Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Former Cop Wanted for Murder Returned to US After Years on the Run

Transcript

Former Cop Wanted for Murder Returned to US After Years on the Run · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about a magic trick,
• 0:03
  there's this like sense of wonder right.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, it's supposed to be.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Fun, right, You watch a magician on stage, they throw
• 0:10
  a smoke bomb or drop a velvet curtain, and suddenly
• 0:14
  they've just vanished into thin air.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a puzzle, exactly.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: It's entertainment. It's this puzzle you want to solve. But
• 0:21
  you're you know, you're smiling while.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: You do it, right because you know it's a trick exactly.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: But what happens when that magic trick isn't happening on.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: A stage, Well, that changes the context entirely, It really does.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: What happens when the person vanishing isn't a performer but
• 0:36
  a highly trained police officer who is accused of just
• 0:41
  the most horrific crimes imaginable?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the stakes are instantly a million times higher.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And what if that vanishing act lasts not for like
• 0:49
  a few seconds behind a curtain, but for twenty one years.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: A standard amount of time.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about a manhunt spanning multiple continents,
• 0:57
  different presidential administrations, and some of the most a complex
• 1:01
  geopolitical landscapes on Earth.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: It's massive.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It is. It's a very different, incredibly dark kind of magic.
• 1:07
  And that is exactly what we are unpacking today for you.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: And it's a heavy one.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It is. We are looking at the staggering twenty one
• 1:15
  year international manhunt for Dan Hyers Junior.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: A man who swor an oath to uphold.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: The law right but ended up on the United States
• 1:25
  Marshal's fifteen most Wanted list. Okay, let's unpack this because
• 1:29
  the sheer scale of what we are dealing with in
• 1:32
  these sources is just monumental, it really is.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, it requires us to synthesize a massive amount
• 1:37
  of moving parts.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So where do we even start.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Well, what's fascinating here is the sheer breath of the
• 1:41
  source material. We're looking at a deep cross section of
• 1:45
  local law enforcement records from South Carolina, national and international
• 1:49
  news reports spanning two decades.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty years of coverage exactly.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Plus we have the highly detailed official statements released in
• 1:56
  July twenty twenty six regarding his extradition from China to
• 2:00
  the United States.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Which is a whole saga in itself.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, definitely, we have to look at the mechanics of
• 2:05
  international diplomacy, the psychological profile of a fugitive hiding and
• 2:09
  plain sight, and you know, the agonizing logistical reality of
• 2:14
  trying to keep a cold trail alive when the rest
• 2:17
  of the world just keeps spinning.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And to really understand how a human being pulls off
• 2:23
  a two decade vanishing act, we have to establish exactly
• 2:27
  who this person was before the clock started ticking.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Because context is everything here, right.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Because a normal person running from the law, they.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Make mistakes, they almost always do.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: They panic, they use a credit card, they call their
• 2:40
  mom or I don't know, they get pulled over for
• 2:42
  a broken tailite.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Right, the adrenaline makes them sloppy, exactly.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: But Dan Hikers didn't make those mistakes.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: No, he didn't, and that is entirely due to his
• 2:51
  professional background.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Let's get into that. What did the record show.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: So, according to the records, Daniel William Heisher's junior spent
• 2:57
  over a decade working in law enforcement in the law
• 3:00
  low country of South Carolina.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he's not a rookie, not at all.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: His most prominent tenure was with the Charleston Police Department,
• 3:07
  but he had served with earlier departments too. We're talking
• 3:10
  about a man with at least eleven years of deep
• 3:15
  institutional experience in police tactics.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Wow, eleven years.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and on top of that, he was extensively trained
• 3:22
  in martial arts and maintained a really high level of
• 3:24
  physical conditioning.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: So he's physically capable and mentally trained for high stress situations.
• 3:30
  Let's break down what those eleven years actually mean for
• 3:33
  a fugitive. That's a long time to learn exactly how
• 3:36
  the machine works from the inside out.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's the ultimate advantage. How so, Well, when you
• 3:40
  spend over a decade enforcing the law, you learn the
• 3:43
  blind spots of the law. You understand the communication protocols
• 3:47
  between different agencies.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Right, the bureaucracy of it all exactly.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: And keep in mind, in the early two thousands, data
• 3:53
  sharing wasn't what it is today.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Oh right. We didn't have smartphones pinging everything instantly exactly.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: A local police department's database didn't instantaneously ping a federal
• 4:03
  dashboard the second a warrant was typed up.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It took time.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: It took precious time. Hiders would have known the exact
• 4:09
  delay times in getting warrants signed by a judge and
• 4:12
  entered into the National Crime Information Center via NCIC.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: SO he basically had a stop watch in his head.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: He absolutely did. He knew how below alerts, you know,
• 4:21
  beyond the lookout alerts were distributed to patrol cars, how
• 4:25
  long it took for those alerts to cross state lines,
• 4:27
  and how tips were processed and vetted.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: He essentially possessed the playbook that the people hunting him
• 4:33
  were going to use.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: That's the perfect way to put it.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And that institutional knowledge, it's completely intertwined with his personal life,
• 4:40
  which is really where the tragedy here truly takes shape.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: It is deeply tragic.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: The records introduced us to Ludamila Hires, who went by Mila.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Her story is just devastating. Mila was a native
• 4:52
  of Brazil, Okay. The sources indicate she met Dan Hires
• 4:55
  when she was just a teenager during a family trip
• 4:58
  to the United States, and.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: They eventually married in Hampton County around nineteen ninety seven
• 5:04
  or nineteen ninety eight, according to the timeline that's correct.
• 5:06
  The age gap here is something that stands out immediately
• 5:09
  in the records. It's very prominent. At the time of
• 5:11
  their marriage, Mila was only sixteen or seventeen years old.
• 5:15
  Hires was in his early twenties. Her father understandably had
• 5:20
  serious reservations about this age difference. I mean, a man
• 5:24
  in his twenties, established in a career marrying teenager from
• 5:27
  another country. There is an inherent power dynamic there that
• 5:31
  just cannot be ignored.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: No, it can't. You have a seasoned police officer and
• 5:35
  a teenage girl far from her home country.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: It's a massive imbalance, it is.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: But despite her father's reservations, they did marry, and they
• 5:43
  eventually settled in Goose Creek, South Carolina, after he joined
• 5:47
  the Charleston Police Department.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And what was Mela like based on the sources.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: By all external accounts provided in the sources, she was
• 5:54
  a beloved figure. Friends and family described her as warm, beautiful,
• 5:59
  and deeply devo It.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Sounds like she really tried to make a life there.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: She did. Her mother, Sueli Kohde Rajo later recalled to
• 6:06
  investigators that the marriage appeared happy to the outside world, but.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: The outside world doesn't always see the full picture.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: No, they don't. In fact, her mother specifically noted a
• 6:15
  really interesting detail to investigators. She mentioned that shortly before
• 6:19
  Mela's death, the couple took a trip to Myrtle Beach.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, little getaway.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Mila had spoken to her mother about her
• 6:26
  husband showing quote renewed affection toward her during that trip.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Wait, hang on, if we look at the timeline here,
• 6:33
  wasn't he already facing massive life altering criminal charges by
• 6:37
  the time of that Myrtle Beach trip?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he was.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: See that doesn't sound like genuine spontaneous affection to me.
• 6:44
  That sounds like a guy who knows the walls are
• 6:46
  closing in trying to keep his wife and her family
• 6:48
  complacent while he figures out an exit strategy.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: It's a highly calculated behavior, and the context strongly supports
• 6:55
  your skepticism there.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Because things were getting really bad for.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Him, incredibly bad in two thousand and four, when the
• 7:00
  facade he had built completely cracks. He is accused of
• 7:03
  sexually abusing.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: A minor, which is just horrible and the.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Specific details of this accusation are deeply disturbing. Investigators alleged
• 7:11
  that Hires had deliberately gained the trust of single mother
• 7:13
  through a connection at a karate.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Class, leveraging that martial arts.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Background, exactly leveraging his skills and his authority as an instructor,
• 7:22
  and after gaining the mother's trust, he allegedly molested her
• 7:26
  young daughter over a period of months.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: That is sickening. So the timeline really accelerates here. North
• 7:33
  Charleston police arrest him on November twenty fourth, two thousand
• 7:36
  and four, on a charge of committing or attempting a
• 7:39
  lewd act upon a child under sixteen. He gets released
• 7:42
  on bond, but then the situation becomes infinitely more severe.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: It escalates significantly because.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: In early March two thousand and five, those charges in
• 7:51
  Dorchester County are upgraded to first degree criminal sexual conduct
• 7:55
  with a miner.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: And this is the psychological pressure cooker.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, explain it, because this isn't just a normal guy
• 8:00
  getting charged.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Right, This wasn't an average citizen facing charges. This was
• 8:04
  a law enforcement officer. A cop accused of these specific
• 8:07
  crimes faces a unique, almost unfathomable terror regarding.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: The justice system because they know exactly how the system works.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly, they know what the conviction rates are for these
• 8:17
  types of offenses, and most importantly, they know precisely what
• 8:21
  happens to former law enforcement officers in the general prison population.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Especially one convicted of crimes against children.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: It is widely considered a death sentence or at best,
• 8:31
  a life of unimaginable torment and protective custody.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And the source has actually mentioned something specific he said
• 8:37
  about this, didn't they They do?
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: The sources explicitly mention an alleged vow made by Hiders.
• 8:43
  He swore that he would never go to prison.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Wow, never, never. I mean for a community like Goose Creek.
• 8:50
  If you think about it, the cognitive dissonance must have
• 8:53
  been shattering, absolutely shattering. You're taught from childhood that the
• 8:56
  person in the uniform is who you call when you're
• 8:59
  in danger, and when that exact person becomes the monster,
• 9:03
  it just breaks the foundational trust a community has in
• 9:05
  its institutions.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: It leaves everyone feeling vulnerable.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: It really does. And for Hires, all of that pressure,
• 9:12
  all of that institutional knowledge, and all of that impending
• 9:15
  legal doom, it all converges on one single catastrophic.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Date, March fifteenth, two thousand and.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Five, the day it all fell apart.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: This is the day Hyders is scheduled to surrender to
• 9:25
  authorities to face those enhanced first degree criminal sexual conduct charges.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So he knew this was coming.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: He knew this debt was coming. He knew this was
• 9:34
  the day the cuffs were likely going to stay on
• 9:36
  and his life as a freeman would end.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And he doesn't show up to court.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: No, he doesn't show up.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So what happens?
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Instead? The narrative shifts back to the couple's home on
• 9:45
  Seventh Street. On that same day, neighbors discovered twenty four
• 9:49
  year old Ludimla Hire's dead in her bedroom.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: The details determined by the Goose Creek Police are brutal.
• 9:57
  She was shot once in the back of the head
• 9:59
  at close to range while she was sleeping.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: The cowardice of that act is just staggering. It is,
• 10:04
  But it's the timeline that really makes your blood run
• 10:07
  cold when you look at it.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Right. The timeline is very specific. The timeframe estimated by
• 10:12
  the police places the time of death between roughly seven
• 10:16
  am and noon. Hiders was the last person known to
• 10:19
  have seen her alive, and then neighbors reported seeing him
• 10:23
  leave the house in the early afternoon around one fifty pm.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Wait wait, yeah, If the murder happened between seven am
• 10:29
  and noon and he is seen casually leaving the house
• 10:33
  at one fifty pm, he potentially stayed in that house
• 10:36
  with the body of his young wife for hours.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: It is highly likely that he did.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Why wouldn't he run immediately? Yeah, I mean the instinct
• 10:44
  for almost anyone who just committed a murder is flight,
• 10:47
  get as far away as fast as possible before someone
• 10:50
  hears the shot or comes looking.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: And that speaks entirely to his law enforcement training and
• 10:55
  his sheer lack of panic.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: It wasn't panicking at all.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Not visibly. He didn't flee in the dead of night.
• 11:01
  He waited, He likely packed methodically, He planned his route
• 11:05
  best chilling. He knew exactly how long it would take
• 11:08
  for a missed court appearance to generate a physical welfare
• 11:11
  check at his residence, right because he used to do
• 11:13
  those checks exactly. And then he executes one of the
• 11:16
  most brazen acts of this entire early timeline. What does
• 11:20
  he do before he completely vanishes from the area. He's
• 11:22
  driving a red two thousand and five Chevrolet of Ao
• 11:25
  with South Carolina license plates, and surveillance footage catches him
• 11:29
  at a local convenience store.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Atm get in cash.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: He's withdrawing cash, and as he does this, he looks
• 11:36
  directly up at the surveillance camera and he waves to
• 11:39
  the clerk.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: He waved.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: He waved at the camera.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: It's like a movie villain's theatrical exit. But this isn't
• 11:45
  a script. It's a real person who just allegedly executed
• 11:50
  his wife.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: It shows a terrifying level of composure.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: If you or I were running from a murder scene,
• 11:56
  we would be sweating, shaking, hiding our faces from every
• 12:00
  passing car. We would be drowning in adrenaline.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, though, What does that physical
• 12:06
  action tell us about his state of mind at that
• 12:09
  exact moment.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: It tells me he thought he was smarter than everyone else.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: The wave is a conscious display of control. Most fugitives
• 12:15
  get caught in the first forty eight hours because cognitive
• 12:18
  overload causes them to make stupid mistakes.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Right they crash the car or use their own debit card.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Hikers is devoid of that overload. He knows the
• 12:27
  camera is there because a cop knows where the convenience
• 12:29
  store blind spots are.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: He probably knew exactly what kind of camera system that
• 12:33
  store had.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: He acknowledges it to send a message, I know you're
• 12:36
  going to look for me, and I'm already steps ahead.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Wow. In the moment he vanishes from that camera's view,
• 12:42
  the local murder warrants drop quickly followed by a federal
• 12:45
  warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, and that is.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: What kicks off a thirteen year period of wild goose chases.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So the marshals are pouring resources into a massive manhunt,
• 12:56
  and they get an immediate major break, or at least
• 12:59
  what looks like a major.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: B right that red two thousand and five Chevy of
• 13:03
  Veo he was seen driving away from his home. It
• 13:06
  was eventually located abandoned in a hospital parking lot in Laredo, Texas.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Laredo is situated right on the border, just miles from Mexico.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Finding the vehicle there immediately fueled the primary working theory
• 13:19
  among law enforcement. They thought Hires had driven straight down
• 13:22
  the highway system to Texas, dumped the car, and crossed
• 13:25
  the border into Mexico to disappear into the expatriot underground.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really interesting. We have to
• 13:31
  look at that car through the lens of a seasoned cop.
• 13:35
  He knows that the absolute first thing Dispatch is going
• 13:38
  to do is run a bilow on a red two
• 13:41
  thousand and five Chevy Aveo with South Carolina plates. Every
• 13:45
  highway patrolmanm between Charleston and the state line is looking
• 13:49
  for it.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: It's a giant red target.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: So did he actually drive that car to Mexico?
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: It is highly probable that the car was a deliberate,
• 13:57
  calculated decoy.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, it makes perfect.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: He drives it to the most obvious geographic escape point
• 14:03
  on the map, and he leaves it in a hospital parking.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Lot, which is genius.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Actually, it's a brilliant choice because hospitals have chaotic two
• 14:12
  hundred and forty seven turnover of vehicles. A car can
• 14:15
  sit there for days or weeks before hospital security and
• 14:18
  notices it's abandoned.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Giving him a massive headstart.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Right while the authorities are laser focused on the southern
• 14:23
  border and coordinating with Mexican federales, hires pivots in a
• 14:27
  completely different direction.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: It's the textbook definition of a false trail. And it works,
• 14:32
  doesn't it.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: It worked incredibly well. While law enforcement resources are diverted south,
• 14:37
  other tips start flooding in from all over the.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Continent because everyone is looking for him.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Now, people swear they saw him on the East coast
• 14:44
  others report him fleeing north into Canada. The noise completely
• 14:48
  drowns out the signal.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And this case generated a massive amount of noise because
• 14:52
  of the media explosion that followed.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Oh the media coverage was intense.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: On March twenty six, two thousand and five, barely a
• 14:59
  week week and a half after Miela's death, his face
• 15:03
  is broadcast to millions on America's Most Wanted.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: That's a huge platform.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: And later on he was featured on The Hunt with
• 15:09
  John Walsh, and John Walsh, who is known for his
• 15:12
  unfiltered advocacy, did not mince words. He never does. The
• 15:16
  sources note that Walsh bluntly labeled Hires a coward, a
• 15:19
  child molesser, and a brutal murderer on national television.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Which really ramps up the public pressure.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: It does, and by June two thousand and five, the
• 15:27
  US Marshall Service elevates Dan Hyer's junior to their fifteen
• 15:30
  most Wanted.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: List, that is the highest priority list they have.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: The wanted poster they issue is incredibly stark. It specifically
• 15:37
  highlights his eleven years of police training, his martial arts expertise,
• 15:41
  and labels him armed and highly dangerous.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: They were telling the public, do not engage this man
• 15:45
  under any circumstances.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Yet, despite the massive federal resources, the television shows, and
• 15:52
  the wanted posters, the physical trail went completely cold, completely cold.
• 15:57
  And while the trail went cold, the human devastation back
• 16:00
  in the low country just compounded year after year.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: The local grief in Berkeley and Dorchester Counties was profound.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I can only imagine.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: For years the community held candlelight vigils to mark the
• 16:12
  anniversaries of Mela's murder.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: The sources describe Mela's mother, Suweli, traveling all the way
• 16:18
  from Brazil to South Carolina to attend these memorials.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: That had to be an agonizing trip.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You have this mother speaking through translators, trying to express
• 16:27
  her absolute disbelief that such brutal violence could have ended
• 16:31
  a marriage that she thought was happy. The pain of
• 16:33
  waiting for answers, of staring at an empty chair year
• 16:37
  after year, it is just agonizing.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: It was a pain and frustration shared by the law
• 16:41
  enforcement community, too, right, because he was one of their own.
• 16:44
  Dorchester County Sheriff Sam Richardson articulated this clearly, declaring that
• 16:48
  quote no badge or title places anyone above the law.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: They dig it personally.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Iyres had deeply tarnished the badge they wore, making his
• 16:56
  capture a deeply personal mission for these agencies.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: But the reason they couldn't find him in Mexico or
• 17:02
  Canada or the East Coast is because he wasn't in
• 17:05
  the hemisphere.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: At all, not even close.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: He had executed a pivot so audacious that he completely
• 17:11
  slipped the net. Sometime after disappearing, Dan Hires made his
• 17:15
  way across.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: The planet at the other side of the world.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: The records place him in the massive metropolis of Shanghai,
• 17:20
  China by the mid twenty tens.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Right in the middle of one of the biggest cities
• 17:25
  on Earth, and.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: He sheds the disgraced cop persona and fabricates an entirely
• 17:30
  new identity, David Williams.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: And this is where his strategy deviates from almost every
• 17:35
  other fugitive profile we see. How So, usually when someone
• 17:39
  goes on the run, they shrink their world. They work
• 17:41
  under the table and cash jobs. They keep their head down,
• 17:44
  they avoid eye contact.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: They try to be invisible.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Hires did the exact opposite. He built a highly visible
• 17:50
  new life as a foreign English teacher at a prominent
• 17:53
  university or school in Shanghai.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Wait, he was standing at the front of a classroom.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: He was lecturing two one hundreds of students.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: It's an inverted witness protection program, hide in the spotlight.
• 18:04
  But how does a wanted fugitive just walk into a
• 18:06
  prominent university in Shanghai and get a job? Don't they
• 18:10
  do background checks well?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: To understand how he pulled this off, we have to
• 18:14
  look at the specific cultural and systemic dynamics in China
• 18:17
  during the mid twenty tens.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Okay set the scene for us.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: During this era, there was an explosive, insatiable demand for
• 18:24
  foreign English teachers. The middle class was booming and English
• 18:28
  proficiency was seen as a vital key to upward mobility.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: So they needed teachers desperately.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Because the demand was so high. The supply side, the
• 18:36
  vetting processes by schools and local visa authorities was often
• 18:41
  incredibly lax, so.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: They weren't exactly running his fingerprints through interpal exactly.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: There was a phenomenon often referred to by expats at
• 18:49
  the time where institutions essentially wanted a Western face to
• 18:52
  show prestige.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've heard of that, like just having someone from
• 18:56
  the US or UK made the school.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Look better exactly forged Tifo Feld, teaching English as a
• 19:02
  foreign language. Certificates were easily bought online. Fake degrees were.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Common, so the paperwork was meaningless anyway.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Basically, foreigners often enjoyed a presumption of trust simply by
• 19:13
  virtue of being Western expats in educational roles. Hires weaponized
• 19:18
  that societal trust.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: He used his fabricated identity and no one dug any
• 19:23
  deeper because he looked the part and played the role perfectly.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: And the descriptions from his former students are just wild.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: What did they say?
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: They described David Williams as tall, handsome and highly popular,
• 19:35
  particularly among the female students.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Which is a chilling detail when you consider the charges
• 19:39
  he was running from. It is horrifying. He was accused
• 19:42
  of using his position as a karate instructor to gain
• 19:45
  the trust of a single mother to access her child
• 19:47
  right and in China he once again positioned himself in
• 19:50
  a role of authority and trust a respected foreign educator.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: He recognized that the camouflage of normalcy of being a popular,
• 19:59
  integrated member of society is far more effective than trying
• 20:02
  to live off the grid in the shadows.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: And it gets even crazier, doesn't it? Oh, it does
• 20:06
  because the Sources site accounts claiming that, on top of teaching,
• 20:10
  he actually worked as a bodyguard for an unnamed celebrity
• 20:13
  in China. Yes, he is literally stepping in front of
• 20:17
  cameras and crowds, putting his body between a famous person
• 20:20
  and the public, all while being on the US Marshall's
• 20:23
  fifteen Most Wanted List.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It requires a level of compartmentalization that borders on absolute sociopathy.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, how does he sleep at night?
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: But for years it worked flawlessly. No one in Shanghai
• 20:36
  was looking at the popular English teacher and thinking that's
• 20:39
  a brutal murderer from South Carolina.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: But the higher you build a fortress of lies, the
• 20:44
  farther you fall when someone finally notices a crack.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: And eventually someone always notices.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: And his downfall didn't come from a high tech facial
• 20:51
  recognition sweep or a wire tap, no, nothing like that.
• 20:55
  It came from a single, unbelievable coincidence.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: It really is wild. In September twenty eighteen, a former
• 21:01
  student of his, identified in the Sources only as missus
• 21:04
  Wang is living in California. Okay, somehow she is looking
• 21:08
  at a US Marshal's fifteen most Wanted poster.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Which why is she even looking at that? It's just
• 21:13
  random chance.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Completely random, and staring back at her from that poster
• 21:19
  is her popular handsome English teacher from Shanghai.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Imagine the sheer shock of that moment.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: It would be mind blowing.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: She connects the dots across an ocean and a fabricated identity.
• 21:31
  She contacts the authorities, but crucially, she also contacts the
• 21:35
  Chinese media, which was a massive catalyst right because this
• 21:39
  sparks massive outrage on Chinese social media platforms. The public
• 21:44
  realizes that a highly wanted American fugitive accused of child
• 21:47
  sex abuse and murder have been teaching their students and
• 21:50
  walking their streets for years.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: The butterfly effect of that one moment is just incredible.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: One woman browsing a wanted poster in California brings down
• 21:58
  a man who outsmarted federal Task force is for thirteen years.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: It really highlights the power of the public in these cases.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And within days of the social media explosion, Hires is
• 22:07
  detained by Chinese authorities. The ghost is finally in custody.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: The US Marshall Service confirmed at the time that they
• 22:14
  were fully engaged with our international partners. The capture was
• 22:18
  celebrated as a massive victory.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: But hold on, they caught him in September twenty eighteen. Yes,
• 22:25
  but the sources say he wasn't returned to United States
• 22:27
  soil until July twenty twenty six.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Why did it take nearly eight years to put him
• 22:33
  on a plane? They knew who he was. We knew
• 22:36
  who he was. Does justice just hit the pause button
• 22:39
  while politicians argue over paperwork for almost a decade.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it becomes
• 22:45
  a master class in the deeply frustrating mechanics of international law.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Explain that to me.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: The simple answer to why it took eight years is this,
• 22:53
  the United States and China do not have a comprehensive
• 22:56
  bilateral extradition treaty.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Now, trying to understand extradation can be confusing. It's not
• 23:01
  like returning a stolen car where you just prove ownership
• 23:04
  and drive it back across the border.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Not at all. An extradition twenty is essentially a pre
• 23:08
  arranged legal contract between two sovereign nations. It outlines exactly
• 23:12
  which crimes qualify for extradition, what evidence is required, and
• 23:16
  the specific legal processes for handing a fugitive over.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: So it makes it a routine process exactly.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: It removes the politics from the equation and makes it
• 23:25
  a purely legal administrative transfer based on reciprocal trust in
• 23:29
  each other's justice systems.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: But if there is no treaty.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: When you do not have that treaty, there are no
• 23:34
  established rules. Every single case becomes a geopolitical poker game.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: So a fugitive like Hires ceases to be just a
• 23:42
  criminal suspect. He becomes a diplomatic bargaining ship precisely.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: To get him back required a massive, labyrinthine interagency.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Effort, just a bureaucratic nightmare.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: The sources highlight that this involved coordination between the Chinese
• 23:56
  Ministry of Public Security on one side, and on the
• 23:58
  US side, this State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, the DSS,
• 24:03
  the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs, and the FBI.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Getting those massive bureaucracies to agree on a lunch order
• 24:11
  would be a nightmare, let alone, negotiating the transfer of
• 24:14
  a high profile prisoner.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: And you have to factor in the broader relationship between
• 24:19
  the US and China during those specific years from twenty
• 24:22
  eighteen to twenty twenty six.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Right, which was not exactly smooth sailing.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: It was a period of intense economic and political friction.
• 24:30
  This process requires the alignment of legal and political priorities
• 24:34
  between two global superpowers whose relationship is often defined by rivalry.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: So China doesn't have to give him back just because
• 24:41
  we asked nicely.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: The Chinese authorities are not obligated to hand him over
• 24:45
  just because the US has a warrant. Furthermore, they have
• 24:48
  their own domestic legal processes. Hires lived in China on
• 24:51
  fraudulent documents, he may have committed tax fraud or other
• 24:55
  crimes on their soil. They have a sovereign right to
• 24:57
  process those crimes.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: First, the sources mentioned a very specific phrase used by
• 25:01
  Chinese state media when the transfer finally happened. They described
• 25:05
  the twenty twenty six handover as part of a quote
• 25:08
  diplomatic exchange.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: That phrase is incredibly loaded in the world of international relations.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: What does it actually mean?
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: A diplomatic exchange strongly implies that the United States had
• 25:19
  to give something to get something like a trade. Yes,
• 25:22
  we don't know the specifics of that exchange based on
• 25:24
  these sources, whether it was the reciprocal return of a
• 25:27
  Chinese fugitive wanted by Beijing, or concessions on trade or diplomatic.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Policy, but it confirms that his return was fundamentally a
• 25:35
  political transaction.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: It took nearly eight years to find the exact right
• 25:39
  moment where the political stars aligned enough to make the
• 25:42
  trade mutually beneficial.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: It is maddening to think about for the victims' families,
• 25:47
  for the police who work the case, justice is just
• 25:50
  sitting in a holding cell in Shanghai for eight years
• 25:53
  while diplomat's trade favors.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: It's agonizing for the families.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: To finally the gears of the machine slowly turn arrive
• 26:00
  at the final act. On July twenty second, twenty twenty six,
• 26:04
  the long exile ends.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Deputy US Marshals arrived in Shanghai. They took physical custody
• 26:09
  of Dan Hires Junior, and they escorted him onto a
• 26:11
  plane back to the United States.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: The photographs released by the Marshal Service of this moment
• 26:16
  are striking. You see this man, his face blurred out
• 26:19
  for the press release standing on a jetway surrounded by
• 26:22
  law enforcement personnel.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: That's a powerful image.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: After twenty one years, he is finally in cuffs on
• 26:28
  an American plane. He was processed in federal custody in
• 26:31
  Seattle before beginning the long transfer back to South Carolina.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: The official statements released around this handover reflect a deep
• 26:38
  sigh of relief.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: What did they say?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Us Marshal Service Director gidiasa's s Seralta released a formal
• 26:44
  statement emphasizing the core issue, the betrayal of trust. He stated,
• 26:50
  Dan Hires was in a position of public trust, but
• 26:53
  he betrayed that trust in the worst possible way.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Which really goes back to him being a police officer exactly.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Nicholas Kullura, the director of the Diplomatic Security Service, echoed
• 27:03
  that sentiment, noting that special agents work daily to track
• 27:06
  fugitives who believe distance and time will protect them locally.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: The reaction in South Carolina was profound. The Goose Creek
• 27:14
  Police expressed their deep appreciation and the prosecution is now
• 27:18
  in the hands of Ninth Circuit Solicitors Scarlett.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Wilson, and she has a massive job ahead of her.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: She has made it clear that she is not taking
• 27:25
  anything off the table for the murder case, including seeking
• 27:27
  life without parole or even the death penalty.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: However, we have to transition from the triumph of the
• 27:33
  capture to the sobering reality of the courtroom.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Because catching him isn't the same as convicting him.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Bringing him back opens a Pandora's box of entirely new
• 27:43
  legal and emotional challenges. Hikers is back on us soil,
• 27:47
  but he is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a
• 27:50
  court of law, and prosecuting a case that is twenty
• 27:53
  one years old presents immense, almost insurmountable legal hurdles.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Trying a twenty one year old case is like trying
• 27:59
  to rebuild a house from a pile of ashes. You know,
• 28:02
  you know what used to be there, but putting it
• 28:04
  back together for a jury is monumentally difficult.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: It is a true stress test of the legal system.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: How does the defense even approach this?
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: The defense council is going to weaponize time. Think about
• 28:15
  the practical challenges. The neighbors who saw him leaving at
• 28:18
  one fifty pm in the Redeveo Are they still alive?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Good question?
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Are they still in Goose Creek? Can they confidently testify
• 28:25
  to what they saw two decades ago, without a skilled
• 28:28
  defense attorney tearing their memory to shreds.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Right by pointing out how much media coverage they've consumed
• 28:34
  since two thousand and five. Their memories are probably completely
• 28:38
  contaminated by watching John Walsh talk about the case exactly.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: And then you have the physical.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Evidence, oh Man, The forensics.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Evidence collected in two thousand and five must now be
• 28:47
  re examined under the rigorous modernized forensic standards of.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Twenty twenty six, which are completely different.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Completely has the chain of custody been perfectly maintained for
• 28:57
  twenty one years? Was a blood sample stored in a
• 29:00
  facility that had a temperature control failure in twenty.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Twelve just one tiny mistake.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: The defense will look for any single procedural flaw to
• 29:09
  get evidence thrown out.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: And what about the eight years he spent in a
• 29:12
  Chinese prison.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: That's another massive hurdle. They are highly likely to challenge
• 29:17
  the very nature of his long international detention, attempting to
• 29:21
  use the eight year diplomatic delay in China to argue
• 29:24
  that his right to a speedy trial was violated.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Wow, even though he was the one who.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Ran the system must rigorously protect the rights of the accused,
• 29:31
  which means this trial will be a brutal, drawn out fight.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: And while the lawyers prepare for that fight, we cannot
• 29:37
  lose sight of the human cost here. We use the
• 29:40
  word closure a lot when we talk about the justices
• 29:42
  we do, maybe too much, But what does it actually mean.
• 29:45
  Here Ludimla's family in Brazil, her mother Suali. They waited
• 29:50
  twenty one years, they aged, they grieved, all while the
• 29:54
  man accused of killing Mila was teaching English and living
• 29:57
  freely in Shanghai.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: It's an unbearable way to get carry for two decades.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And we must acknowledge the other victim at the center
• 30:03
  of this.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Narrative, Yes, the young child from the two thousand and
• 30:06
  four abuse allegations.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: That child is now an adult. They have had to
• 30:11
  live their entire formative years. They're transitioned into adulthood with
• 30:15
  the trauma of those alleged crimes and the crushing knowledge
• 30:18
  that the man responsible had escaped justice.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: It really shapes a person's entire view of the world.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: So if Solicitor Scarlett Wilson secures a guilty verdict, even
• 30:28
  if she gets the maximum sentence, does that verdict twenty
• 30:31
  one years later actually heal those deep emotional wounds, or
• 30:35
  does just close a bureaucratic loop for the state. It's
• 30:38
  a heavy reality.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: It is. The return of Dan Hyer's junior closes one
• 30:42
  agonizingly long chapter of pursuit, but it immediately opens another
• 30:47
  deeply complicated chapter of legal reckoning.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: It's not over yet.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: The institutions charged with finding him proved that they never
• 30:53
  fully close the file. The regional task forces, the diplomatic negotiators,
• 30:58
  They maintain the persistence.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: He didn't give up.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: But whether the courtroom process can deliver the justice that
• 31:04
  the victim's demand remains to be seen. It will be
• 31:07
  decided by evidence, by advocacy, and ultimately by a jury.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: So as we look at the totality of this staggering
• 31:14
  journey from a respected police officer in the Low Country,
• 31:17
  to a decoy car in Texas, to a celebrated English
• 31:21
  teacher in Shanghai, and finally a diplomatic pawn brought back
• 31:25
  in cuffs, what does this all mean?
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: The central theme that emerges is that the machinery.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Of justice is slow, very slow.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: It is imperfect, It is heavily constrained by international borders,
• 31:35
  missing treaties, and geopolitical friction.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: But it is also relentless, is unstopped.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: It relies on the dogged persistence of agencies who refuse
• 31:43
  to archive a file, and just as importantly, it relies
• 31:47
  on the sharp eyes of the public. Nissen Wang, exactly
• 31:50
  miss Wang, the student who recognized the wanted poster in California,
• 31:53
  is the lynchpin of this entire resolution. The system eventually worked,
• 31:58
  but it took an extraordinary confluence of events and over
• 32:01
  two decades of time to get there.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: It really is a story that forces you to re
• 32:06
  evaluate how you see the world. And as we wrap up,
• 32:08
  I want to leave you with a final chilling thought,
• 32:12
  to mulover on your own.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: It's a thought that has stuck with me since we
• 32:15
  started reviewing these sources.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Dan Hikers spent years in a massive, crowded city halfway
• 32:21
  across the world. He taught hundreds of students, he guarded
• 32:25
  a celebrity. He shook hands, he smiled, he grated papers,
• 32:28
  and he seamlessly embedded himself into a brand new society
• 32:31
  hiding in plain sight. Everyone who interacted with David Williams
• 32:34
  thought they knew exactly who he was. It begs a
• 32:37
  terrifying question about our own lives. How well do we
• 32:41
  actually know the people we interact with every day.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: It's unsettling to think about if a man actively running
• 32:47
  from his wife's murder and child abuse charges can become
• 32:50
  a popular, trusted, respected figure just by changing his name
• 32:54
  in his zip code.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: What does that say about the masks we all wear?
• 32:58
  And more importantly, what does it say about our own
• 33:00
  deep vulnerability to a confident posture and a friendly smile.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: It is a profound and unsettling question, it really is.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
• 33:10
  dive into the sources. We hope you found this exploration
• 33:12
  as compelling as we did. Stay curious, keep your eyes open,
• 33:16
  and always always keep questioning the world around you. We'll
• 33:19
  see you next time.