Latest / The Mind of a Man / This Story Will Give You Chills__ Their Fairytale Marriage Had a Horrifying Ending _ Crime Story

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This Story Will Give You Chills__ Their Fairytale Marriage Had a Horrifying Ending _ Crime Story · The Mind of a Man

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: A husband installs security cameras all over his property. He
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: wants to protect his family, protect his business, protect everything
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: he's built. He has no idea that those same cameras
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: are quietly recording the exact minute his story falls apart.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: On a July morning in rural Indiana, a wife is
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: found trapped beneath a weight bar in her own basement.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Her husband says he just walked in and found her
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: that way. But three hours of footage sitting on a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: hard drive in his own garage says otherwise. This is
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the case of Scott and Lisa Patterson, the man who
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: built a fairytale wedding, a bodybuilder persona, and a lie
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: that his own surveillance system couldn't keep straight. Unreal True
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Crime launches its new book, Unreal True Crime, Latin Edition.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: 35 shocking true murder cases from across Latin America. Buy
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: it now on Amazon. Lisa Diane Young was born on
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: November 16, 1972, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her parents were
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Jerry Young and Lucille Rich. Lisa grew up moving between
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Indiana and Pennsylvania, and she graduated high school in Pennsylvania
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: in 1990 before attending the Philadelphia Art Institute. Art stayed
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: with her for the rest of her life. She loved paintings. scrapbooking,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and crafts, and those creative instincts would later carry into
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a career built on communication and public image. Before she
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: ever met the man who would become her husband, Lisa
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: was already a mother. She had a son, Dylan McCoy,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: and she raised him largely on her own in those
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: early years. Friends who knew her during that period describe
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: a young woman who was warm, sociable, and deeply devoted
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to her child, even while juggling the pressures of single motherhood.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: In 1995, Lisa went out dancing in Fort Wayne, a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: rare night away from her responsibilities. That night, she met
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Scott Patterson. Scott was a bodybuilder who had built a
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: strange little side hustle around his physique. He marketed himself
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: as a Jean-Claude Van Damme lookalike. complete with his own
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: business card advertising the service. He handed Lisa that card,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and something about his confidence and larger-than-life energy caught her attention.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: The two began dating, and the relationship moved fast. Less
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: than a year later, on August 24, 1996, Scott and
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Lisa were married. Their wedding was nothing short of theatrical.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Lisa arrived in a white horse-drawn carriage, and at one
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: point during the celebration, Scott appeared dressed as the Beast
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: for a dance with his bride, a full Beauty and
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the Beast performance in front of their guests. Lisa's mother
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: would later remember her daughter as radiant that day, genuinely happy,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: genuinely in love. Scott stepped into the role of stepfather
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: for Dylan, who eventually began calling him Dad. On the surface,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the marriage looked like a success story. Scott built his
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: own roofing business and became a self-employed contractor. Lisa's career
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: took off, too. She worked as marketing sales director for
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: a Marion radio station, WXXC, before eventually becoming marketing director
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: at Five Points Mall, formerly North Park Mall. She was
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: active in the Marion Ambassadors Club, the Grant County Chamber
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of Commerce, the Marion Rotary Club, and Treaty Church of Christ.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: She was, by every account, a woman who was building
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: something professionally, socially, and spiritually. The couple settled into a
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: large rural home near La Fontaine, Indiana. They hosted parties,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: traveled to the Caribbean, and drove nice vehicles. To outsiders,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: it looked like the fairy tale had continued off the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: dance floor and into real life. But Lisa's own family
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: never fully warmed to Scott. Behind closed doors, relatives believed
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: he was controlling, image-obsessed, and harsh, especially with Dylan. Dylan
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: would later describe his stepfather as someone who wanted everything
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to be the biggest and the best. a man who
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: ran the household less like a father and more like
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a drill instructor. In one incident, Dylan recounted, Scott made
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: him walk out to the mailbox in freezing weather, wearing
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: only his underwear as punishment for forgetting to bring in
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the mail. It's the kind of detail that, on its own,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't prove anything criminal, but it painted a very different
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: picture of the man behind the persona. For about 13 years,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: that was the shape of the Patterson marriage, a public
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: image of success and romance, and a private reality Lisa's
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: family found increasingly uncomfortable. That began to unravel in 2008,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: when Lisa discovered that Scott was having an affair. The
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: other woman was Stacey Henderson, a well-known figure in Marion,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: a former chief of staff to the city's mayor. and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the wife of a local police officer. When Lisa found out,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Scott and Henderson temporarily cut off contact. It didn't last.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: The two resumed their relationship, and from that point on,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: they were in near-constant communication. Lisa, growing suspicious that the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: affair hadn't actually ended, installed monitoring software on Scott's computer
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to track what he was doing. By March 2009, the
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: marriage had reached a breaking point. Scott filed for divorce.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: The signs that the split was real were everywhere. The
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: couple's wedding photographs came down from the walls, and the
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: house near La Fontaine went up for sale. Dylan understood
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the divorce was moving forward. Stacey Henderson, for her part,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: believed Scott intended to leave Lisa for good, About a
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: week before the events that would end Lisa's life, Scott
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: told one of his own employees that things with Lisa
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: were difficult and that living together while the divorce worked
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: its way through the system was hard on both of them.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Money was tangled up in all of it. In November 2008,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Scott reached out to a real estate appraiser to get
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the marital home values and told her he wasn't sure
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: he could afford to get divorced. In February 2009, he
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: told one of Lisa's friends, Leah Frazier, flatly, that he
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: was not going to give Lisa half of his roofing business.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: The business, the house, the property they'd built over more
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: than a decade, all of it was suddenly on the table.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: At the same time, Lisa was making her own moves.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: About a month before her death, she sat down with
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: her sister, Christine Smith, who helped manage her finances to
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: change the beneficiaries on her life insurance policy. Scott and
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Dylan were both listed at the time. Lisa wanted Dylan alone.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Christine sent her the paperwork. Whether it was fully signed
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and returned before Lisa died remains unclear in the public record,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: but her intention wasn't. she was actively working to remove
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Scott from that policy. There was also an old, unresolved
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: shadow hanging over the marriage. Back in 2001, the Wabash
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department had received a report that Scott had
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: approached someone and asked them to kill Lisa. Nothing came
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: of it. No charges. No substantiation. In 2009, it remained
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: exactly what it had always been. an old uncorroborated report
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: sitting in a file. That was the state of the
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Patterson marriage heading into the summer of 2009 a divorce
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: in progress a business and a house both at risk
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of being split an ongoing affair and a wife cutting
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: her husband out of her life insurance On the morning
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: of July 2, 2009, Scott later told investigators that he
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: woke up shortly before 5 a.m., kissed Lisa goodbye, and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: drove to a landfill. He said he returned home around 6.30 a.m.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: to pick up Dylan and another employee of his roofing
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: company before heading out to a job site for the day.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: According to Scott, he then ran errands through the late
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: mornings and didn't make it back to the house until
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: roughly 11.30 a.m. He said he walked inside around 11.45,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: and at first he couldn't find Lisa anywhere. Scott's account
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: continues from there. He went down to the basement exercise room,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: and that's where he says he found her. Lisa was
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: lying face up on the bench of a Smith-style weightlifting
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: machine with the bar. loaded to roughly 140 pounds, pressed
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: across her throat. He said her skin had turned purple
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: or blue, and her arms were hanging limply at her sides.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Scott claimed he lifted the bar off her, checked for
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: a pulse, and began CPR. Rather than call 911 immediately
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: from the house, he said he carried her upstairs, put
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: her in his pickup truck. and started driving toward Marion
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: General Hospital himself. It wasn't until 12.14 p.m., while he
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: was already on the road, that Scott called 911 and
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: asked for a police escort. A police officer and an
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: ambulance managed to intercept his truck a short time later,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and paramedics took over, transferring Lisa into the ambulance for
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the rest of the trip to the emergency room. She
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was pronounced dead at 12.49 p.m. At first, first responders
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and investigators treated the scene the way Scott had presented it.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: A strange, tragic accident. A home gym, a heavy bar,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: a woman who somehow got trapped beneath it and couldn't
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: get free. It was bizarre, but not obviously criminal. That
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: began to change almost immediately once detectives... led by Michael Davis,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: started looking closer. A few things bothered Davis right away.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Scott had actively discouraged the 911 dispatcher from sending an
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: ambulance to the house, saying he'd already tried CPR himself.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: And then he'd put his wife in a truck and
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: started driving rather than waiting for help to arrive. His
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: account of what time he'd gotten home that morning didn't
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: line up cleanly with everything else investigators were hearing, and
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: when detectives started asking around about Lisa's exercise habits, they
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: got a very different picture than the one Scott had painted.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Crime scene investigator Jason Page examined the exercise room and
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: noted a bruise on Lisa's neck and an abrasion on
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: her shoulder, details that weren't, by themselves, proof of anything.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Investigators also looked closely at the Smith machine itself. It
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: had guide rails that let the bar travel vertically, hooks
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the user could rotate the bar onto to lock it
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: in place, and separate adjustable safety stops that could be
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: positioned along the rails to catch the bar before it
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: dropped too far. In the Patterson home, those safety stops
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: had not been properly set. Scott told police that he
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: and Lisa had used that machine together millions of times,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and that 140 pounds was probably close to her max.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Dylan told a very different story. He said he'd only
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: ever seen his mother use that machine once, and even
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: then only with Scott spotting her directly. According to Dylan
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and other relatives, Lisa preferred cardio, the treadmill, a step machine,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: light hand weights, and an old neck injury made heavy
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: bench work unlikely for her. When investigators inspected the machine mechanically,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: they found no failure, no significant wear suggesting frequent use,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: and a locking system that worked exactly as it should.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner, Dr. Scott Wagner, performed Lisa's autopsy, and
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: his findings became the turning point in the case. Lisa
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: had died of asphyxia from compression of her neck. Her larynx, trachea,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and voice box had been compressed, but not crushed. That
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: distinction mattered enormously. If a 140-pound bar had simply dropped
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: and slammed onto her throat, Wagner expected fractured cartilage and
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: far more catastrophic trauma. Instead, The injuries were consistent with slow,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: sustained pressure, a bar resting against her throat and staying there,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: not a sudden impact. Wagner also found small hemorrhagic marks,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: or petechiae, along Lisa's back and torso, consistent, he said,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: with significant pressure on her body, potentially someone straddling or
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: pinning her down while the bar remained across her neck.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: While the medical evidence was raising questions, investigators were also
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: digging into Scott and Lisa's relationship, uncovering the affair, the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: divorce filing, the fight over the roofing business, and Lisa's
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: move to change her life insurance. The day after her death,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Scott had asked Christine, Lisa's sister, whether the insurance change
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: had actually gone through. According to Christine, He seemed genuinely
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: stunned when she told him she believed Dylan was already
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the sole beneficiary. Then came the piece of evidence that
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: would ultimately decide the case. During the initial search of
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the Patterson home, detectives had noticed exterior security cameras wired
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: to a recording unit sitting in the garage. The unit
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: had a slot for a DVD, but there was no
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: disc inside it. and at first investigators assumed that meant
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: nothing had actually been recorded. That assumption held for nearly
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: two weeks. Then, on July 15, 2009, an employee from Corson,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the company that had installed the system, contacted detectives directly.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: He explained that the system didn't need a disk to
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: record at all, It saved everything straight to an internal
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: hard drive. A DVD was only used if someone wanted
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: to burn a copy of footage off that drive. Investigators
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: went back, secured a warrant, and seized the system. What
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: they pulled off that hard drive changed everything. Scott had
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: told police he didn't get home until roughly 11.30 that morning.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: The footage showed him pulling back into the property at 8.32 a.m.,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: three hours earlier than he'd claimed, and squarely inside the window. Dr.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Wagner believed Lisa had died in, based on his estimate
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: that she'd been dead somewhere between two and three hours,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: by the time she was pronounced at 12.49 p.m. The
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: cameras also caught him moving around the property, multiple times
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: that morning, at 9.56, 10.03, and 10.07, and again at 11.38,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: and showed him changing clothes at some point between appearances.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: None of the footage showed the inside of the exercise room.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: It didn't need to. It proved that the entire foundation
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: of Scott's story, where he was and when, was false.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Phone records added another layer. They showed Scott and Stacey
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Henderson in near-constant contact leading up to, during, and after
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Lisa's death. Reportedly, around 130 calls and texts exchanged on
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: July 2nd alone, according to later reporting. One of those
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: messages was sent while Scott was actually driving Lisa toward
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the hospital. Henderson would later describe it as a short
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: prearranged signal between the two of them rather than anything romantic.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: The day after Lisa died, Scott sent Henderson a message
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: asking whether her husband was trying to get closer to
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: her now that Scott was free. And even Scott, in
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the message itself, acknowledged it was a disturbing way to
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: put it. By September 2009, the medical examiner's office had
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: formally classified Lisa's death as a homicide. Investigators presented everything
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: they had to a grand jury. The false timeline, the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: surveillance footage, the autopsy findings, the machine inspection, the affair.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: the financial pressure of the looming divorce, and the life
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: insurance situation. Scott was indicted for murder and arrested later
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: that month at his mother's home. Asked for a reaction
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: by reporters, he maintained he was not guilty. The case
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: went to trial in Wabash Circuit Court in late October 2010.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Over nearly three weeks, roughly 30 witnesses took the stand.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: The actual Smith machine was brought into the courtroom, too
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: large for the jury room, so it stayed assembled at
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the front of the court. Investigators demonstrated how the hooks
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and safety mechanisms worked, and how someone would normally escape
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: from beneath the bar. At one point during the defense
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: expert's cross-examination, the prosecutor had a detective lie on the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: bench while he straddled him and held his wrists. asking
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: how quickly a person could be prevented from freeing themselves
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: in that position. Dr. Greg Davis, for the defense, argued
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the marks the state called petechiae might actually be post-mortem lividity,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: blood settling after death, not pressure applied while Lisa was alive.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: He also pointed to prescription medication in her system, including
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: what the defense described as an elevated level of a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: diet drug, arguing it could have caused a fainting spell
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: or cardiac irregularity that left her trapped without anyone touching
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: her at all. The defense pressed hard on what wasn't there.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: No confession, no eyewitness, no camera inside the exercise room,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: no scratches or defensive wounds on Scott. Nothing recovered from
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: under Lisa's fingernails. and reportedly some fluid on the bench
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: that was never tested. It was, in every sense, a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: circumstantial case, and Campbell argued that suspicious wasn't the same
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: as proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury didn't see
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: it that way in the end, but they didn't get
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: there quickly. Their first informal vote was reportedly 7-5. One juror,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Dan Ford, later said he believed early on that the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: surveillance footage proved Scott had lied, but wasn't yet convinced
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: that lying meant he'd committed murder. During deliberations, jurors asked
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: to return to the courtroom to examine the Smith machine themselves.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: A female juror lay down on the bench and tried
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to slip free from under the bar. She got out
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: in under two seconds. They repeated the experiment, this time
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: with another juror straddling her and pinning her wrists down.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: That time, she couldn't move at all. After about eight
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: hours of deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict. On
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: November 9, 2010, they found Scott Pattison guilty of murder.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: On December 3, 2010, Judge McCallan sentenced Scott to 60
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: years in prison. The judge singled out the devastating harm
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: done to Dylan as an aggravating factor. A young man
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: who had lost his mother and then learned that the
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: stepfather he'd once called dad was responsible for her death.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: McAllen didn't hold back in his remarks, describing Scott as
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: a human disaster who had left death and destruction in
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: his wake. Scott showed no visible remorse. leaving the courthouse.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: When reporters pushed him for a reaction, all he offered
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: was that a wise man knows when to keep his
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: mouth shut. Scott appealed, challenging the surveillance warrant, the jury's
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: hands-on experiment with the machine, and the sufficiency of the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: evidence overall. On December 9, 2011, A three-judge panel on
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the Indiana Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed his conviction. The
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: court agreed that a few pieces of the original warrant,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: including that old 2001 report, were too stale on their
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: own to justify the search, but ruled that everything else,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: taken together, more than supported both the warrant and the verdict.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: The jury's experiment with the machine was ruled permissible too,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: since it was an already admitted piece of evidence, and
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: jurors were simply testing scenarios that had already been described
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: in testimony. Technical Analysis Strip away the emotion and what's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: left is a genuinely interesting piece of forensic reasoning. The
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: case turned on one medical distinction, A bar that falls
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: versus a bar that's held. A 140-pound weight dropping onto
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: someone's throat should produce catastrophic trauma, fractured cartilage, crushed structures.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: That's not what Dr. Wagner found. Lisa's larynx and trachea
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: were compressed, not crushed, pointing towards slow, sustained pressure rather
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: than a violent impact. That single finding is what turned
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: this from tragic accident into a homicide investigation. The Smith
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: machine mattered almost as much. Its bar travels along fixed
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: rails with hooks and adjustable safety stops built specifically to
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: prevent this kind of accident. And in the Patterson home,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: those stops weren't properly set. The defense used that absence
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to argue an accident was mechanically possible. The prosecution used
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the machine's design against Scott, since a conscious, unrestrained person
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: should still have been able to rotate the bar onto
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: its hooks or roll off the bench. Then there's the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: surveillance footage, the most important piece of evidence in the case,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and one nearly missed because of a basic misunderstanding. Investigators
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: assumed an empty DVD slot meant nothing had recorded. It
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: took an installer explaining that the footage lived on an
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: internal hard drive the whole time. That correction turned Scott's
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: own security system, installed for his protection, into the evidence
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: that unraveled his alibi. Psychological Analysis There's no clinical diagnosis
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: attached to Scott Patterson in the public record, and it
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: would be irresponsible to hand him one here. What's available
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: is a pattern described consistently by people close to him.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: A man obsessed with image who built an identity around
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: playing a Hollywood lookalike and carried that same appetite for
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: spectacle into a horse-drawn carriage wedding. That same need for
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: control appears to have shaped his role as a stepfather.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Dylan's account of humiliating punishments points to a man who
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: ruled his household through dominance rather than warmth. And when
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: that image was threatened by a failing marriage, a business
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: he didn't want to split, and a wife actively cutting
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: him out of her finances, the state's theory suggests that
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: someone who chose to eliminate the threat rather than absorb
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the loss. Family Aftermath For Dylan McCoy, the cost is
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: almost impossible to measure. He lost his mother, then had
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: to sit in court and testify about the man he'd
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: once called dad. describing both her exercise habits and the
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: private cruelty he says he experienced under that roof. He
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: became the intended sole beneficiary of the very insurance policy
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: that helped establish his stepfather's motive. Judge McCallan pointed to
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the harm done to Dylan directly when handing down Scott's sentence.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Lisa's mother, Lucille Rich, and her sister Christine Smith, were
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: left to carry the memory of a woman they described
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: as warm, creative, and devoted, a portrait now permanently intertwined
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: with the details of how she died. Christine had been
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: the person Lisa trusted with her final protective decision for
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: her son, and that private conversation became key testimony in
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: a murder trial. Stacey Henderson avoided prosecution for Lisa's death.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: but her own conduct during the investigation caught up with her.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: In January 2011, she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false informing
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: and received a suspended sentence, home, detention, and probation. There's
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: no evidence she knew about or participated in the killing itself.
• 30:00
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• 30:09
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• 30:12
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