Latest / Crime and Horror / One beer was missing at the scene of this double murder - MrBallen

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One beer was missing at the scene of this double murder - MrBallen · Crime and Horror

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Speaker 1: On a cold February night in two thousand and five,
0:02
Speaker 1: a woman in Chicago was sitting down for.
0:04
Speaker 2: Dinner when her phone rang.
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Speaker 1: She looked over and saw it was her mom, so
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Speaker 1: she answered it, and her mom, who lived only a
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Speaker 1: few blocks away, she seemed really upset about something, and
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Speaker 1: she told her daughter that she needed to come to
0:16
Speaker 1: her mother's house right now. And the daughter was like, why,
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Speaker 1: what's going on? But her mom cut her off and said, no,
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Speaker 1: you need to come here, like right now.
0:24
Speaker 2: You need to run.
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Speaker 1: And that's when the woman realized that the very thing
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Speaker 1: her whole family had been so afraid of for so
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Speaker 1: long might have finally happened. But before we get into
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Speaker 1: today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark
0:37
Speaker 1: and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to
0:40
Speaker 1: the right place because that's all we do and we
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Speaker 1: upload two, three, even four times every week. So if
0:46
Speaker 1: that's of interest to you, please tell the like button
0:48
Speaker 1: that you'd love to take them out to a really
0:50
Speaker 1: fancy dinner to you know, get all dressed up.
0:52
Speaker 2: It's going to be a great night out. But then
0:55
Speaker 2: stand them up.
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1:02
Speaker 1: let's get into today's story. On the morning of February
1:27
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, two thousand and five, a sixty four year
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Speaker 1: old man named Michael left Cow limped down the stairs
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Speaker 1: inside of his.
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Speaker 2: Home in Chicago, Illinois.
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Speaker 1: He'd injured his achilles tendon playing tennis the week before,
1:37
Speaker 1: so now he had a cast in his leg and
1:39
Speaker 1: he had to get around on crutches. When Michael got
1:42
Speaker 1: into the kitchen, he saw his wife, Joan making breakfast
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Speaker 1: for the whole household, which included Michael, their teenage daughter,
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Speaker 1: Meg Ann Jones's elderly mother, Donna, who had been living
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Speaker 1: with them.
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Speaker 2: For the past four or five months.
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Speaker 1: Michael said good morning to his wife, and then he
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Speaker 1: hobbled his way through the kitchen over to the dining room,
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Speaker 1: where Meg was finishing up her eggs, and they chatted
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Speaker 1: for a few minutes, and then the school bus honked outside,
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Speaker 1: and Meg grabbed her backpack and raced past her.
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Speaker 2: Dad on her way out the front door.
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Speaker 1: A few moments later, Joan walked into the dining room
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Speaker 1: as well, with the plate of food for Michael and
2:12
Speaker 1: a cup of orange juice. When Michael thanked her and
2:15
Speaker 1: then he asked her, what's on the docket for you today?
2:18
Speaker 1: And he meant that literally, because Joan was a federal judge,
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Speaker 1: and you know, she had like a very heavy burden
2:25
Speaker 1: on her shoulders. She was routinely thrust into these cases
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Speaker 1: where it was her job to make these just really
2:30
Speaker 1: difficult decisions, decisions that you know, sometimes were sort of
2:33
Speaker 1: in that gray area between you know, is this the
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Speaker 1: right moral decision or is this the right legal decision?
2:39
Speaker 1: And it was really her job to air on the
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Speaker 1: side of legal and I mean the reality was is
2:44
Speaker 1: she was a great judge, but sometimes her decisions would
2:47
Speaker 1: you know, put her in danger. I mean, this was
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Speaker 1: again a very heavy burden and it was something that Michael,
2:53
Speaker 1: being an attorney himself, definitely understood.
2:56
Speaker 2: He knew what it meant to be a judge. But
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Speaker 2: you know, on this party day.
3:00
Speaker 1: When Michael asked her what she was up to in court,
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Speaker 1: it just sounded an awful lot like today was going
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Speaker 1: to be very typical, sort of a run of the
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Speaker 1: mill day for her, nothing too crazy, no big decisions looming,
3:12
Speaker 1: and so pretty soon the two of them were just
3:13
Speaker 1: having their breakfast and it was just a very relaxed morning,
3:16
Speaker 1: and at some point Michael told Joan that because of
3:19
Speaker 1: his injury, he actually was not going into the office today,
3:21
Speaker 1: he was going to be working from home. And so
3:23
Speaker 1: pretty soon they wrapped up their breakfast, they cleaned up,
3:27
Speaker 1: and then before long Joan.
3:28
Speaker 2: Was ready to go.
3:30
Speaker 1: She grabbed her stuff and she said goodbye to her husband,
3:32
Speaker 1: and then out the door she went, hopped in her
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Speaker 1: car and drove off to court. About half an hour later,
3:38
Speaker 1: around nine am, Michael was getting ready to start a
3:40
Speaker 1: stay at the house when he saw Joan's mother, Donna,
3:43
Speaker 1: coming down the stairs.
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Speaker 2: Donna was eighty nine years old and.
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Speaker 1: Needed two canes just to walk, and she'd been hospitalized
3:50
Speaker 1: for sepsis the previous year, so since Joan and Michael
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Speaker 1: had extra space in their home, they had offered to
3:55
Speaker 1: let her stay with them so she wouldn't be alone
3:58
Speaker 1: and they could help her if they needed to. And
4:00
Speaker 1: so Michael, despite being hurt himself, he immediately got up
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Speaker 1: and hobbled over and helped Donna get down the last
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Speaker 1: few steps, and then he led her back over to
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Speaker 1: the dining room and helped her sit in her favorite chair,
4:10
Speaker 1: and then after she was situated, and she said that
4:12
Speaker 1: she didn't need anything else. Michael thought, okay, now I'm
4:15
Speaker 1: going to start my day, and so he gathered up
4:18
Speaker 1: his things and he headed downstairs into the basement where
4:21
Speaker 1: his home office was. When Michael reached the bottom of
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Speaker 1: the basement steps, he hobbled his way down this hallway.
4:26
Speaker 2: That led to a door.
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Speaker 1: He opened the door up and inside was his home office,
4:30
Speaker 1: and he went and he sat down at his desk,
4:32
Speaker 1: and there was already some files on the desk that
4:34
Speaker 1: he needed to sift through, and so he picked them
4:36
Speaker 1: up and began looking through the files, figuring out where
4:39
Speaker 1: he was going to start for the day.
4:41
Speaker 2: And as he was sitting there, he thought he.
4:43
Speaker 1: Heard something in the closet, the utility closet that was
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Speaker 1: in the home office that he was in.
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Speaker 2: And the door to the utility closet was shut, and he.
4:51
Speaker 1: Just sat there and he listened, and again he heard
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Speaker 1: what sounded like rustling or something inside of this closet,
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Speaker 1: and so he thought, you know, maybe it's the furnace that's,
5:00
Speaker 1: you know, working extra hard right now.
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Speaker 2: Maybe it's making some weird sounds or something.
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Speaker 1: But you know, for whatever reason, he's thinking, there's something
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Speaker 1: happening in this closet.
5:07
Speaker 2: I want to see what it is.
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Speaker 1: And so he gets up and he hobbles his way
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Speaker 1: over to the closet, and then right as he's hearing
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Speaker 1: more rustling inside, he turns the doorknob and he opens
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Speaker 1: up this closet. At five pm that night, Michael's wife, Joan,
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Speaker 1: walked through the parking garage at the Federal Courthouse and
5:26
Speaker 1: got into her car. She was feeling a bit unsettled
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Speaker 1: because she had called Michael a couple of times that afternoon,
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Speaker 1: but there had been no answer, and this was just
5:33
Speaker 1: really unlike him. In fact, this was so unusual that
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Speaker 1: Joan had actually gotten in touch with her daughter Meg
5:40
Speaker 1: after the school day ended and asked her, you know,
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Speaker 1: have you been in touch with the dad? And Meg
5:44
Speaker 1: said that she hadn't, but she had gone home after
5:47
Speaker 1: school and she had grabbed some workout clothes in the
5:49
Speaker 1: house before leaving again. And she said when she was
5:52
Speaker 1: in the house, she had not seen her dad or
5:55
Speaker 1: you know, Joan's mom, so her grandmother, Donna. She said,
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Speaker 1: the house was quiet, and I just assumed that dad
6:00
Speaker 1: and grandma were asleep upstairs or something. It took John
6:03
Speaker 1: about half an hour to drive home, and when she
6:06
Speaker 1: pulled into the driveway around five point thirty that night,
6:08
Speaker 1: it was getting dark, and so she pulls into her driveway,
6:11
Speaker 1: she gets out. She's still pretty anxious because she just
6:14
Speaker 1: hasn't heard from Michael or her mom at this point,
6:16
Speaker 1: and she goes up to the front door. She unlocks it,
6:18
Speaker 1: she steps inside, and right away she calls out for Michael,
6:22
Speaker 1: but there's no answer. She calls out for her mom.
6:24
Speaker 1: There's no answer, and so she walks around the first
6:27
Speaker 1: floor again, no sign of any issues here. Her husband
6:30
Speaker 1: and her mom are not around. She eventually makes her
6:33
Speaker 1: way upstairs, hoping to find them asleep in their beds.
6:36
Speaker 1: But she gets up there and she checks the bedrooms
6:39
Speaker 1: and all the rooms upstairs, and there's no one up there.
6:42
Speaker 1: And so the only place left to look in the
6:44
Speaker 1: house was the basement. But at this hour, it just
6:48
Speaker 1: made no sense that Michael or her mom would be
6:50
Speaker 1: in the basement. And so eventually, you know, even though
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Speaker 1: she felt really uneasy, she went back to the first floor.
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Speaker 1: She went to the doorway that led down to the
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Speaker 1: stairs into the basement. She took a deep breath, She
7:02
Speaker 1: turned on the lights inside of the stairwell down to
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Speaker 1: the basement, and she she called out for Michael and
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Speaker 1: her mom, but still no answer, and then down the
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Speaker 1: stairs she went. When she got to the base of
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Speaker 1: the stairs, she looked down that hallway that led to
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Speaker 1: Michael's office and she saw first there was nothing, She
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Speaker 1: didn't see anything, but on the floor right outside of
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Speaker 1: Michael's office, she saw what looked like blood on the ground,
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Speaker 1: and so at this point she panicked.
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Speaker 2: She ran down the hallway. She's screaming for Michael.
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Speaker 1: She grabs the door handle, she opens it up, and
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Speaker 1: it's like everything she saw in there was so shocking,
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Speaker 1: it was like her brain couldn't process it, and she
7:36
Speaker 1: just shut the door right away, like she she couldn't
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Speaker 1: handle what she had just seen. And then a moment later,
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Speaker 1: she had bolted back upstairs and called nine to one one.
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Speaker 1: In the late evening of February twenty eight, two thousand
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Speaker 1: and five, Special Agent Douglas Seacomb of the Chicago FBI
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Speaker 1: office ducked under the crime scene tape around the left
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Speaker 1: Cow family's home. So about thirty minutes earlier, the nine
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Speaker 1: to one one call had come out of this home
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Speaker 1: from Joan about what appeared to be a murder at
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Speaker 1: this address, and since the caller, Joan, had identified herself
8:08
Speaker 1: as a federal judge, the Chicago Police had immediately called
8:12
Speaker 1: the FBI to take part in this investigation. And so
8:15
Speaker 1: now Special Agent Seekum flashed his badge to one of
8:18
Speaker 1: the uniformed officers who was standing outside right near the
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Speaker 1: edge of the crime scene tape, and he asked them
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Speaker 1: where is Judge Joan Lefkow And the officer said that
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Speaker 1: Judge Joan along with her daughters, so not just Meg,
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Speaker 1: her teenage daughter, but also Jon's three adult daughters who
8:34
Speaker 1: no longer lived at home. They had all been taken
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Speaker 1: together to a safe house by the US Marshals, and
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Speaker 1: so Secum, after hearing this, stepped inside the house and
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Speaker 1: he found a whole bunch of forensic teams already hard
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Speaker 1: at work sweeping every.
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Speaker 2: Room for evidence.
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Speaker 1: And as he walked through the living room and the
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Speaker 1: kitchen on the main floor, he didn't see any signs
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Speaker 1: of blood or a struggle of any kind, and he
8:54
Speaker 1: also saw that TV and other expensive looking electronics were
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Speaker 1: still in place, and so he didn't think this was
9:01
Speaker 1: a robbery gone wrong. Secim eventually found his way to
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Speaker 1: the stairs that led down into the basement, and so
9:07
Speaker 1: down he went, and he found there were a few
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Speaker 1: officers and a crime scene photographer that were down there,
9:12
Speaker 1: gathered around a door that was at the end of
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Speaker 1: the hallway, and so Secim made his way down the hallway.
9:16
Speaker 1: He pushed past the group of people, and there inside
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Speaker 1: of this home office, he saw two dead bodies. There
9:23
Speaker 1: was a man who was lying face down, and then
9:26
Speaker 1: right next to him was also an elderly woman who
9:28
Speaker 1: was lying face up, and there was just a big
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Speaker 1: pool of blood underneath both of them. Secim immediately noticed
9:34
Speaker 1: that both the victims had fairly obvious gunshot wounds to
9:38
Speaker 1: their heads, and then when he knelt down to get
9:40
Speaker 1: a better look, he also found shellcasing scattered around on
9:44
Speaker 1: the floor. So he figured that very likely these two
9:48
Speaker 1: clearly had been shot, but more specifically, they'd been shot
9:51
Speaker 1: and killed in this room. On the other side of
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Speaker 1: this office, Sekim saw there was a closet and its
9:56
Speaker 1: doors were open, and it appeared to be a utility closet,
10:00
Speaker 1: and so Secim he walked over and he stepped inside,
10:03
Speaker 1: and inside of it was this big furnace, and then
10:05
Speaker 1: next to it on the ground, he found there was
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Speaker 1: a twelve pack of beer bottles, except one of the
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Speaker 1: bottles was missing, and so Secim looked around inside the closet.
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Speaker 2: He didn't see the twelfth.
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Speaker 1: Bottle, and then he turned around and looked back into
10:19
Speaker 1: the office. And as he's looking back into the office,
10:22
Speaker 1: he notices there's this window high up inside of the office,
10:25
Speaker 1: and it actually was out to the ground floor, because
10:28
Speaker 1: this is a basement, right, This is a window that
10:29
Speaker 1: leads to the first floor of the house, if you will.
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Speaker 1: And there's like a cutout inside of the office, like
10:35
Speaker 1: a window sill, almost like a ledge that is part
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Speaker 1: of this window, right, so you could actually place things
10:41
Speaker 1: on this windowsill if you wanted to. And he looked
10:44
Speaker 1: up into this window and he saw there was a
10:46
Speaker 1: single beer bottle sitting on that window sill, on that ledge,
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Speaker 1: and also he saw the.
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Speaker 2: Window itself was shattered.
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Speaker 1: And so right away Secim's thinking like, Okay, did the
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Speaker 1: killer leave behind this beer and if so, oh, why
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Speaker 1: is this a message? Are they leaving the bottle here
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Speaker 1: on purpose for us to find it?
11:05
Speaker 2: Or is this a mistake?
11:06
Speaker 1: And so Secum he called for a forensics officer to
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Speaker 1: come over and bag this additional bottle, the the twelfth bottle,
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Speaker 1: and swab it for DNA and fingerprints in case you know,
11:15
Speaker 1: this was left by the killer. And so the forensics
11:18
Speaker 1: officer he placed this bottle inside of a plastic bag,
11:21
Speaker 1: and then he asked Sekim to leave the office and
11:23
Speaker 1: head upstairs for a minute so that he and his
11:25
Speaker 1: team could spray the entire basement with a chemical called
11:29
Speaker 1: leucocrystal violet, which can illuminate traces of blood that are
11:33
Speaker 1: not necessarily visible to the naked eye. And so as
11:35
Speaker 1: Sekim left the office and began making his way upstairs,
11:39
Speaker 1: he began thinking about what he had just learned. So
11:41
Speaker 1: you have a broken window leading into the home office
11:44
Speaker 1: where it appears the shooting took place, and the fact
11:47
Speaker 1: that you know the window was broken does suggest that's
11:50
Speaker 1: how the killer or killers got in. And if that's
11:52
Speaker 1: the case, it likely means the killer or killers did
11:56
Speaker 1: not know the victims personally. You know, they didn't have
11:59
Speaker 1: a key to the house, for example, or they weren't
12:01
Speaker 1: going to be let in if they showed up at
12:03
Speaker 1: the front door. But then you have this weird beer
12:05
Speaker 1: bottle thing like if the if the killer left behind
12:09
Speaker 1: beer in that utility closet and this extra beer bottle
12:12
Speaker 1: up on the ledge of the window that feels really sloppy.
12:16
Speaker 1: And so that's sort of at odds with the idea
12:19
Speaker 1: that this was like an intentional, you know, outsider coming
12:22
Speaker 1: to do this hit. And then he's also thinking, like,
12:24
Speaker 1: you know, the elephant in the room here is that Joan.
12:28
Speaker 1: You know, Judge Joan left cow. This is her husband
12:31
Speaker 1: and her mother. You know, was that intentional? Were they
12:34
Speaker 1: trying to sort of indirectly hurt Judge Joan, or was
12:37
Speaker 1: Judge Joan the.
12:38
Speaker 2: Target or was this coincidence.
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13:24
Speaker 1: while forensics teams were still searching the crime scene, Secam
13:27
Speaker 1: went out to canvas the neighborhood. The chemical spray that
13:30
Speaker 1: the forensics team had sprayed in the basement after Sikim
13:33
Speaker 1: had left had in fact revealed additional traces of blood
13:36
Speaker 1: all over the basement hallway, so it looked like at
13:39
Speaker 1: least one of the victims had actually been shot in
13:42
Speaker 1: the hallway and then moved into the office, and then
13:45
Speaker 1: the killer apparently had cleaned the hallway afterwards. But obviously
13:48
Speaker 1: this chemical had still revealed the blood traces, and so
13:52
Speaker 1: Secim thought to himself that if the killer or killers
13:55
Speaker 1: stuck around to clean up after themselves, it suggests that
14:00
Speaker 1: they went into this home with the intention of committing murder.
14:04
Speaker 1: It was just a matter of why was it Joan
14:07
Speaker 1: the target? Was it or loved ones? Why did that happen?
14:11
Speaker 1: Who would want to harm the left cows? And so
14:13
Speaker 1: Sekim went down the street knocking on doors and speaking
14:17
Speaker 1: to various neighbors, trying to get a feel for, you know,
14:20
Speaker 1: what the left cows were like. But you know, after
14:23
Speaker 1: speaking to many people on the block who tried to
14:25
Speaker 1: be very helpful, you know, Secim really hadn't learned much
14:28
Speaker 1: of anything, like, no one really had all that much
14:31
Speaker 1: to say. But eventually Sekim found his way to a
14:34
Speaker 1: church that was in the neighborhood and he knocked on
14:36
Speaker 1: the door, and a moment later, the pastor opened the
14:38
Speaker 1: door and Sekim explained that, you know, unfortunately a double
14:42
Speaker 1: murder had taken place down the block and they were
14:45
Speaker 1: here investigating, and have you seen or heard anything unusual
14:48
Speaker 1: in the past, you know, several hours. And the pastor
14:52
Speaker 1: at first is just totally taken aback by what he's
14:54
Speaker 1: been told. He can't believe it. But then he's like,
14:58
Speaker 1: you know what, actually, yeah, something strange did happen earlier today.
15:02
Speaker 1: The pastor said he had seen this red car just
15:05
Speaker 1: loitering nearby that had two men inside of it, and
15:08
Speaker 1: they were apparently smoking and drinking cans of what appeared
15:11
Speaker 1: to be Coca cola. But they just sort of didn't
15:14
Speaker 1: fit in with the neighborhood, Like the pastor didn't know
15:16
Speaker 1: who they were, and it just seems sort of odd
15:19
Speaker 1: that they were here, and so just considering what he's
15:22
Speaker 1: been told about this double murder.
15:24
Speaker 2: He basically said, you know, you.
15:25
Speaker 1: Might want to look into who those guys were. And
15:27
Speaker 1: so Sekim asked the pastor if he'd gotten a good
15:29
Speaker 1: enough look at these two men to maybe be able
15:32
Speaker 1: to help their sketch artist come up with a composite sketch,
15:35
Speaker 1: and the pastor said, yeah, I think so, and so
15:37
Speaker 1: Sekim's like, okay, great, we're going to do that. But also,
15:40
Speaker 1: can you specifically point out where this car was like outside,
15:44
Speaker 1: so I can go look at the area, and the
15:45
Speaker 1: pastor he pointed across the street and he said, you know,
15:48
Speaker 1: right over there, and so Sekim he looks where the
15:50
Speaker 1: pastor is pointing, and sure enough he could see on
15:53
Speaker 1: the ground there were all these cigarette butts and clearly
15:56
Speaker 1: an empty coke can. And so Sikim called over a
15:59
Speaker 1: forensics team and they scooped the stuff up and they
16:01
Speaker 1: sent it off to be tested. Later that same night,
16:06
Speaker 1: Secim sat down at a table at the safe house
16:08
Speaker 1: where Joan and her daughters were all staying, and Joan
16:11
Speaker 1: she walked over and set a glass of water in
16:13
Speaker 1: front of him, and then she sat down across from him,
16:15
Speaker 1: and Seacim thought Joan seemed surprisingly calm and composed, considering
16:20
Speaker 1: her husband and her mother have just been brutally murdered.
16:23
Speaker 1: But he also could sense that underneath the surface of
16:26
Speaker 1: Joan's sort of calm affect, she seemed furious, and so
16:30
Speaker 1: Secim and Joan they spoke a little bit about, you know,
16:34
Speaker 1: this great tragedy and how awful this was. However, pretty
16:37
Speaker 1: quickly Secim just sort of got into asking pointed questions
16:41
Speaker 1: of Joan, and Joan answered them. Sekim asked Joan about
16:44
Speaker 1: the twelve pack of beer that was in the utility
16:46
Speaker 1: closet in the basement, and she told him it was
16:48
Speaker 1: left over from a party that they had thrown earlier
16:50
Speaker 1: that same week. And she said she was the one
16:53
Speaker 1: who actually put those beers in the closet, and when
16:56
Speaker 1: she did, she said they were all unopened. This was
17:00
Speaker 1: great news for Secum and the investigation, because that meant
17:03
Speaker 1: that the beer up on that windowsill in the basement
17:06
Speaker 1: almost certainly was handled by the killer or killers. But still,
17:10
Speaker 1: the idea of somebody breaking into this house and stumbling
17:14
Speaker 1: across some beer in the closet and stopping to actually
17:17
Speaker 1: have a drink right in the middle of committing a
17:19
Speaker 1: double murder and then leaving the beer bottle behind. It
17:23
Speaker 1: just felt like a really weird decision to make, and
17:27
Speaker 1: so Sekim wondered if maybe there was something at play
17:29
Speaker 1: here that literally prevented the killer from thinking clearly in
17:33
Speaker 1: the moment, like mental illness or maybe drug use.
17:36
Speaker 2: So at this point Sekim had.
17:38
Speaker 1: Already come to the conclusion that very likely Donna Jones's
17:41
Speaker 1: elderly mother was not the intended target. She's eighty nine,
17:45
Speaker 1: she doesn't have any known enemies, She's not hurting anyone like,
17:48
Speaker 1: She's not a target here. But perhaps Michael Jones's husband
17:53
Speaker 1: could have been the target. After all, at one point,
17:55
Speaker 1: he had actually run for Cook County judge a few
17:58
Speaker 1: years ago, and even though he had lost, entering politics
18:01
Speaker 1: was a surefire way to make enemies, so it was
18:04
Speaker 1: possible he could have been the target and Donna was
18:07
Speaker 1: collateral damage.
18:08
Speaker 2: But most likely of all still.
18:10
Speaker 1: Was that Joan was the one being targeted. Secum knew
18:14
Speaker 1: that as a federal judge there could be literally hundreds
18:17
Speaker 1: of people holding very serious grudges against her, and so
18:21
Speaker 1: Secim told Joan that back at the command posts. There
18:24
Speaker 1: was a team of detectives going through her entire docket
18:27
Speaker 1: and making a list of everyone who might have had
18:29
Speaker 1: a ruling that they were not.
18:30
Speaker 2: Happy with in the past few years.
18:33
Speaker 1: But maybe to help speed things along, he asked Joan
18:36
Speaker 1: if she could think of anybody off the top of
18:38
Speaker 1: her head who might have been responsible for this, and
18:42
Speaker 1: Joan sort of without hesitation, said yeah. In fact, there
18:45
Speaker 1: were three cases that came to mind. The first case
18:48
Speaker 1: was about a guy named Sean Peters who was the
18:50
Speaker 1: leader of a local gang, and Joan had given him
18:53
Speaker 1: a very lengthy prison sentence, and so she said any
18:56
Speaker 1: of his fellow gang members in theory could have come
18:58
Speaker 1: after her and retaliate.
19:00
Speaker 2: The second case she brought up was about this.
19:02
Speaker 1: Armed robber whose name was Richard Young, and she said
19:05
Speaker 1: he just really scared her in the courtroom, like he
19:08
Speaker 1: himself was just a very intimidating and sort of threatening person,
19:12
Speaker 1: and so he seemed capable of doing something like this,
19:15
Speaker 1: And she said. The third case was about Matthew Hale,
19:18
Speaker 1: and before she even got into the explanation, seek him
19:21
Speaker 1: recognized the name because at the time, Hale was one
19:24
Speaker 1: of the most notorious white supremacists in all of Illinois.
19:28
Speaker 1: Six years earlier, one of his followers had committed this
19:31
Speaker 1: horrible shooting spree that left two people dead and nine
19:34
Speaker 1: others injured. Joan said that Hale had actually targeted her
19:38
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago. In the wake of this
19:40
Speaker 1: trademark dispute, a church in Oregon with the same name
19:43
Speaker 1: as Hale's group had sued them, and Joan had actually
19:47
Speaker 1: enforced a ruling that forced Hale to change his group's name.
19:51
Speaker 1: Joan said that just the year before, Hale had actually
19:55
Speaker 1: been convicted of plotting to kill her over this issue.
19:59
Speaker 1: Said he was still in prison for those charges. So
20:02
Speaker 1: Sekim realized he could not have pulled the trigger himself,
20:05
Speaker 1: but clearly he had many followers who were willing to
20:08
Speaker 1: do things like this for him. The next day, so
20:15
Speaker 1: March first, Seekim sat down from notorious white supremacist Matthew
20:20
Speaker 1: Hale in a visiting room at the prison in Chicago
20:22
Speaker 1: where he was incarcerated. Hale was this very clean cut,
20:25
Speaker 1: very stern looking man in his mid thirties, and he
20:28
Speaker 1: didn't seem remotely rattled to be sitting across from an
20:31
Speaker 1: FBI agent who basically was insinuating that Hale was a
20:34
Speaker 1: potential suspect in a double homicide, and so Secum told
20:38
Speaker 1: Hale about how Joan Lefkow's husband and her elderly mother
20:41
Speaker 1: had been brutally murdered inside of her home, and in response,
20:46
Speaker 1: Hale just laughed. He said that he and his followers
20:49
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with those murders. But you know,
20:52
Speaker 1: this was more or less what Sekim had expected Hale
20:54
Speaker 1: to say, because Hale was actually still awaiting sentencing for
20:58
Speaker 1: having tried to kill Joan. So of course he's not
21:02
Speaker 1: going to admit here to arranging another murder. He's going
21:05
Speaker 1: to say, no, I had nothing to do with it.
21:07
Speaker 1: Secam told him that it really didn't matter if he
21:09
Speaker 1: denied this, because at this very moment agents were seizing
21:12
Speaker 1: his phone and computer records, and if he had said
21:15
Speaker 1: anything at all about Joan Lefcow and her family to
21:18
Speaker 1: any of his followers, they would find out. But Hale,
21:21
Speaker 1: he just sat back and smiled and continued to insist
21:24
Speaker 1: that he's like, look, I really had nothing to do
21:27
Speaker 1: with this one, Like nothing at all. You will find nothing.
21:30
Speaker 1: And Secim couldn't help but think that Hale seemed so
21:33
Speaker 1: calm and so confident that really, deep down.
21:36
Speaker 2: He thought to himself, maybe he's telling the truth.
21:40
Speaker 1: Later that same afternoon, Secum hunched over a desk in
21:43
Speaker 1: the corner of the Chicago Police command post. At this point,
21:46
Speaker 1: the police, the FBI, and the US Marshals were all
21:49
Speaker 1: working on this case as part of a joint task force,
21:52
Speaker 1: and all the officers on the task force had moved
21:54
Speaker 1: their equipment into the police precinct so the investigation could
21:58
Speaker 1: be centralized in a conference. From two was left, Seacam
22:01
Speaker 1: could see police officers comparing photos of Matthew Hale's followers
22:05
Speaker 1: to the composite sketches of the two men in the
22:07
Speaker 1: red car who the pastor had seen near the crime scene.
22:10
Speaker 1: And at a desk to Seacam's right, there was another
22:13
Speaker 1: FBI agent who was listening to a recording of a
22:16
Speaker 1: phone call that Hale had recently made to his mother.
22:19
Speaker 1: The FBI at this point was taping all of Hale's
22:21
Speaker 1: phone calls in case he said anything incriminating, and meanwhile,
22:25
Speaker 1: other task force officers were sorting through this huge pile
22:28
Speaker 1: of letters that Hale had received in prison. However, after
22:31
Speaker 1: going through these letters. There was no mention of the
22:34
Speaker 1: left cows anywhere. However, at some point Seacam would join
22:37
Speaker 1: these other officers and continue to sort through all this
22:40
Speaker 1: mail in case something got missed. And as he was
22:43
Speaker 1: sorting through, you know, months worth of mail, something actually
22:47
Speaker 1: did catch his attention. For months, Hale had been exchanging
22:50
Speaker 1: letters with this woman, whose name was Kathleen Robert totso
22:54
Speaker 1: basically every other day they were speaking, and Hale did
22:57
Speaker 1: not write to anybody else nearly that often, not even
23:00
Speaker 1: his own family, so this woman was clearly very important. Now,
23:03
Speaker 1: on the surface, nothing in these letters between Hale and
23:06
Speaker 1: Kathleen was incriminating. However, given the frequency of communication, Secum
23:13
Speaker 1: had to wonder if maybe these two could be talking
23:15
Speaker 1: in code, like maybe they are talking about the left cows,
23:18
Speaker 1: but we just can't tell. The return address on these
23:21
Speaker 1: letters was for a suburb in Chicago, about thirty miles
23:25
Speaker 1: away from the prison where Hale was at. So Secim
23:27
Speaker 1: bundled up all the letters from Kathleen and stuck.
23:30
Speaker 2: Them inside of an envelope.
23:32
Speaker 1: He would need them as evidence to get a search warrant.
23:44
Speaker 1: The next evening, March second, two thousand and five, Special
23:46
Speaker 1: Agent Douglas Seacum led a team of FBI agents up
23:49
Speaker 1: the driveway of a suburban home just outside of Chicago,
23:53
Speaker 1: and as they made their way up the driveway, they
23:55
Speaker 1: saw the car parked there was read just like the
23:58
Speaker 1: car the pastor had seen outside the church that had
24:00
Speaker 1: been loitering near where Michael and Donna had been killed.
24:04
Speaker 1: Secim made his way up to the front door and
24:06
Speaker 1: he knocked, and then a moment later a woman answered,
24:08
Speaker 1: and he said, are you Kathleen Robert.
24:10
Speaker 2: Totso And she said yes, and he said okay, and.
24:13
Speaker 1: He held up a search warrant and he said, we're
24:15
Speaker 1: here to search your house. And so Secim stayed outside
24:18
Speaker 1: with Kathleen while the other agents went inside and swept
24:21
Speaker 1: the whole house. And Kathleen seemed really annoyed by this
24:24
Speaker 1: whole thing, but definitely not that surprised. And so while
24:28
Speaker 1: the team was searching the home, Secum turned to Kathleen
24:31
Speaker 1: and asked her about her relationship with Matthew Hale, and
24:35
Speaker 1: he also asked her if she agreed with his, you know,
24:37
Speaker 1: white supremacist views, and Kathleen admitted that, you know, she
24:40
Speaker 1: did have a relationship with Matthew, but she corrected Secum
24:44
Speaker 1: and said, you know, I'm not a white supremacist, I'm
24:46
Speaker 1: a white separatist. Seacam sighed and moved on to asking
24:50
Speaker 1: Kathleen about her whereabouts on the day of Michael and
24:53
Speaker 1: Donna's murders, and Kathleen insisted that she had nothing to
24:57
Speaker 1: do with that. She gave Secim her alibi for the
24:59
Speaker 1: whole day of February twenty eighth, and while Seacum was
25:02
Speaker 1: writing down the details on his notepad, the other agents
25:05
Speaker 1: came back out of the house carrying a computer. When
25:08
Speaker 1: Kathleen began complaining that she needed that computer for her work,
25:12
Speaker 1: Secum told her that they'd return it as soon as
25:14
Speaker 1: they searched it. And then before Seacom put his notepad away,
25:18
Speaker 1: he looked down to the driveway and he looked at
25:20
Speaker 1: Kathleen's red car, and he remembered that he actually hadn't
25:23
Speaker 1: written down the license plate or the make or the model.
25:26
Speaker 1: But as he's looking at this car, he's realizing that
25:29
Speaker 1: there's no way this car matched the description of the
25:33
Speaker 1: pastor's red car that he had seen loitering outside of
25:35
Speaker 1: the church, Like this was definitely not the same car
25:39
Speaker 1: that was suspected of being involved in the murder. Two
25:42
Speaker 1: days later, on the evening of Friday, March fourth, So
25:45
Speaker 1: now four days after Michael and Donna were killed, Special
25:48
Speaker 1: Agent Seacum carried a cup of coffee into a meeting
25:51
Speaker 1: room with the other officers on the task force, and
25:53
Speaker 1: he looked around the room and everybody just looked completely exhausted.
25:57
Speaker 1: It would turn out Kathleen's alibi had checked out, and
26:01
Speaker 1: her red car was definitely not the red car that
26:03
Speaker 1: had been spotted by the pastor, and there had been
26:06
Speaker 1: nothing on a computer that they had taken to search.
26:08
Speaker 1: So basically she was cleared, and so Sekam and his
26:11
Speaker 1: fellow FBI agents. Over the past couple of days, this
26:14
Speaker 1: is right after Kathleen was cleared, they had gone ahead
26:18
Speaker 1: and expanded their search and began interviewing more and more
26:21
Speaker 1: of Matthew Hale's followers, and a lot of them were
26:24
Speaker 1: very confrontational, and at least three people were detained for
26:28
Speaker 1: starting fights with the investigators. But one by one, their
26:32
Speaker 1: allbies began to check out, and so none of them
26:35
Speaker 1: were tied to Michael and Donna's murders, at least not
26:38
Speaker 1: yet Now, a lot of Hale's followers had criminal records,
26:41
Speaker 1: so Secum was hoping that maybe once fingerprint evidence came
26:44
Speaker 1: back from the crime lab, it would turn up a match.
26:47
Speaker 1: But deep down, realistically, Sekum was starting to doubt that
26:51
Speaker 1: anybody in Hall's circle was behind this. Additionally, the task
26:54
Speaker 1: force had investigated that gang leader Joan had mentioned Sean
26:57
Speaker 1: Peters as well as that armed robber Richard Young, and
27:01
Speaker 1: they both also had been cleared as suspects. And so now,
27:04
Speaker 1: you know, Seacim couldn't help but feel like, you know,
27:06
Speaker 1: we're four days into this investigation, this pretty high profile investigation,
27:11
Speaker 1: and it sort of seems like we really don't have
27:13
Speaker 1: much to show for it.
27:14
Speaker 2: Now.
27:15
Speaker 1: It was the case that there were still dozens of
27:17
Speaker 1: other people on Joan's court docket that maybe could have
27:20
Speaker 1: wanted to kill her that Joan was not aware of,
27:22
Speaker 1: but you know, it was going to take time to
27:24
Speaker 1: keep sorting through all these people, and right now they
27:27
Speaker 1: just they didn't have traction in any one direction. It
27:30
Speaker 1: was like everything was sort of becoming a dead end.
27:32
Speaker 1: And so as Sekim is sitting in this room full
27:34
Speaker 1: of the other agents and they're all sort of at
27:35
Speaker 1: a loss for what to do next. He was thinking
27:38
Speaker 1: to himself, is it possible that we've all just sort
27:41
Speaker 1: of wrongfully jumped to conclusions. We all basically assumed that
27:46
Speaker 1: this attack was, you know, targeted at Joan. But Seacim's
27:50
Speaker 1: thinking to himself he couldn't remember any other case where
27:53
Speaker 1: a judge's family was killed and not the judge themself.
27:58
Speaker 1: Just then, Sekim's supervisor from the show, the Cago FBI office,
28:01
Speaker 1: kicked off the meeting by announcing that the agency was
28:04
Speaker 1: putting up a fifty thousand dollars reward to the public
28:07
Speaker 1: for information on the murders. Now, the task force by
28:10
Speaker 1: this point had received over two hundred tips, but the
28:13
Speaker 1: supervisor said clearly that wasn't enough, and so we're going
28:16
Speaker 1: to use this reward to try to entice people who
28:19
Speaker 1: might have been too afraid to come forward to come forward.
28:22
Speaker 1: We'll pay them and so hopefully this leads to better tips.
28:26
Speaker 1: The next Tuesday, so nine days after Michael and Donnis murders,
28:29
Speaker 1: Seacam walked into the command post. The task force had
28:32
Speaker 1: been working all weekend following up on hundreds and hundreds
28:36
Speaker 1: of calls that had come in since the reward money
28:39
Speaker 1: was announced, but it still didn't really seem like they
28:41
Speaker 1: were getting anywhere. And so Sekim he sat down at
28:44
Speaker 1: his desk and he opened up a folder and he
28:46
Speaker 1: was about to get started when his cell phone ranked
28:49
Speaker 1: and he answered it, and it was the deputy director
28:51
Speaker 1: of the crime lab. And so Siakim's heart began to
28:53
Speaker 1: pound with anticipation as the deputy director told him that
28:57
Speaker 1: they had analyzed those fingerprints found on that beer bottle
29:00
Speaker 1: in the basement of the crime scene up in the
29:02
Speaker 1: window ledge, and after they had run it through.
29:04
Speaker 2: The database, they had found a match.
29:12
Speaker 1: Based on forensic evidence and a confession from the killer.
29:16
Speaker 1: This is what police belief happened to Michael left Coow
29:18
Speaker 1: and Donna Humphrey on February twenty eighth, two thousand and five,
29:27
Speaker 1: around four thirty am, while everybody in the left Cow
29:30
Speaker 1: house was still asleep, the killer smashed through that basement
29:33
Speaker 1: window and climbed down into the basement, and with them
29:36
Speaker 1: was a gun. Their plan was to hide in the
29:38
Speaker 1: utility closet all day and then once everybody inside the
29:41
Speaker 1: house cleared out, they would leave the utility closet sneak
29:45
Speaker 1: upstairs and they would wait and when the time was right,
29:48
Speaker 1: they would jump out and they would ambush the person
29:51
Speaker 1: that they wanted to seek revenge on. But things did
29:54
Speaker 1: not go according to plan. Around nine am, the killer
29:57
Speaker 1: was still in the closet when they heard footsteps coming downstairs,
30:01
Speaker 1: coming down the hallway and into the office where they were,
30:03
Speaker 1: and then they heard the sound of somebody sitting in
30:05
Speaker 1: that desk chair and papers shuffling around. And then a
30:09
Speaker 1: moment later they heard the sound of footsteps as somebody
30:12
Speaker 1: approached the closet, and then before long, the closet doors
30:15
Speaker 1: opened and there was this man standing there looking really surprised.
30:19
Speaker 2: He was on crutches, and he's looking at.
30:20
Speaker 1: The killer, and the killer just panicked and they raised
30:23
Speaker 1: their gun and they shot this man point blank in
30:26
Speaker 1: the head and he crumpled to the ground, and the
30:29
Speaker 1: killer's looking down and there's just blood going everywhere, and
30:32
Speaker 1: they're like, I can't believe what I've done. And then
30:34
Speaker 1: a moment later, the killer hears somebody calling.
30:36
Speaker 2: Out, Michael, Michael, is that you And he.
30:39
Speaker 1: Looks down the hallway and he sees this elderly woman
30:42
Speaker 1: shuffling down the hallway looking really concerned. Who clearly just
30:45
Speaker 1: heard the gun shot and sort of in a continued
30:48
Speaker 1: state of panic, the killer rushed out of the closet,
30:51
Speaker 1: went down the hallway, raised the gun and shot this
30:53
Speaker 1: woman in the head as well, and as Donna is
30:56
Speaker 1: bleeding all over the hallway, the killer put their gun away,
30:59
Speaker 1: reached down, scooped her up, and dragged her over into
31:02
Speaker 1: the office and sort of dropped her next to Michael.
31:05
Speaker 1: At this point, the killer's looking down at what they've done,
31:08
Speaker 1: and they're thinking, well, at this point, I better make
31:10
Speaker 1: sure they really are dead. So they pull out their
31:13
Speaker 1: gun again and they shoot Donna and Michael one more time,
31:16
Speaker 1: just to make sure they would not talk to anyone.
31:19
Speaker 2: About what they had seen.
31:20
Speaker 1: After that, the killer went back into the utility closet
31:24
Speaker 1: and their eyes landed on that pack of beers sitting
31:26
Speaker 1: on the floor, and they felt like that was exactly
31:28
Speaker 1: what they needed right.
31:29
Speaker 2: Now to calm their nerves.
31:31
Speaker 1: So they reached down and they pulled out one of
31:32
Speaker 1: those beers and they cracked it open and they took
31:35
Speaker 1: a sip while they thought about what their next move
31:37
Speaker 1: was going to be. And so as the killer is
31:39
Speaker 1: drinking this beer, they're thinking to themselves, well, I've just
31:43
Speaker 1: killed two people that I did not intend to kill.
31:45
Speaker 1: Those were not my targets, and so they felt kind
31:47
Speaker 1: of bad, like two basically innocent people had been murdered here,
31:52
Speaker 1: and so it made the killer think like should I
31:54
Speaker 1: still stick around and wait for my intended target? And
31:57
Speaker 1: eventually they decided, you know what, I need to change
31:59
Speaker 1: my plan, and so the killer they set their beer
32:02
Speaker 1: bottle down on the window sill.
32:04
Speaker 2: Then they went and found a.
32:05
Speaker 1: Sponge and some bleach, and they began to try to
32:08
Speaker 1: clean up all the blood in the hallway. But as
32:10
Speaker 1: they're doing this, you know, they're realizing there's just so
32:13
Speaker 1: much blood out here. There's there's bodies and lots more
32:16
Speaker 1: blood in the office, Like this is too much.
32:19
Speaker 2: I can't possibly clean all this.
32:21
Speaker 1: And so finally around one fifteen pm, the killer just
32:24
Speaker 1: sort of was like, well, this is as good as
32:26
Speaker 1: I can do in terms of cleanup. I'm just gonna leave,
32:29
Speaker 1: And so they did. They left the house, and they
32:31
Speaker 1: left behind that bottle in the windowsill that would have
32:34
Speaker 1: their DNA and fingerprints all over it. The killer was
32:38
Speaker 1: a man named bart Ross and his intended target was
32:41
Speaker 1: Joan Lefcow but Bart was not like a hardened criminal.
32:46
Speaker 1: Bart was a cancer patient who had tried to sue
32:48
Speaker 1: his doctors after he lost part of his job during treatment.
32:52
Speaker 1: Ross had developed a vendetta against these doctors who had
32:54
Speaker 1: left him disfigured, and over the last few years he'd
32:57
Speaker 1: become increasingly paranoid and detached from reality, and he ultimately
33:02
Speaker 1: blamed Joan Leftcow for dismissing his medical malpractice suit and
33:06
Speaker 1: preventing him from getting justice. And so Bart had put
33:09
Speaker 1: together this list of twenty five doctors, lawyers, and judges
33:13
Speaker 1: he wanted to kill, and Joan just happened to be
33:16
Speaker 1: at the top of the list. But after going into
33:19
Speaker 1: her home with the intent to kill Joan but actually
33:22
Speaker 1: just killing Michael and Donna, Ross was so shaken up
33:25
Speaker 1: by it that he gave up on attacking Joan and
33:28
Speaker 1: just left the scene. But he obviously left behind crucial
33:31
Speaker 1: clues that got him caught. Ross's fingerprints and DNA were
33:34
Speaker 1: found inside of Joan's home, not just on that beer bottle,
33:38
Speaker 1: but elsewhere in the house. However, his fingerprints in DNA
33:42
Speaker 1: were not found on those cigarette butts in the cokecan
33:46
Speaker 1: that was left on the curb where that suspicious red
33:48
Speaker 1: car had been parked. And also, Ross looked nothing like
33:51
Speaker 1: the composite sketches of those two men that were seen
33:54
Speaker 1: inside of that red car, So in the end, the
33:57
Speaker 1: investigators believed that the red car probably had nothing to
34:00
Speaker 1: do with the murders. Then Ross simply acted alone. On
34:03
Speaker 1: March ninth, one day after the fingerprint results came back,
34:07
Speaker 1: Wisconsin police officers spotted Ross's van near a federal courthouse
34:11
Speaker 1: in Milwaukee, but as they approached his van, Ross fatally
34:15
Speaker 1: shot himself. However, inside of his van, police found a
34:18
Speaker 1: note confessing in detail to the murders of Michael Lefkow
34:22
Speaker 1: and Donna Humphrey.
34:32
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for watching.
34:33
Speaker 1: Let me know what you thought of today's episode in
34:35
Speaker 1: the comments, and remember, we have a whole playlist of
34:38
Speaker 1: true crime episodes ready for you to binge right now,
34:41
Speaker 1: so click here and give them a watch.
34:43
Speaker 2: All right, until next time, see y