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Missing Wisconsin Woman Found Murdered In 'Car Accident' · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to just take a second and
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: imagine a perfectly normal morning. Right.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Just your standard everyday routine.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The kind of morning that is so routine, so
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: utterly mundane, you barely even register it's actually happening. You know,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you wake up, the coffee is brewing, the sun is
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: just sort of starting to peek over the horizon.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: You're running on autopilot.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, completely on autopilot. And I want you to place
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: this specific morning inside the context of a deeply happy
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: 25-year marriage.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: That is a long time.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It is. Think about what a quarter of a century
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: with one single human being actually means. I mean, you
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: reach a point of, well, almost neurological comfort.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: You know their patterns. Right.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You know the exact cadence of their footsteps in the hallway.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: You know precisely how they take their coffee without even
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: having to ask. You can translate their distinct size, you know.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a life that feels perfect. profoundly safe.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Safe, exactly. It is predictable. But then I want you
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: to imagine what happens when that picture-perfect, deeply insulated reality
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: is just completely shattered.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Just out of nowhere.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Out of nowhere, yeah. By an event so bizarre and
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: so violent, it literally feels like a glitch in the universe.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Like something ripped straight out of a movie.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, like a Final Destination movie or something. A freak
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: accident that is so statistically improbable, it just completely rewrites
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the history of that normal morning in, I mean, a
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: fraction of a second.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Which really creates a violent rupture in the timeline, you know,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: because human beings, we build our lives on the assumption
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: of continuity.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Right. We expect tomorrow to be like today.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We expect today to look like yesterday. So when
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: an event of this magnitude occurs, there is this distinct,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: really agonizing demarcation.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: A before and an after. Yeah.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: There's the predictable life. before this exact moment, and then
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: there is the absolute terrifying chaos immediately after it.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And that profound chaos is exactly the environment we are
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: stepping into today. Because today's deep dive is an exploration
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of the incredible power of physical evidence.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: The silent witness.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: The silent witness, exactly. We are examining a case where
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the physical environment itself is basically forced to testify when
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: a victim no longer can.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: And it's a heavy one. It is.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Our mission here, as we sift through this massive stack
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of sources, I mean, we've got the 911 dispatch audio,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the crime lab, forensic reports.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Psychological evaluations, the trial transcripts.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all of it. Our goal is to place you,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the listener, squarely in the center of an incredibly difficult,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: almost impossible puzzle.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Because you really have to weigh two completely opposing realities here.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Right. They are totally irreconcilable. On one side, you have
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: an unthinkable, completely motiveless, spontaneous murder of a spouse.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Which is hard enough to grasp.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: And on the other side, you have an impossible, physics-defying,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: one-in-a-billion freak accident.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: And that presents a really profound contradiction for the human
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: brain to process. I mean, we are biologically wired. To
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: crave a coherent narrative, right?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: We want things to make sense.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: We need them to make sense. But in this specific case,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: neither option really makes sense on the surface.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: No, they don't.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: You are either forced to accept a mathematical and physical
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: impossibility or, you know, you're forced to accept a psychological
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: anomaly that defies decades of established behavioral patterns.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: So let's lay the groundwork for this, right? Let's look
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: at the core subjects of our deep dive today. We
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: are focusing on Todd and Barbara Kendhammer.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: From Wisconsin.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, from West Salem, Wisconsin. And by every available metric
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: in the source material we have, their story is the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: quintessential idealized American romance.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: The real deal.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: The real deal. High school sweethearts from a small town.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: They met as teenagers, fell in love, and essentially just
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: grew up together.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And they were married for 25 years, building this relationship.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Very stable, comfortable, middle-class life.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Right. And Barbara, she worked as a lunch lady at
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the local middle school.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I love that detail.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I do too. It just paints such a vivid, wholesome picture,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: doesn't it? She was this beloved maternal figure for all
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood kids.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: A true pillar of the local community.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And Todd, he was a hard worker, described as
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a typical, friendly, average guy who liked the outdoors. In fact,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: just four weeks prior... to the horrific events we are
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: going to unpack. They actually celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: And the sources make a point to highlight that this
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: wasn't just, you know, a quiet dinner acknowledging a milestone.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: No, it was a massive surprise party.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, their extended family threw them this huge event. Dozens
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: of people were there, and the descriptions of that party
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: are incredibly telling.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Well, friends and relatives looked at Todd and Barbara, and
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: they saw a highly functional, deeply connected team. They operated
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: with that perfect synchronicity, you know, the kind you only
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: really get after decades of mutual respect.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Right. They were totally in sync.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. There were zero whispers of financial trouble. There were
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: no rumors of infidelity.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: No domestic issues either.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Absolutely none. No documented history of domestic disturbances or violence whatsoever.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: It was, by all accounts, just a quiet, enduring love story.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: A picture book marriage that seemed virtually bulletproof. But to
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: truly understand the core of this investigation, we have to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: kind of bypass all those warm memories.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: We have to get to the bad part.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: We do. We have to start at the exact millisecond
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: that this quote unquote perfect marriage narrative collided head on
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: with a rural 911 dispatch operator.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: The morning of September 16th.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Right. September 16th on a two lane stretch of asphalt
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: called County Road M.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Just a normal country road.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The 911 call comes in and the audio is
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: just immediately viscerally chaotic.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: It's hard to listen to.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: It is really hard. You hear Todd on the line
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and he is frantic. He is completely out of breath.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: His voice is cracking with panic. He tells the dispatcher,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I need help. My wife is injured. We
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: were in a car accident.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: And as the call progresses over those next few minutes,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: the sheer unadulterated terror in his voice really escalates.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, it ramps up so fast.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Because he's attempting to perform CPR on his wife. Right
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: there in the passenger seat.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: While he's on the phone.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And he gives the dispatcher the explanation for this
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: absolute nightmare. He says a pipe, a heavy metal pipe
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: came crashing through the windshield of their moving car.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: And the physical details he relays to the dispatcher, they
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: are incredibly graphic.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: And indicative of massive trauma.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Massive. He notes that Barbara has been struck in the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: head and the throat. He describes significant hemorrhaging with blood
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: coming from her nose and mouth.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: And throughout the call, the 911 dispatcher is executing standard protocol, right?
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Trying to anchor him, guiding him through the rhythm of
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the CPR compressions.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Just trying to keep him focused.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you can hear the physical exertion in Todd's voice.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: He is terrified. I mean, he's audibly terrified that he
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: is performing the compressions incorrectly. Right.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: That his attempts to save her are inadvertently causing more damage.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You hear him pleading with her, repeating, hurry up,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: hurry up, you're going to be okay.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: It's a harrowing piece of audio.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: It sounds exactly like a man watching his entire universe
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: collapse in real time.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: It really does. And the narrative he gives to the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: first responding police officers on the scene, it is just wild.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: It's highly specific, but also terrifyingly random.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Right. The details he provides.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He says he was driving northbound on County Road
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: M and coming toward him in the opposite southbound lane
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: was an older, dark colored flatbed truck.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And he's adamant about the specifics of this truck.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally. He tells the police this truck had what
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: are called pocket sides, these wooden or metal slats on
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the side of the bed, about eight inches to two
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: feet high.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And he claims that as this truck passed them at
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: highway speed, a five foot long galvanized steel pipe somehow
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: bounced off the back of the flatbed and just became
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: a projectile.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Just launched into the air. Yeah.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Todd says he saw this heavy steel pipe flying through
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the air toward their car. And he claims he actually
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: took one hand off the steering wheel and threw it
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: up to try and catch or deflect the pipe before
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: it hit the glass.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: But the closing speed was just too fast. The pipe
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: smashed through the passenger side of the windshield, striking Barbara
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: with devastating force.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: We really have to consider the kinetic energy involved in
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: a scenario like that.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: That's massive, right?
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely. A five-foot length of galvanized steel pipe is
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: a dense, incredibly heavy object. If you have a truck
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: traveling in one direction at, say, 55 miles per hour,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: and a car traveling the opposite direction at 55 miles
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: per hour.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: The closing speed is basically 110.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Miles per hour. Exactly.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: An object of that mass striking a human body at
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: that velocity is going to cause catastrophic localized blunt force trauma.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: It's the definition of a freak accident. I mean, it's
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of being struck by lightning on a cloudless
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: day while holding a winning lottery ticket.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: The odds are astronomical.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: The statistical probability is so low. But, and this is
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the crucial part for you listening, theoretically, it is possible.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, highway debris causes fatal accidents every year.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It does happen. And when you read through the incident
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: reports from the police officers who arrived at that scene,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you can see how convincing the immediate aftermath was.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Because of his state.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Right. Todd is standing on the side of this rural road,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: literally covered in his wife's blood from his desperate attempts
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: at CPR. He is pacing. He is distraught.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: His breathing is completely out of control. Yes.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: His breathing is so rapid and shallow that multiple seasoned
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: police officers actually had to pause their preliminary questioning just
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: to manage his physical state.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: They had to step in.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: They had to instruct him to sit down, take deep
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: breaths through his nose, and ground himself because he was
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: on the verge of hyperventilating and passing out.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: And this brings us to a really fascinating aspect of
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: law enforcement psychology and well, initial scene management.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: How they handle a scene like that.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Right. When officers arrive at a chaotic, bloody scene involving
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: a severely injured civilian, their operational protocol is strictly focused
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: on rescue and assist.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: They aren't detectives yet.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: No, they're not instantly operating as homicide detectives looking for
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: a suspect. Their primary objectives are the preservation of life,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: securing the physical safety of the immediate area, and facilitating
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: medical transport.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Which makes total sense.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: It does. When a police officer encounters a husband covered
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: in blood, actively hyperventilating while trying to resuscitate his dying wife,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: the standard human and professional response is to just accept
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: the survivor's narrative, as the working truth.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: You don't look at a guy crying and covered in
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: blood and think he's lying.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You don't look at a traumatized weeping spouse in
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: the first five minutes and immediately assume this is a
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: calculated deception. You assume we need a medevac helicopter immediately
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: and we need to locate the fleeing vehicle that caused
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: this catastrophe. Right.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: If there is a rogue flatbed truck out there barreling
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: down rural Wisconsin highways, dropping lethal five-foot steel pipes into
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: oncoming traffic, that is an immediate, severe threat to public safety.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: You have to find that truck.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: You have to. The police have an obligation to hunt
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: down that dark-colored truck before it kills someone else, so
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: they launch a massive search.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Pulling in all the resources.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they start pulling resources, checking with local agricultural businesses,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: monitoring the roads, and critically, hunting for surveillance video along
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the route Todd described.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: And this right here is the exact moment where the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: freak accident narrative hits a brick wall of objective reality.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Because the physical environment begins to stubbornly refuse to corroborate
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: his emotional story.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: The investigators get incredibly lucky. They locate a surveillance camera
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: mounted at a nearby horse farm.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Just down the road. Right.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: This farm is positioned on County Road M. just about
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: one mile south of the exact spot where the accident occurred.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, so if he's heading north.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Because Todd was driving north, he had to pass
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: this farm to get to the accident site. It is
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the perfect, unblinking eye on the only road in or out.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: The only way through.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: So the police pull the digital footage from that morning,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and sure enough, they scrub through the video, and they
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: see Todd and Barbara's car drive past, heading north toward
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the accident site, exactly when Todd said they did.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And that establishes a rigid, undeniable baseline timeline.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: We know the precise second they pass that geographical marker.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Which means we can apply basic math and geography to
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: test Todd's story.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: The math doesn't lie.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: It doesn't. If Todd's car is traveling north and a
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: dark flatbed truck is traveling south, and they cross paths
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: one mile north of this camera.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Then the truck has to show up.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. That means the southbound truck, assuming it maintained normal
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: highway speeds... must appear on this horse farm surveillance camera
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: within a very specific one to two minute window after
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Todd's car passes.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Because there's nowhere else for it to go.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Right. There are no turn offs. There are no side streets.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: It is a closed universe of asphalt.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Just a straight line.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: So the investigators queue up the video. They watch Todd's
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: car pass and they watch that one to two minute window.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Minute one goes by. Just a couple of regular sedans.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Nothing unusual.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Minute two goes by. Nothing unusual. The entire window closes
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and absolutely no flatbed truck passes by in the opposite direction.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Nothing at all.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: No dark truck, no white truck, no truck with pocket sides,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: literally no truck at all.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: You know, forensic investigators refer to this as the immense
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: power of negative evidence.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Negative evidence.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Juries and the public are often focused on the
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: affirmative evidence, the fingerprint on the gun, the DNA on
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: the jacket.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Intangible stuff. Exactly.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But the glaring absence of something that absolutely must
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: be there if a story is true is often far
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: more damning.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: The absence of the truck on that highly specific, isolated
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: stretch of road at that exact time isn't just a
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: minor inconsistency.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: It's not like he got the color wrong.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Right. It doesn't suggest Todd was confused about the color
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: of the paint or the size of the sides. It
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: mathematically proves the truck did not exist.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: And once that thread is pulled, the entire sweater starts
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: to unravel.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: It all comes apart.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Because while the detectives are realizing the truck is a phantom,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the state crime lab is beginning to meticulously examine the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: physical car itself.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: The actual crime scene.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And they run headfirst into a massive physics problem
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: involving the windshield.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: The glass.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: The crime lab technicians map the damage to the laminated
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: safety glass, and they make a startling discovery. The windshield
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't struck by a projectile once.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: It was struck twice. Yes.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Twice. There are two distinct, separate, primary impact points on
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: the exterior of the glass.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: And this is a devastating forensic finding. We really have
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: to understand the mechanics of laminated safety glass here.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: How does it work?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Well, unlike the glass in a house window, a car
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: windshield is comprised of two layers of curved glass with
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: a layer of polyvinyl butyral PVB plastic sandwiched in between them.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't shatter into a million pieces.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When a heavy object strikes it, the glass shatters,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: but the plastic layer flexes and holds the shards together
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: to prevent them from shredding the occupants inside. Right. So
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: if a five-foot heavy steel pipe flies off a truck
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: and hits a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction, the
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: transfer of kinetic energy is a single, catastrophic, continuous event.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: One big boom.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Yes. The pipe strikes the glass, the glass yields and spiders,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: and the heavy object either penetrates the cabin or is
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: violently deflected away by its own momentum and the angle
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: of the windshield.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: So a pipe flying at highway speeds doesn't politely bounce
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: off a windshield like a tennis ball and hit it
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a second time with enough force to create a completely
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: separate massive impact crater.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: It just defies physics.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: It does. But, you know, to give Todd the ultimate
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt, the state police actually take this
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: to the testing ground.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: They did a full reenactment.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Twelve of them. They set up 12 separate physical reenactments.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: They procure a similar vehicle. They get a heavy five-foot
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: galvanized steel pipe, and they try to recreate the exact
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: physics of Todd's story.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: They drop it. They swing it.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: They throw it. Out of 12 distinct scientific attempts, they
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: cannot get that pipe to strike the windshield twice and
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: create the pattern found on Todd's car.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Not even once.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: They noted that maybe on one highly specific angle, the
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: pipe glanced and barely scuffed a second area. But it never,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: ever created that dual impact structural failure.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: The laws of physics flat out refused to recreate his story.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Right. And like you said before, physics is remarkably impartial.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: It really doesn't care about the emotional weight of a
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: 25-year marriage.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: It doesn't care about a husband's tears.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Not at all. And the physics of that windshield were
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: loudly declaring that the event, as described by the only
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: conscious witness, simply did not occur.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And the physical evidence just keeps compounding. Let's move from
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the car to the victim.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: To Barbara.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: When the medical examiner conducts the autopsy on Barbara, they
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: find a glaring, terrifying inconsistency regarding her injuries.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: This part is really tough. It is.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner determines that Barbara's most serious, massive, and
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: ultimately fatal skull fractures are located on the back of
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: her head.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: The back. Not the front. Right. Not her face, not
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: her forehead, but the occipital region at the very back
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: of the skull. Yet, when the crime lab processes the
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: interior of the car, they find absolutely zero blood, tissue,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: or damage on the passenger seat headrest.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And we really have to map the biomechanics of the
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: accident Todd described to understand why that's so important.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Walk us through it. If Barbara is sitting in the
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: passenger seat, facing forward, and a massive steel pipe crashes
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: through the windshield from the front, striking her with enough
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: kinetic force to cause fatal crushing tronger to the back
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: of her skull.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Well, Newton's laws of motion dictate what happens next. The
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: force of a frontal impact powerful enough to fracture the
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: back of the skull would violently force her head backward,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: slamming it into the headrest directly behind her. Right.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: There would have to be evidence of that.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. There would be a massive, unavoidable transfer of blood, hair, tissue,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: or at the very minimum, severe structural denting to the
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: fabric and foam of that headrest.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: But there was nothing.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Nothing. The pristine condition of that headrest strongly, almost undeniably,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: suggests that she was not sitting in a forward-facing position
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: in that seat when those fatal injuries to the back
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: of her head were sustained.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: So her injuries don't fit the box at all. But
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Todd had injuries too, and this is where things get
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: even more suspicious.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: His injuries were very telling.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Very telling. When police initially interviewed Todd at the scene,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: they noticed fresh, red scratches all up and down his neck.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: And they asked him about them.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: They casually asked him, hey, what happened to your neck?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And Todd brushed it off. He said, oh, I got
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: those working with some large sheets of glass at my
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: job recently.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: It's a very specific excuse. It is.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: But when the detectives follow up and interview his employer
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and coworkers, they find out Todd does not handle glass
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: at his job.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: He doesn't work with glass at all. No.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It was a documented, provable lie.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: And that wasn't his only injury.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: No, he also had severely bruised, swollen, and bloody knuckles
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: on both of his hands.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And what was his excuse for that?
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: His explanation for the hands was that after the pipe
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: hit his wife, he was in such a state of frantic,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: adrenaline-fueled panic that he repeatedly punched the shattered windshield from
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the inside.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Which, if we look at that behavior in total isolation,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: might seem somewhat plausible.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Probably.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, human beings do incredibly irrational, self-destructive things
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: when they are in a state of Sudden acute shock.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: That's true. Just blind panic.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But invest do not exist in isolation. You have
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: to layer the evidence.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Put the puzzle pieces together.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: When you combine the bruised knuckles with the phantom truck,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: the physically impossible double strike on the windshield, the pristine
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: headrest and the blatantly lied about scratches on the neck.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: The narrative shifts completely.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Dramatically. Those bruised knuckles no longer look like grief-induced self-harm.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: They look like offensive injuries from a violent physical altercation.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And those scratches on the neck.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Well, in forensic pathology, linear scratches on the neck of
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: a suspect are textbook, classic defensive wounds.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Like she was fighting back. Yes.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: They are exactly what you expect to see when a
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: victim is desperately using their fingernails to pry someone's hands
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: away from their throat during a strangulation.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That just paints a horrifying picture.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: But, you know, if you are still listening to this
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and clinging to the idea that maybe somehow this is
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: just a weird accident and a series of tragic misunderstandings,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: we have to talk about what I consider the two
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: biggest smoking guns in this entire deep dive.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: These are the details that really seal it.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: They completely blow the lid off the freak accident on
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a moving highway narrative. First, let's look at where the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: car actually ended up.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Because it wasn't on the road. No.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Todd's car wasn't parked neatly on the shoulder of the road.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: It was found back down into a grassy culvert, a
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: deep ditch area off the side of County Road M.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: And when the police forensics team is going over the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: exterior of the car, they find a single long blade
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: of tall swamp grass floating firmly trapped inside the rubber
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: weather-stripping seal of the car's trunk.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: And trace evidence like that is a cornerstone of forensic science.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: How does that work, exactly?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: It's rooted in Locard's exchange principle, which basically states that
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: every contact leaves a trace.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Every contact leaves a trace.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Yes. But trace evidence isn't just about what is found.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: It is equally about where it is found and the
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: mechanics required to place it there. Right. So that blade
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: of grass is a massive key to the timelines.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's logically deduce the sequence of events here. Because
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: for a piece of tall swamp grass to get trapped
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: inside the rubber weather seal of the trunk.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: The car first has to be physically reversed down into
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: that specific ditch where this specific species of tall grass grows.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And once the rear of the car is deep
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: in the grass, someone has to manually pop the trunk open.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: The grass falls over the lip of the opening. Right.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: And then someone has to forcefully slam the trunk shut...
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: pinching and trapping the grass inside the seal. Which means,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: without a shadow of a doubt, the trunk of the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: car was opened and accessed after the vehicle was already
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: parked down in the ditch.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And that leads to a really chilling conclusion.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: If the trunk was accessed in the ditch, it strongly
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: suggests that the weapon, the five-foot steel pipe, was likely
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: retrieved from the trunk of the car at that specific location.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Meaning the pipe never flew through the air off a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: passing truck.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: It couldn't have.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It was taken out of the trunk by hand and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: manually smashed into the windshield while the car was already
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: stationary down in the swamp.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: It changes everything.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: And if that sounds like a wild leap of deduction,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: we actually have an eyewitness who perfectly corroborates it.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: The truck driver.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Enter Randall Erler. He is a local truck driver who
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: happened to be driving his route past this exact spot
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: on County Road M before the police or paramedics ever arrived.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: So he sees the scene first.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Right. He testified that he saw Todd's car back down
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: into the ditch. And he thought to himself, oh, maybe
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: some local teenager took a turn too fast and backed
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: their car into the muck.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Just a normal thought.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Being a good Samaritan, he slowed his rig way
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: down to take a look and see if they needed
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: a tow. He looked directly at the car in the ditch.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: And what did he see?
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Well, he stated clearly that he saw no people inside
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: or immediately around the vehicle at that moment. But crucially,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: as he looked right at the front of the car,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: he testified that there was absolutely zero damage to the windshield.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: The glass was perfectly intact.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Perfectly intact.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: And that eyewitness testimony is the catastrophic failure point for
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: the husband's narrative.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: It breaks the whole story.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: It establishes a definitive, verified timeline where the car is
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: already in the ditch, completely empty of occupants, And the
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: windshield has not yet been shattered.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: So the impact of the glass had to have happened
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: after the car was off the road, completely nullifying the
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: story of a highway speed collision with debris.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: But I have to pause and push back on this
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a little bit, though.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, go ahead.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Because when you lay it all out like that, it
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: just feels incredibly sloppy. Yeah. I mean, backing your car
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: into a visible swamp where a passing truck driver can
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: just look down and see the intact windshield.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Not a great plan.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Opening the trunk in the tall grass and leaving a
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: blade of it trapped in the seal. Claiming a phantom
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: truck drove by when you are a literal mile away
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: from a fixed surveillance camera.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of mistakes.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Right. If this was a staged crime scene, it is
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: an absolute mess. Does this point to a master manipulator
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: who genuinely thought he committed the perfect crime and just failed?
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Or does this point to a frantic, improvised, highly emotional
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: cover-up in the middle of nowhere... by a guy who
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: is absolutely panicking?
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: That is a highly perceptive question, and it really cuts
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: directly to the core of how we understand staging in criminology.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Because it doesn't seem like the movies.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. Because of the media we consume,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: the procedural cop shows, the true crime documentaries, the general
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: public expects a staged crime scene to be this intricate, flawless,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: diabolical puzzle crafted by an evil mastermind.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Right, like playing 3D chess.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: But the reality of crime scene staging... is almost universally
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the exact opposite.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: It's just chaos.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly messy, chaotic, and riddled with logical errors.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: You really have to put yourself in the physiological state
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: of the perpetrator.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, how so? Staging usually occurs immediately following a spontaneous
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: act of extreme violence.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: So they aren't thinking clearly. Exactly. The perpetrator's brain is
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: flooded with a massive adrenaline dump, cortisol levels are through
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: the roof, and they are operating under severe immediate time constraints.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: They realize what they've done.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: The realization sets in, you know, I have just committed
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: a horrific act and my life is over unless I
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: explain this. Panic induces what psychologists call cognitive tunneling.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Cognitive tunneling.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they focus entirely on inventing a narrative that absolves them.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: A trick did it. And then they desperately try to
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: force the physical environment to match that hastily constructed lie
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: using whatever materials are immediately at hand.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: So they grab the pipe. Right.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: But because their prefrontal cortex is basically shutting down from
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: the stress, they make massive fundamental cognitive errors.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: They miss the obvious stuff.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Yes. They don't think about the horse farm camera a
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: mile away because they're only focused on the 10 feet
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: around them. They don't realize that pulling a heavy pipe
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: out of a trunk in a swamp will trap grass
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: in the seal.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: They're just frantically reacting, trying to build a raft of
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: lies out of twigs while they're actively drowning.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: So it's not the work of an evil genius playing
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: 3D chess. It's the work of a desperate, panicking man
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: trying to plug holes in a rapidly sinking ship.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: But the physical evidence, the missing truck on the video,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: the physics of the laminated glass, the swamp grass in
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the trunk, the eyewitness truck driver, all of it is
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: pointing like a neon sign to a staged scene.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: The police know this.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: They do. The investigators know the freak accident story is
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: a complete fabrication, but they also know they are at
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a critical juncture.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: They have to be careful.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: They need to lock Todd into his lies on the
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: record before he gets a lawyer, before he talks to friends,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and before he realizes they're on to him.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Which requires a very specific, highly delicate shift in law
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: enforcement tactics.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: They have to flip the script.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Right. The officers have to seamlessly transition their posture from
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: the helpful, sympathetic first responder comforting a grieving widower The
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: strategic adversarial interrogator.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: The psychological warfare basically begins.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: The investigators set up a brutal scenario. They contact Todd
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: and ask him to come down to the police station.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: And the timing is incredible. It is the day before
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Barbara's funeral.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: That is intense.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: It is. The family is actively mourning. Todd is outwardly grieving.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: And the police use a highly calculated ruse. They call
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: him up and say, hey, Todd. We are working hard
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: on finding that truck. We've actually got some new video
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: leads of various flatbed trucks in the area from that morning.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And we really need you to come down to the station,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: look at these videos, and see if you recognize the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: one that dropped the pipe.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: And that is a textbook classic investigative ruse.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And it's totally legal, right? Yes.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: It is important to note that it is completely legal.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: In the United States, law enforcement is permitted to use
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: deception to bring a suspect into a controlled environment or
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: elicit a statement. provided it doesn't cross the line into coercion.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: So they can just lie to him.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. And by offering a premise that perfectly aligns with
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: the suspect's own fabricated narrative, we are hunting the phantom truck,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: they ensure he will come in willingly.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: He thinks they believe him.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: He walks into the station feeling confident, assuming his story
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: has been entirely believed, and that he is just assisting
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: in the hunt for a fictional suspect.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: He walks right into the trap.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: He does.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: So Todd sits down in the interrogation room with Detective
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Fritz Lindfelder and Sergeant Mark Yelly. And if you read
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: the breakdown of the three and a half hour interview,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the behavioral dynamics are fascinating.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: What's he doing?
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Todd is not sitting there acting like a calm, collected,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: grieving husband eager to help. The sources describe a severe
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: physical unraveling.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: His body language.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He is incredibly fidgety. His leg is shaking aggressively,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: practically vibrating under the table.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: A classic stress response.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: He spends a vast amount of time with his head down,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: looking at his lap or using his hands to completely
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: cover his face. His nonverbal cues are screaming that he
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: is under immense crushing stress and is trying to physically
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: shut out the environment.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: And when investigators analyze interrogation footage, they are reading body
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: language as the secondary text.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: So they are watching all of this.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Intently. What you are describing, the severe leg shaking, the
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: covering of the eyes and face, these are known as
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: pacifying or self-soothing behaviors.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Pacifying behaviors.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Okay. Yes. When a person is forced to maintain a
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: complex fabricated lie, The cognitive load on the brain is immense.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Because you have to remember everything.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You have to remember what you said, who you
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: said it to, what evidence might exist, and anticipate the
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: next question.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: That's exhausting.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: When that cognitive load becomes too heavy to bear, the
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: brain's stress leaks out physically. The body tries to comfort
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: itself through repetitive motion or by physically blocking out the
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: source of the stress, the interrogators.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: And the detectives notice this.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Linfelder and Yelly see this behavior immediately. And they know
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: they have a highly vulnerable subject whose mental defenses are crumbling.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: But they don't start by yelling at him, right? They
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: start very gently.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Just establishing the baseline.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They just ask him to walk through his timeline
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: from that morning, minute by minute. They ask him, you know,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: so Todd, you were on County Road M. Where exactly
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: were you driving to when this terrible accident happened?
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: And he gives them an alibi.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: He provides an answer. He says, oh, I was driving
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: over to talk to a guy I work with, Justin Heim.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Justin had a broken windshield on his car and I
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: was going to his house to fix it.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: It's a very specific, mundane detail.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: But the investigators have already done their homework. They have
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: already spoken to Justin Heim.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: They laid the trap.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: They look at Todd and say, well, Todd, that's interesting
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: because we went and interviewed Justin Heim. And he told
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: us that's completely untrue. He said he hasn't seen you
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: in over a month. He never asked you to fix anything.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: And crucially, his windshield isn't broken.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: And this is the critical moment the trap springs.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: The gotcha moment.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: In interrogation strategy, you introduce a definitively contradictory fact to
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: see how the suspect's brain adapts in real time.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Do they double down or fold?
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Right. Do they indignantly double down and say the witness
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: is lying or do they attempt to pivot and alter
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: their story?
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Well, initially, Todd gets very defensive. He tries to bluff.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: He says, are you guys insinuating that I did this
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to my wife? I'm not changing my story. It's 100% true.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I was going to see Justin.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: He's clinging to it.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: But the detectives just let him sit with that lie.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: They keep gently pressing over the next few hours. And
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: about three hours into this grueling questioning, the cognitive load
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: gets too heavy.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: He breaks.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Todd completely folds on his timeline. He pivots. He says, OK, OK,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I was confused. My head is messed up. I wasn't
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: going to see Justin Hyme. Justin had told me about
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a friend of his who needed a windshield fixed. I
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: was actually driving to see his friend, a guy named
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Jared Logging.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: And from an investigative standpoint, this shifting alibi is a fatal,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: catastrophic error.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Why is that so bad for him?
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly revealing regarding guilt. An innocent person recounting
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: the most traumatic morning of their life might get confused
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: about minor peripheral details, what color shirt they wore, what
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: song was on the radio.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: But they generally know the physical destination they were driving toward.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: A deceptive person, however, is forced to invent an alibi
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: to justify being on that specific road. Ah, I see.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: When their primary alibi is destroyed by facts, they panic
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: and are forced to invent a secondary, often more convoluted
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: alibi on the fly. It requires immense mental gymnastics, and
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: it almost always fails.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Because he desperately needs a reason to explain why he
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: and his wife were driving down that isolated road at
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: that exact time. Right. But the police are one step
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: ahead again. They look at him and say, Todd, we
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: talked to Jared Logging, too. He also completely denied this.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: He doesn't know anything about a windshield.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: They just dismantle his story.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: The police systematically dismantle the entire architecture of his morning.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: They strip away his reasons for being there. And then,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: having boxed him in completely, they drop the absolute hammer.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: The confrontation.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: They stop the gentle questioning. They lean in across the
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: table and say, Todd, we have the medical examiner's report.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: The massive injuries your wife sustained are simply not consistent
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: with a pipe coming through a windshield.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: The injuries tell a different story.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: The pipe didn't bounce around the car going bing, bing,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: bing and hit her in the back of the head.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: The injuries to the back of her skull, her shattered nose,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: her broken jaw, and the severe bruising and scratches around
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: her neck. Those injuries are consistent with a human being
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: choking her and beating her to death.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: And this transition is the direct confrontation phase of the interrogation.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: That's where it all comes out.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: They take all the undeniable physical evidence they've gathered behind
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: the scenes, lay it out on the table, and place
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: the blame squarely, unequivocally on him.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: And they want to see how he reacts.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: They are intensely watching his reaction to see how a
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: man defends himself against a direct, forensic accusation of extreme
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: intimate violence against his own wife.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And his reaction is honestly baffling.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: It is strange.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: He doesn't just pound the table and scream, I didn't
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: do it, I loved her. He gets defensive in this
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: highly specific, bizarrely logical way.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: What does he say?
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: He looks at the detectives and says, if I was
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: going to try to do something to my wife, to
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: put somebody through misery and pain like that, There's no
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: way in hell I would have ever got 50 guns
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: sitting in my cabinet.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: He's essentially saying, I wouldn't have chosen this method.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's such an absurd, telling defense. It's what you
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: might call a reverse logic fallacy. I like to think
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: of it as the chainsaw defense.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: The chainsaw defense.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: It's like a suspect sitting in an interrogation room and saying,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I couldn't possibly have stabbed that man to death because
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I own a perfectly good, highly efficient chainsaw.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: He is arguing that because he owns 50 highly lethal
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: efficient firearms, he couldn't possibly be the one who committed
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: a messy, brutal, hands-on strangulation and beating.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: It doesn't prove his innocence in the slightest.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: No. What it actually does is give the detectives a
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: terrifying glimpse into his thought process about how one would
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: theoretically optimize a murder.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: And this exchange really highlights a common misconception about the
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: ultimate goal of an interrogation.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: People think they always want a confession.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. The average person influenced by movies and television assumes
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: the police consider an interrogation a failure unless it ends
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: with a tearful, dramatic confession where the suspect breaks down,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: cries and says, I did it. I'm so sorry. Here
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: is why.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't usually happen.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: But seasoned investigators know that with a deeply entrenched, compartmentalized
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: suspect like Todd, a full confession is highly unlikely.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: So if they aren't going to get a confession, what
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: is the point of the three and a half hour marathon?
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: What are they actually trying to extract?
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: They are strategically fishing for provable lies.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Provable lies.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: And in Todd's case, they caught several massive ones on tape.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: When you can put a suspect in a room, turn
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: on a camera, and get them to definitively lock themselves
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: into a timeline or an alibi that you can objectively,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: forensically prove is false.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Like the guys he was supposedly going to see.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Like the fabricated visits to Justin Heim and Jared Logging.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: or the blatant lie about getting neck scratches from handling glass,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: that footage is incredibly powerful for prosecution.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: It proves he's hiding something.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Locking a suspect into a provable lie demonstrates to a
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: jury what we call consciousness of guilt. An innocent person
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: does not construct elaborate, multi-layered, easily disproven lies about their
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: whereabouts and their physical injuries on the morning their spouse
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: was brutally murdered.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Only someone guilty does that.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Only someone trying to hide a juzzer truth does that.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: But Todd refuses to break. He stubbornly tells the detectives,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: I'll stand in the corner. I'm not lying. The pipe
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: did it. And because the police are still finalizing the
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: forensic reports and technically don't have enough to hold him
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: in that exact second without charges.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: There's the let go.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: The interrogation ends. He is allowed to stand up and
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: walk out of the station. He goes home.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: But they have what they need.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: But the police have everything they need. They have the
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: three and a half hours of provable lies. The surveillance
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: video showing the missing truck, the swamp grass trapped in
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the trunk seal, the pristine headrest, and the impossible physics
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of the double strike on the windshield.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: It's a mountain of evidence.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: A few months later, the hammer finally falls. Todd Kendhammer
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: is arrested and formally charged with first-degree intentional homicide.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: And that takes us to the trial.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: This propels us out of the investigation phase and into
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: the courtroom. And the trial of Todd Kendhammer is truly
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a case study in psychological complexity.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: The courtroom dynamic itself during this trial was highly unusual,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: visually striking, and deeply unsettling for anyone familiar with domestic
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: homicide trials.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Because normally when you walk into a courtroom for a
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: murder trial, especially a domestic homicide where a husband is
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: accused of murdering his wife, the gallery is physically divided
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: like a war zone.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Two separate sides.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: You have the defendant's family sitting stony-faced on one side
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: behind the defense table. And you have the victim's family
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: sitting on the other side behind the prosecution.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: And the tension is palpable.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: The palpable anger and grief in the room is suffocating.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: But that is not what happened here. The courtroom in
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: West Salem was not divided.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: It wasn't.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Barbara's own mother, the mother of the woman who was
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: brutally beaten and strangled, is sitting on Todd's side of
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: the aisle. The entire extended family, Todd's side and Barbara's side,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: is fiercely divided. uniformly supporting him.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: That is wild.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: They have banded together. They are raising money for his
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: legal defense fund. They are giving interviews. They believe, with
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: every fiber of their being, that this entire trial is
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: a horrific miscarriage of justice and that Todd is completely
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: innocent of the charges.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: And adding a really profound layer of complexity to this
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: visual is Todd's physical condition during the trial.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: He looked different.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Right. His appearance has drastically changed since the interrogation videos.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: He has developed a severe, highly visible tremor. His hands
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: shake constantly.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: So people watching must think he's terrified. Right.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: People sitting in the gallery, reporters and likely members of
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: the jury might initially look at a physically shaking defendant
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: and attribute it to immense guilt.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: His conscience eating him alive.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: They might think he is terrified. His conscience is eating
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: him alive. He is physically vibrating with the knowledge of
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: what he did. However, medical records introduced during the process
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: revealed that the stress of the event had actually triggered
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: a severe autoimmune response.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, physical illness.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: He developed Graves' disease, which causes hyperthyroidism, resulting in severe
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: uncontrollable tremors.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: It serves as a stark reminder to the jury and
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: the public of how easily visual cues and body language
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: can be misinterpreted in a highly charged emotional environment.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: You cannot always trust what you see.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: You have to trust the evidence. And that is exactly
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: what the prosecution decides to bank on. Prosecutor Grinke stands
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: up to deliver his opening statement to the jury, and
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: he takes what many legal analysts would consider a massive,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: terrifying gamble.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: What does he do?
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Right out of the gate, in his first impression to
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the jury, he looks them in the eye and voluntarily
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: admits a glaring weakness in his case.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: A motive.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: He says, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot give you a motive.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: You will not hear evidence that Todd and Barbara were
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: fighting that morning. You will not hear about secret financial
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: ruin or life insurance policies or hidden affairs. I simply
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: do not know why this happened.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: And it is a remarkably bold but often necessary legal strategy.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: To just admit you don't know why.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. When a seasoned prosecutor knows they lack a key
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: piece of the traditional narrative puzzle, the why leaning into
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: that absence and owning it is far more effective than
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: trying to invent a flimsy motive that the defense can
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: easily tear apart.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: Grinke is essentially neutralizing the defense's best argument before they
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: can make it. He is telling the jury, the why
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: is a mystery that we may never solve, but I
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: am going to prove that the how is undeniable.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: And he does. He leans entirely on the cold, hard,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: physical impossibility of Todd's story. He brings Dr. Kathleen McCubbin,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner, to the stand.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: And she lays it out.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: She testifies unequivocally, using anatomical charts, that the fatal blunt
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: force impact injuries to the back of Barbara's head, the
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: shattered bones in her face, and the specific linear strangulation
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: marks and bruising on her neck simply do not and
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: cannot match a single strike from a flying pipe.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: It's physically impossible.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: The prosecution entire case is a fortress built on physics,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: trace evidence, and forensic pathology.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: While in stark contrast, defense attorney Steve Hurley builds his
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: counter-narrative almost entirely on emotion, character witnesses, and the presumption
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: of a happy marriage.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Playing to the heartstrings.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. He leans heavily into the quiet but amazing love story.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: He paints a visit picture for the jury of a
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: 25-year romance, high school sweethearts who built a beautiful family
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: and literally never raised their voices at each other.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: So he's saying, look at this guy.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He asks the jury to look at this gentleman
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: and ask themselves, if he is capable of a spontaneous,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: brutal strangulation.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: But Hurley has a massive hurdle. He has to explain
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: the three-and-a-half-hour police interrogation video where his client is caught
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: in multiple verifiable lies.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Because the jury saw that tape.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Right. He can't just ignore it.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: His strategy to counter the interrogation footage is fascinating, though.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: That's his argument.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: Hurley argues that Todd didn't lie to the police out
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: of a sense of criminal guilt. He argues that Todd
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: lied out of a profound, paralyzing psychological trauma.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: That he was just confused.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: He posits that Todd was in such a deep state
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: of grief, shock and post-traumatic stress after watching his wife
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: die in a freak accident that his brain essentially misfired.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: So he just made things up.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: He was desperately trying to be helpful to the detectives,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: trying to solve the puzzle for them. And in his confused,
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: concussed state, he fabricated details to fill the gaps in
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: his memory.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: And what about the injuries on Barbara?
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: As for the extensive unexplained injuries on Barbara's body, the
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: neck bruising, the extra fractures, the defense suggests those could
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: have occurred accidentally when Todd frantically yanked her limp body
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: from the car and dropped her on the hard asphalt
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: while attempting to perform aggressive CPR in the chaos of
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: the moment.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: It is a narrative that relies entirely on sympathy and
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: giving Todd the benefit of every doubt, which brings us
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: to the most dramatic, pivotal moment of the entire trial.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: It's a big risk.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: The defense team decides to take a massive, incalculable risk.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: They call Todd Kendhammer to the witness stand to testify
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: in his own defense.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: In any murder trial, putting the defendant on the witness
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: stand is the ultimate roll of the dice.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Why is it so dangerous?
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: It exposes the accused to cross-examination by a highly skilled
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: prosecutor who has spent the last year intimately analyzing every
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: single inconsistency, lie, and flaw in their story.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: You're just serving him up.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: You are placing your client first. in the absolute most
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: vulnerable position in the room.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Todd gets up there, his hands shaking from the Graves disease,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and he denies everything. His attorney asks him point blank,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: did you take a pipe and beat your wife? Did
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: you bash her head? And Todd tearfully says no.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: He sticks to the script.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: He says he loved her deeply. He never lost his temper.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: He would never hurt her. And when the prosecutor inevitably
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: attacks him regarding the interrogation video and the shifting alibis,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Todd's defense is incredibly deflective.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: What does he say about the video?
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: He says, when I watched those tapes, that is not
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: me talking. It's not a right state of mind talking.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking. He completely blames the trauma for his deception.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: But the fatal flaw of testifying in your own defense
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: is that you open the door for the prosecution to
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: bring in rebuttal witnesses.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Rebuttal witnesses.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Yes. If you make a definitive claim on the stand
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: under oath, the state is allowed to bring in new
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: witnesses to impeach your credibility and prove you are lying
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: to the jury in real time.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: And the prosecution completely obliterates him on this.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: They had them waiting.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Because during his direct testimony, Todd had doubled down. He
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: swore under oath that despite his confusion, he was definitely,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: absolutely going to see Jared logging that morning about a windshield.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: He committed to the lie again.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: He staked his credibility on that alibi in front of
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: the jury. So the prosecution calls surprise rebuttal witnesses. First,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: they bring in Justin Heim, the initial guy Todd lied about.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: And Heim says.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Heim sits on the stand and says, nope. haven't talked
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: to him, don't have a broken windshield. Then they bring
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: in Jared Logging.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: The second alibi.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Logging takes the oath, sits down, and testifies that he
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: had absolutely no plans to see Todd Kendhammer that morning,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: had never talked to him about fixing a windshield, and
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: stated that the moment he heard Todd's story on the news,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: he knew immediately it was a complete fabrication.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: And it is a devastating sequence for the defense.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Just brutal.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: You can practically imagine the air being sucked out of
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: the courtroom. The defense had spent days trying to paint
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Todd as a confused, grieving husband making honest mistakes under
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: the crushing weight of trauma.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: And these witnesses ruined that.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: The rebuttal witnesses surgically proved that he was a calculated,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: persistent liar willing to maintain a fabricated alibi even while
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: sitting on the witness stand facing a jury.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: I want to pause here and put you, the listener,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: directly into the jury box.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Put yourself in their shoes.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Imagine you were sitting in those uncomfortable wooden chairs... tasked
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: with deciding a man's fate. How do you reconcile the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: massive gap in this case?
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: It's so tough.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: How do you vote to send a man to prison
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: for the brutal first-degree murder of his wife when there
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: is zero history of violence, no financial trouble, no affair,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: no secret life? Literally no why. How do you bridge
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: that intellectual gap in your mind to vote guilty?
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: It is arguably the hardest psychological hurdle a jury ever
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: has to overcome. To understand how they do it, We
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: have to look closely at the framework of the criminal
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: justice system and understand the vital distinction between what a
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: human jury wants and what the law actually requires.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Motive the why is a deep ingrained psychological desire. We
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: desperately want to know why someone did something horrific because
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: understanding the motive makes the world feel safer and more predictable.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: It gives it a reason.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: If a man kills his wife for a million dollar
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: life insurance payout, we understand greed. We can quantify it.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: If he kills her in a jealous rage over an affair,
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: we understand crimes of passion.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: A clear motive puts the horrific crime into a neat,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: understandable box.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: But the law doesn't care about making us feel safe,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't care about the neat box.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Precisely. In the eyes of the law, motive is not
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: a requirement for a murder conviction.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: They don't have to prove why. No.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: The prosecution is not legally obligated to explain the psychology
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: of the crime. They're only required to prove the what?
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: the how, and the intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Did he do it? And did he mean to do it?
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: They must prove that a human being died, that the
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: defendant caused that death, and that they did it intentionally.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: And the evidence proves that.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: When the prosecution stacks up the mountain of forensic evidence,
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the intact windshield witnessed by the passing truck driver, the
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: swamp grass trapped in the trunk seal proving the tie
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: was staged, the impossible physics of the double strike on
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: the safety glass, the defensive scratches on his neck, and
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: the provable repeated lies about his alibi, the how and
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: the what, become undeniably scientifically proven.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: You can't argue with it.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: And when the physical evidence of intent and cover-up is
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: that overwhelming... The lack of a why simply becomes irrelevant
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: to the legal threshold of guilt.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Even if we never know the why.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Even if we never, ever know the specific private trigger
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: that caused a 25-year marriage to end in a spontaneous
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: strangulation on a dirt road, the physical evidence proves beyond
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: a reasonable doubt that he did snap and he did
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: commit the murder.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: So the jury is forced into this agonizing binary choice.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: They have to weigh an impossible... physics-defying mathematical anomaly of
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: an accident against the grim reality of an unthinkable, motiveless,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: intimate murder.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: And they made their choice.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: And that leads us to the fallout. The jury deliberates,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: they weigh the physics against the love story, and they
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: return a definitive verdict. Todd Kenthammer is found guilty of
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: first-degree intentional homicide.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: The reaction from the family sitting in the gallery is
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: described as pure... unadulterated devastation.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: They were shocked.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: They are completely, fundamentally blindsided. They had bought into the
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: narrative of the freak accident so deeply. One of the
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: family members is later quoted saying they felt they got
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: played by the system.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: He thought he was coming home.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: They went into this trial believing it was merely a
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: procedural formality, genuinely believing that the obvious truth of the
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: accident would exonerate him and send him home.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Which leads to a sentencing hearing a few months later
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: that is just absolutely gut-wrenching to read the transcripts of.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Because the family, which had been this solid, united front
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: supporting Todd throughout the entire investigation and trial, finally splinters
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: under the weight of the guilty verdict.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: It tears them apart.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: You have this incredible divide during the victim impact statements.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: On one side, you have Todd and Barbara's own daughter,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Jessica Service, standing up in court.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Just think about her position.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Right. She has just lost her mother in the most horrific,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: violent way imaginable. And now she is standing at a
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: podium watching her father get sentenced for being the one
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: who murdered her.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And she defends him.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: She begs the judge for leniency. She asks the court
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: for a 20-year parole eligibility. She praises her dad's character,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: saying he has been nothing but kind and caring her
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: entire life. She tearfully tells the judge, we would like
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to share more of our lives with my dad.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: And it is a profound, almost tragic display of familial
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: loyalty and psychological denial.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: It breaks your heart.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: But then, drawing a sharp contrast on the other side
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: of the courtroom, you have Barbara's cousin, Jerrianne Buckner.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: And she is angry.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: She is the solitary family member who stands up to
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: speak exclusively for the victim to give a voice to Barbara.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: And her statement is fueled by righteous fury.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: What does she ask for?
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: She demands the maximum sentence of life in prison. She
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: forces the court to focus on the horrific, brutal nature
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: of the prolonged strangulation, the agonizing skull fractures, and the
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: fact that Todd blatantly, coldly and repeatedly lied to his
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: own children, to his friends, and to law enforcement for
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: months to cover up the slaughter of his wife.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: The judge listens to both sides, and when it is
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: his turn to speak, he does not hold back.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: He is very direct.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Very. He looks down at Todd Kenhammer, he looks at
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: the divided family, and he delivers this stark, chilling reality
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: check that strips all the emotion out of the room.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: What does he say?
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: The judge says, this is not church. I don't believe
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: in mercy in the courtroom. I don't believe in being
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: lenient or harsh. What's appropriate is the right sentence for
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: the right person based on the crime.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: The judge looks at the brutal, calculated nature of the cover-up.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: He weighs it against the 25-year marriage, and he says
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: that asking for a 20-year sentence for strangling your wife
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: and staging a car accident is way too short.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: So he gives him the max.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: He hands down a life sentence and sets parole eligibility
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: for March 9, 2048. That is a mandatory 30-year wait.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: That's a long time.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Todd Kenhammer will be 77 years old before he even
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: has a chance to ask a parole board for his freedom.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: And the judge's statement perfectly encapsulates the role of the judiciary.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: He is actively stripping away the emotional narrative, ignoring the tears,
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: and focusing purely on the immense culpability of the violent
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: act and the extensive, calculated, prolonged nature of the deception.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: But the human mind is stubborn. Even after the guilty verdict,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: even after the harsh sentence and the judge's rebuke, Ty's
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: children still cannot accept it.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: They keep fighting.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: They hire a new, specialized husband and wife legal team
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: to handle the appeals process. They are clinging desperately to
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: one single piece of tape from the 12 police reenactments.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: The one specific video where the pipe sort of glanced
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and bounced awkwardly on the hood of the test car.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: And they argue in their appeal that that the trial
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: attorneys failed their client by not showing that specific video
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: to the jury.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't work.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: No. The appellate judge reviews the case, rejects the appeal,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and upholds the conviction. Todd Kenhammer remains in state prison.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the lingering psychological fallout of this case,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: which is perhaps the most fascinating and tragic element of all.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: We have family's reaction.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: The cognitive dissonance displayed by the family, particularly the children,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: is staggering. but completely understandable from a neurological perspective.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Let's really dive into that, because I think for a
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: lot of people listening, it is incredibly hard to understand
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: from the outside looking in.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: It seems crazy, right?
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: It does. How can intelligent adults sit through a trial,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: hear about the swamp grass, see the impossible physics of
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: the windshield, hear the proven lies about the alibi, and
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: still aggressively defend the man who murdered their mother?
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: To understand that, We have to look at this through
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: the lens of human survival psychology.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Cognitive dissonance.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Cognitive dissonance is the intense mental discomfort we experience
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: when our core beliefs directly contradict the objective reality in
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: front of us.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: When what we know clashes with what we see.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: Yes. For Todd and Barbara's children, accepting the jury's verdict
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: means they have to accept two unimaginably horrific realities simultaneously.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Two of them.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: First... They have to accept that they lost their beloved
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: mother to a brutal, violent murder.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: That alone is trauma enough for a lifetime. It's unbearable.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: But second, and perhaps even more psychologically devastating, they have
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: to accept that they have lost their father not to
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: a corrupt justice system, but to a monster of his
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: own making.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: They have to accept that the man they love is
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: a killer.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Yes. They have to accept that the man who raised them,
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: the man who kissed their scraped knees, the man who
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: was kind and caring for 25 years... is fundamentally capable
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: of violently strangling their mother to death and then looking
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: his own grieving children directly in the eyes and lying
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: to their faces without breaking character for months.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: That is just.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: That specific realization that your parent is a sociopathic liar
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: capable of extreme violence is a psychological burden that is
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: often simply too heavy for the human mind to bear.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: The brain just rejects it.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: The brain acts like an immune system. It protects itself
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: from trauma that would destroy its ability to function. It
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: forces the children into a state of profound denial because
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: the alternative, acknowledging that their entire life, their family's entire
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: foundation was built on a terrifying, violent illusion, is neurologically destructive.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: So they believe the lie to survive.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: It is infinitely easier and safer for their mental health
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: to believe that the police are corrupt, the science is flawed,
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: and the system is rigged than it is to believe
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: your father is a murderer.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: It is an emotional survival mechanism. The brain just builds
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: a wall to survive the day.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: You know, as we bring this deep dive back to you,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: the listener, reflecting on all of this really emphasizes the vital,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: absolute importance of critical thinking in our daily lives.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: We need it more than ever.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: We do. We go through our world relying heavily on
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: assumptions and narratives. We look at a couple celebrating a
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: surprise 25th anniversary party. They are smiling. They own a home.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: And we instantly write a story in our heads. You know,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: they are happy, they are safe, they are normal.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: We fill in the blanks.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: And when we are suddenly faced with a highly emotional,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: tragic narrative, a weeping, blood-covered husband crying about a freak
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: accident on a 911 call, it is terrifyingly easy to
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: let our empathy blind us to the cold, hard facts.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: We want to believe the crying man.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: We inherently want to believe him. We want to comfort him.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: We don't want to coldly look at the swamp grass
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: trapped in the trunk. or calculate the kinetic physics of
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: the shattered glass, or analyze his defensive neck scratches.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: It feels wrong to doubt them.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: It does. But critical thinking demands that we look at
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the physical evidence, especially when it points to a reality
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: we desperately do not want to see.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: And that leaves us with a truly chilling concept to
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: mull over long after this discussion ends.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: We look at the totality of this case. A seemingly flawless,
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: comfortable 25-year marriage. Zero history of domestic violence. No impending
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: financial ruin. No hidden affairs. A perfectly normal Tuesday morning.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: The picture of normalcy.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: And yet, it ends in a spontaneous, brutal, hands-on strangulation
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: on a dirt road. And the perpetrator is then able
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: to immediately and completely compartmentalize that horrific violence.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: He just shuts it off.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: He successfully stages a complex crime scene, lies smoothly to
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: seasoned police officers, and lies to his own children's faces
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: while they cry over their mother's casket. All without breaking
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: down for months.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: If an average person is capable of that level of
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: sudden extreme violence and that level of cold, calculated deception,
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: living right beneath the surface of a perfect normal life,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: what does that say about how well we can ever
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: truly know the people closest to us?
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: That is a deeply unsettling thought that will absolutely keep
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: you up at night.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: You never really know.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: You think you know someone until the evidence proves you don't. Well,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: that wraps up our deep dive today. Thank you for
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: joining us as we explored these incredible sources, unpacked the
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: forensic science, and waded through this incredibly dark puzzle.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: It was a heavy one.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Keep questioning the narratives you were told, keep looking closely
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: at the evidence in your own world, and we will
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: see you next time.