Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Season Seven: Never Too Late
117 Plays21 hours ago
In this episode, we talk about news updates.
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS. Our theme song is No Scars from slip.fm
You can reach us at our website truecrimexs.com and you can leave us a voice message at 252-365-5593. Find us most anywhere with @truecrimexs
Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe if you want to hear more and you can come over to patreon.com/truecrimexs and check out what we’ve got going on there if you’d like to donate to fund future True Crime XS road trip investigations and FOIA requests. We also have some merchandise up at Teepublic http://tee.pub/lic/mZUXW1MOYxM
Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Ad Information:
New Era Caps: https://zen.ai/dWeCYLHxxANOaZ6NcKocEw
Liquid IV: Link: https://zen.ai/45lYmDnWl1Z3cR66LBX5mA
Zencastr: Link: https://zen.ai/SFkD99OGWGNz_plc2c_Yaw
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
True Crime Case Updates
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:59
Speaker
It's been a minute since we've had one of those episodes where we do like some of the big true crime updates. um There's one that I wanted to include today, but I think it's kind of the story for today. So I'm going to save it for a minute.
00:01:13
Speaker
Do you follow, like like, in the spirit of doing multiple stories, I guess, do you follow, like, when...
Interest in Overturned Convictions
00:01:21
Speaker
Judge vacates blah, blah, blah, murder case or like old case. do you follow those for any particular reason?
00:01:31
Speaker
Um, I like to see, are you asking me if I follow them or what my reason for following them is? I think I'm asking, like, what catches your attention enough? Because there's so many. i see so many now where it's, like, conviction overturned.
00:01:48
Speaker
And, like, I don't dig into all of them. But is there a reason that you would dig into one over others? So I, like, I do i do read any, just about any article that ah comes up about a conviction being overturned.
00:02:04
Speaker
especially the serious crimes, I like to read to see if, like, why it was overturned, right?
00:02:16
Speaker
Like, was it a technical error? Was the person factually innocent? Like, what's going on? okay what ah Like, for me, the older the murder case is, the more interesting it is.
00:02:29
Speaker
and i would agree with that. like Especially if it's one that doesn't make complete sense to begin with.
North Dakota Murder Case: Gilbert Fassett
00:02:40
Speaker
ah This one comes out of North Dakota.
00:02:43
Speaker
And i got a Valley News Live update March 6, 2026 from Devil's Lake, North Dakota. I had not heard of this case, but here's like the quick overview.
00:02:59
Speaker
Back in 1995, a guy named Gilbert Fassett, who was murdered years earlier, like the trial for his murder starts happening, and we get some of the details there.
00:03:13
Speaker
According to Valley News and some of the other sources, Gilbert Fassett's body was found in Benson County, North Dakota, in August of 1986.
00:03:23
Speaker
So prosecutors said that a man named Werner Wolfgang Kunkel had murdered him Between 10.30 p.m. August 1, 1986 and the early morning hours of August 2, 1986, they gave it about a three-hour window. And this three-hour window had become the foundation of the state's entire case.
00:03:46
Speaker
According to a guy named Bruce Ringstrom, who is one of Warner Kunkel's attorneys, he says the state's whole theory was that Gilbert Fassett had to have been killed by Warner Kunkel within these three hours and those three hours alone.
00:04:01
Speaker
For the part of Warner Kunkel, convicted in 1995 of this murder, he has maintained his innocence and he argues there's no way he could have committed the murder during that time frame because he was in custody when Gilbert Fassett was last seen alive.
Conviction Vacated: Withheld Evidence
00:04:20
Speaker
So this week, a North Dakota judge has vacated 30-year-old murder conviction because they believe that prosecutors had withheld key evidence that may or may not have proven that the victim was still alive after the defendant was taken to jail.
00:04:38
Speaker
That's what gets my attention. But the subheading for the next like little portion of this article by Bobby Follett is the Brady violation.
00:04:51
Speaker
And, you know, people talk about Brady violations all the time, but I don't think they know what they actually are. I would agree with that. So this case turns on four documents that according to Warner Kunkel's attorneys, they did not receive until January, 2023.
00:05:11
Speaker
So for those of you listening, the murder takes place in 1986. The trial is in 1995 and they don't get these documents until 2023. These documents are,
00:05:22
Speaker
these documents if relevant, would certainly qualify as a very, very late Brady violation. The fact that they weren't handed over to the defense is ridiculous.
00:05:34
Speaker
So here's what these four documents appear to be. One is a statement from a guy who owned a local pub or cavern who says that he spoke with Gilbert Fassett on August 6, 1986, five days after prosecutors said that Gilbert Fassett was killed and a whole day after Werner Kunkel was already in local jail custody, which is pretty important.
00:06:04
Speaker
There's a military order in these papers, which is unusual. um to see like military orders in here. But it shows that National Guardsman Byron Anderson was required to report for duty in Alabama on August 2nd of 1986. So...
00:06:21
Speaker
so He states that, and and this is from the testimony of trial, that he had given an statement to the police. He gave Gilbert Fassett a ride in the early morning hours of August 2nd, 1986. So those two things, like...
00:06:45
Speaker
Individually maybe don't mean that much, but together having two statements that are withheld by the prosecution that tend to show that Gilbert Fassett was alive at the time frame, they're saying Werner Kunkel killed him.
00:06:59
Speaker
And all of it hinging on the fact that after that time frame, Werner Kunkel is in the local jail. I think those are important. I think so too. Yeah. So then we also get a federal agent's memo where he was raising questions about the credibility of two key state witnesses.
00:07:19
Speaker
That was not provided to the defense.
Impact of Brady Violations
00:07:21
Speaker
And then there was a quote-unquote while you were out note indicating that a witness had seen Gilbert Fassett alive on August 6, 1986, which apparently contradicted this witness's trial testimony.
00:07:37
Speaker
So while you were out note, i don't know if people do this anymore or not. um If you call into like an office and multiple people work there, whether it's an agency or just some kind of company, if there's like a person who mans the phones, whether it's full-time as a secretary or just...
00:07:57
Speaker
like you rotate the phones and whoever's sitting in there at the time, like you have this pad of paper that just says while you're out, and they're real simple. They're about probably less than a quarter sheet of a piece of standard like paper that you write on, you know, the eight by 11. Yeah.
00:08:13
Speaker
yeah So it usually has like a series of boxes across the top that you check and It's got like a place for time and date and then the name of a person who called and a phone number or contact information and then a little memo below that where you can write what they were calling about if they left a message. So that comes up. So these four documents, the military order, the statement from the tavern owner, the federal agent's memo about the two key witnesses and this while you were out document, um they were not turned over by the state to the defense back 1995. And i would say
00:08:51
Speaker
The four of those things being held back certainly constitute a Brady violation. I agree. i know it It's not really up to the prosecution to decide if it's relevant for the defense or not, right?
00:09:07
Speaker
Right. And I think any time that you're holding something like that back, you and I get into this like frame of mind all the time. We're really just trying to decide, was it held back out of incompetence or was it held back out of malfeasance?
00:09:23
Speaker
Right. That's the usually those two things are what goes awry. Anytime you're looking at Brady violations or even there's even some other like, uh, misconduct type things that those, you know, one or the other of those two things comes into play.
00:09:44
Speaker
Right, and it gets hard when you have four pieces of evidence that all tend to be leaning the same direction that are withheld. It's like, that's either complete incompetence and he really does need a new trial, or it's a different kind of misconduct that like has to be examined by and outside party at that
Incompetence or Malfeasance?
00:10:03
Speaker
point.
00:10:03
Speaker
Well, one of the things is, do we know who ah took the message, who the message was for? like One of the things I've started noticing is...
00:10:14
Speaker
sometimes when it's spread across a large group of ah the state actors, right, sometimes it's more like, you know, four people didn't do what they were supposed to do, right, which is incompetence. But sometimes it can be spread out so much that, like,
00:10:37
Speaker
When it comes down to it you can't even point your finger at who really did it. It doesn't mean that it's okay. It just means that like it wasn't as obvious of a misdeed, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, it makes sense. um I don't know, like sitting here, I see that they're all in this judgment. So my guess is it's less, I think that it's just, ah so I don't think it's,
00:11:04
Speaker
I don't think it's like they were trying to commit some kind of prosecutorial or law enforcement misconduct. I think that they just didn't think that those things were important. Right, exactly. And if if you are in one of those positions and you think one little piece of paper isn't important, it's not you can't really ah criticize that like it was purple purposely done with like malfeasance, right? Correct.
00:11:33
Speaker
It's almost flippant. And anybody could do it. A lot of times, I thought it was interesting how you described that note. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, it was people taking a message for you. That's exactly what it was. and But I know exactly what you're talking about.
00:11:50
Speaker
But back in the day when that was a thing, you know think about how many people ah whose messages would you know fall by the wayside and get stuck somewhere, go in the trash eventually, never got the message, right?
00:12:06
Speaker
And it's the same kind of thing as far as it not being turned over. Like, who knows what its path was. Now, it was found later, which is interesting, right? Right. It didn't get thrown away. i mean, if it if it had gotten thrown away, we wouldn't be talking about it.
00:12:21
Speaker
Well, that's that's another sort of element to this particular case is, like... it came up all this time later and it almost, a you know, that like probably, i don't know, two and a half generations of like prosecutor offices have gone through there. I don't really know how many, but you know, it's changed hands. Right. Right.
00:12:46
Speaker
And so somebody looked at it at some point and said, Hey, this is a problem. Right. Well, somebody kept it. So I don't know if they did or not, but they, somebody kept it.
00:12:57
Speaker
Well, right. That's what I'm saying, though. Like, it's... okay, that brings up a whole other, like, fork in the road. Because yeah if they felt like it was important enough to keep, it's weird that they didn't turn it over. That doesn't really make sense. But whatever. this is where we're at, right? Yeah.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, so... um Here's what we have in in terms of like like this going on now. Bruce Ringstrom, that attorney that we talked about, here's his quote that he gives Valley News Live. He says, what the documents that were never discussed show was that there were multiple witnesses who saw Gilbert Fassett alive after the the dates that the state was using.
00:13:39
Speaker
As far down the road as August 5th, when Werner Kunkel was in jail on an unrelated charge. So it was functionally impossible for him to have murdered Gilbert Fassett. Now, Todd Beriatnik, he gets on the stand. That's the trial attorney for Werner Kunkel back in the 90s.
00:13:57
Speaker
He testified he never received these four documents. He called the statement by the pub owner a sleeping, smoking gun. He said he did not know if the case would have even gone to trial had he seen that and had the the ability to talk to the state's attorney about it. And frequently, that's the big problem like with Brady violations is if these four things had been in the hands of defense attorneys, they have a much different argument they're making with the state. And the state maybe would have looked at it from the perspective of, we don't want to take that to trial and like give some future defendant reasonable doubt because we were so sure on the wrong guy
00:14:37
Speaker
They might have a completely different, like put it away and adjudicated another day kind of attitude. Right. towards it And that's also kind of a strange way for justice to work, but that is how it goes.
00:14:51
Speaker
um Bruce Ringstrom agrees with ah the previous trial attorney, and he says what the he says there's a 60-page order here related to all of this. And what this 60-page order said was those four pieces of evidence were Brady material, and any defense lawyer back in 1995 would have likely gotten a very different result had they had that information.
00:15:15
Speaker
So in the article, they talk a little bit about ah Brady violation. So Brady violations are observed under this 1963 Supreme Court ruling, which called Brady v. Maryland.
00:15:29
Speaker
Prosecutors are required to turn out turn over any evidence deemed favorable to the defense, regardless of whether the withholding was intentional or not. So, Ringstrom talks. He says any evidence that would mitigate guilt, any evidence that would be proof of innocence, or any evidence that is what's called impeachment material, which is evidence that shows that one of the state's witnesses might be lying or be dishonest, that's constitutionally required to be given to the defense. So that's the attorney talking about it.
00:15:58
Speaker
ah The judge in this case, Judge Naram, he found the state suppressed the evidence but stopped short of finding that it was done in bad faith. Uh, rings from comments on that and says the district court judge ordering this made it clear. It doesn't matter if the non-disclosure was in bad faith or in good faith.
00:16:13
Speaker
That is to say it could have been an administrator in the office that simply forgot to put them in there. The judge was not saying that the original trial prosecutor did it on purpose. He's simply saying the fact that trial defense attorney at the time did not have this material, that makes it constitute a Brady violation. And I think that's one of the things people miss.
00:16:33
Speaker
Like, a trial prosecutor has the duty that if they're, particularly in a murder case, but any serious felony, you have the duty to make sure that you have all the information that you're going to use organized enough that you can give it to defense But you also, anything that you might not use because it's not necessarily helping your case, that doesn't mean that you just, you know, shred it or throw it away. You have to share it.
00:16:59
Speaker
That's the whole point of the adversarial system that we have in place for our criminal justice system. And the state is typically the, you know, they're embodied to do the investigation.
State's Responsibility & Defense Challenges
00:17:13
Speaker
They have the evidence.
00:17:16
Speaker
They have, everything relevant to the case. And if, you know, it's common sense that if they don't hand over any exculpatory evidence, it's going to be that much harder for the defendant to have it. Right. Right. Because typically a defendant, ah defense attorneys have investigators, but sometimes they're way behind the eight ball. Right. A hundred percent of the time they are.
00:17:47
Speaker
Because they're not the ones investigating, ah you know, they're not, usually they're not sworn law enforcement officers who are on the scene, like whenever the crime occurs. And so they rely on the and but the case file, if you will, from law enforcement, and they have to go from there. And it's always odd to me because essentially everything should be in the case file, right?
00:18:15
Speaker
And when you have a very skewed view, like, I mean, I think a lot of prosecutors do have very skewed views and not realizing, you know, what is or isn't important, which is exactly why we have this entire Brady material thing, right? Right. You got to give everything over. Otherwise,
00:18:40
Speaker
if they find i the state or the prosecutor to be in violation, then there's sanctions, right?
00:18:51
Speaker
And it can be, I think, I'm pretty sure it's the judge's discretion with regard to what the sanction ends up being.
Judge Nairam's Ruling
00:18:58
Speaker
But sometimes it's not allowing the state to use certain evidence. Sometimes they dismiss the charges, right? Yeah.
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's usually got to be a lot for there to be a straight-up dismissal. But the whole point of like these particular documents was they would have changed the outcome of the case.
00:19:18
Speaker
um The way that the judge rules on this, like in real simple form, he rules that, one the government possessed evidence that was favorable to Warner Kunkel. These four items of evidence were all deemed to potentially help him In the case that his defense attorneys were putting on to that, it did not appear that Warner Kunkel had this evidence and some of these things were not attainable through.
00:19:48
Speaker
reasonable diligence, which I think plays to what you were saying. Like ah defense investigators get the case file from the prosecutor. That's supposed to be, here's what we have.
00:20:01
Speaker
And it includes everything that we're going to use in the case against your client. um And from there, that defense investigator can pick apart certain things. And with reasonable due diligence, like basically them looking at ah the prosecutor's file, they can do some investigative work of their own.
00:20:24
Speaker
And I'm going to say this, and people may or may not understand it. It's actually harder to work a case where a defendant client is innocent than it is to work a case where a defendant client, in all probability, either...
00:20:44
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly.
00:20:49
Speaker
related to it either in conspiracy or otherwise it's way harder to know what you don't have then to be able to examine what you do have exactly The third element, number three, that Judge Nairam found was that the prosecution suppressed this evidence, meaning they did not give it to the defense. That's all suppression is. it's it's got to like The word suppression has like a lot of connotation to it in terms of the the legal system, but like all it means is one side had it and didn't give it to the other side.
00:21:24
Speaker
And the fourth thing that Judge Nairam found was a reasonable probability a reasonable probability exists that the outcome would have been different had the evidence been disclosed.
00:21:35
Speaker
So in the judge's notes, he wrote, the jury was not presented with credible evidence that Gilbert Fawcett was seen alive after the time period the state claimed that he had been killed.
00:21:48
Speaker
And he also notes that the military order was the most significant of the four documents. He called it undeniably credible corroborative evidence that, if true, showed Gilbert Fassett was alive after Werner Kunkel was stopped by a highway patrol officer in the early morning hours of August 2nd, 1986.
00:22:08
Speaker
Because like the reason the state's timeline gets so tight is Gilbert Fassett is seen alive, and then their defendant In this case, Werner Kunkel is in jail from then on.
00:22:25
Speaker
So any anything showing that Gilbert Fassett was alive at a different time than they thought was his last contact would be corroborative to the defense in this case.
00:22:38
Speaker
And was he in custody of... Because of the murder? No. Okay. I was going to say, wait. He got pulled over and arrested on unrelated charges, which that's how they narrowed this window to three hours because Gilbert's seen leaving this pub.
Debating the Timeline
00:22:58
Speaker
And that timeframe is like up for debate now, but it essentially put him like, the you call it date of last contact, but ultimately his last contact was thought to be 10.30 p.m. August 1st, 1986.
00:23:15
Speaker
And we know that Werner Kunkel is in jail after that arrest, August 2nd, 1986. So you got the guy alive and you've got the defendant in jail. That seems to narrow down this otherwise unknown timeframe.
00:23:30
Speaker
But you have the problem in the fact that
00:23:36
Speaker
Gilbert's body is found at a different timeframe. So they're trying to make light of, uh, how they can, um they're trying to, they're trying to make it work where Gilbert,
00:24:01
Speaker
is last seen Kunkel goes to jail. And that narrows down what otherwise might be a completely unknown time of death. Right. And in this particular case, it illustrates, ah which again, we don't know what the motive was for ah the suppression of the Brady material and whether it was incompetence or malfeasance. However, it it it could be said, ah theoretically, the fact that there ah their suspect was in jail was not convenient for their case.
00:24:40
Speaker
Right. right and that That would certainly be bad facts for the state. Of course it would. and It's always interesting to me because while you want to be neutral and diplomatic about it, I mean, let's face it,
00:24:56
Speaker
if It's something exculpatory that just happens to be left out. I mean, really? it It's almost always because the investigators are, like, the piece of evidence would back them into a corner they don't want to be in, right?
00:25:13
Speaker
Because at that point, they've got to actually find the perpetrator. Right. um So I did pull up, like, how how did that all work? um Barry Pickers, back on August 10th, 1986, they discovered Mr. Fassett's body. And I think, so Great North Innocence Project is working on this case, by the way, if people want to look them up. um They do some interesting stuff, and they don't make a lot of podcasts, and they don't make a lot of documentaries, in terms of people talking to them or talking about them. But they had determined that like, that was their absolute.
00:25:47
Speaker
Their absolute was that he's definitely dead by August 10th when his body is found. So we have this three hour window. And if you look at anything between August 2nd and August 10th, their defendant client is not available because he's in jail.
00:26:04
Speaker
So it would have changed how he presented. Yeah. It's a huge hole. um And anything that shows him being alive between the 2nd and the 10th, even in passing, is important. And that those are the things that I don't think a defense investigator could necessarily find because you know you're dealing with two people um that if you... I would say it's kind of juxtaposed against each other because you you know exactly where Werner Kunkel is.
00:26:38
Speaker
Right. He's in jail. Right. Yeah. He's like, he's in custody. Like the moment that the highway patrolman calls in that that he has him and has pulled him over and is arresting him. Like, you know where he is. That's like real easy, but you've got this other guy that like is seen leaving a pub, not seen again by like people that might normally know where he is.
00:27:03
Speaker
But then the state has evidence that multiple people have seen him along the path. Right. Well, if you're investigating this in 1993, 1994, leading up to a 1995 trial, it is very difficult to go back to 1986 and find somebody who remembers seeing this random guy 10 years ago.
00:27:23
Speaker
Exactly. But there was, ah which is what I was saying as far as it you know, the reason it's on the state to produce that stuff is because the defense doesn't have the opportunity to do that. Right.
00:27:36
Speaker
So back to the Valley News Live article. It brings up whether the state can retry the case or
Challenges of Retrying the Case
00:27:42
Speaker
not. According to Bruce Ringstrom, he says that there's no evidence in that file that he's gone through. And he says that the the trial file and the discovery file is massive.
00:27:52
Speaker
He says none of that shows they had any idea that Warner did anything besides this murder in that three-hour window of of time because of the circumstances that we just described.
00:28:03
Speaker
He says, how do they try it now? He said the state could attempt to bring a new charge, but they would face significant hurdles. They would almost certainly have to change the theory and claim that Werner somehow did it after this window of time, but that becomes problematic because Werner's in other places. We have evidence in one instance that he is in jail for a period of time.
00:28:23
Speaker
So Bruce Ringstrom says he does not believe that the state can make a new case. He says, to me, the evidence is so strong that it's really hard to imagine the state's new theory of guilt. We don't believe there's any evidence in that file after scrutinizing it that could support the claim that this happened within that three-hour window of time.
00:28:41
Speaker
So other claims that Kunkel's attorneys had made were dismissed. The first claim was that they made a claim that new forensic evidence about the victim's liver toxicology constituted newly discovered evidence, but the judge found that this information had been available at the time of trial Because it was part of the toxicology report um and the defense just did not investigate it appropriately. So he rejects that claim.
00:29:04
Speaker
um He had a claim that his trial attorney was ineffective, but the judge dismissed that because the trial attorney can't be ineffective at working with what they don't have.
00:29:18
Speaker
um There was another claim that some of the physical evidence, which included Gilbert Fass's clothing, was destroyed in bad faith. That failed because the judge found that Werner Kunkel's attorneys did not have evidence that this was destroyed intentionally in an attempt to harm his defense.
00:29:38
Speaker
So there's a lot going on here. ah For Werner Kunkel, it's an interesting story because he is a German citizen. He has filed multiple post-conviction petitions for assistance and relief since his 1995 conviction.
00:29:55
Speaker
um He filed a direct appeal where his conviction was affirmed. That was back in 1996 by the North Dakota Supreme Court. ah He had a 2006 post-conviction appeal that was ultimately denied. But now here we are 2026.
00:30:14
Speaker
He's gotten some very serious headway on his case. Kunkel has since legally changed his last name to Rummer, though the court used Kunkel throughout the proceedings for clarity of what they were dealing with here.
00:30:27
Speaker
ah This case fascinates me. the The best link for this, other than the Valley News Live, ah is the great... greatnorthinnocenceproject.org.
00:30:38
Speaker
They have greatnorthinnocenceproject.org has a really good write-up on this case. um They dug into it really deeply. And you can go on and read the direct appeal for the facts of the case. Justia has it and Case Law has it.
00:30:51
Speaker
um This all took place in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. I just find it fascinating when cases that old have something this bad about them that like it doesn't seem to... I mean, I guess maybe...
00:31:03
Speaker
We'll find out that Werner Kunkel got out of jail on the 9th and killed him that night. That's what I was going to say is, like, I was surprised that it came up, like, are we going to try him again? Like, what?
00:31:19
Speaker
Because to me, it's almost a conclusive alibi. Right. And so why on earth? it This shows me that like they were working to convict him, not to get justice.
00:31:36
Speaker
Right. Yeah, so it's interesting. um There's still going to be some movement in this case throughout the year, which is why I bring it up here, because I love when I can bring up a case that I know will give people rabbit holes to go down. This will certainly be one of those cases.
00:31:51
Speaker
um It is fascinating to me that it exists in the way that it exists ah right now, and i am I'm very excited to see if maybe they finally either get justice for Gilbert Fassett or...
Justice for Fassett or Freedom for Kunkel?
00:32:05
Speaker
If they figure out a way to get Werner Kunkel, or I think they were calling him Werner Rummer Kunkel on the papers now, ah to get him the relief of, like, if he didn't do this, he has a way to get out. And I think so many cases where someone didn't do it aren't it just aren't set up that way.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. um do you have anything else on this right now? No, not right now. I am interested to see what happens. he did he hasn't actually been released, right? his i i don't think he was being released. I think i think if I read the order correctly, the judge had a window of time he was working with that was... So this...
00:32:46
Speaker
this This series of hearings took place in January this year. The ruling came out in February, and something in there said that the state had 30 days to consider an appeal to another level of court for like fresh eyes on a ruling. I don't know that it'll change based on the judge's 60-page order.
00:33:07
Speaker
um But ultimately, at the end of that 30 days, they either have to file a new indictment or he goes free. okay Okay. think that's what we're waiting on now with him.
00:33:20
Speaker
That's interesting, yeah. Yeah, and that's as of i us recording this is taking place March 7th, and it's really come out in the news March 6th, and the order came available.
00:33:32
Speaker
um I don't have a lot more on that one, but I do have ah I have an interesting story, and then I have a huge true crime update. Yeah. ah Do you have any more on Mr. come Romer Kunkel?
00:33:43
Speaker
No, not until something else occurs.
Jerry Goldberg's Tragic Story
00:33:46
Speaker
um I pulled this article. i ended up pulling it out of Nine News. um the The person writing it is a guy named Kevin Vaughn. This popped up on March 3rd, 2026. It was like, you know, sometimes you read these things and it's like,
00:34:01
Speaker
What is happening there? um it is It is weirdly true crime news. It's a story about ah um a man and his wife, but ah the the man's name is ah Jerry Goldberg.
00:34:14
Speaker
And did you read a little about him when I sent this to you? So he had launched a petition, and like this is one of those... I don't know what all the different websites are, but like you can you can you can read about change.org petitions all the time.
00:34:30
Speaker
ah Back in... I think it was 2024. Nine News covered him. and And it said, a man turns grief into action, call for safety improvements after his wife's death. And it's basically just a Colorado man petitions for a traffic light at a busy intersection where his wife died, seeking to prevent future tragedies.
00:34:54
Speaker
um He had launched this. This was about an intersection at East Bellevue Avenue and South Franklin Street in Greenwood Village, Colorado. um So this is a guy that's upset that his wife has died. He is 82 years old in 2026.
00:35:12
Speaker
He was on his way to meet his cousin for lunch at the New York Deli News in South Denver. He's always early for their meetings. meetings And his cousin Gloria said he wasn't there.
00:35:23
Speaker
She asked that her last name might be used. He said, I tried to call him. I tried to text him. No answer, no answer at all. And she says she was she finally left after a while wondering where he was, but she had an empty feeling that something had happened.
00:35:37
Speaker
She said he never showed up and she went home knowing that it was not like him. Her worst fears were confirmed later in the day when Jerry Goldberg's sister called to tell her that he'd been in a crash and had died.
00:35:51
Speaker
So in May 2024, Andy Goldberg, was Jerry Goldberg's wife, she dies at this intersection. He launches this petition. and now in twenty twenty six um Jerry Goldberg dies in a car crash at the exact same intersection he had petitioned for the city to do something about it.
00:36:15
Speaker
There is some weird kind of irony to that, don't you think? Either that or it truly is a horribly dangerous intersection.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah. um According to Megan Copenhaver, she's a spokeswoman for the Greenwood Village. She said the two cities continue to evaluate proposals related to this intersection. She said a proposal that has the blessing of the Colorado Department of Transport ah will increase police patrols and traffic enforcement at this area. And they're reviewing potential longer-term solutions in coordination with these partner agencies.
00:36:53
Speaker
In an interview last fall with Nine News, gary goldberg Jerry Goldberg said that he was motivated by the goal of making sure that what happened to his wife never happened again.
00:37:05
Speaker
um The intersection needs a traffic circle. It needs something. Yeah, it sounds like a place to install a roundabout. And I don't have a ton on this, and it's not super true crimey, but when something like this happens, i it is weird to me.
00:37:22
Speaker
um it It really is because it it it's eye-opening, right? Yeah, exactly. And the fact that a couple, a year or two apart,
00:37:37
Speaker
Both died at the intersection. I mean, may he not have died in vain because that is just awful. I saw the intersection. it looks like it's ah they might need to do some tree trimming, ah maybe examine the...
00:37:55
Speaker
the speed limit of the main road that they're coming out onto. I presume that it's trying to get across all those lanes of traffic. That's the problem. Yeah.
00:38:09
Speaker
So, ah you know, there are, are some things that can be done. i i hate that for them though, because that's, it's almost, it's ridiculous, right?
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, government moves really slow, as evidenced by both of these first few cases. But I do think when ah i' have seen roundabouts go in where accidents happen really quickly, and I don't know that that's the solution here.
Traffic Safety & Government Response
00:38:34
Speaker
I just thought it was crazy that this guy loses his wife in 2024.
00:38:38
Speaker
He has launched a petition over the course of 2024 into 2025, and then at the same intersection loses his life, where his wife died, 2026.
00:38:49
Speaker
in twenty twenty six Right, and that, to me, it's just, it's absolutely ridiculous that that had to happen, and nothing has still happened, right?
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, nothing's happened on it. um It does appear that there, i think I think when something like this happens, they start to take things more seriously. i think you're right. I think they start to take things more seriously. But also, I don't know how much, like,
00:39:17
Speaker
the average person or even an above average person knows about like how that works. But, you know, more than likely there's something wrong in the flow of traffic somewhere. Some light is too fast or too slow or whatever.
00:39:33
Speaker
and that's, what's causing issue. Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
and A lot of times it's almost impossible to figure out just because i don't know that people are fully competent in that area anymore, which is exactly why I was like a traffic um circle would be good because the traffic circle, it slows down the flow enough that you have more of a chance to get out without actually stopping traffic completely. They used to do all kinds of studies about what a traffic light would do.
00:40:08
Speaker
And they used to have them calibrated a certain way to, like in this case, it would allow for time at some point where traffic would be less and people could get out based on the traffic lights in either direction, right? So not the one there's not one there, but they would time it out to make it so...
00:40:33
Speaker
it was compatible. And that's my guess, something, it got off at some point. yeah Or maybe they just never did it to begin with, but it, it's a whole thing, right? It's a whole like skill and engineering skill almost to make things like that work. And I know they're hesitant to put more lights up because a lot of times the recalibration is,
00:40:59
Speaker
is difficult because people don't have training to do it at this point. I don't know why, but for whatever reason that's fallen by the wayside. And it's something everybody takes for granted, right? Like we all, it is we all take it for granted. We probably, a lot of people have no idea what goes into it. And I've noticed ah sometimes with construction that includes new lights or, you know, traffic circles or whatever,
00:41:27
Speaker
it takes a while for things to go back to being ah fluid, which is exactly what you want with traffic. You want it to flow and be fluid and get to where you're going with the minimum amount of congestion, right?
00:41:42
Speaker
And believe it or not, that's what, you know, the entity that's responsible for it wants too. It's just sometimes they can't get back to it. But I hate that this happened to this couple. it's It's one of the craziest things I think I've ever heard.
00:41:58
Speaker
Yeah, that happened to both of them was what caught my attention. So I have a house full of government employees, and they like there's always something moving slow in the government. And we talk about stuff like this all the time.
00:42:12
Speaker
But it's usually like this is the example used where You never get to the part where the second person dies. You have the tragedy happen, and then the petition happens, and then slowly over time the change occurs. In this case, the change didn't occur fast enough, so you have the second tragedy in the same family happen at the same place.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah, and it's insane. And i would I'm interested to see if two people, which we don't know how many people have died there, but we do know both halves of this couple died there. And it'd be interesting to know if that pushes it you know for a change to be made.
00:42:54
Speaker
Right. I don't have a lot more on this one. i just brought it up because it was an interesting piece.
Becca Doe Identified as Rebecca Malakute
00:43:00
Speaker
i have another story to add here if you have time. Yeah, go for it. um Because I like being able to do some true crime roundups. This is a big one for me.
00:43:10
Speaker
ah This is the case of Becca Doe. You and I have talked about Becca Doe over the years. um the The story that we have includes this really haunting ah Polaroid picture.
00:43:24
Speaker
And if you've if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. It's two people. It almost looks like a Polaroid um like in a little photo booth or something.
00:43:35
Speaker
um yeah It is one of those things that... like it it haunts you a little bit. It is. It's haunting. Yep. Yeah. So June 3rd, 1991, we moved to ah Albuquerque, New Mexico motel.
00:43:51
Speaker
Apparently this is the last check-in for Becca Doe. On June 5th, 1991, they find her hanging in a motel shower, like hanging like It's...
00:44:05
Speaker
um it's It's an odd story, but according to to what we know about it, a guy named Eduardo Colin, C-O-L-I-N, he had arrived between 9.30 and 11.00 p.m. and it's this Super 8 Motel in Albuquerque. He rented room 233 for two people for one night. He was expected to check out at 11.00 a.m. the following day.
00:44:28
Speaker
He provided all legitimate information, including a registration slip, um but one thing was false, and that was the vehicle license plate number. On June 5th, it was discovered that Eduardo had failed to check out of the room. So a security guard went to investigate. He found that the room was locked from the inside. He had to use a screwdriver to get inside.
00:44:48
Speaker
And when he gets inside the room, he didn't notice anything unusual apart from multiple alcohol bottles on a table. But then he discovered Becca Doe was hanging from the shower when he entered the bathroom.
00:45:00
Speaker
ah She had hanged herself using a suitcase strap over the shower head. According to the investigation that's done after the fact, she had heroin in her system, and it was believed that she had died on June 3rd, which would have been the day that Eduardo Colin had died.
00:45:19
Speaker
rented the room, but her body had been severely decomposed when found. They did find a photograph of her on a table in the motel room that depicted her alongside a Hispanic man. The motel employees had mistakenly identified the man in the picture as Eduardo,
00:45:39
Speaker
And it's thought that this photo had been taken in a mall photo booth shortly before her death, which has now been clarified as a suicide. It would be several years before Eduardo's family could be located, And by the time that's done, he had died due to natural causes.
00:45:56
Speaker
The family was shown the photograph of this woman who was unidentified at the moment. They confirmed that Eduardo is not the man in the picture. So they also didn't know who the decedent could be.
00:46:10
Speaker
In the room, they find a digital scale on the room's table. So this is a little like so square scale. In a lot of instances, it's used in a kitchen, but it can also be used for drug packaging.
00:46:23
Speaker
On that scale, it has a name, George Martinez on it. And it's going to take years before everything comes together. But in March of 2021, investigators announced that they had received an anonymous tip from the man in the photograph that the woman may have used the name Becca.
00:46:42
Speaker
So I think they already knew her as Becca Doe at this point, but he described her as possibly being from Reseda or Sylmar in Los Angeles County, California.
00:46:53
Speaker
He stated that she had reportedly flown from Los Angeles or Burbank to come out to Albuquerque. And in December 2025, the New Mexico Office of the Medical Examiner contacts Romapo College in New Jersey to provide a genetic genealogy investigation.
00:47:12
Speaker
By January of 2026, the investigative leads had pointed them towards a half-brother and stepfather living in California. So the FBI and Albuquerque Police Department were able to locate the stepfather in Ventura, California.
00:47:27
Speaker
He confirmed that he had last seen his stepdaughter in 1991 when she finally left the Los Angeles area. Detectives followed this lead and they contacted the half-brother. The half-brother provides a DNA sample to police and they are able to confirm that the person who had died, Becca Doe, was his half-sister.
00:47:48
Speaker
So this announcement is being made on what would have been her 53rd birthday, but Becca Doe has been identified as Rebecca Malakute.
00:48:00
Speaker
She was born March 4th, 1973. She died June 3rd, 1991. um She had been, i think the word would technically be estranged from her family.
00:48:16
Speaker
um but not necessarily quote unquote missing, as you call it. They had a lot of information on her. They had photos of her clothing.
00:48:28
Speaker
They had all of the items that were found on the bedside motel table. and it's not a small amount. They have alcohol with fingerprints. They would potentially with DNA and,
00:48:40
Speaker
um Like bottles, they have the Polaroid, they have a purse, they have cigarettes, you know, they have quite a few things going here, but it takes them a really, really long time.
00:48:54
Speaker
uh to identify her she had shown up for years in vikap as one of those unidentified person jane does i i think you can still you may not be it may be archived on the fbi.gov site but i think you can still go to like the inner the way back machine and look at the flyer uh the photo of her is absolutely haunting like the You can't tell if she's having a good time or a terrible time, but her eyes are wide, her mouth's open. She looks kind of shocked.
00:49:26
Speaker
um They did quite a bit of work in 2025 showing us like her... They did reconstruction, don't you saw this, of what the clothing would have looked like on the person in the picture.
00:49:39
Speaker
Yeah, i actually, i think I saw that come out. And I just remember seeing, so I pulled the old like poster from BICAP, and it just says, you know, ah information wanted, BICAP unidentified persons, Jane Doe, Albuquerque, New Mexico. it's got the flyer with that photo and then her clothing next to it. it says that this is a Jane Doe, 18 to 35 years old. she had sandy, strawberry blonde hair that was long and curly. She had hazel-slash-gray eyes. She was 5'7", weighed 140 pounds, and her ears were pierced.
00:50:11
Speaker
And the description they gave us for years was, on June 5th, 1991, the body of an unidentified female was found in a room at the Super 8 Motel located I-40 and I-25. in Albuquerque, New Mexico after checkout was not scheduled as completed.
00:50:27
Speaker
There was no identification for the woman with her belongings. She was wearing a Trends brand multicolored pink top. um She was wearing white denim guest product pants, three-inch silver hoop earrings or loop earrings, a wide metal bracelet. She had a dark-colored purse and suitcase with women's clothing that was also in the room.
00:50:48
Speaker
They believe, based on a tip, that the woman's theme is Becca. She was reportedly from Los Angeles County area, possibly Reseda or Silmar, and flew from either Los Angeles or Burbank to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
00:51:03
Speaker
ah Please you know submit a tip if you found it, although you don't need to do that on any of anymore because Rebecca Doe is no longer Becca Doe. She is Rebecca Maleku, M-A-L-L-E-K-O-O-T-E. And they've, several places online have put up like multiple photos of her over time. She looks very different in each photo, but she has been identified. What you think of that?
00:51:34
Speaker
Well, I wondered why, ah especially with all that ah extra information, i wondered why ah the man who rented the hotel didn't, or motel room, didn't report that she was in there. There's a little bit of a story about her. So this popped up on Unidentified Awareness, which is like a lot of the unsolved mystery cases on sort of a wiki.
00:52:03
Speaker
um It says, ah Becca was born in 1973. She was 18 at the time of her death and had been living in Los Angeles, California. She had dated an unknown man for a few weeks in Los Angeles, and they took a Polaroid picture together, which would be found with Becca at the time of her death.
00:52:19
Speaker
They soon split up, but they remained good friends. The man's brother-in-law was a car mechanic from Albuquerque named Eduardo Collins. He had developed feelings for Becca, and with her ex's consent, Eduardo and Becca made plans to meet up in Albuquerque.
00:52:34
Speaker
Her ex dropped her off at LAX airport. That was the last time that he saw her. So we have the drop-off there, and it's obviously an odd situation because it's a brother-in-law of someone that she had dated.
00:52:51
Speaker
um So we don't know a ton of information about that, but I think these people had to have known it was her the whole time, right? Well, right.
00:53:03
Speaker
mean, I'm not entirely sure. like How was he the brother-in-law? Was he married to the guy's sister? Sister, yeah. I think that's i think is he he's married. It's the 90s. Married to his sister or brother, yeah.
00:53:19
Speaker
It would be very weird, though, for him to encourage his brother-in-law to cheat on his sister. Well, okay, so hold on. Let's think about that for a second. So she's dating a guy. His sibling could be married to this person's sibling. Does that make sense?
00:53:42
Speaker
His sibling. Yeah. So it's like, if you're. what I'm saying. Like it. Why would want his sibling to. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry.
00:53:52
Speaker
I'm trying to picture it. Hold on. No, I'm, I'm now I'm lost. They might've been separated.
00:54:01
Speaker
So. Eduardo co Colon. Colin. Or Colin. Colon. colon so you I don't know how you spell. I don't know how you say I always say Collins, C-O-L-L-I-N-S. I don't know how you say it when it's only one L. um So he he's the brother-in-law of someone she had been dating.
00:54:19
Speaker
So he is if the guy she's dating has a sibling, and that sibling is married, And the married person has, like the so the other side of it, has multiple siblings. That's a brother-in-law.
00:54:37
Speaker
Does that make sense?
00:54:41
Speaker
It does. So, like, my wife, for instance. She has a, ah she has a i have a sister-in-law on her side, right? Who's not married. Right.
00:54:56
Speaker
So that if that person were to see one of my siblings, technically it would be my sister-in-law seeing one of my siblings. Your brother, right?
00:55:07
Speaker
Right. you know what i mean? like So my um my brother and that sister-in-law don't have to be married.
00:55:18
Speaker
Right. So I think it's just like we're missing out on the fact that there's multiple siblings in one of these families that somehow... like Okay, but he's the guy that the guy that she met up with is the guy that rented the room, right? Eduardo, yeah.
00:55:33
Speaker
but Okay, and so my thought is, or was initially, that perhaps she overdosed, but they don't really get into the specifics of that.
00:55:45
Speaker
ah It just seemed odd that he rented the room. We don't even know if he was ever even staying there, Yeah. Right. She came to visit, and for whatever reason, after coming to visit, she takes her own life.
00:56:00
Speaker
It's ruled a suicide by hanging at this point. Right. And it's entirely possible that he just got her a room because she was coming into town, right?
00:56:11
Speaker
Correct. And she was the only one that was there. And she committed suicide because... Of whatever reason. We don't know. She was only 18 years old, which is tragic.
00:56:25
Speaker
Right. It is tragic.
00:56:28
Speaker
It's very sad, but I'm glad she got her name. I was going to say, I'm glad she got her identity back. I'm glad they identified her. i thought there was always a chance that it would be like something else to the story but the investigators seemed pretty clear and when they announced the identification that that was not the case that her death was still a suicide yeah that appears to be what they're going with they have not said otherwise if they do i'll correct myself um well and i'm pretty sure the people are dead anyway right
00:57:05
Speaker
Um, so so it appears that Eduardo. Well, right. Because they went to go talk to him. Right. And he's not in the picture because the family has had passed away. Right. Right. But they didn't recognize his brother-in-law either.
00:57:21
Speaker
It was just weird. They didn't recognize them, but who knows? There's also the situation where your family's not close. Right. Right. And so it is entirely possible that the brother-in-law relationship is something we're not thinking of right now.
00:57:40
Speaker
Right. Oh, it's interesting because now that I look at the wording of it, it says Collins family was shown the photograph of the then unidentified woman and confirmed he was not the man in the picture. They were also unaware of who the decedent could be.
00:57:52
Speaker
So they're not they're not saying no one was identified. They're just saying the person in the picture is not Eduardo. Right. Okay, I got you. I see where you're headed with that. Now I see where you're headed with that.
00:58:05
Speaker
Okay, well, the wording isn't... ah When I heard that, I thought it was interesting. But the reason that they didn't talk directly to Eduardo at that time was because he had passed away. And that's all I have today for true Crime News Roundup. you got was That was a big one. I mean, that was... She died ninety ninety one june ninety ninety one yep So that was, that took quite a while.
00:58:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's, um, wow. Uh, that's going to be 35 years. No, more than that. 26 plus man math, 26 plus nine. What is that? 35 years. Yeah. thirty Yeah.
00:58:51
Speaker
So, uh, she got her identity back and may she rest in peace.
00:59:07
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating.
00:59:18
Speaker
It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS. s
00:59:51
Speaker
Don't want to go, but it's cause I'll disappoint ya. It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of.
01:00:02
Speaker
I hate the competition. This culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
01:00:13
Speaker
True Crime Excess 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.
01:00:31
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.