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The Psychological Autopsy of Kristen Trickle · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So to start off this deep dub, I really want
• 0:02
  you to put yourself in this environment, like vividly picture
• 0:05
  this scene as it unfolds.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, let's set the stage.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: It is a freezing, heavily snowing Halloween morning out in Kansas.
• 0:13
  The time is exactly five point three seven am.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Which you know is pitch black at that time of year.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly, So first responders are rushing through the dark, cutting
• 0:23
  right through the snow to this house. It's got this
• 0:26
  distinct red and white trim.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Right, a very typical suburban house, right, But.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Out on the front porch, standing in the freezing cold
• 0:33
  is a husband waiting for them.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, just waiting outside.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he is choking back tears. He's hyperventilating so
• 0:40
  hard that the officers can actually barely understand what he's saying.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: That sounds incredibly intense, it is.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And he leads a police sergeant inside the house, down
• 0:49
  a hallway and into this dark bedroom. Okay, and there
• 0:53
  lying in the bed is his twenty six year old wife, Kristen,
• 0:57
  and she has a gunshot wound located directly under her chin.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: God, I mean, it creates just an incredibly chilling image.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Right, it really does.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the juxtaposition is what makes it so striking. You
• 1:08
  have this quiet, snowy early morning on a holiday, you know,
• 1:12
  a day usually associated with kids.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: In candy, right Halloween.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and inside this totally ordinary house you have just
• 1:19
  absolute horror.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: And the husband, who we will come to know as
• 1:23
  Colby trick Less, he tells the police a very simple,
• 1:27
  very tragic story.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Let me guess. He says she did it herself.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Exactly. He tells them his wife took her own life.
• 1:34
  And honestly, if you were to just look at the
• 1:36
  raw physical evidence in a complete vacuum, Yeah, the authorities
• 1:40
  actually agreed with his assessment. At first, it looks on
• 1:42
  the surface like a tragic suicide.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Wow, but I'm assuming that's where the narrative starts to
• 1:49
  fall apart.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, completely fractures because you know, to the people who
• 1:52
  knew Kristen Best, her family, her friends, her coworkers, her
• 1:56
  psychological profile screamed the exact opposite, which you.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Know, is one of the most fascinating and frankly dangerous
• 2:02
  tensions you can encounter in the criminal.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Justice system, Right, Like, what do you do when the
• 2:06
  physical evidence says one thing, but the behavioral evidence says
• 2:08
  another exactly.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: What happens when the initial, rushed interpretation of the physical
• 2:13
  scene tells one story, but the victim's behavior tells a
• 2:18
  completely contradictory one.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: And that is exactly what our deep dive is venturing
• 2:22
  into today. It's this extraordinary case that sits squarely at
• 2:26
  that intersection.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a story that really exposes the extreme danger
• 2:30
  of initial assumptions and the blind spots in forensic science
• 2:36
  when people just do not communicate.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, the lack of communication here is staggering. But it's
• 2:41
  also about how an investigation that was completely dead in
• 2:45
  the water got blown wide open.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Right by a really groundbreaking technique.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this technique because you're referring to
• 2:51
  what's called a psychological.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Autopsy, right I am. Yeah.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I mean just the phrase autopsy of the mind is
• 2:57
  utterly fascinating to me.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: It sounds totally sci fi, doesn't it.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: It really does. We are so conditioned to think of
• 3:03
  autopsies as strictly clinical, right, just purely physical procedures.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Right, like weighing organs, checking toxicology reports, measuring.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Wounds exactly, So the idea of like post mortem profiling
• 3:15
  a person's mental state to solve a crime. It feels
• 3:18
  pulled straight out of a movie.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: It does sound like something a screenwriter would invent, but
• 3:23
  I assure you it is a highly rigorous, intensely complex investigative.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Tool, and we are going to explore exactly why it
• 3:32
  was literally the only key left to unlock this mystery.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Because sometimes you know, when the physical scene is muddled,
• 3:39
  or when the medical establishment makes a premature ruling, maybe
• 3:43
  the absolutely do here right, which legally handcuffs the police.
• 3:46
  When that happens, critical thinking and meticulously connecting those circumstantial
• 3:51
  behavioral dots are your only options.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: You really have to reconstruct the invisible mind of a
• 3:55
  victim to spring a trap on a killer.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly, So, should we go back to the mechanics of
• 4:00
  that snowy Halloween.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Morning, let's do it so. Sergeant Brandon Hallman is the
• 4:04
  first to arrive at the scene. Okay, he walks into
• 4:06
  that master bedroom, which remembers pitch black. He finds Kristen
• 4:10
  lying in bed and she is almost entirely undressed.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, just in her underwear, right.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, wearing only her underwear and lying awkwardly across her
• 4:20
  abdomen is the weapon, and we.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Should clarify this is not some small, easily concealed handgun
• 4:24
  we're talking about here.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. This is a massive, heavy, eleven
• 4:29
  to twelve inch point three five seven magnum revolver.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we really need to pause and seriously consider the
• 4:36
  logistics of a weapon like that.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, twelve inches is huge for a handgun.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: It is a point three five seven magnum revolver with
• 4:44
  a twelve inch profile is not just heavy, it is incredibly.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Cumbersome, right because of the barrel length.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the center of gravity is far forward because of
• 4:53
  that long barrel, So it requires a significant amount of
• 4:57
  grip strength, reristability, and overall dexterity just to hold it
• 5:01
  steady aiming forward.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So aiming it backward at yourself would be a nightmare.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Maneuvering a piece of steel that size and a reverse
• 5:07
  angle pointing it back at yourself under the chin. It
• 5:10
  requires severe physical contortion.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: That physical awkwardness is a massive detail. But honestly, the
• 5:15
  most pressing issue for Sergeant Hallman in that split second wasn't.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: The firearm, right, because Kristen is actually still alive when
• 5:21
  he walks.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: In exactly he can see her jaw moving. She is
• 5:26
  clinging to life. Oh my god, So he immediately moves
• 5:30
  that giant revolver away from her body. He scoops her up,
• 5:33
  carries her into the living room where there is more
• 5:35
  space and light, and he starts CPR.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: That's just a terrifying situation for a first responder, it is.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: And tragically, despite those desperate efforts, she does not survive
• 5:46
  the morning.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Which you really forces us to scrutinize the husband's account
• 5:50
  of what happened in that dark bedroom right.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And those minutes before the police sirens arrived.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Because Colby Trickle claims he was asleep in the bed
• 5:57
  right next to her. He says he woke up with
• 5:59
  his ears ringing from the concussive blast of the gun.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: And he says he found his wife bleeding, moved the
• 6:05
  gun away from her neck, grabbed his phone and dialed
• 6:07
  nine to one one.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Right, But then, according to his own official statement, he
• 6:11
  claims he had this brief, agonizing moment where he contemplated
• 6:15
  shooting himself out of grief. Okay, sure, he says he
• 6:18
  decides against it. But then, and this is crucial, he
• 6:21
  takes this heavy, bloody revolver and deliberately places it back
• 6:25
  onto her stomach before the police walk in.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Wait, he put him back on the dying person's stomach.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, that specific action is what Detective JB. Burkeholders zero's
• 6:36
  in on when he arrives.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I mean he spots red flags immediately, right, because if
• 6:41
  you imagine the sheer panic of waking up to your
• 6:43
  spouse bleeding out.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Your brain is in pure survival and rescue mode.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You're on the phone with dispatch, you are desperately
• 6:50
  trying to stop the bleeding.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Right, deliberately picking up the murder weapon and placing it
• 6:56
  resting on the abdomen of a dying person. That defies
• 6:59
  every known human instinct.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: It is the total antithesis of a trauma response.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because when a loved one is injured, the primate
• 7:07
  brain dictates that we clear the area of danger and
• 7:09
  render aid. Putting the gun back suggests a completely different
• 7:14
  cognitive process.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Like what what is the brain doing there?
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: It indicates a panicked, rushed attempt to reset a stage.
• 7:21
  The person taking that action is actively calculating how the
• 7:24
  physical tableau will look to the approaching authorities. Wow.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: So they are prioritizing the visual narrative over the life
• 7:30
  of the person bleeding in front of them. I mean,
• 7:32
  it feels like watching a play where a terrible stage
• 7:35
  director got the props completely wrong.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: You're trying to set the stage for a tragic, spontaneous finale,
• 7:43
  but you completely forget to check the rest of the set.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Because the gun placement is just the first bizarre incongruity
• 7:51
  in that house.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Right, So Detective Burkholder is standing in the house taking
• 7:55
  in the scene, and suddenly he hears an alarm clock
• 7:58
  going off in the background. Oh wow, Yeah, it's Kristen's phone.
• 8:02
  She had set her mourning alarm to wake up and
• 8:05
  get ready for her shift at work.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: See, that is a fundamental piece of behavioral evidence.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Really, just an alarm clock.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, because the psychology of suicide tells us that individuals
• 8:14
  who have made the final, agonizing decision to end their
• 8:17
  own lives rarely engage in mundane future planning.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Like setting a work alarm for a few hours later.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the act of suicide is a profound disconnection from
• 8:27
  the future. Setting an alarm is an inherent expectation of
• 8:30
  participating in that future.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And to add to that expectation of the future, there
• 8:35
  was Halloween candy deliberately set out in the kitchen area.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Oh really for trick or treaders.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Kristin and Colby actually had plans to participate in
• 8:43
  trick or treating later that evening.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: So you have an alarm set for a morning shift
• 8:47
  and candy prepped for an evening activity.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Right, every single environmental marker pointed to a woman who
• 8:54
  fully expected to live out her Thursday.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: And in addition to those environmental clues to take to
• 9:00
  evaluated the physical mechanics of the wound itself.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Because it's pretty unusual, right.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Very a gunshot wound to the head, specifically angled under
• 9:09
  the chin, is statistically anomalous for female suicide victims. Why
• 9:14
  is that, Well, the forensic literature indicates that women, generally speaking,
• 9:18
  tend to consider their physical appearance after death. Oh I see, Yeah,
• 9:21
  so they typically choose methods that are less physically destructive
• 9:25
  to the face or head.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Right, And when you couple that statistical rarity with the
• 9:29
  sheer physical awkwardness we discussed earlier, a.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Smaller female trying to maneuver a massive twelve inch magnum
• 9:35
  revolver under her own chin.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: In the dark, completely undressed.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the entire physical narrative just collapses under its own weight.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: But you know, while all of those physical environmental clues
• 9:46
  are screaming homicide to the detectives working inside the house, right,
• 9:51
  the behavioral clues happening outside the house are somehow even
• 9:54
  more jarring. Oh with Colby on the porch, Yes, because
• 9:58
  while Kristen is inside a living room literally bleeding out,
• 10:02
  receiving frantic chess compressions from a police surger.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Her husband is just chatting outside.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Holby is out on the front porch, casually chatting with
• 10:10
  the backup police officers.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: And the topic of conversation is what makes it so chilling, Danna,
• 10:17
  that he was talking about video games. Yes, he is
• 10:20
  discussing video games. He's talking to the patrol cops about
• 10:24
  playing counter Strike, Call of Duty and Minecraft.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you try to map that behavior onto
• 10:30
  a normal human experience, it fails.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Completely, Holy fails.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Your wife of five years is fighting for her last
• 10:37
  breath fifteen feet away from you, and your brain decides
• 10:40
  to make small talk about the graphics in Minecraft.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering level of emotional detachment's insane well,
• 10:46
  it revers the fragility of a staged persona. When we
• 10:50
  study the psychology of offenders whose stage crime scenes, they
• 10:53
  often struggle to maintain the grieving widower act continuously.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: It's exhausting for them to keep it up.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, it requires immense cognitive effort to perform a manufactured emotion,
• 11:06
  so when they aren't actively being interrogated, when that spotlight
• 11:09
  is turned off, they instinctively revert to their psychological baseline
• 11:13
  to self soothe.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: And for Colby, his baseline comfort zone was casually chatting
• 11:18
  about his hobbies exactly.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: He completely lacked the authentic, messy, uncontrollable physiological distress you
• 11:26
  would naturally expect from someone whose entire world had just
• 11:28
  violently shattered.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So, okay, the detectives are looking at this absolute mountain
• 11:32
  of discrepancies, right, the work alarm, the halloween candy, the
• 11:36
  absurdly large gun for the method, the bizarre staging of
• 11:39
  placing the weapon back on her stomach, and a.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Husband casually reviewing video games on the porch while his
• 11:44
  wife dies.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Right, So, to the seasoned investigator standing in that house,
• 11:48
  this is a glaringly obvious neon lt homicide investigations without
• 11:52
  a doubt. But here is where the momentum completely stalls
• 11:56
  and the case hits a massive, infuriating and administrative brick wall.
• 12:01
  Oh oh enter corner Lyell Nordhook, Oh boy.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: This juncture of the case serves as a textbook tragic
• 12:08
  example of the danger of information silos in the criminal justice.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: System, because just three days after Kristen's death, coroner Nordhook
• 12:16
  signs a piece of paper and officially rules the manner
• 12:18
  of death a suicide.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Three days that is unbelievably fast.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: It boggles the mind how a medical professional arrives at
• 12:27
  such a definitive case closing conclusions so quickly when the
• 12:31
  detective standing in the actual house are drowning in red frags.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Well, the explanation lies in the parameters of his focus.
• 12:37
  His rationale was entirely localized to the physical body resting
• 12:41
  on his autopsy table.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Completely stripped of any environmental.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Context, exactly stripped of all behavioral context too. He looked
• 12:47
  at the close range gunshot wound under the chin and
• 12:50
  concluded strictly from a ballistic standpoint that the angle is
• 12:53
  typical for self inflicted injuries.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Which, as we know, is already a stretch for this
• 12:57
  specific gun and a female victim.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Right, But he also examined the body for signs of
• 13:02
  a physical struggle. He looked for defensive wounds on the hands,
• 13:06
  fresh bruising scratches under the fingernails.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Could he find any?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: He found none. He also looked for older healing injuries
• 13:14
  that might indicate a history of progressive, long term physical abuse.
• 13:18
  Again he saw none.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Therefore, in the total absence of obvious physical trauma beyond
• 13:24
  the single gunshot wound, he made the decision to take
• 13:27
  the husband's initial statement at what he termed word value.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Word value. Taking a suspect's story at word value during
• 13:34
  a death investigation seems incredibly reckless.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: It is highly problematic.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: He basically rubber stamped Colby's story because the physical tissue
• 13:42
  alone didn't jump off the table and definitively prove him wrong.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I really want you to consider the immense
• 13:48
  legal weight of an official title here. Oh, absolutely, think
• 13:51
  about how much power a piece of paper with the
• 13:53
  word suicide typed on it holds over an entire police department.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: It legally forces them to stop treating the husband as
• 13:59
  a prime suspect now right.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly, it mandates the treat him as a grieving victim.
• 14:04
  The paralysis it causes is absolute.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Prosecutor Aaron Cunningham actually noted later that this specific ruling
• 14:12
  severely crippled the ability of law enforcement to aggressively pursue
• 14:16
  the case.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Of course it did, because if the official medical determination
• 14:20
  by the county is suicide, the Fourth Amendment comes into play.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Right, getting search warrants becomes impossible.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Judges are far less likely to grant search warrants to
• 14:30
  seize digital devices, come through bank records or search homes.
• 14:34
  For a murder that officially legally did not happen.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: The police needed probable cause of a crime to investigate,
• 14:41
  and the coroner just erased the crime.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: It is a terrifying bottleneck in the system. The pathologist
• 14:47
  is operating in a completely sealed off environment, entirely independent
• 14:51
  from the detectives pounding the pavement and corner.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Northook actually admitted much later after the trial concluded that
• 14:57
  the police did not share critical information with him before
• 15:00
  he made his ruling. Oh really, yeah, he didn't know
• 15:03
  the exact dimensions and extreme weight of the weapon. He
• 15:06
  just knew a gun was involved.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: That is a critical missing piece of context.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: And he was completely unaware of the morning alarm, the
• 15:14
  tri or treat candy, or the casual call of duty
• 15:17
  conversation on the porch. He was making a medical determination
• 15:20
  in a total vacuum.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Well, when you failed to cross pollinate investigative findings between departments,
• 15:26
  confirmation bias takes root incredibly fast.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: He just saw what he expected to see, exactly.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: He expected to see a suicide because the initial dispatch
• 15:35
  report and the husband cited a suicide without any contextual
• 15:40
  evidence provided to shatter that preconceived expectation. He simply verified
• 15:44
  the bullet trajectory and closed the file.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: That clinical vacuum sealed perspective was infuriating to Kristen's family.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I can only imagine.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Her aunt Dellan and uncle brant Rice, who happened to
• 15:55
  be a local pastor. They were absolutely adamant from day
• 15:58
  one that Kristin did not take her own life, and.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Their reasoning wasn't just denial, was it.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. It was deeply rooted in their
• 16:05
  lifelong understanding of Kristin as a complex human being, not
• 16:09
  just as a subject on a stainless steel table.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Right, their behavioral evidence stood in stark screaming contrast to
• 16:17
  the physical ruling.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: They pointed out two major psychological incongruities. First, Kristin was
• 16:23
  absolutely terrified of firearms, she actively avoided them.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Wow, okay, that's huge.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And second, she was a deeply modest person regarding her
• 16:31
  physical body.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Which makes the scene make even less sense.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly, a woman with a phobia of guns decides to
• 16:38
  end her life, and instead of I don't know, taking
• 16:40
  pills or finding another method, she chooses the loudest, heaviest,
• 16:44
  most destructive handgun in the house.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: And a deeply modest woman chooses to do this while
• 16:49
  completely undressed.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Right, It violently violates the established baseline of her character.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: But despite the family's please and the detective suspicions, the
• 16:58
  coroner's ruling held all the legal power, so the police
• 17:02
  investigation ground to a halt.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the irony is that while the official ruling
• 17:06
  provided Colby Trickle with a perfect shield, his own psychology
• 17:09
  couldn't leave well enough alone.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: They rarely can.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: He was busy leaving a massive trail of digital breadcrumbs
• 17:15
  that were essentially ticking time bombs, waiting for a prosecutor
• 17:18
  to find them.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: So let's examine the illusion Colby tried to build for
• 17:21
  the police, because it tells you everything you need to
• 17:24
  know about who he really is.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, let's talk about that initial interview.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Right, shortly after Kristen died, Colby voluntarily sat down for
• 17:33
  an eleven hour initial interview with investigators. Eleven hours, and
• 17:37
  the character he decides to play in this interview is
• 17:40
  nothing short of delusional.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: He tries to construct this narrative of himself as a
• 17:45
  highly trained, deeply experienced military operative.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Right. Yes, he confidently tells the investigators that he served
• 17:52
  as a US military human intelligence officer.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: A human intelligence officer, Okay.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: He claims he was deployed to hot zones in the
• 17:59
  Middle East and Central America performing what he literally called
• 18:03
  spy stuff and actively cultivating networks of informants.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: To use the phrase spy stuff in a homicide interview
• 18:10
  is wild, It really is. Naturally, the police are going
• 18:14
  to verify the background of someone sitting in their interrogation room,
• 18:17
  and when they run his military jacket they find the
• 18:19
  complete opposite of adjacent Bourne narrative.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the military records confirmed he was merely a reserve officer.
• 18:25
  He had absolutely zero overseas deployments on his record, none, none.
• 18:30
  He had never set foot in the Middle East or
• 18:32
  Central America for the military, and he possessed exactly zero
• 18:37
  intelligence training or experience.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: The entire persona was a total.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Fabrication, a total lie.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: You really have to ask yourself what possesses a person
• 18:46
  to do that. You are sitting in a police station,
• 18:49
  your wife is dead, the police are asking you basic questions,
• 18:52
  and you voluntarily decide to spin a massive, easily disprovable
• 18:56
  lie about your career.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels less like a lieon more like an
• 19:00
  attempt to establish dominance in the room.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly. That's exactly what it feels like.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: It's a classic move in criminal psychology. This behavior touches
• 19:07
  on the concept of stolen valor, but in the context
• 19:10
  of a domestic homicide, it reveals a deeply ingrained, pathological
• 19:15
  need for grandiosity and control.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: So he's just compensating for something exactly.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Individuals who fabricate these elaborate, heroic military backgrounds usually do
• 19:25
  so to mask profound, crippling feelings of inadequacy. They have
• 19:30
  an overwhelming compulsion to be perceived as the smartest, most capable,
• 19:34
  most dangerous person in the.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Room, which is terrifying for whoever is married to them.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Persisely, that specific personality profile someone obsessed with controlling their
• 19:44
  image and projecting unearned authority. It aligns perfectly with the
• 19:48
  profile of a coercive domestic abuser. They resort to extreme
• 19:52
  violence when they feel that carefully constructed control slipping.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Away and losing control over Kristin is exactly what prosecutor
• 19:59
  Consuningham argued was the catalyst for this murder. When the
• 20:03
  case finally made it to court years later, he laid
• 20:05
  out the motive using a very memorable framework, the ABC's
• 20:09
  AB and.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: C I love frameworks like this. Let's walk through those letters,
• 20:12
  starting with a.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: A stands for affair, of course, because while Polby was
• 20:16
  busy portraying himself to the police and the public as
• 20:19
  the devastated, loyal husband whose world had just collapsed.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Let me guess his digital footprint told a.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Different story, a completely different story of active infidelity. Investigators
• 20:29
  discovered he was having what they described as a sexy
• 20:32
  snapchat affair with a woman he had met through an
• 20:35
  online video game group chat.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: The audacity of how he managed this affair is just
• 20:40
  hard to fathom.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: It gets worse. Remember that eleven hour police interview where
• 20:44
  he's talking about doing spy stuff. Investigators pulled the time
• 20:48
  stamps on his phone records and discovered that during that
• 20:50
  very interview, just hours after his wife died violently in
• 20:54
  their bed, while he is physically sitting in the police station,
• 20:58
  he is actively texting.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: This mistress, you have got to be kidding me.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: He actually typed the words I wish I could talk Wow.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: It is a stunning display of psychological compartmentalization and just
• 21:11
  malignant narcissism. Seriously, his primary emotional concern in the immediate,
• 21:16
  bloody aftermath of his wife's death was maintaining his romantic
• 21:19
  and sexual connection with a woman he met online.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: It completely shatters the illusion of the grieving widower. His
• 21:26
  brain isn't processing loss, it's processing how to maintain his
• 21:29
  alternate life.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Right. So, moving from A for affair, we look at B,
• 21:33
  which stands for breakdown of control.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: This is where we really see the power dynamics of
• 21:38
  the marriage shifting.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Because Christen's family had long observed and noted Colby's controlling nature,
• 21:43
  they described him as a partner who demanded immediate replies
• 21:47
  to text messages and expected her to be at his
• 21:50
  constant beck.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And call, which is exhausting.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Very he had engaged in behaviors that systematically isolated her
• 21:57
  from her support network for a time. But you know,
• 22:00
  in the months leading up to Halloween, the dynamic was changing.
• 22:03
  Kristin was finding her footing in her voice.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The digital forensics team recovered text messages from April
• 22:08
  twenty nineteen, about six months before her death, where Kristin
• 22:11
  was actively and explicitly pushing back against his dominance.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Good for her, What did she say?
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: She sent him a text saying I'm just deciding to
• 22:19
  stick up for myself. I'm taking control of the situation.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Oh wow. See for personality type that relies on absolute control,
• 22:26
  the kind of person who invents a fake military intelligence
• 22:29
  career just to feel powerful. A spouse asserting their independence
• 22:34
  is not just an annoyance.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: It's a threat.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: It is a massive psychological threat. It is a destabilizing
• 22:40
  event that threatens their entire constructed reality. When an abuser
• 22:44
  realizes they are losing their grip on their victim, that
• 22:48
  is statistically the most dangerous period in the relationship.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the final and perhaps most damning
• 22:54
  letter in the prosecutor's motive.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: C let me guess cold heart cash.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: You got it. During that initial eleven hour interview, the
• 23:03
  detectives explicitly asked Colby a standard question, did he have
• 23:07
  any life insurance policies on Kristin?
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: And he lied.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: He let them dead in the eye and said no.
• 23:12
  He mentioned he had a policy on himself through the
• 23:14
  military reserves, but claimed there was nothing on her.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: The digital forensics once again proved he was blatantly lying.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, they tore that lie apart. A deep dive into
• 23:23
  his phone data revealed that exactly ten days before Kristen's death,
• 23:27
  he performed a highly specific Google search.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Just ten days before, just ten days.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: He searched for the exact payout amount for a military
• 23:35
  spouse life insurance policy commonly known as SGLI.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Think about that timeline. Ten days before she supposedly makes
• 23:43
  a spontaneous, tragic decision to end her life, her husband
• 23:47
  is researching exactly how much of a financial windfall he
• 23:50
  will receive if she dies.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: It's premeditation at its finest right.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: And when the detectives eventually confronted him with this undeniable
• 23:58
  search history His reaction was so illustrative of his character.
• 24:03
  He didn't just deny it.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: He immediately tried to deflect the blame onto the victim.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He constructed a new lie on the spot. He
• 24:11
  claimed that they shared an access code to the phone
• 24:14
  and suggested that Kristin must have been the one who
• 24:16
  performed the Google search about her own life insurance payout.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: It is a constant, exhausting stream of deflection, but the
• 24:22
  detectives were meticulous. They didn't just look at the search term.
• 24:26
  They looked at the exact minute and second of the timestamp.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, smart.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Then they drove to the local Walmart where Kristin worked
• 24:32
  in the gardening center. They requested the security surveillance video
• 24:36
  from that exact moment in time, and let.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Me guess, she wasn't on her phone.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: The footage showed Kristin actively working her shift, interacting with
• 24:44
  the environment, and absolutely nowhere near a mobile phone.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Brilliant. It trapped him in a definitive, mathematically provable lie
• 24:54
  regarding a massive financial motives. Yep, and you know it
• 24:57
  wasn't the only critical lie they caught him in using
• 24:59
  the contents of his own phone.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Right there was the gun photo.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, Colby had initially told the police that the massive
• 25:06
  point three to five seven magnum revolver was technically Kristen's
• 25:10
  gun and that she always kept it on her side
• 25:12
  of the bed. He used this detail to explain why
• 25:15
  she had such easy immediate access to it in the
• 25:17
  dark that morning.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: But the police scrolled back through his photo gallery and
• 25:21
  found a picture taken just a month prior to the shooting,
• 25:25
  and what did it show? The photo clearly showed that
• 25:27
  exact same distinctively massive point three five seven revolver resting
• 25:32
  squarely on his side of the bed.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Every single piece of digital and behavioral evidence contradicted
• 25:39
  his verbal narrative, the hidden affair, the premeditated financial research,
• 25:44
  the true location of the weapon. But tragically, because of
• 25:47
  that initial coroner's ruling of suicide, Colby remained a free man.
• 25:52
  The legal system was completely paralyzed.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: He thought he had committed the perfect chrome, and for
• 25:57
  a significant, agonizing period of time, he actually did.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: He walked out of that police station free as a bird,
• 26:04
  and he immediately started cashing the checks.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to arguably the most grotesque and surreal
• 26:09
  chapter of this entire story.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Oh boy.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: In the winter of twenty twenty, just months after Kristen's death,
• 26:15
  Colby collects a total of one hundred twenty three thousand
• 26:18
  dollars in life insurance payouts.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: That's a huge payout.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it consists of twenty three thousand dollars from a
• 26:24
  basic Walmart employee policy and a massive one hundred thousand
• 26:28
  dollars payout from the US military SGLI policy he had researched.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Well, if you apply the logic of a truly tragic suicide,
• 26:35
  a grieving husband might use that substantial amount of money
• 26:37
  to pay off marital debts, or establish a memorial fund
• 26:40
  in her name, or simply put it in savings while
• 26:42
  he figures out his life right.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Instead, Colby burns through the entire one hundred and twenty
• 26:46
  three thousand dollars windfall in just eight months.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Eight months. To blow through over one hundred grand in
• 26:52
  a small Kansas town in under a year requires a
• 26:55
  dedicated effort of spending.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, he was dedicated. But it's what he spent the
• 26:59
  blood mone money on that really Through the investigation for.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: A loop, what did he buy?
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: The most shocking single purchase discovered in his financial ledgers
• 27:07
  was a payment of nine and forty two dollars to
• 27:11
  a company called True Touch Dolls.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Oh Wow. For context, True Touch Dolls is a company
• 27:17
  that manufactures highly realistic, anatomically correct life size sex dolls.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Your wife dies violently in your own bed, and a
• 27:24
  few months later you take the life insurance money generated
• 27:26
  by her death to buy a two thousand dollars sex doll.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: It's repulsive.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: The psychology of that choice is staggering.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: It really is. When clinicians analyze the behavior associated with
• 27:37
  a genuine grieving process, it typically involves a period of
• 27:40
  profound social withdrawal, deep sadness, and a distinct lack of
• 27:44
  interest in seeking out new romantic or sexual connections. Immediately
• 27:47
  purchasing a hyper realistic sex doll with the victim's life
• 27:51
  insurance money demonstrates a complete, chilling, emotional detachment from the
• 27:55
  reality of her death. It reduces her existence and her
• 27:58
  passing to a mere trend action that funded a fetishistic purchase.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And the defense attorney, Cassie Zeigler, actually had to stand
• 28:06
  up in court and address this purchase.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: How do you even defend that?
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Her defense strategy was to claim that Colby was having
• 28:12
  trouble sleeping alone. She argued that he was very open
• 28:15
  about this struggle, pointing out that he even discussed the
• 28:18
  purchase of the doll with his own mother, with his
• 28:21
  mother yes, claiming he just needed it for quote comfort
• 28:24
  and warmth.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: That is a fascinating, almost desperate defense strategy. It attempts
• 28:30
  to normalize a profoundly abnormal, highly specific behavior by framing
• 28:34
  it as a common symptom of grief. But it completely
• 28:37
  falls apart when you subject it to basic scrutiny.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Right, if you are genuinely seeking comfort and warmth because
• 28:43
  you miss the presence of another being in your home,
• 28:46
  you buy a weighted blanket, or.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: You know, adopt a dog from a shelter.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly, which, by the way, is exactly what Kristin actually
• 28:52
  wanted to do for a living. She loved animals. Really, yes,
• 28:55
  you do not drop two thousand dollars on a life size,
• 28:58
  silicone true touch doll and then have a casual chat
• 29:01
  with your mother about it over coffee.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: The pathology of replacing a human spouse who was asserting
• 29:07
  her independence with a completely compliant, silent, silicone object perfectly
• 29:13
  mirrors his motive. He wanted ultimate control, and a doll
• 29:17
  offers exactly that.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Beyond the sheer absurdity of the defense, it further shatters
• 29:21
  the behavioral profile of a devastated widower. And this total
• 29:25
  lack of authentic grieving wasn't just hidden in his bank statements.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: It was public.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: It was highly visible to the entire community. He was
• 29:32
  putting on a daily performance while he was blowing through
• 29:35
  this money. He started posting self help videos on his
• 29:38
  Facebook page, videos where he is lecturing his followers about
• 29:41
  pushing forward and enjoying life, acting like some enlightened lifestyle
• 29:45
  guru who has conquered adversity.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, that is nauseating.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: He was also parading around town, bringing his guitar to
• 29:51
  local restaurants and singing for the crowds. The lead detective
• 29:55
  on the case went on record saying that seeing Colby
• 29:57
  outperforming and soaking up attention made his skin crawl.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: It is the pure arrogance of a perpetrator who firmly
• 30:06
  believes they have successfully outsmarted the system. He wasn't hiding
• 30:10
  in shame or grief. He was actively reveling in his new,
• 30:14
  unencumbered funded life.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: He really thought he won.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: And because the system was deeply stuck in that information silo,
• 30:20
  paralyzed by the coroner's official ruling. Nearly two entire years passed,
• 30:26
  two years of Colby living his life completely broke after
• 30:28
  spending all the money, but completely free from consequence.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: It felt like Kristen's case was destined to end up
• 30:34
  in a dusty cardboard box in a basement, labeled as
• 30:37
  a closed suicide.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: But then something changed.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, the political landscape of the county changed, and it
• 30:42
  changed the trajectory of the entire investigation. In January twenty
• 30:46
  twenty one, a newly elected county attorney named Robert Anderson took.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Office, okay, a fresh set of eyes.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Literally within days of him moving into his office, the
• 30:54
  detectives cornered him.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: They essentially staged a professional intervention for this cold case
• 30:59
  right exactly.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: They laid out the entire mosaic of circumstantial evidence, the
• 31:04
  hidden affair, the one hundred and twenty thousand dollars financial motive,
• 31:08
  the bizarre behavior with the sex doll and the glaring
• 31:11
  physical incongruities of the scene.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: They pleaded with the new attorney to help them figure
• 31:15
  out a way to nail down a homicide charge.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: But Anderson immediately ran into the exact same brick wall
• 31:21
  the police did. Coroner nord Hook flatly refused to change
• 31:25
  the official ruling from suicide to homicide without a formal
• 31:28
  adversarial court proceeding.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: The medical establishment was just digging its heels in protecting
• 31:33
  its initial assessment.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Yep. So Anderson realizes he has to circumvent the physical
• 31:39
  autopsy entirely. He decides to utilize a tool that was
• 31:42
  entirely unprecedented in Kansas criminal history.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: A psychological autopsy.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: He orders a formal psychological autopsy, which.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Raises a critical question for anyone analyzing evidence, what exactly
• 31:53
  is a psychological autopsy and how does it meet the
• 31:56
  rigorous standards required to hold up in a court of.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Law Because it sounds so subjective.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: It does, but it's not. When a traditional medical examiner
• 32:05
  looks at a body, they are looking for physical biological
• 32:09
  causes of death, tissue damage, toxicology, organ failure. But when
• 32:13
  a forensic psychologist conducts a psychological autopsy, their objective is
• 32:18
  to meticulously reconstruct the victim's state of mind in the weeks, days,
• 32:22
  and hours leading up to their death.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: So they are searching for the psychological cause of.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Death, or crucially, in this case, the absolute lacks thereof.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: To execute this unprecedented move, Andersen brings in doctor Ashley Christensen,
• 32:35
  a forensic psychologist. Her assignment is basically to become the
• 32:38
  foremost expert on the internal life of Kristin Trickle.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Without having a physical body to examine exactly.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Instead, she examines the digital and emotional residue Kristen left behind.
• 32:48
  She pours over text messages, reads diaries, analyzes the syntax
• 32:52
  and tone of social media posts.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: She's essentially mapping out Kristen's emotional landscape.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Right. She conducts exhaustive structured in with Kristen's friends, her
• 33:01
  family members, and her coworkers.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: And what is truly fascinating here is the clear, undeniable
• 33:07
  pattern that emerges from doctor Christensen's rigorous research in the
• 33:12
  field of suicideology. Suicidal ideation almost always leaves a detectable
• 33:17
  behavioral footprint.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: People usually leave clues.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. People making that decision often begin giving away prize possessions,
• 33:25
  They withdraw noticeably from their social circles, and their communications
• 33:29
  express a profound, pervasive hopelessness. But doctor Christensen found the
• 33:33
  exact opposite behavioral markers in Kristen's life.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: She found a woman who was highly optimistic and incredibly driven.
• 33:41
  Kristin wasn't just drifting through life. She was making very concrete, active,
• 33:45
  complex plans for her immediate future.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Didn't she want to start a business?
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, she was actively researching and planning to launch her
• 33:52
  own pet boarding and dog grooming business. She had gone
• 33:55
  so far as to pick out a specific little house
• 33:57
  south of town that had a bar and she wanted
• 33:59
  to convert for the business.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Wow. The logic is simple. You do not map out
• 34:03
  real estate acquisitions and draft business plans for a small
• 34:06
  enterprise if you are actively planning to end your life.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Based on this overwhelming behavioral evidence of prospective, future oriented thinking,
• 34:15
  doctor Christensen concluded in her official psychological autopsy report that
• 34:19
  it was quote relatively less likely that Kristen's death was
• 34:23
  a suicide.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: That phrasing is incredible in the careful, highly measured, scientifically
• 34:28
  conservative language of forensic psychology. That phrase is a damning,
• 34:33
  screaming indictment of the coroner's rutched medical ruling.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: But of course, Colby's defense team recognized the threat the
• 34:39
  support posed, and they fought back incredibly hard against it,
• 34:42
  they had to attorney. Zeigler argued to the court that
• 34:45
  doctor Christensen's report was fundamentally flawed. She pointed to Kristen's childhood,
• 34:50
  noting that she had suffered immense trauma. Her biological mother
• 34:54
  had abandoned her when she was just two years old.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: So the defense tried to construct an alternate narrative of
• 34:59
  a fragile woman who had been successfully masking a deep, lifelong,
• 35:03
  hidden depression from everyone around her.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: The defense also fiercely attacked the methodology of the psychological
• 35:10
  aucopsy itself. They argued that because the interviews with friends
• 35:13
  and family were conducted nearly two years after the actual death,
• 35:17
  human memory is inherently malleable and prone to shifting.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Oh So, they suggested a phenomenon where Kristen's family was
• 35:24
  viewing her entirely through the rose tinted glasses of grief.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly subconsciously remembering only her positive attributes and actively filtering
• 35:33
  out any signs of depression. To avoid the stigma of suicide.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: And to counter the family's glowing optimistic memories, the defense
• 35:41
  brought in their own character witness, didn't.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: They yep, Colby's mother, Tina Cryer, Her description of Kristin
• 35:47
  was drastically different from everyone else's. She described her daughter
• 35:51
  in law as emotionless and hard to read, trying to
• 35:54
  plant the seed that Kristin was capable of a sudden
• 35:57
  dark act, which creates a classic I Stake's courtroom battle
• 36:01
  of competing narratives. How does a jury measure the objective
• 36:05
  weight of concrete future plans like setting a morning alarm
• 36:09
  clock or plotting a real estate purchase for a business
• 36:12
  against a defense attorney's theoretical claim of hidden lifelong childhood trauma,
• 36:18
  it's tricky to bolster their theory. The defense argued that
• 36:22
  discovering Colby's online snapchat affair was the acute last straw
• 36:27
  that pushed this supposedly fragile, masking woman over the edge
• 36:31
  into self harm.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: But here's where Colby's pathological need to lie completely torpedoed
• 36:36
  his own defense's narrative.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: He just couldn't help himself.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: When the police first interviewed him on the day of
• 36:41
  the murder, he swore up and down that Kristin didn't
• 36:44
  know a single thing about his online snapchat affair. But
• 36:46
  years later, when he was interviewed by doctor Christensen for
• 36:49
  the psychological autopsy, he completely changed his story. He claimed
• 36:53
  that she did know about the affair and that it
• 36:55
  had caused a massive fight that ruined their relationship the
• 36:57
  week of her death. He simply couldn't keep his lies straight.
• 37:01
  His compulsion to manipulate the narrative of the moment ended
• 37:05
  up providing the prosecution with proof of his deceit.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: The implementation of the psychological autopsy was brilliant because it
• 37:11
  provided the behavioral framework the jury needed to understand why
• 37:15
  the initial suicide ruling was a mistake.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: It painted a vivid, data backed picture of a victim
• 37:20
  who desperately wanted to live. However, behavioral evidence, no matter
• 37:25
  how compelling, rarely secures a first degree murder conviction on
• 37:29
  its own right.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: You need the physical proof exactly.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: To truly trap Colby and secure a life sentence. The
• 37:35
  prosecution still needed to prove the physical mechanics of the
• 37:38
  murder in that dark room. They had to prove exactly
• 37:41
  how he did it.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: And that takes us to September twenty twenty three, when
• 37:45
  the trial finally begins in earnest. Finally, the defense's entire
• 37:48
  strategy leans incredibly heavily on the administrative air we've been discussing.
• 37:53
  They essentially hide behind the coroner. They just keep pointing
• 37:56
  to the official death certificate, begging the jury to find
• 37:59
  reasonable day out. Because the county's own appointed medical examiner
• 38:03
  officially deemed it a suicide, it is an undeniably strong
• 38:06
  defense strategy on paper. If the state's own medical expert
• 38:10
  testifies that it's a suicide, how can a jury ethically
• 38:14
  convict a man of murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: So to overcome this, the prosecution had to completely dismantle
• 38:20
  the medical examiner's physical findings, using a superior interpretation of
• 38:24
  their own physical evidence.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And prosecutor cutting in steps up to deliver. He brings
• 38:29
  out the final, devastating, undeniable piece of physical evidence, and
• 38:34
  it all comes down to a tiny forensic detail called
• 38:37
  the site imprint. The site imprint, Yes, he stands in
• 38:40
  front of the jury box holding a heavy, life sized
• 38:43
  replica of that massive Zo point three to five seven
• 38:45
  magnum revolver to demonstrate the biomechanics of the weapon.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: This moment is where physical forensics finally syncs up with
• 38:52
  the behavioral forensics.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: The prosecution firmly established that Kristen was right handed. The
• 38:57
  sight of a revolver is that little metal fin sticking
• 38:59
  up at the very end of the barrel used for aiming. Okay,
• 39:01
  I can picture that if a right handed person is
• 39:04
  going to hold a heavy twelve inch barrel and physically
• 39:07
  turn it backward to shoot themselves under the chin, the
• 39:10
  natural ergonomic mechanics of the human wrist and arm dictate
• 39:14
  how that gun will rest against the skin.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Right because your arm only bends certain ways.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly when the gun is pressed hard into the soft tissue,
• 39:22
  that metal fin will leave a temporary stamp. Based on
• 39:25
  human anatomy, that mark will inevitably land somewhere between the
• 39:29
  nine o'clock six o'clock position on the neck relative to
• 39:33
  the chin.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: But when the prosecutor blew up the high resolution autopsy
• 39:37
  photos for the jury to see that little divot from
• 39:40
  the gun site wasn't at nine o'clock, It wasn't at
• 39:43
  six o'clock.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Where was it?
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: It was perfectly cleanly stamped at the three o'clock mark
• 39:48
  on the right side of her neck.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Think about the biomechanics required to achieve that angle to
• 39:53
  get a three o'clock imprint on the side of the
• 39:55
  neck while holding the gun yourself. A right handed person
• 39:59
  would have to hold the gun perfectly sideways, twisting their
• 40:02
  arm into a physically impossible contortion that would essentially require
• 40:06
  disjointing the elbow.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: It's impossible that three.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: O'clock angle is completely unnatural, if not impossible, for a
• 40:11
  self inflicted wound. However, that precise three o'clock mark perfectly,
• 40:17
  flawlessly matches an entirely different mechanical scenario.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: It matches the exact scenario where a husband grabs his
• 40:23
  massive revolver from his own nightstand, rolls over in bed,
• 40:27
  reaches his arm across the mattress, presses the gun sideways
• 40:30
  under his sleeping wife's chin from the right side, and
• 40:33
  pulls the trigger.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: That tiny, easily overlooked divot, That split second impression of
• 40:39
  metal pressed against skin was the absolute physical anchor the
• 40:42
  jury needed to ground the case. Wow, The psychological autopsy
• 40:46
  proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wouldn't
• 40:48
  do it. The digital forensics, the Google searches, and the
• 40:51
  snapchat messages proved he had the financial and personal motive
• 40:55
  to do it. And the biomechanics of the three o'clock
• 40:57
  divot proved exactly how he physically executed the act.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: The synchronization of all those different types of evidence was overwhelming.
• 41:04
  It completely shattered the illusion Colby had built.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: What did the jury do?
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: It took the jury less than two hours of deliberation
• 41:10
  to completely reject the coroner's official ruling and toss out
• 41:14
  the defense's theories of childhood trauma.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Two hours is incredibly fast.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: They found Colby Trickle guilty a first degree premeditated murder.
• 41:22
  He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility
• 41:25
  of parole for.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Fifty years, and does he admit it now.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: No dru to his narcissistic profile. To this day, he
• 41:33
  continues to deny his guilt.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Typical and in a moment of extreme albeit heavily delayed
• 41:39
  vindication for the investigators in the family, coroner Nordook finally
• 41:44
  amended the official death certificate.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, he finally did it.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, he legally crossed out the word suicide and officially
• 41:50
  changed the manner of death to homicide.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: The relief for Christen's family is hard to even quantify.
• 41:55
  Imagine spending years of your life fighting an official government
• 41:58
  document that coldly stayed the woman you loved simply gave
• 42:02
  up on life.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: It must have been agonizing.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: After the guilty verdict was read, they said they finally
• 42:06
  felt like they could breathe again. They got their own
• 42:08
  lives back. Her cousin Chloe even wrote a beautiful goodbye
• 42:12
  song for her to help process the grief. That's lovely,
• 42:14
  and the family says they still routinely drive by that
• 42:17
  specific little house south of town, the one with the
• 42:20
  barn that Kristin dreamed of turning into her dog boarding business.
• 42:24
  They affectionately call it Kristen's House.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: It represents a profound emotional closure, but it's crucial to
• 42:31
  remember that it was a closure that had to be
• 42:33
  fought for tooth and nail against a bureaucratic system that
• 42:36
  was perfectly content to close the book and walk away
• 42:39
  on day three.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: It truly was an incredible, grueling journey, an investigation that
• 42:44
  dragged on for over three years, kept alive only by
• 42:47
  a stubborn detective who refused to ignore a ringing alarm
• 42:50
  clock and a bowl of Halloween.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Candy, and a brand new county attorney willing to risk
• 42:54
  a trial on an unprecedented psychological tool.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Right and a forensic psychologist who a meticular mapped the
• 43:00
  mind of a woman she had never even met. All
• 43:03
  of this monumental effort was required to overturn one rushed,
• 43:08
  vacuum sealed medical conclusion.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: If there is a core takeaway for you as you
• 43:13
  process this deep dive, it is that context is absolutely everything.
• 43:18
  Physical data, no matter how scientific it appears, is only
• 43:22
  as good and only as accurate as the contextual reality
• 43:25
  surrounding it. Exactly, whether you are analyzing data metrics for
• 43:29
  a presentation at work, reading a news headline, or looking
• 43:32
  at a piece of physical evidence. Taking things at word value,
• 43:35
  or operating inside an information silo is incredibly dangerous. The
• 43:39
  real truth usually exists in the friction between different types
• 43:43
  of information.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: So I'll leave you with this final chilling thought, Tom
• 43:46
  all over. We started by looking at a cold, snowy
• 43:48
  Halloween morning and a stage forensic scene that almost worked perfectly.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: It was so close to being a perfect crime.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: It took years of relentless advocacy, deep digital forensics, and
• 43:59
  an entirely unprecedented psychological autopsy to overturn just this one
• 44:03
  mistake in suicide ruling. YEA, So you have to wonder
• 44:06
  how many perfectly staged homicides are sitting in cold case
• 44:09
  files right now, permanently locked away in an administrative silo,
• 44:13
  simply because no one thought to perform an autopsy of
• 44:15
  the victim's mind.