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Season Five: Fall Transition Episode
296 Plays3 months ago
Today, we are talking about some True Crime News Updates as we shift to our fall programming schedule.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2015/chicago-crime-stats/
https://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com
https://fstoppers.com/education/biggest-dangers-photographers-face-299728#comment-thread
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Context
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:49
Speaker
This is True Crime XS
00:00:56
Speaker
This is sort of our end of summer transition episode into the fall episodes. We we just got done covering J. Paul Hill's case. There's a lot more to be done with J. Paul Hill's case, but things have to happen kind of behind the scenes first. And ah that's kind of an intense case. So we're transitioning to do some of what we normally do. You and I have already started recording holiday episodes, which is something we do this time every year.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yes, I have to say that we aren't done with Jay's case yet.
Impact of Jay's Case and Listener Contributions
00:01:28
Speaker
There is more to be done behind the scenes, and that that case was life-changing for me. um i I think that case, from the outset, I think we knew, but we weren't maybe completely aware of how much that was going to like change, how we looked at things. It's a very big deal. I can say, honestly, I had no idea because it just There's not a whole lot of thinking and planning that necessarily goes into the things that we find ourselves in. We just find ourselves there and you know we're gonna do everything we can behind the scenes to figure out how to help get justice for Jay.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, and we've had at least one or two listeners have emailed in with some additional ideas. Very appreciative of those ideas. They had some people to contact, people that they had run into in other situations. I really, really appreciate that. So if you guys have, if you know someone in the Chicago Police Department, the local media, we are definitely interested in talking to them. I had one local media person reach out.
00:02:33
Speaker
and I had a little bit larger production company reach out. I did talk to his mom Jane Paul Hill this week to kind of tell her our game plan on on how to handle getting you know as many ears and eyes as possible in Jay's case. um But if you you know for some reason you know someone in that area of Illinois, in like North Chicago or Chicago, you know let us know. Send us a message and i'm I'm reaching out to everyone at this point. I've sent a lot of letters and a lot of requests for information. I've i've tried to set multiple meetings and that process is is ongoing.
True Crime Updates and Future Plans
00:03:08
Speaker
There's like a lot going on in true crime news. And it's always hard for me to segue into true crime news. You pointed this out to me recently. We have we have loads of episodes. We've never, for for whatever reason, they've never made it fully to publishing.
00:03:24
Speaker
and i I think earlier in the year you pointed out that like there were a couple where we gave updates on things that haven't quite made it out there yet, and I don't like to just burn episodes off, but I am going to try and get caught up on a couple of them. I thought we'd use today to talk about a couple of true crime news items, and I'm going to go ahead and like say one of them may be an update to something that isn't released yet. And if that's the case, um when I go back through and listen through the feed, I will put it i will put that episode up as ah i like an extra episode at some point in the next few weeks since we're
00:04:01
Speaker
covering our holiday episodes and and sort of getting things together. We have an interview coming up, possibly two, that'll be about some true crime books. We have another serial killer case to cover. And then um we may we may do something for Halloween this year. Sometimes we do more for Halloween. Sometimes by that time we're really focused in on the holiday stuff. And I don't know if you're new, um you may not know.
00:04:24
Speaker
Meg and I record a lot of episodes for the holidays. as I think last year, we recorded a total of 30. This year, we've got 25 on the books. We're maybe a quarter of the way into that or thereabouts. I wasn't sure how to handle all of these true crime out updates. but and You and I just had a conversation off mic about this case, but we're goingnna we're going to mention it, and it may be something we have to come back to, I think.
Asia Degree's Case: Developments and Theories
00:04:52
Speaker
But there appears to be some movement in the case of Asia degree. That's a case that's come up on multiple episodes in the past. She appeared in the name of search when we were doing the Israel keys stuff. And the FBI had used recognize to find her photo from the vicap page in Israel keys browser cache.
00:05:17
Speaker
So Asia Degree comes up in episode 10 there and then she comes up in ah season two of True Crime XS in an episode called Close and I think we brought her up one more time just in passing because there's been some Over the years, there's been some times where there's a little bit bigger push for information in her case. Right. And so I would say at this point in 2024, Asha's case would be on my shortlist, putting a aside the ah possible update, right? Yeah. She's a nine-year-old little girl who ah left her home.
00:05:57
Speaker
in Shelby, North Carolina, sometime in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine's Day 2000. She left for an unknown purpose, and she had packed some stuff. And we've talked, like you said, we've talked about the different scenarios. um Essentially, she showed up on Israel Key's computer, but we are 100% sure that he was in Egypt at the time she went missing. Right.
00:06:23
Speaker
So he was not involved. Nevertheless, she is a nine she was a nine-year-old little girl who left her home of her own accord, which is, you know, it's strange. And then she basically vanished. she's on my So she would be one of the ones on my shortlist at this point.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, so I've had um a lot of interactions with with law enforcement surrounding her case over the years. In fact, and then yeah I don't know if this is in those episodes or if it was somewhere else. um ah There was a Jane Doe, Opalika Jane Doe, that had been found in Alabama ah back in January of 2012. I know you recently re-listened to that. We put that out for the audience. Or did we mention Opalika Jane Doe?
00:07:14
Speaker
Yes, we talked about her. um that She was, well, she was part of remains found and she had little heart buttons on her blouse. Yeah. That correlated with Asia to an extent. Yeah, we were thinking Valentine's Day and some of the clothing that Asia had. I did want to i I'm not segueing away from Asia, but i I did want to point out to people, so when we recorded that material, I think it was four years ago, ago give or take. Yeah, about... Opalika Jane Doe was identified.
00:07:51
Speaker
ah She ends up getting identified in January of 2023. I had talked to Nick Mick and there was a forensic artist I talked to. ah There were some law enforcement and some forensic investigators that I had left messages for, and some of them returned calls, some of them didn't. My idea was that if Asia had been hit by a car or a truck specifically and had ended up where this truck was parked in a trailer park, then potentially that's how we get the clothing and the skull in that area down. um This is a place called Brookhaven Trailer Park that we had looked at. But I did want to point out um she was identified and her name is Amore Jove Wiggins.
00:08:34
Speaker
J-O-V-E-A-H Wiggins. And there is gonna be, I think there's gonna be a trial in that case. They they charged the parental figures in Amore's life, a man named Lamar Vickerstaff Jr. and ah Ruth Vickerstaff. They were charged as both of them being ah responsible for her death. The way that goes down is,
00:09:03
Speaker
So Othram gets Opalika Jane Doe's remains in January of 2022. And a woman named Barbara Raventer, who we may talk about later in the fall, she had done some work alongside the different people involved in the Golden State Killer case. They retained her to try and get them some investigative leads. That's January of 2022 they do this. So Othram's lab is down at Woodlands, Texas. They send the remains over.
00:09:33
Speaker
They are able to track Opalika Jane Doe and by October 2022, they have her identified. Now, Lamar Vickerstaff, who was 50 years old at the time, he's identified as Lamar's father, and he had been born and raised in Opalika, Alabama, but he had enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and he'd been all over. He'd been to Norfolk, Virginia. ah He had been based out of Honolulu at one point and Jacksonville, Florida at one point. And in December of 2022, Opalika detectives traveled over to Mayport Naval Station,
00:10:08
Speaker
And at the time, Lamar Vickerstaff was assigned there. They were just there to ah identify him of his daughter's death. And he did not provide any additional information ah regarding his daughter. But Vickerstaff's wife, Ruth, whom he had been married to since May of 2006, she told detectives she did not know who Vickerstaff's daughter was or who was her mother. But Barbara Redenter was able to identify the biological mother as a woman named Sherry Wiggins. Sherry Wiggins resided in Maryland um and she was able to confirm in ah December of 2022 that she was Amore's biological mom. She had been a native of Norfolk and she provided documentation where
00:11:05
Speaker
the vicar staffs who just denied knowing anything about the daughter, the detectives got court records from her biological mom, and in 2009, they had legal and physical custody of her. At that time, the court had suspended Sherry's visitation with Amore. She showed documentation that she had been paying child support.
00:11:27
Speaker
to the vicar staff since 2009. So they end up arresting Lamar and Ruth vicar staff shortly after they discover that As far as Sherry Wiggins was concerned, she was supposed to be in their care and she was paying child support. it January 17th, they arrest both of the vicar staffs. Lamar is charged with felony murder and failure to report a missing child. And Ruth is charged with failure to report a missing child. And then they bring them from Jacksonville, Florida, back to Lee County, Alabama. Now, ah they they hold a preliminary hearing for the two of them.
00:12:07
Speaker
And one of the detectives in the preliminary hearing in March of 2023, he says that Ruth Vickerstaff had admitted to him, the detective, that she'd been untruthful during the initial arrest and said she didn't know what was going on. She stated that while they had custody of Amore, Ruth was unable to take care of Amore. And she requested that Lamar send Amore off to family. And she said that was the last time she saw her.
00:12:34
Speaker
And the detective also stated during this preliminary hearing that someone who knew Ruth Vickerstaff had reported Amore had injuries prior to her death. Now, during Lamar Vickerstaff's police interview, he had confessed to killing Amore, but he denied inflicting the injuries that have been observed on the remains.
00:12:56
Speaker
And ah also the detective revealed that they had church surveillance footage of Amore and those injuries were captured on that surveillance footage. According to Victor's staff, he tried to bring her back to life after he had killed her. And he also requested to police that Ruth not be charged on Amore's death. Now he's been denied bail. ah Ruth has since been granted bail and gone home.
00:13:22
Speaker
ah Ruth could face the possibility of 10 years in prison, but Lamar would face life in prison ah without the possibility of parole. um His case may be a death penalty case, and even though all that happened in 2023, all of that appears to still be pending. But I thought I would just throw that update in here because Asher degree had come back in the news, and with Asher degree, that was a case that we talked about.
00:13:49
Speaker
This is a good illustration of how I'm pretty sure, well, we always have the caveat that we're talking about of the people reported missing.
00:14:02
Speaker
right? Keeping in mind that this little girl is not reported missing, right? Correct. We make assessments like who could it be? And in this particular case, we were looking for Asha degree and we had information pertinent to her case and we had no idea how I know specifically we talked about the height and that's why it came up that um it wasn't like a full skeleton found. And so we had no idea how how big or how old the remains would be, had been categorized as, just
Forensic Challenges and Emotional Reflections
00:14:40
Speaker
as a child basically. At the time we were doing this, it was before she was identified, actually not very far before, but I like to think that just putting it out in the universe like makes it
00:14:53
Speaker
It brings awareness, right? Because you know from 12, it took 10 years. So in a way, Amore's case as well. um I never really thought much about her as being, I don't know why, but I didn't really think much about her as being Asia, but it bothered me that there was a little girl that could be Asia, right?
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's where I came from too. And I think at a point in there, I didn't care who was who and what was what. It was that she didn't have a name and she was a little girl. She was never, Amore was never reported missing. So she didn't come into our purview as far as considerations, right? And that is always in the back of my mind. Anytime there's an unidentified remains,
00:15:45
Speaker
there's always a, especially with small children, um there's always the possibility that it's a child that's not been reported missing. And of course that immediately indicates there's a problem with the caregiver, right? Yeah, they either ran away and it's known, and we should be able to find them as a runaway, or the caregiver is tied to it somehow.
00:16:08
Speaker
Right, especially when they're not reported missing. If a child isn't reported missing, there there's an adult at the other end of that that is either dead or responsible for the fact the child is missing. Correct. um There's not really any way around that. I can't even imagine, I hope I never have to even consider it like the situation where you see a parent who no longer has their child, right?
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah. And you're like, I'm sorry, where did your child go? And like, how long do you buy the excuse, right? Well, what's interesting about that is I know the, the degree family has gotten flack over the years, but they did everything right. And I think the reason I bring up like a Morris case today is a Morris case is like the opposite of the degree case.
00:17:03
Speaker
Like, Asha goes missing, it's shocking, it's unexpected. Her parents report her missing, they go looking, they're trying to find her. The other case, biological mom doesn't know, like to the point that she's still paying child support for her daughter. You know, this is, that's heartbreaking. Yeah, yeah, it is heartbreaking.
00:17:28
Speaker
I have a, I have a lot of trouble with the whole situation. You're right. It is opposite. Um, Asia's family has, you know, they've almost desperately held out hope, right? yeah This little girl, it took them 10 years to identify her.
00:17:47
Speaker
She was three, I think, around three. And so obviously, with more information on the other end of that, it would have been clear it wasn't Asia, right? Because Asia was nine. But again, we were going off of what was available to us.
00:18:03
Speaker
I think that especially in this particular case, not having the full picture on the unidentified person side and not being able to fathom how on earth this little child could possibly be unidentified, right? Yeah, that's where I come from.
00:18:21
Speaker
I think that our brains like try to match them up, right? To make it where it's not two children who have suffered this situation, right? right it cannot it's ah It's just one. And it's not that it's just she's not identified yet. And you you know they did finally identify this little girl through um DNA. The biological mother had no idea. Ultimately, the father was responsible for her death.
00:18:51
Speaker
And you said he was in the service? Yes, he was in the US Navy. I'm sure that there's like a whole lot of whatever happening. it that That's a weird, the whole situation's weird. I'm very sad that another little child died and was never reported missing and went unidentified for 10 years. Yeah, i you know, in my head, obviously they're very young black girls in the South. I tied them together that way.
00:19:20
Speaker
um I wondered to the point that like after we recorded what we recorded, you know we do these cases and um I know some people are just kind of putting a story out there and they move on to the next one. I spent days calling around and left messages with so many people related to the Opalika case, just trying to like figure out if I could do anything to help. um and shortly there i mean i did get like I got some indicators that they had a direction to go. There'll be things that happen where we're like, okay, so there is a um a little girl who was found and there are these characteristics that are similar, and then we look, right? And we're like, well, it can't be, you know, any of these. And we find the one match, right? The one it could possibly be if it's going to be a missing child that's been reported missing.
00:20:16
Speaker
And in this case, it was Asia. It didn't end up being Asia. However, I like to think that we would have noticed that this was clearly Amore. Yeah. And I'm going to go ahead and apologize for both of us. If we're getting the pronunciations here wrong, no one has corrected me over the years when I talk about Asha over Asia.
00:20:34
Speaker
No one has corrected me when I talk about Amore or Amore. I call them like what I can. I've never spoken with a family, although I did see recently that apparently a cousin is in my news feed on social media. We're connected. I've heard Asha's mother speak, and if I'm recalling correctly, she calls her Asha.
00:20:58
Speaker
I do not know about Amore. I have run down i had run out two other leads with regards to Asia. ah One of them was the was an inmate named Marcus Mellett. and that one The sheriff came out about a year after we let any of those episodes go and said that like that had come to an end, which is kind of the same conclusion I had. was like It was BS. Was that the inmate letter or something?
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's the inmate letter. He said he knew where she was there, and then he knew she was murdered, but he he sent this letter to a local newspaper down there called the Shelby
Asia Degree: Suspects and Case Status
00:21:36
Speaker
Star. That was one of the things that we kind of alluded to that has now been like kind of confirmed in the public since we recorded that stuff. But, has it been debunked?
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it is. I'm gonna get some of this wrong. I had him and this other inmate that I'll just we'll call him Walker. um That's part of his name, but I had looked at them. So Marcus Mellon had been convicted of sex crimes against children sometime in like the 2000 teens.
00:22:07
Speaker
ah Walker was not a predator. He was actually a drunk driver who had been pulled over three times on that section of road late at night for DUI, driving to his parents' home. that was It wasn't actually there. It was in the next town. But um those were the two people I had looked into the hardest. but From what I understand,
00:22:34
Speaker
the sheriff cleared Marcus Mellon as a dead end. And but they didn't say why, they just said it was not it was not possible for him to have done it. And so I do remember looking, when I looked into this case briefly, um we've never really completely covered this case. This has just come up in our periphery, basically.
00:22:59
Speaker
And it we talk about it whenever, and and that's probably why we were talking about it previously. There was that pseudo-fake confession or whatever. Well, it was it was it was originally touted as a confession, and then it was more like...
00:23:16
Speaker
I know who did it. And then it was like, he doesn't really talk. Right. Um, and so it is a, it is a very, um, it's a, it's a case that stands out circumstantially because you've got a nine year old little girl leaving by ah from everything anybody could ever tell on her own accord, right? In the middle of the night, leaving her own home.
00:23:38
Speaker
and then something happening. I remember when I was looking into that, they released details, and one of the details was that there was this picture of another little girl found with some of her stuff, right? Right. I got the bright idea to look up ah sex offenders, right?
00:23:59
Speaker
And yeah there were a an alarming number of sex offenders ah very close to but everything that was happening there. ah Whenever I looked it up, it was it's a typical like ah rural North Carolina setting, right? When I say highway, I'm talking about a two-lane winding road.
00:24:21
Speaker
everything about all of it made me, because I remember thinking that the little girl's picture was going to have something to do with something, right? I don't know that it was ever identified. I can't remember. I remember thinking like maybe um this little girl is going to be the key to finding which sex offender did this, right? That's what I remember thinking. The problem with all that for me was I could never figure out how she left on her own accord and then got picked up randomly. Yeah. and i i was sort of you So that was the path you took and I considered it and I haven't ever ruled out like the concept of her being a victim of a predator ever. But i the path that I went down personally
00:25:10
Speaker
was, and and your to your point, ah what you just said made it impossible to to really follow my path, but it was that some sort of accident or um I felt like it was going to be traffic related, um but I couldn't make it make sense with the idea that she left on her own accord, packing a bag and taking it with her. and I think we established that either had been storming or was storming when all that happened. yeah it was and It was cold but because it was in February and ah there was
00:25:52
Speaker
there i you know Again, we haven't completely covered this. so I have bits and pieces of this in my mind, but she was seen by like a couple of truck drivers, then maybe another driver. There was stuff found in the shed where it appeared she took cover. I believe from the other episode, I recall she was 1.6 miles away from her house at one point when she was seen.
00:26:15
Speaker
um There's all these different little pieces. and The biggest thing to me was like she packed up her stuff, which it included like her Valentine's Day outfit, a Tweety Bird overall set, and a Tweety Bird purse, and then her basketball uniform.
00:26:33
Speaker
and I was trying to put all that together thinking that you know somebody lured her out. right um But I don't know that that's the case. And we went through a very extensive conversation about like how would a nine-year-old know to take three days worth of clothes or whatever. And so we've really never known what was behind that. It is possible, and this is heartbreaking, because it is possible she was like running away from home for some reason.
00:27:02
Speaker
and like you know, all the scary stories that you're told of why you shouldn't run away from home like happened to her. Where we kind of land on this right now is, so there's paperwork available and podcasters are running with it and the Reddit community is running with it and Facebook is running with it. They've named some people related to this. And to what Meg just said, they've raised the possibility in this paperwork, which is essentially search warrants that were sealed and now aren't sealed because they hit a number of places. Search warrants seem to indicate the possibility that something happened
00:27:41
Speaker
to this nine year old girl through other children. And by children I'll say, They've mentioned ah a 13 year old, a 15 year old, a 16 year old. They've also mentioned a man who was in a, what I call a group home, you may call it a nursing home or a rest home facility, but he was receiving some level of medical care from two people that they did define as suspects. And this is a couple from the Shelby, North Carolina area who owned numerous properties and had various sort of
00:28:17
Speaker
Depending on how you look at it either businesses or sort of schemes I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong, but they they kind of they had you know It looks like animals at one point and it looks like they're caring for people at another point. They have a trucking company. They have ah School, they have multiple things going on there ah That family is interesting ah they do say that One of the pieces of evidence in the Aches case or Aches case was a backpack that had been found, I would call it under extremely suspicious circumstances. It was found in ah a construction project off of that same road, ah about 26 miles outside of town in an area that's almost in Morganton, North Carolina. And among these items they find in August of 2001 are
00:29:12
Speaker
ah the backpack we've been talking about where she put all her clothes and everything. And it had been wrapped in two black trash bags. A construction worker was able to identify it as being belonging to Asia degree because it had her name and phone number inside of it.
00:29:28
Speaker
The FBI took that backpack and they analyzed it. Now, they have not shared all of the results publicly about this backpack. We talked about it some, there was some clothing in there, the doctor's shoes pulled. It had been checked out from her school library, but we had no idea if it had been checked out by her. so The only thing that these search warrants really clear up for us is that they were able to find some hair and do some DNA testing.
00:29:58
Speaker
We believe it's all related to just that discovery. And that's where they get first, the person who lived in the group home. And his name is out there. um He does have a criminal record, but his criminal record is not under the name.
00:30:10
Speaker
given in the search warrant. It's a nickname that sounds like a real name. It has this criminal record. Other forensic analysis they did led them to a 13 year old at the time in 2000, girl, who is the daughter of the two suspects. And the idea is that something happened between Asia and someone in this family ah that was probably underage and that the parents somehow assisted with whatever happened next.
00:30:39
Speaker
and i And I think that's really the extent of the update. To the degree family, they've come out and they've sort of said, take your time, you know don't dig into this, don't spread a bunch of fake rumors. I had actually gotten a tip that like her body or human remains were found, which I think was a, I think it was done in earnest to be a good tip. um It was wrong.
00:31:06
Speaker
in terms of her body. They do mention a tooth being found in this paperwork. You and I kind of looked at this and we were like, do you know do we continue to cover this? And we thought it was worth mentioning in terms of an update because it's interesting. There's this missing nine-year-old, like,
00:31:22
Speaker
little girl, which has been missing for 24 years. And it does look like they're making some kind of headway, which they the police have hinted at that a couple of times. And I understand that they're, from what I understand, Shelby, North Carolina is not big. Nothing like this has ever happened there before. And they're trying to balance the public interest with um the integrity of any sort of case that they're going to come out with.
00:31:47
Speaker
and any sort of narrative that is you know to the best of their knowledge what happened. They're trying to balance that right now because it is such a big deal and it's such a smallish rural type place. right um I feel like they' they may be having a little bit of trouble balancing that ah right at the moment.
00:32:11
Speaker
It's an interesting set of circumstances, right? I'm fascinated that they use DNA. I always thought in the back of my head whenever, I don't know how long it's been released that they found the book bag like they did. And then I remember thinking about, because there was an NK or TV shirt in there and it wasn't hers, right? Granted, the affidavit states something else, but you know, it could be inconsequential. The hair being ah linked,
00:32:41
Speaker
and somebody else's stuff being in the book bag, it says to me that there could be some circumstances that are inconsequential to any sort of crime occurring, right? Yeah, and I think that's gonna be the hard thing to swallow. It is, like the words killed and the words murdered are mentioned in the news releases and the paperwork. And and that's and and so I'm trying to balance that against, I feel like if you're going to release something,
00:33:11
Speaker
I feel like there should be something to be released.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah. And you and I had a lot of debate of whether we were going to cover this or not. I was using it as an opportunity to talk about Amore. It's time. I mean, it's, we are, I mean, it's past time, right? Over 20, we're almost 25 years out from Asia disappearing. Uh, like I said, I'm,
00:33:40
Speaker
It's astonishing that literally nothing has happened, right? If it weren't for her book bag having been found buried, wrapped in trash bags or whatever it was that made it very deliberate, right?
00:33:57
Speaker
um I would have thought that this poor child was hidden somewhere and died from exposure, right? That's that's what I would have thought and so it's I I'm cool with giving the update I I feel like It See, i don't I don't know that it's irresponsible ah to talk about it on like our part, but like I feel like this could be putting people in an awkward predicament. Good for Asia's family in holding it together like they are. I hope they're about to get some answers. Yeah, I hope so too. And this is, again, as a case that's been on... This is a case that um it's so...
00:34:47
Speaker
Well, it's so disturbing, though, that it's almost like as time continues to go by and it's not solved, it I try to push it further and further away because it's so impossible, right?
00:35:00
Speaker
except Because there's no reason that a nine-year-old should have just fallen off the face of the earth, right? And, you know, regardless of what occurred under the circumstances, it's just so weird. The whole situation is weird. And it it doesn't seem like so much time should have passed and it not be solved. but But the DNA is going to take everybody down eventually because even if and I'm not saying that anybody whose DNA was linked here is directly responsible for a crime, but it's going to get people talking like as far as I'm not talking about rumors. I'm talking about like going to find out what was going on around there on Valentine's Day in 2000, right? I think
00:35:48
Speaker
You know, there were the different avenues of how does she get out of the house? would did Did a predator then randomly snatch her or had they been grooming her and people hadn't found evidence of it?
00:36:00
Speaker
then or did some kind of accident occur. I think this case is gonna have a shocking ending when it finally has one. I think someone's gonna talk or has already talked about it a little bit maybe. And I think some of the pieces are gonna start to make sense. um I don't have a lot more on this, but I wanted to just, I wanted to bring her up. I wanted to talk about Amore. That trial, I saw sometime earlier this year, her dad was denied bond in Amore's case.
00:36:27
Speaker
um There's not anything, like like what we just told you about h2degree, that's it. That's all of it for now. And hopefully, whatever they were doing, because they towed a cup a car that looked like the green car from um possible unnamed motorist sighting of seeing Asia being pulled into a car, they they did a lot in terms of what they returned here that if they have evidence, I don't think it'll be a really long time before we hear more about it. I hope not, because I feel like that this is a
00:37:03
Speaker
This is like a ticking time bomb. A little bit, yeah. And do you have anything else on this one
Linda Stanley's Disbarment and Its Impact
00:37:11
Speaker
right now? I have a couple more things I wanted to mention. No, I don't have anything else. So Sean Combs was indicted and I wanted to give him an appropriate amount of time ah related to ah what I think of him and this indictment for sex trafficking and corruption. Also, Linda Stanley, who we've talked about multiple times, and i you this was the one that you said, have we released those episodes? Because we actually did multiple episodes about Linda Stanley. And for those of you who don't know who she is, she was a prosecutor in the Suzanne and Morphew case prosecuting Barry Morphew, Suzanne's husband.
00:37:54
Speaker
We're not sure that we released the other episode about this because it was getting complicated to explain how terrible this was. And at the end of it all, you and I had come to the conclusion that she was going to be disparate. That she may have certainly needed to be disparate.
00:38:12
Speaker
Right, so the last time that we talked about her that I think appears in an episode somewhere earlier this year is when we talked about this, and if I haven't released it, this is the one hour lease. She made some really negative comments about a young couple that have been charged with murder on television. Well, the Colorado Bar got ahold of her. And we get this ah ruling, the State Disciplinary Board for the Bar,
00:38:41
Speaker
They ruled that because of her nonsense, which we're going to talk a little bit about here, that they were going to disbar her. They just made this ruling. The publications that covered it, I think they started releasing information September 11th thereabouts. They issued an 83 page order and they basically stated the judges in that um and they use judges for their state disciplinary bar actions.
00:39:06
Speaker
They ruled that Linda Stanley had made at least three inappropriate statements related to the Morphew prosecution to the media. ah They also ruled that she had failed to supervise the case and that she had opened a retaliatory criminal investigation into the judge over rulings he had made against her team. Now, the charge ultimately gets dismissed against Barry Morphew.
00:39:34
Speaker
But they also found that she had violated ethical attorney rules when she interviewed ah with KRDO, who carries a lot of this. If you want to check out KRDO.com, the local news has tons of information about Linda Stanley. They have been after her relentlessly.
00:39:53
Speaker
um And in the this one interview on KRDO 13 Investigates, there's a video interview of her talking about William Jacobs, who I i mentioned, and we're not sure if we released that episode, but we're going to. In that interview, Linda Stanley said, I'm gonna be very blunt here. He has zero investment in this child, zero. He's watching this baby so he can get laid. That's it.
00:40:19
Speaker
He can get laid and have a place to sleep. I'm sorry to believe blunt, but honest to God, that is what's going on. And ultimately, that case got kicked because of her saying that. According to Linda Stanley's attorney, despite being disbarred, she wants to finish her term as district attorney.
00:40:41
Speaker
It expires in January, but the disbarment that went into place in early September will, by mid-October, she will no longer be a licensed and barred attorney. So if she's appealing to try and stop that from happening, but if she's disbarred, the governor will have to appoint someone to fill that role Now, there's already been an election here and a man named Jeff Lindsay was elected into that office. um He would be taking over in January either way, but they would have to have a temporary ah district attorney in this area. What do you think about that? yeah
00:41:20
Speaker
Man, this case, like she ruined anything that we could have seen out of the Morphew investigation. And you and I had issues with that investigation, and we've aired episodes about it over the years because it wasn't we didn't even come at it from the perspective of, is he guilty or is he innocent?
00:41:41
Speaker
We tried to, but what we had problems with was they were so sure that they were like skipping past some really interesting information and not releasing why they were skipping past it. They had code as hits in that case.
00:41:58
Speaker
that were totally relevant. And the impression that they leave the public of those CODIS hits, because they were from multiple states and multiple sexual assaults, was that The code sets didn't matter. They had sent someone to, it was either Nevada or Arizona, and talked to the person. So somehow, Nevada, Arizona, and Illinois were all tied to this DNA found on Suzanne Morphew's car.
00:42:31
Speaker
and the bicycle, I think. That might have been what made me go. i I don't know if it's and the bicycle or just on the car, but they left it in the prosecutorial paperwork and in all the discovery as unknown DNA.
00:42:45
Speaker
And you and I looked at that and we just could not see how you could move forward with that leader. I don't know that it was, I thought, I read somewhere that like it had gone further than unknown and like the distinction had been made that there was like a CODIS match. But like, oh well, we're just gonna keep going with this case. Like that's how I read it. That's why it was so incredibly crazy.
00:43:10
Speaker
yeah Yeah. That one, I looked at it all. I think we looked at it after. ah We went back and went through everything with a fine-toothed comb at one point because her remains were discovered. And once her remains were discovered and some of the information about the autopsy came back, you and I poked at that case like trying to figure out like like how we could make it ah makes sense. And I think where I landed, I don't even know if I articulated this anywhere, the prosecution had just wrecked it. Not the investigators. The investigators kept trying to go after information and the prosecution just wasn't putting it together in a way that makes sense for me. I remember before the charges were even, while the charges were still in play against very more few, they were being sanctioned expert witnesses. ah You want to take a case?
00:44:06
Speaker
ah get some of your expert witnesses, get sanctions so your expert witnesses can't testify. That will tank it very quickly. And I don't know for certain, I i don't know how many district attorneys have been part of this, but i ah I presume she had a hand in this because that's exactly what would happen when you've brought a case that you is not solid and then you don't can Continue the work on it, right? Which is what I feel like happened as far as him being arrested sitting in jail and then nothing this situation now I So there was a blurb about like her ah Letting her office Staff know that she'd been disbarred and it was like the end of my reign or something like that. That's how she put it And when she's talking she's talking like somebody has come at her
00:45:03
Speaker
I believe district ah you said that there was a new one elected so ah the district attorney is an elected position so she was put into office by the people right she's elected and she did a terrible job I don't know anything about this woman but In the episode we covered her earlier, ah she had no filter. The things that she was saying were inappropriate.
00:45:30
Speaker
ah she you know Obviously, she's a human, so she it's normal to think things like that, but when you're standing before a judge in a case, ah you have no comment.
00:45:44
Speaker
to the media. You don't grab the reporter and bring them into your office and sit them down and have a chat on the record, right? That's what I remember happening in the case where she was talking about the guy having no stake in the kid's, uh, livelihood, right? And you would think like, okay, so she's smart. She's appealing. You would think at this point, like that was going to be my next thing. So like, what is it that she thinks they got wrong?
00:46:14
Speaker
Well, her appeal is they they read it wrong, but I noticed this and I think this is a new filing. I'm not 100% sure, but KRDO13,
00:46:28
Speaker
they put in a request. where in this ruling, it's like in the fine print, the state disbarment ruling says that Stanley is required to pay for the cost of the disciplinary trial. And anybody that's ever had like some type of ah back and forth in an adversarial legal system situation has heard about the cost, court cost, cost of whatever, and cost or assessed for usually the loser of a matter to somehow one way or the other pay for it. Well, KRDO 13 found out that Linda Stanley has been writing tens of thousands of dollars of checks from the district attorney's office to pay her legal bills. Are you serious?
00:47:24
Speaker
I am so serious. And there are, well, no, don't get me wrong. Some jurisdictions, there's provisions that, like if you look at the statute, that to some degree, elected officials are allowed to be reimbursed for reasonable expenses related to their job. I think that there's going to be, I don't, ah first of all, the appeal's going to fail.
00:47:44
Speaker
she's She's that she doesn't need to be there at all. That's my I don't have any sort of personal opinion of her at all I don't know anything about her except the specific things we looked at and I was like Regardless of who this person is. She does not need to be a district attorney. Okay, I'm completely I feel like unbiased on objective on that topic and so Just taking that into stride i could be convinced otherwise however along with what you just said right that she's been writing checks for tax from you know you know i'm just i'm not sure everybody understands us but like just because the chat comes from the government doesn't mean like. It appeared magically from nowhere.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah, it came out of the taxpayers money for the 11th Judicial District in Colorado. the The constituents there are the ones paying for this. Correct. And I feel like um I don't think defending your disbarment is going to qualify as a ah it as a allow as an allowed ah job expense. Reasonable. It's not an allowed reasonable job expense to which you can seek. for When you're the district attorney. And not only that, not only that, the way this would work is you pay your lawyer and then you submit to whoever is the fiduciary. Right, and so what is happening in this woman's mind? What is happening here? Is she like so sure? She's above the law because she is the law. Is she so sure she's right? um And then if so, and the reason I say all this is,
00:49:26
Speaker
I don't know if anybody's aware of this or not, but I have my measurements where it seems like I might know it all. I don't. And whenever I feel that way, I always try to take myself down a notch. And that's why I'm wondering, like, does she not know that everybody can't be wrong? and So her attorney comes out with a statement to KRDO. It was interesting. So he points out that there's a dissenting opinion.
00:49:54
Speaker
of a single board member related to this disciplinary action. And he's going to use that, he says he's going to use that for his argument that he thinks the dissent is better reason. His direct comment to KRDO 13 investigates somewhere around September 11th, either 11th or 12th. He said, we very much disagree with the conclusion that this parliament is appropriate and Ms. Stanley is a good person and an ethical attorney.
00:50:18
Speaker
He said they're still navigating the appeal process and determining if she wants to appeal, but if they do file an appeal, her attorney hopes that Stanley can continue practicing law until the appeal is heard. The Office of the Attorney Regulation Council says Stanley has a right to an appeal, however, to keep her license during an appeal, she would need to file a stay, and then the state board would need to have a hearing on whether or not to approve that. So, okay, a couple of things.
00:50:47
Speaker
Being a good person and ethical attorney does not make you a good prosecutor. Right, but being a bad prosecutor doesn't get you disbarred. Typically. So was it a three-judge panel? Does it say? I just wanted to explain really quick. I'm i'm not entirely sure this followed in what a normal like civil or criminal case would would follow, um because this is like the initial hearing and ruling. and so I know when you hear about court cases and there's an order, right, like guilty, not guilty, or I find in favor of the plaintiff or the defendant and civil matters, and then occasionally on non-run of the mill cases, um a judge will write an opinion and order, right?
00:51:36
Speaker
And the reason they do that is to explain how they got to the conclusion. they They kind of lay out the findings of fact that they have throughout the case, and they bring it um to fruition in their conclusions of law. And those are done, well,
00:51:57
Speaker
in partially so, you know, the opinion can be understood, right? ah So it can be read by others. And then if you have a panel, um and let's say, you know, whatever the opinion is, it's got to be the majority. And then, ah so if it's a three judge panel, so two of them agreed, and then there's a dissenting opinion. And so the dissenting opinion happens when they They don't agree with the majority. And so the majority rules, so to speak, I'm sure everybody's heard that before, but like, so that's what's going to happen because the majority decided that. But the dissenting opinion would be written out by somebody who finds a material issue in the majority's opinion.
00:52:54
Speaker
and they find it to the extent that they want to point it out in the event that in the future a similar issue comes up, it can be pondered further. And so I don't know exactly. It's a three judge panel. Okay. So two to one. And so the, so the attorney latched onto to the dissenting opinion. Now, if you're going to actually try and convince somebody to do something,
00:53:23
Speaker
ah in a legal matter. If you're not a very good attorney, you probably aren't going to get there on a dissent. Additionally, ah anything you know courts have published versus unpublished, it and then from the published opinions of different court case of different cases the court has heard,
00:53:44
Speaker
you get case law, right? This this is a unique situation, having a having ah an elected district attorney before the judicial panel. And and I assume um it's for its it's akin to ah professional conduct, right? I mean... Correct. Yeah. this yeah the So the primary excuse for all of this, if you read carefully what the hearing was about, Steve Jensen is the attorney for Linda Stanley in this proceeding. And his main excuse was, this is a rural area ah district attorney's office.
00:54:28
Speaker
and they were not accustomed to high profile cases. The behavior is excused because of that. well i so I could, I don't agree with that. I could see where there could be, there's a lot that would go into right or wrong, failing upwards or succeeding, her ending up where she's at, and okay? ah Now, the aftermath that I've seen, it lends towards they've probably made the right decision. I don't know what the disconnect is here. i'm have i have tried I don't know why.
00:55:04
Speaker
Like I feel like if I was in that position and they were like, yeah, you're disbarred. And I like thought back over everything she had done and I had done it, I would be like, yeah, I probably should be disbarred, right? I don't know like why she's not getting there. She may have a perfectly good reason, but it seems like it's, it's just a like a checks and balance where you're like, Oh, I, you know, I'm,
00:55:29
Speaker
I'm on top here. so ah But for the aftermath that I've sort of watched how she sort of said, I don't really think that should happen. They're out to get me or whatever she said.
00:55:43
Speaker
I don't know that disbarment is absolutely necessary. In fact, like, she might be really good at ah at a certain type of law. And it is a, you know, because they're looking to punish her for for her behavior, right? That's why you go before a judicial committee.
00:56:03
Speaker
All correct, yes. Okay, and so disbarment means you are no longer an attorney. You cannot be part of the state bar. Go find something else to do with your life, right? It's extreme.
00:56:18
Speaker
However, now granted, I don't remember every single detail. It seems like it's been a while since we talked about this. um I'm thinking it was probably after Suzanne Morphy's body was found. And I think we're about we're coming up on a year, aren't we? That sounds right, yeah. And so probably shortly after that is about when we were talking about it. I got that impression in the light quick and fast you know The quick view of the situation I got, i I don't feel like I say that about very many people. Like, oh, they need to be disbarred. right um And that's like what I said. That's what what stuck with me was that woman is dangerous and needs to be disbarred. And I believe it stemmed from the fact that basically somebody that had killed a baby was not going to be punished for it because she had
00:57:12
Speaker
gotten sanctioned and the charges were dismissed to punish the district attorney. If I'm remembering it right that's what happened and I'm going and I remember thinking that's not going to work.
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah, they ended up dismissing charges. It was not a small thing. She got on podcasts and she talked about different cases. She had appeared on multiple online and television things talking about different cases. This is not like a small thing that happened. But the bottom line, what really gets her in trouble, both as a lawyer and as a prosecutor, was she was accused of basically ignoring like sinking cases in her area and putting people, other lawyers in her her office, in positions where like she was sending them in to do jobs they did not know how to do without captaining the ship at all. In fact, that's one of the quotes early on. It was like a ah completely rudderless ship without a captain. Right, and it was a lot of the procedural stuff.
00:58:21
Speaker
Yes, there were many deadlines they didn't meet. They had meetings in secret that they sort of hid from the defense when they shouldn't have been. There were multiple things that they miss related to discovery. ah There was the whole debacle about the unidentified DNA and how they followed up on it. And like they couldn't even explain how they had approached like in, you know, sort of comport with law enforcement, how they were going to explain this DNA from multiple, I think it was either three or four unsolved sexual assault scenes ending up on Suzanne Morphew's
00:58:58
Speaker
car and they were having meetings about this stuff that they weren't documenting anything. They made a mess of the Morphew case and they made a mess of the Jacobs case. Whatever it was, it they did not satisfy to multiple judges displeasure.
00:59:15
Speaker
what should have been like like a pretty clear easy answer, I guess would be the right word. Like there was a process to go through with all of this and she was ducking the process. And I'll say this, and this will kind of be like how I wrap up my thoughts on this. From what I've seen of their statements to different news outlets, including Keirdeo, I'm not 100% sure that Linda Stanley or her attorney, Steve Jensen, know much about this process.
00:59:44
Speaker
And i't think they just to be honest, I mean, it is an unusual process, but like, that's okay. Here's how that works. If you don't know the process, you can say, I don't know. You could say, I don't know, or you can learn and then speak about it. But like trying to make a statement about what's happening when you don't know what's happening,
01:00:13
Speaker
That makes no sense. And clearly the news was able to look it up and figure it out. um I think there may be a little bit of denial. ah I think that sometimes you find yourself in positions in life that if you truly look around and you ask yourself questions about how you got there, you cannot provide yourself the answers. I don't think that they made a mistake here. um i i feel like ah I feel like she has served her time as a prosecutor and attorney, and maybe real estate will be her next thing. Yeah. I mean, look, she threw a bunch of strange emails out there and called it political. This process is still kind of ongoing as of September 17th or 18th or so. I know that my um completely ah irrelevant assertion of the situation was not political.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, I didn't feel political to me. At all. There are a lot of words I would use to describe this situation, and none of them have anything to do with anybody's politics. And that's that's really all I have to say about this. I just thought it was interesting that she got disbarred.
Celebrity Legal Troubles and Credits
01:01:26
Speaker
I don't have a lot more on her. And we kind of ran along with this, even if I cut it. I think I'm going to save that. I think we're going to need to do a second episode. OK, but hold on, because I just want to point out like that was the time you gave P Diddy.
01:01:46
Speaker
That's why I did it. I said I was going to give him the time he deserved. Yeah, I gotcha. But like, honestly, I believe everything in this indictment is true. I believe that he is screwed. Oh, yeah. no I was just laughing because we've moved on so fast. I was like, wait, we didn't even talk about him. But I recalled you saying that. and but My understanding is this state, or the United States in this instance, asked for 18 months to review the voluminous discovery materials to determine what to turn over. um He could ask for a speedy trial and probably get somewhere with it, but the truth is, he knows he did it. Get sentenced faster. That's what a speedy trial here is going to be. There's a lot of, um there's a boatload of evidence. And there's witnesses and um it is a,
01:02:38
Speaker
I do find it odd that like all the people involved are all the same people from the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. And I wondered how well did Jeffrey Epstein and P. Did he know each other? And maybe he's the only name on the list they gave a crap about.
01:02:53
Speaker
um Oh, hmm. Interesting. I don't know about that. um I know. Well, it's Florida and then it's Southern District of New York again. In fact, the same prosecutor. Well,
01:03:08
Speaker
And I heard, I listened to the attorney talking, um, there, you know, there was a, there was a, like a brief graphic video out of basically, um, he he was being very violent towards his girlfriend. Oh, you're talking about the hotel video. and Yeah. And so like,
01:03:33
Speaker
It doesn't take much more than that right um to fade. Well, that's how you that's how you get an investigation into you that you can't overcome. Well, right. And like there's there's not a whole lot. I don't know that there's enough like you know grandparents on earth for him to walk across the street to make up.
01:03:54
Speaker
for what he did to her in that video. And then the facts, so the attorney's not helping the situation, this is a, um He is a famous, per he's a celebrity and the attorney saying that like he came here to turn himself in and then he got arrested anyway, taken because they didn't let him turn himself in. And then the attorney was so sure he was going to be walking out of there. They offered $50 million dollars in bail. Well, when the, before the indictment was unsealed, before court had happened, he was going in
01:04:30
Speaker
He's like, he's in good spirits. We're going to get him out. He came here willingly. And I'm going, what are they talking about? Are they not? Because I don't even know what the charges are, but I know it's bad, right?
01:04:46
Speaker
yeah and I'm going he's and probably never getting out of there. That's what I'm thinking to myself um Just based on the circumstances and the attorney doesn't even like blink he thinks that he's going to bail him out momentarily, right and It it's all a little bit bizarre to me because I couldn't figure out how like what is what is the attorney's impression of this, right? That's making him give this statement to the press. i don't yeah I don't either. And so anyway. Optimism, that's a very optimistic attorney. Maybe, but I feel like there's a very fine line between optimism and stupidity.
01:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard Linda Stanley is available. Maybe they can get her barred in New York. I don't know.
01:05:45
Speaker
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01:06:51
Speaker
Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:07:11
Speaker
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