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The Jerene Matta Fortress Murder · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to picture this. It's December 7th, 2013,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and you are in Yakima, Washington.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, which means it is freezing.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's an unusually bitter, freezing winter night. We're talking
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: temperatures plunging deep into the 20s. Wow.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is cold. Right.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: But inside the local police department, things are warm. They're festive.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: It's their annual Christmas party.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, nice.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The precinct is full of officers dressed up, laughing,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: you know, ready to unwind after a really long, grueling
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: year of policing the streets.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Right. Everyone's just trying to relax.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But right as the catered food is being served,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: right as the room is finally, like, settling into this
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: rhythm of celebration, Detective Drew Shaw gets a tap on
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the shoulder from a lieutenant.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, no. Yeah.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: There's a suspected homicide across town.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is just the absolute ultimate mood killer,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: You have this rare moment of community, and it's instantly
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: shattered by the grim reality of the job. Detective Shaw
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: literally has to leave his wife sitting there at the table.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: That's rough.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he has to run home, shed his party clothes
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: for his winter gear, and just step back out into
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the freezing dark.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And that really sets the tone for what we're getting
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: into today. Welcome to today's Deep Dive, where our mission
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: is to unravel a really baffling unsolved mystery. We're looking
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: into the murder of a 62-year-old woman named Jareen Maida.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: And this isn't just a standard case.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. She lived alone at 1809 Greenway Avenue.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And her house wasn't just your standard, you know, suburban ranch.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It was built to be a literal surveillance fortress. Right.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: A fortress.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: But tonight, that fortress had become the site of a brutal,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: unseen crime.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: See, Jareen was incredibly well-known to the local police department.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Over the years, she had called dispatch frequently. Like, a lot.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Mostly to report minor infractions or, like, suspicious behavior in
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: the neighborhood.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: She was kind of the neighborhood busybody, right?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. She was the woman who would stand on
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: her porch and yell at kids if they rode their
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: bikes too close to her lawn, or she'd confront you
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: if you parked even slightly over her property line.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So she alienated a lot of people.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: She really did. But the defining feature of 1809 Greenway
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Avenue was her intense home security. Her property was absolutely
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: plastered with cameras.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Like everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: The patrol officers who frequented her house noted that you
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: literally could not step foot onto her driveway, let alone
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: approach her front door, without being recorded from multiple angles.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Which brings up this massive paradox.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Right. The police knew her house was lined with cameras,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: so their immediate thought upon hearing about a potential crime
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: there was, well, we are definitely going to have this
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: on tape. Of course.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: But they didn't. And that creates a terrifying question. How
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: does someone violently ambush a homeowner inside a house that
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: is explicitly designed to watch everyone?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Right. Like, was Jareen watching someone she shouldn't have been?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Or was a predator watching her, you know, learning the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: blind spots of her fortress?
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: It's a chilling thought.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So let's follow Detective Shaw as he arrives on the scene,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: because the reality of what he walks into is just,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: it's jarring. It's just before 7 p.m. The street is
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: pitch black. illuminated only by the sweeping red lights of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a fire truck.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Because the initial 911 callers hadn't reported a murder or
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: an assault, right?
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly. They'd reported a residential fire. They didn't even know
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: exactly which house the smoke was billowing from at first. Wow. Yeah,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the Yakima Fire Department had to respond to the general vicinity,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: trace the smoke to Jareen's roof, and force entry through
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the front door just to combat the flames.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: And so when Detective Shaw finally walks through that broken doorway,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, the air is thick and the walls are
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: completely blackened with sticky soot.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Just a Horovic scene.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: He braces himself, scanning the rooms. He walks straight down
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: the central hallway and that's where he finds her.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And it's bad.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly bad. She was lying on the floor of
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: the hallway right outside a bathroom. Her cat was actually
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: just inside the bathroom door, having already succumbed to the smoke.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's so sad.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. and the state of Jareen's body was horrifying. Her
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: throat had been deeply slashed, and she was lying twisted
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: on her back.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: But the thing that really stands out to me here,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the part that's just insane, is the restraints.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Right, the duct tape.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, her wrists were bound tightly behind her back, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: her ankles were taped together. But this wasn't like a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: quick zip tie situation. The attacker used an entire roll
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: of duct tape.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: An entire roll?
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Literally the whole thing. I mean, Let's just think about
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the sheer mechanics of that for a second. A standard
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: roll of duct tape has about 60 yards of material.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: That is a lot of tape.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: It's massive. To empty a roll on one victim means
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: that you are lifting their limbs, wrapping, pulling, tearing, and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: repeating that motion dozens of times. It takes minutes of
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: continuous physical exertion. Right.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: And that level of overkill completely changes the psychological profile
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: of the crime.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Because if this was a standard robbery, why do that?
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Right. If an intruder is simply there to commit a robbery,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: speed is their primary survival tool. A smash and grab
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: takes seconds. Taking five to ten minutes to methodically mummify
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: a 62-year-old woman's limbs with 60 yards of adhesive tape
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: requires physical proximity, dominance, and intense malice.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: It feels deeply personal.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Very personal. Or it speaks to a profound paranoia or
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: a need for absolute control over the victim.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: But wait, I have a question about this. If the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: house was filling with extreme heat and smoke and soot
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: from a fire, how does any physical evidence on that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: tape survive? I mean, we always hear that fire destroys
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: crime scenes.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: That is the ironic part about the attacker's overkill with
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: the duct tape.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Fire does destroy a massive amount of forensic evidence.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: But because the attacker used so many thick, overlapping layers
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: of heavy-duty tape, the adhesive actually sealed itself.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Wait, it protected the evidence? Yes.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: The outer layers melted and blackened, but the inner layers
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: closest to Jareen's skin acted as an airtight protective barrier
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: for whatever biological material was trapped underneath.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Wow. So they inadvertently preserved their own forensic downfall. Exactly.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: But before the forensics could even be processed, the investigators
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: had to establish a timeline. And the cruelest part of
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: this entire tragedy is the sequence of events.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the timeline's just heartbreaking. Her security alarm triggered first
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: at 3.09 p.m. Okay. Then it went off a second
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: time at 5.12 p.m.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: That is a huge gap.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Two hours.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: That's two hours.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And the reason for that gap is a fatal mechanical
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: flaw in the alarm protocol of the time.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Well, the Yakima police policy stated that dispatch would not
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: send officers to an automated alarm unless the homeowner... answered
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a phone call from the security company, and verbally confirmed
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: they were in danger.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Are you kidding me?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, that is baffling, right? It's like having
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: a smoke detector that only calls the fire department if
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: you politely ask it to.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: That completely defeats the purpose of an emergency response system.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Right. Jareen couldn't answer the phone because she was bound
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: on the floor with her throat slashed.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: It's something anyone with a modern ring camera or, you know,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: a smart alarm needs to really think about today.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: We assume these systems are proactive bodyguards, but mechanically, they
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: are often just passive observers reliant on a human failsafe.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Because of that policy, Doreen was trapped inside that house
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: with her attacker for over two agonizing hours before the
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: fire department was finally called by a neighbor at 5.35 p.m.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Two agonizing hours. And in that time, the attacker lit
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: a fire in a spare room opposite the laundry room.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: They likely used an accelerant like gasoline. It was a clear,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: methodical arson attempt designed to erase the crime scene and
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: destroy Jareen's body.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: But setting the fire was only half of their cover-up.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Right, because as police are navigating this soot-stained house, they
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: notice Jareen's pickup truck is missing from the driveway. But
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: more importantly, her literal command center has been gutted.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she had a dedicated room with a bank of
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: big-screen TVs mounted on the wall. These monitors were directly
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: linked to all the exterior cameras.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: And they were just gone.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: The monitors were ripped off the wall. But the critical
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: piece of the puzzle is that the actual hard drives
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: linked to the security system were meticulously extracted and stolen.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: See, taking a hard drive isn't a panic response. If
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: an intruder panics because they see a camera, they smash
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the camera with a baseball bat. Exactly.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Smashing a lens is an emotional, fear-driven reaction. Tracing the
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: BNC cables from the exterior cameras, through the walls, down
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: into a centralized DVR box, and physically removing the storage
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: drives requires a clinical, premeditated understanding of surveillance networks.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: They didn't just poke the security system's eyes out. They
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: performed a precise lobotomy on it. They took this glowing
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: surveillance fortress and plunged it into total irrecoverable darkness.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: So since the digital eyes inside the house were stolen...
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Investigators had to rely on the human eyes of the neighborhood.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: It's just after 5 p.m. in December. It's dark. It's freezing.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: But it's prime time for people coming home from work.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And first responders had run over something incredibly bizarre right
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the street on Greenway Avenue.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Lying flat on the freezing asphalt were three Afghan-style
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: blankets stacked neatly on top of each other.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: In the middle of the street?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Right in the middle of the street. And Jareen's family
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: later confirmed these blankets belonged to her. They had been
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: taken from inside the house. Okay. And they were covered
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: in vomit.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Which is just, the logistics of this are baffling. Like,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: were the blankets used as a makeshift sled? to drag
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the stolen heavy TVs and hard drives out to a
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: waiting car?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: That's one theory.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Or did the attacker experience vasovagal syncope? You know, that
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: sudden drop in heart rate and blood pressure caused by
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: extreme stress. And they vomited on their way out.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: It's definitely possible.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Or even worse. Did Jareen herself vomit in pure terror
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: before she was moved to the hallway? It's so disturbing.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And the physical evidence couldn't answer that definitively. But the
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: human element offered some pretty startling clues.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Well, a neighbor named Denise Lynn Mendez, who was actually
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: the same woman who eventually called 911 about the smoke,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: she reported a highly unusual sighting around the time the
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: fire started. Okay. She saw a young man, maybe 18
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: or 19 years old, standing under a streetlight on Crusher Avenue.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: That is less than a five-minute drive from Jareen's house.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And here is the physiological detail that makes this sighting
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: so important to you as a listener. It is in
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the 20s outside. Yet, this young man is sweating profusely,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and he is wearing absolutely no winter coat.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Denise also saw a second man running up to this sweating,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: coatless teenager, screaming at him, keep running.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, Think about the biology of the fight or
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: flight response. When the human body is flooded with massive
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: amounts of adrenaline from sheer panic, it shunts blood to
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the major muscle groups for survival. Right. It generates immense
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: internal heat. To be sweating heavily in freezing temperatures without
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a coat means you aren't just out for an evening jog.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: You have experienced massive, terrifying physical exertion.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: They were terrified.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: These men were fleeing for their lives.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And Denise wasn't the only one who saw something. Another neighbor,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Krista Huyet, noticed an older green or teal Pontiac Grand
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Prix parked directly in front of Dreen's house earlier that day,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: right before 11 a.m.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, a teal car.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: She saw a similar teal car there again around 4.30 p.m.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: And crucially, she watched it speed off around 5 p.m.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly a half hour before the fire department arrived,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: perfectly aligning with the two-hour gap of the alarm system. Exactly.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: But Detective Shaw knows that eyewitness testimony is inherently flawed, right?
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Adrenaline distorts memory, streetlights alter the color of cars, and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: people often retroactively fit innocent details into a sinister narrative.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, memories are tricky.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: A vague description of a sweating kid in a teal
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: car isn't enough to arrest anyone. Shaw needed physical, undeniable proof.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: And he found his starting point by analyzing Jareen's injuries.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Beyond the fatal slashing and the smoke inhalation, Jareen had
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: suffered a severely brutal targeted beating specifically to her face. Oh, God.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: From an investigative standpoint, this didn't look like random chaotic anger.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: It looked purposeful. It looked like an interrogation.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Because you don't torture a 62-year-old woman's face to get
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: her to hand over a television. You torture her to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: extract information she has memorized.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Like her banking PIN numbers.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Recognizing this, Shaw immediately rushes to Jareen's primary bank. He
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: sits down with the branch manager, explains there has been
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: a homicide, and states his theory that the victim's account
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: is currently being drained. Right. Now, banking privacy laws are
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: incredibly strict. The manager is sympathetic, but his hands are
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: legally tied. He tells Shaw, I can't give you any
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: account activity without a signed warrant.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Which is standard. But the manager wants to help. So
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: he walks to the back office, checks the computer system,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: walks back out to the lobby, looks Detective Shaw dead
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: in the eye and says, if I were you, I'd
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: get a search warrant.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: That subtle confirmation is just, it gave Shaw chills.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, I bet.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: He raced back to the police precinct, walked into the bullpen,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: told his sergeant, we got him, and began frantically typing
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: up the legal affidavit to secure those banking records.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And when they finally secure that ATM footage from Wheatland
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Bank downtown, it is unbelievable. Absolutely chilling. It confirms everything
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Shaw suspected.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: While the fire department was breaking down Doreen's door and
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: discovering her body, her killer was standing at an ATM
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: across town, draining her life savings.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: The security footage shows this solitary figure stepping up to
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: the machine. They are wrapped in a heavy hooded winter
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: coat with a thick balaclava pulled up over their face
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: and black-rimmed glasses covering their eyes.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: So you can't see anything.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Not a single inch of skin is visible. And in
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: the most haunting moment of the footage, this heavily masked
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: figure turns and stares fixatedly directly into the camera lens.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: It's an act of supreme arrogance. They know they're being watched,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: but they have meticulously concealed themselves so completely that they
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: just don't care.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: They really don't.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: And the total amount of money this person walked away with?
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Less than $ 1, 000.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: It forces you to confront the grim mathematics of this crime.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Less than $ 1, 000. That is the price tag they placed
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: on Jareen Mata's life.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: It's sickening.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: But from an evidentiary standpoint, the ATM footage is a
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: complete dead end.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Because of the clothes.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Because of the thermal layers, the balaclava, and the glasses,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: you can't determine the suspect's age, you can't determine their sex,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: and you can't determine their skin tone. The camera captured
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: everything and revealed absolutely nothing.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So the digital trail went cold. But the very next morning,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the physical trail provided a massive break in the case.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: A patrol officer is driving through a local community college
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: parking lot and spots an abandoned pickup truck. She runs
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the license plate, and it pings as a match. It's
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Jareen's stolen truck, dumped just four or five blocks away
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: from the soot-blackened house.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Finding the truck was important, but the location
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: where it was dumped was explosive. Why? Because just 60
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: feet away from the bumper of that stolen truck was
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: the front door of an apartment belonging to a man
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: named Lloyd Calvert.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And Lloyd Calvert was not an upstanding citizen. He was
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: incredibly well known to the local police, posting a rap
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: sheet with 35 prior arrests.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: 35 arrests? Yeah. That's insane.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So Detective Shaw knocks on his door and confronts him. Initially,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Lloyd plays the classic game of ignorance, right? He claims
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: he hasn't seen anything, hasn't heard anything, knows nothing about
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: a murder or a truck. Sure.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Playing dumb. But Shaw doesn't let up. He returns a
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: few days later, gets right in Lloyd's space, and essentially says,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the murder victim's truck is 20 yards from your living
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: room window. Do not insult my intelligence by telling me
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: this is a coincidence.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: And the pressure works. Lloyd finally cracks and offers a
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: highly specific narrative. He claims that on Saturday evening, the
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: exact night of the murder, two men came pounding on
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: his apartment door unannounced.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Who were they?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Well, these weren't random acquaintances. Lloyd identified them as two well-known,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: high-profile property thieves and drug addicts in the area.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: According to Lloyd, these two men were acting incredibly erratic
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: and frantic. They claimed they were on foot, which immediately
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: raised a red flag for Lloyd because these were the
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: type of habitual car thieves who would steal a vehicle
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: just to drive to the end of the block.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: They begged Lloyd to give them a ride across town
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: to the north side of the city.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: So Lloyd thought the whole interaction was deeply suspicious, but
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: he agreed to drive them anyway. And here is the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: detail that locks the trap. Lloyd tells Detective Shaw that
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: when he walked out to his car with these two
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: frantic men, Jareen's stolen truck was not in the parking lot.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Let me guess.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: When he returned an hour later from dropping them off,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the stolen truck was sitting right there.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: It creates a perfectly wrapped circumstantial narrative. You have Lloyd,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: a career criminal, living 60 feet from the dumped evidence.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: You have two prolific property thieves, desperate and panicked, fleeing
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: the area on the exact night of a robbery homicide. Right.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: It all fits perfectly.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Detective Shaw was convinced he was looking at his three
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: prime suspects.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: But securing DNA from transient criminals is notoriously difficult, as
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: they spend their entire lives evading the system. Obviously. But
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the police managed to surreptitiously collect DNA samples from both thieves,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: as well as a voluntary sample from Lloyd. They boxed
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: up these swabs, along with the Afghan blankets, a screwdriver
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: found inside the stolen truck, and those crucial inner layers
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of duct tape from Jareen's body, and shipped them off
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: to the state crime lab.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, the agonizing wait begins. It took
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: until the late summer of 2014 for the forensic analysis
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: to finally come back.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's a long wait.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And when Detective Shaw finally opens that report, it
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: shatters the entire circumstantial case into a million pieces.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the first wave of results is disappointing, but
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: not entirely surprising. The vomit on the blankets and the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: swabbing from the truck's steering wheel yielded no usable genetic material.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Which happens. Yeah.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: But the screwdriver found in the truck did yield a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: DNA profile. It belonged to Doreen's son, Chris.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Which is a detail that always raises eyebrows in a
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: homicide investigation, right? It's always the family.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Usually, yes. But investigators quickly and definitively cleared him. He
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: was a frequent visitor to his mother's house, which explained
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the screwdriver. And he possessed an ironclad alibi for the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: night of the murder.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, so he's out.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Furthermore, financial and behavioral analysis showed that his mother's death
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: did not benefit him in any way. His life spiraled
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: into deep devastation following her murder.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: So the sun is definitively cleared. Lloyd and the two
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: thieves are the prime targets left. Right. We come to
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: the final pieces of biological evidence, the duct tape and
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: the scrapings taken from deep under Doreen's left fingernails. Shaw
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: always believed that before she was bound, Doreen fought back
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: fiercely against her attacker.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense given who she was.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: And the lab confirmed it. Underneath her fingernails, the friction
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: of her scratching had collected a wealth of epithelial skin cells.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: They extracted a pristine, CODIS-worthy DNA profile. Now, CODIS is
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: the Combined DNA Index System, the national database managed by
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: the FBI. A worthy profile means the lab didn't just
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: find a degraded partial fragment.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: It's a full match. Yes.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: They found enough distinct genetic markers to guarantee a definitive
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: mathematical match to a single human being.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on. You're telling me they pulled a
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: perfect profile from a woman who fought for her life
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: against what we assume is a male intruder?
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: No. The DNA pulled from under her fingernails belonged to
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: a female. Wait, really?
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: A female suspect? That completely breaks the mold of this
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: crime scene.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: It totally does.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Everything about this attack, the intense physical domination required to
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: empty a roll of duct tape, the vicious facial beating,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the targeted extraction of the hard drives, it all points
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: heavily toward a specific type of male offender in traditional
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: criminal profiling.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it gets even more complicated. While the fingernail scrapings
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: yielded female DNA, the skin cells recovered from the adhesive
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: side of the duct tape binding her wrists yielded a distinct,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: separate male DNA profile.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me guess the final twist of the knife here.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: When they ran those two pristine profiles against the DNA
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: they collected from Lloyd and the two transient thieves.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Zero matches. None of the three prime suspects had ever
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: touched Doreen Matta or that duct tape.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: The hard science pointed away from the known suspects... and
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: directly toward a phantom man and woman.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Wow. It's a terrifying reminder of the absolute limits of
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: our own intuition and circumstantial evidence.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Seriously.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Eyewitnesses saw a panicked, sweaty man on the street, a
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: teal car sped away. The victim's truck was dumped 60
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: feet from a known criminal's door. The narrative made perfect
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: logical sense to everyone involved.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: It really did.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: But the forensic science didn't care about the narrative. The
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: science proved them all wrong.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And as baffling as the forensics are, they pale in
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: comparison to the tragic medical reality of what actually ended
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Jareen's life.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this part is hard to hear. Because despite the
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: brutal interrogation beating to her face, despite having her throat
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: slashed with a blade, despite being methodically bound hand and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: foot with 60 yards of tape, none of those horrific
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: injuries are what killed Jareen.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: No.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: No.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: The medical examiner determined her cause of death was smoke inhalation.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: She was alive while her home burned around her. She
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: was conscious, bound on the hallway floor, breathing in toxic
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: soot as her sanctuary filled with fire.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: That is just unimaginable.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: And all the while, her state-of-the-art security alarm was silently
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: counting down a two-hour administrative delay, waiting for a confirmation
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: call she was physically incapable of making.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Today, Detective Shaw still operates under the theory that the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: motive was financial. He doesn't believe this was a targeted
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: assassination by an angry neighbor tired of being yelled at
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: over parking spaces.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: No, it was a robbery.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: He believes it was a robbery gone horribly wrong, perpetrated
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: by a desperate man and woman looking for a quick
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: payout who realized too late what they had unleashed.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: OK, so where does the case stand now?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: The case is technically classified as inactive right now, pending
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: new leads. but Shaw has publicly promised that he will
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: not stop working those files until the day he retires.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: You know, it forces us to confront a deeply unsettling
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: reality about the way we live. Jareen Mata spent years
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: building a literal fortress.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: A fortress that failed her.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: She covered her property in high-definition cameras, built a centralized
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: command center to monitor every angle, and wired her doors
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: with automated alarms specifically to keep the dangers of the
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: world out.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: But in the end, Her cameras were stolen, her alarm
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: protocol fundamentally failed her, and her intense isolation made her
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: an invisible target.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Did those fortified walls actually keep her safe? Or did
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: they only serve to trap her inside with her killers
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: when she needed help the most?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: That's a scary thought.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: It makes you wonder if our modern obsession with extreme
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: security is actually providing safety or just the illusion of it.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And the most haunting part of this entire tragedy Somewhere
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: out there, the DNA of a killer and his female
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: accomplice is just sitting inside the CODIS database, quietly waiting
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: for them to make one single mistake.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Just waiting.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Some puzzles are still out there, just waiting for their
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: missing piece. Keep your eyes open.