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Son Murders His Own Mom by Brutally Slashing Her Throat to Get Early Inheritance · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to imagine pulling off the perfect
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: crime in the 21st century. Like, what would that actually take?
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, man. I mean, you'd need zero witnesses.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. No witnesses. And you'd need like an airtight alibi
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: placing you thousands of miles away.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Right. And a motive that is just completely hidden from everyone. Yeah.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. We're going to see today that
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in the modern era, the physical evidence, well, it might
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: actually be totally secondary to your digital footprint. Like, you
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: can wear all the gloves you want. But if you
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: have a smartphone in your pocket, you're leaving a trail.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We constantly see this cognitive dissonance in modern crime.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Like a perpetrator will spend literally months obsessing over the
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: physical mechanics of a murderer, you know, wiping down doorknobs,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: paying in cash.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Right. The analog stuff.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The analog stuff. While remaining completely oblivious to the
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: massive digital exhaust they are pumping out every single second.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, they treat their smartphone like it's just an
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: inert piece of plastic rather than a highly advanced radio
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: transmitter that's constantly logging where it is in the world.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It's wild. So welcome to today's deep dive. We are
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: unpacking a really chilling true crime investigation based on a
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Law and Crime Network documentary transcript.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: And this one is just, it's a masterclass in how
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: not to get away with murder.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It really is. Our mission today is to explore how
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: a meticulously planned cross-country murder unraveled entirely through cell towers,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: automated license plate readers, and honestly, a killer's own staggering hubris.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: The contrast between the careful analog planning and the spectacular
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: digital failure is just, it's what makes this whole investigation
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: so compelling to look at.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: For sure. So to get into the mechanics of how
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: he was caught, we have to establish the victim and
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the setup. We're looking at Asina Valentini. She's this hardworking
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: immigrant originally from Romania who lived in Hungary before coming
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: to the U.S.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Right, and she's living in this quiet coastal town of
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Grover Beach, California.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's a registered nurse working at the California
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Men's Colony, which is a state prison. By all accounts
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: from her friends and neighbors, she's just vibrant, deeply hardworking,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and sacrificed everything for her family.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this. We have to start with the
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: welfare check on the morning of October 25th, 2018.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Right. So just before noon, the Grover Beach police get
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: a call requesting a welfare check. The caller is an
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: officer from the prison where Athena works.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Because she missed her shift.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. She was scheduled for a 7.30 a.m. shift
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and she just never arrived. And for someone working in
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: a correctional facility, I mean, missing a shift without a
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: phone call triggers an immediate institutional response.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: I'd imagine the protocols are super strict for that kind
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: of job.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, incredibly rigid. The risk factors inherent to working in
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a prison are so high, so a missing employee is
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: basically always treated as a potential crisis right out of
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the gate.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: So the prison sends two peace officers in an unmarked
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: vehicle down to her apartment on South 9th Street. They
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: also request a local police unit to meet them there.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: And.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Honestly, before they even knock on the door, the physical
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: environment is already signaling that something is just fundamentally wrong.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the neighbors immediately point out all these weird anomalies
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: in Athena's established routine.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Establishing a baseline is like the very first step in
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: any investigation. And Athena's baseline involved this 10-year-old beagle that
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: she just absolutely adored. Right. Every single morning when she
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: left for her shift, She would put the dog out
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: on this enclosed front patio and she'd secure the little
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: gate with a padlock. But on this morning, the padlock
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: is missing entirely. The gate is unlatched and the patio
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: is completely empty. No dog.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: And the neighbor also notices her car, right? Because Athena
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: typically parked inside his garage overnight, but she'd move the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: car out into the driveway during the day.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but this morning her car is still locked inside
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: the garage, so her entire routine is just fractured. You
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: have a missing padlock, an absent dog, a hidden car,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: and a highly reliable woman who has vanished from a
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: very secure job.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Which gives the police a pretty solid reason to go
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: inside without waiting for a warrant.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Those factors combined elevate the situation from a standard
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: wellness check to what we call exigent circumstances. I mean,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: under the Fourth Amendment, police generally need a warrant to
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: enter a private residence.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Right, but if they think someone is dying.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exigent circumstances provide an exception... when there is a
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: reasonable belief that someone inside is in immediate danger or
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: needs emergency aid. The preservation of life always supersedes the
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: warrant requirement in that specific moment.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So they test the front door and it's unlocked. They
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: announce themselves. They step inside and the transcript notes that
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the smell of blood is just immediate.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: It's horrific. They find Athena in her upstairs bedroom and
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: the violence of the scene is extreme. She's lying in
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: this prone, semi-fetal position on the floor surrounded by just
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: a massive amount of blood.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: And the initial assessment shows severe sharp force trauma, like
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: brutal slash wounds to her throat and upper extremities.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: The coroner later determined that the attack likely initiated from
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: behind while she was on the bed and then culminated
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: on the floor. I mean, the sheer volume of blood
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: makes it definitively clear that.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: This is a homicide. But the physical evidence in the
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: room introduces this massive psychological contradiction. And this is the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: part that really got me. Scattered everywhere around her body,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: literally in the blood, are pills. Yeah. Just handfuls of
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: medication spread across the floor. And, I mean, if a
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: victim has suffered catastrophic sharp force trauma to the neck,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: like her throat is slashed, scattering pills makes zero logical sense.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Why are there pills everywhere? Was this some clumsy attempt
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: at staging a suicide scene by someone who was just panicking?
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how staging a crime scene often
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: completely exposes the perpetrator's lack of forensic sophistication.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Staging is essentially a physical manifestation of a lie. The
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: killer is trying to construct a narrative for the police.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: In this case, trying to suggest an overdose or a suicide.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: But under the intense physiological stress of committing a murder,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: your cognitive bandwidth narrows significantly.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Right. They panic and just throw out a bunch of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: fake clues without thinking about how they actually interact with reality.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They fall back on these rudimentary, almost TV show
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: tropes of what a death scene should look like. They think, well,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: suicide involves pills, so they scatter pills.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Well, totally ignoring the massive slash wounds.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Right. They fail to recognize that the primary cause of death,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: which is a brutally severed airway, Completely obliterates that secondary
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: narrative they were trying to sell. You cannot physically inflict
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: those specific injuries upon yourself after an overdose.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: It's so sloppy. It just highlights this profound disconnect between
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the violence they just committed and the story they want
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to project.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: And the wider crime scene tightens that profile even further
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: because there is no forced entry. The house isn't ransacked.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Athena's purse, her valuables. They're completely untouched.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Which immediately rules out a random burglary gone wrong.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: And then there is the missing beagle. This was a
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: protective 10-year-old dog that neighbors said was deeply suspicious of strangers.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if a random intruder breaks in and brutally murders
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the owner, a dog like that is going to mark, bite,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: or cower under a bed. It definitely doesn't quietly leave
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the premises with a blood-covered attacker.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: The dog's absence strongly suggests a pre-existing relationship. The animal
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: felt comfortable enough with the perpetrator to either be leashed
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: and led away or to simply just follow them out
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: the door.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Wow. So that instantly shrinks the suspect pool from literally
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: anyone in Grover Beach to someone intimately familiar with the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: household dynamics and the dog.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: And an observant HOA president and a next-door neighbor provide
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: the next critical data point. The neighbor recalls that on
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: October 23rd, which is two days before the body was found,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: she heard Athena speaking Hungarian inside her home.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Right, because Athena was originally from Romania and lived in Hungary.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the neighbor assumed Athena was speaking to her son, Levante,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: either on the phone or in person because he is
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: basically the only person she communicates with in that specific language.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: The introduction of a rare language into the timeline gives
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: investigators this really specific auditory anchor. But honestly, the police
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: couldn't narrow their focus to the family right away because
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the victim is a nurse at a state prison.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: That's an inherently dangerous environment. So the most obvious variable
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: is her proximity to convicted felons.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Standard investigative procedure dictates that you have to exhaust the
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: most statistically probable threat first. So they interview Cheryl Mankey,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: who is a fellow nurse and a close friend of Athena's.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: And she is absolutely distraught.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And Cheryl immediately hypothesizes that an inmate is responsible,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: which is a completely logical deduction for a civilian to make,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: given the brutality of the crime and where Athena worked.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Her friends describe her as this powerhouse. Like Shelby Holmes,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: another friend, talks about how much she loved to dance,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: her high energy, her massive personality. The idea that someone
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: from her workplace held a grudge and followed her home,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems totally plausible to them.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: But when investigators pull the prison incident reports, look for threats,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: search for paroled inmates in the area, I mean, the
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: well is completely dry.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Zero leads.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: None. The prison angle yields absolutely no actionable intelligence. So
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: investigators pizit to establishing a definitive timeline of her last
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: known movements.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And they find a receipt, right?
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They locate a receipt on her dining room table
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: from a local UPS store, timestamped the afternoon of October 24th.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: They go get the surveillance footage from that business, and
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: there she is. She's alone, conducting business, showing zero signs
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: of distress.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: So that footage basically locks in the timeline. She was
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: alive on the afternoon of the 24th. And with the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: prison theory discarded, the focus naturally shifts back to her
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: only immediate family in the United States, her 26-year-old son,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Levante Lazar.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: And looking at Levante requires a look at how Athena
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: ended up in California in the first place, because her
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: backstory is really rooted in immense sacrifice.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in the 1990s, she was living in Hungary with
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: her husband and young son. But in 1995, her husband
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: suffered a massive fatal heart attack in the middle of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the night.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: And at that time, The legal framework surrounding custody in
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: that specific region heavily favored keeping the child within the
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: paternal family structure.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: So she was absolutely terrified that the local courts were
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: going to grant custody of Lavande to her in-laws. So
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: in 1997, she just packs up her life, flees the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: country with her son and immigrates to Los Angeles to
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: start completely over.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: She navigates a new legal system, learns the language, earns
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: all her nursing credentials and actually builds real wealth. She
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: buys properties, sets up a trust. Literally everything she did
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: was designed to build this fortress of stability around this boy.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Which just frames the subsequent interaction with law enforcement in
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a deeply, deeply disturbing light. Because Levante is now 26.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: He's a graduate student living 2,000 miles away in Bloomington, Indiana.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Say Grover Beach detectives reach out to the Bloomington Police
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Department and request that they conduct an in-person death notification
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: at his apartment.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And the body cam footage of this encounter, it is chilling.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Levante shares the apartment with his girlfriend, Hannah, who is
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: a medical student. The Indiana officer knocks. Levante opens the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: door and the officer delivers the news. He says the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: DA's office in California called and his mother has passed away.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Now, a standard physiological response to sudden traumatic news about
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: a parent involves an immediate loss of physical control. Your
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: nervous system just floods with adrenaline and cortisol. Right.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Like knees buckling, crying.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The breathing rate skyrockets. There's often immediate denial or weeping.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: It is a visceral, involuntary physical reaction.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: But Levante just gives the officer this completely blank stare.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Like he literally says, OK, what happened? And then he
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: actually thanks the officer for making the, quote, house call. Yeah.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's delivered with the emotional weight of someone
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: confirming a dental appointment. It's like watching a terrible actor
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: reading lines off a cue card. How does a son
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: who claims to have a tight bond with his mother
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: react so clinically to her sudden death?
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Well, you have to distinguish between clinical shock and psychological control.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Because in genuine shock, the brain is struggling to process
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: the information, but there is still underlying distress.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: What we see in Levante's footage is a complete absence
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: of distress. In behavioral analysis, investigators look for what they
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: call leakage.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Leakage.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, leakage is when a suspect is trying so fiercely
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: to control their outward presentation that their true underlying emotional
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: state bleeds through in inappropriate ways.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So his attempt to look super calm and collected just
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: makes him look completely psychopathic.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And he even volunteers an alibi before the officer
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: even asks a single question. He casually mentions he hasn't
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: seen his mother since January. He states he tried to
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: call her a few days prior. found her voicemail full,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: and just assumed her phone was broken.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Just casually laying the groundwork.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Right. He is proactively building a narrative of distance and
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: technological failure to explain away his lack of recent contact.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And then, literally minutes after the Indiana officer leaves, Levante
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: calls Detective Casey Neal back in California. And Detective Neal
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: observes the exact same void of emotion on the phone.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Levante just wants to discuss logistics.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, logistics. And he reiterates that he's firmly planted in
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the Midwest. He totally believes he is steering the investigation
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: away from himself with this phone call.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: But while he is managing this whole performance over the phone,
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: the digital forensics team in California is already dismantling his timeline.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: The investigation shifts from the physical crime scene to the
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: invisible digital infrastructure surrounding it.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting. Because modern tech
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: completely dismantles traditional alibis. So the HOA president we mentioned
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: earlier had noted that the complex's surveillance camera was motion activated.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Right, which is crucial because it only records when the
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: sensor detects physical movement, massively reducing the amount of footage
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: investigators have to review. So they pulled the logs for
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: the night of October 24th.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: And at 11.00 p.m., the sensor triggers. The camera captures
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: a figure walking northbound on the sidewalk along 9th Street,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: heading away from Athena's apartment. And trotting happily alongside this figure...
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: completely off-leash, is Athena's missing beagle.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: This visual confirms the early theory that the dog trusted
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: the suspect. So detectives map the likely walking route and
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: begin pulling camera footage from surrounding businesses along that path.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: In three blocks north, there's a 24-hour surveillance system at
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the Exploration Discovery Center. It catches the exact same figure
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: and the dog passing by.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Investigative momentum relies on extrapolating data backwards and forwards. If
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: you have the exit on camera, you naturally look for
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: the arrival. So they rewind that Discovery Center footage to
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: earlier that same evening.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: And at 6.30 p.m., the camera catches a figure matching
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the same physical description walking toward Athena's house. And crucially,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: this person has a cell phone pressed to their ear.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: That specific visual detail, the active phone call at 6.30 p.m.,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: provides a direct bridge between the physical suspect and the
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: digital realm. Detectives immediately subpoena Athena's call detail records for
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that specific day.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: They scan her call log. And amidst all her normal contacts,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: this new number appears repeatedly. It's a 513 area code,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: originating from Ohio. She had literally never communicated with this
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: number before October 24th.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: And the train stamps of those calls align perfectly with
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: the 6.30 p.m. footage of the suspect walking toward her home.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: It's a phone trap. They execute a search warrant for
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the subscriber information on that 513 number, serving it to
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the carrier, which is Cricket Wireless.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: And the return reveals it is a prepaid device, commonly
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: referred to as a burner phone.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: The subscriber is listed as Jacob Keith with a P.O.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: box in Cincinnati. Both are completely fabricated.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: But the fake name on the account is irrelevant, right?
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Because the carrier possesses the underlying network data.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If we connect this to the bigger picture, the
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: concept of a burner phone is a relic of the
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: analog era that criminals mistakenly believe applies to modern cellular networks.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Like to watch too much The Wire.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Right. You can pay cash and use a fake name,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: but the moment you power that device on, it begins
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: negotiating with local cell towers. It continuously broadcasts its unique identifier,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: its IMEI and MSI numbers to the network just to
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: route potential calls.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And the carrier logs all of that.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: The carrier logs every single one of those handshakes, storing
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: the latitude, longitude, and azimuth of the specific tower sector
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: the phone communicated with.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So Cricket Wireless hands over a spreadsheet containing every location
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: that burner phone pinged. And the very first line of
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: that spreadsheet basically destroys Levante's entire narrative.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Because the phone was activated in Bloomington, Indiana.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Less than a mile from his apartment.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Detectives contact the Best Buy in Bloomington that's located within
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: that initial cell sector. They review the store's surveillance footage
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: and boom, there is Levante Lazar physically purchasing the device
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: at the register.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: The cashier even recalled him specifically asking for a burner phone.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you buy a burner phone to hide
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: your identity, but you leave it on while driving across
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the country with your actual cell phone, they're basically traveling
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: together in a digital sidecar.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: This introduces the concept of co-location data. Think of it
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: like two people walking through a pitch black forest, and
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: each is carrying a flashlight with a distinct color.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Even if you can't see the people, if you watch
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: a red beam and a blue beam moving in perfect
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: unison through the trees for miles... you know those two
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: individuals are traveling together.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: And the detectives don't just have the purchase. They have
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the entire road trip. The spreadsheet maps the burner phone
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: leaving Indiana, shutting down temporarily, powering back up in Oklahoma City,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: and then pinging this breadcrumb trail of towers straight down
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Interstate 40 all the way into California, arriving in Groover
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Beach on the afternoon of October 24th.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: And when the suspect is caught on camera leaving the
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: apartment at 1100 p.m., The burner phone pings a tower
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: indicating it is leaving Grover Beach.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: And Athena's actual cell phone, which the killer obviously stole,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: pings the exact same tower. The two phones travel in
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: lockstep eastward. The final ping from Athena's device registers at 11.004 p.m.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: before it's presumably destroyed or tossed out the window. So
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the cell data proves the device made the journey, but
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: detectives still need to put Levanto in the physical vehicle
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: making that drive. And this is accomplished through ALPRs, which
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: are automated license plate readers.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Which are everywhere now. You probably drive past a dozen
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: of these on your commute without even noticing. They look
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: like small infrared traffic cameras mounted on overpasses, toll booths,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: and even police cruisers. But they aren't checking your speed.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: No, they utilize optical character recognition software to photograph every
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: single license plate that passes. They instantly log the alphanumeric characters,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the time, and the precise GPS coordinates into a massive
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: searchable database. It operates continuously, capturing millions of data points
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: every single day.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: During the initial death notification, the Indiana officer noted that
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Levante drove a white 2013 Jeep Patriot. So Detective Neal
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: queries that plate in the national ALPR database. And the
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: system returns multiple high resolution images of Levante's specific Jeep,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: which is easily identifiable by a unique aftermarket sticker on
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: the back window. traveling through Texas and Arizona on the
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: exact dates that align with the burner phone's cellular trail.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So before Detective Neal even boards a plane to Indiana,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: he has constructed an inescapable trap. He has the best
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: buy purchase video, the cross-country cell tower mapping, the co-location
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of the victim's phone, the ALPR photographs of the suspect's vehicle,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and the localized surveillance footage in Grover Beach.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Detective Neal flies to Indiana unannounced. He calls Levante from
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: the ground, and Levante, just displaying incredible arrogance... willingly drives
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: down to the police station for an interview.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: While a secondary team simultaneously executes a search warrant on
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: his apartment.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: And the interrogation that follows is an absolute masterclass in
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: psychological warfare.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: It really is. I mean, the dynamic in that interrogation
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: room is totally defined by Levante's pathological need to establish dominance.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: When Neil reads him his Miranda rights, which, by the way,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: is a universal indicator that you are the primary target
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: of a criminal investigation. Levante just dismisses the severity of it.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: He immediately launches into a protracted recitation of his resume.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he spends several minutes detailing his academic history. He
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: talks about attending Berkeley, transferring to UC Davis, studying linguistics
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and history.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: He brags about securing grants and teaching courses to inmates
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: at a women's prison in Indiana.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: He is desperately trying to establish a hierarchy where he
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: is the intellectual superior in the room.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: He is attempting to control the frame. He wants Neal
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: to view him as a peer, not a suspect. He
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: details a three-, five-, seven-, and ten-year plan. He claims
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: to be the sophisticated retail investor, a day trader dealing
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: in complex financial instruments like options and futures.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And Detective Neal does something brilliant here. He doesn't interrupt him.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: He just lets Levante build this massive, intricate facade. He
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: lets him lock himself into a rigid timeline of lies
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: before introducing a single piece of evidence.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: The strategy is to close off every possible avenue of retreat.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: So Neal casually mentions that he pulled some preliminary phone records,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: and it looks like Levante's personal phone pinged in Springfield, Missouri,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: on October 23rd.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And Levante aggressively denies it. He claims he drove to
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Mount Vernon, Illinois, but hasn't been to Missouri in months.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: He commits fully to the lie.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Neal pushes slightly harder. He suggests the phone data shows
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Levante in Texas on the 25th.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Levante scoffs and states definitively the last time he was
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: in Texas was in 2015.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Neil is systematically forcing Levante to explicitly state on camera
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: that he never left the Midwest.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Once Levante is thoroughly boxed in, Neil brings out the sledgehammer.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: He pulls out the map of the burner phone starting
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: from Cincinnati. He explains that the 513 number and Levante's
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: personal phone travel side by side all the way to
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Athena's house.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: The physical reaction to the collapse of a fabricated reality
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: is profound. Levante begins to stammer. He falls back on
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: absolute denial, just promising he wasn't in California.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: So Neil drops the ALPR data. He explains that there
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: are literal photographs of Levante's specific Jeep crossing state lines.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: When Levante still denies it, Neil brings up the local
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: surveillance cameras in Grover Beach.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Neil stops asking if Levante was there and transitions to
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: asking why he was there. He says, I know you
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: went to the house. Help me understand why you did
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: this to your mom.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Now, a standard suspect confronted with this mountain of empirical
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: data will typically invoke their right to counsel or just
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: shut down completely.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: But Levante's narcissism traps him. He cannot accept that he
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: has been outsmarted by a local detective. He feels compelled
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: to invent a new alternative explanation that incorporates all the
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: undeniable evidence, but still exonerates him of the actual murder.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: So he completely abandons the I never left Indiana defense
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: and pivots to what has to be the most absurd
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: alibi in the history of true crime. He looks at
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Detective Neal and admits he drove to Los Angeles, but
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: he claims he drove there to buy medical marijuana.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: We really need to analyze the sheer logistical impossibility of
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: the narrative he attempts to sell in that room.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, let's just do the math on this. He
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: is claiming he drove from Bloomington, Indiana to Los Angeles, California.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: That is roughly a 2,000 mile trip one way. He
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: claims he drove straight through 40 hours each way, sleeping
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: in the driver's seat at rest stops. And he did
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: this to purchase $ 120 worth of marijuana.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: He specifies the amount as 15 grams.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: It's insane.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: He constructs a motive based on hiding a drug habit
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: from his medical student girlfriend. He argues that he undertook
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: a grueling 80-hour, 4,000-mile round trip for a negligible amount
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: of cannabis simply to maintain secrecy.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: You are looking a homicide detective in the eye and
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: claiming that you, a Berkeley-educated financial whiz with a 10-year plan,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: spent more money on gas than the actual street value
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: of the drugs you bought.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: It's insulting. I mean, at what point does a lie
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: become so heavy it just crushes the liar?
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: He attempts to frame himself as a minor federal offender
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: to escape the murder charge. He points out that crossing
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: state lines with marijuana is a federal crime, implying that
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: this is the reason he was initially lying. He is
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: offering up a lesser manufactured crime to explain his presence
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: on the West Coast.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Neil asks him directly if he went to his mother's house.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Levante claims he drove up to Grover Beach to surprise her,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: but when he drove by, her car wasn't in the driveway.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: So instead of calling her or waiting, he claims he
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: just drove to an In-N-Out burger, slept in his Jeep,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: and then drove 30 hours back to Indiana.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Detective Neal recognizes the absurdity, obviously, but he continues to
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: apply interrogation techniques designed to lower the psychological barrier to confession.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: He offers Levante what behavioral analysts call themes or outs.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: These are basically face-saving rationalizations. Neal asks if maybe things
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: just got out of hand, like if there was a struggle.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: He says, people get frustrated. People go from zero to 100.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: He is giving Levante the opportunity to claim it was
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: an accident or a crime of passion, which feels less
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: monstrous than a premeditated execution.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: But Levante's ego refuses the lifeline. Admitting to a loss
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: of control contradicts his self-image as a calculated mastermind. He
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: claims he isn't a cold-blooded killer and insists nothing happened
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: because he never went inside.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And when Neil offers to show him the raw data
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: extraction from his own devices... Levante tries to deflect by
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: accusing the detective of employing TV tricks. He attempts to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: act completely unfazed, basically just trying to outweigh the interrogation.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the core mystery the investigators had
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: to solve. If this guy is so incredibly intelligent, and
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: if he has this robust financial plan, what on earth
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: is the motive for driving across the country to slaughter
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: the mother who gave up everything for him?
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Right. During the interview, Levante insists his finances are impeccable.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: He details receiving a $ 130, 000 annuity from his mother's deceased boyfriend,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: claiming he used the funds to wipe out his debt,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: open an IRA, and establish himself as an independent day trader.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: He paints a picture of absolute self-sufficiency. But Deputy District
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Attorney Lindsey Briner starts digging into the actual bank records,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: and the reality is catastrophic. Levante isn't a financial genius.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: He is hemorrhaging money at a terrifying rate.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Because faking it till you make it turn deadly here.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Trading options and futures carries immense leverage and risk. The
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: records show he was down $ 49, 000 in the stock market.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: His capital was literally evaporating. Furthermore, he was carrying nearly $ 70, 000
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: in student loan debt. And to compound the crisis, he
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: owed the IRS $ 12, 000 in back taxes.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: He told the police he thought his stipends were tax-free.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: He just completely ignored his tax liability. The wall was
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: closing in fast, his accounts were draining, the IRS was circling,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and he had built this massive lie for his girlfriend, Hannah.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about the psychology of the motive.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: He needed Hannah to believe he was a successful, independent investor.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: If his total financial collapse was exposed, the persona he
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: constructed for her would shatter. He required a massive, immediate
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: infusion of cash to maintain the illusion.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Of his life. And the investigators discovered that Athena had
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: set up a trust. Levante was the sole heir to
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: her estate, her properties in California, and her life insurance.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: He stood to inherit hundreds of thousands of dollars upon
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: her death.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: To a severe narcissist facing a crisis, other people cease
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: to be human beings. They become utilities. Athena was no
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: longer his mother. She was simply the administrative hurdle standing
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: between him and the capital required to fund his ego.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: When Neil brings up the trust in the interrogation room,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Levante plays completely dumb. He claims he had no idea
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: he was the beneficiary. But the premeditation tells a different story.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: He bought the burner phone. packed his Jeep with water
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: bottles to minimize stops, and drove across the country with
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: singular intent.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: But despite all of that analog preparation, it is the
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: digital evidence recovered during the search warrant of his apartment
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: that provides the absolute, undeniable proof of his guilt.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? How does a supposedly
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: brilliant guy get taken down by a piece of hardware
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: in his own living room? While Levante is trying to
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: outsmart Neil at the station... The secondary team seizes his electronics,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: including an older iPad.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: The distinction with this specific iPad is that it was
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: a Wi-Fi-only device. It lacked a cellular modem. It couldn't
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: connect to a 4G or LTE network while driving down
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: the highway. To access the Internet, it had to physically
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: authenticate with a local wireless router, logging its unique MAC
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: address in the process.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: The forensic extraction of that iPad reveals a connection log
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: that destroys any remaining shadow of a doubt. On the
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: morning of October 25th, the day after the murder, while
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Levante is driving back to Indiana, the iPad connects to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: a public Wi-Fi network.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: And the router it authenticates with is located inside a
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: McDonald's in Winslow, Arizona.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Sitting in that parking lot, utilizing that free Wi-Fi, between 11.00 a.m.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and 11.10 a.m., Levante opens a browser and searches Google
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: for the phrase, Levante Lazar suspect Grover Beach. And then
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: he types, murder Grover Beach on 9th Street.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: The temporal relationship here is the ultimate smoking gun. He
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: executes these searches and just after 11.00 a.m. However, the
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: welfare check wasn't initiated by the prison until almost noon.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: The police did not breach the apartment and discover Athena's
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: body until 11.50 a.m.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: He is frantically searching for news coverage of a murder
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: 40 minutes before law enforcement even knows a crime has occurred.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's Shakespearean tragedy meets Black Mirror. The only
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: way you can search for a murder before the body
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: is found is if you put the body there.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: It demonstrates the obsessive compulsion of the killer to monitor
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: their own handiwork. He needed to know if his staged
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: crime scene was working, if he had gotten away with it.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: And that psychological weakness was logged by a commercial router
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: in Arizona. A suspect can try to manipulate a detective
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: in an interrogation room with convoluted stories about buying marijuana,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: but you cannot cross-examine a router log. The data is
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: entirely impartial.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: You just can't outsmart a router log. And the forensics
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: team also uncovers the final piece of his digital manipulation.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Levante claimed he had received text messages from his mother
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: late on the night of the 25th, trying to use
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: them as proof she was alive while he was driving
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: through the desert.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: The digital extraction proves those messages were fabricated. He stole
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Athena's phone after killing her. While driving eastward, he used
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: her device to send text messages to his own phone.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: But cellular architecture logs the exact origin point of every
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: SMS message.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Because of course it does.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: The co-location data proved conclusively that both the sender's phone
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: and the receiver's phone were pinging the exact same tower
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: on the interstate at the exact moment the messages were sent.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: He was literally texting himself from the passenger seat of
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: his Jeep to build a fake alibi. Detective Neal later
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: described him as a remorseless psychopath. And looking at the
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: totality of the evidence, it's impossible to argue. One year
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: after the murder, a jury convicted Levente Lazar of first-degree murder,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to life in prison without the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: possibility of parole.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: The legal system achieved its designated outcome, securing a conviction
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: based on an overwhelming matrix of digital evidence. But the
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: judicial process does not mend the profound emotional destruction left
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: in the wake of the crime.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: The tragedy of Athena Valentino's death is defined by the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: loose ends that will never be tied. The most immediate
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: mystery is the fear of her dog. That 10-year-old beagle
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: that left the apartment with Levante was never recovered. What
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: happened on that long drive back to Indiana remains a
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: secret only he knows.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: And because Athena sacrificed her entire life in Europe to
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: bring Levante to the United States, he was her sole
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: family member in this country. When he killed her, he
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: eradicated her entire familial infrastructure. There was no one left
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: to arrange a funeral. There was no burial.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Her friend Shelby spoke about the agonizing lack of closure,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: having no physical place to go and mourn. Cheryl Manke,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: her fellow nurse, admitted that she saves the last voicemail
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Athena ever left her on her phone, playing it just
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: so she can hear her friend's voice and remember her laugh.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: It is a devastating reality.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: It underscores the harsh truth that while our technological infrastructure
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: is incredibly adept at reconstructing the mechanics of a crime
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: and identifying the perpetrator, it offers absolutely no remedy for
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: the human cost.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: We started this deep dive exploring the concept of the
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: perfect crime and how the modern criminal underestimates the world
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: they live in. Most of you probably view your devices
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: with a sense of mild paranoia. You assume your phones
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: are listening to your conversations to serve you targeted ads
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: on social media.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: But the surveillance is far more fundamental and pervasive than
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: just targeted marketing.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: The reality is that your devices act as silent, infallible
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: witnesses to your life. They don't require sleep. They don't
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: get confused under pressure. And they certainly don't invent ridiculous
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: stories about driving across the country for 15 grams of marijuana.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: They simply log the truth ping by ping. The next
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: time you find yourself on a long stretch of highway,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: consider the invisible tether connecting your dashboard to every cell
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: tower and license plate reader you pass. You're constantly broadcasting
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: your existence to the network. Are any of us ever
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: truly off the grid?
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: The architecture of the modern world suggests the answer is no.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Every movement leaves a shadow.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Something to keep in mind the next time you connect
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: to public Wi-Fi. Until next time.