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Michigan Police Suggest Possible Serial Killer Responsible In Lansing Michigan · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine trying to sleep, knowing that the very act of
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: closing your eyes makes you a target.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: It's a terrifying thought.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It really is. Over the last eight weeks, the shadows
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of the Lansing River Trail have basically become a hunting ground.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we are looking at a highly fluid, really
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: volatile investigation right now.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Because the most vulnerable people in a community are being
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: attacked in the dark, in the exact moments when they
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: are completely defenseless.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: You are looking at a scenario that just terrifies law enforcement.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, the data points they are working with are
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: scattered across months. And they involve victims who live almost
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: entirely off the grid. Plus, the level of violence is
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: escalating in a densely packed geographic area.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this deep dive. I'm so glad you could
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: join us. Our mission today is to map out this
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: emerging threat unfolding right now in Michigan's capital city.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: And we have some very recent data to go through.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: We do. We are pulling directly from a breaking ABC
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: News report that was published just yesterday, October 7th, 2026.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Which is crazy to think about just how fresh this is.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's happening right now. This report covers a highly unusual,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: incredibly tense press conference held on October 2nd by Lansing
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Police Chief Robert Backus. Right.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: And we are going to decode the unsettling temporal and
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: geographic patterns the police have identified along that trail.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: We're also going to examine the incredibly complex line that
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: law enforcement has to walk when a city is on
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: edge about a potential serial killer.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Not to mention the forensic bottlenecks that keep investigators basically
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: just waiting for answers.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The immediacy of this cannot be overstated. Today is
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: October 8th, 2026. So for you listening, you are getting
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: a real-time analysis of an active investigation involving five distinct deaths.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: And in cases of potential serial crimes... I mean, the
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: initial facts are rarely a cohesive picture. It's usually a mess. Right.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: It's like a chaotic jigsaw puzzle.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Our goal today is not to sensationalize the tragedy,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: but to logically analyze the data the police are interrogating.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: To look at the forensic reality of blunt force trauma.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the strategic restraint Tief Backus is employing when,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: you know, the public is essentially demanding an immediate arrest.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: OK, let's unpack this.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Because to understand the pattern, we first have to understand
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the timeline.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: The sequence of events is everything here.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the timeline of these five incidents reads kind
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: of like an epidemiological cluster.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good way to put it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Like you have an index case, a long incubation period,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and then this sudden localized outbreak of extreme violence.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It starts back in the fall of 2025, October 14th
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: to be exact. Police receive a call about an injured
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: person on the trail.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: And they find Gino Chouinard.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Right, a 54-year-old man. And he has severe injuries to
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: his face.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He's transported for medical care, but he actually succumbs
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: to those injuries weeks later on October 27th.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets frustrating. The medical examiner evaluates
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the case and issues a finding of an undetermined cause
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of death.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Which means legally it's in limbo.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Right. So for months, this just sits as a tragic,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: isolated incident on the books.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: It remains this total anomaly in the data for nearly
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: three quarters of a year.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Nine whole months.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That nine-month gap between October 2025 and the summer
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: of 2026 is critical. I mean, a nine-month cessation in
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: extreme violence is a massive variable for behavioral analysts.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Because it's so long.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. In criminology, when you observe a sudden stop followed
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: by a really dense escalation, investigators immediately start looking at
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: geographic and systemic factors.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Like maybe they left town. Right.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Did the perpetrators secure or transient work out of state?
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Where they incarcerated for an entirely unrelated, maybe lesser offense.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Like a property crime or an assault.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, during that winter and spring, only to be released
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: back into the Lansing area in the summer.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Or, I mean, factoring in the harsh reality of a
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Michigan winter.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: The extreme weather alone changes the entire landscape of the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: river trail.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: The transient population shifts, the foot traffic changes, and, well,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the opportunities for a predator just kind of vanish under
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the snow.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: That environmental factor is huge. Yeah. It completely alters the
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: victim pool.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: But police also have to consider the very real possibility
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: that the death of Gina Schooley in October 2025 is
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: a false positive for the larger pattern.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Wait, you mean it might not be connected at all?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It might be genuinely unrelated to the summer 2026 cluster. However,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: if it is the same perpetrator, that first attack often
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: serves as the initial psychological crossing of the line.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: The offender commits that first act of extreme violence, and
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: the psychological weight or simply the immediate fear of apprehension
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: forces them into a dormant state.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: They lay low.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The compulsion retreats, but it doesn't dissipate. It builds.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And when it erupts, it erupts with terrifying density.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: We move into the summer of 2026, July 9th. Police
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: find 70-year-old Dennis Dunback unresponsive on the trail.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: He's older, 70 years old.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Right. He is critical, taken to the hospital, and he
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: dies a week later on July 16th.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: And this is important. As of the October press conference,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: his medical examiner finding is still pending.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Still pending. But the police don't even have time to
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: process Dunback's death before the next attack happens.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: It's just days later.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Four days later, July 13th, 2026. 57-year-old Robert Smith is
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: found unresponsive, bleeding heavily from the head.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: And he dies on July 17th.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: What's fascinating here is how law enforcement utilizes these temporal
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: clusters to establish the framework of a serial pattern.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Because it's not just one or two isolated things anymore.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Right. That sheer density of the July timeline, two fatal
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: attacks within four days, That is the trigger mechanism for
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the serial killer alarm within any investigative unit.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: It shifts the statistical probability away from random, isolated altercations
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: and straight toward a systematic hunt.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: And the cluster doesn't stop in July. We hit August
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and the violence actually accelerates.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It speeds up.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. August 20th, a 22-year-old named Daniel Lusk is found
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: stabbed to death.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Now, for this specific case, police do make an arrest, right?
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: They do. Edward Joseph Smith.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: But just 10 days after Lusk is found, on August 30th,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: a 57-year-old man named Louis Woodruff is found under a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: bridge with apparent facial injuries.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: 10 days later.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: 10 days. He dies on September 1st. And this, like
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Robert Smith's death, is classified as a homicide. Wow. So
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: you have four fatal incidents compressed into just eight weeks.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: The sheer velocity of that summer timeline is staggering. I mean,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: when investigators map that kind of temporal acceleration... They are
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: looking at an offender who is rapidly losing impulse control.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: The cooling off period has totally vanished.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The attacks are becoming a routine.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And the sheer density of that summer timeline just panicked
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the city. But the timeline alone doesn't prove.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: A serial killer. No, you need more than just dates.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Right. For Chief Backus to connect these dots, he had
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: to look at the terrifying similarities in who was dying
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: in the dark.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: We have to look at the intersection of the MO
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and the victimology.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Yes. Chief Backus laid out very specific demographic markers. All
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: five victims are white males ranging in age from 22
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to 70 years old.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: The age range is broad, which tells us that youth
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: or advanced age isn't the primary selection criteria for the offender.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Right. They aren't just targeting the elderly or just the youth. No.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: The true connecting thread is their housing status. Yeah. All
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: of the victims are believed to be unhoused. And the
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: temporal element of the attacks... overnight or in the very
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: early morning hours, paints a really grim picture of the environment.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Backus stated they believe the victims were attacked while lying down,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: potentially even while they were sleeping.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: You are looking at a population that is forced to
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: live their most private, vulnerable moments in public spaces.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: It's heartbreaking.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: It is. The source material references a related narrative about
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: how unhoused people are often unfairly assumed to be dangerous
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: by the general public.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Right. There's that stigma.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: But we have to completely invert that assumption here. The
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: unhoused are the uniquely vulnerable prey in this scenario. Yeah.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: When you are sleeping under a bridge, like Louis Woodruff,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: you don't have a locked door. You don't have a
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: security system.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: You're just out there.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: You are a static target.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: And the method of the attack really highlights that vulnerability.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: In four of these cases... The MO involves severe blunt
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: force trauma, specifically targeting the facial area.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: And with no known weapon left at the scene. Right.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: No weapon.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Targeting the face with blunt force isn't just about inflicting
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: fatal damage. It feels highly depersonalizing.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: It's very intimate in a horrible way.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: It's like an attempt to obliterate identity, to take individuals
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: whom society often already renders invisible and literally erase their faces.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: The psychology of facial blunt force trauma is intensely brutal.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, it requires close physical proximity.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: You have to be right there.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it requires significant kinetic energy. Doing it to
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: a sleeping victim requires a level of predatory calculation that
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: is just deeply disturbing.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: But you mentioned four out of the five cases involved
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: blunt force trauma.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Right. Which brings me to Daniel Lusk, the 22-year-old found
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: on August 20th. He was stabbed to death.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the outlier.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The others suffered blunt force trauma. If four out
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of five cases involve blunt force and no weapon left behind,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: a stabbing seems to completely disrupt the established MO.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: It does seem that way.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: It really begs the question, do serial offenders suddenly adapt
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: their methods in the middle of a high-velocity spree?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: It is a really common misconception that offenders have rigid,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: unchanging methods.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Like you see on TV. Right.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly like TV. Real-world criminal investigations often reveal adaptation. Really? Yeah.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: An offender might adapt based on Pure opportunity or just
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: a shift in the environment.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Like if they stumble across a different weapon.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Or sometimes it's based on panic. Think about it.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: If a victim wakes up before the blunt force strike
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: can be delivered and they fight back. Oh, wow. It
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: might necessitate a totally different lethal approach in the heat
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: of the moment.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: So the weapon might just be whatever is available or
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: whatever is required to maintain control of a really chaotic situation.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Yes. Or it could simply be a matter of acquiring
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: a new weapon. Perhaps the offender didn't possess a bladed
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: weapon for the July attacks, but they acquired one by
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: late August and deployed it.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: However, we have to weigh that against another crucial possibility.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Which is?
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: The stabbing of Daniel Lusk might be an entirely separate
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: crime committed by a totally different person.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, right. Because they do have a suspect. Yes.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: They have a distinct suspect, Edward Joseph Smith, in custody
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: for that specific murder.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Which implies an even darker reality for Lansing.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: It means you have a baseline of lethal violence against
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the unhoused population occurring simultaneously with a serial blunt force
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: offender operating in the exact same geographic footprint.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: It highlights the extreme danger of that specific environment right now.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: It means the River Trail was experiencing a convergence of violence.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: A convergence.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But this brings us to a procedural reality that
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: often totally baffles the public.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: The delay.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The police are seeing this convergence of violence in
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: July and August. They are looking at the bodies. They
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: are seeing the blunt force trauma.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: And yet it takes until October for a police chief
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: to stand at a podium and talk about a potential
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: serial killer. The delay feels almost incomprehensible to someone living
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: in that city. I mean, why wait? But that delay
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: leads us directly into the massive bureaucratic and scientific bottleneck
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: of the medical examiner's office.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: The timeline of forensic pathology dictates the timeline of the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: entire criminal investigation.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: They just can't move faster than the science.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Detectives cannot outpace the science.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the actual dates of that science because
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the lag is staggering.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Gino Shandy's death from October 2025 is still classified as undetermined.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Still?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Still. Dennis Dunback, found on July 9th, 2026. As of
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: this October press conference, his death still has absolutely no
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: medical examiner finding.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: And then you have Robert Smith. He's found on July 13th,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: bleeding heavily from his head. He dies on July 17th.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: But his death wasn't officially ruled a homicide until September 17th.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Two months later.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: That is a two-month gap. Why does it take two
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: months for a medical professional to determine that a man
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: found bleeding from his head on a trail was murdered?
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Well, we have to dive into the biomechanics of head
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: trauma and the immense legal threshold a medical examiner must meet. Okay.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Think about it. When a victim is shot, the projectile
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: path and the gunshot wound make the cause of death
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: both medically and legally apparent within hours.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: It's obvious. Right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Blunt force trauma, especially when there is no weapon left
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: at the scene, is a forensic labyrinth.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Because without a bloody pipe or a hammer sitting next
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: to the body, you have to prove that the trauma
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: didn't come from the environment itself.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You are trying to definitively distinguish between gravity and malice. Wow.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Gravity and malice.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Imagine the scene. An unhoused individual is found deceased on
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: a concrete trail or under a concrete bridge with massive
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: head trauma.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: There's concrete everywhere.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Right. The medical examiner must scientifically rule out every other
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: conceivable possibility before declaring it a homicide.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Did this person trip in the dark and strike their
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: head on a concrete piling? Did they suffer a massive
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: medical episode, like a severe seizure, a sudden cardiac event,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: or a stroke that caused them to fall violently.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. And compounding that, you're dealing with a
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: population that often has a myriad of untreated underlying health conditions.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: The lack of access to consistent medical care means comorbidities
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: are incredibly common.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: And the forensic pathologist has to account for all of
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: those comorbidities during the autopsy.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: That sounds exhausting.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: It is. They are examining the brain for hemorrhage patterns
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: to determine the sequence of events.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: What are they looking for?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: For instance, they have to distinguish a coup-contra-coup injury.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: A what?
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: A coup-contra-coup injury, which typically occurs when a moving head
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: strikes a stationary object.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Like falling and hitting the pavement. Right.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: They have to distinguish that from a localized depressed skull fracture.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, and what does that mean?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: That is indicative of the kinetic energy from a moving weapon,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: like a bat or a pipe striking a stationary head.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, so they have to literally map the fracture patterns
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: on the skull to prove a weapon was used.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Even if the weapon is gone.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: And that biomechanical analysis takes significant time. Furthermore, the medical
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: examiner is mandated to run exhaustive toxicology screens.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: To see if they were under the influence.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Yes. They have to determine if alcohol, narcotics, or synthetic
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: substances played a role in a potential accidental fall or
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: a medical event.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And those tests aren't?
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Instant. Not at all. Depending on the backlog at the
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: state or county crime lab, those specific panel results can
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: take six to eight weeks to process.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: So that forensic bottleneck completely shackles the police department.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Because detectives are bound by the law, you cannot legally
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: assign massive department resources or secure wiretaps or pull vast
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: amounts of digital surveillance data for a homicide investigation if
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: you don't legally have a murder on the books.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: No, you can't. Until the medical examiner officially signs that
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: paperwork and rules it a homicide, it is technically just
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: a suspicious death investigation.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Which means during those two months of waiting for the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: toxicology and the fracture analysis on Robert Smith, the killer
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: was potentially still operating. And the police hands were procedurally
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: tied by the speed of the science.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: It's tragic, but the speed of the laboratory rarely matches
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: the speed of the street.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: But eventually the science catches up. The homicides are confirmed.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: And the police do make a major move.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: They arrest Edward Joseph Smith in connection with the stabbing
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: of the 22-year-old Daniel Lusk. He is arraigned on September
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: 3rd and charged with open murder.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Now, historically, when a city is terrified of a predator
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: in the parks and the police finally parade a suspect
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: in front of the cameras, it's designed to be this
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: moment of massive public relief.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Like a huge sigh of relief for the whole town. Exactly.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: The inherent narrative is, we got him. The parks are safe.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: But Chief Backus doesn't do that.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: No, he doesn't.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: He actually issues a stark warning.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: He fundamentally disrupts the expectation of a neatly closed case.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. The press obviously zeroes
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: in on the single suspect.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Because that's what they do.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They ask Chief Backus if Edward Joseph Smith is
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the suspect for all five of these incidents. And Backus
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: urges extreme caution.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: He was very deliberate about that.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: He explicitly warns against using a suspect's name to retrofit
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: evidence just to make it fit a convenient theory.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Which is so important.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: He states that doing so leads to inappropriate charges, misidentification,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and what he calls very big problems. Yeah.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, what Chief
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Backus is publicly guarding against is a systemic cognitive trap
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: known as confirmation bias.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Confirmation bias. Yes.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: And in high-stakes law enforcement, confirmation bias is incredibly destructive.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, the pressure on these detectives must be unimaginable.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: You have a terrified public, a ravenous local media, and
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: city officials demanding that the river trail be declared safe
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: for commerce and recreation.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: The pressure is crushing. And under that immense crushing pressure,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: the psychological temptation to look at the one man you
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: already have sitting in a county jail cell.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Edward Joseph Smith. Right.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: To look at him and pin every unresolved, geographically similar
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: crime on him is profound.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Because it would just solve everything so neatly.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If investigators succumb to that bias, they start looking
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: at the blunt force trauma cases exclusively through the lens
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: of Smith's guilt.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: They start forcing the pieces to fit.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Yes. It's like finding one puzzle piece that fits the
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: edge of the board and then using a hammer to
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: smash that same piece into the center of the board
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: just because it has the same colors.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a perfect analogy.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: They will unconsciously discard or minimize forensic evidence that points
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: away from him.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And they will artificially magnify any circumstantial detail that might
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: possibly link him to the other scenes.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: But Backus is drawing a hard line in the sand.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: He really is. By publicly stating that they cannot assume
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Smith is the perpetrator for the blunt force attacks, he
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: is actively preserving the integrity of the broader investigation.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Because the cost of getting it wrong here isn't just
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: a lost court case.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: The collateral damage is unthinkable. If Edward Joseph Smith is
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: only responsible for the stabbing of Daniel Lusk, and he
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: has absolutely nothing to do with the blunt force traumas
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: inflicted on the other men.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Then you have a huge problem.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Prematurely pinning those crimes on him does two catastrophic things. First,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: it ruins the prosecution's credibility.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: But more importantly, it means the real serial tiller, the
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: individual actively targeting sleeping men with blunt force, remains completely free, unmonitored,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: and confident on the river trail.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Law enforcement would essentially be granting the real killer functional
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: immunity by locking up the wrong man for those specific crimes.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: It is. The source material briefly notes a headline regarding
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: the Gilgo Beach murders and the suspect, Rex Heuermann.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Right, in New York. Yeah.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Now, we aren't analyzing the specifics of that case today,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: But it serves as a macro-level example of this exact
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: investigative philosophy.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Well, unraveling true serial patterns, untangling overlapping M.O.s, and ensuring
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: you have the correct forensic link for every specific victim.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: It takes time.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: It often requires years of agonizingly slow, unrushed evidence gathering.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Just to make sure it's undeniably the right person.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: So Chief Backus is basically telling the city of Lansing...
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Justice requires patience, and we will not sacrifice accuracy for
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the sake of speed.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Which is brave, honestly.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: It is, but that creates an incredibly difficult reality for
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the community right now.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: It means the threat vector is officially still active.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the people utilizing
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the public spaces in Lansing today?
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: That's the big question.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: How does a city respond to an ongoing shadow on
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: its trail system while the police are methodically building their case?
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: It requires an immediate pivot toward public safety infrastructure.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Which leads us directly into the incredibly complex debate over
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: urban surveillance.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Chief Backus mentioned that they have established a specific tip
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: line dedicated entirely to river trail assaults. Right. But he
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: also waded into the infrastructure debate. He stated that surveillance
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: is a hot topic in the city right now, and
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: he explicitly called for more cameras.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: He firmly believes that an increased surveillance network would help
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: law enforcement in this specific scenario.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Well, this raises an important question, and it forces us
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: to navigate the deep tension between privacy, security, and the
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: harsh realities of urban geography.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: It's a tough balance. If you live in a city
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: with river trails and parks, how do you balance the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: desire for natural, unmonitored spaces with the need for safety?
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We have to analyze why the unhoused population is
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: utilizing the Lansing River Trail as a sleeping ground in
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the first place.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Well, they aren't there for the scenic views.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: No.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: They are there for the seclusion. It's away from the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: storefront cameras, the traffic lights, the constant monitoring of downtown
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: business districts. Right. It offers a fragile layer of privacy
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: for individuals who have nowhere else to exist.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: It is a geographic paradox known in urban planning as displacement.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Displacement. Yeah.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: If the city's reaction to these tragic murders is to
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: blanket the river trail with high-definition cameras, floodlights, and increased patrols,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: they aren't necessarily solving the underlying vulnerability of the unhoused population.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: What are they doing then?
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: They are simply stripping away the last remaining shred of
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: seclusion these individuals have.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Oh. And when you increase surveillance in one marginalized area,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you don't magically house the population. You just push them
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: out of the frame.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: You displace them. You push the unhoused population deeper into
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the woods, into abandoned industrial sectors, or into even darker,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: more isolated areas where the cameras cannot reach.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: And if they are pushed into those extreme margins... They
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: become even harder for emergency medical services to locate if
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: they are attacked.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is a logistical and moral catch-22 for city
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: planners and the police department.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Because they need the cameras to catch the guy.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: They desperately need the camera footage to catch a killer.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: But installing that infrastructure might inadvertently make the most vulnerable
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: people even less safe by forcing them further off the grid.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: It is a staggering reality to process.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: For you listening, we've covered immense ground today. We've mapped
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: out a timeline that evolved from a single, isolated tragedy
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: into a dense, high-velocity cluster of violence.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: The whole summer of 2026.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Right. We've explored the agonizingly slow, complex biomechanics of forensic
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: science that dictate the pace of justice.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Those two-month delays.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We've examined the profound ethical restraint of Chief Backus
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: refusing to bow to confirmation bias.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Which could save the whole case.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: And we've looked at the heartbreaking geographic paradox of trying
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: to protect a population that relies on the shadows just
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to survive.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: This case forces us to dismantle our preconceived notions about crime, safety,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: and who is truly at risk in the urban ecosystem.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: It really flips the script.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: It does. We so often view the unhoused as individuals
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: who have simply slipped through the cracks of our civic infrastructure.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as a systemic failure.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Right. We view them as passive victims of economic or
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: systemic failure. But the chilling reality of the Lansing River
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Trail investigation reveals a much darker dynamic.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: What if someone isn't just casually watching them slip through
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: those cracks? What if a predator is actively, intentionally waiting
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: for them at the bottom? Oh, wow.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: It fundamentally changes how you view those shadows.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: It does. The most marginalized among us are being methodically
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: targeted in the dark. It forces us to ask a
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: deeply uncomfortable question about our own civic awareness.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Does our societal lack of attention to these spaces make
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: us implicitly complicit?
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Or conversely, does our knee-jerk reaction to simply increased
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: surveillance force them even further into the dangerous margins where
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: predators thrive unchecked?
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: It's an investigative landscape where every potential solution seems to
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: create a new vulnerability.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the source material. We strongly encourage you to keep a
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: close eye on the news out of Michigan. as this
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: highly active, incredibly complex investigation continues to unfold.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, stay tuned to the updates.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Stay curious, stay informed, and we'll catch you on the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: next one.