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The Betrayal of a Lifelong Friend · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine finding a car at the bottom of a ravine.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: It's a blue Toyota Prius, and it's just partially submerged
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in a creek in a quiet local park. Right. And
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: there are no skid marks on the road above. Okay.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: The transmission is just sitting in neutral. Now, you know,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to a passerby walking their dog, that looks like a
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: tragic accident. Sure.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Like someone fell asleep at the wheel.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Maybe swerved to miss a deer in the dark,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: went over the edge. But to a forensic investigator standing
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: on that exact same embankment, The physical reality of that scene,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: like the raw physics of it, is just screaming one word.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Murder. Or, well, at the very least, a meticulously staged
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: event to cover one up.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Because the physics of panic are just completely absent.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And that is exactly where we are starting today's deep dive.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: We are looking at a case from Rome, Georgia, in
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: November of 2022. Yeah. The really tragic murder of 21-year-old
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Aaron Davies. And the person who took his life wasn't,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: you know, a stranger hiding in the bushes.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: No, it wasn't.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: It was his childhood best friend of over a decade,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a guy named Brandon Risner. And we're drawing today from
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a variety of sources, including a really comprehensive documentary breakdown
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: by the YouTube channel Beyond Evil. But our goal isn't
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: just to, like, recount the timeline of a tragedy. We
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: are taking a magnifying glass to the mechanics of modern
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: criminal justice.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Because this case is a masterclass in the rapid, violent
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: escalation of just a routine missing persons check.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: We want to dismantle the anatomy of a cover-up. We're
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: going to look at why perpetrators make these critical errors,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: the digital infrastructure that makes true anonymity almost impossible now.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Right. The phones.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the profound psychological collapse that happens when an
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: investigation turns its focus on a friend.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So let's get right into the mechanics of that Friday morning.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Rome police get a call about this suspicious vehicle in
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the park. They run the plates. It comes back to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Aaron Davies. But let's get back to the physics of
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: the scene for a second. You said the physics of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: panic were absent. What does an investigator actually see when
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: they look at a car in a ditch?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Well, they're looking for kinetic energy transfer. When a vehicle
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: accidentally leaves a roadway, especially if a driver is, you know,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: falling asleep or losing control, there's this biological realization of
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: danger that happens just a fraction of a second before impact.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Like waking up at the last second. Right.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: So the driver slams on the brakes or they jerk
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: the steering wheel. That creates friction. You see deep, aggressive
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: gouges in the dirt. Wow.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: You see rubber transfer on the asphalt. You see violently
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: torn vegetation where the mass of the car just plowed
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: through at a high velocity.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Right. Because a two-ton machine carries momentum and stopping it
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: forcefully leaves a literal scar on the environment.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Precisely. But... With Aaron's Prius, investigators found none of that.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: None of it? No.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: The car was in neutral. There was no sign of
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: sudden deceleration. The vegetation wasn't sheared off. It was merely
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: pushed over, which suggests the car just rolled at a
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: very low speed.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In accident reconstruction, when the math of the scene
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: doesn't add up to a collision, you immediately pivot to
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: the concept of staging. Someone manually pushed or rolled that
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: car into the water to dispose of it.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the police instantly know they aren't dealing with
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a simple car crash. Meanwhile... Aaron's family and his girlfriend
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: are panicked.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, understandably.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Because Aaron had left home the day before, Thursday afternoon,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: heading to Gadsden, Alabama. But he planned to stop halfway
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and sleep at Brandon's house in Rome. Right. His last
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: text to his girlfriend was at 10.57 p.m. And after that,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: just radio silence. So the family starts texting Brandon.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: And this is where we see the first manifestation of
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: what forensic psychologists call narrative anxiety.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Narrative anxiety.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Brandon is suddenly thrust into the position of, like,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: an air traffic controller for this massive crisis. And his
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: story just begins to fracture under the pressure.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: He initially texts back saying that Aaron fell asleep around 10.00 p.m.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And when Brandon woke up at 1.00 a.m., Aaron's car
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: was just gone. Like, he vanished into the night. Right.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But then, almost in the same breath, Brandon is texting
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Aaron's girlfriend pretending everything is totally fine. He claims Aaron's
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: phone is just dead and that the two of them
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: are currently out for a walk together.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: It is a desperate, highly disorganized stalling tactic.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: But wait, how could he possibly think that would work?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: He's creating two completely opposing realities.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: He's telling one person Aaron has been missing since 1.00 a.m.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and telling another they are actively hanging out. Did he just, like,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: forget who he was texting?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not necessarily forgetting. It's a failure of working
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: memory under extreme stress. Okay. When an individual commits a
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: violent act, their cognitive load is just maxed out. They
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: are processing adrenaline, fear, the immediate physical demands of the cleanup.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Right. His brain is fried.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When the phone starts lighting up with questions, they
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: don't have the mental bandwidth to construct a cohesive, multivariable lie.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: They just react to the stimulus right in front of them.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: To the parents, he offers an explanation for the absence.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: To the girlfriend, he offers a pacifier to just stop
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: her from calling the police. He isn't cross-referencing his own lies.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: But those lies fail immediately because the Peles, acting on
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the missing person report and this bizarrely parked Prius, decide
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: to go knock on Brandon's door. And they aren't kicking
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: it down. They're just doing a welfare check.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Right, just a knock.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And Brandon meets them and offers up an alibi that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: is incredibly specifically detailed. He claims they went to bars,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: drank a ton of red wine... and that Aaron got
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: violently ill and threw up everywhere. Then Brandon adds that
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: he himself accidentally dropped a wine bottle, cut his pinky
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: finger on the glass, went to an urgent care clinic
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: to get a bandage, took a shower, and woke up
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: to find Aaron gone.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: That is the textbook definition of the over-explanation phenomenon.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: The over-explanation phenomenon.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Brandon is offering a preemptive defense against evidence the
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: police haven't even found yet.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Because he knows his house is a mess and he's
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: trying to beat the cops to the punch.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He's acutely aware of the biological realities inside that house.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: He knows there might be lingering odors or visible fluids.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: So he volunteers the story of Aaron vomiting to explain
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: away any potential biohazards. He knows his own blood might
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: be mixed in, so he constructs a narrative about a
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: broken wine bottle. He even goes to urgent care, which
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: is a classic move to establish a documented third-party paper
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: trail for his injury. He's trying to legally insulate the
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: physical anomalies in his environment.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I have a massive problem with the logic of this alibi, though.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Because if we look at the context of who Aaron was,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: this story is fundamentally absurd.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Aaron was a devout member of the Church of Jesus
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was Mormon. Right. His family
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and friends knew that because of his strict faith, he
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: did not drink alcohol like that. So if Brandon is
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: offering this chugging red wine until he puked everywhere story,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: knowing the police are communicating with Aaron's deeply religious parents,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: how does he think that's going to fly? Is that
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: arrogance or is he just fundamentally stupid?
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't classify it as either arrogance or stupidity
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: in the traditional sense. It's a phenomenon known as cognitive
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: narrowing or tunnel vision brought on by the trauma of
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: his own actions.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Explain that because to me it just looks like a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: really bad lie.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: It is a terrible lie. But it's born of necessity.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Under immense stress, the human brain prioritizes immediate threats over
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: long-term strategic thinking. Brandon's immediate threat wasn't Aaron's parents. His
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: immediate threat was the physical evidence inside his house.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: The blood.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Right. He needed a vehicle to explain a massive amount
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: of fluid and a foul odor. Red wine and vomit
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: is the most accessible, culturally common excuse for a mess
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: in a 21-year-old's house.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Right. Just a wild college night.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. His brain grabbed the nearest tool to solve the
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: immediate problem, completely failing to factor in the victim's religious profile. Yeah.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: He couldn't see past the porch he was standing on.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: The officers are standing there listening to a kid who
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: is trying way too hard to explain a cut on
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: his hand while they know a car is sitting in
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: a creek completely defying the laws of physics. The gap
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: between those two realities is massive. And the only way
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: to reconcile them is to see where they intersect. Which
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: is inside that house.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: So the officers ask the pivotal question, do you mind
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: if we take a look around?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: And this leads to one of the most critical legal
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: and psychological junctures in the entire case. Because Brandon says yes.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: He grants them a consent search.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Which blows my mind. Why would anyone do that? If
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you have something to hide, why not just say, you know, no,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: get a warrant?
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: To understand that, we have to look at the legal
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: architecture of a consent search and the psychological trap it
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: sets for a perpetrator.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, you are
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: protected against unreasonable searches and seizures. Police need probable cause
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: and a warrant signed by a judge to enter your home.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: However, that entire constitutional shield evaporates the second you give
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: verbal consent. You are legally inviting them in.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: But surely Brandon knows that. I mean, we all watch
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: police procedurals. We know you can refuse.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: We do. But criminals suffer from something called the illusion
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: of transparency. compounded by the Dunning-Kruger effect.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They falsely believe that refusing a search makes them
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: look guilty and that projecting an aura of cooperation will
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: deflect suspicion. They think, you know, if I act casual
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: and let them step inside, they'll see I have nothing
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: to hide, do a quick visual sweep, and leave.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And he also probably thought he actually did a good
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: job cleaning up.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: That is the crucial second half of the equation. A
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: layperson does not understand forensic chemistry.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Brandon likely looked around his house saw that the obvious
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: pools of red liquid were gone and genuinely believed he
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: had a the event.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Well, he was dead wrong, because the officers crossed the threshold,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: and they don't even need to see anything at first.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: They can smell it.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: There is an overwhelming, suffocating odor of industrial bleach permeating
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the entire house, and they see a washing machine running,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: full of soiled sheets.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: The irony of bleach is that perpetrators think it's the
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: ultimate eraser, when in reality, to a forensic investigator, it
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: is a giant neon sign pointing directly to a cover-up.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I want to dig into that because you always hear
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: about criminals using bleach to clean crime scenes. Does it
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: actually work? I've heard people compare it to painting over
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: a crumbling wall, but that feels a bit simplistic.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit more complex.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: What is actually happening on a chemical level when someone
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: pours bleach on a bloodstain?
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Let's get into the chemistry of it because it really
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: is fascinating. Blood contains hemoglobin, and at the center of
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: the hemoglobin molecule is an iron atom. Okay. When you
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: pour household bleach, which is sodium hypochlorite, onto blood, it
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: oxidizes the hemoglobin. It breaks down the pigment, which is
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: why the red color disappears. To the naked eye, the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: stain is gone.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: So it does work visually.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Usually, yes. But it does not destroy the iron. The
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: iron atoms remain embedded in the carpet fibers, the wood grain,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: the grout. And when forensic teams come in, They spray
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: a chemical called luminol. Luminol reacts violently with iron, creating
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: a chemiluminescent reaction.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: So if you've bleached a floor, you haven't destroyed the blood.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You've actually just smeared the iron atoms over a much
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: wider surface area.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's terrible for the killer. It is.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: When the police turn off the lights and spray luminol,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: the entire room doesn't just glow. It practically detonates with
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: a blue luminescence, showing exactly where the body was dragged
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: and how the mop moved across the floor.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: So by using bleach, you aren't hiding the crime. You
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: are literally providing the police with a glowing map of
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: your exact movements during the cleanup.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And in Brandon's case, the cleanup wasn't even chemically
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: sophisticated enough to require luminol yet. Wait, really? No, because
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: when the officers move from the downstairs to the upstairs bedroom,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: the facade completely collapses. There is a massive volume of
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: blood on the floor, next to the bed, soaking into
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: an armoire, saturating a rug. Oh. It is so extensive
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: that the officers make an immediate grim determination. Aaron Davies
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: never left that room alive.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: The amount of blood shattered that he puked red wine
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: alibi in two seconds, it's just too much volume.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. At this exact moment, the officers transition in their
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: minds from conducting a missing person welfare check to securing
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: a homicide scene.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: But here is where the timeline gets incredibly chaotic. The
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: officers haven't officially arrested Brandon yet. He is standing nearby,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: maintaining this eerie, flat, detached effect.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just watching.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: He has held it together this entire time. But then
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: he overhears one officer casually mention to another that there
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: are sheets running in the dryer. And that one tiny detail,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: not the blood, not the car, but the dryer, flicks
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: a biological switch in Brandy. He bolts.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: He runs.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: He bursts out of the house, outruns three police officers,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and vanishes into the neighborhood immediately. initiating a massive citywide lockdown.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: This is a perfect real world example of an amygdala hijack.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: What does that mean exactly? Because he was so cold
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and calculated for hours and then suddenly he's sprinting like
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: an Olympic track star.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: To understand the shift, we have to look at brain anatomy.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: For the hours following the murder, Brandon was operating out
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: of his prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: brain responsible for complex planning, logic and maintaining a deceptive narrative.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: He went to urgent care. He texted the girlfriend. He
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: calmly opened his front door. But maintaining that requires an
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: incredible amount of mental energy.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: It's a high wire act.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And when he overhears the officers discussing the dryer,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: a realization pierces that logic center. The cognitive dissonance shatters.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: He knows he's caught. Right.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: He realizes the performance has failed. The police have found
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the physical evidence of his cleanup. The moment that realization hits,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: the prefrontal cortex essentially goes offline and the amygdala, which
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: is the brain's primitive threat detection center, takes complete control.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: The fight or flight response.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: But on a massive biochemical scale. The amygdala floods his
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: system with adrenaline and cortisol. It increases his heart rate,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: dilates his pupils, and shuts down rational thought. It is
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: a primal, survivalist explosion of energy.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: That is how a 21-year-old kid in a state of
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: absolute terror manages to physically outrun three trained, equipped police
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: officers and disappear into an urban landscape. It is pure
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: biological panic overriding everything else.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: So suddenly, Rome, Georgia, is a war zone. You have
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a suspected killer on the loose, the neighborhood is swarmed,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: helicopters are in the air, tactical units are checking backyards.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Chaos.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Total chaos. And walking right into the middle of this
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: is Brandon's father, Jeremy Risner.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And this is where the procedural mechanics of the investigation
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: collide with a deeply agonizing human tragedy.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Jeremy arrives at the house and initially he's cooperative. He
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: knows the police are looking for his son and he
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: knows Aaron is missing. But then an officer asks Jeremy
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a very simple question. Do you have Brandon's cell phone?
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And Jeremy stalls. It's a crucial two hour delay. First
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: he tells the police he doesn't have it. Then he
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: comes back and claims he just found it in the street.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Which is a lie.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Right. Which the police know is a lie because they
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: had already canvassed that entire street with a fine tooth comb.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: The psychology of Jeremy's delay is profound. We are witnessing
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: a parent experiencing the most extreme form of cognitive dissonance imaginable.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Which is what? The conflict between two opposing beliefs.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The human brain cannot easily hold two contradictory truths
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: at the same time. On one side of Jeremy's psychological
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: scale is his identity as a father. His fundamental biological
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: and emotional drive is to protect his child from harm,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: from danger, and from the state. On the other side
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: of the scale is is the horrific, mounting reality that
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: his son has likely committed an unspeakable act of violence
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: against a boy who was practically a member of their
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: own family.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And we know why Jeremy was stalling. It's because he
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: didn't just find the phone in the street. He had
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the phone, and he had looked through it.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: He was staring directly at the abyss.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I can't even fathom what that two-hour window was like
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: for him. He's sitting there, scrolling through his son's digital life,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: trying to reconcile the kid he raised with the monster
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the screen is revealing.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: That lie about finding it in the street, it wasn't
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: a criminal mastermind trying to thwart an investigation. It was
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: just a desperate, flailing father trying to buy a few
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: more minutes to process a nightmare.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: It was a mourning period. He was mourning the death
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: of who he thought his son was.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: But ultimately, his moral compass holds. He doesn't smash the phone.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: He doesn't toss it in a river. He doesn't help
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Brandon escape the perimeter. Later that evening, Jeremy and his
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: wife actually bring Brandon into the police station to surrender. Wow.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And the reason Jeremy turns his own son in is
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: because the digital footprint he saw on that phone was undeniable.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: It is the irrefutable architecture of premeditation.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about that footprint. Shortly before midnight, on the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: day Aaron arrived, Brandon's Google searches tell the entire story.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: He wasn't searching for funny videos. He was searching how
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: to clean blood from a carpet, does Walmart have duct tape,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: best secluded locations, and how to drain a washing machine.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: He actually typed out a literal to-do list in his
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Notes app that included the words, clean, shower, create a
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: false alibi.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I want to pause here and talk about digital forensics
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: because perpetrators constantly misunderstand how technology archives their intent.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Right, because people think, I'll just clear my search history
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: or delete the note and I'm safe.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Trying to delete your Google search history to hide a
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: crime is like trying to unring a bell by throwing
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: away the rope. The sound has already traveled miles away.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I love that analogy. Break down how that actually works
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: on a technical level.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: When you type a query into a smartphone, that data
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: doesn't just live on the glass screen in front of you. First,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: it is logged in the phone's internal Squalite database, which
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: is a hidden registry that keeps a shadow copy of
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: your activity even if you hit delete.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Deleting a file on a phone doesn't destroy the data.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: It simply tells the operating system you can write over
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: this space if you need to. Until new data overwrites it,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: forensic extraction tools like Celebrate can pull it right back up.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: But even if you smash the phone to pieces, the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: data is still out there, isn't it?
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Because that query is instantly transmitted through your local
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Wi-Fi or cellular tower to your internet service provider and
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: then bounced to a Google server farm, likely hundreds of
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: miles away.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: So it's gone from the phone entirely. Right.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: It is timestamped, geolocated, and permanently associated with your IP
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: address and account credentials. By the time Brandon had finished
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: typing how to drain a washing machine, that intent was
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: permanently etched into multiple remote servers that no amount of
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: bleach or smashing could ever reach.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just digital. The police pull surveillance footage
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: from a local Walmart. And they watch video of Brandon
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: just hours after murdering his best friend, casually walking down
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the aisles, picking out industrial cleaning supplies, and the exact
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: duct tape he searched for online.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: It's chilling.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: It really is. But this brings up a massive debate
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: regarding Brandon's mental state. Because when investigators dig into his background,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: they find some deeply disturbing elements.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: The background check provided what a defense team might typically
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: view as a fertile ground for an insanity plea.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Brandon worked as a scare actor at a local haunted house.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But he wasn't just wearing a mask. He fully immersed
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: himself in a character he created, which he described as
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: a savage, animalistic bandit. Furthermore, he wrote and produced his
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: own music, and the lyrics were hyper-focused on death and torture,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: including lines about someone who screamed till he choked on
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: his own tongue and blood.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Good grief.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He kept a journal where he wrote things like,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: stalked my prey, the only emotion I felt was a
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: surprise that I could have done it. And later, after
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: his arrest, he would tell psychiatrists that he received prophecies
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: from God commanding him to kill Aaron.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: This is a critical intersection in forensic psychology. How do
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: we distinguish between genuine psychosis, which is a mind fractured
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: from reality, and psychopathy, which is a calculated predatory state
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: of mind?
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Right, because you hear prophecies from God, an animalistic bandit,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and you think, okay, this guy has lost his grip
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: on reality. But I have to ask about the haunted
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: house aspect. Does pretending to be a monster... leaning into
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that darkness night after night for entertainment, does that desensitize
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the person to actual violence?
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: It's a common question.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Or was the haunted house gig just a socially acceptable
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: mask for the monster that was already festering inside him?
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: It is almost universally the latter. Criminologists and psychologists rarely
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: find that role-playing creates violent pathology.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: What happens is that individuals harboring dark, violent ideations actively
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: seek out environments where those behaviors are simulated, accepted, or
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: even rewarded.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: The haunted house didn't make Brandon a killer. It provided
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: a safe sandbox for him to rehearse the feelings of dominance, power,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: and terror that he eventually decided to enact in the
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: real world.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So how do investigators look at the prophecies from God
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: claim and definitively say, no, this isn't an insanity defense,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: this is premeditated murder?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: By contrasting his claims of madness with the physical and
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: digital evidence of his methodology. Genuine psychosis, like schizophrenia with
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: command hallucinations, is inherently chaotic and disorganized. Right. A person
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: truly experiencing a psychotic break where God is commanding them
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: to kill does not have the executive function to create
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: a chronological to-do list on their iPhone.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: They do not have the presence of mind to Google
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: the inventory of a local Walmart, drive there, purchase specific
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: items to conceal a crime, and then construct a false
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: alibi for a girlfriend via text message.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Because madness isn't methodical. Exactly.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The digital footprint proved that his intent was grounded
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: in cold, calculated, earthly reality. The claims of prophecies were malingering,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: which is a desperate post-defense attempt to build an insanity defense.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: So the phone data secures the premeditation. It proves intent
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: beyond a shadow of a doubt. But the police still
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: have one agonizing missing piece. They don't have Aaron. It
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: is Jeremy, Brandon's father, who makes the final devastating contribution
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to this investigation. Before he leaves the police station after
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: turning his son in, he tells the investigators where to look.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: He points them toward Old East Road out near an
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: old cemetery at the edge of town.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: It brings the tragedy full circle. The father hands over
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: the son, sealing his fate, and then hands over the victim,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: effectively ending the search and confirming the absolute worst fears
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: of Aaron's family.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: The police go out to that wooded area and they
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: find Aaron's body in a shallow grave. He is wrapped
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: in plastic and bound with the exact duct tape Brandon
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: was seen buying at Walmart.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: It's awful.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: And the autopsy results, they're grueling. Aaron suffered more than
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: 40 stab wounds to his head, neck, upper arms, and torso.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Awful.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: But the forensic pathologist noted a specific detail that completely
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: shaped the legal outcome of this case. There were zero
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: defensive wounds.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: The absence of defensive wounds is one of the most
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: critical findings in forensic pathology.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Can you break down what a defensive wound actually looks
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: like physically and why its absence is so damning here?
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: When a human being is attacked with a blade while conscious,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: the biological imperative to survive takes over instantly. You do
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: not just lie there.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: You raise your arms to protect your face and chest.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: You grab at the weapon. Consequently, pathologists look for very
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: specific injuries. Deep lacerations across the palms and fingers from
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: grasping the blade and cuts along the ulnar aspect, the
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: pinky side of the forearm where the extensor tendons are,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: from holding your arms up as a shield.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: But Aaron had none of those.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: None.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: None.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: The total absence of those specific physiological markers tells a grim,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: irrefutable story. It means the victim was entirely incapacitated at
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: the moment of the attack.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: He was murdered in his sleep.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: And legally, that completely shatters any potential defense narrative of
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: a mutual combat situation or a drunken altercation that got
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: out of hand.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a fight.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: It was not a fight. It was a cold-blooded, unilateral
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: execution of a sleeping, defenseless young man.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And the horror of it didn't even end with the stabbing.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: The autopsy also revealed signs of attempted dismemberment in the shower,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: noting that a portion of Aaron's small intestine was actually missing.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: The sheer brutality of this. I'm trying to square that
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: with the fact that these two boys were best friends
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: since the fifth grade.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: That is the most chilling aspect of this case. And
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: it defies our standard frameworks of human behavior. We are
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: psychologically conditioned to process stranger danger. We understand the concept
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: of a predator in the woods. But the intimacy of
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: this violence, the betrayal required to invite your best friend
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: into your home, offer them a bed, patiently wait for
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: them to fall asleep, and then inflict that level of
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: catastrophic intimate damage, it is almost incomprehensible.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: When the police finally sit Brandon down in the interrogation room,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: hoping to get some sort of confession or explanation... He
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't say a word. He immediately requests the lawyer and
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: completely shuts down. But as the lead detective points out,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: they didn't need a single word from him. They had
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: the Prius defying physics. They had the luminol glowing in
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the bedroom. They had the Google searches on the servers
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and they had the body in the woods.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: The justice system moved incredibly fast because the convergence of physical,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: digital and forensic evidence left absolutely zero room for reasonable doubt.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Fast forward to June of 2024. Brandon Risner undergoes psychological
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: evaluations and is deemed fully competent to stand trial. The
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: insanity angle is dead on arrival.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that wasn't going to work.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Faced with an insurmountable mountain of evidence, he pleads guilty
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to a slew of charges. Malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: concealing the death of another, and abandoning a corpse. What?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: The judge sentences him to life in prison without the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: possibility of parole. But it's the victim impact statements delivered
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: at that sentencing hearing that truly ground this entire procedural
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: nightmare in its devastating human cost.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: The legal system processes the crime, but the victim impact
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: statements process the void left behind.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Aaron's girlfriend stood up in front of the court and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: said to him, I was seen for my soul. Wow.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful, simple testament to who Aaron was.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: It highlights the absolute erasure of a bright, deeply empathetic
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: young man. It reminds the court that a life isn't
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: just biological. It is the sum of the connections and
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: love they shared.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: And then Aaron's mother, Sarah, took the stand. And what
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: she said to the court and to Brandon just stops
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: you dead in your tracks. She noted that over the
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: 10 plus years of their friendship, she had cooked and
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: served Brandon thousands of dinner.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Thousands of dinners.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Thousands of times this boy sat at her kitchen table,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: accepted her family's hospitality, and broke bread with them, all
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: while eventually harboring the darkness that would lead him to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: butcher her son.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: It encapsulates the ultimate violation of the social contract.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Hospitality, inviting a child into your home, feeding them, watching
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: them grow up alongside your own child. These are the
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: very foundations of community trust. To have that profound trust
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: weaponized is a trauma that extends far beyond a single family.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: It damages the entire community's ability to feel safe.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the ultimate question of this deep dive.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: What are we supposed to learn from this? We've covered
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the mechanics of accident reconstruction. the chemical reality of bleach
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: and luminol, the inescapable permanence of a digital footprint, and
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the agonizing psychological breaking point of a father. But looking
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: past all the forensic science and police procedure, there is
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: a much deeper, much more unsettling takeaway here.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: The structural vulnerability of trust.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And I want to leave everyone listening with a
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: final thought, building directly on the devastating reality of Erin's
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: mother feeding her son's killer those thousands of dinners. We
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: spend our entire lives building physical fortresses.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we do.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: We lock our deadbolts at night, we armor security systems,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: we install doorbell cameras, and we build fences to keep
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the dangers of the outside world exactly where they belong,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: which is outside.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: We are obsessed with securing the perimeter against monsters we
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: don't know. But this case forces us to reckon with
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: a terrifying vulnerability. What happens when the threat doesn't have
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: to pick a lock or break a window? because we've
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: been willingly setting a plate for them at our own
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: dinner table for a decade.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: It is a profoundly sobering reality.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: It really is. Thank you for joining us on this
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: deep dive. Keep questioning the world around you, and we'll
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: catch you on the next one.