Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Lost Security Footage Helps Police Solve College Student's 2020 Disappearance from LA Dispensary

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Lost Security Footage Helps Police Solve College Student's 2020 Disappearance from LA Dispensary · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're stepping away from
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the usual corridors of power or tech labs. We're going
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straight into the heart of South Los Angeles.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, a place where, you know, the really bright dreams
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of a young college student tragically collided with the well
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the dark underbelly of an unlicensed, cash fueled economy.
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Speaker 1: We're focusing on the disappearance and murder of Juan Carlos
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Hernandez back in twenty twenty.
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Speaker 2: In this case, it's just pivotal. It really shows two
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powerful forces clashing. First, you've got these unchecked power dynamics,
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the dangers lurking in California's illicit cannabis market. And second, second,
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the absolutely incredible, almost unbelievable skill of digital forensics that
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was needed to uncover a very deliberate, very calculated cover up.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the scene. Huan was just twenty one.
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He's at El Camedo College studying engineering. He has big plans.
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Speaker 2: Huge plans. He wanted to transfer to USC you know,
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design bridges, skyscraper's a whole thing, a real future ahead
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of him.
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Speaker 1: But like a lot of students, he needed money to
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make that happen. So he took a part time.
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Speaker 2: Job right as a bud tender at a place called
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VIP Collective La on Western Avenue. And here's the key.
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It was an unlicensed shop.
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Speaker 1: So operating outside the legal system.
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Speaker 2: Completely cash only, kind of a gray zone operation that
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popped up after California legalized cannabis in twenty sixteen. That
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need for cash, that ambition, it put him right in
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harm's way, no safety net.
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Speaker 1: So our mission today is really to give you a
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fast track, a shortcut into understanding the timeline here, what
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happened when, and.
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Speaker 2: The motive, which turns out to be pretty thin, pretty toxic,
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rooted in paranoia.
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Speaker 1: And crucially how justice in the end depended entirely on
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bringing back digital evidence that the killers were absolutely convinced
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they had destroyed, wiped clean.
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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, let's really unpack that because the core nugget,
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the absolute heart of this when you look at all
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the sorts material, this case wasn't cracked by an eyewitness
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stepping forward. No, No, it was blown wide open because
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forensic anal did this monumental, painstaking work recovering tiny fragments
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of video from a hard drive that someone had intentionally
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tried to scrub.
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Speaker 1: Wow. So pulling truth literally from a digital void.
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Speaker 2: Pretty much, it's incredible and we need to understand not
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just that they did it, but how how did they
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make those deleted pixels?
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Speaker 1: Talk? Okay, let's start right at the beginning. Then the
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moment Jan vanished and why the search for him immediately
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ran into well resistance.
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Speaker 2: Right, So one was serious about school. That associate's degree
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was his ticket to usc VIP collective. That was just
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the means to an end quick cash to pay for
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tuition books.
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Speaker 1: You know, how long had he been there?
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Speaker 2: Only about six months actually, and working in that kind
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of unlicensed place, it means huge amounts of cash changing hands,
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almost zero transparency, and honestly a lot of vulnerability for
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the people working there.
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Speaker 1: Even though One was like physically a strong guy.
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Speaker 2: Yeah he was tall, imposing, but that doesn't matter when
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you're financially exposed, legally unprotected in that kind.
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Speaker 1: Of set up. Okay, So take us to the last
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time he was definitively seen. Yeah, Tuesday, September twenty second,
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twenty twenty.
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Speaker 2: His shift started at around four pm, pretty standard, should have
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ended around ten pm.
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Speaker 1: And did it well?
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Speaker 2: His coworker clocked out right around ten Sawwan still inside
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near the display case, maybe closing up, doing inventory, something
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like that, normal stuff. But by eleven pm something was wrong.
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His car, that gray twenty twenty Honda Civic, a graduation
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gift from his mom, it was gone. Okay, And here's
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the really suspicious part for investigators. Right away, his cell
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phone just went dark. The last ping right near the dispensary.
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Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like someone just leaving work, not at all.
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Speaker 2: And that's where the story shifts, really pivots. Because of
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his mother, Yojaria Hernandez. She knew her son, knew this
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wasn't like him.
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Speaker 1: She was reliable, communicative.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely always letting her know his plans. So when he
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didn't come home, didn't answer, she knew instantly something was
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terribly wrong. Her reaction was immediate, you do. By six
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point three four the next morning, Wednesday of the twenty third,
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she's already down at VIP collective, demanding answers, where's.
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Speaker 1: One another response? She got?
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Speaker 2: Obstruction calculated lies right from the start. The staff claimed
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he left hours earlier.
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Speaker 1: Which didn't line up with the coworker seeing him at
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ten pm exactly.
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Speaker 2: And then the crucial lie when she asked about security footage.
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They told her flat out.
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Speaker 1: Live feed only, no recordings.
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Speaker 2: Sorry, wow, just shut her down.
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Speaker 1: Completely, trying to make her go away, denying evidence that
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we now know captured everything. It was the beginning of
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the cover up.
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Speaker 2: That's just heartbreaking for a mother in that situation. So
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she goes to the police next, right, and this is
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where things get complicated systemically.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the sources really highlight this painful part. When Yarira
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reported him missing to the LAPD, their initial response was
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well dismissive. They categorized him as a voluntary missing person,
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meaning they thought he just left. Yeah, suggests maybe he
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ran off, maybe he had debts problems. The sources explicitly
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mentioned how much that stung got year at this assumption
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about a Latino kid from South la. It just fueled
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her resolve. She knew she wasn't just fighting for her son,
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but against these kinds of biases too. So she pushed back,
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Oh yeah, she formalized the missing person reports, started making flyers,
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getting the word out herself immediately. Meanwhile, the police did
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find wants Honda.
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Speaker 2: Civic near Figaroa in sixty fourth Streets, a few miles
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from the dispensary.
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Speaker 1: Okay, and the car itself did offer clues.
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Speaker 2: It was weird, an anomaly, no signs of a struggle
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inside her out but the keys still in the ignition,
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still in the ignition, that feels staged. It does right,
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like maybe trying to suggest he was carjacked after parking
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or he just abandoned it. But it contradicted the phone
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data because the phone went dark back of the shop exactly.
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The phone stopped pinging near VIP Collective around eleven pm,
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but the cars found miles away keys in it. That
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time gap, that location gap, it just didn't add up
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screen that whatever happened, it started at the dispensary, and.
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Speaker 1: That discrepancy must have just solidified the Ajira's focus.
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Speaker 2: On the shop totally. She zered right in on the manager,
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Ethan Kedar Astafan. He was known initially just as e.
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She went back to VIP Collective again, Yes, but this
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time she brought back up a security guard contact she knew,
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showing she wasn't alone. She had resources now. She confronted
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Astafan directly demanded that security footage.
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Speaker 1: And he stuck to the story.
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Speaker 2: He did stonewalled her again. No recordings he claimed, but
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her persistence, her absolute refusal to accept that lie, combined
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with the weirdness of the car and the phone data
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that finally convinced the LAPD Missing Persons Unit.
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Speaker 1: We realized this wasn't just a runaway right.
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Speaker 2: They started to see this was likely something much darker,
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and that led to the most critical step, getting a
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search warrant for VIP.
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Speaker 1: Collective, which allowed them to get their hands on the DVR.
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Speaker 2: System exactly executed about a week after he disappeared. Everything
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hinged on what was or wasn't on that machine. The
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physical search was over, the digital hunt was about to begin.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So September twenty ninth, the warrant is executed Detect raid.
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VIP Collective sees the DVR. They're hoping for answers, but
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what they find is obstruction. Again pretty much.
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Speaker 2: They found immediate proof as to faned light. The DVR
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was working. It did record, but the footage from September
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twenty second, specifically those crucial hours around ten to eleven
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PM when one Vanish gone just missing, conspicuously absent a
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huge gap. Not accidental. This was clearly an intentional erasure,
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a digital hole where the truth should have been.
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Speaker 1: So this takes us straight into the LAPD forensics lab.
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This is where it gets really interesting technically. What did
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they see right away that screamed tampering?
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Speaker 2: Well, Forensic technicians look for specific things signs like header
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corruption or unusual overwrite patterns. You know, when you just
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delete a file. Normally it often just marks the space
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as available, but a deliberate dilution a cover up that
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often in actively writing junk data over the original bits
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or deleting the file's index entry, and then quickly recording
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new innocent footage on top to hide the.
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Speaker 1: Gap, like digital spackling exactly.
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Speaker 2: And the LAPED experts saw those signs immediately. Irregular file
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structures evidence that data segments had been overwritten. It confirmed
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someone had tried to digitally bury whatever happened.
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Speaker 1: That night, So they knew the data was there, just
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hidden or damaged. Could they get anything back?
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Speaker 2: Initially they could, using specialized recovery software. They started pulling fragments,
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not full video yet but stills like blurry snapshots.
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Speaker 1: In time from the night he disappeared.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, timestamped around ten thirty pm September twenty second, blurry, fragmented,
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but clear.
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Speaker 1: Enough to be horrifying. What did they show?
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Speaker 2: They showed a struggle, two figures grappling. One looked like
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Han based on build and clothing description. The other, a
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larger man matching Astafans build, had him in a choke hold.
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Speaker 1: Oh my god, so confirmation.
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Speaker 2: Of viol Oh yes, but there was more. In those
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same fragmented stills, they saw a second person nearby, hovering
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holding what looked unmistakably like a.
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Speaker 1: Surrid a syringe that changes everything instantly.
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Speaker 2: This wasn't just a fight that went wrong. This pointed
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to a planned, premeditated attack involving a weapon, a chemical
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weapon essentially.
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Speaker 1: It stills aren't enough for court, right, you need the
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actual video precisely.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, The stills confirmed foul play strongly suggested as to
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fans involvement, but they weren't definitive proof of the entire
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sequence of events. They needed the moving picture, and they
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suspected the deletion was sophisticated, maybe too much for their
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standard tools.
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Speaker 1: So they needed bigger guns digital.
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Speaker 2: Speaking, right, they outsourced the DVR send it over to
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the Glendale Police Department's computer forensics unit. These guys had
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let's say, enterprise level capabilities for deep recovery.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so what made the Glendale unit different? What challenge
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were they up against.
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Speaker 2: The challenge was that the killers hadn't just deleted the files,
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they'd actively trying to overwrite them. This requires really advanced techniques.
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Glendale specialized in something called data carving.
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Speaker 1: Data carving, Okay, break that down. What is that.
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Speaker 2: Imagine the hard drive is like a huge library, but
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someone burned the card catalog, the index that tells you
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where each book is. Okay, data carving ignores the burnt catalog. Instead,
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it meticulously sifts through every single page on every single shelf.
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That's the raw data sectors on the drive, looking for
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the unique start and end signatures that identify specific file types,
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in this case, video files.
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Speaker 1: So they're looking for fragments of video codes scattered across
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the drive like digital archaeology.
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Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. They're hunting for orphaned files, bits
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of video data that still physically exists on the disc
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but have lost their official place in the file system.
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It's incredibly painsfully.
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Speaker 1: They have to prove what they find is real, right, yeah,
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not something they created.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely crucial. They use complex hashing algorithms to verify the
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integrity of every recovered block, creating a chain of custody
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to prove in court that the recovered video is authentic
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and hasn't been altered during the recovery.
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Speaker 1: And did it work.
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Speaker 2: It paid off big time. On October sixteenth, twenty twenty,
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almost a month after the DVR was seized, they hit
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the jackpot. They got it, They got it. They recovered
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a forty five second video clip. It was partially damaged,
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a bit degraded because of the overwriting, but the content
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devastatingly clear. It was the missing piece the crime itself.
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Speaker 1: Forty five seconds tell us exactly what that recovered video showed.
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Speaker 2: It showed Astafhan attacking Wand from behind, no warning, lunging
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wrestling him down into that chokehold we saw.
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Speaker 1: In the stills and the syringe.
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Speaker 2: Then a woman later connected to the shop's owner, Uijia Peng,
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comes in the frame. She approaches Wan who's being subdued
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by Astafan, and she injects him with the syringe.
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Speaker 1: Do you know what was in it? Kenemine kettymine? Wow?
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Why is that significant? Well?
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Speaker 2: Medically, ketamine is a powerful dissociative anesthetic. Using it like this.
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It shows planning, maybe even some knowledge of how to
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incapacitate someone quickly and effectively. The sources mentioned the dose
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was potent, potentially enough to knock out a large animal.
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Speaker 1: So incredibly dangerous methyl in.
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Speaker 2: This context it causes rapid sedation, disorientation, and can cause
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cardiac arrest, especially combined with asphyxiation from the choke hold.
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The injection was fast, one went limp almost immediately, and
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then and then the video shows them dragging his now
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unresponsive body towards the back exit of the dispensary. The
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whole horrific event, the thing they tried so desperately to erase,
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captured in under a minute.
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Speaker 1: That forty five second clip is just damning, irrefutable completely.
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Speaker 2: But the digital trail didn't end there. The cell phone
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data came back into play, acting like digital breadcrumbs. It
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corroborated everything. Cell tower records showed the phones belonging to Astaphone,
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the owner, Pang, and another associate named Tracy Heng, all
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moving together in perfect synchronization that night.
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Speaker 1: Where did they come from?
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Speaker 2: They traveled from an apartment in Alhambra, arrived at the
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dispensary around ten five to six pm, just minutes before
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the attack scene on the recovered video.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: They stayed until about eleven three seven pm, and then
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all three phones traveled together, heading east on the ten.
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Speaker 1: Freeway towards the mountains.
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Speaker 2: Exactly it showed. They arrived together, committed the murder together,
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and left together, presumably to dispose of Wan's body. The
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digital evidence locked them into the timeline and the location,
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and that perfect digital timeline showing them leaving heading east.
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It leads us straight into the next phase figuring out
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the motive finding Wand and the eventual courtroom battle.
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Speaker 1: Right, because the y is still hanging there. Why kill
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a part time bud tender? What could possibly justify this
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level of violence?
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Speaker 2: The answer presented by the prosecution was almost disturbingly mundane
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given the outcome paranoia, specifically paranoia.
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Speaker 1: About money money. How did they know?
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Speaker 2: They found WhatsApp messages texts exchanged between asked to find
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the manager and paying the owner. In these messages, they
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repeatedly accused Juan of.
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Speaker 1: Stealing stealing cash product.
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Speaker 2: Both stealing cash and product, the messages said. One chilling
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text from Peng read something like we have to handle
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this before he takes us under yeah, implying Wand was
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somehow ruining them.
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Speaker 1: But was there any proof, any actual evidence he stole anything, That's.
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Speaker 2: The crucial part. No, absolutely zero proof ever surfaced. When
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Wan's body was eventually found, his pockets were empty, he
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had nothing on.
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Speaker 1: Him, So it was all just suspicion.
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Speaker 2: Pure suspicion, bread from the environment itself. Think about it,
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an unlicensed cash only business, no real books, no audits,
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no credit card trails, just huge amounts of physical cash
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flowing in and out.
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Speaker 1: Easy for money to go missing or just.
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Speaker 2: Be miscounted exactly, and in that kind of environment, with
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no transparency, any little discrepancy, any shortfall, it breeds paranoia.
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Owners immediately suspect theft because there's no way to easily
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track it. That suspicion festered between Peg and Astafan until
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they decided to act lethaly on a completely baseless fear.
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Speaker 1: So the cell data showed them heading east after the murder.
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Speaker 2: Right and that became the focus for the search. Investigators
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used that cell tower data tracking their path east towards
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the San Bernardino Mountains to narrow down a potential disposal.
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Speaker 1: Area, but finding him took time, A lot of time, a.
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Speaker 2: Long, agonizing time for his family. Nearly eight weeks passed
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between his disappearance on September twenty second and the eventual discovery.
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The search area was vast, rugged terrain. How's he finally
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found on November fifteenth, twenty twenty. It wasn't law enforcement directly,
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but a volunteer searcher working alongside especially trained cadaverdoc. They
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found skeletal remains were off the fifteen Freeway near Hesperia,
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out in the Mahave Desert, a desolate, remote spot chosen
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clearly to hide him forever.
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Speaker 1: What did the scene itself reveal?
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Speaker 2: It was grim but forensically important. His body had been
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wrapped in a blue tarp and bound tightly with duct
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tape confirmed. The disposal was hurried but deliberate, and.
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Speaker 1: The autopsy did the line up.
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Speaker 2: With the video perfectly. The meta cole examber confirmed the
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cause of death catamine overdose, but crucially also noted signs
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of asphyxiation consistent with the chokehold scene in the video.
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The two methods worked in tandem.
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Speaker 1: Was there other physical evidence connecting back to the dispensary?
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Speaker 2: Yes, trace evidence experts went over everything meticulously. They found
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tiny fibers embedded in the tarp that matched the carpeting
16:22
inside VIP collective.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: And even more incredibly, they managed to lift a smudged
16:28
partial fingerprint off the sticky side of the.
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Speaker 1: Duct tape off duct tape, how.
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Speaker 2: Using a specialized technique called microsol casting. Microsil is this
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silicone putty substance. Forensics teams use it to lift prints
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or tool marks from difficult, uneven or porous surfaces where
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normal dusting wouldn't work, like fabric or in this case,
16:47
duct tape.
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Speaker 1: Did they match the print?
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Speaker 2: They did, It linked back to someone connected to the dispensary,
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and on top of that, Waigia Peng's phone it pinged
16:56
cell towers near that specific dump site in Hesperia on
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the night of the murder. It sealed the disposal route.
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Speaker 1: So they had everything the video of the murder, the
17:05
cell data tracking their movements, the physical evidence from the
17:07
body linking back to the shop and the disposal site,
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the medical confirmation.
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Speaker 2: The case was airtight overwhelming. On November twenty, twenty twenty,
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LAPD arrested Astafan Pang and the associate, Tracy.
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Speaker 1: Hang Oh, were the specific charges.
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Speaker 2: First degree murder with special circumstances, alleged lying in wait,
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indicating premeditation and the use of a deadly weapon the
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syringe filled with ketamine.
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Speaker 1: Then came the trial early twenty twenty.
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Speaker 2: Four yep LA Superior Court, and by all accounts it
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was a masterclass in using forensic evidence. The prosecutor, Deputy
17:40
da Habib Ballian, just systematically dismantled the defense.
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Speaker 1: What was the defense strategy? Did Astafan try to explain
17:46
the video?
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Speaker 2: He tried claimed self defense, argued want attacked.
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Speaker 1: Him first, but the video showed Astafan attacking from.
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Speaker 2: Behind exactly, and Ballian just played that recovered forty five
17:56
second clip over and over for the jury. It completely
17:59
contradicted the self defense claim. Hard to argue with your
18:02
own actions on video.
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Speaker 3: The forensic testimony must have been key to absolutely central
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Detective Hammer testified about the DVR, calling the missing footage
18:11
purposeful deletions, a clear digital cover up.
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Speaker 2: Then the expert from Glendale PD.
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Speaker 1: Took the stand, the Daity Carving expert.
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Speaker 2: Yes, explain the whole process, how they used hashing algorithms,
18:23
scan sector bisector, how they could prove the recovered video
18:25
was authentic and hadn't been tampered with during the recovery.
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It showed the lengths the defendants went to hide the
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truth and the lengths forensics went to uncover it.
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Speaker 1: Did Tracy Hang, the associate, testify, She did.
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Speaker 2: She ended up taking a plea deal in exchange for
18:39
a lesser sentence. She testified against Peg and Astaphan.
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Speaker 1: What did she reveal?
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Speaker 2: She described the cleanup after the murder, how they frantically
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scrubbed the floors of the dispensary, trying to remove any
18:49
trace of blood or struggle, and she confessed they'd taken
18:52
Wand's clothes and burned them in a backyard fire pit,
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destroying potential DNA evidence.
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Speaker 1: So the jury heard everything, the motive born of paranoia,
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the brutal murder captured on video, the calculated disposal, the
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digital cover up, the physical cleanup.
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Speaker 2: Laid out step by step. The jury didn't need long.
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Deliberations took less than four hours. The verdict guilty, Pang
19:16
and Astafhan guilty on all counts first degree murder, special
19:20
circumstances included, and the sentence. Judge Mark Cansono gave them
19:23
both twenty five years to life in prison, plus an
19:26
extra year tacked on for the use of the syringe
19:28
as a deadly weapon, but the.
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Speaker 1: Final word really belonged to Wan's mother.
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Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah. Rayah Hernandez delivered a victim impact statement in court.
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She faced Pang and Astafhan directly told them you took
19:39
everything from me. I lost my world. She connected their
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actions directly to their greed and baseless suspicion, a devastatingly
19:46
powerful moment, holding them accountable not just legally but morally.
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And that courtroom reckoning, you know, it forces us to
19:53
look beyond just this one horrific crime. We have to
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connect it to the bigger picture. Yeah, the systemic issues
19:58
that created the environment where this could even happen.
20:01
Speaker 1: Right. Wand's murder wasn't just about paying an as to
20:04
fans paranoia. It exposed major fault lines in California's whole
20:08
approach to cannabis. After legalization in twenty sixteen.
20:11
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the legal market exploded, right, It's worth something at
20:13
five billion dollars a year now, huge money. But alongside
20:16
that legal boom, the state really failed to control the
20:19
illegal side. Unlicensed shops like VIP Collective just proliferated.
20:23
Speaker 1: Why couldn't they shut them down, lack.
20:25
Speaker 2: Of resources, political will, complex regulations, a mix of things.
20:30
But the result was these shops operating completely in the shadows,
20:33
evating taxes, ignoring safety regulations, floating labor laws.
20:37
Speaker 1: And that creates this incredibly vulnerable workforce.
20:41
Speaker 2: Exactly, people like wand often young maybe immigrants, are from
20:45
marginalized communities, just trying to make cash. They get paid
20:48
under the table, have zero workplace protections, no insurance if
20:52
they get hurt, no legal recourse if they're cheated out
20:55
of wages.
20:55
Speaker 1: And they're totally subject to the whims of owners and
20:58
managers who operate with impunity.
21:00
Speaker 2: Unchecked power. And because it's all cash, it inherently breeds violence.
21:05
The LAPD data backs this up. Dispensary related robberies, assaults, violence,
21:10
it spiked something like thirty percent between twenty eighteen and
21:13
twenty twenty two.
21:14
Speaker 1: And that's probably not even the full picture, right.
21:16
Speaker 2: Oh, almost certainly an undercount. Think about it. If you're
21:19
running an illegal, unlicensed dispensary stuffed with cash and you
21:23
get robbed, are you calling the police?
21:26
Speaker 1: Probably not. You risk getting shut down yourself.
21:28
Speaker 2: Exactly, So a lot of this violence goes unreported. It
21:32
creates this false sense of security, maybe until something catastrophic
21:35
like Qwan's murder brings the danger into sharp focus.
21:38
Speaker 1: It circles back to that paranoia issue we talked about right.
21:42
Speaker 2: There's a quote from a criminologist, doctor Elena Vasquez, who
21:45
studied this. She said, basically, these shops breed paranoia. Owners
21:50
suspect theft because there's no pay pertrayal when everything's cash,
21:53
every missing dollar looks like theft, and colleagues instantly becomes suspects.
21:58
It's a breeding ground for mistrust and sometimes violence.
22:01
Speaker 1: In One's case wasn't unique in that sense, was it?
22:04
There were others?
22:05
Speaker 2: Sadly no. The sources mention other similar horrific incidents, like
22:09
a butt tender in Oakland shot in twenty nineteen because
22:12
the owner thought he was short by two.
22:13
Speaker 1: Hundred dollars one hundred dollars yeah.
22:15
Speaker 2: And a manager and sacrament are stabbed in twenty twenty
22:18
two over another dispute about alleged skimming. These aren't random crimes.
22:22
There are symptoms of a system where disputes can't be
22:24
resolved through legal or regulated channels, so they escalate, often lethally.
22:30
Speaker 1: So is anyone pushing for change. Are there groups trying
22:32
to fix this regulatory mess?
22:34
Speaker 2: There are advocacy groups, particularly unions like the United Food
22:38
and Commercial Workers Union the UFCW. They're pushing hard well
22:41
they want They're demanding stricter enforcement. They argue that state
22:45
and local governments have to shut down these unlicensed operations.
22:49
Force all sales through the legal, licensed channels where there
22:53
are rules, rules about security, about labor rights, and critically
22:57
about accounting. Using proper financial systems eliminates the massive cash
23:01
hoards that fuel the paranoia and attract crime.
23:04
Speaker 1: He comes back to what Yajia said, doesn't.
23:06
Speaker 2: It It does? Her words were so potent. Wan was
23:09
collateral in a system that values profit over people. He
23:13
died because the system, the state, failed to properly regulate
23:17
the very industry it had legalized.
23:18
Speaker 1: But his death is having some positive impact now a legacy.
23:22
Speaker 2: Yes, thankfully, his memory is being used to try and
23:25
prevent this from happening to others. El Camino College, where
23:29
he dreamed of studying engineering, now holds workplace safety seminars
23:33
every year.
23:34
Speaker 1: Funded by a scholarship in his name.
23:36
Speaker 2: Exactly, a memorial scholarship funds these seminars they specifically educate
23:40
students about the risks of gray zone employment, the kind
23:43
of unregulated work that Juan was doing, trying to arm
23:46
them with knowledge he didn't have.
23:48
Speaker 1: It's a tragic irony. He wanted to build structures to
23:51
keep people safe, and now his memory is building a
23:54
different kind of safety structure for students.
23:56
Speaker 2: A really poignant, powerful legacy born from unable loss.
24:01
Speaker 1: So as we wrap up this deep dive, the story
24:03
of Juan Carlos Hernandez really stands out. It's this brutal
24:06
intersection of several key things.
24:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, first the sheer calculated violence, that combination of the
24:13
ketamine injection and the choke hold, all stemming from baseless
24:16
paranoia within that volatile, unregulated cash economy.
24:20
Speaker 1: And second, the absolute critical role of digital forensics. The
24:24
fact that this crime only came to light because of
24:26
the incredible skill and persistence involved in that data carving
24:30
process recovering those forty five seconds they thought were gone forever.
24:33
Speaker 2: It really underscores how vital that forensic tenacity is becoming.
24:37
Speaker 1: And Wan's legacy, his light. It continues primarily through his
24:40
mother's incredible strength. Yheshira Hernandez didn't just fight for justice.
24:45
She's fighting to protect others.
24:47
Speaker 2: Her nonprofit Wan's Watch is actively working in the community,
24:51
distributing safety kits, things like pepper spray, personal alarms, emergency beacons,
24:57
even cards with basic legal aid infos BESI sifically targeting
25:00
young people in South LA who might end up in
25:03
similar vulnerable work situations.
25:05
Speaker 1: That's amazing and the community has responded to.
25:07
Speaker 2: They have those heartbreaking missing billboards, They've been replaced with
25:11
ones that say remembered. And the VIP Collective building itself,
25:15
the place where he died, it was torn down in
25:17
twenty twenty three, raised a physical removal of that painful sight.
25:22
Speaker 1: And his story is reaching a wider audience now too,
25:24
isn't it.
25:24
Speaker 2: Yes, The media attention has grown and it's set to
25:27
be featured in an oxygen docusaries buried in the backyard
25:30
sometime in twenty twenty five that will keep his story
25:33
and the systemic issues it exposed in the public eye.
25:36
Speaker 1: When you think about it, Want's family faced incredible obstacles,
25:40
from that initial police skepticism, that tendency to dismiss him,
25:44
all the way to the murderers literally trying to digitally
25:46
erase his final moments.
25:48
Speaker 2: They fought against a system in many ways designed to
25:51
deny his truth, but they prevailed because they refused to
25:55
give up, refuse to let those digital fragments that recovered
25:59
video remains.
26:00
Speaker 1: Which leaves us with a pretty unsettling final thought, doesn't it. Yeah,
26:04
in our world now, digital evidence is everything, but it
26:07
can also be manipulated, deleted, faked, perhaps with increasing sophistication.
26:13
Speaker 2: Right, So, what happens when the only witness left is
26:16
the data someone thought they destroyed? How much effort, how
26:19
much technical skill, how much sheer cost is required to
26:22
make those hidden pixels speak truth in a courtroom.
26:25
Speaker 1: It suggests that sometimes justice depends on these digital archaeologists
26:30
digging through corrupted data, proving that even erased information can
26:33
leave a ghost if someone is determined enough to find it.
26:36
Speaker 2: A sobering thought about technology, truth and the very real
26:40
human cost when regulation and oversight fail, A powerful lesson.
26:43
Speaker 1: Indeed, thank you for diving deep with us today