Latest / Crime Night / The Mystery of Trip Brazeale and the Forest City Woods

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The Mystery of Trip Brazeale and the Forest City Woods · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want to transport you directly to a really
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: dark rural road in Forest City, Arkansas. It's twelve fort's
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: a year in the morning on November three, twenty twenty four.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Picture this pitch black, just winding country road right, and
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: suddenly the quiet is absolutely shattered.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because you have this massive Dodge Ram police
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: truck in hot pursuit of a four wheeler right, and
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: they're hitting speeds of like eighty miles per hour. Both
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: vehicles are just tearing through the dark, their headlights cutting
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: through the woods until they hit a raised dirt berm
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: in the road.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: And at that speed, I mean, that is incredibly dangerous.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: It's terrifying. They hit that dirt berm so fast that
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: both the four wheeler and this super heavy police truck
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: actually launch into the.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Air, which is just wild to visualize. And when they
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: crash back down, the impact is so violent that the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: four wheeler's battery cable violently snaps off the solenoid.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and for anyone listening who hasn't really, you know,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: tinkered with an ATV engine, a solenoid is basically the
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: heavy duty electromagnetic bridge between a vehicle's battery and its starter.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Motor cable disconnects that that electrical bridge is just entirely
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: destroyed exactly.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: The ATV doesn't just sputter right, it dies instantly. It
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: stops absolutely dead in the dirt.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So the deputy slams on his brakes, jumping out of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: his truck and yelling for the rider to get on
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the ground. But the rider, this figure in a cameo
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: hoodie and blue jeans, he doesn't hesitate for a single second.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: He just hops in nearby fence and vanishes into the
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: pitch black woods before the deputy can even get close.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: The deputy actually draws his weapon at this point, sweeping
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: his flashlight and aiming into the trees, but the rider
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: is just gone, like completely swallowed by the dark.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what I just described, it's not some opening
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: scene from a thriller movie. Today, we are taking you
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: on a deep dive into a real life, highly controversial
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: investigation because.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: That fleeing writer in the cameo hoodie, well that was
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: fifteen year old boy named Trip Brazil.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And the tragedy here is that hours after he ran
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: into those woods, he would be found dead in what
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: local authorities officially ruled a suicide by ligature hanging. But
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: as we unpack the timeline today and the physical evidence
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and honestly the deeply unsettling actions of the officers that night,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: you are going to see a really chilling story, one
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: that's full of forensic impossibilities, missing evidence, and very very
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: dark gaps in time, which I.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Think brings us to the first massive red flag of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the night, Like, why was a fifteen year old being
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: chased by a heavy police trucket eighty miles per hour
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: in the first place?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Good question.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: The deputies involved, Deputy Trey Bam and Sergeant David Kenny.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: They were originally in that area responding to a completely
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: unrelated tip about two missing eleven and twelve year olds.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they're on a completely different call exactly.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: They clear that call, but while they are still in
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: the neighborhood, they hear some noisy ATVs in the distance.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: But wait, the Saint Francis County Sheriff's Office, they have
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a very strict vehicular pursuit policy route like, you can't
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: just engage in a high speed chase on a whim oh.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Far from it, and officers are fired by department policy
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: to call into justification to dispatch before they ever.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Initiated chase, right, because of the risk, they have.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: To actually prove that the immediate danger to the public
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: of letting the suspect get away heavily outweighs the immense
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: obvious danger of starting a high speed pursuit in.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: The dark, Which makes sense.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: But de Wite Bayham initiated this chase simply because he
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: saw the four wheeler driving at what he called erratic speeds.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: He never called it in with a proper justification, he
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: just floored it.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: So they're chasing this kid at eighty miles an hour
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: for essentially being a noisy teenager on an ATV. And
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: you know, to really understand the sheer disconnect of this night,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: we have to look at what is happening simultaneously over
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: at the Brazil.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Household, right the parallel timeline.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So it is now one twenty one am.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Tripp calls his mom, Jennifer, and listen to this. He
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: doesn't sound panicked, not at all. He doesn't sound out
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: of breath or like a kid fleeing for his life
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in a high speed pursuit. He just tells his mom
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: his four wheeler stranded. He can see the blue police
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: lights in the distance, and he is just going to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: walk toward them and turn himself in.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And at almost that exact same time, a deputy who
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: actually knows the family personally, Deputy Jason Bradshaw, calls Trip's dad.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Gil, and Gil's background is important here.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very important to know that Gil is a
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: former law enforcement officer himself. So Bradshaw tells Gil that
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: they are out there looking for Trip, and Gil gets
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: on the phone with his son and says, look, Bradshaw's
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: out there, just go turn yourself in.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: So I really want you to put yourself in his
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: parent's shoes for a second. It is a remarkably calm situation.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: You think, Okay, our kid did something dumb on his ATV.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: He stranded in the dark. He's going to go talk
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: to the deputies and we will just go pick him up.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: The tension is completely diffused, right.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: You think the worst is over.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: But then just twenty minutes after that completely calm phone call,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: at one forty one am, Trip's parents receive a massive
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: text from his phone and.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: The tone shifts violently. I mean it reads entirely like
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: a suicide note, long paragraph style message saying he loves them,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: but he's a quote fuck up, and that he wants
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: all his stuff given to his brother. Oh yeah, he
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: says his phone is about to die. He's sorry, and
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: he never wanted it to end this way.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I really want you to think about teenage texting habits
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: for a moment. Just getting a perfectly punctuated, deeply emotional
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: paragraph long text from a fifteen year old boy who
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: you know usually just sends quick lowercase fragments. I mean,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: it's like them suddenly speaking our foreign language.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: It's so out of character.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: His mom knew instantly something was catastrophically wrong, not just
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: because of the terrifying content, but because the syntax, the punctuation,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the rhythm of the words. It just did not sound
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: like Tripp.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: If he was calmly walking toward the blue lights to
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: turn himself in at one twenty one am. What on
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: earth could have happened in those twenty minutes to trigger
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a meticulously punctuated suicide text.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: And that is the defining question here. Yeah, because the
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: physical evidence we are about to look at it completely
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: shatters the narrative of what supposedly happened.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Next, It really does, Let's.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Look at the actual scene in the woods. Exactly eight
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: minutes after getting that terrifying text, Trip's parents pull up
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: to the precise spot in the woods where his phone
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: was last tracking, and.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: The woods are completely empty, completely silent.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: There are no deputies, there are no patrol cars, no
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: blue lights flashing in the distance, just you know, pitch
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: black darkness.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: So Gil immediately leans on his law enforcement training. He
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: sets up a search grid using his phone's GPS, and
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: they start methodically combing the woods for their son. But
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: they find absolutely nothing that night.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Nothing at all. Fast forward to two twelve pm the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: following afternoon, a game in Fishwarden is searching the area
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and spots a faint trail of broken twigs leading up
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a steep wooded ridge. Yeah, she follows it, and she
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: finds Trip. He is hanging from a tree at the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: top of this ridge, a full mile and a half
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: south of where he jumped off that four wheeler.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: This is exactly where the physics of the official story
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: completely break down. The local authorities quickly claimed this was
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: a suicide, but just think about the logistics of that
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: for a second. That means Trick would have had to
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: walk that mile and a half in the pitch black, right,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: But he would have had to do it barefoot.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Right, because searchers actually found his boots miles apart from
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: each other near where the chase ended.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly, So he supposedly walked one point five miles barefoot
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: over terrain that his dad described as violent ground. Violent ground, Yeah,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: we're talking thick, unmanaged woods, riddled with rusted barbed wire,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: broken glass bottles, jagged rocks, and snakes. Yet when his
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: parents saw his body the funeral home, there wasn't a
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: single scratch, cut or bruise on his feet.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to push back on this a little bit,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: because this is where the mind tries to fill in
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the blanks. Is it medically possible that, because he was
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: running from the cops, his adrenaline was just pumping so
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: high that it entirely masked the pain. Like could that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: adrenaline have allowed him to step on broken glass and
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: barb and just keep walking without feeling it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: It is a common misconception, for sure, But here is
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: the critical physiological distinction. Adrenaline absolutely blocks the sensation of
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: pain in the brain, but it does not prevent tissue
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: damage on the body. Ah, if you walk barefoot through
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: broken glass and rusted wire, your flesh is going to
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: be cut to ribbons. Adrenaline doesn't make your skin invincible,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: you know, it just stops you from crying out.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: The complete lack of physical cuts, scrapes, or lacerations on
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: his feet is forensically impossible to ignore. You just cannot
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: walk that terrain barefoot without the environment leaving a physical
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: record on your body.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Right, you can't just will away physical damage. If the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: ground is sharp, the skin breaks. And that is not
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the only physical impossibility here, not even klus Trip weighed
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: one hundred and nineteen pounds. The branch she was found
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: hanging from was barely two inches thick. Trip's family actually
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: consulted an independent forensic pathologist, doctor Ashley Matthew, to look
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: at them mechanics of this and what did she find. Well,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: her research shows that to hold a dynamic weight of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifteen pounds, a branch needs to
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: be at least five inches in diameter. This branch was
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: so small Trip's mom could wrap her some and index
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: finger completely around it.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's tiny.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Right to picture this? Imagine trying to hang a heavy
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: bowling ball from a thin car antenna, the sheer physical
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: leverage and the static weight would snap it instantly.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Not to mention the mechanics of the ligature hanging itself.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Ligature hanging generally implies suspension by a cord or strap,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: often without a significant vertical drop, which means the branch
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: has to sustain a constant dead weight without snapping exactly.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: And trip was found hanging from a complex slip knot,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: But according to his dad, this is a kid who
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: didn't even know how to tie his own fishing lines.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Right, which makes it highly suspicious.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: And the ligature used was a green ratchet strap. That
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: investigator's claim was taken from a deer stand about thirty
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: feet away from the tree.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Which, if you really think about human behavior, makes zero sense.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: If you are going to take a heavy strap from
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: a deer stand end your life, why not use the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: deer stand itself exactly. It has height, it has a ladder,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: it's structurally sound. Why detach the strap, walk an extra
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: thirty feet to the edge of a steep ridge and
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the pitch black and try to construct a highly complex
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: slip knot over a flimsy two inch branch that shouldn't
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: even be able to hold your weight.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: The physical evidence in the woods completely defies logic and gravity.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So if the scene itself is impossible, we really have
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: to find out what actually happened. Yeah, And to do
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: that we have to look at the one thing that
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: was supposedly recording the officer's actions during that dark hour,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: which is the police body cameras.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And let me tell you, Deputy BAM's bodycam timeline is
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: one of the most deeply disturbing parts of this entire
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: investigation there really is. We have footage of the initial pursuit,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: he stops, he checks the four wheeler after the kid
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: runs off, but then at twelve fifty one am you
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: literally see his hand reach up into the frame and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: he manually turns his camera off.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Now, department policy dictates that a body camera must stay
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: on until an event is entirely.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Completed, so presumably he decides the event is over, the
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: kid ran away. He's just waiting for a tow truck.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: You know, nothing to see here, right, But then at
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: one forty am Bam turns his body cam back on,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and when the video comes up, he is suddenly wearing
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: latex gloves.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Keep the timeline in your head, because this is crucial.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: He turns his camera on wearing low tex gloves at
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: one forty am. Just one minute later, at one forty
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: one am, that massive, meticulously punctuated suicide text is sent
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: from Trip's phone to his parents.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, let me just challenge the entire logic of
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: how this policy is being applied here. Let's say Bam
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: genuinely considers the chase over at twelve fifty one am,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: so he turns the camera off to save battery. Okay,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: why would he turn it back on at one forty
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: am if he is just standing by an ATV waiting
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: for a tow truck. Nothing new is happening, nothing at all.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: If the event was over, it's still over. Doesn't The
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: sudden reappearance of the camera precisely one minute before a
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: suicide texts as sent while the officer has inexplicably put
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: on latex gloves strongly suggest a completely new event was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: being documented or staged.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: It raises massive, massive red flags, especially when you listen
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: to the ambient audio captured the second that camera comes
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: back on.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: What does he say?
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Bam is heard talking to Sergeant Kenny and he says
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: clearly quote I got him, and then he immediately points
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: out that his heavy police truck step rail has bent.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: I got him when the official story is that the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: kid vanished into the woods untouched. That phrasing combined with
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: fresh heavy damage to a police.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Truck, it's extremely concerning.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: The family actually hired a private investigator named Cody Turner.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: He is a former EMT who has worked a lot
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: of severe vehicle rex. He has the four wheeler in
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: his possession now and he says the damage to it
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: looks distinctly like it was struck heavily by a vehicle,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: not just a dirt burm. Wow, did Baham ran the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: ATV during the chase? Is that what bent his step rie?
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Is that what he meant by I got him?
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: We obviously don't have the footage to prove what happened
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: during that gap, but what we do have is perhaps
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: the most chilling temporal anomaly I have ever seen in
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: any forensic investigation.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about, and it's crazy.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: This chase happened in the very early hours of November third,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty four.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Which was the end of daylight savings time, exactly.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: At two am that night, the clocks legally fell back
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: to one am local time repeated itself. This means that
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: one forty am actually happened twice that night. So when
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: we look at the police logs and see a forty
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: nine minute gap in the body cam footage from twelve
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: point five to one to one point four am, we
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: are naturally assuming it's the first one forty am.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Because that's how we read time linearly.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: But because of the time change, that gap might actually
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: be an hour and forty nine minutes of undocumented time
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: in the Pitch Black Woods, nearly.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Two hours of missing time. Two hours where a fifteen
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: year old boy goes from calmly plan to turn himself
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: in to being found dead with a complex knot over
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: a physically impossible tree branch.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: It's hard to wrap your mind around.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And the unexplainable coincidences during this missing window just keep
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: piling up. At twelve fifty nine am, Dispatch receives an
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: anonymous nine to one one call. This caller somehow identifies
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the fleeing suspect in the woods, specifically as Trip Brazil,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and gives a location behind a nearby church.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: The logic there is completely broken because there was no
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: be all, no public be on the lookout alert issued
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: at all. The police didn't even officially know who they
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: were chasing at twelve fifty nine a right.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: They had no idea.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: How did a random civilian in a rural area know
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: it was Trip and know exactly where he was hiding.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: And if you're wondering how we can't just, you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: listen to the caller's voice or hear the background noise
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: on the dispatch recording, it's because we can't. The caller's
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: identity is completely redacted in all the files given to
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the family.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: And it gets worse.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, when the family officially requested the raw dispatch
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: audio recordings for that night, the sheriff's office told them
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that lightning struck the sheriff's our drive, destroying the files.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Wait, a literal lightning strike, A literal lightning strike, destroying
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: the exact digital files that might shed light on who
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: knew Trip was in those woods and who was communicating
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: with Dispatch during the blackout period.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: It sounds like something out of a.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Bad movie, it really does. Compounding all of this, the
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Sheriff's office flat out refuses to release Trip's clothing and
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: his socks to his parents for independent forensic testing.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Which is baffling.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: If this is a definitively closed suicide case as they claim,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: what is the legal or investigative logic in withholding a
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: pair of socks?
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the people involved today?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Like the officials, the family, where do they stand?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Well? Both Deputy Baym and Sergeant Kenny have documented disciplinary
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: records from previous law enforcement jobs. We're talking citations for insubordination, defiance,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: and neglecting duties yikes. In fact, Deputy Bayam was recently
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: let go from the Marian Police Department after they found
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: out he had omitted prior employment history on his application.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: But his career didn't end there, did it.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. Just days after being let go
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: from that department, Bayam was re hired by the Saint
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Francis County Sheriff's Office.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: The very same department handling the investigation into Tripp's death.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The sheriff publicly called him a quote good officer
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: and welcomed him back onto the force.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, just imagine you are Tripp's parents watching this unfold.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: It is absolutely infuriating. But Gil and their private investigator,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Cody Turner, are not just sitting back and accepting these
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: lock doors.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: No, they are fighting back.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: They are taking the ultimate step. They aren't just filing
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act requests and waiting for redacted documents anymore.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Both men are currently running for sheriff in their respective counties.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: That is incredible.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: They are literally trying to dismantle and rebuild the system
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: from the inside out to ensure no other family has
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: to face lightning, struck hard drives and withheld evidence.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It's such a profound way to chair unimaginable grief into
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: concrete action, as this case painfully illustrates. When the official
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: channels close ranks and control the flow of physical evidence,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: you really have to find another way to force the
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: truth into the light.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Which brings me to a final thought. I want you
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to just mall over as we close this out. We've
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: talked about how local authorities can redact documents, they can
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: claim acts of God destroyed their hard drives, they can
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: manually switch off body cams in the dark, and they
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: can refuse to hand over physical evidence like a pair
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of socks. But there is one thing they cannot alter,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and that is digital physics.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is the phone.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, right now, Trip's cell phone is sitting safely inside
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a Faraday bag, awaiting a completely independent, private forensic extraction.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: And for anyone who doesn't know, a Farita bag is
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: a specialized sleeve that completely blocks all electromagnetic signals. It
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: means no one can remotely wipe the phone, alter its GPS,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: or ping its location.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: It freezes the device in time. The data inside that
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: phone operates on Universal Time coordinated or UTC. It is
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: a continuous count of seconds that is completely immune to
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: local police interference, and it does not care about daylight savings,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: time falling back. Wow, that phone's internal memory might just
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: be the ultimate silent witness, and when that data is
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: finally extracted, it may unequivocally reveal exactly whose hands were
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: holding Trip's phone in the dark woods at one point
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: four one am.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Digital forensics don't rely on witness testimony. The code either
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: exists or it
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Doesn't, exactly from a shattered battery cable on a dark
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: rural road to the digital footprint of a final, highly
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: uncharacteristic text message, the truth is out there, quietly waiting
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: to be pulled from the muddy waters.