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The Brick: The Unsolved Murder of Rosa McMillan · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine this. You're looking at an investigative case file and
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: you have like a literal head nodding confession from a
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: suspect sitting right there in the interrogation room.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Right. Which is huge.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you also have police canine units tracking
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: a scent directly from the victim's back door straight to
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the suspect's usual hangout. Plus, you've got a half dozen
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: sworn witness statements placing him at the scene. And then
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and this is the part that is just mind bending.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: imagine having to let that person walk out the door.
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  Speaker 2: It's hard to even fathom. It is.
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  Speaker 1: Knowing they will likely wander the exact same streets for decades,
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  Speaker 1: completely free. And you might be asking yourself, why? Well,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: because the very forensic science that was invented to catch
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: killers actually created a loophole that let him walk.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is the ultimate double-edged sword of modern justice.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: What we are looking at today is is just a
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: masterclass in how criminal investigations can completely derail. It shows
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: us the severe psychological danger of tunnel vision in early
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: police work. And it also exposes how the rapid evolution
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: of forensic technology has drastically altered what juries and prosecutors
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: demand before they will even step foot in a courtroom.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: So welcome to today's Deep Dive. We are unpacking a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: massive stack of raw investigative case files detective interviews, and
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: witness statements.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: There's a lot to go through here.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: There really is. And they all surround a chilling, unsolved
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: 1989 murder in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Our mission today is
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to explore how a seemingly solvable true crime mystery transforms
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: into what detectives call a brick.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: A brick. Right?
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  Speaker 1: The one case they carry with them forever, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the one that weighs them down long after they turn
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: in their badge. And for retired detective Chris Corcio, his
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: brick is an 85-year-old woman named Rosa McMillan.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: To really understand how this case went so wrong, we
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: have to understand the environment. So put yourself in Fayetteville
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: on August 6, 1989.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, setting the scene?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. It is the kind of unbearably humid, sweltering southern
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Sunday where the air just feels like incredibly thick and heavy.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, I can almost feel it. Right.
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  Speaker 2: And in this neighborhood called Massey Hill, you have Rosa McMillan.
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  Speaker 2: She is fiercely independent, known around the block as grandma
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: to everybody.
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  Speaker 1: That's so sweet.
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  Speaker 2: She spent her days tending to a small vegetable garden
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  Speaker 2: outside the home that her late husband built. And she
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  Speaker 2: was a woman anchored by an unwavering, decades-long routine.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: And that routine is crucial for you to understand because
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: every single night, Rosa turned her porch lights on.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Without fail.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Without fail. Every single morning, she turned them off. She
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: locked her doors. Her home was kept completely immaculate. So
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  Speaker 1: when her daughter Elaine, her son-in-law Rodney, and their kids
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: were driving past the house that Sunday morning, on their
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: way to the beach actually, a single seemingly minor detail
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  Speaker 1: made them pull the car over immediately.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: The porch light.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The porch light was still burning bright in the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: middle of the daytime.
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  Speaker 2: Well, and from an investigative standpoint, when human behavior deviates
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  Speaker 2: that sharply from a lifelong pattern, it is almost always
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  Speaker 2: an indicator of disruption. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: That light.
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  Speaker 2: Was essentially the very first distress signal.
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  Speaker 1: So Rodney tells the family to wait in the car
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: while he goes to check on her. And what he
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  Speaker 1: walked into was a visceral nightmare.
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  Speaker 2: Just horrifying.
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  Speaker 1: Rosa's back door was wide open. On the side of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the house, a window pane had been completely smashed out.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And inside, the immaculate home was unrecognizable. It had been
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: violently ransacked. Papers and belongings were just dumped everywhere.
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  Speaker 2: Total chaos.
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  Speaker 1: Complete chaos. And Rosa's body was found on the floor,
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  Speaker 1: covered by a rug and a pile of items emptied
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  Speaker 1: from her drawers.
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  Speaker 2: The physical evidence at the scene provided a stark psychological
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  Speaker 2: profile of the perpetrator. Rosa's official cause of death was
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  Speaker 2: blunt force trauma.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: She had been physically beaten, but the fatal blows came
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: from a makeshift weapon. It was a heavy wooden fence post.
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  Speaker 1: And not just any fence post.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: It was literally ripped right out of the ground from
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  Speaker 1: the fence surrounding Rosa's own vegetable garden.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And whoever wielded that post, they swung it with such terrifying,
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  Speaker 1: chaotic force that the wood actually struck the ceiling overhead
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  Speaker 1: before it hit Rosa.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that level of force is just staggering.
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  Speaker 1: It really is. The investigators found ceiling tile material deeply
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  Speaker 1: embedded in the end of the post and heavy indentations
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: in the ceiling itself, which honestly leads to a massive
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  Speaker 1: logical disconnect for me when looking.
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  Speaker 2: At these files.
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  Speaker 1: If a perpetrator breaks into a house with a premeditated plan, like, say,
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  Speaker 1: a professional burglar or someone executing a targeted hit, they
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: do not rely on ripping a piece of wood out
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  Speaker 1: of the yard at the last possible second.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely not.
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  Speaker 1: Plus, the police found Rose's purse sitting right there in
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  Speaker 1: the open, completely untouched, with about $ 500 in cash inside.
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  Speaker 2: Which is a huge red flag for the motive. Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: This points entirely to a chaotic, totally unplanned event, not
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  Speaker 1: a professional robbery.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: You're exactly right. When a forensic psychologist looks at a
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: scene like this, they mathematically categorize it along a spectrum
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: of organization. Okay. So an organized offender brings their own weapon.
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  Speaker 2: They bring tools like duct tape or flashlights. They have
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  Speaker 2: a clear exit strategy and an objective, like stealing cash.
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  Speaker 1: Which was completely ignored here.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. This scene is the textbook definition of disorganized. A
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  Speaker 2: weapon of opportunity pulled from the dirt. A panicked exit
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  Speaker 2: out the back door, leaving high-value items untouched.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: A disorganized scene implies a perpetrator who is acting impulsively.
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  Speaker 2: They're possibly under the influence of substances or maybe someone
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  Speaker 2: young and inexperienced who's just panicking when things go wrong.
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  Speaker 1: So if it is an impulsive, chaotic event and the
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  Speaker 1: money was totally ignored, what actually drives the attack?
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  Speaker 2: Well, the initial investigators leaned heavily towards sexual assault.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: But there was a complication that completely muddied the waters, right?
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  Speaker 2: There was. The medical examiner found biological evidence of semen
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: during the autopsy. But because of the sheer brutality of
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: the injuries, they could not definitively determine the timeline. That's rough. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: They just didn't know if a sexual assault occurred before
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: the blunt force trauma or postmortem. But that biological presence, however,
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  Speaker 2: locked the early investigators onto a very specific track.
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  Speaker 1: It sent them looking outward into the community for a
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  Speaker 1: pattern of sexual violence, rather than looking inward at the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: disorganized reality of that specific living room.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
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  Speaker 1: They decided they were hunting a serial predator. And sure enough,
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  Speaker 1: they found a man named Harry Klein Lee.
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  Speaker 2: Harry.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Harry was 41, and on paper, he looked like
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  Speaker 1: a slam-dunk suspect. That same month, there had been assaults
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  Speaker 1: on three other older women within like an hour's drive
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  Speaker 1: of Rosa.
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  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 1: Harry also had an active warrant for an attempted break-in
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  Speaker 1: at another older woman's home. And right after Rose's murder,
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  Speaker 1: Harry just vanished. He skipped town.
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  Speaker 2: So law enforcement executed a search warrant on his abandoned apartment.
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  Speaker 2: And the environment they uncovered suggested severe psychological deviation.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, it was incredibly disturbing.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. They found multiple pairs of women's underwear, which investigators
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  Speaker 2: believe were taken as trophies from the previous assaults. They
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  Speaker 2: found a book titled They Don't Call This Rape. And
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  Speaker 2: they even found human feces preserved inside a pizza box.
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  Speaker 1: Wait, preserved inside a pizza box?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, literally kept in the box.
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  Speaker 1: That is just, I mean, wow. Okay, and because early
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  Speaker 1: 1989 forensics could only tell investigators that the perpetrator who
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  Speaker 1: left the biological evidence at Rose's house was a white male,
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  Speaker 1: and Harry was a white male on the run, they
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  Speaker 1: blasted out a bolo.
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  Speaker 2: Right, a bee on the lookout.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, all the way up and down the East Coast.
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  Speaker 2: Which highlights a really fascinating operational limitation of that era.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, in 1989, information sharing between jurisdictions was largely
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  Speaker 2: analog and heavily fragmented.
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  Speaker 1: No centralized computer databases.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. So fleeing across state lines was an incredibly effective
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  Speaker 2: evasion tactic. Harry evaded capture during a period that Detective
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Corson later referred to as Fayetteville's killing years.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: It was this really dark stretch marked by record high
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  Speaker 2: homicides that just severely strained police resources.
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  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Rosa's family is trapped in this horrific limbo years
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  Speaker 1: go by. But let's look at the psychology of the
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  Speaker 1: investigators themselves here. Why were they so convinced Harry was
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  Speaker 1: the guy when nothing in his apartment actually tied him
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  Speaker 1: to Rosa?
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  Speaker 2: It's a psychological phenomenon we can call cognitive red car syndrome.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, explain that.
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  Speaker 2: You know how when you buy a red car, suddenly
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  Speaker 2: you see red cars everywhere on the highway?
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like everywhere.
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  Speaker 2: Your brain actively filters out the white and black cars
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  Speaker 2: to focus on what it has deemed important. The 1989
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: detectives decided the killer was a serial rapist.
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  Speaker 1: And they locked onto that. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Once that framework was locked in, their brains automatically filtered
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  Speaker 2: out the chaotic, disorganized evidence at the house that contradicted
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that profile.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Because Harry was an organized offender. Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. He collected trophies. He planned his targets. Rose's living
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  Speaker 2: room was the complete opposite of Harry's behavioral fingerprint.
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  Speaker 1: But that cognitive filter finally shatters in July of 1996.
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  Speaker 1: Seven years later, Harry is actually arrested in Miami.
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  Speaker 2: Finally.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Detective Korshun, who had taken over the cold case
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  Speaker 1: by this point, extradites him. Korshun gets a warrant, pulls
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  Speaker 1: vials of blood, hair samples, and saliva because by 1996,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: DNA technology is highly reliable.
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  Speaker 2: Hmm.
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  Speaker 1: They test Harry against the autopsy sample. It is not
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  Speaker 1: a match. Harry is a complete ghost in this case.
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  Speaker 2: Which leaves Detective Corsion staring at a seven-year-old crime scene
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  Speaker 2: with absolutely zero leads.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing.
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  Speaker 2: When the prime suspect just evaporates like that, an investigator
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  Speaker 2: has to completely deconstruct the narrative and start from scratch.
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  Speaker 1: So put yourself in Detective Corsion's shoes. You open up
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  Speaker 1: this dusty file box. You pull out the grainy 1989
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  Speaker 1: crime scene photos. What do you even look for?
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  Speaker 2: You look for the anomalies. Right.
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  Speaker 1: And Caution started looking for those anomalies. And sitting right
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: there on a table in Rosa's living room were these
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: small airplane-sized liquor bottles and a single Xanax pill.
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  Speaker 2: Those items are profound behavioral markers. Yeah.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Because Rosa fiercely opposed alcohol of any kind. She just
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: did not drink. And she certainly did not use unprescribed drugs.
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  Speaker 1: So they didn't belong to her.
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  Speaker 2: Therefore, the items had to belong to the perpetrators, which
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: firmly establishes that substances were involved.
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  Speaker 1: So, Caution immediately pivots to a new framework. He comes
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: up with the party gone wrong theory.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, walk me through that.
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  Speaker 1: He theorizes a group of local youth from the Massey
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  Speaker 1: Hill neighborhood were getting high, drinking, and just decided to
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: look for a vulnerable target. He focuses on a specific
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: person of interest from that immediate area. We'll call him Larry.
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  Speaker 2: All right, Larry.
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  Speaker 1: Larry was a small man, which is mechanically important because
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the perpetrator had to squeeze their body through that broken
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: side window pane.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Right, an adult of every size wouldn't fit. Exactly. Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Larry was an accomplished breaking and entering artist. He had
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a documented history of violence against women. And he matched
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the description of a man seen running near Rose's home
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: that day.
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  Speaker 2: The irony there is just staggering. I mean, the original
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: detectives were so blinded by their pursuit of an organized
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: serial offender crossing state lines, they literally tripped over the
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: disorganized local burglar operating right in their own backyard.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: It's like finding a footprint at a crime scene that
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: belongs to a hiking boot while the police spent seven
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: years looking for someone who wears dress shoes.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
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  Speaker 1: And when Corson points his flashlight at Larry, the mountain
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: of circumstantial evidence he illuminates is just, it's mind-bending.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, I bet.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the hours immediately following the murder. Police
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: actually ran canine units through Rose's yard.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: The dogs locked onto a scent, tracked it out the
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  Speaker 1: back door, over the fence, down the street, and stopped
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  Speaker 1: directly at a house where Larry frequently hung out after
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: committing crimes.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: That is huge. Send tracking relies on the microscopic shedding
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: of human skin rafts, which fall off our bodies continuously. Gross. Yeah,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: a dog walking onto that specific trail and ending at
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: a known suspect's location is really powerful corroborating evidence of
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: a physical escape route.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: But the wildest piece of this puzzle is buried in
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: an old interrogation log. Early investigators actually brought Larry into
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the station in 1989.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Wait, they had him in the room?
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. The detective sat across from him and walked through
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the crime. He said, you knocked out the window to
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: get in the house. And Larry nodded his head yes.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Nodded yes.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: You defended yourself against an old lady. Larry nodded yes.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: You went out the back door. Larry nodded yes. Then
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Larry verbally responds, and I quote, yeah, man, it was
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: all effed up.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: In any standard investigative manual, that constitutes a partial verbal
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: and nonverbal admission to undisclosed facts of a crime scene. Exactly. Exactly.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So how does a detective look at a man who
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: just admitted to breaking a window during a fatal home
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: invasion and let him walk out the door?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Because they let him go, right?
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Because that is exactly what happened. They let him go
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: on a promise that he would come back to take
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: a polygraph test. A literal pinky promise.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: That is unbelievable.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: He never returned. And because the department was so obsessed
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: with tracking down Harry, the pizza box guy, nobody ever
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: went looking for Larry.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Well, criminal psychology dictates that offenders carrying a heavy burden...
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: often leak information over time to relieve internal pressure. They
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: talk to the people around them.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And Larry talked a lot. Caution spent years tracking down
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Larry's old associates in prisons and living rooms, gathering half
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: a dozen sworn affidavits.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: What did they say?
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: One associate testified seeing Larry the morning after the murder,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: covered in scratches he blamed on barbed wire. Rose's house
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: had barbed wire running along the side.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Another witness heard Larry arguing about losing a borrowed black hat.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: A black hat was found near Rosa's body. Another inmate
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: swore Larry bragged about targeting houses with no cars, specifically
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: looking to overpower older women. Rosa didn't drive.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Notice how specific those details are. They are not just
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: vague rumors. They map perfectly to the physical reality of
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: the crime scene that was never released to the public.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Larry even told an associate, if police get me for
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: what I did on Camden Road, I'll get life or
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the death penalty. Rosa lived on Camden Road.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And if that wasn't enough, investigators enhanced a blurry Polaroid
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: photo found on the street outside the house. In the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: reflection of a car mirror caught in the photo, Corson
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: actually identified Larry's half-sister, placing his immediate family squarely at
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the scene.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: So we have motive, means, opportunity, scent tracking, a partial confession,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: and multiple corroborating witnesses.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Think about what this means if you're looking at this
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: case file today. How does a man with that much
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: evidence against him avoid trial? This is where we hit
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the brick wall.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: The DNA. Exactly.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: When Caution finally obtained Larry's DNA, it did not match
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the biological sample recovered during the 1989 autopsy.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: But we have to apply critical logic here. Caution's working theory,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: supported by the evidence, was a party gone wrong involving
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: multiple local youths.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Larry's physical size allowed him to squeeze through the window
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: and unlock the door for the others.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The person who broke the window and committed the
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: blunt force trauma with the fence post doesn't have to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: be the exact same person who committed the sexual assault
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and left the biological evidence.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Larry can be guilty of felony murder without being the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: source of that specific semen.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: However, the district attorney's office refused to view the case
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: through that multi-perpetrator lens, didn't they?
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: They completely refused. Caution took this powering stack of evidence
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to the DA three separate times, pleading for them to
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: charge Larry.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: And they said no.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And three times the prosecutors refused to move forward without
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: a direct microscopic DNA match to the body. This is
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the phenomenon known as the CSI effect.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Ah, yes. The CSI effect is a profound psychological shift
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: in the American legal system.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Break that down for us.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Over the last two decades, continuous exposure to procedural television
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: shows has fundamentally altered jury expectations. Juries have been conditioned
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: to expect flawless, definitive, high-tech forensic evidence in every single trial.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Like it's a TV script.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Consequently, prosecutors have become terrified of bringing circumstantial cases,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: even overwhelmingly strong ones, because they know the jury will
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: sit there asking, where's the DNA?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So forensic science, which was supposed to be the ultimate truth-teller,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: inadvertently created a shield for Larry?
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: It did.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: But you might be wondering, why not just run that
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: 1989 autopsy DNA through modern databases like CODIS to find
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the other guy who was at the party?
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Well, the National Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, is
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: essentially a digital fingerprint network for biology. But to search it,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: you need a sample.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And understanding why we don't have one requires looking at
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the actual chemistry of early forensic testing.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So back in 1989, the rape kit yielded four cotton swabs.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Two confirmed the presence of semen. The other two went
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: to the FBI for profiling. But they used a method
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: called RFLP or blot testing.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Right. RFLP, restriction fragment length polymorphism, was the first generation
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: of DNA testing. Okay. Mechanically, it required cutting long strands
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: of DNA and separating them by length. The problem is
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: this process required massive amounts of intact cellular material. It
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: essentially devoured the evidence to create a physical profile that
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: looked like a barcode.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: So it destroys the sample.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Yes. Modern testing uses PCR, polymerase chain reaction, which acts
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: like a molecular photocopier. PCR only needs a few microscopic cells,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: multiplying them until there is enough to read, leaving the
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: original sample largely intact.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: But because they used that crude, destructive RFLP method in 1989,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the entire biological sample was permanently consumed. The evidence literally
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: no longer exists in a physical form.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: It's gone.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Decades later, Korshan even found the tiny wooden applicator sticks
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: from the original swabs sitting in a cardboard box. He
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: sent them to an advanced lab, hoping modern PCR tech
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: could find a single stray skin cell clinging to the wood.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Let me guess.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: It yielded absolutely nothing.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: It is an agonizing investigative paradox. The legal system demands
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: a scientific certainty that the science itself destroyed 30 years ago.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the haunting reality of today. The
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Fayetteville Police Department is actually launching a new dedicated cold
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: case unit.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: That's a positive step.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they want to send other items from the ransacked
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: house to private labs, praying that new touch DNA technology
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: might pick up something, anything, on a piece of paper
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: or drawer handle.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: But while science attempts to catch up to the past,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: the human toll continues to compound.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Larry, the man who nodded yes to breaking the window...
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: The man who bragged about his power on Camden Road
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: is still out there. According to Detective Corcion, Larry still
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: walks the streets of the Massey Hill neighborhood.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: That's incredibly hard to swallow.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: This case is Corcion's brick for a deeply personal reason, too.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Rosa McMillan was murdered on the exact same day as
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Corcion's own mother's birthday.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. His mother has since passed, but every single year,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Amidst the memories of his own mother, he is forced
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: to think of Rosa. He said in an interview, if
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: you don't solve it, you take it with you into retirement.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: The trauma of an unsolved murder doesn't just sit in
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: a filing cabinet. It radiates through generations.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Rosa's daughter, Elaine, who was in that car heading to
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: the beach, she actually wrote a poem attempting to process
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the enduring void. She wrote about wishing she could look
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: out and see that frail little frame, wearing her bonnet,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: tending to the weeds in the vegetable garden.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Elaine wrote, they say the pain lessens with time, but
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I'm struggling to get through each day. That pain remains suspended,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: just waiting for an answer.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: But if the evidence of a multi-person break-in is true,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: that means someone else out there knows what happened in
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: that sweltering heat in August 1989. Someone knows who drank
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: from that airplane bottle. Someone knows who swung that fence post.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: When multiple people share the burden of a horrific secret,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: the structural integrity of that silence is incredibly fragile. The
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: truth is often just one conscience-clearing conversation away.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: We spend so much time celebrating forensic advancements. We treat
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: DNA as the ultimate answer key, you know, an infallible
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: machine that dispenses justice. Right. But as you process the
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: haunting reality of Rosa McMillan's case, think about what this
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: means for the future of our legal system. In our
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: absolute obsession with microscopic evidence, have we inadvertently created a
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: system so rigidly dependent on the science of a swab
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: that we are willing to let guilty people walk free,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: right past a towering mountain of human truth?
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: It fundamentally challenges our definition of proof. And it is
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: a question we must confront as technology continues to dictate
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the boundaries of justice.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. Keep questioning everything.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: We'll catch you next time.