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Snowboarder Beaten And Stabbed To Death In The Wilderness Of Wyoming · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In the American justice system, well, truth is basically completely useless.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Right. Which, I mean, it sounds totally absurd when you
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: first hear it.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I know. And I want you to really think about
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: that for a second because it sounds crazy. But it
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: is the reality. Like, a man can sit in a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: police interrogation room, look detectives dead in the eye, and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: just hand them these specific horrific details of a murder.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Details that, you know, only the actual killer could possibly know.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: He can map out the weapon, the sequence of the attack,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the hidden injuries. And after delivering that absolute truth, he
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: can literally just stand up, walk out the front doors
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: of the precinct and remain a completely free man.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: It's totally wild.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Today, we are looking at what happens when the truth
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of a situation and the letter of the law are
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: just violently, aggressively at odds.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: It's a terrifying friction point, honestly, because, you know, we
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: operate under this societal assumption that if you figure out
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: the narrative, like if you know who did it, how
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: they did it, and why the system will just naturally
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: administer justice.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Right, that's what we expect.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the legal apparatus doesn't actually process truth. It
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: processes proof. It requires this very tangible chain of physical
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: and administrative artifacts.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: And when those artifacts contradict the narrative.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Or when they just simply don't exist at all, the
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: entire machine just grinds to a complete halt.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly what we are dissecting today. We are
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: doing a deep dive into a really fascinating, just massive
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: transcript provided by the true crime television program, True Crime News.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they documented three really distinct, highly complex investigations.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But our mission today isn't just to recount the timeline
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of these cases for you. We want to peel back
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the layers and look at the underlying mechanics.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: We're going to explore how an airtight investigation can completely
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: implode on a technicality, how the cutting edge of biological
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: science interacts with decades-old cold cases, and how the.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Whole concept of the perfect crime is almost always dismantled
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: by just sheer human hubris.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Right, because these aren't just tragedies, though they definitely are that.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: They are masterclasses in how physical evidence, human psychology, and
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: procedural law all intersect.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We are going to look at
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: three variations of this systemic failure. And the first is
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: a case where the physical evidence and the human narrative
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: are both present, but they exist in entirely separate, mutually
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: exclusive realities.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Which is just a mind-bending scenario for investigators.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Totally. So let's start right there. I want you to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: think about the geography of Wyoming for a second. If
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you have never been out west, it is just vital
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: to understand the sheer scale of the landscape.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. It's massive.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: We are talking about hundreds of miles of high desert,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: jagged mountains, and what locals literally refer to as the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: vast nothingness.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: It's unforgiving terrain.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: It really is. And this is the environment where we
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: meet Ben Bradley. At the time of this investigation, Ben
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: was 29 years old, and he's described by everyone in
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: his orbit as this gentle giant.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Wait, he was, what, 6'5?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a towering 6'5, originally from California, but he had
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: relocated to Winter Park, Colorado. And he moved there specifically
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: because he was, I mean, in the best sense of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the phrase, a professional ski bum.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: His entire existence revolved around the outdoors.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: And that baseline behavioral profile, that's actually the first critical
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: piece of data for investigators. Ben is not some novice who,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: you know, accidentally wandered off a marked trail.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: He is highly capable, comfortable in extreme environments. and intimately
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: familiar with survival gear. When investigators look at a missing person,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: they look for deviations from their normal routine.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Right, what's out of character.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And for Ben, sleeping outside under the stars in
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere for three or four days, that
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: was entirely routine.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Which totally explains the initial reaction to his travel plans.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: So Ben decides he wants to celebrate his 29th birthday
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: by snowboarding off a glacier.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: That's a pretty intense birthday plan.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And to do this, he plans to travel 450 miles
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: from Winter Park, Colorado, all the way up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And his chosen method to cross that massive expanse of
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: American wilderness.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Let me guess.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Hitchhiking.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Which, I mean, from a modern urban perspective, sounds like
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: an incredibly reckless decision.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Right. You think, who does that?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But within the culture of extreme outdoor sports, and
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: specifically for a 6'5 man who feels entirely at home
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: on the road, hitchhiking. is a calculated, acceptable risk.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: It was just a core part of his free-spirited nature.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: He had successfully hitchhiked countless times before without any incident.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't weird for him.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Not at all. So he packs his gear and hits
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the road. And for a while, we have a very definitive,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: verifiable timeline.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: We know exactly where he was.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Right. He makes it across the state line into Wyoming.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: He places a call to his parents, Ken and Mary,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: from a cell site located in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And this was his birthday, right?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they had this wonderful conversation where they actually sing
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: him happy birthday over the phone. And then later that afternoon,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Ben attempts to call them back.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: But they miss it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Ken and Mary are driving, they hit a dead zone,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and the call fails to connect. And tragically, that missed
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: connection is the absolute last digital or physical trace of
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Ben Bradley as a living person. Wow.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: And as we establish, his parents don't immediately panic.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Because of his baseline behavior... Dropping off the grid
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: for a weekend in the wilderness is normal for him.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: But the alarm bells begin to ring with his peer group.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, his friends up in Jackson Hole.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Right, the ones who are staging this big glacier run
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: for his birthday. They start calling Ken and Mary because
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Ben never arrived.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: And for someone whose entire life ethos was dedicated to snowboarding,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: missing a scheduled milestone birthday run is a massive deviation
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: from the norm.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate red flag.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So that triggers the search. Ken and Mary fly out
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: to Rock Springs, which was the location of that final
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: cell tower ping. And listening to Ken describe this part
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of the ordeal, it's just agonizing.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I can only imagine.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: He talks about driving out into the desert, pulling over
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: and just looking at the horizon. It's just this ocean
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: of sagebrush and dirt roads.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: The scale of that area is just overwhelming.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Right. They are driving up and down these remote highways,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: handing out missing person flyers at Literally every gas station
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and diner between Rock Springs and Jackson Hole just completely
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: swallowed by the scale of the environment.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: And how much time goes by.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Three brutal months. Three months pass with absolute silence. The
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: trail goes completely cold.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Until someone walks in with something, right?
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Yes. A man named Tommy Bowman walks through the doors
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: of the Rock Springs Police Department holding Ben Bradley's backpack.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, so when a piece of physical evidence is suddenly
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: introduced into a stagnant investigation like that, The first thing
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: detectives analyze isn't just the item itself, but the vector
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: of its delivery.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by vector?
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Like, who is handing this to us and why now?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Why today? Tommy Bowman claims that he was out jet
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: skiing with a female friend named Tanya.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Wait, jet skiing in the desert?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, on a lake or reservoir nearby. He says
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: he found the backpack floating in the water. Furthermore, he
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: claims he recognized the name Ben Bradley because he had
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: seen those flyers Ken and Mary distributed.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And he confirmed the identity. Because inside the soaked backpack
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: was a vehicle title bearing Ben's name.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to pause on this because the logistics
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: of Bowman, your story, fundamentally break down if you just
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: look at a map.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Right, the geography makes no sense.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Bowman claims he found this bag while jet skiing roughly
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: 70 miles south of Rock Springs. But Rock Springs was
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Ben's last known location, and he was hitchhiking north to
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Jackson Hole.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: It's totally backwards.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It's like searching for a needle in a haystack. only
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: to realize the person who found the needle brought their
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: own hay from the next county over. How does a
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: backpack travel 70 miles in the exact opposite direction of
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: the victim's destination?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: It defies logic.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And more importantly, Bowman supposedly discovers this bag in June,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: but he waits months to actually walk it into the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: police station.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge red flag.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: What is the psychological mechanism behind holding onto evidence for
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: that long?
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Well, it immediately shifts Bowman from a, you know, Good
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Samaritan classification to a highly suspicious person of interest. Investigators
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: see this pattern frequently, actually.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Really? People hand in evidence to mess with the cops?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When perpetrators or accessories insert themselves into an active investigation,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: it is often an attempt to control the narrative.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: By handing in a piece of evidence, they can gauge
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: what the police already know, observe their reaction, and attempt
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: to point the investigation in a false direction, in this case,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: pointing them 70 miles south.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: That's incredibly manipulative.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So, to test his credibility, the police administer a polygraph.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And we know polygraphs are inadmissible in court. Right. But
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: police still use them. Why?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: That's a great point. They are legally inadmissible because they
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: don't actually detect lies. They measure physiological arousal.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Like heart rate.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, which is essentially
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: how much your fingers sweat.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: The theory is that the cognitive load and fear of
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: deception trigger an involuntary autonomic nervous system response.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: OK, but a nervous, innocent person could feel that, too, right?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly, which is exactly what a defense attorney would correctly argue.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: But investigators use the polygraph as an interrogation tool. It
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: provides psychological leverage. And the transcript notes that Bowman's polygraph
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: explicitly showed deception.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: And his behavior afterward just compounds the suspicion. He actually
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: goes on national television.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Specifically, he gives an interview on the Greta Van
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Cistern show. And on national TV, he embellishes his story
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: claiming he had this whole group of people with him
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: when he found the bag.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a mystery.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: A huge one. The detectives, doing their due diligence, track
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: these specific individuals down. And these people are completely bewildered.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: They had no idea what he was talking about.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Right. They tell police they were absolutely not on a
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: jet skiing trip with Tommy Bowman. He was dropping names
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: to fabricate an alibi, basically creating a corroborating squad out
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: of thin air.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Which demonstrates a profound lack of sophistication. I mean, he
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: fails to understand that in a murder investigation, police will
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: run down every single thread.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: They check everything.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Everything. But before they can pressure Bowman further on the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: backpack anomaly, the geography of the case shifts violently again.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just two days after Bowman turns in the bag.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: A local family is out hunting for Native American artifacts
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: near a geographical landmark called Boar's Tusk.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: That's north, right?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, about 30 miles north of Rock Springs. It's this
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: incredibly remote, jagged volcanic plug that just shoots straight up
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: out of the desert floor.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: It's a very desolate, unforgiving terrain.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Very much so. And right there, lying completely exposed to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the elements and unburied, they discover Ben's remains.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: The physical state of the crime scene immediately forces investigators
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: to rewrite their assumptions.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Because it wasn't exposure.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Right. No, not at all. Ben suffered severe blunt force
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: trauma to the cranium alongside multiple deep stab wounds. It
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: is an intensely violent, intimate method of killing.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Intimate because you have to be so close.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Yes. It requires the attackers to be in close physical proximity,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: exerting massive physical effort.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: But the most confusing data point comes when the crime
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: scene technicians process the body. because they discover Ben's identification,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: his cell phone, and several hundred dollars in cash still
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: in his pockets.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Which completely vaporizes the standard robbery motive. If someone kills
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: a hitchhiker for money, they take the cash. If they
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: want to delay identification, they take the ID. If they
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: want to prevent digital tracking, they take the phone and
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: destroy it. The killers left all the traditional items of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: value behind.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Except for one very specific thing.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Ben's custom snowboard is completely missing from the scene.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: And that missing snowboard is the linchpin of physical evidence,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: which we will analyze shortly.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, we definitely will.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: But right as the investigators are trying to reconcile a
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: brutally violent murder with a non-robbery motive, the entire case
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: is hijacked by a phone call from a holding cell, what, 1,100
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: miles away? Yeah, 1,100 miles.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: We are jumping from the desert of Wyoming to a
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: jail in St. Louis, Missouri. A man named Eric Kahn
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is sitting in custody on completely unrelated charges. And he
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: reaches out to detectives and initiates a conversation about Ben Bradley.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Just out of the blue.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Pretty much. And Kahn doesn't just say he heard a rumor.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: He begins handing federal agents highly specific, granular details about
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the murder.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: What kind of details?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Well, he claims he and two other unnamed men spent
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: hours partying with Ben. He details the sequence of the violence.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And he explicitly states, That one of the men struck
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Ben in the head with an axe handle, which perfectly
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: aligns with the blunt force trauma profile at the scene.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And then he says that another man utilized a knife
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: to stab him.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, so what you are describing is the absolute holy
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: grail of criminal investigations. It's called holdback evidence.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Holdback evidence, right.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: When a high-profile crime occurs, law enforcement intentionally quarantines specific
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: details from the media and the public.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: So they hide it on purpose. Yes.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. This could be the exact caliber of a weapon,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the specific knot used in a ligature, or in this case,
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: the mechanics of an axe handle, and the specific sequence
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: of blunt force followed by sharp force trauma.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And they do this so they know if someone is
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: lying later.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Precisely to validate future confessions. If a suspect walks in
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: and regurgitates facts they read in the newspaper, it's totally useless.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: But if they produce holdback evidence, investigators operate under the
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: assumption that the suspect must have been present at the scene.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: So the police are looking at Kahn and he possesses
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: knowledge that physically shouldn't exist outside of the killer's mind
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: in the police file.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: It's a slam dunk.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Right. So they arrest him. They charge him with first
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: degree murder. Furthermore, Kahn's statements somehow link back to our
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: jet skiing backpack finder, Tommy Bowman, giving police the leverage
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: to charge Bowman as an accessory after the fact.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, it all comes together.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: It looks like a textbook resolution. The detectives are literally
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: calling this one of the greatest days of their professional careers.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I bet.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Ken and Mary, Ben's parents, are preparing themselves for the
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: grueling process of a trial. And then here's where it
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: gets really interesting.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Days before the trial is set to commence, the puzzle
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: piece that perfectly fit the board is suddenly revealed to
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: have a completely impossible picture on it.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Because Eric Kahn, the man who provided a terrifyingly accurate,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: unreleased description of a murder... completely torpedoes the prosecution.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: He blows it all up.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: He produces an airtight, legally insurmountable alibi. And it isn't
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: a testimonial alibi. It's not like his girlfriend claiming he
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: was asleep on her couch.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Those are easy to break.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Very easy.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: But he directs his defense attorney to pull the administrative
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: records from Los Angeles County, California. The jail intake logs
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: and probation records definitively prove, beyond a shadow of legal doubt,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: that on June 2nd, The exact operational window of Ben's
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: disappearance and murder Eric Kahn was physically incarcerated in a
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: cell in Los Angeles.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: OK, I have to push back here because this is
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: where my brain just starts to glitch.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: It's confusing. Yeah.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: If Kahn has the holdback evidence, if he knows about
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the axe handle, why does his physical presence matter? Couldn't
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the prosecution just pivot and argue that he, I don't know,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: orchestrated a hit from behind bars in L.A.? Why did
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: the DA just drop everything?
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: It's an excellent question, and it really comes down to
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: the strict parameters of how someone is legally charged. Khan
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: was charged with first-degree murder as a primary actor, meaning
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: the prosecution filed legal documents claiming he was physically present
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: in Wyoming committing the act. To pivot to a conspiracy
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: charge or a murder-for-hire charge, you have to prove an
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: entirely different set of elements.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: You have to prove communication across state lines. You have
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: to find financial transactions. a predetermined agreement.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: There was zero evidence of any of that.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: So they are basically trapped by their own charging documents.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But it's even deeper than that. It is the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: hierarchy of evidence in the courtroom. You have two undeniable
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: facts that literally violate the laws of physics.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Fact A and Fact B.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Right. Fact A, Kahn possesses intimate knowledge of a Wyoming murder.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Fact B, Kahn was locked in a California cell. In
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the hierarchy of the court, a verbal confession, even one
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: containing holdback evidence, is considered subjective and malleable.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Because people lie.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: People falsely confess all the time, you know, for notoriety,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: for better jail conditions, or because of mental illness. But
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: a municipal jail intake record, that is considered an objective
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: administrative truth.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: So paper beats people. Exactly. When the physical documentation contradicts
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: the human narrative, the law must side with the documentation.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: The district attorney looked at this paradox and realized... A
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: defense attorney would obliterate their case in 10 minutes. They
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: were legally obligated to dismiss the charges against Kahn, and consequently,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: the accessory charges against Bowman collapsed as well.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Everyone just walks out the door. Which leaves us with
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the million-dollar question. How does a guy locked in a
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: cell in Los Angeles know about an axe handle in
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the Wyoming desert? How does the quarantine of holdback evidence
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: fail so spectacularly?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Well, the most logical hypothesis points to the hyper-efficiency of
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: the criminal underground.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: They just talk.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we think of holdback evidence as perfectly sealed, but
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: it often leaks through secondary channels. First responders talk.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Crime scene technicians talk to their spouses. Or, more likely
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: in this scenario, the actual killers talk.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: The killers cross paths with someone in the transient criminal network.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: They brag about the axe handle at Boar's Tusk. And
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: that information travels like a virus through the system until
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: it reaches Eric Kahn.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: And Kahn just uses it.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Kahn, finding himself facing charges in St. Louis, decides
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: to use this stolen intellectual property as currency. He attempts
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: to manufacture leverage by essentially framing himself for a murder
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: he physically couldn't have committed, hoping to broker a plea
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: deal for his current predicament.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: But the gambit backfires.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Completely. And he accidentally demolishes the entire Wyoming investigation in
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: the process.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But the police aren't totally back at square one. Because remember,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: whoever killed Ben didn't take his money, but they did
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: take his snowboard.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And that board is crucial.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to get granular about this board because
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: it is essentially the ultimate tracking device. Ben wasn't riding
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a mass-produced off-the-rack board. This was a custom-manufactured, never-summer snowboard
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: built in Denver, Colorado. Specifically, it was a split board.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Which is a highly specialized piece of equipment.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Right. For those who aren't in the extreme winter sports world,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: A split board literally unclips down the middle. It splits
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: into two separate skis, allowing the rider to attach skins
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: to the bottom and hike up a mountain through deep
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: backcountry snow.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: So you don't need a ski lift.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And once you reach the summit, you clip the
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: two halves back together into a solid snowboard to ride down.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: It is a brilliant piece of engineering, and it's incredibly expensive,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: costing well over $ 1, 000.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: And it was a limited edition, right?
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Very limited. For the police, the most important part is
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that this specific board was serialized. It was number 55
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: out of a limited production run of only 97 boards
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: ever made. Visually, it was unmistakable. A stark black and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: red bottom with a distinctive Black Eagle graphic on the top.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: It is a unique artifact. In forensic terms, if you
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: can establish the chain of custody of that snowboard from
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: the slopes of Winter Park to wherever it currently rests,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: you will inevitably intersect with the individuals who left Ben
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Bradley at Boar's Tusk.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And this unique artifact leads investigators directly to two local men,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Tracy Warren and Chris Stove.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, who are they?
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: These are acquaintances of our jet skiing friend Tommy Bowman,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and they operate within a circle that law enforcement explicitly
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: describes as active in local criminal events. And the most
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: shocking part, the tip about the snowboard being in their
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: possession doesn't come from a rival drug dealer or an
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: anonymous hotline call.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Where does it come from?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It comes from inside the house. Tracy Warren's own sister
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: contacts the police and unequivocally states that she saw Ben's
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: custom snowboard Inside Tracy's living room.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: The police transcript indicates that Tracy's parents also corroborated this sighting.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Which creates a massive structural advantage for the police, theoretically. Right.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, the family has breached the perimeter.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Right. You'd think they have them.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: But when the investigative journalists from Crime Watch Daily travel
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: to Wyoming to capitalize on this, the reality of the
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: situation hits a brick wall.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Yes. The reporters drive up to the sister's house. Her
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: vehicles are parked in the driveway, signaling she is home.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: They knock. They wait, and she absolutely refuses to answer
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: the door.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Just ignores them.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Completely. So they pivot and drive to the mother's house.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The mother opens the door, realizes who they are, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: flat out refuses to speak a single word to them.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: We really need to analyze this through the lens of
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: game theory and localized social dynamics.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Well, what we are witnessing is a localized variation of
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: the prisoner's dilemma. In a vacuum, you might assume that
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: physical evidence like finding the murder weapon, matching DNA, Locating
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: a stolen $ 1, 000 snowboard is the absolute currency of justice.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Which is what we're taught to believe. Right.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: But in tight-knit rural communities or insular networks, social survival
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: often overrides legal obligation. The family knows the evidence exists.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: They initially reported it. But as the reality of a
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: murder trial sets in the prospect of sending their own
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: son or brother to prison for life, the calculus changes.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: The reality of the consequences.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The legal system demands testimony. But the social system
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: demands silence. They choose silence, effectively paralyzing the investigation.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: And that paralysis is on full infuriating display when the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: reporters finally secure in an on-camera interview with a woman
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: named Tabitha. Tabitha was romantically involved with both Tracy Warren
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: and Chris Dove at different times.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: She sits down in front of the cameras and she
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: starts constructing this bizarre psychological partition. She describes Tracy and
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Chris as gentlemen.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Gentlemen. Yeah.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: She details how they would open car doors for her,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: how they were deeply concerned about her physical well-being. She
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: insists that she does not believe they would ever be
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: capable of harming someone like Ben Bradley. But then she
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: drops a massive, heavily loaded caveat. She says, not in
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: their right state of mind.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Wow. That phrase is a structural pillar of cognitive dissonance.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: She's acknowledging their capacity for violence while simultaneously absolving their
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: core identities. By stipulating not in their right state of mind,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: She is heavily implying severe substance abuse.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: She's separating the men from the drugs.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She is separating the sober gentleman she dated from
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: the intoxicated entities who may have committed a brutal homicide.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: It allows her to protect her own psychological safety, the
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: belief that she wasn't dating monsters while addressing the reality
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: of the murder.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: But the absolute jaw-dropping pull-your-hair-out moment of this interview comes
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: when the reporter leans in and asks Tabitha point-blank, Who
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: killed Ben Bradley?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Does she say?
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: She doesn't claim ignorance. She looks right at the camera
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: and refuses to say the name. She says, I've already
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: told the cops who I think it was.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: And there is the ultimate failure point of the system.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: She knows. The police know she knows. The sister knows.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: The parents know.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Everyone knows.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: But knowing a truth and legally proving a truth are
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: two entirely different universes. The police cannot force Tabitha to
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: testify against her will in a way that will hold
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: up under cross-examination, especially if she suddenly recants or claims
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: she was coerced.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Which is why the police are reduced to practically begging
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the public. The detectives look into the camera and explicitly
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: broadcast a tip line, 307-922-5295. They're just hoping someone breaks.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: They are essentially praying for human frailty. They are waiting
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: for the burden of guilt, or maybe a bad breakup,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: or a drug arrest. to finally outweigh the burden of loyalty.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: They need the human element to break so they can
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: access the physical proof.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: But what happens when we invert that entire paradigm? We
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: just spent a good chunk of time looking at a
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: case where someone literally gets away with murder because they
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: disposed of the physical proof or hid it behind an
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: impenetrable wall of silence, rendering the human narrative legally useless. Right.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: What happens when you flip the board? What if the
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: narrative is crystal clear, horrifyingly detailed, and provided directly to
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: law enforcement? But the physical proof simply does not exist.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: That is a brilliant pivot because it takes us from
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the freezing mountains of Wyoming to the oppressive heat of Phoenix, Arizona.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: And to a very different kind of case.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Very different. If the Ben Bradley case is about having
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: physical evidence but a broken narrative, this next case is
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the exact opposite. A horrifyingly clear narrative with absolutely no
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: physical evidence... It brings us face to face with the
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: limits of science.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is tough.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: We are looking at a cold case that terrorized the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Phoenix area for 25 years. The media dubbed it the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: canal killer case. In the early 1990s, the mutilated bottoms
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of two young women, 22-year-old Angela Brasso and 17-year-old Melanie Bernis,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: were discovered dumped in the municipal canal system.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Just horrific.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: The city was completely paralyzed by fear. And for two
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: and a half decades, the police had nothing but DNA
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: profiles from the crime scenes that matched no one in
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: their database.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Until the technology finally caught up with the evidence.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Right. The science advanced.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: This brings us to a revolutionary, though, you know, highly
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: controversial forensic tool. Familial DNA.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Can you explain how that works?
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Sure. For years, if police ran a killer's DNA through CODIS,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: the national database, and didn't get an exact match, it
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: was just a dead end. But familial DNA testing searches
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: for partial matches.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: So it looks for relatives.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It looks at autothomal DNA, analyzing the number of
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: shared centimorgans, which are essentially units of genetic linkage. If
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: the police find a profile that shares a specific threshold
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: of genetic markers with the crime scene DNA, they know
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: they aren't looking at the killer, but they are looking
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: at the killer's brother or father or cousin.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: It's weaponizing the family tree against the suspect.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: It really is. It narrows the suspect pool. from millions
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: of people down to a single surname. In this case,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: the genetic genealogy points detectives toward the family name Miller.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they find a Miller.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Through targeted surveillance, they identify a man named Brian Patrick Miller.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Miller is a bizarre, deeply unsettling character who had branded
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: himself online and in steampunk cosplay communities as the zombie hunter.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: The zombie hunter.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so detectives surreptitiously collect a sample of his DNA,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: usually from a discarded coffee cup or a cigarette butt,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: and they run it against the canal crime scenes.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And?
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: It is a statistical, irrefutable match. He is arrested and
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: charged with two counts of first-degree murder, to which he
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: pleads not guilty.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Now, in a standard procedural drama, the credits roll here.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: The science solved the cold case. But Miller's arrest acts
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: as a catalyst that unlocks a deeply hidden peripheral nightmare.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: The other case. Right.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Immediately after his mugshot hits the evening news, a woman
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: named Amy walks into the spotlight. Amy is Brian Miller's ex-wife.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: She contacts Crime Watch daily, and she unloads a secret
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: that is almost too heavy to comprehend.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: It's unbelievable what she lived with.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: She reveals that back in the early 2000s, while they
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: were married and living together, she watched Miller descend into
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: a dark, escalating obsession with extreme pornography, severe violence, and sadomasochism.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Which, you know, the escalation of those paraphilias is a
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: well-documented precursor in the behavioral profiles of violent offenders. It
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: is the normalization of the abnormal.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: But it moves from fantasy to reality when Miller makes
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a direct confession to Amy.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: He actually tells her what he did.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: He didn't just hint at it. He sat her down
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: and explicitly told her that he had grabbed a little
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: girl off the street. He told Amy he dragged the
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: child into their house, stabbed her, and cut her throat.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: And he then detailed, methodically, how he dismembered the little
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: girl's body and disposed of the remains in the municipal
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: trash system to be collected on garbage day.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: It's just evil.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And after hearing this explicit, horrific confession, Amy stayed married
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to him for eight more years.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: We really have to unpack the neurobiology of that because
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: the immediate reaction from the public is always intense judgment.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I'll admit that was my exact first thought. It feels
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: impossible to understand. How do you sleep next to someone
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: who tells you they butchered a child? Why didn't she
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: run to the police the next morning?
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: It feels impossible because you are analyzing it using your
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: prefrontal cortex, part of the brain responsible for logic, planning,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: and rational decision making.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Right. From a place of safety.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But Amy wasn't operating from her prefrontal cortex. She
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: was trapped in her amygdala. When a human being is
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: subjected to chronic terror and an inescapable threat, the brain
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: as fear center, the amygdala, essentially hijacks the entire nervous system.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: The fight or flight response.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Yes. It floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline. The
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: brain determines that fighting is impossible and fleeing will result
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: in death, so it defaults to a profound freeze or
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: fawn response.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So she just shut down.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Amy stated she didn't want to believe it, which is
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: a classic dissociative defense mechanism. But more acutely, she knew
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: that if she went to the police and they couldn't
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: immediately lock him up, She would be the next person
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: dismembered in the trash can.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Her silence wasn't complicity. It was biological survival.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Precisely. It was pure survival.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: But the dam finally breaks. Once Miller is securely behind
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: bars for the canal murders, that immediate physical threat is neutralized.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Her prefrontal cortex comes back online and she tells the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: world what he confessed to. And the shockwave of that
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: revelation hits one specific family with devastating precision.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: It connects to a parallel missing persons case that had
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: been agonizing the community.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Right. We have to introduce Brandy Myers. Brandy was a
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: little girl in Phoenix who vanished without a trace in
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the early 2000s. She had simply been walking door to
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: door in her neighborhood, collecting donations for a school book-a-thon.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Just a normal day.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: And the source material features an incredibly hard-to-watch interview with
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Brandy's younger sister, Kristen. Kristen literally maps out the geography
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: of their childhood. She shows the exact route she and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Brandy would walk from their apartment complex to their elementary
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: school every single day.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: And where did that route go?
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: That daily route, the path this little girl took while
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: knocking on doors, went directly past Brian Patrick Miller's front door.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: See, that geographical convergence removes almost all statistical ambiguity. You
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: have an established, genetically proven violent predator living directly on
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: the walking route of a child who vanishes in the
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: middle of the day.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: It's all right there.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: You have his own ex-wife corroborating a highly specific confession
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: of a little girl being dragged inside a home, which
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: explains the sudden disappearance off the street. And you have
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: the disposal method, the municipal trash system, which perfectly explains
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: why canine units and search parties never located a body
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: in the surrounding desert.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: The narrative structure is solid, logical, and complete.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: It is entirely cohesive.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And listening to Kristen process this reality is just gut-wrenching.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: She is drowning in survivor's guilt. She talks about the
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: last time she saw Brandy watching her sister turn the
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: corner and getting that instinctual lump in her throat, that
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: somatic feeling that something is terribly wrong.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: That intuition.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Kristen agonizes over the what-ifs, and she says something that
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: just stops you in your tracks. She says she wishes
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: she had gone with Brandy that day. She wishes she
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: had been there to hold Brandy's hand, even if it
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: meant Miller dragged them both inside and killed them both.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Just so she wouldn't be alone.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Just so Brandy wouldn't have to face the terror alone.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: The sheer weight of that love and that trauma is staggering.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: What is equally remarkable is Kristen's emotional discipline regarding Amy.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: The ex-wife. Right.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: It would be incredibly easy and human to direct decades
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: of rage at the ex-wife who sat on this confession
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: for years. But Kristen explicitly states she harbors no anger
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: toward Amy.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: That takes a lot of grace.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: It really does. She understands the fear. She is simply
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: profoundly grateful to finally have the void of the unknown filled.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: The narrative, as horrific as it is, provides a form
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: of psychological closure.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: But here's where we hit the absolute infuriating bedrock of
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the American legal system. Kristen knows in her bones that
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Miller killed Brandy. The public knows it. The Phoenix Police
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Department holds a press conference and publicly states that Brian
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Miller is a very strong investigative lead in Brandy's murder.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Right. The prosecutor's office declines to press charges. How is
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: that possible?
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Because, as we said, the court does not deal in knowing.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: It deals in proving. And the prosecutors are paralyzed by
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: a legal doctrine known as corpus delicti.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Corpus delicti.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: It translates to the body of the crime. This doctrine
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: dictates that you cannot convict someone based solely on a confession.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: You must first prove that a crime actually occurred through
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: physical evidence.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: So because he put the body.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: In the trap. Exactly. Exactly. Because the municipal waste was
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: incinerated or buried in a massive landfill decades ago, there
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: is no body. There's no crime scene in the house
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: because it was cleaned or remodeled.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Nothing is left.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: There is no blood, no bone fragment, no DNA tying
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Miller to Brandy. All the prosecution has is a secondhand
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: confession recounted by an ex-wife years after the fact.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: And defense attorneys would just destroy that.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: In front of a jury, a competent defense attorney would
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: tear that to shreds. They would argue Amy is a
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: vindictive ex-wife. making up stories to capitalize on Miller's current infamy.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Without physical proof to anchor the truth in reality, the
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: truth is legally impotent.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: So nothing happens.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Even though Miller is facing the death penalty for the
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: two women in the canal because familial DNA physically anchored
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: him to those victims, Brandy's case legally stalls out.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate agonizing realization of the phrase beyond
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt. In your gut, there is zero doubt.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: But on paper, it's impossible to prosecute.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: We've now examined a case where the narrative contradicted the
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: physical evidence and a case where the narrative was perfect,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: but the physical evidence was missing.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: But what happens when the narrative itself is deliberately weaponized?
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: What happens when a person realizes that the justice system's
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: reliance on physical proof and procedural law is actually a
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: massive vulnerability that can be exploited?
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: That is exactly where we are going next. We've looked
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: at how murderers evade justice. But what happens when the
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: supposed victim is actually the one pulling the strings?
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: It's a fascinating shift in dynamics.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: We are pivoting from cold-blooded violence to high-stakes white-collar grifting.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: And I want to be entirely clear right up front.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: This case involves a very high-profile political figure. But we
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: are not here to debate political platforms or take ideological sides. Right.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: We're just looking at the facts.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: We are looking strictly at the mechanics of this extortion scheme,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: exactly as it is laid out in the source transcript,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: because it is an unbelievable study in greed and catastrophic arrogance.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: To understand the extortion, we really have to establish the
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: immense power disparity between the two main actors.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Who are we looking at?
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: On one side, you have Eliot Spitzer. At 57 years old,
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: He's the disgraced former governor of New York. He is
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: a man who built a career as a crusading prosecutor,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: only to have his political life destroyed by a highly
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: publicized prostitution scandal.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Right, the Client 9 scandal. Yes.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: He is immensely wealthy. He is a public figure. And
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: because of his past, he is acutely, uniquely vulnerable to
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: public embarrassment.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And on the other side, you have Svetlana Zakharova Travis.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: She is a 25-year-old Russian national operating as an incredibly
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: high-end call girl, commanding rates of $ 5, 000 a night.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: That's a huge sum.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And we actually have incredible insight into her psychology, because
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Svetlana wrote an article outlining her worldview. She didn't view
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: herself as a victim of the sex trade. She stated
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: her philosophy plainly. Sex is sex, but money is money.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: She was very pragmatic about it.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: She viewed herself as an immigrant businesswoman. She essentially argued
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: that she was doing exactly what American politicians tell immigrants
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: to do. Work hard, seize opportunity, and aggressively maximize your talents.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: And she identified Eliot Spitzer as a massively lucrative opportunity.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: They engage in a secret transactional relationship for two years.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: But the dynamic fundamentally fractures during an incident at the
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: famed Plaza Hotel in New York City.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: The Plaza, wow.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, an institution of wealth and discretion. But in room 1541,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: that discretion evaporates. Svetlana informs Spitzer that she intends to
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: move back to Russia. Shortly after this conversation, she dials 911.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: And what does she tell them?
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: She tells the emergency dispatcher that Spitzer has gone completely
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: ballistic and that he violently attacked her, attempting to choke her.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Imagine being the NYPD officers responding to that call. You
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: are walking into a luxury suite at the plaza. You
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: recognize a former governor of New York, and it is
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: pure chaos.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: It must have been surreal.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: The officers find broken glass shattered across the room. They
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: find blood. Svetlana is highly agitated, claiming she cut herself
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: on the broken glass during the struggle.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: So there's physical evidence.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Yes. The police protocol for domestic violence kicks in. Emergency
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: medical services are dispatched, and they physically transport Svetlana to
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: the hospital. On paper and physically in that room, it
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: looks like a textbook. Highly volatile assault by a powerful
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: man against a vulnerable younger woman.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: She has successfully generated the physical artifacts of a crime.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: She has the 911 recording, the broken glass, the blood,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: and the hospital intake forms. The narrative and the evidence
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: are perfectly aligned.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: But then the timeline gets incredibly bizarre.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the sudden twist. Instead of staying in
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: New York to press formal charges, to give sworn statements
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: to detectives, or to seek a protective order, Svetlana immediately
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: goes to the airport.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Just leaves.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: She hops on a plane and flees to Russia the
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: very next day. And once she's safely out of the
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: jurisdiction of the NYPD, she publicly admits that the entire
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: incident was theater.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: She just admits it.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: She fabricated the choking story, the broken glass, the blood,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the panic. It was all a completely staged performance.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Which forces us to ask, why? Why risk felony charges
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: for filing a false police report and staging a crime
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: scene with a high-profile politician? Why involve the authorities at
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: all if you were just going to flee?
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Because the NYPD choking investigation was just a smokescreen. When
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: investigators pull back the curtain and look at the financial records,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: they realize they aren't looking at an assault case. They're
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: looking at a massive, sophisticated extortion operation. And Svetlana is
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: the architect.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: The financial audit reveals that over the course of their
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: two-year secret relationship, Svetlana had systematically bled Spitzer dry. She
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: had squeezed him for $ 400, 000 in hush money.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: $ 400, 000.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: And the mechanics of her leverage were brutally simple. She
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: threatened that if the payments ever ceased, she would bypass
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: him completely and go directly to his family in the
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: New York tabloid press. divulging every little dirty detail of
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: their tryst.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: And because of Spitzer's client nine history, that threat isn't
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: just credible. It is weaponized plutonium. Oh, absolutely.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: He knows the press will print it and he knows
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: the public will believe it. He actually tried to fight
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: back initially. The transcript notes he filed a lawsuit against
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: her for blackmail. But you can imagine the legal counsel
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: he received.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: It would have been a disaster for him.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: A public blackmail trial involves discovery, cross-examination and airing all
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: those dirty details in open court anyway. He realizes he
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: is trapped and he drops the lawsuit.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: So Svetlana is sitting comfortably in Russia. She is nearly
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: half a million dollars richer. She has completely outmaneuvered a
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: former governor, neutralized his legal retaliation, and utilized the NYPD
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: to orchestrate her exit strategy.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: By all metrics of criminal enterprise, she has won. She
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: executed the perfect grift.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Which makes what happens next so mind-boggling. I had to
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: read the transcript three times to make sure I understood it.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: So what does this all mean? How could someone cunning
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: enough to extort nearly half a million dollars be foolish
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: enough to walk right back into the trap? It is
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: the defining fatal flaw of the criminal mastermind, hubris. It
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: is the Dunning-Kruger effect applied to criminality, the absolute blinding
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: belief in one's own invincibility.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Svetlana flies back to the United States. She had a
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: completely unrelated minor court date pending in Los Angeles. So
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: possessing half a million extorted dollars, She books a flight
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: from Russia back into JFK Airport in New York.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: She just assumes she is untouchable.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she assumes the narrative she controlled so perfectly in
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: that hotel room protects her. But what she doesn't realize
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: is that while she was gone, the NYPD's choking investigation
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: had quietly morphed into a grand larceny investigation against her.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: And they issued a warrant.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: She vastly underestimated the digital architecture of jurisdictional law. When
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: a felony warrant for grand larceny by extortion is signed
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: by a judge in New York, it enters the NCIC.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: The National Crime Information Center database. Right.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: And this database is instantly accessible to Customs and Border Protection.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: The moment her passport is scanned at JFK, bells ring.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: The system doesn't care about her philosophy on maximizing talents.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't care about how clever her extortion plot was.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: The system only processes the administrative artifact, an active felony warrant.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: The cops get the tip, they get the flag, they
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: are waiting for her at the gate, and they nab
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: her right as she steps off the plane.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: The psychological whiplash must have been incredible.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: She goes from believing she is an untouchable international businesswoman
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: to sitting in Rikers Island on a $ 1 million bond.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: She is crying her eyes out in court, facing up
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: to 15 years in state prison for grand larceny by extortion.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: She traded a luxury apartment and the plaza for Rikers.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: All because she underestimated the reach of a pending U.S. warrant.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: She couldn't comprehend that physical presence in a jurisdiction overrides
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: a manipulated narrative.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Which really brings this entire deep dive full circle.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: When you synthesize the mechanics of all three of these
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: stories for you, a profound, unified theme emerges. Whether we
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: are analyzing Eric Kahn's mathematically impossible jailhouse alibi in the
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: Wyoming desert, or Brian Miller's missing physical evidence that prevents
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: the Myers family from getting justice in Phoenix, or Svetlana's
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: fabricated hotel room crime scene in New York, the common
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: thread is that truth is completely at the mercy of proof.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: It is an imperfect, frustrating machine. The justice system cannot
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: read minds. It cannot rewind time to see who swung
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the axe handle or what happened in that house or
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: what was said in that hotel room.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: It can only process the tangible artifacts left behind.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Justice isn't just about knowing what happened. It's about being
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: able to prove it on paper to 12 strangers beyond
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: And if the puzzle piece doesn't perfectly match the picture
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: on the board, the system must reject it, regardless of
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: the human cost.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a final provocative thought
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: to ponder as you go about your day, because this
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: tension between what we know and what we can prove
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: is only going to become more complex.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: As we move deeper into an increasingly digital, hyper-surveilled age,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves, what happens when our physical reality,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: where our bodies actually are, what we actually see with
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: our own eyes is completely contradicted by our digital footprint?
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: It is the next evolution of the Ericon Paradox. A
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: piece of administrative data said he was in Los Angeles,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: while human testimony in his own confession placed him at
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: a murder scene in Wyoming.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: And the law sided with the data over the human.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: So are we rapidly approaching a future where our digital evidence,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: our cell phone GPS pings, our facial recognition logs, our
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: biometric check-ins completely overrides human memory in the eyes of
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the law? If an algorithm says you were in the room,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: but 100 people swear you weren't, who does the jury
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: legally have to believe?
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: That's a scary thought.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: When the puzzle piece perfectly fits the digital algorithm, but
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: the human picture is entirely wrong, what becomes of the truth?
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Keep questioning the narrative. We'll catch you next time.