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Transcript

She Was Stabbed to Death — Now Her Boyfriend is Telling a Chilling Story · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So imagine you are standing in a freezing remote Scottish archipelago. Right.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Totally isolated.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Like gale force winds, dark, windswept. A place where
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you were just truly cut off from the rest of
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Just absolute geographical isolation.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And in the middle of that isolation, inside an
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: ordinary looking house, a man dials emergency services.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: And what he says is just, it's chilling.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It really is. He clinically, methodically lists the 40 stab
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: wounds he had literally just inflicted on his girlfriend.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: 40 stab wounds. It's just an incomprehensible level of violence.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: And then hours later, he drinks toxic automotive fluid and
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: drives a Porsche straight into the dark, churning waters of
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the North Sea.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: It's a complete explosion of chaos and self-destruction.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: But then, and this is the craziest part, months later,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: he looks a jury in the eye and claims that
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the victim actually inflicted all 40 of those wounds upon herself.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Which, from a biomechanical standpoint, is just physically impossible.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Right. So today, in this deep dive, we are figuring
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: out how a single human mind attempts to hold three
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: completely contradictory realities at once.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: And how a really unique legal system is forced to
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: dissect those realities.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Because this deep dive is based on transcripts and
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: reporting from the Law and Crime Network detailing the shocking
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: trial of Aaron Pearson.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: It's a profound psychological collision. I mean, you're looking at
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: the absolute extremes of human behavior here.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: You really are a clinical confession followed by just chaotic self-destruction,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: capped off by a core armed defense that openly defies
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: basic physical science.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: It really forces you to examine the anatomy of a cover-up, right?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: And the forensic reality of a crime scene.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Plus the heavy burden of proof. So let's set the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: table here. We are tracing the tragic final days of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: 24-year-old Claire Levesque and her 41-year-old boyfriend, Aaron Pearson.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Both originally from Canada.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Claire was from a town called Westlock, Alberta, and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: she was working in Edmonton when she met Aaron.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: And he holds dual British and Canadian citizenship.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Right, and for reasons that eventually turned catastrophic, they decided
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to uproot their lives and move to the absolute edge
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: of the world.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: The Shetland Islands.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Specifically, a tiny settlement called Sandinus. staying at a property
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: called Ringville, which was owned by Aaron's mother, Hazel.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Which is such a specific extreme environment.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. To understand the sheer gravity of what happened on
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the night of February 11th, 2024, we first have to
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: understand the environment that bred it, right?
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Because you hear Scottish islands and you might picture like
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: rolling green hills and quaint villages.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Like a postcard.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But the Shetlands in the dead of winter are
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: a totally different psychological beast.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: That geographic reality is basically the silent third character in
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: this tragedy.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, so.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Well, the Shetland Islands sit practically halfway between Scotland and Norway.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That far north.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So in the winter, you are dealing with gale
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: force winds whipping off the North Sea, freezing rain, and
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: a severe lack of daylight.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Just constant darkness and cold.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And when behavioral psychologists look at extreme isolation, whether it's,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: you know, researchers wintering over in Antarctica or or individuals
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: moving to highly remote cabins, they look for the onset
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: of something called cabin fever.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Or isolated confinement syndrome, right?
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, the clinical term. The sensory deprivation of the environment
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: forces the brain to turn entirely inward.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: And when the brain turns inward in a toxic relationship,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the results are just explosive.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: They really are.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Because the court evidence showed this was a relationship drowning
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: in heavy alcohol use, frequent screaming matches... And mutual abuse.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: It's the pressure cooker effect.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me think of like being in a submarine.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: You're miles beneath the ocean surface and every minor slight,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: every perceived insult is amplified a thousand times over because
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: there is no escape valve.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: That is a great analogy.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: You cannot just walk out the door and wander around
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: a sunny park to cool off. You are trapped with
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the tension and the tension becomes your entire world.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: And that submarine environment fundamentally alters your baseline for normal behavior.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Right. It warps your sense of reality.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When you are constantly operating in a state of
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: high alert, the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the brain responsible for logical decision making and impulse control,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: starts to cede control.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: To the amygdala, right?
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Yes. The brain's fear and aggression center. So you stop
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: reacting logically to arguments and start reacting as if your
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: actual survival is threatened.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Right. Which brings us to this crucial, horrifying incident on
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: January 2nd, 2024.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Roughly five weeks before Clara's murder.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Right. This is the moment the pressure cooker visibly cracks.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: A neighbor, Katherine Jameson, testified to this in court.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: And her testimony is wild.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: It is. So on January 2nd, Erin Pearson shows up
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: at her door in the freezing cold, only half-dressed.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: In the Shetland winter.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he was bleeding profusely from his mouth, and
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: he was missing teeth.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And not because someone hit him?
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: No, he was completely distraught, acting erratically, and he told
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the neighbor that he had punched his own teeth out.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Which is just, wow.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he started making wild claims that he
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: had grenades on him.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, we really need to dissect the self-mutilation first.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Well, please do, because that makes no sense to me.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Well, punching your own teeth out requires an immense, horrifying
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: amount of physical force.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even imagine the pain.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah. It requires an absolute bypass of the body's
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: natural pain avoidance mechanisms. Your brain is wired to stop
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: you from doing that.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: So how does someone actually do it?
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: In psychiatric terms, when we see extreme sudden self-mutilation in
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: the context of a volatile relationship, it is often a
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: severe externalization of unmanageable psychological pain.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Like the emotional pain is so bad it has to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: become physical. Right.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: It's an act of rage that is so overwhelming it
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: has to be physically discharged. If he cannot direct it
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: at his partner in that exact moment, He turns it
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: inward as a violent grounding mechanism.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Grounding mechanism. That's terrifying.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate red flag for escalating lethal aggression.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, but what about the grenades comment? Like, is that
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: a literal threat or is it a symptom of a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: full-blown psychotic delusion?
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: That's a really important question.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Because if a guy shows up at my door bleeding
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: from the mouth talking about explosives, I'm assuming he has
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: completely lost his grip on reality.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: It's a critical distinction. A true psychotic delusion means the
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: brain has created a false reality that the person believes
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: with absolute certainty.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Like they genuinely see the grenades. Right.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: But in the context of chronic alcohol abuse and intense
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: domestic volatility, claims about grenades often act as grandiose metaphorical
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: threats rather than literal delusions.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: So he's just trying to seem dangerous.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Yes. It is a manifestation of hypervigilance. He is projecting
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: an aura of maximum danger.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Whether he literally believed he had explosives... or was just
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: using the term to convey how explosive he felt, it
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: signals to everyone around him and later to the jury
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: that his baseline mental state was intensely volatile.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: And deteriorating rapidly. So the prosecution points to this January
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: 2nd incident and says, look, the fuse was already lit.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: He is violent, he is unpredictable, and he is capable
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: of overriding basic human instincts.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Which sets the stage for the main event.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Yes. That horrific prelude brings us to the day of
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the crime, February 11th, 2024. And the tragic irony of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: domestic homicides is that they rarely start like a horror movie.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: No, they usually start very normally.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Right. They start with the most mundane domestic chores imaginable.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: The plan that Sunday was literally just to clean the
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: hot tub and the adjoining shed at the property.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: The contrast between the mundane task and the resulting violence.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: is just stark.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: But it's historically consistent with domestic homicides. These events often
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: ignite over perceived failures in routine tasks.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Like an argument over who is supposed to buy soap
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: or something.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The hot tub cleaning provides the setting, but the accelerant,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: as the sources note, was a massive influx of alcohol
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: as the afternoon turned into evening.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Which is a terrible combination with that existing pressure cooker.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, But in high
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: acute doses, its primary behavioral effect is the severe impairment
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: of executive function.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: So all that impulse control we talked about is just gone.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Completely gone. And it amplifies underlying hostility.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: And that hostility boiled over into absolute darkness. Erin's mother, Hazel,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: who lived on the property and who actually passed away
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a few months later in May, was the one who
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: ultimately called emergency services.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Her statements are so crucial.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: They really are. She told police that Aaron walked into
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the kitchen looking, in her words, zombie-like.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Zombie-like.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He was holding a small, black-handled kitchen knife. He
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: just looked at his mother and simply said that he
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: had hurt Claire.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: That zombie-like description from the mother is a really fascinating
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: behavioral clue.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Why is that? Is it shock?
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Basically, yes. In the immediate aftermath of extreme, hands-on violence,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: perpetrators often enter a state of acute dissociation.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Because their brain can't handle what they just did.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The brain is attempting to process a massive trauma
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: in this case, a trauma the perpetrator himself just initiated.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: It would result in a flattened effect, a blank stare,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: and robotic movement. The psychological shock system temporarily shuts down
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: the emotional processing centers to prevent an immediate mental collapse.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Wow. But that shutdown didn't last because what happens next
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: is what elevates this case from a standard tragic domestic
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: violence incident into something just chillingly clinical.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: The 911 call.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. Hazel makes the call, but Aaron physically takes the
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: phone from her. He speaks directly to the emergency operator.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Which is rare in itself.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: The transcript of this call was read in court, and
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you guys, it is a horrifying artifact.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: It's hard to listen to.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to quote part of it. He says, quote, Hello. Hi,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: my name is Aaron Pearson. I've just killed my girlfriend
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: in the hot tub in the garage. I stabbed her
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: about 40 times in the heart, stomach, face, neck and back.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Just itemizing it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he goes on to say he stabbed himself
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: in the neck four times because he couldn't live with
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the fact he killed her. using a highly derogatory expletive
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: to describe Claire, by the way.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: He claims she drank too much and angered him. Then
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: he says, I drove my Porsche right into the ocean.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It's gone.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Which is true. He did do that.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he finishes with, yeah, she is dead. I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: definitely killed her to make sure I drowned her after
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I stabbed her several times and beat her up really badly.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It is an incredibly rare piece of audio.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, normally people lie, right?
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Yes. When you study the transcripts of killers calling emergency
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: services immediately after an event, The overwhelming norm is minimization
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: and passive language.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Like saying, she got hurt instead of I hurt her.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They distance themselves from the mechanics of the act.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: They say things like, there's been a terrible accident or
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: she fell on the knife.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Right. She's bleeding. Please hurry. Yes.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: They instinctively protect their own ego and legal standing by
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: fracturing their connection to the violence.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Right. They act like a bystander to their own crime.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Precisely. But Pearson does the exact opposite here. He provides
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: a gruesome... itemized inventory of his atrocity.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: He gives his full name.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: He provides the exact number of stab wounds, estimated at 40.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: He lists the precise anatomical targets, heart, stomach, face, neck, back.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: It's like he's reading a grocery list of horrors.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: And he outlines a distinct chronological sequence. Stabbing, then beating,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: then intentional drowning to ensure death.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: He even gives a motive, citing her drinking and his anger.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: He is essentially acting as his own forensic pathologist and
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: lead detective in real time.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Wait, stop right there. You're saying that extreme specificity proves
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: he was perfectly aware of what he was doing.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: But couldn't a defense attorney look at that exact same
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: transcript and argue the complete opposite?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Like, couldn't they say that reciting a robotic itemized list
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: of 40 stab wounds actually points to a complete psychotic break?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Because it doesn't sound human. It sounds like a machine
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: reciting code.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: That's a fair point.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: So how does a prosecutor prove that is cold-blooded intent
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: and not just severe mental fragmentation?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: That is the exact tightrope the prosecution has to walk.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: The defense absolutely will argue that the clinical nature of
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: the call is evidence of a fractured mind.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Right, that he is just rambling in a dissociative state.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: But the prosecution counters this with the concept of memory encoding.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Memory encoding, what is that?
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, so if you are experiencing a genuine psychotic break
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: or an alcohol-induced blackout, Your memory encoding is fragmented.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: It's broken up.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Yes. It's like a strobe light going off in a
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: dark room. You only get terrifying flashes of imagery, not
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: a continuous narrative video feed.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. So you wouldn't know the sequence of events. Right.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: You might wake up with a knife in your hand
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: and blood on your clothes and genuinely have no idea
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: how it got there.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But Pearson knew everything.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The fact that Pearson accurately tracked the sequence, the locations,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: and the specific intent behind the drowning... saying he did it, quote,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: to make sure, end quote, demonstrates that his cognitive faculties
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: were actively recording and processing the mechanics of the murder
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: as it happened.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: That requires a horrifying clarity of purpose.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: And the physical reality of the scene perfectly matched his
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: terrifying clinical words.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Which just solidifies the prosecution's case.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: When first responder PC Dana Jameson arrived at Ringville, she
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: provided testimony that paints a scene I don't think any
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: juror will ever forget.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: It's brutal.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: She found 24-year-old Claire lifeless, floating on her back in
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the hot tub. And the specific imagery the officer used
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: in court, she described the water in the hot tub
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: as being black.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Black water. That phrase is so loaded.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Well, the defense later tried to clinicalize this, repeatedly referring
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to it merely as blood in the water, attempting to
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: soften the blow.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Naturally, they want to make it sound less horrific.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: But the officer held firm. She said, no, the water
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: was black. and the official cause of death was later
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: confirmed as fatal stab wounds to the neck and chest,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: along with severe blunt force trauma.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: We really have to pause and look at the forensic
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and psychological weight of that specific phrase. Blackwater.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Because of how much blood it takes to do that.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yes. The average human adult has roughly 5 liters of
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: blood in their body. For an entire hot tub to
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: visually read as black to a first responder, you are
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: dealing with catastrophic, massive arterial bleeding.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: From a courtroom strategy perspective, words matter immensely.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Right. The difference between blood and black water.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When a defense attorney says blood in the water,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: they are trying to engage the jury's logical brain, acknowledging
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: a biological fact.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Just a fluid.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: But when the first responder says the water was black,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: it bypasses logic and hits the jury right in the
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: emotional center.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: It paints a picture you can't unsee.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: It visually confirms the extreme sustained violence of those 40
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: stab wounds. Plus, a hot tub is a universal symbol
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: of relaxation, warmth, and intimacy.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Right. It's supposed to be a safe, fun space.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: To invert that into a scene of overwhelming, dark violence
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: creates an indelible psychological anchor for the jury.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: And that psychological anchor is what makes Aaron's actions in
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the immediate aftermath so utterly baffling.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Because the 911 call isn't even the end of it.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Not even close. If you think that brutally honest 911
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: call is the end of the chaos, it is only
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the beginning. The timeline of what he does next is
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: just a complete whiplash of intent.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Let's trace it out.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he stabs Claire. He then turns the knife
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: on himself, stabbing himself in the neck four times.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Four times in the neck.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Right. Then he manages to get into his Porsche, drives
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it away from the property, and literally drives it off
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: a pier into the North Sea.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: The wreckage was found less than a kilometer away from
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: the house.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: He is somehow rescued from the freezing water, bleeding from
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: his neck wounds, and taken to the Gilbert Bain Hospital
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: in Luric.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: So he survives the stabbing and the crash.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, but when he gets to the medical staff, they
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: realize he hasn't just stabbed himself and almost drowned. He
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: requires an immediate antidote because he had consumed brake fluid.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: So within a matter of hours, we have a man
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: who has executed a brutal murder and then engaged in
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: three distinct, highly lethal attempts at suicide.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Lacerating his own neck, plunging a vehicle into the ocean,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: and ingesting toxic automotive chemicals.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: I really want to dig into the brake fluid aspect
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: because that feels so incredibly specific and painful.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I know, right? Why brake fluid and what does that
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: actually do to a human body?
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: It is a horrific way to try and end your life.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Brink fluid is primarily composed of diethylene glycol or ethylene glycol.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Like antifreeze.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It has a sweet taste, which is why animals
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: unfortunately sometimes drink it, but its effects on the human
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: body are devastating.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: What happens when you drink it?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: When ingested, the liver metabolizes the ethylene glycol into highly
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: toxic compounds, specifically glycolic acid and then oxalic acid. This
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: causes profound metabolic acidosis. Your blood literally becomes too acidic
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: to sustain normal cellular function.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: That sounds awful.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: But the most agonizing part is what happens to the kidneys.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: The oxalic acid binds with calcium in the bloodstream to
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: form calcium oxalate crystals.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Crystals inside your blood?
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Yes. And these microscopic crystals act like shattered glass, physically
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: tearing through the kidney tubules and causing acute renal failure.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, he was shredding his own internal organs.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: It is an excruciatingly painful process that leads to cardiovascular
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: collapse if untreated.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: So how do they even treat that?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: The hospital staff would have had to aggressively administer an antidote,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: usually Fomabesol, or a controlled intravenous infusion of pharmaceutical-grade ethanol.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Wait, ethanol? Like alcohol?
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, to stop his liver from metabolizing the poison.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: And the wild thing is... After surviving the freezing ocean,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: after stabbing his own neck, and after consuming a chemical
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that literally crystallizes your internal organs, he is sitting in
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the ER being evaluated by psychiatric staff.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And what do they find?
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: The evaluation concludes that there is no evidence of acute
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: mental illness. Wow. They deemed him entirely legally fit to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: be interviewed by the police.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: That is fascinating.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: How on earth can a medical professional look at a
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: man who just drank brake fluid and drove a car
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: into the sea and say... Yep, he's mentally sound.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Because medical distress and legal sanity are two entirely different frameworks.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: When an ER psychiatrist evaluates someone in this state, they
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: are looking for signs of a break from reality.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Like seeing things that aren't there.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Right. Acute psychosis, severe schizophrenia, or a dissociative fugue state
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: that renders the patient unable to understand their surroundings anymore.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: or the consequences of their actions.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: They use specific tests for that, right?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They use tools like the glazocoma scale and orientation questions.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Does he know his name? Does he know where he is?
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Does he understand why the police are outside the door?
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: And he did.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Yes. The extreme self-harm proves he is in profound emotional
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: agony and experiencing intense suicidal ideation. But it does not
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: mean he is hallucinating or unaware of reality.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: So he knew exactly what he was doing.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: In fact, attempting suicide after a murder... often indicates a
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: very sharp, crushing awareness of the reality he just created.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: He was lucid.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: And in that lucid state, he speaks to a Dr.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Caroline Heggie at the hospital. He looks at her and says, quote,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I've been trying to get rid of her for a while.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: That is a damning statement.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Well, the defense later tried to spin this, arguing that
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: he just meant he wanted to end the relationship and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: send her back to Canada.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Right. Trying to make it sound innocuous.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: But when you say that while being treated for wounds
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: related to her brutal murder, it sounds like a confession
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: of premeditation.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: It speaks to a deep, simmering resentment that really undercuts
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: any narrative of a sudden, unpredictable crime of passion.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: But the contradictions just keep stacking up.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: They really do.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Because around this exact same time frame, while he's confessing
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: to the doctor and while he's telling one of the
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: responding police officers, PC Kevin Simpson, quote, murderers are to
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: be killed. Put a bullet in me.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: He's literally begging for death.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Yes. But simultaneously, he is sending text messages to Claire's
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: father back in Canada.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Doing a cover up.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: He texts her dad. claiming that Claire is in good
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: health and that he had actually booked return flights for
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: her to go home.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: He is actively orchestrating a cover up while begging the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: police to execute him. He even tells the Scottish police to, quote,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: take me out to the boonies.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: The boonies.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a North American slang term for the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: remote wilderness that the prosecution actually had to pause and translate.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: for the Scottish jury.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: That is just, if we look at this chronologically, it
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: is a masterclass in cognitive dissonance.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: It is a mind fracturing under the weight of its
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: own actions, bouncing wildly between self-preservation and self-destruction.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: But how does a jury reconcile that? It's like a
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: computer trying to run two conflicting operating systems at the
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: exact same time.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to picture it.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Program A is calculating. Hide the evidence. pacify the father,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: pretend she is alive. Right. But program B is screaming,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: destroy yourself, confess to the doctors, drink poison.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: The conflict is intense.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So if I'm on that jury, I might look at
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: those conflicting actions and think, this guy's brain is completely broken.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Doesn't that erratic ping-ponging actually support a defense of legal insanity?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: It seems counterintuitive, but legally, attempting a cover-up is often
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: viewed by courts as the ultimate undeniable proof of sanity.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Really? Why?
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Because you only attempt to hide a crime or deceive
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: a victim's family if you possess the cognitive awareness that
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: what you just did was legally and morally wrong. Oh, wow.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: That makes so much sense.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: If you truly believed you were fighting a demon or
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: if you were entirely blacked out, you wouldn't possess the
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: logical sequencing required to formulate a lie about booking return flights.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't know you needed to lie. Exactly.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The text messages to the father prove an awareness
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: of guilt and a desire to evade consequences.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: And what about all the self-harm?
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: The self-harm, the brake fluid, the ocean crash, the begging
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: for a bullet can be interpreted by a jury not
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: as a loss of sanity, but as overwhelming, immediate remorse
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: and cowardice.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Like the reality of it hit him all at once. Yes.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Having realized the inescapable magnitude of the crime he fully
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: intended to commit. He knew exactly what he did. He
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: tried briefly to hide it. The futility of that lie
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: set in. And then the reality crushed him.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: That is a phenomenal distinction. The cover up proves the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: consciousness of guilt.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: So armed with this mountain of contradictory chaos, we fast
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: forward to October 7th. We are now inside the high
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: court in Edinburgh before Judge Lord Arthur.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: The trial begins.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Aaron Pearson is facing seven grave charges, including murder, assault,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: threatening and abusive behavior, and defeating the ends of justice.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Which is the Scottish charge that covers his text messages
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: and his attempts to mislead authorities.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Right. So the prosecution lays out the devastating timeline we
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: just walked through. They play the 911 call. They emphasize
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: the black water. They detail the brake fluid. And they
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: bring in Hazel's statements.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: And the inclusion of Hazel's statements involves a really fascinating
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: evidentiary rule regarding hearsay.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Because she died before the trial.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Right. As we mentioned, Erin's mother passed away in May,
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: months before the trial began in October.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: So normally she couldn't testify, obviously.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: In the Anglo-American legal tradition, a statement made by someone
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: outside of court is generally considered inadmissible hearsay.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Because the defense has a constitutional right to cross-examine their
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: accuser on the stand. And, well, you can't cause exam
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: in a document.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: But the Scottish legal system, like many others, has specific
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: hearsay exceptions.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Right, like the concept of a dying declaration or statements
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: made in the immediate shock of an event.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It falls under the doctrine of res geste.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Res geste.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: It's Latin for things done. Or words spoken so closely
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: connected to the crime that they form part of the
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: event itself.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: So because she said it right as it was happening? Yes. Yes.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Hazel recounting of Aaron walking in zombie-like with a black-handled
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: kitchen knife wasn't a calculated police statement made weeks later.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: It was a real-time observation of the immediate aftermath.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: So the judge let it in.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Because of her death, the court allowed these crucial, highly
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: prejudicial statements into evidence for the jury to hear.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: And the prosecution didn't stop there. They played chilling audio
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: recordings from prior arguments before Claire's death.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Those recordings are devastating.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: The jury sat in that courtroom and listened to audio
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: of 24-year-old Claire telling Aaron, quote, you are going to
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: kill me.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: And she said that right after she told him she
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: loved him.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Mere moments after she had just said to him, I
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: love you. The emotional weight of that is just suffocating.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: It paints a terrifying picture of the abuse.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Combine that with the forensics investigators matching the black handled
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: knife to Claire's DNA, her hair and the specific size
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and depth of the 40 wounds on her body. The
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: prosecution built an absolute fortress of evidence.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the pivotal moment of the trial.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Day 5, October 13th.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Aaron Pearson decides to exercise his right to take the
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: stand in his own defense.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Always a risky move.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And when he opens his mouth, the narrative he delivers
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: to the jury is completely fundamentally contradictory to the 911
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: call he made on the night of the murder.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: He completely abandons the clinical confession.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: He tells the jury that the day started normally. But
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: he claims Claire began drinking heavily, consuming roughly a third
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: of a liter of hard liquor. He says they started
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: arguing because she overheard him on the phone with her father,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: discussing sending her back to Canada to get away from
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the toxicity.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: So he's setting up a motive for her to be angry.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Right. Aaron claims Claire called him a rat, that she
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: physically struck him. And then this is the core of
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: his entire courtroom defense. He claims Claire grabbed the kitchen
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: knife and proceeded to stab herself.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Okay. To be absolutely clear for the listener, he is
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: claiming that 24-year-old Claire Levesque, in a drunken rage, inflicted
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: 40 individual stab wounds upon her stomach, her face, her neck,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: and her back.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. That is his testimony under oath. And his story continues.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, there's more?
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: He says that after she supposedly mutilated herself, he snapped
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: out of his disorientation and tried to be the hero.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: The hero.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: He claims he tried to pick her up to put
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: her in his Porsche so he could drive her the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: 45 minutes to the hospital in Lerwick.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: 45 minutes away.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: But he says she was, quote, dead weight. And so
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: in the chaos and his panicked state from her striking him,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: he just got confused, got in his car alone, and
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: accidentally drove into the sea.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: The biomechanical and logical hurdles of this defense are just staggering.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stop right here because I think anyone
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: listening is just screaming at their device right now.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Understandably so.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: We are supposed to believe that a young woman stabbed
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: herself 40 times.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: It defies logic.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Including in her own back. How do you even physically
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: generate the force to stab yourself in the back repeatedly?
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: You really can't.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: And furthermore, if she really did do this to herself,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: why wouldn't he just pick up the phone and call
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: an ambulance immediately?
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Right, why the car ride?
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Why try to drag a bleeding, dying woman into a
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: luxury sports car for a 45 minute drive across the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: islands only to end up driving it off a pier alone?
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: The logic just falls apart instantly.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Is there any strategic legal reason for a defense attorney
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: to let their client take the stand and offer a
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: story that is so easily scientifically disproven?
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: It is an excellent question that really gets to the
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: heart of the attorney client dynamic.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Because no lawyer would suggest this, right? No.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: When a defense narrative is this physically improbable, it almost
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: always points to an issue of client control.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Client control. Yes.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: In most democratic legal systems, the decision to testify belongs
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: absolutely unequivocally to the defendant.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: So the lawyer can't stop him.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: A defense attorney can beg, plead, and mathematically prove to
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: their client that taking the stand will destroy their case.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: But if the client insists, the attorney is ethically bound
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: to facilitate that testimony. This was likely a Hail Mary
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: pass thrown by a defendant who simply refused to accept
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: the reality of the evidence against him.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: But let's dig into the science of why it's impossible
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: just to put a nail in it. If a forensic
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: pathologist is sitting in that courtroom listening to this, how
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: do they dismantle the she stabbed herself narrative?
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: A forensic pathologist would destroy this defense using biomechanics and
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: the timeline of hemorrhagic shock.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Let's start with biomechanics.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: First, the angle of incidence. When a person stabs someone else,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: the blade enters at angles consistent with the height difference, handedness,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: and kinetic swing of the attacker.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: It's an external force.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Right. When someone stabs themselves, the angles are entirely different,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: limited by the rotation of the human wrist and shoulder.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: You can only twist your arms so far.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Second, the back wounds. It is physically nearly impossible
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: to generate the deep kinetic force required... to pierce the
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: dermis and muscle tissue of your own back repeatedly.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Because your bones get in the way.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Yes. Your shoulder blades and your spine severely limit your
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: reach and leverage.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: But most importantly, it's a question of blood loss and
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: cellular energy.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Hemorrhagic shock.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Right. After the first few fatal wounds to the heart
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: or neck, blood pressure drops catastrophically. The muscles are instantly
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: deprived of oxygen and ATP. It's the energy currency of
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: the cell. Without it, your muscles just stop working.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: So she would just collapse.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: She physically would not have had the muscular energy or
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: consciousness to continue stabbing herself 40 times. Rapid muscle failure
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: would make it impossible.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Not to mention the jury has his own voice in
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: their ears. They heard the 911 tape where he explicitly says,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I stabbed her about 40 times. I definitely killed her
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: to make sure I drowned her.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Her contradiction is just glaring.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Taking the stand and claiming she did it to herself
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: requires the jury to believe that the 911 call was
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: just a wild coincidental hallucination. that perfectly matched the forensic evidence.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Which is why taking the stand was incredibly risky. But
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: if we look closely at the underlying strategy, the defense
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: team might not have been aiming for a full acquittal.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: What else could they be aiming for?
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: They might have been aiming to muddy the waters just
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: enough to trigger one of the unique mechanisms of the
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Scottish legal system.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: They wanted the jury to look at Aaron, hear about
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: the heavy drinking, the mutual abuse, the extreme isolation, his
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: zombie-like state, and decide, that the entire situation was just
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: an incomprehensible drunken tragedy.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Where the specific legal intent for murder couldn't be proven.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Which perfectly transitions us into the actual legal framework that
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: will decide the outcome of this bizarre story. We need
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: to ground this in the real world mechanics of Scottish law.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Because there are some fascinating jurisdictional and historical quirks at
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: play here that you simply do not see in North America.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the elephant in the room regarding jurisdiction.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: We established that both Claire and Aaron were Canadian citizens.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Why is a court in Edinburgh prosecuting two Canadians for
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a crime involving a Canadian victim?
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: This comes down to a fundamental principle of international law
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: called the territoriality principle.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Meaning where it happens matters most.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Essentially, yes. Sovereignty is tied to geography. The crime happened
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: on Scottish soil in the Shetland Islands. Therefore, it is
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: a violation of the king's peace in Scotland. and it
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: is a matter for Scottish territory and Scottish law.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Does Canada have any say?
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: While Canadian authorities technically have an interest, especially since the
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: victim was a Canadian citizen, they would generally only attempt
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: to invoke extraterritorial jurisdiction if Scotland looked at the case
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: and actively refused to prosecute or was incapable of doing so.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: But Scotland took the lead.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Since the Scottish Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service moved
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: forward aggressively with the trial, Canada steps back and allows
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: the host nation to handle it.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: And because Aaron Pearson is standing trial in a Scottish court,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: he is subject to unique concepts within Scottish common law.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Which is quite different from Canadian or U.S.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Law. Right. One of the most vital concepts to understand
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: in this trial is the charge of culpable homicide.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: This is a crucial distinction.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: How does it work?
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: In the United States or Canada, you typically have varying
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: degrees of murder, like first or second degree, and then
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: manslaughter for lesser intent.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Right, depending on premeditation.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: In Scotland, the primary division is between murder and culpable homicide.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Culpable homicide broadly applies when someone has unlawfully caused the
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: death of another person, but they lacked the specific necessary
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: intent required for a murder conviction.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: So what does murder require in Scotland?
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: In Scottish law, murder requires showing wicked recklessness or an
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: absolute intent to kill.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Wicked recklessness. That's a very specific term.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: So how does the defense use the chaos of the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: crime scene to angle for culpable homicide?
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: They attempt to build a narrative of diminished capacity without
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: relying on a full insanity defense.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: By using the alcohol. Right.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: They would argue that the massive documented alcohol consumption, the
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: highly volatile screaming match, the history of mutual abuse, and
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: perhaps even Aaron's blank zombie-like state meant he was cognitively
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: and physically incapable of forming the specific premedicated intent to
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: murder Claire.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: So they admit he did it, but argue his brain
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't fully online.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: They would essentially argue, yes, his actions unlawfully caused her
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: death and the chaos of that hot tub, but it
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: was a tragic, drunken explosion of violence, not a cold-blooded,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: intentional execution.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, what's the benefit of that?
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: By painting the scene as mutually chaotic, they hope to
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: downgrade the conviction from murder... to culpable homicide, which carries
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: significantly more lenient sentencing guidelines.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: But the Scottish system holds an even more unique, deeply
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: controversial quirk. When the jury goes back to the deliberation room,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: they don't just have two options on the table.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is the really wild part.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: They don't just vote guilty or not guilty. They have
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: a third verdict available to them, not proven.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Ah, yes. The infamous bastard verdict.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Bastard verdict.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: That's what the great Scottish novelist and legal figure Sir
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Walter Scott famously called it. This is a hallmark of
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: the Scottish justice system, and its existence is intensely debated
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: to this day.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: We have to explain the mechanics of this, because to
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: an outsider, it just sounds wild. An international law attorney
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: in our source material explained that a not proven verdict
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: essentially means the jury highly suspects or even truly believes
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that the defendant committed the crime. However, they feel the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: prosecution legally failed to meet the strict burden of proof
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: required for a formal guilty verdict.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: That is exactly right.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Where did this even come from?
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Historically, in the 17th century, Scottish juries didn't pronounce guilt
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: or innocence at all. They merely pronounced whether the specific
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: facts alleged by the prosecution were proven or not proven.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: So it was just a factual checklist. Yes.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Over time, the not guilty verdict was reintroduced, but not
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: proven just stuck around.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: So what happens if you get a not proven verdict?
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Do you go to jail?
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Legally and practically, a not proven verdict has the exact
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: same effect as a not guilty verdict. The defendant walks free.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: They're acquitted.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? They just go home?
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Yes. And they cannot be tried again for the same
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: crime under the rules of double jeopardy. But socially, historically,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and psychologically, it carries a massive inescapable stigma.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: It's like a referee in a championship game coming over
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: to a player and saying, look, I know you threw
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: an elbow. Everyone in the stadium knows you did it.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: But my linesman was looking the other way and we
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: don't have it on camera from the right angle. So
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: legally play on.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: It acknowledges the extreme likelihood of guilt while citing a
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: technical procedural failure of evidence. It's a verdict that says
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: you didn't convince us you were innocent, but the state
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: didn't prove you were guilty.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Which leaves everyone unsatisfied.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Let me push you on this regarding the Pearson case specifically.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Given the sheer volume of evidence we just laid out,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: the recorded 9-11 confession listing the anatomy of the stab wounds,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the murder weapon matching the forensics, the black water, the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: text covering it up is the not proven verdict realistically
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: on the table here.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: It's a good question.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Or is the defense just grasping at a desperate legal
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: loophole by throwing so much chaotic spaghetti at the wall?
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Realistically, in this specific trial, a not proven verdict seems
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: incredibly unlikely.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: That verdict typically arises in highly circumstantial cases, say, a
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: historic sexual assault, where it is entirely one person's word
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: against another's with absolutely zero corroborating physical evidence.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Where there's just not enough proof either way. Right.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: In those cases, a jury might believe the victim but
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: feel legally bound to say the state couldn't clear the
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: high bar of reasonable doubt. Here, the prosecution has an
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: absolute mountain of concrete data.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: The 911 tape alone.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And ironically, the defense's pivot to the she stabbed
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: herself 30 times narrative actually hurts their chances of securing
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: a not proven verdict.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? How?
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: If they'd simply argued it was a chaotic struggle in
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: the dark and we don't know who's handheld the knife,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: they might have introduced doubt.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Because it's plausible.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Yes. But by offering a physically impossible alternative, the jury
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: now has to weigh the absolute absurdity of a woman
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: stabbing her own back 40 times against the rock-solid recorded
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: confession of the defendant. It removes the ambiguity that not
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: proven thrives on.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: It is a staggering amount of information, forensic science and
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: legal history for a jury of ordinary citizens to process.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: It really is a heavy burden for those jurors.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And as we bring this deep dive to a close
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and summarize everything we've unpacked, the ultimate takeaway cannot just
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: be the legal mechanics or the forensic anomalies.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: No, it has to be the human cost.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: The ultimate takeaway has to be the sheer devastating tragedy
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: of this case. We are talking about a 24-year-old woman,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Claire Levesque, who traveled across the world to a breathtakingly
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: beautiful place seeking a new chapter.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Just looking for a fresh start.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And her life was brutally cut short. Her memory now
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: inextricably linked to a trial filled with gruesome details, absurd self-sabotage,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and entirely contradictory narratives from the man accused of taking
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: her life.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: It is a dark, twisting narrative that places an immense
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: psychological and moral weight on the shoulders of that Scottish
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: jury sitting in Edinburgh.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: They have so much to sift through.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: They are tasked with looking past the erratic behavior, the
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: ingested brake fluid, the Portia sinking into the sea, and
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: the retracted confessions to find the objective truth of what
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: happened in that freezing black water. They have to restore
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: order to an event defined by absolute chaos.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: And that leaves us with a final provocative thought for you,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: the listener, to mull over long after this deep dive ends.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I want you to think deeply about that unique Scottish verdict.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Not proven.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: It's a heavy concept.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: We talked about how it affects the defendant, but... imagine
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the psychological weight of such a verdict on a society,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: and more importantly, on a victim's grieving family. The justice
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: system is supposed to provide closure. It is supposed to
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: provide a definitive answer to tragedy.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: It's meant to be the final word.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: If a court of law essentially says to a family,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: we know he did it, we suspect he is entirely guilty,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: but we just can't formally prove it on paper, does
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: that provide any real semblance of justice?
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Or does it leave an even darker, more agonizing, unresolved
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: stain on the truth than a simple, straightforward, not guilty verdict?
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: It creates an epistemic void where the truth is known
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: but legally powerless. If you were sitting in that jury
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: box in Edinburgh looking at a man who confessed on
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: tape with chilling precision but now claims the impossible, how
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: would you vote?
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: It's something that would haunt you.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: It brings us right back to where we started. Standing
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: on that windswept Shetland Island, looking at an ordinary house
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: and realizing that sometimes the most terrifying mysteries aren't hidden
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: in the shadows. They are confessed to loudly and clearly,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: and we still have to figure out how to find
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the truth in the noise.