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Secret Messages Surface in Utah Mom’s Murder Mystery · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine walking through just this chaotic, blood-soaked scene of a
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: double homicide.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: You're pushing open a bedroom door and you find a
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: 15-year-old boy waking up from a nap and he's calmly
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: claiming he just slept through multiple gunshots.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's almost impossible to picture.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly. How does an investigator even begin to parse that reality?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The sensory overload of a crime scene is absolute. Yet
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the detective has to you know, instantly switch gears.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they have to compartmentalize.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Right. They have to box up that trauma to interrogate
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a potential suspect or maybe a surviving victim who's just
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: emerging from this seemingly undisturbed slumber.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Well, the human brain just isn't wired to process that
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: level of cognitive dissonance smoothly.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, law enforcement protocol dictates that you secure the
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: environment first, but the psychological environment in a scenario like that,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: it's completely shattered.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely shattered.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: You have this localized catastrophic violence occurring literally mere feet
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: away from claimed total tranquility.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly the intersection we are exploring today. Welcome
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: to this deep dive, everyone. We are unpacking a newly
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: provided stack of source material surrounding just a chilling unresolved
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: mystery in Saratoga Springs, Utah.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: It's a heavy one for sure.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: It really is. And our mission today is to deconstruct
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: how modern investigators build a case that when the physical
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: evidence is, well, practically non-existent.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Right. They have to rely on a blend of other things.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly. A highly interwoven blend of digital footprints, semantic linguistics,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: and psychological profiling. If you're a tech enthusiast, a psychology buff,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: or just insanely curious, this deep dive is going to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: make you look at your own digital footprint, your neighborhood
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: ring cameras, and even your smartphone in a completely different light.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. It really makes you think twice about the
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: data you're leaving behind.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Definitely. And we're relying heavily on excerpts from the Law
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: and Crime Network show Sidebar, which features analysis by retired
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: police commander Mike King.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: And King's perspective is really the anchor for understanding all
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: of this.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. I mean, his background is intense.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Very. He's the author of Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, and
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: he has an upcoming project, Gardens of Evil, which, by
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: the way, is dropping February 3rd and benefits Child Victim Advocacy,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: and the law enforcement endowment at Weber State University.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: That's a great cause.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: It really is. But his theoretical knowledge is backed by
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: just extreme field experience. I mean, he investigated the Zion
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Society cult. Right.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I remember reading about that.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: That was massive.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: That was massive.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Seventy officers raided a compound and rescued 32 children from
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: ritualistic abuse. Wow.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So when you spend your career dismantling organized ritualistic abuse,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I imagine you learn to see right through the narratives
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: people construct.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, definitely. You learn to spot the staging, you know,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: almost instinctively.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So let's lay out the foundation of what King is
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: analyzing here. Let's look at the raw facts chronologically. The
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: date is March 28th, 2025. Saratoga Springs, Utah. Around 10
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: in the morning, a teenage girl, reportedly 17 years old,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: walks into her family townhome and discovers just an unimaginable scene.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: The contrast there is staggering. Right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Her mother, 44-year-old Jessica Lyman, and her 8-year-old brother, Eli Painter,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: are unconscious and covered in blood in a bedroom.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Just a mundane, suburban Tuesday morning completely shattered by absolute horror.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: The 17-year-old makes a hysterical 911 call. Eli is tragically
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: pronounced dead at the scene. Jessica is rushed to the hospital,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: but she also dies.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: It's just devastating. It is.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Both were shot in the head with small caliber rounds.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: while lying next to each other in bed.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: And from an investigative standpoint, the psychological footprint of that localized,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: intimate act of violence tells an immediate story. It was
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: an execution-style shooting.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And small-caliber weapons, they have a reduced acoustic signature, right?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: They do, compared to larger firearms. But let's be clear,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: they are still deafening indoors. A small-caliber gun inside a
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: townhome is incredibly loud. Right.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: And while paramedics are fighting to save Jessica, the police
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: are clearing the house to ensure there isn't, you know,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: an active shooter still inside.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Standard protocol.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And that is when they find someone else. Jessica's 15-year-old son.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: He claims he was asleep, taking a nap, and heard
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: absolutely nothing.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Two small caliber gunshots in a townhome and he slept
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: through it?
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how the officers on the ground
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: are forced into an immediate tactical pivot.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Well, they have to maintain this neutral information gathering posture.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: They don't know what they're dealing with yet. Right.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: He could be a victim.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They don't know if this teenager is a survivor
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: who narrowly escaped death, a crucial witness in severe shock, or,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: you know, the perpetrator.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Because the officers bring the 15-year-old
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: downstairs to the living room. And the very first clue
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: we get isn't physical.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: It's semantic.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: According to the unsealed warrants, the teen repeatedly asks, what happened?
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Which is a natural question if you just woke up
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: to cops in your house.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: But then, during this exchange, an officer asks if there
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: are any weapons in the home. And the teen specifically
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: replies that he isn't aware of any guns.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: And that right there, that semantic shift, it changes the
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: entire temperature of the interview.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: See, I want to challenge that interpretation a bit.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Because, okay. If someone asks me if I have any
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: pets and I reply, I don't have a golden retriever,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: that is highly specific and suspicious.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Right, because it's oddly narrow.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: But in American culture, especially for a teenager, doesn't the
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: word weapon almost instantly translate to gun?
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: That's a fair point.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Like, if a cop asks a 15-year-old about weapons, he
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: isn't thinking about a baseball bat or a kitchen knife.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: He's thinking about firearms. Could this just be colloquial shorthand?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: A defense attorney will absolutely argue exactly that. They'll say
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: it's just a logical colloquial leap. But investigators, they don't
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: analyze language based on colloquialisms. They analyze it based on
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: baseline deviations.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Baseline deviations. Yeah.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: No one had mentioned a shooting to him yet. He
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: claimed he was asleep and heard nothing at all. So
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: narrowing the broad category of weapon down to the exact
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: specific instrument used in the crime, it flags the statement.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: I see. It doesn't prove guilt, obviously, but it establishes
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: a baseline of unprompted specificity. Even if it wouldn't hold
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: up alone in court, it tells the investigator to look closer.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: And looking closer is exactly what they did. That semantic
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: flag prompts them to look at the physical reality, leading
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to this staggering microtrace lab report.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, the lab report is huge.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Detectives sent the clothing the teenager was wearing that morning
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: to a lab, and it tested positive for gunshot residue, GSR.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Finding GSR on the clothing worn during the initial police
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: contact is a profound piece of physical evidence.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: But let's break that down for the listeners. Because, you know,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: most people just know GSR from watching police procedurals on TV.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Right, where it's a magic swab that instantly solves the case.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The source notes they are looking for particulates of lead, barium,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: and antimony. But how is that actually tested?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Well, to understand it, you have to look at how
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: it's created. When the firing pin strikes the primer cap
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: of a cartridge, it ignites a chemical compound.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: And that compound contains those specific elements? Usually, yes.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Lead stiphenate, barium nitrate, and antimony sulfide. That micro-explosion creates
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: this vaporous cloud of heavy metals.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: And that cloud quickly condenses into microscopic spherical particles. Labs
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: test for this using scanning electron microscopy combined with energy
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: dispersive x-ray spectroscopy.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Whoa, okay. That's a mouthful. Yeah. SEM.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: EDX for short.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Basically, the electron microscope finds the microscopic spheres and the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: x-ray spectroscopy confirms the exact elemental signature. So it's not
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: just a chemical swab turning pink like on TV.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Not at all. It is the visual and elemental confirmation
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: of the specific microscopic debris of a gunshot.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: That's wild. But here's the thing. How long does it last?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Could this just be a lingering trace from, I don't know,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: a trip to a shooting range weeks prior? The source
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: specifically notes the teen's bedroom was incredibly messy. Do dirty
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: clothes hold GSR longer?
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: It's a great question. On human skin, GSR is notoriously fragile.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: It rubs off, it washes off, or it just falls
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: away as skin cells shed.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: So, like, within a few hours?
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Usually, yeah. However, there's a concept called Locard's exchange principle.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Which means every contact leaves a trace. Exactly.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: When that vaporous cloud hits the woven fabric of a
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: hoodie or sweatpants, those microscopic spheres can become embedded deep
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: within the fibers.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: And if the clothing is just thrown into a pile
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: in a messy room and never washed, the GSR can
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: theoretically persist indefinitely.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Meaning the, I went to a shooting range last month
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: defense is forensically viable.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: It is forensically viable in a vacuum, sure. But investigators
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: rely on the totality of the circumstances. You have an
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: execution-style double homicide, a teenager claiming he slept through it,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: an unprompted semantic jump to guns, and the immediate presence
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: of GSR on his current clothing.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: The timeline convergence makes the contamination theory highly improbable to
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: an investigator. Exactly.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: It's just too many coincidences stacking up.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: But the physical narrative still has a massive hole in it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Despite the GSR... And despite the victims clearly dying of
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: gunshot wounds, no ammunition or firearms were found in the house.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Right. The phantom weapon.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: It just vanished. The source details that police actively searched
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the nearby Jordan River.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And that decision to search the Jordan River, it speaks
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: volumes about the investigators' working theory regarding the offender's psychological organization.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Because the Jordan River is a slow-moving, highly turbid body
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: of water. I mean, Dropping a small piece of metal
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: into a silty river in the Salt Lake Valley is
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: basically creating a permanent forensic void.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: It's a needle in a haystack. Searching there usually involves
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: magnet fishing or specialized sonar, but the silt degradation makes
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: recovery incredibly difficult. Right.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: So what does that tell us about the perpetrator?
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Well, an unorganized offender, someone acting in a blind panic,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: they usually drop the weapon at the scene, or maybe
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: they toss it in a nearby storm drain.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: So we're close and easy. Yeah.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Disposing of a weapon in a specific geographical feature, like
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: a murky river, that indicates premeditation. It shows a calculated
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: understanding of forensic destruction.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the next physical breadcrumb, the mask
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and the neighborhood watch.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: This part is so eerie.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: It really is. Let's look at the neighborhood ring camera data.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., cameras caught a suspicious
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: person on Willowbrook Lane and Silvercrest Road.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Walking around in the middle of the night. Yeah.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: And the outfit is very distinct. Dark hoodie, shorts, long
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: black socks, slip-on shoes or sliders, a backpack, and a
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: distinct black and white mask.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: But the behavior is what really stands out to investigators.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Right, because this person is actively trying to avoid the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: motion-activated cameras.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Evading modern neighborhood surveillance requires an actual understanding of how
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: that technology operates. Most consumer doorbell cameras use PIR sensors.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Passive infrared, right? Exactly.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: They detect changes in heat signatures moving across their field
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: of view.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So to avoid them, you can't just, you know, walk
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: softly or hide your face. You have to understand the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: camera's specific triggering zones and blind spots.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: You have to hug the perimeter.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: You have to utilize shadows to disrupt clear optical recognition
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: in case the motion sensor does trigger.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: And you mask your facial features.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And here is the connection that ties it back to
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the house. Police found a white and brown mask inside
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: a bedroom at the family's home that visually matched the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: surveillance footage.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Which anchors those external evasion tactics right back to the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: internal reality of the house.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So synthesizing all of this, we have a mask, we
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: have GSR, and a missing gun. Physical evidence places an
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: action in reality. But to really understand premeditation, investigators have
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to shift from the physical world to the suspect's mind.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: To turn a tragedy into a calculated act, you have
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: to look at the psychology.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And in 2025, the mind is mapped digitally. Which brings
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: us to our second segment, the digital paper trail and
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the psychology of pre-crime.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: The digital aspect of this case is where it gets
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: really dark.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In the teen's incredibly messy bedroom, police found handwritten notes.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: And one of them lists forensic evidence types. It literally says,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: fire testing, DNA.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: That is just chilling.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Another note simply reads, this is a murder story.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: And from a behavioral analysis standpoint, this is a textbook
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: example of what Mike King refers to as the fantasy phase.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. Break that down for us. What is the fantasy phase?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Well, before a crime is ever acted out physically, it
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: is mentally, spiritually, or digitally rehearsed, especially with juvenile offenders.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: So they're like running simulations in their head.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The perpetrator builds a narrative structure where they are
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: in absolute control. They write a script.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: This is a murder story. Precisely.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Writing that suggests the author is viewing the potential taking
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: of a life not as a visceral, horrifying reality, but
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: as a narrative construct.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Like they're the director of a movie. Right.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And writing fire, testing DNA, is an attempt to anticipate
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: the plot holes in their own dark fiction.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: But the reality of a crime scene never actually matches
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the fantasy, does it?
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Never. In the fantasy, the gun doesn't jam, the victims
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: don't wake up, And the massive adrenaline dump doesn't completely
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: shatter your cognitive processing.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Which is why organized plans often fall apart at the scene.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Reality is messy.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: You can really see the emotional buildup to that reality
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: in the text message history. Investigators pulled texts from the
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: teen to his mother for months prior. And the language,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's stomach churning.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: The vitriol is staggering.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Let me quote a few of these. He texts, I
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: don't like you. Go away. Do you need to learn
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: how to shut your mouth? You're so bleeping mentally ill.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And do you know how insignificant you really are in
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: my life?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: It's hard to hear.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: And the worst one. I wish I died in your stomach.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't have to put up with you. I mean, teenagers
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: often say mean things to parents. We all know adolescent
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: rebellion is a real thing. But this level of vitriol.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: It goes way beyond slamming doors. Right.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: This isn't just teenage angst. This reads like someone actively
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: severing their own humanity and empathy towards their target.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. The linguistic density
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: of that anger is a mechanism for emotional distancing.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Dehumanization. Yes.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Dehumanization is the crowbar used to pry open the psychological
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: barrier to murder. Calling a parent mentally ill or insignificant,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: it's a tactic.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: If you convince yourself your target is insignificant... You lower
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the psychological barrier required to commit intimate, close-range violence.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When he writes, I wish I died in your stomach,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: he is conceptually unmaking the maternal bond. He is erasing
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: their shared humanity to facilitate that fantasy phase.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And while this emotional distancing is happening, the logistical rehearsal
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: is escalating online. Investigators found the teen allegedly subscribed to Telegram.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Which is a highly secure encrypted communication service. Right.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: And on there, they find messages about someone offering a
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: dirty gun for sale.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: And this is where we have to talk about staging.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Because the pursuit of a dirty gun is a highly
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: sophisticated forensic countermeasure for a 15-year-old.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Well, explain why a dirty gun matters so much. A
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: dirty gun is basically a stolen weapon with the serial
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: numbers filed off, right?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: It's more than that. It's a weapon with a history.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: And that history points investigators in a specific direction.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: If you use a brand new gun or a gun
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: registered to your family, the evidence points right back to you.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: But if you use a dirty gun that was previously
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: used in, say, a robbery two towns over.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It creates a false trail.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It directs the investigation away from the family and
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: toward an outside intruder. If we connect this to the
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: bigger picture, it shows an astonishing level of premeditation.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Trying to hack the investigation by polluting the evidence pool.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: It's wild. But here's where it gets really interesting. Because
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: despite this cold, calculated digital planning, the post-crime digital life
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: reveals a desperate, almost chaotic need for connection.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, the behavior at the police station.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Just hours after the killings, around 4.10 p.m. at the
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Saratoga Springs Police Department, the teen is relentlessly begging for
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: his cell phone.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And his grieving father is right there. Right.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: The father finally snaps, telling him to stop worrying about
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: his cell phone because it wasn't important right now.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: You have to look at the contrast there. You have
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: a distraught father possibly even becoming suspicious of his own
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: son's behavior versus the teen's absolute tether to his device.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Is it just a trauma response, like a kid wanting
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: a distraction because reality is too horrible?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: A psychologist might say yes, but an investigator views that
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: phone not as a toy or a comfort object. It's
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: the control center for his alibi and his entire digital life.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Right. It holds the encrypted communications, the search history.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Being severed from that device means being blind to the
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: digital footprint the police might be uncovering in real time.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: And it also severs him from his audience. Which brings
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: us to the secret Discord account. The warrant alleges the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: teen created a new secret Discord account under the names Kana, Kanai,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: or Kenny.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: And he used it to contact an online romantic interest.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Named Spazzy LOL or Spazzalol. And the exchange they had
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: on April 28th, exactly a month after the homicides, is bizarre.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Kenny is frustrated that Spazzy hasn't researched the March 28th homicide.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: So Spazzy agrees to look it up. They discuss the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: case and Kenny starts questioning the truth of the details
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Spazzy finds.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: He's demonstrating intimate knowledge of the event to her. Right.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: But I have to ask the critical question here. Does
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: this actually prove guilt? Or does it just show a
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: traumatized kid desperately wanting his online girlfriend to understand the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: nightmare he just lived through?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: It's a valid question. In Channel and Mike King's source
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: material here, we have to introduce the concept of online grooming.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Because we don't actually know who Spazzy is. Exactly.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Is Spazzy a 15-year-old girl or a 50-year-old man?
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: The anonymity of the internet allows for profound psychological manipulation.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Was there a buildup or encouragement to commit this crime
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: from the darker corners of the internet?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: So you're saying the need for validation is the red flag?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: A massive red flag. The need to have someone else
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: validate the murder story suggests the act wasn't just about
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: the victims. It was a performance.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Wow. But the digital trail isn't perfectly clean. Investigators hit
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: some major dead ends, which brings us to segment four,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: when the absence of evidence is the evidence.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: The digital voids.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Yes. They served warrants for Equifax and ChatGPT, which came
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: back unable to locate data. Let's focus on the ChatGPT angle.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Why did police want the AI data?
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Well, the warrant stated the teen used it extensively to
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: craft texts, navigate relationships, and address conflicts with his mother
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: and Eli.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Which raises an important question about how AI history will
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: be used in future courts.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Because asking an AI how to deal with an
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: annoying mom is normal teenage behavior. Right. But asking an
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: AI how to dispose of a dirty gun or how
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: long does GSR last, that is damning.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: It's literally logging premeditation into a server. But they didn't
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: get the data. And they also hit a wall with
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: the geofence warrant.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: The geofence empty net? Yeah.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Phone location data from around the home on the night
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: of the killings came up completely empty. detectives found zero
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: obfuscated account activity in the area.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: And rather than seeing that as a failure, detectives in
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Mike King view this as a massive clue.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: How is empty data a clue?
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Because of behavioral anomalies. It's similar to the Brian Koberger case.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Intentionally leaving a phone behind or turning it completely off
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: breaks a baseline habit.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: So it's like a footprint in the snow. If you
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: trace someone's routine, and they always take their phone to
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the bathroom, to the kitchen, to sleep, and the one
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: night their family is murdered, the phone is frozen in
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: place or turned off. Right. The blank space on the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: map is actually a massive neon sign?
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. People do not voluntarily sever their digital tether without
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: a compelling reason. And in a forensic context, that reason
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: is almost always location obfuscation.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So we have the physical evidence, the digital footprints, and
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the deliberate digital voids, all weaving together to form a
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: highly circumstantial, but incredibly dense web. So what does this
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: all mean? Why hasn't anyone been arrested?
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: That is the big question.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Which leads us to segment five, the legal standoff and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the totality of circumstance. And we need to reiterate this
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: with absolute clarity for you, the listener. The 15-year-old has
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: not been charged with any crime.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Right. There are no named suspects.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: None.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: None.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And investigators have not been allowed to interview the teen
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: since that first day, likely because lawyers stepped in immediately.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Which is exactly what a defense attorney should do. But
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: for the prosecution, it means they have to rely on
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: the burden of proof.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: And the concept of totality of evidence. Yes.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: A chat GPT search alone isn't a conviction.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: GSR alone isn't a conviction. A missing phone isn't a conviction.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: But when you layer the GSR, the mask, the texts,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: the missing gun... the Discord chats, and the left-behind phone.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: It becomes a mountain for a defense attorney to climb.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: A very steep mountain. But they still need a definitive linchpin,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: which is why they are waiting on the final shoe
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: to drop.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: The DNA.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Yes. The source mentions DNA was recovered from the mother
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: at the hospital and on the bedsheets. Investigators are waiting
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: to see if this matches the alleged perpetrator.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: And the Utah legal context adds immense pressure here. We're
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: talking about juvenile justice.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly complex.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: If a minor is charged as an adult in Utah,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: there are limits. Minors are not subject to the death penalty,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: and there are intense debates regarding life without parole.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Right, because of the incomplete development of the adolescent brain.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Prosecutors have to navigate a very volatile legal landscape.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: And the police basically have one dip at this thing.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: They must have all their ducks in a row before
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: formally naming a suspect.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Because of double jeopardy. If they charge prematurely and fail,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: they can't try him again.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Which might explain the tactical unsealing of these warrants. It
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: feels like a call for public help.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, it absolutely is a tactical move. By unsealing details
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: about Discord and Telegram and Spazzy, police are trying to
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: shake the tree.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Hoping someone from that digital underworld gets spooked and comes forward.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They're using the public as an investigative tool.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: So we've synthesized this entire deep dive. We started with
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: a horrific physical tragedy in Saratoga Springs. And we ended
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: up in the murky, encrypted waters of Telegram, Discord, and ChatGPT.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: It's a dual-track investigation for a dual-track life.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: And why should you care about any of this? Because
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: this case perfectly illustrates how our lives are now dual-track.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: We exist in the physical world where we might leave
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: GSR or get caught on a ring camera. And we
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: exist in the digital world where our texts, Discord chats,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: and AI prompts build an incredibly detailed psychological profile. You
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: cannot scrub one without the other betraying you.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: They are permanently intertwined.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: They really are. And that leaves us with a final
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: provocative thought for you to mull over. We spent this
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: time analyzing how digital footprints catch criminals. But think about
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: the teen's handwritten note. This is a murder story.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: That phrase just sticks with you. It does.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: In an era where everything we do is digitized, recorded,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and broadcast for an online audience, are we losing the
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: ability to distinguish between reality, and a macabre performance.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: That's a terrifying thought.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: If a crime is committed for an audience of spazzies
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: on a Discord server, who is really pulling the trigger?
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Is it the person holding the physical gun? Or the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: culture of the digital coliseum that demands a performance?
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: When the boundary between physical reality and digital narrative collapses,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: the consequences are just devastating.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: They truly are. Thank you for joining us on this
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: deep dive into the source material. Remember to stay curious
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and always think critically about the information surrounding you. We'll
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: catch you next time.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, everyone.