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A phantom threat caught David Mabrito · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this. It's the night of Valentine's Day, two thousand
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: and seven. You're in Carlsbad, California, sitting in this darkened
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: movie theater. The flickering light from the screen is just
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: kind of washing over the audience, and right in the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: middle of that crowd our seventy seven year old Art
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and seventy two year old Lois Sarin. They are out
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: for a really rare, much deserved romantic date night, which.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Is a big deal for them because they've spent decades
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: raising six kids exactly, and their daily lives are still,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: you know, heavily centered around caring for their thirty nine
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: year old daughter, Jodine or Jody as they called her.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we should probably give some context on Jody for everyone.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Listening, Right, So, Jody had developmental disabilities. She functioned with
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the mental capacity of like a young teenager.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, So while she.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Lived independently in her own condo, she really relied on
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: her parents for a lot of her daily structure. I mean,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: they checked on her every single day, right.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to this specific Valentine's Day. They hadn't
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: been able to reach her by phone earlier.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Which is a break in the routine.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and Lois had tried to just push it out
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of her mind, you know, to just enjoy the movie.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: But if she sits there in the dark, this creeping,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: totally inexplicable dread just crawls under her skin. Oh man,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: she cannot focus on the screen at all. The feeling
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: gets so overwhelming that she finally turns to Art and
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: they just get up and leave, right in the middle
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: of film. He just knew, Yeah, they just had to
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: go check on Jody.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: It's that really visceral intuition, Like sometimes the brain processes
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: a break and routine like that missed daily phone call
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: subconsciously before it even registers. His conscious panics.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So true. So it's about ten several PM when Art
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and Lois arrive at Jody's condo. They expect to hear her,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: you know, walking around, or the TV on, but it
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: is dead silent.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: That's eerie.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Very Art uses his spare key, turns the dead bolt
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and pushes, but the door barely budges. Wait, why it's
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: chained from the inside. Oh wow, And this stops them.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely cool because he had a really strict routine. She
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: never changed her door, right.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Because of her developmental level. She liked them having easy
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: access exactly.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So panic immediately sets in. Art, who again is seventy
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: seven years old, throws his entire body against that door
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and literally breaks.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: It down, which is just a massive testament to the
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: sheer adrenaline of that.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Moment, unimaginable adrenaline.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So the lights are on in the condo. Art rushes
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: straight down the hall to Jody's bedroom and he throws
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: open the door. Okay, the room is mostly dark, but
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: in the shadows he can make out the silhouette of
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: two people in bed.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he sees what looks like his daughter and a man.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Believing he's just you know, stumbled into this highly intimate
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: private moment, he has completely taken aback.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's probably embarrassed, definitely a little angry, totally.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: So he quickly shuts the door and yells through the wood, like, listen,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: you need to get decent. Both of you come out
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: to the living room. We were waiting for you.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, So he just he backs off.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: He backs off, and then Art loses goes sit in
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the living room. They wait. Minutes go by total silence,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: not even a rustle of clothing.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: You can just imagine the tension for you as a
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: parent sitting there waiting for this stranger to emerge, trying
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: to figure out what you're even going to say.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: But here's the devastating current. After a few agonizing minutes,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Art gets up to nudge them along. He opens the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: bedroom door again. The man is gone, gone. Jody is
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: lying on the bed. She's been brutally beaten, and when
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Art rushes over to her, he realizes she is completely
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: cold to the touch.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: God, that is the absolute worst case scenario, and it
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: sets up this truly baffling physical puzzle right from the
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: very first minute of the investigation.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: It really does. And that's why we're doing this deep
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: dive today opening up this notorious, decades old case file,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: because this isn't just a story about a horrific crime.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: No, It's so much more complex than that.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Right, It's a story about a chillingly methodical offender, the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: relentless evolution of forensic science over an eleven year period,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and honestly, a stunning twist of fate driven entirely by
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: guilty contents.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: What makes this case so compelling to analyze is the
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: massive gap between the physical evidence left at the scene
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: and the psychological profile of the man who left it. Yes,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I mean it took a completely new way of looking
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: at DNA to finally bridge that gap.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this right now, because the immediate question
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: you're probably asking yourself listening to this is how on
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: earth does an assailant vanish from a bedroom when the
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: victim's parents are sitting right there in the living room.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Right It sounds physically impossible, it does, but it comes
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: down to the specific layout of Jody's condo. It was
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: split right down the middle by a dividing wall. Okay,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: so when you walk in the front door, turning one
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: way takes you down a hallway to the bedroom and
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the bathroom, but turning the exact opposite way takes you
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: into the kitchen and the living room.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So, while Art and Lois are sitting in the living
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: room facing the kitchen, just staring at each other in
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: stune silence.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: This man silently slips out of the bedroom.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he walks right down the hallway behind the dividing
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: wall and slips out the broken front.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Door while they are literally feed away feet away.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: He walks away into the Carl's bad night. But wait,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: this is what trips me up. If Art just violently
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: broke down the door, why would this guy silently stay
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: in the bedroom right Why wouldn't he panic and attack
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the parents right then or just bolt immediately.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: That's actually the most chilling part of the scene because
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: it tells us something really profound about his nervous system.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: How so well he didn't panic, He calculated. Most offenders,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: you know, when they're interrupted in the act, they experienced
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: this massive fight or flight adrenaline dumb.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Right, They get frantic and noisy exactly.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: But this man stayed perfectly quiet, assessed the layout, waited
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: for the parents to retreat to a separate room, and
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: systematically extracted himself.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And what investigators find when they process that bedroom confirms
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: that extreme level of calculation. I mean he had placed
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: sheets and blankets over the windows in Joe room to
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: completely block out the world.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally isolated.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: And he had dragged a full length mirror and positioned
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: it right next to the bed so he could watch himself.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It gets worse. Jody had been severely beaten, strangled, and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: she fought back. I mean, she had defensive ones, but
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the brutality didn't stop there, he assaulted her and then
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: inflicted laceration across her throat.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Post mortem, the psychological profile that emerges from that room
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: is incredibly dark. I mean, the blocked windows indicate this
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: desire for total isolation and prolonged control over the environment,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: and the mirror points to extreme narcissism and a paraphilic
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: need for visual stimulation during the act.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: This wasn't just a frenzied loss of control.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Not at all. It was a curated environment.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: But hold on, because here is the stark contrast that
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: makes this case so baffling to me. Despite the incredibly
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: violent end, the scene actually started out completely peacefully.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the evidence at the front door.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Exactly by the front door, detectives found a pair of
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: men's sneakers, but they weren't kicked off in a struggle.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: They had been taken off side by side and neatly
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: placed next to the rest of Jody's shoes.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Which, by the way, was Jody's strict house rule for
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: any guest.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Right and in the kitchen sink two plates dishes for two.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: So it suggests compliance and familiarity. I mean, he arrived
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: as an invited guest, perhaps even a date considering it
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: was Valentine's Day, he respected her space, followed her rules,
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: and even shared a meal with her.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: It's just like a flip switch. I mean, how does
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: a guy go from politely placing his sneakers by the
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: door to staging a bedroom with a mirror.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: It's jarring.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: It really makes me push back on the idea of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: the timeline. Could this really have been a first time
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: offender who just snapped? Because to me, the mirror, the blankets,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: that level of preparation suggests someone who knew exactly what
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: he wanted to do.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: You're absolutely right to question that. The behavioral evidence strongly
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: points away from a first time offender. You don't usually
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: jump street to post mortem, mutile and mirrored staging on
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: your very first offense.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Right, That's an escalation, exactly right.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: The shift from polite guest to predator might seem like
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: a flipped switch to us, but psychologically, playing the polite
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: guest was likely just the necessary camouflage to get through
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: the front door.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Wow, so he had fantasized about this and likely acted
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: on it before.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Most likely Yes, and because.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Art interrupted him, this guy had to flee, and in
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: his calculated rush, he left behind a massive amount of
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: forensic evidence. Oh yeah, we're talking blood on the walls,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: on the carpet, partial fingerprints, and of course those neatly
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: placed sneakers. I mean he left his DNA everywhere.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: And from an investigative standpoint in two thousand and seven,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: a scene with that much of the offenders DNA usually
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: means an arrest is imminent.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Right, it should be a slam duck.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: You swab it, you upload it to COTIS, the national database,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: you get a hit, and you go make the arrest.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: But the results come back zero, no matches in any local,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: state or federal database. Despite all this physical evidence, they
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: have absolutely no idea.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Who this is, which is the fundamental limitation of codis.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: It isn't like some magic search engine that scans the
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: whole population, right, It only contains the DNA of people
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: who have been previously convicted of qualifying crimes or you know,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: in some states, arrested for them. If he's never been caught,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: he's just not in the system.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: So investigators have to pivot. They figure, if the science
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: can't give him a name, maybe Jody's life can, Like
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: who would she let into her home? Who would she
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: share dishes with right.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Look at the victimology exactly.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And it turns out her world was wonderfully open, which
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: unfortunately made the suspect pool terrifyingly large.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was incredibly trusting.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: People said she saw everyone as a friend.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Which tragically makes her highly vulnerable to a predator who
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: knows exactly how to identify and exploit that kind of innocence.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, so, detectives look into her routine. She spent a
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: lot of time volunteering at facilities for people with developmental disabilities,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and one of those facilities happen to be located right
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: next to a substance abuse clinic.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, so a potential intersection.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, please start wondering did she cross paths with someone there?
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Did someone notice her trusting nature, maybe strike up a
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: conversation and follow her home.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: It's a very plausible theory. It gives them a geographic
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: starting point and a potential demographic to look into.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: But it just leads to years of sheer frustration. I mean,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: they create a list of over fifty men who could
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: have crossed paths with her, They swab every single one
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: of them, and nothing, no matches. The family puts up
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: a fifty two thousand dollars reward. They plaster Jody's face
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: and the cold case info on public buses all over town.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: They're doing everything they can.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Everything. They even consult with the Vedok Society in Pennsylvania.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: You know that elite group of forensic experts who tackle cold.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Case Oh, yeah, they're legendary.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: But nothing works.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: For nearly a decade, Jody Saran's file is just passed
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: from detective to detective.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Until the technology finally catches up to the evidence.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, so it's twenty sixteen, nine years years after the murder.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Detective Lieutenant Eric Ku takes over the case and decides
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to utilize new technology. First up, he works with Parabon
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Nanolabs for forensic phenotyping.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Right, and the limitation of early phenotyping wasn't necessarily the science,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: It was the output.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: How do you mean?
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it reads the genetic code to determine probabilities for
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: eye color, hair color, and skin tone. But it gives
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: you a statistical average, right, not a high definition photograph exactly.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Ku thought this would break the case, but the compile
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: that comes back looking like a generic southern California surfer.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Dude, let me guess, light skin, dirty blonde.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Hair, yep, bluish green eyes. It didn't generate any real leads,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: but Cou doesn't stop. He pushes for another technique, y
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: STR profiling.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Now what's fascinating here is the underlying biology of y
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: STR profiling.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, break you down for us.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Instead of looking at the entire autosomal DNA profile, which
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: is a mix of both parents, scientists isolate just the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Y chromosome, right, and the Y chromosome is passed down
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: directly from father to son, virtually unchanged generation after generation.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: And in Western cultures, last names are also passed down
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: directly from father to son. So by comparing this YSTR
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: profile against public genealogy databases, they can actually predict the
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: suspect's surname exactly.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: It's a massive shortcut.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So the lab runs the test and comes back to
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Coup with a stunning result. The predicted last name for
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the killer is literally Miracle, that is the actual surname.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: But as they start digging into guy's name Miracle in
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: southern California, nobody fits. The trail goes cold again. So frustrating,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and I'm really hung up on this. If the y
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: chromosome points to miracle. How does the trail just stop?
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Aren't there public birth records?
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Well that's where the biology collides with human bureaucracy. Okay,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: the DNA tells you the biological lineage, but it doesn't
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: account for what humans write down on paper. Oh, I
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: see it, and that discrepancy is exactly what they had to.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Solve, which brings us to twenty eighteen. A total watershed year.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Twenty eighteen is when the Golden State killer is caught
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: using investigative genetic genealogy or IgG.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Right the game changer.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: They took the killer's DNA, put it into public databases
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: like gd match, found his distant cousins, and built a
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: family tree backwards until they found him. Detective Q sees
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: this on the news and realizes he has to try it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: But building those trees isn't just plugging data into a computer,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: is it.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Far from it. It requires someone capable of navigating incredibly
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: complex family dynamics, misattributed parentage, and messy historical census records.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: So the Carlsbad Police are utterly stumped by this highly
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: advanced genetic web. And who comes to their rescue. Barbara
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Ray Venter.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: She is amazing.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: She's not even a cop. She's a seventy year old
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: retired patent lawyer who just picked up genealogy as a
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: post retirement.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Hobby, and she was actually the driving force behind catching
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: the Golden State killer exactly.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Detective Coup literally has to bribe her with pancakes at
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a hole in the wall diner just to get her
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: look at Jody's case, and she agrees.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: And Barbara almost immediately solves the riddle of why the
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Miracle last name was a dead end because when she
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: maps the suspect's family tree, she uncovers a double adoption.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. How does someone spot an adoption
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: just looking at a genetic web.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Well, instead of a direct line, she's looking at overlapping
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: genetic clusters in glydmatch that suddenly diverge. Okay, So she
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: sees a tight cluster of DNA cousins pointing to a
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: family named Miracle. But when she pulls the public birth
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: records for that exact coordinate in the family tree, the
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: paper says the name is Mabrito. Oh wow, Yeah, that
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: mismatch where the biology goes one way and the state
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: records go. Another is the distinct fingerprint of a closed adoption.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: That is just brilliant. So somewhere down the line, a
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: man with the biological last name Miracle had a son.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: That son was adopted and his name was changed to
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: an Italian origin last name, which was Mobrito. Right. That
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Mobrito man then grew up and had two sons of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: his own. One was name Stephen, who is also adopted out.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: The other was named David David Mobrido.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Without Barbara ray Venter unraveling that discrepancy between the Y
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: chromosome and the birth records, they would have been searching
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: for someone actually named Miracle forever completely.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: So Barbara Han's detective coup three possible names. Yeah, the father,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the brother, Stephen, and David Mabrido.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, narrowing it down.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: The father is too old. Stephen died in twenty seventeen,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: but his DNA was on file from the medical examiner.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: What's hee a match?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Not a match? That leaves one man, David Mobrido. But
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: there's a huge problem. David died in twenty eleven, four
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: years after JODI's murder.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Wow, so he's gone.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: He's gone, and his DNA is nowhere in the system.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So Ku has his prime suspect, but the man is
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: dead and there's no direct way to compare his DNA
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to the crime scene.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: So he has to get highly creative with his investigative tactics.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: He really does. Ku finds out David's ex wife, Marissa,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and their eighteen year old son are still living right
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: there in Carlsbak, Okay. So in October twenty eighteen, Ku
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: knocks on Marissa's door. He plays it very cool. He says,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: you know, nobody is in trouble, We're just investigating a
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: cold case.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: The keeping her calm exactly.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: He asks about David's complicated family tree, and then he
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: asks the big question. He says, would you and your
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: son be willing to give us a DNA swab just
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to rule you out of this investigation?
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Now, if you're listening to this, you might be wondering,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: isn't getting DNA from an ex wife and son without
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: a warrant legally questionable?
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah? How does that work?
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Ku is operating in a very gray area here. He
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: relies heavily on voluntary consent and strategically by getting the
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: DNA of David's biological son and the son's mother. The
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: lab can mathematically subtract the mother's DNA from the sons
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: oh I see yeah, leaving them with a reverse engineer
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: profile of David Mobrito himself.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: That is incredible, So Marisa Anderson agree they swab their cheeks.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: A few weeks later, the lab confirms it. The reconstructed
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: DNA is a mathematical certainty. David Mobrido is the man
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: who murdered Sarah.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: He got him.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: They got him. But Ko doesn't just want a scientific match.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: He wants to understand how this happened. So he goes
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: back to Marissa's.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: House, and this time the facade is completely gone.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Oldly gone. Ku has a binder full of crime scene photos.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: His questions are incredibly pointed. He asks about Marissa's relationship
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: with David, his habits. Marisa starts getting really defensive.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Because she realizes they think her dead ex husband is
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: a murderer exactly.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting. Ku has the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: case file open and Marissa catches a glimpse of a photograph.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: It's not a gory photo. It's a picture of the sneakers,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the neat little men's sneakers placed by Jody's front door.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Marissa stares at that photo and her stomach just drops.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: She instantly recognizes them because she is the one who
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: bought those exact sneakers for David.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: The psychological whiplash she must have experienced is staggering. I mean,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: you are sitting in your living room, defending the father
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: of your child, and in a fraction of a second,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: a photograph of a pair of shoes shatters your entire reality.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: You realized the police are actually right.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: The police see her reaction and ask do these look familiar?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And Marissa, in sheer panic, operating entirely on a mother's
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: instinct to protect her eighteen year old son from this
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: horrifying truth, lits the detective in the eye and says.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: No, Wow. She lies.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: She lies. But even as she lies, as she continues
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: to answer their questions about David's life and specifically his death,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: a seven year old mystery suddenly snaps into terrifying clarity for.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Her right because David died under mysterious circumstances, he did.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: David had died in twenty eleven of an unexpected overdose.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: It had been ruled a suicide, but he never left
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: a note. Marissa and her son had found his body.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: For seven years, they tortured themselves wondering why he did.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: It, and sitting there with the detective, she finally realizes
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: exactly why. What was the catalyst that drove a man
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: who had successfully evaded capture for four years to suddenly
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: take his own life?
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: It is wild. Marissa tells Detective Coup that a week
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: before David killed himself in twenty eleven, his truck broke
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: down in Oceanside, which is the town right next to Carlsbad. Okay,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: He's standing behind his truck when an ocean Side police
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: officer pulls up, but the officer isn't there to help him.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: The officer tells, David, you match the exact description of
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: a suspect we are looking for in a local bank robbery.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Oh man, put yourself in David's headspace in that exact moment.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: For four years, you have known that your DNA is
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: plastered all over a highly publicized murder scene in Carlsbad.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: You know it's a ticking time bomb. And suddenly an
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: officer is confronting you.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: The officer says, would you be willing to give me
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: a DNA swab to clear you.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Of this bank robbery, and David has to agree.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: He does likely terrified that refusing would give the officer
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: probable cause to just detain him on the spot, so
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: he consents. The officer swabs the inside of.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: David's cheek and lets him go, and that single swab
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: breaks David's mind.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: He completely spirals. Marissa Tel's detectives that for the next
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: week David was experiencing a full mental collapse into sheer paranoia.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: He was acting completely bizarrely. At one point, she found
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: him frantically rubbing household spices all over his face.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Rbbing spices psychologically, that's a manifestation of profound panic. It's
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: this irrational attempt at altering his appearance or masking his scent.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: He is entirely consumed by the knowledge that the swab
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: he just gave is going to be uploaded, it's going
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: to hit on the Carl's bad murder, and he is
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: But if we connect this to the bigger picture, the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: ultimate irony of this entire story is that David Mombrito
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: had absolutely nothing to do with that Ocean Side bank robbery,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: zero connection, and because he was quickly cleared as a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: suspect in the robbery through other investigated means. Ocean Side
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Police never processed his DNA swab. They didn't need to, exactly,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: They never uploaded into kotas. He just sat in a
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Manila envelope. Oh my god, David Mobrito killed himself over
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a phantom threat. He executed himself for a murder he
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: thought the police had caught him for, when in reality
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: they didn't even know his name.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: The guilt and the terror essentially did the work of
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: the justice system.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: When Marissa tells this story, Detective Coup realizes what it means.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: He immediately contacts the Ocean Side Police department. He asks,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: do you, by some absolute miracle, still have a physical
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: DNA swab taken from a random traffic stop back in
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: And they check the cold storage evidence lockers and they
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: find it seven years it just sat there in the dark.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Ku sends that twenty eleven swab to the lab. Two
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: days later, the results come back. It is a one
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: hundred percent direct, irrefutable match to the evidence left in
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Jody Sarin's bedroom on Valentine's Day. Two thousand and seven,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: The case is finally definitively closed.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: That is just incredible. So what does this all mean
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: for you listening, and more importantly for Art and Leis Saran? Yeah,
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: the family, after eleven agonizing years of waiting, they finally
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: have a name. They have the resolution of knowing the
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: man who did this can never hurt anyone else because
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: he's dead by his own hand.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: It closes a really terrible chapter. But even with the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: DNA match, there are things we will just never know.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Detectives could never figure out how Jody and David met.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Did he notice her trusting nature at that clinic? Did
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: he charm his way through her front door? That secret
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: died with him?
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: And that leads to a much darker, really lingering question
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: for you to maul over.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: We talked about how the crime scene in Jody's apartment
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: was shockingly methodical, the blacked windows, the strategically placed mirror,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: the post mortem acts. As we discussed, this did not
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: look like a first time offense. It looked like the
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: work of an experienced predator.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Right, someone who had definitely done this before.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: But David Bbrito's DNA was never officially uploaded. Into the
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: National Code ES database, not when he was alive, and
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: not when he was swabbed in twenty eleven. It was
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: only matched directly to Jody's case through genealogy in twenty eighteen.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: So if he possessed the kind of methodical predatory instincts
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: to stage a room like that.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see where you're going with this, is it.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Possible he committed other horrific crimes, crimes where he did
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: have time to clean up, Crimes where he didn't leave
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: a pair of sneakers behind.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Wow. Because his DNA isn't swimming around in the national
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: database constantly pinging against cold cases, there could be other
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: victims out there, exactly, other families waiting for answers, completely
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: unaware that the man responsible took his own life way
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: back in twenty eleven. That is a truly chilling thought
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: to end on. Thank you for joining us on this
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: deep dive into a really intense and haunting case file.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Until next time,