in to
• 17:31
  deliberate, again, speaking from personal experience, is
• 17:35
  understanding that doctrine of what is reasonable doubt rather
• 17:40
  than what is just doubt, right. This again, going back to the
• 17:45
  Jeff Spence trial on murder of Kirby Carpenter, man, that that
• 17:50
  that attorney was really good. And it was in the South.
• 17:53
  So it kind of felt like we were watching Matlock or something,
• 17:55
  you know, is it? It was he was just very good at
• 17:59
  at planting seeds of doubt. And when the jury gets their
• 18:04
  charge, the judge is going to tell them this is what
• 18:07
  reasonable doubt is. And usually the judge reads it
• 18:10
  verbatim from the law and does and, and I've even seen juries
• 18:14
  go, can you explain that to me? And they will say, I cannot, but
• 18:18
  I can read this to you again, right.
• 18:21
  So when you get into the jury room, understanding that legal
• 18:25
  doctrine of reasonable doubt is actually really tough,
• 18:28
  especially when somebody's life is in the balance and you start
• 18:31
  to have those feelings of guilt. Like what if I get this wrong?
• 18:35
  Rather, I would rather err on the side of caution than not,
• 18:39
  right? Sure.
• 18:40
  So can you explain to us the difference between doubt and
• 18:47
  reasonable doubt? No, it is.
• 18:53
  It is one of the most highly contested attorneys.
• 18:58
  You're right. The reason it's so difficult is
• 19:00
  because it is so heavily litigated on how you define it
• 19:06
  that that's why when there there is a jury instruction on it in
• 19:10
  each jurisdiction has their own jury instruction on it.
• 19:14
  Lawyers, judges, certainly no one wants to go outside of that
• 19:18
  because there's been so much litigation over what those exact
• 19:21
  words should be the the kind of a running joke with defense
• 19:26
  attorneys as you say. Well, listen, you're all
• 19:29
  reasonable people. So if any one of you have a
• 19:32
  doubt, well then that's a reasonable doubt.
• 19:34
  The problem is, is that it is kind of a feeling.
• 19:38
  The the way that it's defined in California is it is as an
• 19:42
  abiding conviction, which is essentially a feeling.
• 19:45
  Do you have a gut feeling that is so strong that you feel
• 19:51
  confident in the guilt of this person as you will today, as you
• 19:56
  imagine you will tomorrow, as you imagine you will a year, 10
• 19:59
  years and 50 years from now? Well, that's all a feeling.
• 20:02
  That's all just kind of, you know, hypothetical mumbo jumbo
• 20:06
  that people have to play in their head.
• 20:09
  I think the best way of understanding it is, is what?
• 20:13
  What is it not Well there, it's not questions, that's for sure.
• 20:18
  It's not unanswered questions. And I've always tried to make
• 20:22
  this clear to jurors is that. I fully intend to prove to you
• 20:26
  this case beyond a reasonable doubt, as it is the elements of
• 20:30
  the crime charged. I will prove to you at each
• 20:33
  element charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 20:35
  But I cannot answer every possible question that you're
• 20:38
  going to have in this case. You're all smart people.
• 20:41
  You're going to come up with little mysteries along the way
• 20:43
  that I cannot possibly answer. So it's not just mysteries, it's
• 20:48
  not just questions, and it's also not just doubts, because
• 20:53
  you can have doubts. But do those rise to the level
• 20:57
  that are so reasonable, first of all, that you feel like you
• 21:03
  cannot have confidence in this today, tomorrow, five years, 10
• 21:07
  years, 20 years down the line. And again, it comes down to a
• 21:10
  feeling of, you know, people just kind of checking their gut
• 21:16
  about this whole thing. And that's why it's so difficult
• 21:18
  to understand. Yeah, I, I mean, I've, I've
• 21:21
  heard those jury instructions so many times and I'm always left
• 21:25
  wondering what is reasonable doubt.
• 21:27
  And, and actually that's kind of the a feature of the laws that
• 21:30
  there's are always an argument, There's always a way to to see
• 21:35
  it. It's it's not a shortcoming of
• 21:37
  the lots. It's a built in feature.
• 21:41
  I I know the jury instructions here in in Pennsylvania, they,
• 21:44
  they say a reasonable doubt is a doubt that would cause you to
• 21:48
  change given new information, it would cause you to change your
• 21:51
  behavior. And I've heard that instruction
• 21:54
  several times be given to jurors.
• 21:57
  And every time I look over at the juror box to see how are
• 22:00
  they receiving this instruction, they either they only look more
• 22:04
  confused. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
• 22:08
  OK, Susie, Q420 asks us why do you think Eric didn't go to the
• 22:13
  police? He did express concerns that his
• 22:18
  wife was trying to kill him when he had the sandwich and he
• 22:23
  changed the, you know, his, his trust, the beneficiaries.
• 22:29
  He did all he was concerned that that Corey was trying to kill
• 22:34
  him. At least that's I think a
• 22:36
  reasonable conclusion to draw. Why do you think he didn't go to
• 22:40
  the police? Because I think he just couldn't
• 22:43
  believe it himself. I think it, you know, how, how
• 22:46
  difficult a thing is that to say or admit to yourself, my wife's
• 22:52
  really trying to kill me. And, and like, I'm going to call
• 22:54
  the police because I fully try to believe she, he's, she's
• 22:57
  trying to kill me. I think he was an incredibly
• 23:00
  long-suffering and forgiving person.
• 23:03
  I mean, look at she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars
• 23:06
  from him. She forged documents.
• 23:08
  She, she had, you know, powers of attorney put in his name and
• 23:13
  he forgave her and again and again.
• 23:15
  And who knows what kind of conversations they had behind
• 23:18
  closed doors about, oh, she made a mistake and you got to forgive
• 23:22
  me and all of this stuff. But he was incredibly
• 23:24
  long-suffering and forgiving. Now, he was also not a complete
• 23:29
  dummy. I mean, he, he was making moves
• 23:32
  behind the scenes where he was, you know, setting up a trust and
• 23:35
  keeping her out of it and setting up his life insurance in
• 23:38
  such a way. And, and having conversations
• 23:43
  with others about his concerns about her.
• 23:44
  But I think that, you know, maybe maybe he in his heart of
• 23:50
  hearts, was hoping it would all kind of work itself out.
• 23:53
  Maybe he was thinking that, OK, well, I'm, I, you know, she's,
• 23:57
  she's done some really bad stuff, but I just can't imagine
• 23:59
  her doing something this bad. I mean, I think it's a, you got
• 24:04
  to imagine what was going through this poor guy's mind to
• 24:07
  actually think the mother of his children might be trying to take
• 24:11
  his life. And I think he just thought, I,
• 24:13
  I can't go to the cops with this.
• 24:15
  Yeah, that's, I mean, it's a good question from Susie.
• 24:18
  And I think that you've probably hit the nail on the head,
• 24:22
  especially if you've had like happy times, right?
• 24:25
  You're like, again, mother of my children, we have three boys
• 24:28
  together. We have a happy life together.
• 24:30
  I can't believe that she would she would do that.
• 24:33
  But that's something that at least on my channel, we try
• 24:36
  really hard to learn, right? It's very easy to Monday morning
• 24:40
  quarterback and it's very easy to slip into victim blaming.
• 24:44
  And and we don't want to do that, but we do want to learn
• 24:46
  from these things, right? And one of the things that I'm
• 24:49
  constantly saying is if somebody signals to you that they mean
• 24:55
  you harm, you should believe them.
• 24:58
  Yeah. Now, in Eric's defense, I think
• 25:00
  if he went to the police, I don't think there's any anything
• 25:04
  that they could have could have done.
• 25:07
  I mean, what would he have gone to the police with?
• 25:09
  I Hey, I, I ate a sandwich on Valentine's Day and I felt
• 25:12
  really weird. I'd like you to investigate my
• 25:14
  wife. You know what I mean?
• 25:16
  I, you can imagine him getting laughed out of the station for
• 25:18
  that kind of a thing. I I think the guy was in a real
• 25:22
  tough spot. He's living with this woman.
• 25:25
  She's the mother of his children.
• 25:26
  He's probably thinking about his children more than she certainly
• 25:30
  was. And, you know, completely
• 25:34
  frustrated and at his wit's end with the idea that she, her
• 25:39
  financial problems are becoming his financial problems and he
• 25:42
  can't trust her. I, I mean, I really feel awful.
• 25:46
  The guy was in a was in a was in a living nightmare before this
• 25:50
  all turned deadly for him. Yeah, and at the same time
• 25:52
  trying to live a normal life and keep his family fed and roof
• 25:57
  over their head and all the things that I mean, if you think
• 25:59
  about just the daily living, I mean that that takes up 98% of
• 26:05
  just the bandwidth that you have, right.
• 26:07
  And then trying to deal with somebody who means you harm that
• 26:11
  that's got to take it well over the edge.
• 26:14
  OK, the third thing. So the the three things that I
• 26:17
  think are are possible that the that the defense can
• 26:22
  successfully kind of plant the seeds of reasonable doubt are no
• 26:27
  direct evidence that she administered the fentanyl,
• 26:29
  right. The drug supply chain is murky
• 26:32
  as you as you brought up. And then the third one is the
• 26:35
  Eric himself did have or could have had access to drugs and
• 26:40
  alcohol. We do know that he had access to
• 26:42
  alcohol, but we already talked about this a little bit.
• 26:45
  You never know who is, who may be addicted to, you know, to
• 26:53
  drugs, who might be recreationally using.
• 26:56
  I think about as a parent, you know, Kimberly and I have 5
• 26:58
  kids, three of which are adults. Actually, I even think about
• 27:02
  myself. I was back in California as you
• 27:04
  know, I was hanging out with my parents.
• 27:05
  And it seems like every time I go back there, I'm now 50 years
• 27:09
  old. There is, I have to, I have a
• 27:13
  session where I come clean about all the stupid things that I did
• 27:17
  that they didn't know about, right?
• 27:19
  And our kids are starting to do that with us, right?
• 27:22
  So it's very easy to get away with things innocent and not so
• 27:26
  innocent under the noses of all the people that, that we that we
• 27:31
  love and are around us. Who knows if Eric was a
• 27:35
  recreational drug user? Nobody, right?
• 27:38
  Yeah, and, and here's the, you know, I talked about he, he
• 27:42
  didn't have a bullet hole in his head.
• 27:43
  He didn't have a knife in his chest.
• 27:44
  He also didn't have cyanide in his system, like an easily
• 27:49
  identifiable deadly poison. He had a drug in his system that
• 27:54
  unfortunately is being used by people who abuse it and also
• 28:00
  being laced into other drugs that people, you know,
• 28:04
  recreational drugs that people take.
• 28:07
  So again, it's like the mechanism of the murder makes it
• 28:10
  difficult to say whether or not this was homicide or whether or
• 28:15
  not this was accidental to to the point that even the medical
• 28:19
  examiner struggles to to make that determination.
• 28:22
  I had Joseph Scott Morgan. Do you you know him?
• 28:26
  Oh yeah. On on our channel please.
• 28:30
  Yeah. Everybody go over there.
• 28:31
  Check out the episode. If you want to see it, yeah.
• 28:34
  Exactly. And he, we were talking about
• 28:37
  just this issue with fentanyl. He said three, imagine 3 grains
• 28:44
  of table salt, that small amount, that is how much
• 28:48
  fentanyl you need to kill somebody. 3 grains of table
• 28:53
  salt, it is so small. And the point of that is drug
• 28:58
  dealers are using this to enhance other drugs, not like
• 29:03
  cut drugs. They're not like taking cocaine
• 29:06
  and adding a bunch of fentanyl so that they can have more yield
• 29:09
  of cocaine to sell. But they're taking it and
• 29:11
  they're adding it to things like cocaine and other drugs to
• 29:14
  enhance the effects of it so that people want their drugs,
• 29:19
  right. Oh, this guy's got really good
• 29:21
  cocaine or what have you when it's really got an extra kick
• 29:24
  because they've added fentanyl to it.
• 29:26
  Well, do you trust the people who are drug dealers and adding
• 29:30
  things like fentanyl to their to their drugs to, to put in the
• 29:34
  right amounts of this stuff? So that's another kind of built
• 29:38
  in issue of this is that people do unfortunately get lethal
• 29:44
  doses of fentanyl in other drugs.
• 29:47
  I mean, I anecdotally, a, a, a friend of mine, I'm not going to
• 29:53
  name him for, for the reason for of the, of the story I'm about
• 29:55
  to tell, but said that he had recently gone to a, you know,
• 29:59
  kind of Hollywood sort of New Year's party where there were
• 30:05
  drugs there. And they had also testing strips
• 30:08
  available to people in case they wanted to test the drugs.
• 30:12
  Just to be careful because it's the world that we live in that
• 30:16
  who knows what can be laced into some of these things.
• 30:19
  That's the argument that the defense is going to make.
• 30:22
  You don't know. He doesn't have to be a hardened
• 30:25
  drug abuser. He doesn't have to have a drug
• 30:28
  history a mile long. He could have just every once in
• 30:31
  awhile liked to take himself whatever you, you know, ecstasy,
• 30:34
  cocaine, whatever kind of a drug.
• 30:37
  And he just happened to get himself a, a hot dose and it
• 30:40
  killed him. But don't point the finger at
• 30:42
  our client. Yeah, there's a question from
• 30:46
  Jules of me did or why didn't they test his hair?
• 30:50
  I I guess the implication there is to try to determine if he was
• 30:53
  a long term drug user or something like that.
• 30:56
  I I haven't seen any evidence about about that.
• 30:59
  I don't think the prosecution has done anything like that.
• 31:02
  But man, that is here in Pennsylvania and a lot of other
• 31:07
  states in the, in the nation, there are now they, they are
• 31:12
  holding drug dealers responsible for deaths.
• 31:15
  You know, I mean, I follow things all the time where there
• 31:20
  will be 5 deaths in, you know, Podunk nowhere, Pennsylvania and
• 31:25
  then three years later a whole series of people get arrested
• 31:30
  and charged with drug delivery resulting in death.
• 31:33
  Because this whole, the way that you described it is exactly the
• 31:38
  way it is. They're not cutting it.
• 31:39
  They're not trying to make it cheaper.
• 31:41
  They're trying to make the high higher.
• 31:43
  They're trying to make the addictive properties of it more
• 31:46
  addicting so that people will chase that high.
• 31:49
  And it's not like we've got the world's greatest chemists
• 31:53
  putting this together either. We've got, well, in some cases
• 31:57
  there probably are. But on the street anyway, when
• 32:00
  they're putting, when they're lacing with fentanyl, man, that,
• 32:03
  that is a, that is a huge revelation that I didn't know. 3
• 32:07
  grains of table salt of fentanyl is enough to kill a person,
• 32:10
  according to Joseph. So yeah, they're, they're just
• 32:14
  trying it. It's an economic incentive,
• 32:16
  right? They want, they want more people
• 32:19
  to be addicted so they can sell more drugs.
• 32:21
  And if the trade off on that is that a few junkies die in their
• 32:25
  words, right, that it's OK, there will be plenty of, there
• 32:30
  will be plenty more customers. So when we're talking five times
• 32:34
  the lethal dose, we're not talking very much at all.
• 32:38
  Now we're talking 15 grains of salt.
• 32:40
  We're talking about a very small amount.
• 32:42
  Now that's in it's pure form, right?
• 32:45
  We don't know if she was being supplied it in, in tablet form
• 32:49
  where they're going to add other fillers and stabilizers to
• 32:52
  create the tablets or if it's in some kind of liquid form.
• 32:55
  I know that it can also be purchased in.
• 32:59
  But yeah, we're we're not talking much at all.
• 33:02
  That is, I mean, it's like a drug that we've never seen
• 33:04
  before. Really, it is it because it's
• 33:05
  synthetic and it's so powerful. It really is like nothing that
• 33:12
  that we've ever had to deal with, which is why we're seeing
• 33:15
  so many deaths involved in it because it is it is so
• 33:19
  incredibly powerful and deadly that you can't it's hard to
• 33:23
  control what people are taking And and yeah, people can start
• 33:27
  to build up a tolerance to it like they can with any other
• 33:30
  street drug, but it does. We're we're talking, you know,
• 33:34
  from one dosage to a little bit stronger could be enough to kill
• 33:38
  you. And maybe you're maybe you do
• 33:39
  have a problem and you're looking for something a little
• 33:41
  bit stronger, but that a little bit stronger is just enough to
• 33:44
  kill you. Yeah, the threading the needle
• 33:46
  there as you're, as you're chasing the higher high, it's
• 33:49
  just really dangerous, really dangerous.
• 33:52
  OK. So we've talked about the ways
• 33:54
  that the defense might be able to, you know, plant these seeds
• 33:59
  of doubt. What do you think the
• 34:01
  prosecution has to do or have they been doing it well in order
• 34:06
  to kind of counter what some of these things that we've
• 34:09
  identified in the case? I think they've been doing a
• 34:14
  good job. I, I think they, they have, they
• 34:18
  have, it's heavy on motivation, but that's a good thing because
• 34:24
  you do need to be really convincing on motivation when
• 34:29
  you are talking about a wife taking her husband's life,
• 34:33
  taking the life of her, the father of her children.
• 34:36
  I think that jurors need to know what would motivate someone to
• 34:40
  do that. I think they've also done an
• 34:42
  incredible job of showing that this wasn't just about money,
• 34:46
  but it was also about kind of this lifestyle.
• 34:49
  She wanted this the the new boyfriend that she wanted
• 34:55
  feelings of, of complete completely being trapped in this
• 34:59
  marriage and wanting out of it. You know, it's, it's more than
• 35:04
  just saying, Hey, she had financial issues.
• 35:06
  It was a whole other thing. I, I, you, you made the point
• 35:09
  actually that I thought was so great about understanding that
• 35:12
  that area and at that time with kind of the, a real estate boom
• 35:19
  they were going through and how it was creating these kind of
• 35:21
  overnight entrepreneurs and people who thought they're going
• 35:25
  to make a quick buck. And she goes from, you know,
• 35:28
  getting her real estate license and all of a sudden she's
• 35:31
  flipping millions of dollars in homes and she's in debt to the
• 35:34
  tune of 8,000,000 bucks, but she's got a bunch of assets.
• 35:37
  And I mean, they're just, those are staggering figures for, for
• 35:41
  somebody who's kind of still learning their way in the real
• 35:43
  estate industry. So I think they've done a very
• 35:46
  good job with that. I think that the the the
• 35:52
  housekeeper Carmen, along with the drug dealer and I don't mean
• 35:58
  that, you know, just to be pejorative about him, but the
• 36:01
  the person who sold the drugs with Crozier, I think do enough
• 36:07
  to show that. Hey, yeah, maybe we can't show
• 36:11
  the fentanyl in her hands, but we certainly show someone who,
• 36:15
  with all these motives, was out looking for incredibly deadly
• 36:20
  stuff. I mean the idea that she's going
• 36:22
  back and saying I need something stronger.
• 36:25
  Give me the Michael Jackson stuff, yeah.
• 36:27
  Give me the Michael Jackson stuff.
• 36:28
  That's that that is to me really convinced.
• 36:31
  And then and then, you know, you add into that kind of her her
• 36:35
  searches where, you know, I mean, the one that kills me is
• 36:38
  where she's searching about women's prisons in Utah and
• 36:43
  like, what are the conditions that I mean, she's she's got a
• 36:46
  lot of. She's weighing behavior.
• 36:49
  And everything else. Yeah, she's weighing her risk.
• 36:52
  Is this worth it? And if I get caught, is my life
• 36:54
  going to be OK still? Actually, one of the things
• 36:58
  that's really unique about this case is unlike the vast majority
• 37:03
  of cases where we've got male on female violence, we.
• 37:06
  This is 1 where a wife is allegedly killing her husband.
• 37:12
  And that probably, that probably is a lot to take for a jury as
• 37:17
  well. That's.
• 37:19
  Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.
• 37:21
  I mean, you, we're not being sexist about it.
• 37:24
  It's it's difficult for jurors to just imagine a female
• 37:28
  committing a, a, a crime like this.
• 37:31
  Yeah. That that's, that's going to be
• 37:33
  something that the, the prosecution is going to have to
• 37:35
  get around to. But I think they've done a real
• 37:37
  good job of showing that like the sweet little Corey that you
• 37:41
  may, that she may have been before all of this.
• 37:43
  And the woman that we see in court wearing the sweaters and
• 37:46
  the, and looking all innocent. She was, she was up to some real
• 37:50
  bad stuff. And there's a lot of people who
• 37:52
  felt very deceived by her. Yeah, that that presentation
• 37:57
  that she makes in court and always had to me, I kind of it
• 38:00
  kind of looks like she's trying to she kind of trying to look
• 38:06
  like I don't know what's happening to me here.
• 38:08
  That I cannot believe that they, you know, it's like I am just as
• 38:11
  pure as the wind driven snow. And, you know, they they aren't
• 38:16
  making any arguments. At least I haven't caught any
• 38:19
  yet. Where?
• 38:19
  Oh, this is an abusive husband. She was protecting herself.
• 38:22
  No, they, their defenses. She had nothing to do with this.
• 38:26
  This couldn't possibly be. I mean, look at this innocent
• 38:28
  face. I can't even believe that you
• 38:29
  guys would bring such spurious charges against me.
• 38:32
  That's the way it it kind of feels to me.
• 38:35
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:36
  What's going on on your channel these days?
• 38:38
  What? What do you got over there?
• 38:41
  Well, we're talking about this one for sure.
• 38:43
  That's a big case going on. We just, you know, we had, we
• 38:46
  had, had been covering Nancy Guthrie really heavily and, and
• 38:50
  sadly we've kind of had to step away a little bit because
• 38:52
  there's just not much development in that case.
• 38:56
  But today we are releasing our, our every Friday we do our
• 39:02
  weekly roundup, which is just kind of a look back at the week
• 39:06
  and everything that took place. So that's coming out later this
• 39:09
  afternoon. Yeah, it we're, you know, we're,
• 39:13
  we're trying, man. We're we're out there trying to
• 39:16
  cover as much as we can. Well, you're obviously working
• 39:19
  hard. I appreciate your I, I don't
• 39:22
  think it's too much of A stretch to call her the better half,
• 39:25
  right? She has been hanging out in the
• 39:28
  comments. She's thank you very much, Tiff
• 39:30
  for, for, for everything you're doing over there.
• 39:33
  Thanks for the Super chat getting us started there.
• 39:36
  If you guys are not subscribed to Courtroom confidential, I
• 39:39
  highly recommended. There is a link in the
• 39:41
  description below. Josh Ritter, thank you so much
• 39:44
  for joining me, and I appreciate you taking the time.
• 39:48
  Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate.
• 39:50
  It all right, man. Have a good night.
• 39:51
  Thanks so much. Yeah, Josh Ritter, he's the best
• 39:56
  and well, he's the second best. Tiff Ritter is probably the best
• 40:01
  and I deeply appreciate them coming on to talk about this
• 40:04
  here on my channel. And and I'm not making it up
• 40:07
  there. There are channels that I just
• 40:09
  love, love, love. Courtroom Confidential is one of
• 40:11
  those that is a terrific team. Josh is a just a mound of.
• 40:18
  A very good information and an experience.
• 40:21
  So thank you. Thank you, thank you, Josh.
• 40:23
  All right, we got a few minutes here guys.
• 40:26
  I didn't get didn't get to check out where you guys are tuning in
• 40:33
  from and by then it's all already gone for my system.
• 40:36
  So why don't you and I move on to the next segment of the old
• 40:41
  share. Let's head on to three
• 40:45
  questions, shall we? Here we go.
• 40:55
  In three questions, guys, I answer, not surprisingly, 3
• 41:00
  questions. Now, these are your questions
• 41:02
  that you send in to me. 2-3 questions at gavinfish.com.
• 41:05
  Three questions at gavinfish.com.
• 41:07
  It's spelled out. THREE questions at
• 41:09
  gavinfish.com. And, you know, this is kind of
• 41:11
  funny. I get like personal messages
• 41:15
  saying, hey, what? How do I send in a question?
• 41:17
  Again? It's three questions at
• 41:18
  gavinfish.com. OK, just send them there.
• 41:21
  I solemnly promise that I will answer all the questions that
• 41:25
  come in. I will do so to the best of my
• 41:27
  ability, the best of my knowledge, and do so honestly.
• 41:31
  I ask that if the question applies to you in the live chat,
• 41:34
  just just tell us what the answers to those questions are
• 41:37
  for you. And I, I do not, however, give
• 41:43
  you the control over what order I answer the question.
• 41:47
  So tonight we are going to get into three questions.
• 41:50
  Number one comes in from Debbie. Would you recommend being a
• 41:54
  reporter to a young person as a profession?
• 41:57
  Why and or why not? Yeah, I I would absolutely.
• 42:03
  It's what are some of the things that you get from being a
• 42:08
  reporter? Well, you get to know your
• 42:10
  community really well. Actually, I should say this, I
• 42:13
  am a local reporter. I did not go to J school.
• 42:17
  I, I kind of fell into being a reporter.
• 42:22
  I, I reached out to a couple of publications in my area after I
• 42:28
  had already started YouTube and asked them if they wanted
• 42:31
  somebody to write features for them, like crime features.
• 42:35
  And then that turned into, hey, would you like to work as a
• 42:38
  reporter? So, so I came to this career
• 42:44
  late in my life and have learned on the job kind of the way
• 42:49
  everybody did before journalism school took off.
• 42:52
  But what are some of the things? So as a local reporter?
• 42:55
  Yeah. Well, you get to see things in
• 42:57
  the community and meet people in the community that you otherwise
• 43:00
  wouldn't meet. We, we do tend to get into our
• 43:05
  little tribes and we kind of engage with the people that we
• 43:08
  know and who we, you know, who are in our neighborhoods and,
• 43:13
  and, you know, building those natural friendships.
• 43:16
  As a reporter, you do kind of have to go out and you meet new
• 43:19
  people and you meet elected officials.
• 43:22
  I don't like calling them leaders because I don't think
• 43:25
  they lead us anywhere, but they certainly are, are public
• 43:29
  servants. And it's good to know what it is
• 43:31
  that they're doing. And to build those kinds of
• 43:34
  relationships, you also sometimes have to be
• 43:36
  confrontational. And, and I don't mind that at
• 43:40
  all. I, I don't like confrontation,
• 43:42
  but when confrontation is necessary, I, I engage in it.
• 43:48
  So, you know, for example, in Venango County, Pai think
• 43:52
  they've got a real problem with the, with the Venango County
• 43:56
  prison. I think that there are way too
• 43:58
  many people, former former incarcerated people and former
• 44:03
  CE OS and staff that are reporting things that are
• 44:07
  happening within the, the jail that are beyond the pale Now.
• 44:12
  At the same time, I think that the county commissioners and the
• 44:16
  jail board are working their best in order to make things
• 44:22
  better there. But the fact remains that it's
• 44:25
  still bad. So people that I respect and
• 44:27
  like, I have to push back on. And that is something that I, I
• 44:31
  think it's good for everybody. I think it's, I think it's good
• 44:34
  personally for me to say, hey, I, I'm going to confront this.
• 44:38
  This is something I dislike. I'm going to go after you,
• 44:42
  Commissioner, so and so, and then also at the same time be
• 44:49
  able to respect and admire and like that person for the other
• 44:52
  things. So, you know, people are complex
• 44:55
  and being a local reporter is a very good profession.
• 44:59
  I would suggest that you go to journalism school in today's day
• 45:05
  and age. Question #2 is do you or some of
• 45:10
  your staff? Well, that is, I don't really
• 45:14
  have staff. I have volunteers and I have my
• 45:17
  sweetie pie, my snuggly bear, my one and only.
• 45:19
  I all. Well, OK, I do.
• 45:21
  I have Wanda. Hey, Wanda, can you check in?
• 45:23
  Can you just tell us you're here?
• 45:25
  Wanda? Wanda, that is nice.
• 45:31
  That what is that? What is that guitar?
• 45:34
  I, I can tell that those are steel strings, but what is that?
• 45:37
  She's talking to me in my ear. She bought that.
• 45:40
  That was a Fender Mustang she bought in 1963.
• 45:44
  Pretty cool. It sounded acoustic.
• 45:45
  Wanda, you're you're a musician, magician.
• 45:48
  And Javi, we haven't, we haven't had any button pressing problems
• 45:52
  yet. Anyway, do you do you or some of
• 45:55
  your staff go back and read comments and questions that have
• 45:58
  been placed on the chat after the live?
• 45:59
  OK, I'm going to come clean on this.
• 46:02
  All right. I just have a hard time with
• 46:05
  trolls and, and there, there are some, you know, our amazing
• 46:13
  moderators led by Autumn, but Mooney and Robin are amazing
• 46:16
  moderators. Keep the live chat classy.
• 46:20
  But the chat there are the comments later on.
• 46:23
  I have a hard time with the with the trolls and, and I don't want
• 46:29
  to be like, you know, banning people and doing all that stuff.
• 46:33
  I just, I just don't want to be that guy now.
• 46:35
  So I don't typically go back and read comments.
• 46:39
  However, my Kimberly, my sweetie pie, my snuggly bear, my one and
• 46:44
  only, she does every morning she wakes up and she goes through
• 46:48
  the latest live stream, she reads the comments and she tells
• 46:51
  me the things that I should be paying attention to.
• 46:55
  So she does that for me because she is long-suffering and
• 47:00
  awesome. So I guess the answer to your
• 47:04
  question is I don't, but my, my staff does.
• 47:10
  Kimberly, does. Javi, do you go and read any
• 47:15
  chats? Javi says no.
• 47:16
  Javi's job description, he just said is flipping toggles,
• 47:22
  rotating knobs and pushing buttons.
• 47:25
  That's, that is his job description.
• 47:27
  So reading. Reading is out for you, Javi.
• 47:30
  I had to get that guy. Microphone reading is out for
• 47:33
  Javi. Wanda, how about you?
• 47:35
  Do you read anything or. Or what do you do back there?
• 47:37
  Wanda? Yeah, yeah.
• 47:42
  Well, you're a sweetheart. Give me give me some of that
• 47:44
  sugar. Here we go.
• 47:46
  Oh, yeah. So, Wanda, that is that is that
• 47:53
  is nice. I didn't even know you could fit
• 47:55
  a piano in that area, did I? No, no, She brought.
• 48:01
  That's her piano. OK.
• 48:02
  All right. Question #3 is if you were a
• 48:06
  suspect in a crime mystery novel, what would your
• 48:11
  suspicious but totally innocent habit be?
• 48:13
  This is a great question, and I want your answers.
• 48:18
  OK, I want your answers. If you were a suspect in a crime
• 48:22
  mystery novel, what would your suspicious but totally innocent
• 48:26
  habit be? I think I would be the guy that
• 48:29
  is always around crime scenes. I'd be like the guy I'd have a
• 48:35
  backpack on, I'd have a hat down over my head and I'd be outside
• 48:39
  of the yellow tape. And I would just be like looking
• 48:42
  in. And every once in a while the
• 48:43
  the police would look up and say, hey, I recognize that.
• 48:47
  Why is he always here? Do we have a cereal on our
• 48:51
  hands? And then when we make eye
• 48:53
  contact, I would be like, I'm out of here.
• 48:55
  And I would turn and go and that would add to the suspicion.
• 48:59
  But and then and then they would, because of my suspicious
• 49:04
  behavior, they would get some magisterial judge, some lower
• 49:08
  judge to sign off on a warrant. And that, that they would come,
• 49:13
  they would take my computers and they would see my Google search
• 49:17
  history as full of missing persons murders and stuff like
• 49:22
  that. So that would be my suspicious
• 49:27
  but totally innocent habit. And it would be, I don't want
• 49:31
  to, I don't want to make it so that the police can't get their
• 49:34
  guy. But that would, that would
• 49:37
  definitely be me. I'd love to hear what you guys
• 49:42
  say. And while you are getting ready
• 49:44
  to type in there with your little fingers or if you're on a
• 49:47
  computer with your, with your fingers and thumbs, we will hop
• 49:53
  into a couple headlines. Here we go.
• 49:56
  True crime headlines. Okie, Dokie, I, I've got a I've
• 50:06
  got a few headlines that I want to share with you guys.
• 50:09
  Let me go to the right one. This is the right button.
• 50:14
  Here we go, Guthrie case and Josh was just talking about
• 50:19
  this. Guthrie case investigators.
• 50:22
  There's no colon in there. Gavin Hobby, can I get a take
• 50:24
  two on that? You're going to edit that out
• 50:26
  and post good, OK. Guthrie case investigators
• 50:29
  question neighbors about any Internet issues on the night she
• 50:32
  disappeared. This is interesting.
• 50:35
  This is coming to us from NBC News.
• 50:38
  Liz Kreutz and Rebecca Cohen Wright, investigators hunting
• 50:41
  for leads in the search for Nancy Guthrie, have asked people
• 50:44
  living in her neighborhood whether they noticed any disrupt
• 50:48
  disruptions to their Internet connections on the night of her
• 50:51
  disappearance. Both the Pima County Sheriff's
• 50:54
  Department Sheriff's Department and the FBI were out canvassing
• 50:57
  in Guthrie's neighborhood in the Catalina Foothills in Tucson on
• 51:01
  Thursday, yesterday going door to door talking to residents and
• 51:04
  asking if they noticed anything about their connectivity.
• 51:08
  Several different homeowners from the neighborhood told NBC
• 51:11
  News that the agents who came by their homes Thursday
• 51:14
  specifically asked them if they had noticed any disruptions or
• 51:18
  or issues with their Internet service the night that that
• 51:21
  Guthrie went missing. According to those homeowners,
• 51:24
  the agents told them that several people who live in the
• 51:27
  area had mentioned that there were glitches with their
• 51:30
  Internet that night. Two homeowners said that when
• 51:33
  the investigators came to their home on Thursday, they
• 51:36
  additionally asked about video footage from January 11th.
• 51:39
  This is a date that we have, we have heard before.
• 51:42
  Authorities have not confirmed that they are looking into
• 51:45
  anything on January 11th and have not said why they're asking
• 51:48
  homeowners about it. 3 homeowners who spoke to NBC News
• 51:52
  Thursday all said they were either asleep or not home at the
• 51:55
  time of Guthrie's abduction and couldn't say if they had
• 51:57
  Internet issues. But one couple who lives
• 52:00
  adjacent to Guthrie and who spoke to NBC News on Friday said
• 52:04
  they that would be today did notice a glitch with one of
• 52:07
  their Ring cameras that night. The couple said they have 4 Ring
• 52:11
  cameras on their property and that the one that is closest to
• 52:14
  Guthrie's home said not available when they went to look
• 52:17
  for footage from the overnight hours on the day of the
• 52:20
  abduction. So some technology issues seem
• 52:24
  to be at the heart of what the FBI and the Sheriff's are
• 52:28
  investigating. To me, that might be an
• 52:31
  indication that there were technologically savvy people
• 52:36
  working to get to get Nancy, but I don't know.
• 52:42
  I do not know from Mountaintop Media.
• 52:46
  Guys. This is in the case of the
• 52:49
  murder of Judge Kevin Mullins at the hands.
• 52:53
  We will say the killing of Kevin Mullins at the hands of Sheriff
• 52:57
  Mickey Steins, who is on trial for murder.
• 53:01
  Remember, the defense made a motion for the judge to recuse
• 53:05
  himself from Mountaintop Media. Ralph Davis writes Dateline.
• 53:10
  Whitesburg, Kentucky Special Judge Christopher Koran will
• 53:13
  remain on the Sean Mickey Stein's murder case.
• 53:16
  Steins is the former Electric County blah, blah blah. back in
• 53:19
  December, defense attorneys filed a motion asking the judge
• 53:22
  to recuse himself from the case after they received information
• 53:25
  that Koran and Mullen sat next to each other at a judicial
• 53:28
  conference just seven days before Mullen's death.
• 53:31
  But on Friday, Corn denied the motion and vouched for his
• 53:35
  impartiality on the case. Quote.
• 53:38
  Let me get some water here. Quote To be sure, Judge Mullins
• 53:44
  and I shared the legal profession and may in that
• 53:46
  regard be viewed as colleagues, Corn wrote in his ruling.
• 53:50
  But our nominal, purely professional association is not
• 53:53
  the degree of relationship which would interfere with my duty to
• 53:56
  uphold and apply the law and to perform judicial duties fairly
• 54:01
  and impartially, or suggest an appearance of partiality.
• 54:04
  Back in January, the Supreme Court declined to step into the
• 54:07
  case, leaving the matter to Corin to decide.
• 54:09
  However, the High Court left the door open for the defense to
• 54:12
  appeal if Quran elected to remain in the case.
• 54:17
  So no word yet on if the defense plans to appeal.
• 54:22
  We're keeping our eye on that case.
• 54:25
  Lastly, The Colorado Sun, written by Carol McKinley, wrote
• 54:31
  a long, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but a long like
• 54:35
  primer into what we're going to see in the pending trial against
• 54:45
  Barry Morphew in the murder of his wife, Suzanne Morphew.
• 54:51
  Barry Morphew's October murder trial promises to center around
• 54:54
  a highly restrictive concoction of potent chemicals the autopsy
• 54:57
  revealed were discovered in his dead wife's remains.
• 55:01
  The premixed chemical compound, marketed and as a patented
• 55:05
  product under the acronym BAM, is a regulated blend of
• 55:11
  butorphenol, azaparone and metatomidine used almost
• 55:16
  exclusively by by biologists and veterinarians to sedate large
• 55:21
  animals, according to the grand jury indictment.
• 55:24
  The El Paso County coroner's chief toxicologist found that
• 55:27
  all three of the individual chemicals that comprise BAM were
• 55:30
  present in Suzanne Morphew's bone marrow.
• 55:34
  Suzanne Morphew died as a result of homicide by unspecified means
• 55:38
  in the setting of butorphenol, zaparone and metatomidine
• 55:43
  intoxication, the autopsy found. So yeah, I think everything is
• 55:49
  going to center around that. Remember, this is a this is a
• 55:51
  photo that has been released of the cap to a tranquilizer dart.
• 55:58
  Barrymore. If you did admit, at least
• 56:01
  according to police in his interviews, that he shot deers
• 56:07
  with tranquilizers to, in his words, steal their horns, though
• 56:13
  they're not horns, Sir. They're antlers.
• 56:15
  And we know that he was a deer farmer before they moved to
• 56:18
  Colorado. So it does look like they're
• 56:21
  starting to ramp up their reportage of of the Barry
• 56:27
  Morphew case. And I am keeping my eye on that.
• 56:31
  And those guys are your headlines.
• 56:36
  And we will get into some of your comments here.
• 56:43
  Let's see, go down into, let's see.
• 56:47
  Just Ducky says, do you think Cory Richins will take the
• 56:51
  stand? I think she would be stupid to
• 56:53
  take the stand. Does that mean she probably will
• 56:58
  take the stand? I don't think her lawyers are
• 56:59
  stupid. I don't think she'll take the
• 57:01
  stand. Susie Q Susie Q.
• 57:05
  What's the most horrible crime I have covered?
• 57:08
  That sounds like a question for three questions at gavinfish.com
• 57:15
  probably, but I'm going to answer it because you're new
• 57:18
  here and I appreciate you being here.
• 57:20
  At least I don't I I think you're new here.
• 57:24
  In Venango County, Pennsylvania, there was a murder of a 2 1/2
• 57:31
  year old little boy at the hands of his mother's boyfriend who
• 57:37
  beat him to death and was convicted of it.
• 57:40
  And it was oh so sad, so sad. And in the in the trial, they
• 57:48
  showed autopsy photos of this little baby boy.
• 57:52
  He was just the sweetest little thing, the most adorable little
• 57:56
  thing. And his father was in the
• 58:00
  gallery watching the trial to ensure that the murder of his
• 58:07
  little boy was did face justice, was convicted.
• 58:14
  And it was the most horrifying and saddening experience maybe
• 58:22
  of my entire life. Oh, so sad.
• 58:26
  So, so, so, so sad. But yeah, Mooney says maybe Dory
• 58:31
  can help with reading comments. Well, Dory's not part.
• 58:36
  Dory's not on staff. I, I, I have retained her CV.
• 58:41
  As I recall, her resume wasn't nearly as long as Wanda's.
• 58:45
  Wanda's was many pages it was bound with, with like really
• 58:50
  long staples. It had a really nice cover.
• 58:54
  Dory's not so much, but I have retained it just in case we need
• 58:59
  somebody to read comments. Just Ducky says my suspicious
• 59:04
  activity would be passing out baked goods.
• 59:11
  You, you would be at the crime scene like feeding everybody.
• 59:15
  What kind of baked goods would you do there, Ducky?
• 59:17
  I'm, I'm curious, would they be like on the savory side?
• 59:20
  Would they be everything bagels with schmear?
• 59:23
  Or would they be more like Donuts for the cops?
• 59:27
  And you'd be passing them out. You wouldn't be selling them.
• 59:30
  You just you'd be doing it out of the goodness of your heart.
• 59:33
  That is great. Pamela says I would be the girl
• 59:37
  eating a Snickers bar. Oh that is funny, that is funny.
• 59:47
  Jules and me says my Google searches would have me in the
• 59:50
  pokey Quick and Crime addiction says that is exactly what I
• 59:55
  thought I would try to be right there checking it out.
• 1:00:00
  So funny. The Toothpick Bandit.
• 1:00:06
  Oh, Autumn's asking the song at the beginning of this, before we
• 1:00:10
  even started, I was listening to a song and I asked you guys, I
• 1:00:16
  told you guys, you can get brownie points.
• 1:00:18
  If you could guess the 1984 song that I was listening to, that is
• 1:00:24
  the IT. It's on my list of best last
• 1:00:29
  dance, last slow song at the high school dance songs.
• 1:00:33
  OK, And now I have to remember what it was.
• 1:00:38
  Hold on, hold on. I know it was Survivor.
• 1:00:45
  How can I convince you The search is over?
• 1:00:48
  It's the search is over by Survivor, that is.
• 1:00:51
  That was the song Autumn. Great.
• 1:00:53
  Thank you for for asking me that question.
• 1:00:56
  I would have forgotten. I would have forgotten.
• 1:01:00
  Let's see, put AGF before a question for Gavin Melissa and
• 1:01:05
  let me see if I can find one for Melissa.
• 1:01:07
  And because sometimes it they just don't show up on my side
• 1:01:12
  unless there's that GF Diane Faris says her suspicious but
• 1:01:19
  completely innocent habit would be read, listen and watch all
• 1:01:23
  the related material. Diane Faris asked what did the
• 1:01:29
  jury decide in the double murder you covered the one that I was
• 1:01:32
  on the jury. We convicted 1 count of second
• 1:01:37
  degree murder and one count of first degree murder and it was
• 1:01:41
  negotiated. I went in there going 2 counts
• 1:01:44
  of first degree murder. But the people, my Co jury
• 1:01:50
  panelists, several of them couldn't get there.
• 1:01:54
  And I was able to, in addition to two other people on the
• 1:02:00
  panel, were able to convince those holdouts that maybe it was
• 1:02:04
  second degree murder on the first shot, but on the second
• 1:02:07
  shot he definitely decided to kill that person.
• 1:02:11
  So that's what we did. Barbasol Barbara Olsen.
• 1:02:16
  Not Barbasol Barb. Barb Olsen says.
• 1:02:20
  I believe you said Wanda CV also came with a cassette tape of her
• 1:02:23
  musical talents. It did.
• 1:02:24
  It did. Do I have any?
• 1:02:27
  What other instrument do you have in your room today, Wanda?
• 1:02:31
  Oh, she she has my favorite electric piano.
• 1:02:35
  You have the roads with you today.
• 1:02:37
  Play a play. Just play something really nice
• 1:02:40
  on the roads. Wanda, that is delicious.
• 1:02:52
  Yeah, she did. She did submit a cassette tape.
• 1:02:54
  I had to find my old deck and but I was able to listen to it.
• 1:02:58
  The noise floor was high. So there's a lot of hissing on
• 1:03:01
  that tape. But Wanda, you've turned out.
• 1:03:06
  She's been terrific. Now, I will say that she is kind
• 1:03:09
  of wise cracking, you know you are.
• 1:03:12
  Wanda is kind of wise cracking. So we won't be putting a
• 1:03:15
  microphone in her little little recording booth, but she's got
• 1:03:25
  so much in there. She just got, she's got the
• 1:03:27
  vibes in there. Wanda, can we hear the vibes
• 1:03:30
  again? Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:33
  That's not. I can't even believe you can put
• 1:03:35
  a full set in there. It's awesome Chicago Marie says
• 1:03:39
  I'll take an everything bagel and the tank is hilarious
• 1:03:45
  tonight. Yes, indeed.
• 1:03:48
  Let's see Venus gal take 5 or Snickers for me searches.
• 1:03:53
  I make others search those things.
• 1:03:55
  No way I will. That is funny.
• 1:03:57
  That is funny. OK, guys, thank you so much for
• 1:04:00
  spending time with me tonight. Josh and Tiff Ritter, thank you
• 1:04:04
  very much for joining me, Josh on on video and Tiff in the live
• 1:04:09
  comments. Thank you.
• 1:04:10
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 1:04:13
  Let's see one more comment I'm going to grab before we go from
• 1:04:16
  Melissa. I wanted you.
• 1:04:19
  I wanted to know if any updates on the Alan Greenberg case.
• 1:04:22
  None that I know of. No, I also did see that he was
• 1:04:26
  working at the Olympics. Yes, I did see that.
• 1:04:29
  And yeah, but no. And, and just so you guys know,
• 1:04:36
  Ellen's parents are like my, my set of bonus parents.
• 1:04:41
  I love them to death. I talk to them.
• 1:04:44
  It should be more frequently, but it's still frequently.
• 1:04:46
  I still talk to Sandy more than I talk to my own mother.
• 1:04:50
  Those people are just amazing. But, and I check in on the
• 1:04:57
  frequent. There is nothing new to report.
• 1:05:00
  And as soon as there is, I will definitely be reporting that.
• 1:05:04
  With that guys, just a quick reminder, quick little reminder,
• 1:05:08
  EPU that you can hang out with us on or in the fish tank, which
• 1:05:15
  is on Facebook. And now I'm on other socials as
• 1:05:17
  well. I am on Instagram X Tiktok and
• 1:05:23
  Facebook. Those are the places where I
• 1:05:24
  post pretty regularly. Facebook, though, is where we
• 1:05:27
  hang out and talk about all things true crime.
• 1:05:30
  So if you would like to join us there, we actually just added
• 1:05:35
  Emmy as a moderator there. Emmy, thank you very much for
• 1:05:38
  joining us as a moderator. If anybody else has any
• 1:05:42
  expertise in moderation and keeping the conversations going,
• 1:05:46
  specifically on Facebook, I'd love your help.
• 1:05:48
  Reach out to me. Go to my website, gavinfish.com.
• 1:05:51
  Click on this little icon right here, the little envelope on the
• 1:05:54
  upper right hand corner that will open a little eventually
• 1:06:00
  it'll load a little form and just choose on the message type.
• 1:06:03
  I'd like to volunteer. We do do some vetting and autumn
• 1:06:09
  or somebody else will send you kind of the deal on that.
• 1:06:13
  But if you would I, I'm specifically looking for more
• 1:06:16
  people that can moderate the tank.
• 1:06:19
  Spend a little more time in there.
• 1:06:21
  The the we joke around about having a staff.
• 1:06:24
  We have terrific volunteers. I'm so so grateful to my
• 1:06:30
  volunteers. But running a YouTube channel it
• 1:06:36
  does take quite a bit of time and getting more help would be
• 1:06:41
  terrific. Also, case researchers would be
• 1:06:44
  awesome if if people, if you are very good at finding cases and
• 1:06:51
  specifically finding documents, these are, you know, criminal
• 1:06:55
  complaints, affidavits of probable cause, things like
• 1:06:58
  that. Boy, could I use your help.
• 1:07:02
  Go ahead and reach out to me on my website, gavinfish.com.
• 1:07:05
  Click on the little icon and it will take you again to this
• 1:07:09
  contact me page and one of my intrepid and amazing volunteers
• 1:07:14
  will reach out with that, thanking you for your attendance
• 1:07:20
  for this whole week. I bid you adieu.
• 1:07:23
  I hope you take care of yourselves and I hope to see you
• 1:07:25
  on the next one. Until then, take care.
• 1:07:28
  Bye bye. Thank you very much for watching
• 1:07:31
  this video. If you liked what you saw,
• 1:07:33
  please consider subscribing and if you have any questions or
• 1:07:36
  comments, please leave them below.