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The Tragic Final Act of Catherine Woods · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture a size ten and a half bloody bootprint, right
0:04
just stamped onto the hardwood floor of a Manhattan apartment.
0:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a pretty jarring image right now.
0:09
Speaker 1: Contrast that image with a golden Thanksgiving turkey resting on
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a dining room table. Because we have this incredibly powerful,
0:18
almost unshakable expectation that the holidays are a sanctuary. Absolutely, Yeah,
0:23
we just assume Thanksgiving is a time of absolute domestic safety.
0:27
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, we view the holidays as this sort
0:30
of emotional fortress. But the reality for criminal investigators or
0:35
you know, forensic pathologists and detectives is drastically different.
0:39
Speaker 3: They see it differently exactly.
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Speaker 2: They see Thanksgiving not as a time of gratitude, but
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as this well a forced behavioral audit. Really, it's a
0:47
four day window where all geographic buffers are stripped away.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't hide, right, People.
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Speaker 2: Who spend the rest of the year meticulously hiding their
0:54
double lives, or their financial stress or just simmering resentments,
0:58
they are suddenly trapped in the exact same room together.
1:01
Speaker 1: Which is a recipe for disaster. And so for you
1:04
listening today, we are taking a deep dive into the
1:07
anatomy of the unsolvable crime. We are using a stack
1:11
of real, highly detailed forty eight hours case files that
1:15
all center around the Thanksgiving holiday.
1:17
Speaker 2: Which is fascinating source material, it really is.
1:20
Speaker 1: But we are not just walking through a list of
1:22
true crime stories today. Our mission here is to understand
1:25
the mechanics of how the ultimate domestic holiday collides with
1:29
the darkest corners of criminal psychology.
1:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we are going to examine how the evolution
1:34
of technology has fundamentally shifted the burden of proof over
1:38
the last forty years.
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Speaker 3: It's completely changed the game.
1:40
Speaker 2: It has We've gone from relying on terrified eyewitnesses to
1:45
relying on completely invisible data trails. We are going to
1:49
trace a very specific historical.
1:51
Speaker 3: Arc today, right from the past to the present.
1:53
Speaker 1: Right.
1:54
Speaker 2: We will start by looking at what happens when a
1:56
crime occurs in total physical isolation. Before the digital age,
2:00
people involved simply closed ranks in state silent, which is
2:03
terrifying it is. Then we will move forward through the decades,
2:07
observing the early dawn of biological tracking, and finally arriving
2:11
at a modern case. We're escaping the digital pinopticon is virtually.
2:15
Speaker 1: Impossible, so we are really looking at the relentless evolution
2:18
of consequence exactly. And for you listening, you are going
2:22
to see how the most microscopic anomalies like the chemical
2:27
composition of a stray tooth fragment, or the invisible handshake
2:30
protocol of a cell phone tower, or.
2:32
Speaker 2: Even the specific cellul degradation of DNA and river water.
2:36
Speaker 1: Yes, how all of that can systematically dismantle decades of deception.
2:41
So let's look at how killers who successfully evade the
2:44
physical grid are often betrayed by the digital one.
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Speaker 2: It's a great place to start.
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Speaker 1: And we are starting with a case that sits right
2:50
on the fault line of that technological shift. It is
2:52
Thanksgiving weekend two thousand and five in New York City
2:55
and this is the investigation into the death of Catherine Woods, right.
2:59
Speaker 2: So to understand the site logical trigger for this specific crime,
3:02
we really need to analyze the environment Catherine was navigating
3:04
at the.
3:05
Speaker 3: Time, because it was intent very She.
3:07
Speaker 2: Was a twenty one year old from Columbus, Ohio and
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actually the daughter of a well known music professor and
3:12
marching band director.
3:14
Speaker 1: Good background, very Midwestern, yeah, and she.
3:16
Speaker 2: Moved to New York at seventeen to become a Broadway dancer.
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But you know, the attrition rate of the New York
3:22
performing arts scene is just relentless.
3:25
Speaker 3: Oh, I can only imagine.
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Speaker 2: It requires immense capital just to survive the daily grind.
3:30
You have vocal coaching, acting lessons, dance classes, all while
3:35
paying just exorbitant rent.
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Speaker 1: Right, she was pushed into a corner financially, So to
3:39
fund this ambition, Catherine created a heavily compartmentalized life.
3:43
Speaker 2: Which is so common but so dangerous.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, during the day she was the quintessential hardworking theater student,
3:50
but at night she secretly worked as a dancer at
3:53
a Manhattan toalpless club called Privilege under the stage name Ava.
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Speaker 2: And she hid this entirely from her Midwestern.
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Speaker 1: Family completely, which created a dangerous vulnerability because the people
4:03
who could have protected her simply didn't know this nocturnal
4:06
world even existed.
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Speaker 2: Right, And compartmentalization is incredibly stressful from anyone, and it
4:11
usually collapses when it's introduced to a catalyst of course.
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Speaker 1: Of control, which is exactly what happened here.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that catalyst arrived in the form of a really
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complicated romantic triangle. First, you have her platonic roommate David Hahn.
4:24
He was her twenty year old ex boyfriend, a rap
4:27
musician raised in foster care who literally followed her from Ohio.
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He was financially dependent on her and really viewed her
4:35
as the only real family he had.
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Speaker 1: So there's already a lot of dependency there. And then
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on the other side you have the new secret boyfriend,
4:42
Paul Cortez. He's twenty four, a personal trainer, a prep
4:46
school graduate with a theater degree, and he's the frontman.
4:50
Speaker 3: For a rock band.
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Speaker 2: It sounds perfect on paper.
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Speaker 1: On paper, yeah, he is articulate and driven, but underneath
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that veneer is this deep seated narcissism. Catherine didn't tell
5:01
her roommate David about Paul, and she didn't tell Paul
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about her job at the club.
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Speaker 2: Until April of two thousand and five, when the two
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world just completely collided. Catherine actually called Paul from the
5:11
club in a state of panic because she believed a
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customer had slipped a narcotic into her drink.
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Speaker 3: And assaulted her, which is horrific.
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Speaker 2: It is, But when Paul arrived and discovered where she
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was working, his reaction was not one of empathy. For
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a potential victim of assault.
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Speaker 3: Not at all.
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Speaker 2: No, his reaction was rooted entirely in possessive fury. He
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demanded she quit immediately.
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Speaker 1: And when she refused, because you know, citing her financial reality,
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Paul bypassed her autonomy completely.
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Speaker 2: He really did.
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Speaker 3: He dug through her.
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Speaker 1: Phone, found her father's number in Ohio, and just outed
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her secret life to her parents.
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Speaker 2: Which is a textbook move for someone attempting to isolate
5:48
and control a partner, right by weaponizing their own family
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against them.
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Speaker 3: Exactly.
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Speaker 1: The psychology of that betrayal completely set the stage for
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the Thanksgiving weekend tragedy.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Catherine was infuriated by the breach of trust, obviously,
6:02
but they somehow remained in this toxic, tethered dynamic.
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Speaker 1: And Paul was obsessively jealous, especially after learning that David
6:09
Hahn the X was still living in her apartment.
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Speaker 2: Right, and the tension finally shattered on November twenty seventh,
6:14
two thousand and five. David han claimed he left their
6:18
apartment for about twenty to thirty minutes just to retrieve
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his car.
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Speaker 1: And he returns to a scene of staggering violence.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was brutal.
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Speaker 1: Catherine was found on her bedroom floor. She had been
6:28
stabbed twenty times and her throat was cut twice.
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Speaker 2: It's just horrific.
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Speaker 1: The lead investigator, who was a sixteen year veteran, actually
6:36
categorized it as the most violent scene of his entire career.
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Speaker 2: Wow.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, this wasn't a random intrusion.
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Speaker 1: The sheer volume of wounds indicated a deeply personal rage,
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and the killer left behind a very specific physical signature.
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Speaker 2: Right the bloody handprint on the wall.
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Speaker 1: That and a series of bloody footprints tracking through the apartment,
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left by a size ten and a half sketcher's boot.
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One print was stack mp directly onto Catherine's back.
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Speaker 2: And initially investigators fell right into the trap of profiling
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based on trauma response.
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Speaker 3: What do you mean?
7:07
Speaker 2: Well, they brought in David Hahn, who happened to wear
7:10
a size ten and a half shoe, and during his
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interrogation he displayed a very flat affect.
7:15
Speaker 1: Like he wasn't reacting normally.
7:17
Speaker 2: Right, He didn't cry. He seemed totally detached, And law
7:20
enforcement often expects innocent people to perform grief in this
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hysterical cinematic.
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Speaker 1: Way, like weeping and screaming.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, But they failed to recognize that emotional numbing is
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a completely standard physiological response to severe shock.
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Speaker 1: Right, your brain just shuts down to protect you. But
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they quickly shifted their focus to Paul Cortes, who crucially
7:42
also happened to wear a size ten and a half shoe.
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Speaker 2: Which is where the mid two thousands technological shift really
7:48
becomes the star of the investigation.
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Speaker 1: Yes, because Paul provided a written statement claiming he was
7:52
at his own apartment which was a mile and a
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half away, making phone calls during the window of the murder.
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Speaker 2: And you know, a decade prior without an eye as
8:00
it contradict him that Alibi might have totally held up.
8:03
Speaker 1: But I want to break down exactly why a cell
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phone is essentially a digital tracking bracelet, because for you
8:08
listening this is fascinating.
8:10
Speaker 2: It really fundamentally altered the entire landscape of criminal defense.
8:14
Speaker 1: So break down the mechanics of how his phone betrayed
8:18
him here.
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Speaker 2: Sure, so it all comes down to the handshake protocol
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between your device and a cellular network. Your phone is
8:25
constantly searching for the strongest possible signal to maintain.
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Speaker 3: Connectivity, right, pinging the towers.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, pinging nearby towers. When you initiate a call, the
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network doesn't just broadcast it everywhere. It routes the data
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through the specific geographical antenna that you are communicating.
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Speaker 1: With, and investigators can triangulate the timing of those pings.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and when they pulled Paul's records, they saw he
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called Catherine a dozen times right before six zero zero PM,
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which was the estimated time of death.
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Speaker 1: But those calls did not route through the tower servicing
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his apartment.
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Speaker 2: No, they didn't. The telemetry data showed his phone handshaking
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with a tower located just two blocks from Catherine's apartment. Wow,
9:06
So he literally placed himself inside the geographical radius of
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the crime scene at the exact moment he claimed to
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be isolated in his own home.
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Speaker 1: He constructed an illusion of physical alibi, completely ignorant of
9:18
the data trial he was generating.
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Speaker 3: And he also skipped his band rehearsal that night.
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Speaker 2: Right claiming he overslept because he anticipated being kicked out
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of the group anyway.
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Speaker 1: Which is a remarkably convenient excuse for lacking an alibi.
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But the most damning psychological evidence came when police searched
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his apartment and found his journals.
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Speaker 2: The writings were deeply disturbing.
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Speaker 1: They discovered poems and writings dripping with violent ideation toward women.
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One entry literally read, she wipes clean the shaft that
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cuts her throat.
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Speaker 2: And of course, Paul argued that specific poem was written
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eight months prior and was completely out of context. Naturally,
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but when you aggregate the violent ideation, the fingerprint match
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from that bloody handprint on the wall, and the telemetry
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destroyed his albi. The prosecution had a very compelling case
10:03
for second degree murder.
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Speaker 1: But the trial itself turned on a moment of profound
10:08
irony involving a low resolution video.
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Speaker 2: Right, it really is the ultimate own goal in legal strategy.
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Speaker 3: Okay, set this up for us.
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Speaker 2: So the prosecution had the bloody boot prints, but they
10:18
never actually recovered the physical sketcher's boots. On the stand,
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Paul swore he didn't even own boots.
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Speaker 1: He claimed he was wearing a flat pair of Johnston
10:27
and Murphy dress shoes on the day of the murder.
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Speaker 2: Right, and the defense team, genuinely believing they had the
10:33
silver bullet, introduced security camera footage from a PC Richard's
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appliance store where Paul was shopping hours before the.
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Speaker 3: Murder oh Man.
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Speaker 2: They played it for the jury specifically to prove he
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was wearing flat shoes, But.
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Speaker 1: They underestimated the analytical capacity of a collective group severely.
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Speaker 2: I mean, a single attorney might watch a degraded video
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and see what they want to see, confirming their own bias. Sure,
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but when you lock twelve jurors in a room, you
11:01
get this distributed processing of visual information.
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Speaker 1: And initially the jury was split right, they were actually
11:06
leaning toward a hum verdict because the physical murder weapon
11:10
was missing.
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Speaker 2: Until deliberations the holdouts asked to re examine that PC
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Richard's video.
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Speaker 1: You can just imagine the tension in that room. They
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watched it frame by frame, zooming in on Paul's feet,
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and one of.
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Speaker 2: The jurors pointed at the screen and noted the physical
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profile of the footwear.
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Speaker 3: Because address show has a sleek.
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Speaker 2: Silhouette exactly, but the shoe in the video had a thick,
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bulky sole and a rounded, elevated front toe box.
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Speaker 1: So it became undeniably clear to the entire room that
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the defensi's star piece of exculpatory evidence actually proved the
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prosecution's case.
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Speaker 2: It proved he was wearing boots.
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Speaker 1: That realization swung the holdouts. Paul Cortes was convicted of
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second degree murder undone by a cell tower ping he
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didn't know existed, and a video his own lawyer submitted.
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Speaker 2: It's wild. But if Paul Cortes represents the dawn of
11:59
the digital grid capturing a killer, we really have to
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ask what happens when a perpetrator evades the digital grid
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entirely but leaves behind a biological footprint decades before the
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science exists to read it right.
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Speaker 1: We are moving from the concrete of Manhattan to the
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deep woods of Acme, Washington. It is Thanksgiving weekend, nineteen
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eighty nine, and Acme.
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Speaker 2: Is a rural logging community characterized by intense social cohesion.
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Speaker 1: People left their doors unlocked. It was an environment of
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profound trust.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, very safe.
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Speaker 1: But on November twenty fourth, nineteen eighty nine, an eighteen
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year old college freshman named Mandy Stavick went for a
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run with her German shepherd down a rural road near
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her home.
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Speaker 2: And she was a phenomenal athlete right, a basketball player
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with ambitions of becoming an airline pilot.
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Speaker 1: She had her whole life ahead of her. When her
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dog returned home alone. The community immediately understood the severity
12:49
of the situation, and.
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Speaker 2: Three days later, a search team found Mandy's body submerged
12:55
in the south fork of the Nooksack River.
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Speaker 1: She had been drowned wearing only her running shoes and socks.
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Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking, and the physical pathology at the scene mapped
13:04
out a terrifying sequence of events.
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Speaker 1: Because of her athletic speed, investigators deduced her attacker used
13:10
a vehicle and likely a firearm to force her compliance.
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Speaker 2: Right violently kicking her dog into a ditch during the initial.
13:16
Speaker 1: Abduction, and she was assaulted several miles away, and her
13:19
body was covered in severe scratches consistent with the heavy
13:23
native BlackBerry bushes. She clearly fought back hard, making a
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desperate dash through the thicket before being subdued, knocked unconscious,
13:31
and placed in the river.
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Speaker 2: And this is where the narrative shifts to the precarious
13:36
nature of forensic science in nineteen eighty nine.
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Speaker 1: Because the detective leading the river search, Ron Peterson, had
13:42
actually recently attended an FBI seminar on biological evidence.
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Speaker 2: Right, so he understood something crucial about the environment. Yeah,
13:49
rushing river water is catastrophic for cellular material.
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Speaker 1: I want to focus on that for a second because
13:54
it is fascinating for you listening who might not know this.
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How exactly does water destroy DNA evidence?
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Speaker 2: Well, it is a combination of osmosis and bacterial activity.
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Speaker 3: Okay.
14:04
Speaker 2: When biological fluid like siemen is submerged in a hypotonic
14:08
environment like a freshwater river, water rushes into the cells,
14:12
causing them to swell and lies or burst, which completely
14:16
degrades the DNA.
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Speaker 3: Oh wow.
14:17
Speaker 2: Furthermore, the bacteria naturally present in river water immediately begin
14:21
consuming organic material.
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Speaker 1: So detective Peterson knew that if he dragged her body
14:26
out of the water haphazardly, the current would literally wash
14:29
away whatever fragile microscopic evidence from hate.
14:32
Speaker 2: Exactly, So he engineered a meticulous, localized extraction, preserving a
14:36
viable male DNA profile from the seminal fluid.
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Speaker 1: It was a brilliant piece of foresight, honestly, but it
14:42
was also a tragedy of timing.
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Speaker 2: Because having a pristine DNA profile in nineteen eighty nine
14:49
was like possessing a highly complex barcode but having absolutely
14:52
no scanner to Rea.
14:53
Speaker 3: There was no CODA system, And.
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Speaker 2: For those who don't know, CODA stands for the Combined
14:57
DNA Index System, which is the FBI's massive digital filing cabinet.
15:02
Speaker 1: The one that allows local jurisdictions to cross reference biological
15:06
profiles nationwide.
15:07
Speaker 2: Right, But in nineteen eighty nine, that interconnected database didn't exist.
15:12
Investigators were holding a puzzle piece with no box to
15:15
look at.
15:16
Speaker 1: They tested over thirty local men, including her boyfriend, and
15:19
every single one was a negative match.
15:22
Speaker 2: So the case went cold for twenty four years.
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Speaker 1: Twenty four years, and the breakthrough didn't come from a laboratory.
15:27
It came from the sociology of the small town itself.
15:29
Speaker 2: Right. In twenty thirteen, two local mothers, Heather Backstrum and
15:33
Merrily Anderson were sitting at a community water park.
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Speaker 3: Just a completely mundane setting.
15:38
Speaker 2: Completely they barely knew each other, but the conversation drifted
15:42
to Mandy Stavic, and suddenly both women realized they had
15:45
been harboring the exact same suspicion about a local man
15:49
named Tim Bass for a quarter of a century.
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Speaker 1: You might wonder how two people could sit on information
15:54
like that for decades, but it really speaks to the
15:57
oppressive weight of small town social dynasm.
16:00
Speaker 2: Absolutely accusing a neighbor as someone whose family is totally
16:04
entrenched in the community of a sadistic murder without physical proof,
16:09
that is a massive social risk.
16:10
Speaker 1: But sitting at that water park, they finally compare their encounters,
16:14
and the psychological profile of Tim Bass became undeniable.
16:17
Speaker 2: Right. Heather recounted an incident from the summer of nineteen
16:21
eighty nine, just months prior to the murder. She was fifteen,
16:25
sitting in a truck, and Bass, who was in his twenties,
16:28
began commenting on her physical appearance and slowly rubbing a
16:31
pen up and down her bare knee.
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Speaker 3: Gross.
16:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a calculated predatory invasion of physical boundaries
16:38
designed to test her compliance.
16:39
Speaker 3: And Merrily's encounter was even more aggressive.
16:42
Speaker 2: It was in nineteen ninety one. She was home alone
16:45
with her young son. Base knocked on her door, claiming
16:48
he was hunting and needed to use her phone to
16:51
call his wife, so she lets him in right Once inside,
16:54
she handed him the receiver and distinctly heard the automated
16:58
voice indicating the line was disconnected.
17:00
Speaker 1: Oh god, so the phone call was a ruse to
17:03
breach the threshold of her home exactly.
17:06
Speaker 2: He then cornered her in her bedroom, declared he was
17:08
in love with her and demanded she sleep.
17:10
Speaker 1: With him, terrifying, but she managed to threaten him with
17:13
police intervention, forcing him to leave.
17:16
Speaker 2: Yes, both women had witnessed the mask slip. They saw
17:20
a man who felt entitled to women's bodies and used
17:23
coercion to isolate them, and.
17:25
Speaker 1: When they finally brought this to the police in twenty thirteen,
17:27
investigators realized Bass had lived less than two miles from
17:30
Mandy's house, right on her running route.
17:33
Speaker 2: But because his family was viewed as normal, he had
17:35
been entirely bypassed in the initial dragnet.
17:37
Speaker 1: So the police approach Base, who is now married with
17:40
children and working as a bakery delivery driver, and asked
17:43
for a voluntary DNA swab, and.
17:45
Speaker 2: He flatly refused, citing a fear of being framed.
17:48
Speaker 3: Which is always a red flag.
17:50
Speaker 1: So law enforcement initiated surveillance, trailing his delivery truck for
17:54
nights on end, just hoping he would discard a coffee
17:57
cup or a cigarette, but he.
17:59
Speaker 2: Was extored, narily disciplined. He left zero refuse.
18:02
Speaker 1: They needed someone on the inside, and.
18:05
Speaker 2: They found their operative in Kim Wagner, the manager at
18:08
the bakery where Bass worked.
18:09
Speaker 1: When detectives approached her, she immediately understood the assignment. She
18:13
had already pegged Bass as deeply misogynistic.
18:16
Speaker 2: Right he refused to use her name, referring to her
18:19
exclusively as woman, which is a glaring indicator of how
18:22
he dehumanized the women around him.
18:24
Speaker 1: So Kim Wagner volunteered to run a covert collection operation
18:28
inside her own bakery. She emptied his specific garbage can daily,
18:32
ensuring it was pristine, just waiting for him to slip.
18:35
Speaker 2: Up, and it took three months of agonizing patients, but
18:37
Bass finally discarded a plastic cup and later a Coca
18:41
Cola can.
18:42
Speaker 1: She secured the items in her desk and handed them
18:44
to the detectives.
18:45
Speaker 2: The Washington State Crime Lab analyzed the saliva on the
18:48
rim of the can, and it was a categorical match
18:51
to the DNA detective Peterson had salvaged from the river
18:53
in nineteen eighty nine.
18:55
Speaker 1: Incredible when they arrested Tim Bass in the bakery parking lot,
18:59
the trial fail really illuminated the profound narcissism required to
19:03
maintain a lie for decades.
19:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, because when a perpetrator is confronted with irrefutable biological
19:09
evidence found inside a murdered woman, the defensive options vanish.
19:13
Speaker 3: You can't claim you were out of town.
19:15
Speaker 2: No. Yeah, but Bass's defense strategy was just an insult
19:18
to basic logic. He admitted the DNA was his, but
19:21
claimed he was having a secret, consensual affair with the
19:24
eighteen year old college.
19:25
Speaker 3: Student, which is ridiculous, right.
19:28
Speaker 2: And that an unknown third party must have abducted and
19:30
killed her hours after their rendezvous.
19:33
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate expression of a cornered predator attempting
19:36
to rewrite reality. Narcissists will construct increasingly absurd alternate universes
19:41
to explain away empirical data.
19:43
Speaker 2: And the prosecution completely eviscerated the narrative. There were zero
19:47
phone records between them, no eyewitnesses to this supposed romance, and.
19:51
Speaker 1: The medical examiner testified that the pathology of the injuries
19:53
proved the assault was violent and concurrent with the drowning,
19:56
not a gentle encounter hours prior.
19:59
Speaker 2: But I think the most review billing aspect of his
20:01
character was his attempt to manipulate his own family to
20:04
escape justice.
20:05
Speaker 1: Oh, this part is insane. His ex wife testified that
20:08
Bays actually asked his mother to lie on the stand
20:11
and blame his deceased father for the murder.
20:14
Speaker 2: Yes, and he also approached his younger brother Tom and
20:17
asked him to falsely testify that he also had a
20:21
sexual relationship with Mandy.
20:23
Speaker 1: He wanted to drag his own brother into perjury just
20:26
to smear the victim's reputation and bolster his fake affair story.
20:30
Speaker 2: It highlights a complete absence of empathy. He viewed his
20:33
own blood relatives merely as tools for his survival.
20:37
Speaker 1: And thankfully, the jury deliberated for a matter of hours
20:40
before convicting him of murder, rape, and kidnapping. Because he
20:44
was tried under the nineteen eighty nine sentencing guidelines, he
20:48
received a maximum of nearly twenty seven years.
20:50
Speaker 2: So Tim Bass relied on the solo fabricated narrative to
20:53
explain away his biology.
20:55
Speaker 1: Right. But our next case involves a killer who also
20:58
tried to construct an alternate reality. But he leveraged modern
21:01
technology to spoof his victim's existence.
21:03
Speaker 2: And crucially, he recruited a medical professional to scrub the
21:07
physical evidence.
21:08
Speaker 1: We are moving to Thanksgiving twenty eighteen in the Mountains
21:11
of Florissant, Colorado, and the murder of Kelsey Bearrath by
21:15
Patrick Frazy.
21:16
Speaker 2: The contrast in methodologies between Tim Bass and Patrick Frazy
21:20
is really stark, definitely. Kelsey was a twenty nine year
21:23
old flight instructor, fiercely independent, and she was engaged to Frazy,
21:27
who operated a cattle dog training and ferrier business on
21:31
a thirty five acre ranch.
21:32
Speaker 1: They shared a one year old daughter, Kayley, but maintained
21:35
separate residences.
21:36
Speaker 2: Right the power dynamics were highly skewed. Friends noted Frasey
21:40
utilized emotional manipulation to gradually erode Kelsey's confidence and.
21:45
Speaker 1: The timeline hinges. On Thanksgiving Day, surveillance cameras captured Kelsey
21:49
at a local Safeway, shopping with her baby, purchasing ingredients
21:52
for a sweet potato castrole.
21:54
Speaker 2: It is a portrait of complete holiday normalcy.
21:56
Speaker 1: That was the last time she was seen alive. When
21:59
questioned Frasey, he presented a highly curated narrative. He claimed
22:03
Kelsey had unexpectedly broken up with him the day before,
22:06
demanding a fifty to fifty custody split.
22:08
Speaker 2: And he claimed that he only visited her town home
22:12
on Thanksgiving to exchange the child. He suggested she was
22:16
emotionally unstable and had simply abandoned her life.
22:19
Speaker 1: But that narrative collapses under the weight of basic behavioral logic.
22:24
Speaker 2: It really does. If she was terminating the relationship and
22:27
abandoning her family, she would not be purchasing sweet potatoes
22:30
for a communal holiday castrole.
22:32
Speaker 1: Nor would she be texting him that afternoon offering to share.
22:35
Speaker 2: It exactly, but would truly dismantle his defense? Were the
22:40
digital anomalies.
22:42
Speaker 1: Because a few days after Thanksgiving, Kelsey's mother reported her missing.
22:46
Investigators pulled the cell phone records, and they found a
22:49
technological impossibility.
22:51
Speaker 2: Right The telemetry data showed Kelsey's phone and Patrick's phone
22:55
pinging the exact same towers, graveling in tandem for days.
22:58
Speaker 1: Master claimed he hadn't seen her, yet the data proved
23:01
he was carrying her.
23:01
Speaker 2: Device, He was utilizing her phone to text her employer,
23:05
calling in sick, and even texting his own phone to
23:07
simulate an ongoing conversation.
23:09
Speaker 1: Just creating a digital ghost to buy himself time.
23:12
Speaker 2: And the facade cracked completely three days later, when Kelsey's
23:16
phone suddenly pinged a tower eight hundred miles away in Gooding.
23:19
Speaker 1: Idaho, sending a final text that read do you even
23:22
love me?
23:23
Speaker 2: Right? And this geographic jump introduced the accomplice, Crystal Lee.
23:28
Speaker 1: She was a former rodeo queen, a registered nurse, and
23:32
Patrick's former romantic partner. Yes, Crystal Lee's involvement really forces
23:36
us to examine the incredibly pragmatic, often unpalatable realities.
23:41
Speaker 3: Of the justice system. Is a deal with the devil exactly.
23:44
Speaker 1: She eventually confessed to traveling across state lines, utilizing her
23:47
medical knowledge to sanitize a horrific murder scene, destroying evidence,
23:52
and transporting the victim's phone to Idaho to lay a
23:54
false digital trail, and in exchange for her testimony, she
23:58
accepted a plea deal, capping her sentence at three years.
24:02
It is a bitter reality to digest when someone so
24:05
deeply complicit receives a fraction of the penalty.
24:08
Speaker 2: It is, but it is what prosecutors often refer to
24:10
as a necessary transaction in a nobody homicide.
24:13
Speaker 1: Because without a body proving the mechanics of a first
24:16
degree premeditated murder beyond a reasonable doubt, it's exceptionally difficult very.
24:22
Speaker 2: The state possessed the cell tower data and trace amounts
24:25
of blood, but they lacked a cohesive narrative. They needed
24:28
the jury to understand the how and the why. Right
24:31
Crystal Lee was the only person alive who could provide
24:34
the architectural blueprint of Phrase's premeditation. The state sacrificed a
24:39
heavy sentence for the accomplice to ensure a life in
24:42
prison for the primary architect, and.
24:44
Speaker 1: The premeditation she detailed was just staggering. Phasey's motive was
24:48
rooted in absolute custodial control. He wanted sole dominion over
24:52
their daughter despite zero evidence. Kelsey, ever, intended to limit
24:56
his access, and he attempted.
24:57
Speaker 2: To recruit Crystal to assassinate Kelsey on three separate occasions
25:00
before committing the act himself.
25:02
Speaker 1: The escalation of those attempts is chilling.
25:04
Speaker 2: It really is. In the first instance, he instructed Crystal
25:07
to leverage her access to pharmaceuticals because she was a nurse. Right,
25:10
she acquired lethal doses of ambient and valium, drove twelve
25:14
hours to Colorado, and laced a Starbucks caramel machiado.
25:18
Speaker 1: She knocked on Kelsey's door under a false pretense and
25:21
handed her the coffee, but.
25:22
Speaker 2: She ultimately lost her nerve, claiming she didn't actually mix
25:25
the narcotics into the drink.
25:27
Speaker 1: When Frasy realized the poisoning failed, he escalated to blunt force.
25:32
Attempt number two involved instructing Crystal to wait outside Kelsey's
25:35
home with a metal pipe to strike her in the head, and.
25:37
Speaker 2: She drove back to Colorado, stood outside the home but retreated.
25:41
Speaker 1: Attempt number three was identical, substituting an aluminum baseball bat.
25:46
Speaker 2: Finally, on Thanksgiving Day, Frasy executed the murder himself, calling
25:50
Crystal and ordering her to come clean up the mess.
25:53
Speaker 1: She arrived with a specialized cleaning kit, industrial bleach, hairnets,
25:58
and gloves, and.
25:59
Speaker 2: She entered a scene of unimaginable brutality. Fraser had lured
26:03
Kelsey into a false sense of play, convincing her to
26:06
wear a sweater over her eyes to blindly guess the
26:09
scent of various candles.
26:10
Speaker 1: While she was blindfolded in her own home.
26:12
Speaker 3: He beat her to death with a baseball.
26:14
Speaker 2: Bat, and the most disturbing element of his psychology is
26:17
that he committed this act while their one year old
26:20
daughter was sitting in a playpen in the adjacent room.
26:23
Speaker 3: That's just vile.
26:24
Speaker 1: Crystal spent hours attempting to chemically erase the crime scene.
26:28
But I want to talk about why that is scientifically
26:31
almost impossible. How did her bleach fail?
26:34
Speaker 2: Well, bleach is highly effective at altering the color of
26:36
blood and degrading the DNA, but it doesn't entirely erase the.
26:40
Speaker 3: Hemoglobein Okay, because of the iron exactly.
26:43
Speaker 2: Blood is iron rich. When it seems into poorous surfaces
26:47
like the grout between tiles or the microscopic grain of
26:49
hardwood floorboards, the iron actually bonds with the material.
26:53
Speaker 3: Wow.
26:54
Speaker 2: Forensic technicians use chemical reagents like luminol, which reacts specifically
26:58
with the iron and hemoglobe and causing it to luminess
27:01
even after being scrubbed with bleach.
27:03
Speaker 1: And Crystal claims she intentionally left blood between the floorboards
27:07
and a single tooth fragment to aid investigators, though it's.
27:10
Speaker 2: Equally likely that completely eradicating biological matter from a porous
27:13
environment is simply beyond human capability.
27:17
Speaker 1: She then loaded Kelsey's belongings into a plastic tote, drove
27:20
to Phrasey's ranch and watched him incinerate the evidence before
27:24
taking the phone back to Idaho.
27:25
Speaker 2: And at trial, Phrasey refused to testify, but his true
27:29
character was laid bare by a jailhouse informant.
27:32
Speaker 3: Yes.
27:32
Speaker 1: While awaiting trial, Phrasey was passing notes written on paper
27:35
towels to another inmate, attempting to orchestrate a hit list.
27:38
From inside his cell.
27:40
Speaker 2: He solicited the assassination of Crystal Lee to eliminate the
27:43
star witness. He targeted Crystal's best friend, who possessed corroborating
27:48
knowledge and.
27:49
Speaker 1: Most revealing of his utter depravity, he requested the murder
27:52
of Kelsey's grieving mother, providing explicit instructions on how he
27:57
wanted the executions carried out.
27:59
Speaker 2: The jury convicted him a first degree murder in a
28:01
matter of hours, resulting in a sentence of life without
28:04
parole plus one hundred and fifty six years.
28:06
Speaker 1: He was defeated by an accomplice who buckled under the
28:09
weight of the secret and by his own technological arrogance
28:12
in spoofing a cell phone.
28:14
Speaker 2: Right, But what happens when you strip away the cell towers,
28:16
remove the biological databases, and place the crime in total
28:20
physical isolation.
28:21
Speaker 1: You are left with human nature in a vacuum, which
28:25
brings us to the most infamous Thanksgiving mystery in Hollywood history,
28:29
the nineteen eighty one death of Natalie Wood off the
28:31
coast of Catalina Island.
28:33
Speaker 2: This case really explores what happens when a small group
28:36
of people in an isolated environment decide to close ranks,
28:40
leveraging their status to dictate the narrative to law enforcement.
28:43
Speaker 1: The cast of characters is legendary. Natalie Wood was cinematic royalty,
28:48
starring in classics since childhood.
28:50
Speaker 2: However, her psychological profile contains a crucial detail.
28:54
Speaker 1: Yes, she suffered from a paralyzing lifelong phobia of dark water.
28:58
She was terrified of the ocean.
29:00
Speaker 2: At night, and she was on a yacht named the
29:02
Splendor with her husband, Robert Wagner, who was a massive
29:05
television star.
29:06
Speaker 1: Their relationship was intensely passionate but notoriously volatile. I mean
29:11
they married, divorced, and remarried each other.
29:13
Speaker 2: Also present were Christopher Walkin, fresh off an oscar when
29:17
and Wood's current co star, and Dennis Davren, the yachts captain.
29:21
Speaker 1: The catalyst for the weekend's disaster was Robert Wagner's consuming jealousy.
29:25
He perceived a romantic chemistry between Wood and Walkin that
29:28
threatened his ego right.
29:31
Speaker 2: The tension reached such a pitch by Friday night that
29:34
Wood demanded Captain Daverren take her ashore in the dinghy
29:37
in the freezing rain.
29:38
Speaker 1: She procured two hotel rooms on the island, spending the
29:41
night in tears, explicitly stating her desire to divorce Wagner
29:45
due to his suffocating temper.
29:47
Speaker 2: She was literally fleeing the vessel to escape his rage, but.
29:50
Speaker 1: In the cyclical nature of volatile relationships, she returned to
29:54
the Splendor on Saturday to de escalate.
29:57
Speaker 2: That evening, Wood, Wagner, and Walkin went ashore for dinner,
30:00
consuming massive quantities of alcohol.
30:03
Speaker 1: Witnesses observed Wood and walk In enjoying themselves while Wagner
30:07
sat in a silent, visible.
30:09
Speaker 2: Fury, and the intoxication level was so severe that the
30:13
restaurant manager proactively contacted the harbor master to ensure the
30:17
group navigated safely back to their yacht.
30:19
Speaker 1: Once they were confined back on the Splendor, the geographical
30:21
buffer vanished.
30:22
Speaker 2: According to Davern, they were in the salon when Wagner
30:25
unexpectedly grabbed a wine bottle and shattered it across a
30:28
table in a fit of rage, explicitly accusing Walkin of
30:31
attempting to seduce his wife.
30:33
Speaker 1: Wood, furious and exhausted, retreated to her stateroom. Walkin retired
30:37
to his cabin. Wagner followed Wood into their quarters.
30:40
Speaker 2: And Davern recounted hearing a violently escalating argument. He described
30:44
the sound of objects being thrown and heavy thumping against
30:47
the bulkheads.
30:48
Speaker 1: When the case was reopened in twenty eleven, new witnesses
30:51
from a neighboring boat corroborated this. They testified to hearing
30:55
a man and a woman whose voices matched Wagner and Wood,
30:59
screaming at a name each other on the aft deck
31:01
in the freezing rain, and that.
31:03
Speaker 2: Leads to a critical turning point in the timeline. The
31:06
screaming was followed by sudden, absolute silence.
31:09
Speaker 3: It's eerie.
31:10
Speaker 2: Devn noted the abrupt cessation of the argument. There was
31:13
no splash, no cry for assistance. Approximately ten minutes later,
31:17
Darviren went below deck and found Wagner distressed, claiming Wood
31:20
was missing, along with the motorized dinghy.
31:23
Speaker 1: Wagner's subsequent behavior completely defies emergency protocols. He delayed contacting
31:28
the coastguard for over an hour, and when evenly did
31:30
authorize a search, she instructed people to look for her
31:32
in the local island bars, actively directing attention away from
31:35
the water, and the.
31:36
Speaker 2: Next morning Wood was found floating in the ocean, wearing
31:39
a flannel nightgown, socks, and a red down jacket.
31:42
Speaker 1: The original nineteen eighty one investigation concluded her death was
31:45
an accidental drowning, relying entirely on a theory provided by Wagner.
31:50
Speaker 2: He suggested that Wood, annoyed by the dinghy banging against
31:54
the hull of the yacht, went out onto the slippery
31:56
deck in her socks to retie the vessel, slipped, struck
32:00
her head, and rolled into the ocean.
32:02
Speaker 1: I have to pause here and look at the absolute
32:04
absurdity of.
32:05
Speaker 3: This banging dinghy theory.
32:06
Speaker 2: It makes no sense none.
32:08
Speaker 1: You have a woman who is clinically terrified of dark water.
32:11
She doesn't know how to operate the dinghy's motor right.
32:14
Suggesting she ventured onto a wet pitching deck in the
32:17
middle of a freezing storm in her socks to adjust
32:19
a rope is like suggesting someone who is deafly afraid
32:23
of heights, deciding to climb onto their roof during a
32:25
Category five hurricane and their pajamas to fix a loose shingle.
32:29
Speaker 2: Your analogy highlights the behavioral impossibility of this scenario perfectly.
32:34
Speaker 1: You do not voluntarily approach the source of your deepest
32:37
phobia to fix a minor auditory annoyance. She would have
32:40
simply asked the captain to do it, Yet the.
32:42
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty one investigators accepted it without pushback. We have
32:46
to view this through the sociological lens of the era.
32:49
Robert Wagner was a formidable Hollywood power broker.
32:53
Speaker 1: Law enforcement displayed intense deference to his celebrity.
32:56
Speaker 2: They did not secure the yacht as a crime scene.
32:59
They treated it as a tragic accident, accepting the synchronized
33:02
narrative provided by the three men on board.
33:05
Speaker 1: And Davern later confessed that Wagner explicitly orchestrated their testimonies,
33:09
commanding them to stick to the accidental narrative.
33:12
Speaker 2: But the truth is incredibly corrosive to a lie. Thirty
33:16
years later, in twenty eleven, Davern broke his silence, admitting
33:20
the cover up and petitioning to reopen the case.
33:22
Speaker 1: This prompted the Los Angeles County Coroner to re examine
33:25
the original autopsy photographs, resulting in a monumental shift. They
33:29
changed the official manner of death from accidental drowning to undetermined.
33:34
Speaker 2: The forensic pathology drove that change. When you analyze the
33:37
bruising on a body recovered from water, you have to
33:40
differentiate between post mortem injuries caused by scraping against rocks
33:44
or the boat and anti mortem injuries sustained while the
33:47
heart was still pumping blood.
33:48
Speaker 1: The re examination revealed that Wood possess dozens of fresh,
33:52
anti mortem bruises on her arms, legs, and face.
33:55
Speaker 2: Right the distribution and severity of these contusions were entirely
33:58
inconsistent with a single slip and fall into the water.
34:02
Speaker 1: The pathology strongly suggested she was the victim of a
34:04
physical assault prior to entering the ocean.
34:07
Speaker 2: So, with the captain admitting a cover up, witnesses hearing
34:10
a violent fight on the deck, and pathology pointing to
34:13
an assault, you're probably wondering why Robert Wagner, who is
34:16
officially a person of interest, hasn't been charged.
34:19
Speaker 1: He refuses to speak to investigators and the case just
34:22
sits there. Why can't the system act?
34:25
Speaker 2: It is entirely bound by the statute of limitations. For
34:28
almost every offense negligent homicide, manslaughter, assault, the legal window
34:33
for prosecution expires after a set number.
34:35
Speaker 3: Of years, so the clock runs out right.
34:37
Speaker 2: The only crime devoid of a statute of limitations is murder. However,
34:42
securing a murder conviction requires proving a specific intent. Prosecutors
34:46
would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Wagner
34:49
intentionally and physically force Wood into the water with the
34:52
explicit desire to enter her life.
34:54
Speaker 1: Because there were no direct eyewitnesses to the moment she
34:57
went over the rail, Proving that specific mechanical intent is
35:01
impossible exactly. But even if one were to theorize that
35:04
she fell during a physical altercation and Wagner simply stood
35:07
there refusing to throw a life ring, actively choosing to
35:10
let her drown, is that not murder.
35:13
Speaker 2: Under the strict definitions of the law. In most jurisdictions, No,
35:17
there is generally no duty to rescue, even for a spouse,
35:21
unless the prosecution can prove you intentionally place them in
35:25
that lethal peril to begin with.
35:26
Speaker 1: It is a staggering moral failure, but it is notoriously
35:29
difficult to prosecute as murder without a witness to the
35:33
final physical act.
35:34
Speaker 2: Consequently, Robert Wagner remained silent, and the case exists in
35:38
a state of permanent legal stasis, a ghost story preserved
35:41
by isolation.
35:42
Speaker 1: It is incredibly haunting when we step back and look
35:45
at the trajectory of these four Thanksgiving cases, Catherine Woods,
35:48
Manny Stavit, Kelsey Barath and Natalie Wood, we see the
35:51
architecture of justice shifting beneath our feet.
35:54
Speaker 2: We really do. We observed a microscopic, bloody footprint dismantling
35:58
an alibi in two thousand.
35:59
Speaker 1: And five, whow how the precise preservation of cellular biology
36:03
reached across twenty four years to trap a predator.
36:05
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty nine, we witnessed how the invisible handshake
36:09
of cell tower telemetry exposed a meticulously planned digital spoofing.
36:14
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, technology has constructed a grid that makes
36:17
total evasion nearly impossible.
36:19
Speaker 2: Yet the Natalie Wood case serves as the ultimate counterweight.
36:23
It reminds us that when you strip away the digital
36:26
trackers in the DNA databases, when human beings are placed
36:29
in physical isolation, their willingness to manipulate the truth in
36:33
close ranks can still grind the gears of justice to
36:36
an absolute halt.
36:37
Speaker 1: The human element, the capacity for deception, the fear of
36:40
social repercussion, the narcissism required to construct alternate realities, remains
36:45
the most unpredictable variable in any investigation, and for.
36:48
Speaker 2: You taking this deep dive with us today, this isn't
36:50
just about absorbing true crime. It is about understanding the
36:53
hidden mechanics of the world.
36:55
Speaker 1: It is about recognizing how human behavior fractures under extreme
36:59
psychological pressure, sure and realizing that the tiniest physical anomaly,
37:03
the thickness of a boot sole, the iron and a
37:06
drop of blood, the timing of a data ping, can
37:09
become the full home that flips a lie into a conviction.
37:12
Speaker 2: It illustrates that while justice can be delayed by silence,
37:16
the physical truth has a remarkable persistence.
37:19
Speaker 1: Which leaves us with a final thought to consider. We
37:22
begin by discussing the idealized version of thanksgiving, the warmth,
37:26
the safety, the impenetrable domestic.
37:28
Speaker 2: Fortress, but the anatomy of these investigations points to a
37:31
much colder reality.
37:33
Speaker 1: The holidays, with their forced proximity, their financial strains, and
37:36
their obligatory intimacy, don't create safety. They create a crucible.
37:41
Speaker 2: They are the specific moments in the year when the
37:43
masks we meticulously maintain begin to crack.
37:46
Speaker 1: As you gather around the table this year, passing the
37:48
food and sharing stories, it is worth asking a quiet question,
37:52
how well do we truly comprehend the internal lives of
37:55
the people we invite into our homes, onto our boats,
37:58
and into our absolute trust.
38:00
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us on this deep dive into the
38:01
source material. We'll see you next time.