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Revisiting Bella: Domestic Violence and Suspicious Death Reviews · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to start by picturing a photograph in
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: your mind. Okay.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: I'm with you.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: So you are looking at a picture of a 24-year-old woman.
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  Speaker 1: She was a former competitive cheerleader, a student at the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: University of North Texas. And she just has the smile.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: The kind of smile that people say could literally, you know,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: light up an entire football field. She is young. She
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: is vibrant. And her whole life is pretty much just
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: stretching out ahead of her.
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  Speaker 2: It's the kind of image that feels so full of momentum,
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  Speaker 2: you know? Yeah, exactly. You look at it and you
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: immediately project a future onto it. You imagine the graduation,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: the career, the whole life she is actively building.
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  Speaker 1: You see that momentum, totally. But then, I mean, I
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  Speaker 1: have to give you the jarring reality that just shatters
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  Speaker 1: that picture completely. Right. Just five days after her 24th birthday,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Isabella Nicole Gonzalez, and everyone called her Bella, she died. Yeah.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: She died from a single gunshot wound to the forehead.
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  Speaker 2: Which, I mean, that forces a complete mental recalibration.
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  Speaker 1: It really does.
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  Speaker 2: When you were presented with a vibrant 24-year-old and then
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: told she met this abrupt violent end, the human brain
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  Speaker 2: really struggles to bridge the gap between those two data points.
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  Speaker 1: Because human nature immediately demands an explanation, right? We need
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  Speaker 1: to know the why and the how just so we
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  Speaker 1: can try to make sense of the tragedy.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: So the Fort Worth police and the Tarrant County medical examiner,
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  Speaker 1: they looked at the scene of Bella's death, evaluated the
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  Speaker 1: immediate evidence, and they delivered their ruling. And that ruling
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  Speaker 1: was suicide.
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  Speaker 2: But here is where we hit the core conflict of
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: this entire deep dive.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Because Bella's parents, Billy and Jesse Gonzalez, they looked
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  Speaker 1: at the exact same scene, the exact same timeline, and
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  Speaker 1: they believe the ruling is fundamentally flawed.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they see something else entirely.
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  Speaker 1: They believe her death might actually be a homicide, specifically
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  Speaker 1: a homicide linked to intimate partner violence.
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  Speaker 2: And that conflict right there, that is the engine for
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  Speaker 2: everything we are going to unpack today. Because this isn't
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  Speaker 2: just about examining a single, isolated tragedy, as heartbreaking as
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  Speaker 2: it is.
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  Speaker 1: No, it's way bigger than that.
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  Speaker 2: It forces us to ask a profoundly difficult systemic question. Like,
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  Speaker 2: how does the presence of domestic abuse, or just the
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  Speaker 2: shadow of intimate partner violence, complicate the way investigators interpret
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  Speaker 2: a crime scene?
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  Speaker 1: It's a huge question. And for this, we are pulling
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  Speaker 1: heavily from some really extensive reporting by Marvin Hurst at
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: CBS News Texas.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And the sources reveal a situation that has escalated
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  Speaker 2: far beyond just a local dispute over a medical examiner's ruling.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. It has triggered a national review by outside experts.
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  Speaker 1: And it's actually sparked a legislative movement that could change
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  Speaker 1: how suspicious deaths are investigated across the entire state of Texas.
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  Speaker 2: Which is massive. It is.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, think of this deep dive like looking at
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: an optical illusion. You know those pictures where if you
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: look at it one way, it's a vase, but if
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: you shift your perspective, it's two faces looking at each other.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Rubin vase, right?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The authorities looked at the scene of Bella's death,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and their training, their protocols, it showed them one clear picture,
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  Speaker 1: and that was suicide.
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  Speaker 2: But the family looks at the exact same lines, the
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: exact same shapes of this evidence, and they see something
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  Speaker 2: entirely different.
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  Speaker 1: They see coercion, abuse, and ultimately like a cover-up of homicide.
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  Speaker 1: So we're going to examine the lines and shapes of
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  Speaker 1: this evidence together to see how both of these pictures
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  Speaker 1: are drawn.
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  Speaker 2: And to understand how the exact same evidence is being
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  Speaker 2: interpreted in two wildly different ways, we really first have
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  Speaker 2: to establish the timeline of Bella's life leading up to
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  Speaker 2: her death.
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  Speaker 1: Right, because there are two completely diverging narratives about her
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  Speaker 1: state of mind.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have to start with the baseline that
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  Speaker 2: the investigators were working from.
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  Speaker 1: You mean the official, strictly procedural standpoint?
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  Speaker 2: Yes. The investigators saw a few key things that immediately
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  Speaker 2: pointed them towards suicide. First, Bella had a documented history
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  Speaker 2: of depression.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: And in forensic investigations, a documented mental health struggle is
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  Speaker 2: often viewed as a foundational block. It establishes a pre-existing vulnerability.
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  Speaker 1: Because they're looking for a pattern.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. When an investigator arrives at a scene involving a
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  Speaker 2: gunshot wound, they are essentially working backward. They are looking
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  Speaker 2: for a behavioral runway that makes that final act logical.
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  Speaker 2: And depression provides that runway.
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  Speaker 1: It's this massive data point that just fits neatly into
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  Speaker 1: a specific investigative column. But then there's the second factor,
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  Speaker 1: and this is where the medical and procedural aspects heavily intersect,
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  Speaker 1: which was her toxicology report.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And the report was severe.
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  Speaker 1: It really was. It identified methamphetamine, amphetamine, fentanyl, and cocaine
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  Speaker 1: in her system at the time of her death.
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  Speaker 2: We really need to pause and look at the physiological
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: and psychological impact of that specific combination of narcotics.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's break that down.
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  Speaker 2: Because you are looking at a mixture of extremely potent
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: central nervous system stimulants, the meth and cocaine, combined with
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  Speaker 2: a synthetic opioid, fentanyl, which is a massive depressant.
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  Speaker 1: So functionally, what is actually happening to the human brain
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  Speaker 1: when those substances are interacting all at once?
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  Speaker 2: It basically creates a state of violent biological contradiction. The
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  Speaker 2: stimulants are flooding the brain with dopamine and norepinephrine.
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  Speaker 1: Which causes what exactly?
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  Speaker 2: It induces hypervigilance, rapid heart rate paranoia, and just a
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  Speaker 2: sense of aggressive overstimulation. The brain is telling the body
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  Speaker 2: it is in a state of extreme emergency and must react. Right.
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  Speaker 2: But at the exact same time, the fentanyl is binding
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  Speaker 2: to the opioid receptors, suppressing the respiratory system and creating
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  Speaker 2: this heavy, numbing sedation.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, so the body's essentially at war with itself.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The psychological result of this push-pull, which is often
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  Speaker 2: referred to as a speedball effect, is massive emotional instability.
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  Speaker 2: The highs are chaotic and the crashes are just devastating,
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  Speaker 2: often resulting in deep, acute despondency.
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  Speaker 1: So an investigator working from a strictly clinical and procedural
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  Speaker 1: standpoint gets this talk screened back.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: They look at a history of clinical depression and they
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  Speaker 1: combine it with this highly volatile mixture of street-level narcotics.
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  Speaker 2: And it leads them to a very straightforward, almost closed-loop conclusion.
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  Speaker 1: The narrative just forms itself, right?
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  Speaker 2: Pretty much. The narrative becomes, the victim was deeply unwell,
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  Speaker 2: self-medicating to manage her depression, spiraled completely out of control
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  Speaker 2: due to the chemical instability in her brain, and in
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  Speaker 2: a moment of chemically-induced despair, took her own life.
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  Speaker 1: I see. From an institutional perspective, the toxicology report provides
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  Speaker 1: a scientifically-backed why.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: And, I mean, I understand the institutional logic there. If
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: you are an overworked detective processing dozens of cases a
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: month and the science gives you a clean narrative, the
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  Speaker 1: incentive is to accept it.
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  Speaker 2: It's the path of least resistance.
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  Speaker 1: But the family witnessed Bella's actual life. not just her
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  Speaker 1: toxicology report. So let's look at the behavioral context they observed,
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  Speaker 1: because it paints a radically different picture of that runway
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  Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier.
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  Speaker 2: It really does.
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  Speaker 1: Five years after ending a previous relationship, Bella started seeing
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  Speaker 1: a new man, someone she eventually moved in with. And
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  Speaker 1: her mother, Billy Gonzalez, noted that Bella, quote, thought she
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: could help and save him.
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  Speaker 2: And the psychology of the rescuer in romantic relationships is
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  Speaker 2: a highly documented dynamic.
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  Speaker 1: Is it?
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  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Particularly in situations that eventually become unbalanced or abusive.
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  Speaker 2: When a capable, vibrant person, someone used to succeeding, like
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  Speaker 2: a competitive cheerleader or university student, enters a relationship with
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  Speaker 2: someone struggling, they often believe their love, their stability, or
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  Speaker 2: their competence can fix the other person's brokenness.
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  Speaker 1: Which creates a really dangerous sunk cost fallacy.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Like the more time and emotional energy you invest in
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  Speaker 1: saving someone... The harder it is to walk away when
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  Speaker 1: the situation deteriorates, right? Because walking away feels like admitting failure.
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  Speaker 2: And it often opens the door to severe boundary erosion.
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  Speaker 2: The partner who needs saving begins to dictate the emotional
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  Speaker 2: climate of the relationship.
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  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: The rescuer's needs are just constantly subjugated to the crises
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  Speaker 2: of the partner.
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  Speaker 1: And that erosion became incredibly visible to Bella's family. We
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  Speaker 1: aren't just talking about a gradual shift in her mood.
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  Speaker 1: The physical deterioration was rapid and terrifying.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the sources note she lost a significant amount of weight.
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  Speaker 1: In just nine months, Bella lost approximately 30 pounds.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, losing 30 pounds in nine months, assuming it
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  Speaker 2: is not intentional or medically supervised, is a massive physical trauma.
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  Speaker 2: It is. It speaks to chronic, severe stress. When the
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  Speaker 2: human body is subjected to constant fight-or-flight conditions, which often
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  Speaker 2: happens in highly volatile environments, the endocrine system is flooded
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  Speaker 2: with cortisol.
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  Speaker 1: So it literally changes her biology. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Digestion slows down. Appetite vanishes. And the body literally begins
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  Speaker 2: to consume its own preserves just to maintain that state
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  Speaker 2: of hyperarousal.
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  Speaker 1: And alongside that physical withering, she became increasingly isolated from
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  Speaker 1: her support systems. She pulled away from the people who
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  Speaker 1: loved her.
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  Speaker 2: Which we know is a textbook maneuvering course of control.
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  Speaker 1: Right. An abuser cannot fully control a victim if that
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  Speaker 1: victim has a strong outside reality check from family and friends.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The abuser has to sever those ties to become
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  Speaker 2: the sole source of the victim's reality.
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  Speaker 1: And most alarmingly, her family stated she began showing physical
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  Speaker 1: signs of abuse.
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  Speaker 2: So we basically have two competing paradigms for her physical
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  Speaker 2: and mental state here.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: The official paradigm sees a tragic spiral of internal depression
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  Speaker 2: and voluntary drug abuse. But the family's paradigm sees a
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  Speaker 2: victim being systematically dismantled physically, socially, and psychologically by another person.
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  Speaker 1: Which really brings up a critical question regarding how evidence
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: is weighted, specifically that toxicology report. Like when investigators get
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: a tox screen back and see meth and fentanyl, do
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  Speaker 1: they unconsciously put the victim in a box? Does the
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: mere presence of heavy stigmatized drugs make it easier for
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  Speaker 1: authorities to write off a highly complex death as just
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  Speaker 1: a simple tragedy?
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  Speaker 2: The concept you are circling there is cognitive framing, and
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  Speaker 2: it is a massive area of study in systemic bias
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  Speaker 2: within law enforcement.
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  Speaker 1: How does that work?
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  Speaker 2: Well, when investigators see hard drugs, a narrative often forms
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: instantly under the label of a high-risk lifestyle. And when
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: a death is categorized as stemming from a high-risk lifestyle,
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  Speaker 2: the investigative aperture tends to narrow significantly.
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  Speaker 1: Because the assumption is that the victim was already dancing
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: on the edge of a cliff, right? So it's not
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  Speaker 1: really surprising they fell off. The drugs answer the question
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  Speaker 1: of how they got to the edge. So the police
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  Speaker 1: just stopped looking for someone who might have pushed them.
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  Speaker 2: That is exactly the danger of the high-risk label. It
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: acts as an institutional blindfold. But if we evaluate the
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  Speaker 2: presence of those drugs through the framework of intimate partner violence...
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  Speaker 2: The toxicology report takes on a completely inverted meaning.
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  Speaker 1: How so?
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  Speaker 2: We know that drugs exacerbate mental health struggles. But in
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  Speaker 2: environments of severe domestic abuse, narcotics are rarely just a
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  Speaker 2: recreational choice or a solitary coping mechanism.
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  Speaker 1: They are a tool?
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are frequently introduced, encouraged, or heavily utilized as
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: a method of control by the abuser. Wow. An abuser
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: will often supply the drugs to keep the victim dependent.
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  Speaker 2: If the abuser is the sole source of the substance
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  Speaker 2: the victim needs to stave off physical withdrawal or emotional pain,
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  Speaker 2: the abuser holds absolute power.
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  Speaker 1: That is terrifying. It is.
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  Speaker 2: Furthermore, keeping a victim intoxicated or chemically destabilized makes them
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  Speaker 2: less capable of planning an escape, less credible if they
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: actually try to report the abuse to authorities, and much
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: more malleable to psychological manipulations.
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  Speaker 1: So the very thing the investigators might be using as
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: proof of Bella's internal unraveling, the drugs, could actually be
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  Speaker 1: the weapon the abuser used to unravel her.
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  Speaker 2: Precisely.
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  Speaker 1: If an investigator only sees an addict, they might completely
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: miss the hostage.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: And that distinction changes everything about how the physical and
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: digital evidence found at the scene should be processed.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: The contrasting views on Bella's mental state, the internal void
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: of depression versus the external terror of abuse— dictate the
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: methodology of the investigation itself.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's apply that to the written evidence. Because
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  Speaker 1: the family discovered journal entries that are just incredibly hard
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: to read. Bell explicitly wrote, quote, I get so afraid
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  Speaker 1: when I hear him wake up.
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  Speaker 2: I want you to consider the specific physiology of that statement.
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  Speaker 2: I get so afraid when I hear him wake up.
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  Speaker 2: This is not an expression of generalized sorrow or melancholia.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
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  Speaker 2: This is a description of acute hypervigilance.
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  Speaker 1: It really implies that the only time she felt a
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: baseline level of safety in her own home was when
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: he was unconscious. Yes. The mere sound of his consciousness returning,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: like the shifting of weight in the bed, footsteps on
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the floor, was enough to trigger a fear response. That
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: requires a conditioned environment of terror.
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  Speaker 2: And it directly contradicts the official narrative of a vacuum
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: of depression.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Depression is frequently characterized by apathy, an internal void, this
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: heavy numbness where the outside world feels muted. But what
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Bella is describing in those pages is sharp, externalized terror.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: The threat is not in her own mind. The threat
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: is sleeping in the next room.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just fear. Another entry explicitly detailed an
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: escape attempt. She wrote about a moment where she tried
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: to leave and the man allegedly slammed her head into
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: a wall and a doorframe.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: This is documented physical violence. So how do investigators look
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: at a journal detailing physical entrapment and head trauma and
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: still process the scene as a standard suicide?
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Historically, the criminal justice system has heavily compartmentalized domestic violence
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: and death investigations.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Okay. What does that mean in practice?
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Unless a homicide detective is specifically trained in the escalating
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: dynamics of coercive control, they might view the journal simply
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: as evidence of a toxic or chaotic relationship.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: So they dismiss it?
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: They acknowledge the relationship was bad. They acknowledge there might
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: have been assaults in the past. But they separate the
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: historical abuse from the immediate mechanism of death.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: They just look at the gun in her hand and say, well,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the boyfriend might be a terrible person who hit her,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: but he didn't pull the trigger, so it's a suicide.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They view the abuse as merely a contributing factor
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: to her depression, not as the primary active engine of
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: her demise. It's a fundamental failure to see the continuum
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: of violence.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And this clash of interpretations becomes even more volatile when
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: we look at the text messages.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, definitely.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: According to the sources, investigators read certain text messages sent
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: by Bella and interpreted them as clear suicidal ideation. They
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: were statements that, out of context, sounded like someone planning
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: to end their life.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: But a text message is essentially a frozen piece of dialogue.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Without the tone of voice, the physical body language, or
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: the history of the conversation, the words themselves can be
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: incredibly ambiguous.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: And Billy Gonzalez completely disputes the police interpretation of these texts.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: She quoted a very specific message Bella sent to her boyfriend.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: It said, quote, you doing this makes me want to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: take my own life.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Billy argues this was not some random expression of a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: desire to die. This was a direct causal reaction blaming
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: his alleged drug use and behavior.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: And the linguistic structure of that sentence is crucial there.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: It is conditional language.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: You doing this.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You doing this is the catalyst. Makes me want
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: to take my life. is the resulting extreme reaction.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Think about reading these text messages like reading a movie script,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: but you have no idea what genre of movie you're reading.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. Right.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: If the authorities assume the genre is a tragedy, the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: story of a depressed woman succumbing to her own internal demons,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: then they read a conditional text like that, and it
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: looks like a suicide note. It fits the script. They
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: assume she is just articulating her breaking point.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: But if the family knows the actual genre is a
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: hostage thriller... the story of a woman trapped by a volatile,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: controlling abuser, then that exact same text message functions entirely differently.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: It does. In the context of severe abuse, extreme statements
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: are often used as negotiation tactics.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: It's a desperate plea. When a victim is stripped of
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: all physical and financial power, sometimes the only leverage they
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: have left is their own existence.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Saying, you doing this makes me want to take my
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: life might be her trying to shock him into stopping
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: his behavior. It's saying, If you continue to hurt me,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I won't be here for you to control anymore.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: The text itself remains static, but the framework of meaning
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: wrapped around it changes completely depending on the lens of
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: the reader. If the investigators lack the framework of intimate
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: partner violence, they literally cannot read the text the way
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the victim intended it.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: They interpret a survival tactic as a death wish.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And this ambiguity isn't just limited to the words she wrote.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: It extends to the hard scientific evidence at the scene.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the DNA on the gun, because this
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: is where the forensic limitations really expose the gaps in
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the investigation.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into the forensics. The Fort Worth Crime
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Lab analyzed the firearm, and they determined that Bella was
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: the major DNA contributor on the gun.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And for an investigator looking for a clean, scientific answer,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a major contributor finding is a massive checkmark in the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: suicide column. It means she handled the weapon extensively.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: It confirms her physical interaction with the mechanism of her death, yes.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: But the crime lab also found a minor DNA profile.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: There was genetic material from an unknown male on that weapon.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Like a genetic ghost.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Yes. Now, the caveat from the crime lab is that
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: this genetic material was insufficient for further analysis.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: What does that mean practically?
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: It means the sample was too degraded or too small
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: to extract a complete enough profile to run through the
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: FBI's CODIS database and find a match.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of DNA testing, why
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: does that happen? Like, why can they say it's an
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: unknown male, but they can't figure out who?
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: So forensic DNA analysis relies on identifying specific markers, or loci,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: along a DNA strand. Think of them as letters in
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a highly complex password. To get a match in a database,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: you need to confidently identify a certain number of those
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: letters in the correct order. When a person touches a
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: textured surface like a gun grip, They leave behind skin cells.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: This is called touch DNA. Right. But if they only
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: touched it briefly, or if someone else handled the gun
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: heavily afterward and deposited thousands of their own cells over
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: the exact same area, the initial DNA profile becomes fragmented. Ah,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I see. The lab can look at the fragments and
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: see the Y chromosome, indicating a male, but they don't
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: have enough of the password to point to a specific individual.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: To present the full context from the sources here, the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: family openly acknowledges that this unknown minor DNA profile could
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: belong to Bella's father, Jesse. He actually purchased the gun
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: for her protection. So it is entirely plausible his DNA
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: was transferred to the weapon and just lingered there. Right.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: And the family's argument is not that the minor DNA
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: profile definitively proves the boyfriend pulled the trigger.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: What is their argument then?
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Their argument is much more nuanced and fundamental. They are
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: arguing that the physical evidence a cannot and does not
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: rule out another person's presence or active involvement in her death.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Because we have been culturally conditioned by crime shows to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: believe that DNA is this magical, omniscient storyteller, right? Like,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: if your DNA is on the murder weapon, you did it.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: If it's not, you're innocent.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: But that's a dangerous oversimplification.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: It is a profound misunderstanding of forensic science. DNA tells
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you about a physical transfer of cells. It tells you
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: absolutely nothing about context, coercion, or intent.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Nothing at all.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: It does not record the psychological state of the room
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: in those final moments.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't. Let's play out a hypothetical scenario to
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: illustrate this.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: A person could be handed a loaded gun by an abuser.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: The abuser could say, do it or I will kill
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: your family. The victim holds the gun, cries, hesitates, gripping
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: the weapon tightly for 10 minutes while the abuser screams
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: at them. Okay. The victim's DNA will be the major contributor.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: The abuser, who maybe only touched the gun briefly with
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: a shirt sleeve to hand it over, might leave an
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: insufficient minor profile or no DNA at all.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Wow. So forensics alone cannot capture the invisible mechanics of
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: power and control. A swab of a gun grip cannot
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: detect the presence of a psychological hostage situation.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It means the science can actually protect the abuser
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: if we rely on it too heavily without factoring in
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: the behavioral context.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And this ambiguity, the fact that the local police looked
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: at the texts, the journals, and the DNA, and still
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: just closed the book, is exactly why the Gonzalez family
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: had to look outside the local department for help.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: The system failed to see the whole picture. It did.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the systemic issues of how deaths
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: are classified and the involvement of an organization called One
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Safe Place. Right.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: One Safe Place. They are a family justice center located
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: in Fort Worth designed specifically to serve survivors of domestic
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: violence by bringing multiple social and legal services under one roof.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And the key figure we need to focus on here
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: is Michelle Morgan, the executive vice president of One Safe
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Place and the director of the Family Justice Center.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Yes. And what is crucial about Morgan's perspective is her background.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: She's a former Fort Worth police employee.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: So she knows how they operate.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: She understands the investigative side, the procedural hurdles and the
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: institutional mindset intimately. Morgan reviewed portions of Bella's journal, the
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: exact same journal the police had access to.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: And what was her conclusion?
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Her conclusion was completely unequivocal. She stated, quote, You can
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: 100 percent tell that there is some power and control
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: that is happening.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: When a domestic violence expert uses the phrase power and control,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: They are not using colloquial.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Buzzwords, are they? Not at all. They are identifying a
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: highly specific, empirically studied pattern of behavior that drastically elevates
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: the risk of lethality in a relationship.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: They are looking at the Duluth model of power and control,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: things like the use of intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, minimizing, denying,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and blaming.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Morgan saw the red flags that the standard investigative lens
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: just filtered out because the police were looking for a sudden,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: spontaneous act of violence.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Whereas Morgan was looking for a chronic, escalating campaign of subjugation.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: And Morgan took action. She connected Bella's case to a
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: national team of experts trained specifically to examine deaths where
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: domestic violence might have been overlooked or misclassified.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: They specialize in looking at the optical illusion from the
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: perspective of IPV.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Which shifts the story from a local tragedy to a
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: potential national catalyst. However, the source material includes a massive
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: institutional caveat here.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a pretty big one.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: This national review has no deadline. And more importantly, the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Fort Worth police are not required to adopt its findings.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Right. The police issued a statement indicating they consider all
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: possibilities and work in conjunction with a medical examiner. But
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: they notably did not commit to a formal reinvestigation of
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Bella's case based on the national team's review.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: This just highlights the incredible thickness of institutional walls. Why
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: is it so difficult for a police department to simply say, OK,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: experts are looking at this. Maybe we missed something. Let's
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: reopen the case.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: It comes down to institutional inertia and liability.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: OK, how so?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Reopening a closed case, especially one officially ruled a suicide
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: by the medical examiner, requires significant manpower and funding, which
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: departments are always short on.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: But psychologically and institutionally, it requires the department to admit
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: a potential flaw in their initial methodology. Furthermore, the police
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: are constrained by the legal standard of proof.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: What does that mean in this context?
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: A domestic violence advocate can look at a journal and
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: see 100% power and control. But a detective has to
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: look at that same journal and ask, can I present
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: this to a district attorney and prove beyond a reasonable
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: doubt that a specific individual committed a specific felony on
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: a specific night? Ah, okay. Those are two very different thresholds.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: But Morgan and her team aren't just looking at Bella's
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: case in a vacuum, fighting one local department. They are
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: looking at the macro-level math. They are compiling... broader data.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: And what they found is just staggering.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: It really is. Let's unpack the study being conducted by
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Morgan and the School of Social Work at the University
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: of Texas at Arlington.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Let's get into the UTA study.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: This research is attempting to quantify the invisible overlap between
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: the domestic violence support system and the homicide investigation system.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: The UTA researchers initially looked at 279 deaths in the
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: region that were officially classified as either suicides or undetermined
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: deaths between the years 2020 and 2025. They later expanded
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: this review to cover an entire decade.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: And what they did next is the critical part. They
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: took those 279 names, people the state determined either killed
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: themselves or died under ambiguous circumstances, and cross-referenced them with
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the confidential database at One Safe Place.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: They were looking for individuals who had sought help for
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: domestic violence while they were alive, who later ended up
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: dead by suicide.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And out of that initial batch, they found nine matches.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Nine matches.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Nine people who had interacted with the Family Justice Center
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: fleeing abuse, whose lives ended in suicide or undetermined deaths.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Now, a listener might do the quick math on that
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and think nine out of 279. That's a relatively small percentage.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Is that a statistically significant problem?
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: It is vital to clarify what those nine matches represent.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Finding nine matches does not automatically mean that nine homicides
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: were definitely misclassified as suicides.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Right. It is not direct, one-to-one proof of nine murders. No.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: But it raises vital, systemic questions that the current architecture
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: of law enforcement is just not designed to ask. Like what?
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: When a woman comes to a family justice center fleeing
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: an abuser, she leaves a documented paper trail of her terror.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: When she later dies of a supposed suicide, Morgan and
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: her team are asking... What were these survivors disclosing to
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: advocates when they sought help? What were their danger scores?
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: The concept of a danger score or a lethality assessment
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: is fundamental to domestic violence advocacy, isn't it?
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: It is. It is a standardized empirical tool, often based
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: on models like the Campbell Danger Assessment. It's a series
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: of questions designed to calculate the statistical likelihood that an
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: abuser will murder the victim.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: What kind of data actually goes into calculating that score?
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: The questions are highly specific. Does the abuser own a gun?
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Has the abuser ever threatened to kill you or your children?
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Is the abuser unemployed?
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Wow, so very targeted.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Yes. Has the abuser ever forced you to have sex?
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: And crucially, has the abuser ever tried to choke you?
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Non-fatal strangulation is one of the highest predictors of future
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: homicide in domestic violence cases.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: That's horrifying.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: If a victim answers yes to a certain combination of
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: these questions, they score very high. indicating they are in
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: extreme imminent danger of being killed.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: So if one of these nine women had an extremely
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: high danger score at one safe place, meaning statistically her
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: abuser was highly likely to kill her, and then a
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: year later she's found dead with a gun in her
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: hand and it's rapidly ruled a suicide, that is a
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: massive structural red flag.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: The UTA research forces us to ask, were they in
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: extreme danger for homicide to occur before they died? had
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: they made previous police reports that were ignored, minimized, or
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: filed away without follow-up.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: It exposes a fatal fracture in the system. The domestic
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: violence support networks hold all the behavioral and historical data,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and the homicide detectives hold all the forensic data, but
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: the two systems are operating in silos.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They aren't talking to each other.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Which points us to the ultimate goal of all this research.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: They aren't just trying to point fingers at local police departments.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: They are trying to build a completely new investigative architecture.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: The goal is creating a regional, multidisciplinary review team.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, Morgan noted that there is no system right now
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: set up to review these cases with cross-agency coordination.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: It's all separated.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Currently, the medical examiner looks at the body to determine
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: the mechanical cause of death. The police look at the
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: immediate physical scene. But no protocol requires anyone to look
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: at the victim's history of domestic violence as a crucial
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: forensic tool for determining the manner of death.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: It's like trying to solve a puzzle where half the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: pieces are locked in a different building and nobody has
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the key.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner has the tox report, the detective has
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the gun, and the social worker has the journal detailing
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the abuse. But there is no table for them to
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: all sit around and assemble.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: The picture together.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Together. This lack of coordination is literally bearing the truth.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: And while systems and bureaucracies take years to change, the
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: families left behind are paying the emotional and financial price
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: of these blind spots every single day. They really are.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: We have to bring this back down to the deeply
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: personal human cost of of this institutional friction.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Part of that emotional toll for the victim's family is
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: navigating the narrative of the person accused of the abuse.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: According to the sources, CBS News Texas attempted to contact
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: the man Bella lived with. And as a reminder to
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you listening, we are withholding his identity because he has
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: not been officially named a suspect or charged with a
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: crime in connection to her death.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: When the reporters reached out, they did not speak to
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: him directly. They reached a woman identifying herself as his mother.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: And her response encapsulates the profound divide in how this
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: event is processed. The mother claimed he was unavailable. And
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: then she questioned why the story was even being pursued
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: by the news at all.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Her reasoning was chillingly simple. She stated that Bella was
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: already dead.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: The psychological weight of that response on a grieving family
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: is just devastating. To the family of the accused, the
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: event is over.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: It's in the past.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: The death is an ending, a closed door. The medical
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: examiner made a ruling and the situation is resolved. The
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: inquiry is seen as an unnecessary annoyance.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: But to the victim's family, the death isn't an ending.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: It is a sprawling, terrifying, unresolved question that haunts their
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: every waking moment.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Hearing the phrase, she's already dead, is a complete dismissal
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: of their daughter's value. It invalidates their need for truth
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: and accountability. It's an assertion that the pain of the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: grieving family is less important than the convenience of the accused.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: And that deep, relentless need for answers, born from that
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: kind of dismissal, is what has fueled Billy and Jesse
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Gonzalez to push for legislative change.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: They are turning their grief into action.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: They are no longer just asking for a new investigation
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: into their daughter's case. They are pushing Texas lawmakers to
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: mandate a systemic overhaul. They are advocating for what they
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: call Bella's Law.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Ambella's law represents a potentially revolutionary shift in legal and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: investigative protocol regarding suspicious deaths.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: At its core, the mechanics of this proposed legislation would
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: mandate much more thorough multi-agency investigations of suicides and undetermined
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: deaths whenever there is documented evidence of intimate partner violence.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It essentially attempts to legally mandate the multidisciplinary review team
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: that Morgan is advocating for.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so making it a requirement.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. If there is a history of abuse, like protective orders,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: domestic violence center records, prior police calls, the investigators cannot
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: simply check the suicide box based on the immediate physical scene.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: They are legally required to dig deeper into the behavioral history.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: It forces the investigators to put on those hostage thriller
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: glasses we talked about. But the most radical and legally
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: complex aspect of Bella's Law is about accountability.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, the accountability piece is huge.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Billy Gonzalez wants this law to seek accountability for abusers
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: if their abuse is proven to have contributed to a
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: death by suicide.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: And this is where the legal philosophy becomes incredibly dense.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: You are talking about attempting to hold a person criminally
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: responsible for a death where the victim technically, mechanically pulled
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: the trigger or swallowed the pills.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Traditionally, criminal law operates on very rigid binary lines regarding causation,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't it?
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: It does. Homicide is when person A kills person B.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Suicide is when person A kills person A. Right. The
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: law views suicide as an independent, autonomous act of the self.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: In legal terms, suicide is often viewed as a superseding
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: intervening cause.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: It breaks the chain of liability. If you abuse someone
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: and they later kill themselves, the law generally says their
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: decision to end their life supersedes your abuse as the
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: direct cause of death.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: But Bella's Law challenges that foundational premise. It argues that
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: autonomy can be systematically destroyed. It blurs that rigid legal
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: line by introducing the concept of psychological coercion as a
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: lethal weapon.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: If an abuser systematically destroys a person's mental health, cuts
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: off their support systems, subjects them to physical terror, controls
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: their access to money and food, and essentially traps them
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: in a psychological burning building... Or jumping out the window
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: seems like the only escape. Is that truly an autonomous
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: act of suicide?
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Bella's Law asks the justice system to recognize that extreme
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: coercive control can negate a victim's free will. Wow. It
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: suggests that if you architect the environment that makes suicide
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: the only logical escape for the victim, you share culpability
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: for the death. It really pushes the boundaries of how
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: we define manslaughter.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Fighting for a paradigm shift of that magnitude, trying to
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: change centuries of legal precedent regarding autonomy and causation, is
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: a monumental task.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: It is exhausting.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: The toll it takes on a family is grueling. The
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: sources detail how the Gonzalez family has essentially drained their
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: life savings.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fighting the system isn't cheap.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: They are hiring independent experts, gathering investigative records themselves, and
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: funding their own parallel investigation.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: They are absorbing the financial and investigative burden that they
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: believe the state failed to shoulder. And beyond the financial drain,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: the emotional and geographical reality of their daily life has
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: been permanently altered.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Their daughter's grave has become a daily destination for them.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Every single day, they are physically anchoring themselves to their loss.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Billy Gonzalez had a quote that perfectly encapsulates the reality
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: of this kind of ambiguous, unresolved loss. She said, quote,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: When you lose a child, there's no moving on. You
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: move with.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: You move with. It is a profound articulation of how
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: grief operates.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: Society often treats grief as an obstacle you eventually walk past,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: an illness you recover from. But when a loss is
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: complicated by unresolved questions of violence and systemic failure, it
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: becomes the gravity of your new reality.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: You don't move past it. You just learn how to
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: carry the immense weight of it as you force yourself
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to walk forward.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: And right now, they are carrying that weight straight into
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: the Texas legislature. demanding that no other family has to
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: carry it the way they do.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: We started this journey with a photograph of a smiling
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: young woman, a tragic gunshot, and a swift official ruling
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of suicide based on a talk screen and a history
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: of depression.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: But by slowing down and unpacking the layers, the terrifying
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: journals detailing physical abuse, the highly disputed and conditional text messages,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: the severe limitations of touch DNA profiling, and the glaring
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: systemic lack of cross-agency coordination, between domestic violence advocates and
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: homicide detectives. We see the optical illusion flip.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: We see how easily and how quietly intimate partner violence
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: can be buried right alongside the victim. The system in
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: its current iteration is not designed to see the invisible
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: bruises of coercive control.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: No, it's not.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: The Gonzalez family is fighting to change the entire apparatus
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: of how Texas, and potentially the country, views suspicious deaths.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: They are demanding that the justice system look at the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: whole picture, not just the final frame.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Consider everything we've explored regarding the law and human autonomy.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: We legally define suicide as an act of the self,
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: a decision made entirely independent of outside forces. Right. But
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: if a person is systematically isolated from everyone they love,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: if they are subjected to extreme, daily power and control,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: if they are writing in their journals about the terror
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: of a man simply waking up and their head is
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: being slammed into door frames, well, at what point does
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: the person pulling the trigger cease to be the sole
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: author of their own death?
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: That's the real question.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Even if the National Review ultimately concludes that Bella Gonzalez's
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: death was mechanically a suicide, Bella's law forces us to
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: ask a much darker, much more necessary question. If an
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: abuser hands you the pen, who really wrote the tragic ending?
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. Keep
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: looking closely at the pictures you're shown and never stop
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: questioning the narratives presented to you. We'll talk to you
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: next time.