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The Killing of Botham Jean · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:17
  Welcome to ten Minute Murder, Brief and Bingeible True Crime. My name is
• 0:22
  Joe, I'm the host, and thank you for joining today. I was
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  recently doing some reflecting thinking about this past year and then back to what we've
• 0:30
  all been through over the last few years, and it got me thinking that
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  our current time is so weird. It's so strange right now, Like nothing
• 0:38
  could pop up in the news that would surprise me, including an alien invasion
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  wouldn't surprise me at all. But if you're near the same age as me
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  and we've lived through the childhood or childhoods, we're in the eighties and the
• 0:49
  nineties, it was a confusing and complicated time in life back then. Like
• 0:54
  back in the nineties when the Looning Tunes characters were in and on nearly everything.
• 0:59
  You couldn't walk in to a radio shack without seeing three people wearing a
• 1:02
  taz or Bugs Bunny t shirt. It was weird, and Pizza Hut was
• 1:06
  trying to give away free pizzas if you just read some books. So I
• 1:10
  put the time that we're living in today into perspective and being serious for a
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  moment about this. Since the nineteen eighties, there's been a sharp decline in
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  serial killing. Everything else has gone kind of bonkers, but police investigation techniques
• 1:23
  have improved. There's been advancement in DNA collection and tracking technology and that's helped
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  to catch killers before they have a chance to become serial So if you're looking
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  for a bright side as to how crazy things seem to be right now,
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  I think that that is a shining example. And thank you for coming to
• 1:42
  my ted talk. Hey, if this is your first time listening to ten
• 1:45
  Minute Murder, please subscribe now so that you can catch up on all the
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  back episodes and never miss any new ones. Connect with me on social media
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  see the visuals that we're talking about here on the podcast, and if you
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  like the episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple or any place
• 2:00
  that's possible. Your positive feedback is appreciated. Go to ten minute Murder dot
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  com for all things related to ten Minute Murder. Now to today's story.
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  Any fan of true crime knows that one moment can change a person's life or
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  even end it. The last minutes of Botham John's life were incredibly mundane,
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  eating a bowl of ice cream in the living room of his apartment just before
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  ten pm on the sixth of September twenty eighteen. He had no way of
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  knowing that he would not live to see the next morning or have any opportunity
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  to save his own life. The sequence of events that happened was both unexpected
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  and catastrophic. Somebody walked through the door of Botham's apartment, which he had
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  left a jar. The intruders saw both them sitting on the couch and immediately
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  shot him twice in the chest with a handgun. After shooting him, the
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  intruder realized that she had made a terrible mistake. Her name was Amber Geiger,
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  and she was a police officer who lived in the same apartment complex as
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  the man she had just killed. In fact, Amber's apartment was in the
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  exact same position as Botham's, but located on the fourth floor instead of the
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  third floor. At thirty years old, Amber had been a member of the
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  Dallas Police Force for less than five years. This is what Amber insisted happened
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  that night. She had left work at the end of a shift that had
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  lasted almost fourteen hours, and had removed her body camera but not her handgun.
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  She called her partner on the way home, parked her car in the
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  apartment complex as parking garage and walked back to what she thought was her apartment.
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  Somehow, she had supposedly ended up on the wrong floor and walked into
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  Botham's apartment instead of her own. Thinking the man sitting in the living room
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  was an intruder, acted instinctively and shot him out of fear. Amber called
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  nine to one one just before ten pm, and Botham was rushed to the
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  hospital, but the wounds to his chest were extensive and he was unable to
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  be saved. With the victim dead and the perpetrator a police officer, investigators
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  had to unpack Amber's story. Was it really believable that she had mistakenly entered
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  the wrong apartment, and if she had, was it a good enough defense
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  to prevent her from being charged with the murder of an unarmed man. Amber
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  was placed on administrative leave immediately after Botham's death, but the Dallas Police Department
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  made the decision to fire her less than a month later. Initially, she
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  was charged with manslaughter for the killing, but this was not good enough for
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  Botham's family or many members of the public. The story made national headlines.
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  An unarmed black man relaxing in his own apartment being shot to death by an
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  off duty white cop. The racial elements were undeniable, result in protests across
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  the country. Under scrutiny, Amber's version of events from that night did not
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  seem to match up with reality. Botham's family hired an attorney who officially disputed
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  Amber's description of what happened that night. The attorney stated that multiple witnesses had
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  come forward independently telling lawyers that on the night Botham died, they heard someone
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  knocking on the door to his apartment. After the knocking, one of the
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  witnesses heard a woman's voice, who they assumed was Amber, repeatedly telling Botham
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  to let her in. As well as questioning the truth of Amber's story,
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  Botham's family attorney criticized the Dallas Police Department for making a police affidavit public that
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  had the potential to damage the victim's reputation. The affidavit in question stated that
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  police had seized a sizable amount of marijuana from the apartment after his death,
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  which had absolutely nothing to do with a sequence of events that led to his
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  murder. Amber's trial began on the twenty third of September twenty nine, the
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  day before John Cruzoe, a district attorney for Dallas County, violated a gag
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  order to give an interview about Botham's murder. The defense petitioned for a mistrial
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  because of the violation, but after questioning of the jury revealed that they had
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  reportedly not viewed the interview, the motion was denied and the trial began.
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  The trial focused on one key aspect, the difference between the initial charge of
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  manslaughter and the accusation of murder. Convicting Amber of manslaughter only required proving that
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  she had been reckless enough to cause Botham's death, but charging her with murder
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  meant that the prosecution had to prove that she had the criminal intention of killing
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  Botham deliberately. The prosecution had two main pieces of evidence asserting that Amber had
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  killed Botham deliberately. The first, and perhaps the most significant, was the
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  accusation that Amber had not accidentally arrived on the wrong floor of the apartment building
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  that night. Instead, the prosecution alleged that Amber had gone to a different
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  floor of the apartment because of the phone conversation she had with her partner on
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  the drive home, where they had been attempting to arrange a meeting They argued
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  that it was implausible that Amber had not noticed that she had been on the
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  wrong floor, and she certainly hadn't entered Botham's apartment thinking it was her own.
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  Botham's apartment had a bright red doormat outside. Was it possible that Amber
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  truly had not noticed any of these differences between his apartment door and hers.
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  The second argument brought forth by the prosecution was directly related to Amber's role as
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  a police officer. Police protocol stated that as an officer, she should not
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  enter a residence where a burglar is potentially inside. Instead, they should retreat
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  and call for backup. If Amber had exited the apartment instead of shooting Botham,
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  backup would have arrived quickly. The police station was two blocks away from
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  the apartment complex. Another police officer, Michael Lee, took the stand.
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  Michael stated that in Amber's position, he would have taken cover and called for
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  backup using his police radio. He stated that both he and Amber were trained
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  to wait for backup to arrive before entering premises where there is an intruder.
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  Michael also insisted that had he been in Amber's shoes, he would have immediately
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  looked to the suspect's hands to see if he was armed before shooting. If
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  Amber would have done this, Botham would have lived. He was holding an
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  ice cream bowl and did not have a gun. Meanwhile, the defense argued
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  that Amber had genuinely believed that she was in her own apartment because she thought
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  that Botham was an intruder in her home. She had believed that she was
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  legally able to use deadly force and self defense, regardless of the fact that
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  Botham had not been aggressive to her in any way. It took only six
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  hours for the jury to reach their conclusion. Amber Geiger was found guilty of
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  murdering Botham John on the first of October twenty nineteen. Previously, the last
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  Dallas police officer to be charged with murder had been victim in nineteen seventy three,
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  and now the timer was reset to zero. The following day, Amber's
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  sentence hearing took place. She was sentenced to serve ten years in prison.
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  The sentencing hearing was highly emotional and brought Amber's character even further into question,
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  with racist and offensive social media posts she had made in the past being broadcast
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  to the courtroom. Incredibly, both Botham's father, Bertram and his younger brother,
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  Brandt publicly forgave Amber for her actions. Brandt even gave Amber a hug
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  during her sentencing, while Bertram admitted that although he forgave Amber, he wished
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  her sentence had been firmer. In October twenty nineteen, Joshua Brown, a
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  key witness in the case, was murdered. He had been Botham's neighbor and
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  had moved to another apartment complex after the killing took place. He was shot
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  and killed in the parking lot of his new apartment complex, and investigation later
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  revealed that these murderers, three men, had been engaging in a drug deal
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  with Joshua at the time of the shooting. Later that year, the three
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  men were indicted for capital murder. In August of twenty twenty, Amber's attorney
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  appealed her conviction, stating that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that she
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  should be charged with murder instead of manslaughter. The appeal requested that Amber either
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  be acquitted of her charges or that her charges should be reduced to criminally negligent
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  homicide. The appeal was unanimously denied. In two twenty one, the Fifth
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  Court of Appeals of Texas upheld that not only had the jury's verdict been reasonable,
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  but that Amber's testimony in court had a line with the charges she'd been
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  convicted of. The fact remained amber supposedly entering the wrong apartment did not change
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  what happened inside, and it didn't provide any defense for shooting and killing both
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  of them in his own home. Currently, Amber is incarcerated in the Mountain
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  View Correctional Center and is eligible for release in September of twenty twenty four.
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  Everybody involved in the case has their own opinion about the events that led Amber
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  of Botham's door that night, but Amber is the only one who knows the truth.