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A Teacher’s Murder is Solved 26 YEARS Later · Murder Files Unsealed

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Speaker 1: How does a recipe for Puerto Rican food and a
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discarded piece of chewing gum solve the brutal twenty six
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year old murder of a beloved sixth grade teacher.
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Speaker 2: It sounds like fiction, honestly, it really does.
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Speaker 1: But welcome to our deep dive today. We have a
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profound and honestly a deeply unsettling mission for you.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, we're taking you through a fascinating set of sources
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detailing the nineteen ninety two murder of Christy Murrak and Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
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Speaker 1: Right, And our goal today isn't just to read off
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a timeline. We are going to examine the complete evolution
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of this investigation.
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Speaker 2: From the very beginning exactly.
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Speaker 1: We'll walk you through the agonizing, frustrating dead ends of
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nineteen nineties police work, the intense psychological toll on the survivors,
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and then, and this is the wild part, bridge the
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gap to the mind bending modern DNA technology that finally
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cracked it wide open.
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Speaker 2: Almost three decades later. The contrast we're dealing with here
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is just staggering. Think about the analog world of nineteen
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ninety two.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no smartphones, no massive databases, right.
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Speaker 2: Detectives are literally knocking on hundreds of doors. They are
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holding up hand drawn sketches to terrified neighbors. They're relying
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entirely on like shoe leather deduction and physical.
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Speaker 1: Witnesses, which is so different from today completely.
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Speaker 2: Fast forward to the digital genetic landscape of twenty eighteen,
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where a family tree built by a genealogist sitting in
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front of a computer screen can point an arrow directly
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at a suspect.
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Speaker 1: A suspect who has been hiding in plain sight for decades,
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I might add.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, it's a masterclass in how time, persistence, and these
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huge technological leaps can eventually corner someone who truly believed
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they had gotten away with the ultimate crime.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because to truly understand the shockwaves
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this crime sent through the community, you really have to
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transport yourself to Lancaster, Pennsylvania in nineteen ninety two.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Context is everything here.
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Speaker 1: It is when you look at the accounts from family
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and friends, they paint a very specific picture of this environment.
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Imagine a place that operates on a baseline of total safety.
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Speaker 2: Lancaster was known for being a trusting community characterized by
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very little drama.
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Speaker 1: Right. It was the kind of environment where the expectation
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of a violent, random intrusion into your home was simply
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not on anyone's radar.
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Speaker 2: People feel genuinely secure, and that psychological safety is crucial
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context for you to.
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Speaker 1: Understand, because it makes the shock that much worse.
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Speaker 2: Exactly when a community collectively believes that, you know, things
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like this don't happen here, The suddenness of extreme violence
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doesn't just frighten people, it shatters their entire.
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Speaker 1: Worldview, completely shatters it. And into this quiet community we
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are introduced to Christy Murrak.
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Speaker 2: She was twenty five years old.
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Speaker 1: Just right. She set up a little chalkboard, stood at
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the front and actually taught lessons to them. She carried
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that hyper focused childhood dream all the way through her
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graduation from Millersville.
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Speaker 2: University, which is right there in Lancaster, YEP.
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Speaker 1: Earning her degree in elementary education. Her principal, har Goodman,
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who had been in education for twenty seven years, so
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he's seen a lot of teachers. He said, you could
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walk into her classroom and get shells.
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Speaker 2: Oh wow.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he said. The kids were completely in tune with her.
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He noted this genuine radiating love for teaching, which you
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just cannot fake. You know, you can't learn that from
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a textbook.
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Speaker 2: You really can't. But beyond her career, her sister Annie
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paints a really vivid picture of her personality outside the classroom.
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Speaker 1: She sounded incredibly fun.
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Speaker 2: She was take the story from their senior prom in
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May of nineteen eighty five. It was a mutual friend's birthday.
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On the night of the prom, okay, and Christy and
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Annie arranged to have the entire room saying Happy Birthday
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to this friend, knowing full well the friend would be
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absolutely mortified by the attention. That's select and Christy loved
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every minute of it. She was energetic, constantly smiling, and
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possessed this vibrant kind of mischievous spark.
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Speaker 1: But we have to balance that vibrant energy with another
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trait the family emphasizes, right, one that becomes critically important
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to our understanding of the crime.
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Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, she was highly secure, very opinionated, and exceptionally
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aware of her surroundings.
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Speaker 1: Her brother actually mentioned she was cautious.
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Speaker 2: To a fall, right. It was a trait deeply ingrained
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from their childhood. She was not the kind of person
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to blindly trust the situation, leave things to chance, or
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easily give in to anyone attempting to control.
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Speaker 1: Her, which brings us to the timeline of December twenty first,
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nineteen ninety two.
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Speaker 2: Oh a chilly Monday morning, just four.
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Speaker 1: Days before Christmas. So the school is buzzing with holiday excitement.
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But Christy, a teacher known for never ever being late,
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does not show up.
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Speaker 2: And for someone with her level of obsessive dedication to
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her students, this isn't a minor.
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Speaker 1: Red flag, No, it's a blaring siren. Principal Harry Goodman
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realizes something is deeply wrong right away. He calls her apartment.
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Speaker 2: Five times Eli's messages.
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Speaker 1: And getting no response, he makes the decision to personally
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drive over to her apartment complex to.
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Speaker 2: Check on her, which tells you how unusual this was
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for her.
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Speaker 1: Exactly so, he pulls into the complex and the first
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thing he spots is her car. It's completely iced over.
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Speaker 2: It hasn't been started, the windshield hasn't been scraped, nothing.
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Speaker 1: Which immediately confirms she hasn't even attempted to leave for work.
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He approaches the apartment and he sees something far more
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alarming than an iced over windshield.
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Speaker 2: The door to her apartment is partially a jar.
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Speaker 1: Let's pause right here at the door. You have a
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woman who her own family describes as incredibly.
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Speaker 2: Vigilant, highly cautious, right.
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Speaker 1: And the principle finds the door partially a jar. My
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immediate thought is a hypervigilant person living alone doesn't just
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leave their door unlatched on a freezing December morning. Never.
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This isn't forgetfulness. This is a massive anomaly to me.
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It points to a sudden, violent interruption before she could
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even secure the lock.
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Speaker 2: Your deduction aligned perfectly with the physical evidence investigators later found.
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If a highly cautious, safety conscious young woman is in
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her apartment getting ready for work, she does not casually
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crack her front door open to the winter air.
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Speaker 1: No, of course not.
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Speaker 2: She wouldn't open it to a stranger, and she certainly
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wouldn't walk away leaving it unlatched. That partially a jar
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door implies a violent, unexpected breach of her safe space.
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Speaker 1: So she definitely did not invite this person in.
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Speaker 2: No, the door was forced or she was ambushed right
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at the threshold the very second she opened it to
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leave for school. The killer just left it that way
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in their haste to escape.
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Speaker 1: So Principal Goodman is standing there. He rings the doorbell,
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he screams her name into the apartment.
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Speaker 2: I can't imagine the panic you must have felt.
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Speaker 1: Right. Finally, he makes the agonizing decision to push the
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door open and walk inside. And what he finds in
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that living room is an image he later said he
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has never fully described to anyone.
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Speaker 2: It was an image that irrevocably altered the rest of
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his life.
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Speaker 1: He found Christie's body immediately to the left of the entryway.
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Speaker 2: The responding officers and the subsequent autopsy by medical examiner
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doctor Wayne Ross documented a truly harrowing scene.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a memediately apparent that a massive, desperate
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struggle had taken place right inside the doorway.
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Speaker 2: We're talking about severe scuff marks on the floor, gouges
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on the door itself, and damage to the doorframe.
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Speaker 1: Just sheer violence, and the violence moved further into the
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living room. Doctor Ross documented catastrophic facial injuries, including a
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fractured jaw, alongside severe ligature marks and deep bruising around
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her neck.
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Speaker 2: Which established strangulation as the cause of death.
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Speaker 1: But beyond the sheer physical brutality, of the beating and strangulation,
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there was a sexual assault. She was found nude from
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the waist down, her upper clothing pushed up and critically.
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Speaker 2: The attacker left bodily fluid on the carpet.
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Speaker 1: Which was huge. The police meticulously cut out that section
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of the carpet and sent it to the lab. But
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you know what completely blows my mind about this entire
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sequence of events is the timing.
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Speaker 2: The timing is incredible.
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Speaker 1: Her roommate had left the apartment right around seven am.
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Christie's routine was to leave for work between seven point
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thirty and seven point four five am.
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Speaker 2: So the window of opportunity was incredibly narrow. We're talking
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maybe thirty to forty five minutes total.
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Speaker 1: But more startling than the narrow window is the environment itself.
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This entire horrific event took place in broad.
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Speaker 2: Daylight, right in the middle of a busy residential.
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Speaker 1: Complex, at the exact hour when dozens of people are
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actively walking to their cars leaving for work in school.
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It's like attempting a bank robbery during rush hour.
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Speaker 2: It really is.
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Speaker 1: Who commits a violent, desperate struggle at an apartment doorway,
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literally leaving scuff marks on the frame from the sheer
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force of it in broad daylight, right when everyone is outside.
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Speaker 2: The brazenness is staggering. It suggests an attacker who was
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either completely unhinged acting under severe chemical influence, or and
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this is terrifying, driven by an overwhelming targeted compulsion, where
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the immense risk of being caught was entirely secondary to
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committing the acts.
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Speaker 1: But a brazenness of that magnitude inevitably leaves a footprint. Right.
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Because the attacker shose such a high risk time and place,
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they failed to go unseen.
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Speaker 2: As police began their immediate canvas of the neighborhood, they
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located a crucial witness.
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Speaker 1: A woman living in the complex was walking her dog
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right around seven point fifteen am.
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Speaker 2: And she observed a vehicle which she described as light
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colored or white, parked in the overflow lot directly across
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from Christie's townhouse.
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Speaker 1: And she didn't just see the car, she actually got
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a look at the driver. She described a white male
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with a muscular build and stringy dark hair.
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Speaker 2: She watched him exit the vehicle and walk purposefully toward
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Christie's apartment.
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Speaker 1: Then, chillingly, as this witness was chatting with her roommate
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who had just come outside. They both heard a loud,
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high pitched scream coming from the exact direction of Christie's unit.
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Speaker 2: While they couldn't be absolutely certain it was Christy at
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that exact moment, the timeline aligns flawlessly with the medical
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examiner's estimation of.
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Speaker 1: The murder right so the police capitalized on this immediately.
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They developed a composite sketch based on the witness's detailed
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description of the muscular man with stringy, dark hair, and.
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Speaker 2: They released this sketch to the public alongside the description
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of the white car, banking on the idea that someone
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in this tight knit community would recognize him.
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Speaker 1: But despite a flurry of initial tips from the public,
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none of the leads panned out. The trail went cold
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almost instantly, which.
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Speaker 2: Forces the detectives into a harsh pivot. If the random
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tips from a sketch aren't generating a suspect, you have
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to look inward.
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Speaker 1: You have to look at the people closest to the
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victim exactly.
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Speaker 2: And in this case, the police zeroed in on two
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very distinct individuals within the first forty eight hours.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into this. The first is the man
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who found the body, Principal Harry Goodman.
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Speaker 2: Now, subjecting the person who discovers the body to intense
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scrutiny is a foundational investigative protocol, oh for sure. Statistically speaking,
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victims of violent crime are overwhelmingly targeted by someone they know,
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often someone in their immediate orbit.
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Speaker 1: And the person who discovers the body is physically placed
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at the crime scene by their own admission.
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Speaker 2: Precisely, actives have to aggressively determine if that presence is
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genuinely the tragic luck of an innocent person, or And
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this happens quite a bit a calculated move by the attacker,
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attempting to control the narrative and explain away any physical
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evidence they might have left behind.
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Speaker 1: Well, the detectives certainly did not hold back with Principal Goodman.
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He described being called down to the station under the
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assumption he was just going to provide background information on
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Christie's employment history.
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Speaker 2: But that's not what happened, not at all.
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Speaker 1: The moment he arrives, he gets finger printed and thrown
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into an interrogation room, and the questions they threw at
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him were incredibly invasive.
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Speaker 2: They employed really high pressure tactics. They asked him point
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blank if he found Christie attracted. They escalated to directly
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asking if he was having a sexual relationship with her,
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and they.
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Speaker 1: Challenged his core narrative too right, questioning why a school principle,
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a man with significant administrative duties would personally drive to
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a subordinate's apartment simply because she was a few minutes late.
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Speaker 2: Right, Because to a cynical detective, that level of concern
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might look like an overreaction designed to mask a deeper,
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perhaps inappropriate obsession or stalking behavior.
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Speaker 1: But I find Goodman's reaction fascinating. Faced with an aggressive
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police interrogation, a lot of people power or get defensive
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in a very nervous way.
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Speaker 2: The Goodman got furious.
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Speaker 1: He really did. He looked the lead detective in the
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eye and said, how dare you defame Christie's memory? How
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dare you defame me?
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Speaker 2: He flat out told them he went there because he
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cared about his staff, and.
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Speaker 1: When they demanded he take a polygraph, he didn't call
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a lawyer. He didn't hesitate, He said, sure, go ahead,
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I've got nothing to hide. Hook me up.
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Speaker 2: His righteous indignation practically jumps off the page in the
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source material. He describes putting himself into this intensely focused
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zone to pass the polygraph because he absolutely refused to
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let the investigators intimidate him or twist his grief into.
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Speaker 1: Guilt, and he passed it conclusively.
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Speaker 2: He did. Yeah, but we cannot overlook the psychological costs
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to that process.
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Speaker 1: Oh absolutely.
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Speaker 2: He later detailed how the compounding trauma of finding her
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brutalized body immediately followed by the aggressive accusatory interrogation resulted
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in five years of screaming nightmares.
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Speaker 1: Five years. That's awful.
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Speaker 2: He required intense therapy during those crucial initial days. He
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couldn't even properly mourn his friend and colleague because he
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was consumed with defending his own freedom.
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Speaker 1: It really highlights the devastating collateral damage a violent crime
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inflicts on the innocent people swept up in the investigative dragnet.
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Speaker 2: It's a heavy burden. But while they are busy clearing
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Principal Goodman, an even more suspicious character literally walks right
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into the middle.
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Speaker 1: Of the school, right on the very day of the murder.
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While the staff is an absolute shock, A man shows
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up at Rorstown Elementary asking to see Christy.
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Speaker 2: When the staff tells him she isn't available and hesitantly
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asks if he knows what happened. He claims he has
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no idea.
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Speaker 1: The staff panics. They immediately call the police, and this
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man is identified as an individual known by the nickname Dagger.
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Speaker 2: Now, if you're writing a textbook on suspect profiling for
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a crime of passion, Dagger checks an alarming number of boxes.
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Speaker 1: He really does. He was Christie's ex boyfriend, but the
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nature of their relationship is what raised massive red flags
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for the police.
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Speaker 2: He was twenty years older than Christy, and more importantly,
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he was married.
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Speaker 1: They had met at a local bar and had been
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carrying on a clandestine relationship for a couple of years,
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and Christy kept him entirely hidden from her family. Her
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parents and brother had zero idea he even existed.
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Speaker 2: Her sister Annie only found out about him later, and
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her immediate reaction upon learning he was married was to
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warn Christy to be extremely careful.
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Speaker 1: But the timeline is the ultimate screaming red flag here.
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The sources note that on the Saturday before the murder,
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just forty eight hours prior, Christy had met with Dagger
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and permanently ended the relationship.
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Speaker 2: She was done, her friends were getting married, she wanted
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to move forward with her life, and she was unequivocally
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done with this secret day end affair.
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Speaker 1: So look at the narrative that presents to a detective. Right,
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you have a significantly older married man who has just
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been abruptly dumped by his young, vibrant girlfriend.
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Speaker 2: Two days later, he is suddenly unable to reach her
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by phone.
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Speaker 1: So what does he do? He physically shows up at
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her workplace on the exact morning she has found brutally murder.
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Speaker 2: It presents incredibly compelling, almost irresistible narrative from motive. It's
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this volatile mix of rejection, loss of control, and exclusive anger.
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Speaker 1: But let me push back on this a bit. If
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Dagger seems like a movie perfect villain and he shows
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up on the day of the murder, how do investigators
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not just succumb to tunnel vision. I mean, it's like
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casting a net in a murky pond. You have to
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examine every boot and tire you drag up before you
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find the fish. Why did they end up clearing him
15:48
so quickly. You'd think they would spend months trying to
15:50
pin it on him.
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Speaker 2: That's a great point, But they avoided tunnel vision because
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they hit a wall of verifiable, exculpatory evidence. A compelling
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narrative of rejection is not proof of murder. Right when
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police brought Daggery in and interrogated him about his whereabouts
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during that narrow window on Monday morning, he provided an alibi.
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He stated that he was in the process of officially
16:14
moving to Virginia to reconcile with his wife. Crucially, he
16:18
claimed that at the exact time of the murder, he
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was physically standing inside a Department of Motor Vehicle's office
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in Virginia getting his vehicle registration and driver's license changed
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to his new address.
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Speaker 1: Wow, okay, that is an incredibly robust alibi. I mean,
16:32
you can't sweet talk a DMV clerk in another state
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into falsifying time stamped government records on the exact mourning
16:39
your ex girlfriend is murdered in Pennsylvania.
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Speaker 2: Precisely the point the investigators pulled the records. They corroborated
16:45
his timeline down to the minute. His alibi was unshakable.
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Speaker 1: That's air tight.
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Speaker 2: Furthermore, he voluntarily submitted to a polygraph, which he passed,
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and the absolute final nail in the coffin for him
16:57
as a suspect. He submitted his DNA for announce.
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Speaker 1: And it was a non match.
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Speaker 2: Right. His profile was compared to the biological evidence extracted
17:05
from the carpet at the crime scene, and it was
17:07
a definitive non match. Despite looking incredibly guilty on paper,
17:11
the physical and documentary reality entirely exonerated him.
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Speaker 1: So daggers off the board. The principle is cleared, and
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the police are left holding a DNA profile from the
17:21
crime scene, an unknown male contributor.
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Speaker 2: Which is where things stall. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Now, if this were today, you hear a DNA profile
17:28
and you expect an immediate dramatic hit on a computer screen.
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But we have to remember the technological reality of nineteen
17:35
ninety two.
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Speaker 2: The combined DNA Index system known as COTIS was in
17:41
its absolute infancy.
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Speaker 1: The forensic landscape was entirely different. In nineteen ninety two,
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COTIS was essentially a pilot program.
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Speaker 2: It only contained the DNA profiles of previously convicted violent
17:53
offenders from a mere twelve states.
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Speaker 1: That's nothing compared to.
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Speaker 2: Now, Right, It was not the massive, interconnected national database
18:00
we rely on today. So when investigators ran the killer's
18:03
DNA through this nascent system. The result was a resounding blank.
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Speaker 1: Which means, unless the killer had a prior felony conviction
18:12
in one of those specific twelve states that happened to
18:14
be participating in the early CODIS program.
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Speaker 2: His DNA was functionally useless for identifying him.
18:19
Speaker 1: Wow. It was a reactive tool, not a proactive one.
18:22
It could confirm if a suspect sitting in their interrogation
18:25
room was the killer, but it could not scan the
18:27
horizon and tell them who to go arrest.
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Speaker 2: It created a deeply frustrating paradox for the investigators. They
18:32
had the precise biological blueprint of the murderer.
18:36
Speaker 1: They knew exactly what he was on a cellular level.
18:38
Speaker 2: But the technology of the era offered them absolutely no
18:41
mechanism to read the name attached to that blueprint. They
18:45
were holding the answer, but they couldn't translate it.
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Speaker 1: And this is where the investigation hits a massive, agonizing wall.
18:51
The days turn into weeks, the weeks bleed into months,
18:54
and the months stretch into years.
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Speaker 2: The sheer volume of the police work during this period
18:58
is staggering. Though By nineteen ninety five, just three years
19:02
after the murder, detectives had conducted interviews with at least fifteen.
19:05
Speaker 1: Hundred people fifteen hundred people, and they had officially investigated
19:09
and cleared nearly sixty distinct suspects.
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Speaker 2: They chased down every conceivable rumor, including vague, unsettling reports
19:16
of a peeping tom lurking in Christie's townhouse complex and
19:19
the weeks leading.
19:19
Speaker 1: Up to the murder, the peeping Tom angle is a
19:22
fascinating thread of investigative desperation.
19:24
Speaker 2: It really is. The police did receive credible reports of
19:27
an unknown individual lurking in the complex, specifically looking into
19:32
ground floor.
19:32
Speaker 1: Windows, but the descriptions provided by the terrified witnesses were
19:36
so incredibly general, right like a shadow, a figure in a.
19:40
Speaker 2: Dark coat exactly. It led nowhere. They couldn't build an
19:44
actionable suspect profile off of it. They were leaving no
19:48
stone unturned, interviewing everyone from delivery drivers to maintenance workers,
19:52
but they were essentially digging a hole in dry sand.
19:55
The sides just kept caving in on them.
19:57
Speaker 1: As the police spin their wheels. The agony of cold
20:00
case begins to consume Christie's family. When you listen to
20:03
her brother Vince speak about this era, the pain is
20:07
just as raw twenty years later as it was on
20:09
day one.
20:10
Speaker 2: They were trapped in this awful, suffocating limbo.
20:13
Speaker 1: The unanswered questions of why and who gnawed at them
20:16
every single waking moment.
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Speaker 2: What the Mirac family experienced is a profound psychological state,
20:21
clinically referred to as ambiguous loss.
20:24
Speaker 1: Ambiguous loss, can you explain that a bit more sure?
20:27
Speaker 2: When a loved one is brutally murdered and the perpetrator
20:29
remains unidentified, the natural grieving process is violently short circuited.
20:34
The family has the absolute crushing finality of the death,
20:37
but they are denied the narrative of the event, so.
20:40
Speaker 1: They don't know the sequence of events, they don't know
20:42
the motive, and.
20:43
Speaker 2: Most importantly, they are denied the justice of accountability. They
20:46
are stuck in a state of suspended animation, unable to
20:49
find closure because every day without an answer feels like
20:53
a betrayal of the victim's memory.
20:55
Speaker 1: The wound cannot heal because it is constantly being reopened
20:58
by the unknown. Exactly you see the unbearable physical toll
21:02
of that ambiguous loss on their mother. In December of
21:06
two thousand and two, exactly ten years after Christie was murdered.
21:09
Her mother passed away from a recurrence of cancer, and.
21:12
Speaker 2: On her deathbed, her final desperate plead events was please
21:15
don't ever let this go.
21:17
Speaker 1: Vince promised her he wouldn't. He stated he simply couldn't
21:20
go through the rest of his life without knowing who
21:22
destroyed his family and why.
21:24
Speaker 2: That deathbed promise fueled an incredible level of tenacity, but
21:28
also deep desperation. By two thousand and seven, fifteen years
21:32
after the crime, Vince felt a terrifying reality setting in a.
21:36
Speaker 1: Passage of time was slowly erasing Christie's memory from the
21:39
public consciousness.
21:40
Speaker 2: He felt the police had exhausted their traditional options, so
21:43
he partnered with another victim's family and did something drastic.
21:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, without the approval of the police, in fact, going
21:49
directly against the advice of the investigators, who feared it
21:52
might compromise a future trial. They rented a massive, highly
21:56
visible billboard on a major highway in Lancaster.
22:00
Speaker 2: The message Vince chose for that billboard was chilling.
22:03
Speaker 1: It featured photos of the victims and a massive, stark question,
22:08
do you know who murdered us?
22:10
Speaker 2: Vince openly admitted they wanted to make it as aggressive, unsettling,
22:14
and chilling to the public as their daily reality was
22:17
to them.
22:18
Speaker 1: He harbored this desperate hope that the killer or someone
22:21
who knew the killer, would drive past it every day
22:23
on their commute, and the mountain guilt would eventually force
22:26
them to come forward.
22:27
Speaker 2: It perfectly encapsulates the profound helplessness of a cold case.
22:31
The family is resorting to public provocation, essentially shouting into
22:35
the void because the traditional systematic avenues of justice have
22:38
completely failed them.
22:40
Speaker 1: Did the billboard help it all?
22:41
Speaker 2: Well? It generated a surge of tips, certainly, but unfortunately
22:45
none of them contained the concrete, actionable evidence needed to
22:48
break the case.
22:50
Speaker 1: They still had the killer's DNA sitting meticulously preserved in
22:53
an evidence locker, but they still had no one to
22:56
match it to.
22:57
Speaker 2: It's exactly like having the one perfectly cut key to
23:01
a massive safe.
23:02
Speaker 1: But the safe is hidden somewhere and a sprawling city
23:05
of millions of people, and your only option is to
23:08
walk from building to building, trying the key on every
23:11
single door by hand.
23:12
Speaker 2: It's a mathematically impossible task.
23:14
Speaker 1: Until suddenly the fundamental rules of the game changed completely.
23:18
Speaker 2: The paradigm shift began internally. When the Lancaster County District
23:21
Attorney's office decided to take a fresh, aggressive look at.
23:24
Speaker 1: The case, a newly appointed prosecutor, who had actually been
23:27
a high school senior in the area when Christy was murdered,
23:31
felt a deep, personal, vested interest in solving it.
23:34
Speaker 2: She recognized a crucial reality. While the physical evidence collected
23:38
in nineteen ninety two hadn't changed, the scientific technology available
23:42
to analyze that evidence had evolved exponentially over the intervening decades.
23:47
Speaker 1: The first major technological leap was partnering with a specialized
23:50
forensics company called pair Bond Nanolabs. Detectives had learned about
23:55
an emerging, highly advanced process called phenotyping.
24:00
Speaker 2: Testing the original DNA sample extracted from the bodily fluid
24:03
on the carpet, Parabond's complex algorithms could actually predict the
24:07
genetic makeup of the killer.
24:09
Speaker 1: The DNA was no longer just a barcode for a database.
24:12
It was a blueprint for a physical description.
24:15
Speaker 2: The science of phenotyping is genuinely fascinating. We need to
24:19
understand its exact parameters right.
24:21
Speaker 1: How does it actually work?
24:22
Speaker 2: It works by analyzing the specific genetic markers single nucleotide
24:26
polymorphisms or SNPs that dictate a person's physical appearance smps. Okay.
24:30
The algorithms analyzed the killer's DNA and told the investigators
24:34
his predicted skin tone, his detailed geographic ancestry, his face shape,
24:39
his eye color, and his hair color.
24:41
Speaker 1: That is wild, but what can it do well.
24:44
Speaker 2: What phenotyping cannot do is account for environmental factors or
24:48
lifestyle choices. It cannot tell you if the suspect is
24:51
currently overweight, if they have a beard, if they've lost
24:54
their hair, or if they have facial scars.
24:56
Speaker 1: So it provides a genetic baseline, not a current photograph exactly.
25:01
Speaker 2: Armed with this genetic baseline, they generated age progressed sketches.
25:06
Speaker 1: They created a highly detailed profile of what the killer
25:09
most likely looked like at age twenty five, since that
25:12
was roughly Christie's age at the time of the murder,
25:15
and then progressed the facial structure to age forty five
25:18
and fifty.
25:18
Speaker 2: Five, keeping in mind the possibility that he was older,
25:21
given she had previously dated an older man.
25:24
Speaker 1: The authorities released these highly scientific computer generated faces to
25:28
the public during a massive press conference.
25:30
Speaker 2: They were banking on the hope that someone would recognize
25:33
the genetic ghost of the killer in the faces of
25:36
their neighbors or coworkers.
25:37
Speaker 1: The family naturally poured over the images hundreds of times,
25:41
desperately searching for a flicker of recognition.
25:44
Speaker 2: But yet again, the flood of tips led to nothing concrete.
25:47
Speaker 1: The faces were perhaps slightly too generic, or the killer's
25:51
actual lifestyle over the last twenty five years had altered
25:55
his appearance too far from the pristine genetic baseline the
25:59
computer predictive.
26:00
Speaker 2: It was incredibly deflating. You have this wave of fresh,
26:03
scientifically backed hope, followed immediately by another agonizing dead end.
26:08
Speaker 1: But then while the investigators were essentially regrouping and waiting
26:11
for a miracle, the news broke regarding a completely different,
26:16
massively high profile case on the other side of the country.
26:19
Speaker 2: The arrest of the Golden State killer, Joseph DiAngelo.
26:22
Speaker 1: That arrest was an absolute earthquake in the forensic and
26:25
legal world.
26:26
Speaker 2: The investigators in Pennsylvania watched the news coverage of DiAngelo's
26:29
capture and realized instantaneously that the exact methodology used by
26:34
authorities in California could be the skeleton key they needed.
26:37
Speaker 1: For Christie's case, DiAngelo wasn't caught because his DNA was
26:41
finally uploaded to cotis.
26:42
Speaker 2: No, he was caught because brilliant investigators took his decades
26:46
old crime scene DNA, uploaded it to a publicly available
26:49
genetic genealogy database, and mathematically linked it back to him
26:53
through his distant unknowing relatives.
26:56
Speaker 1: Right on cue, the DA's office gets an email from
26:58
Parabon Nana Labs saying, Hey, we are now offering those
27:02
exact genetic genealogy services to law enforcement.
27:05
Speaker 2: They already had the pristine DNA profile extracted for the
27:09
phenotyping process, so they simply had to prep the data
27:12
file and upload it.
27:13
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, because the process of
27:17
genetic genealogy requires a complete mind bending inversion of how
27:21
police traditionally hunt a suspect.
27:24
Speaker 2: To understand the mechanics of this inversion, we have to
27:26
look at the work of pioneering genealogists like CC Moore,
27:29
who took on the Marat case.
27:31
Speaker 1: What does she do differently?
27:32
Speaker 2: When Moore uploaded the killer's DNA data file to a
27:35
public database called ge match, she was not looking for
27:38
the killer himself.
27:39
Speaker 1: Because she knew he wouldn't be in there right.
27:41
Speaker 2: Instead, she was looking for anyone, absolutely anyone who shared
27:45
a percentage of DNA with the killer. She was looking
27:47
for second, third, or even fourth cousins who had taken
27:50
a consumer DNA test just to learn about their heritage.
27:53
Speaker 1: It's like trying to find one specific single leaf in
27:56
a dense, sprawling forest of millions of trees. But instead
28:00
of wandering around aimlessly looking at all the leaves, you
28:03
locate a distant part of the root system.
28:06
Speaker 2: That analogy perfectly captures the methodology.
28:09
Speaker 1: You trace those roots up to the massive trunk, and
28:12
then you meticulously followed the exact branch, splitting off again
28:16
and again all the way to the specific leaf.
28:18
Speaker 2: Exactly When the genealogist opened the match list on ged match,
28:23
she saw a list of distant cousins. The amount of
28:25
shared DNA measured in units called centa Morgans told her
28:29
exactly how closely related they were to the unknown killer.
28:32
Speaker 1: Cent to Morgan's Okay, so how does she build the
28:34
tree to find him?
28:36
Speaker 2: She had to build a family tree backward. At first,
28:38
she identified these distant cousins, and then she spent hours
28:41
tracing their ancestry back through historical census records, old obituaries,
28:45
marriage certificates, and birth records until she found a set
28:48
of great grandparents that all of these disparate cousins shared.
28:52
Speaker 1: That ancestral couple from their early nineteen hundreds is the
28:55
root of the tree.
28:56
Speaker 2: And once you established that roub, you execute the inversion.
28:58
You flip the tree upside down.
29:00
Speaker 1: Exactly the term for it reverse genealogy.
29:03
Speaker 2: Once she found the great grandparents, she stopped looking backward.
29:07
She started moving forward in time from those great grandparents,
29:10
painstakingly tracing every single descendant they ever had down through
29:14
the generations to the present day.
29:16
Speaker 1: She was building a massive net yes.
29:18
Speaker 2: Looking for a male descendant who fit a very specific profile.
29:23
He had to be the right age in nineteen ninety two,
29:25
he had to be living in the right geographic location Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
29:29
and he had to have the precise ancestral mix to
29:32
be the suspect.
29:33
Speaker 1: And this is where a tiny, seemingly insignificant detail from
29:37
the earlier phenotyping test becomes the absolute, undeniable lynchpin of
29:41
the entire twenty six year investigation.
29:44
Speaker 2: The genealogist successfully traced a branch of the family tree
29:46
down to a specific family living in Lancaster.
29:49
Speaker 1: However, this family was primarily of Northwest European descent, but.
29:53
Speaker 2: The phenotyping report from Parabon had explicitly predicted that the
29:56
suspect would also possess some Latin American ancestry, specifically pointing
30:01
to Puerto Rican genetic markers.
30:03
Speaker 1: That specific genetic marker acted as the ultimate filter.
30:07
Speaker 2: The genealogist identified a male descendant of the Lancaster family
30:11
who was the correct age and was confirmed to be
30:13
living in the area in nineteen ninety.
30:14
Speaker 1: Two, but his formally documented family tree only accounted for
30:18
the European side of his heritage.
30:20
Speaker 2: She needed to ascertain who his biological father was to
30:23
see if it accounted for the missing Puerto Rican DNA marker.
30:26
Speaker 1: To do this, she couldn't rely on nineteenth century census records.
30:31
She had to dig deeply into contemporary modern sources like
30:35
social media profiles, local newspaper archives, and community newsletters.
30:40
Speaker 2: And then she strikes gold.
30:42
Speaker 1: She unearths a local Lancaster newspaper article featuring this specific man.
30:47
It's a lighthearted human interest story and.
30:49
Speaker 2: Buried in the text of the article it casually mentions
30:52
that he enjoys cooking Puerto Rican food because his biological
30:54
father was Puerto Rican.
30:56
Speaker 1: Think about the magnitude of that A throwaway line in
30:58
a fluffy newspaper story about culinary hobbies becomes the definitive,
31:03
irrefutable link connecting a man to a brutal, cold blooded murder.
31:07
Speaker 2: It is an astonishing, almost surreal moment of intersection between
31:10
highly advanced, cutting edge genetics and the most mundane of
31:14
public records.
31:15
Speaker 1: That single sentence in the article confirmed the final piece
31:19
of the ancestral puzzle.
31:20
Speaker 2: The genealogist knew with an incredibly high degree of mathematical
31:24
certainty that the man situated in that specific branch of
31:28
the family tree, the man who liked to cook Puerto
31:31
Rican food, was the man who left his bodily fluid
31:34
on the carpet in Christy Merrick's apartment.
31:37
Speaker 1: His name was Raymond Row.
31:39
Speaker 2: But the reality of police work is that you cannot
31:42
secure an arrest warrant solely based on a genealogist's family tree.
31:46
Speaker 1: Right that tree is a lead, a pointer, The police
31:50
still have to vet the lead.
31:51
Speaker 2: You had to find out who Raymond Row actually is.
31:54
Speaker 1: And when the detectors run his name, the reality of
31:56
who they are dealing with induces a state of pure
31:59
terrorle fying shock. Because Raymond Row didn't flee the state
32:02
after the murder, he.
32:03
Speaker 2: Didn't change his name and hide in the shadows.
32:05
Speaker 1: He stayed right there, embedded in the Lancaster community for
32:08
twenty six years.
32:10
Speaker 2: The dissonance of his existence is what makes this case
32:12
so deeply unsettling. Rayn Roe was not a transient trifter.
32:17
He had built a highly successful, intensely public persona.
32:21
Speaker 1: He started his career as a DJ, working small house parties,
32:24
eventually rising to become a very prominent successful DJ at
32:28
local nightclubs, operating under the well known moniker DJ Freeze.
32:32
Speaker 2: In later years, as he aged out of the club scene,
32:35
he transitioned into becoming a highly sought after premium wedding DJ.
32:40
Speaker 1: I want to spend a minute dissecting the psychological compartment
32:43
you have to build to live that life. You brutalize, sexually,
32:47
assault and murder a young woman in her own home,
32:50
you leave her body for her colleagues to find, and then.
32:53
Speaker 2: For the next two and a half decades, your literal,
32:55
day to day profession is to stand in front of crowds,
32:58
entertain hundreds of peace people, and serve as the master
33:02
of ceremonies at their happiest, most intimate moments, their weddings.
33:05
Speaker 1: You are a local celebrity, You are posing for photos,
33:08
You are the life of the party, all while carrying
33:10
the absolute darkest, most monstrous secret imaginable.
33:13
Speaker 2: It requires a level of psychopathy and profound compartmentalization that
33:17
defies normal human empathy. He was able to completely sever
33:21
the horrific reality of his violent actions from his daily public.
33:24
Speaker 1: Existence, and ironically, this very public success explains exactly why
33:29
he was never caught. Prior to the advent of genetic genealogy.
33:33
Speaker 2: He maintained an outwardly lawful life. He had no prior
33:36
felony convictions because he never entered the criminal justice system
33:41
for a serious offense, his DNA was never legally required
33:44
to be swabbed and entered into the national CODIS database.
33:48
Speaker 1: He was entirely invisible to the traditional forensic dragnet because
33:52
he was hiding in the spotlight.
33:53
Speaker 2: The investigators armed with his identity immediately look for a
33:57
connection to the victim. Did Christy know him? Did their
34:00
paths cross?
34:02
Speaker 1: Her brother? Vince noted that Christy and her friends frequently
34:04
enjoyed the Lancaster nightlife, going out to the very clubs
34:07
where DJ Freeze was performing.
34:09
Speaker 2: Furthermore, property records from nineteen ninety two revealed that Christian
34:12
Raymond Row lived in shockingly close proximity to one another
34:15
at the time of the murder.
34:16
Speaker 1: The circumstantial evidence was piling up rapidly, perfectly aligning with
34:20
the genetic pointer, but the legal standard requires undeniable proof.
34:24
Speaker 2: The police needed a fresh direct DNA sample from Raymond
34:27
Row to match against the nineteen ninety two crime scene sample.
34:30
Speaker 1: They couldn't just walk up and ask him for a swab.
34:33
If he realized they were onto him, he could flee
34:35
the jurisdiction, destroy evidence, or even harm himself.
34:39
Speaker 2: They had to acquire his DNA surreptitiously.
34:42
Speaker 1: Which leads to an incredibly tense, high stakes undercover sting operation.
34:47
The Pennsylvania State Police set up covert surveillance en Row.
34:51
Speaker 2: They trail him to his next gig, which, in a
34:54
sickening twist of irony, happens to be an event. He
34:57
is djaying at a local elementary school.
35:00
Speaker 1: The state Police assign an undercover female trooper to infiltrate
35:03
the event. Her sole objective is to blend into the crowd,
35:08
maintain visual contact with him, and wait for him to
35:11
discard an item containing his saliva.
35:13
Speaker 2: The tension of an operation like this is immense. The
35:15
trooper has to monitor him for hours without drawing attention
35:18
to herself.
35:19
Speaker 1: The chain of custody for the evidence must be flawless
35:22
or a defense attorney will tear it apart in court.
35:24
Speaker 2: Finally, at the close of the event, as Roe is
35:26
breaking down his audio equipment, he leaves behind a water
35:29
bottle and a plastic cup that contains a piece of
35:32
recently discarded chewing gum.
35:33
Speaker 1: The moment he steps away, the undercover trooper swoops in,
35:37
secures the items and evidence bags, and immediately rushes them
35:41
to the state crime lab.
35:42
Speaker 2: Now why chewing gum?
35:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
35:45
Speaker 2: Because chewing gum is an absolute gold mine for DNA.
35:49
It's covered in saliva, but more importantly, the abrasive action
35:54
of chewing scrapes off buckle cells cells from the inside
35:58
of the cheek.
35:58
Speaker 1: The lab extracts the DNA from those cells on the
36:01
gum and runs it against the pristine profile extracted from
36:04
the carpet and the multiple swabs taken from Christie's body
36:07
during the autopsy twenty six.
36:08
Speaker 2: Years prior, and then the result comes back.
36:10
Speaker 1: It is an absolute, mathematically undeniable match. The probability of
36:14
it being anyone else is astronomical. There is no question
36:18
left to answer. Raymond Row is the killer.
36:20
Speaker 2: The relief for the investigators, some of whom had spent
36:22
their entire careers haunted by this case, was monumental. A
36:26
press conference is immediately called and the arrest is announced
36:29
to a stunned public.
36:30
Speaker 1: For Christie's family, the shock was profound. They had never
36:34
heard the name Raymond Row. He wasn't a disgruntled ex
36:37
boyfriend or a shady acquaintance. He was the local wedding DJ.
36:40
Speaker 2: But that initial shock quickly crystallized into a very focused,
36:45
righteous anger. After twenty six years of staring at shadows,
36:49
they finally had a face to attach to their suffering.
36:52
Speaker 1: But the narrative doesn't end with the handcuffs clicking. On
36:55
June twenty fifth, twenty eighteen, seasoned detective Herbs sits down
37:00
in an interrogation room with Raymond.
37:02
Speaker 2: Rowe, and initially Roe tries to play the exact same
37:05
character he's played for twenty six years. He plays dumb.
37:08
Speaker 1: He denies ever having any contact with Christy, denies knowing
37:12
who she is, and flatly denies having anything to do
37:15
with the horrific crime.
37:16
Speaker 2: Detective Herb, however, employs a brilliant, highly calculated interrogation tactic.
37:21
He doesn't immediately slam the DNA report on.
37:23
Speaker 1: The table right he strategically holds his cards close to
37:26
his chest.
37:27
Speaker 2: Instead, he begins probing the periphery of the crime. He
37:30
brings up a seemingly minor long forgotten detail from the
37:33
very beginning of the investigation, the vague reports of the
37:36
peeping tom lurking in the townhouse complex in the weeks
37:40
before the.
37:40
Speaker 1: Murder, and when RB mentions the peeping tom, he notes
37:43
a severe involuntary physical reaction from Roe.
37:47
Speaker 2: Roe literally leans back in his chair, physically attempting to
37:50
distance himself from the detective. The question hit an exposed nerve.
37:55
Speaker 1: Slowly methodically, the facade begins to crack under the pressure.
38:00
The detective then brings up the specific description of the
38:02
white vehicle seen fleeing the scene by the dog walker.
38:06
Speaker 2: Faced with the mounting specificity of the questions. Roe finally
38:09
concedes a point.
38:10
Speaker 1: He admits, yes, he did own a white Toyota Selica
38:13
back in nineteen ninety two.
38:15
Speaker 2: Based on his visceral reaction to the peeping tom question,
38:18
combined with the extreme violence of the crime and his
38:21
proximity to her apartment, the working theory of the police evolved.
38:24
Speaker 1: They hypothesized that Roe was not just a random burglar,
38:27
but that he was deeply dangerously obsessed with her.
38:31
Speaker 2: They believed he was the peeping tom, that he had
38:33
spent weeks watching her, stocking her, and tracking her precise
38:36
daily movements to identify the narrow window when her roommate
38:40
left him before she locked her door to leave for school.
38:42
Speaker 1: But I have to stop and push back on the
38:44
psychology of that motive. If we accept the theory that
38:48
he was deeply obsessed, that he spent weeks stalking her
38:51
and planning this attack, how does someone maintain that level
38:55
of absolute compartmentalization for twenty six years.
38:58
Speaker 2: It's hard to wrap your mind around.
39:00
Speaker 1: How does a person become so consumed by an obsession
39:02
that they commit a savage murder and then simply turn
39:05
that obsession off like a light switch, go home? And
39:08
start spinning records at weddings.
39:10
Speaker 2: Vince, Christie's brother echoes this exact disbelief. He points out
39:14
that it blows his mind that Roe continued to live
39:17
in the exact same community.
39:18
Speaker 1: He undoubtedly saw the newspaper anniversary articles. He almost certainly
39:23
drove past the desperate billiboard Vince put up on the highway,
39:26
and he just blatantly ignored a family's agonizing public cry
39:29
for help.
39:30
Speaker 2: As Vince bluntly states, it takes a truly sick, broken
39:34
person to operate that way.
39:35
Speaker 1: I agree with Vince's assessment. It requires a fundamental lack
39:38
of human empathy. He possessed the terrifying ability to completely
39:42
sever the violent, monstrous reality of his actions from the
39:45
narrative of his daily life.
39:47
Speaker 2: He wasn't haunted by his actions, he had simply filed
39:50
them away. But ultimately the crushing weight of the undeniable
39:53
genetic evidence destroyed that detachment.
39:56
Speaker 1: He couldn't charm his way out of a DNA match.
39:59
Speaker 2: Facing a mountainous scientific proof, and to avoid the very
40:02
real threat of the death penalty, Raymond Rowe formally pleaded
40:06
guilty to murder in the first degree, rape and burglary.
40:09
Speaker 1: For those crimes, he was sentenced to life in prison
40:11
without the possibility of parole, plus an additional consecutive sentence
40:15
of sixty to one hundred and twenty years.
40:17
Speaker 2: He will take his last breath inside a prison cell.
40:20
Speaker 1: The prosecutor, reflecting on the decades of work, noted it
40:24
was the most personally satisfying case of her entire career,
40:27
serving as a powerful testament to the value of sticking
40:30
with something, no matter how impossible it seems, until you
40:33
achieve the right result.
40:35
Speaker 2: While justice was finally definitively served, the Marrack family is
40:39
left to carry the complex memory of Christy.
40:42
Speaker 1: Her brother, Vince, spoke beautifully at the sentencing about the
40:45
profound lessons he learned from his sister's tragically short life.
40:49
Speaker 2: He said, Christie taught him the invaluable lesson of how
40:52
to just live in the moment and be genuinely happy.
40:55
Speaker 1: She taught him that you don't have to constantly worry
40:57
about what is going to happen years down the road,
40:59
but rather you should focus on being intensely present in
41:02
the life you have right now.
41:04
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for you? Listening to
41:05
this deep dive right now.
41:07
Speaker 1: Beyond the fascinating mechanics of a true crime narrative, it
41:10
serves as a stark reminder of the extreme fragility above
41:13
our everyday normalcy.
41:15
Speaker 2: But more importantly, it showcases the enduring, unstoppable power of
41:19
a family's love, a love that flatly refused to let
41:23
a vibrant memory fade into the dust of a cold
41:26
case file.
41:27
Speaker 1: Christie's ultimate legacy isn't the tragedy of how she died,
41:31
but the radiant, infectious energy of how she lived, an
41:34
energy that kept detectives, genealogists, and her family fighting for
41:38
her for almost three decades.
41:40
Speaker 2: Building on that, if we zoom out and connect this
41:42
specific case to the broader societal picture, it leads us
41:45
with a profound, almost haunting realization about the technological era
41:50
we have just entered.
41:51
Speaker 1: This horrific, unsolvable crime was ultimately solved solely because distant,
41:57
completely unrelated individuals decided to spit in a plastic tube
42:02
and upload their genetic code to a public database, simply
42:05
to learn about their family heritage.
42:07
Speaker 2: On one hand, it is a beautiful, undeniable victory for
42:10
truth and justice, Yet it raises a massive lingering question
42:15
for our modern age, as our deeply personal genetic blueprints
42:18
become increasingly digitized, interconnected, and accessible to algorithms, does the
42:23
concept of absolute privacy even exist anymore?
42:26
Speaker 1: Or are we all inevitably just connected branches on a massive,
42:30
undeniable biological tree waiting to be traced by whoever has
42:34
the right software.
42:35
Speaker 2: It's something to think about.
42:36
Speaker 1: It brings us right back to the beginning of our discussion,
42:38
the expectation of precision. For twenty six agonizing years, the
42:42
diagnostic landscape of this murder was completely obscured.
42:45
Speaker 2: The investigators had the shattered door frame, the brutalized body,
42:48
the meticulously preserved biological evidence, but the scientific lens of
42:52
nineteen ninety two simply couldn't bring the picture into focus.
42:55
Speaker 1: It took twenty six years for technology to evolve, to
42:59
finally develop the film and point with laser precision at
43:02
the man hiding behind the DJ booth.
43:04
Speaker 2: Just like that, the murky water clears, the genetics snap
43:08
into place, and a twenty six year old nightmare finally, unequivocally,
43:11
it comes to an end.