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Season Seven: Infighting in the Inland
151 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, we talk about a murder suicide case closing but possibly going to coroner’s inquest and corruption in a small town.
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
True Crime Cases: Murdoch and Koberger
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:59
Speaker
I don't know if you fall down like the sort of rabbit hole where you're like looking for a piece of information about something that's in true crime news and you land on like a local, and sometimes like regional or maybe even state site where like you're reading about that thing, but then there's many more interesting things happening in that area.
00:01:21
Speaker
I would say that that I do do that. I go down rabbit holes, but recently it seems more like I grab onto a thread and unravel a sweater.
00:01:32
Speaker
That's exactly where I've been. And I think people know all of this stuff. You and I will like watch an entire trial because we hear that something's being overturned and then we'll go back.
00:01:45
Speaker
Where I'm at recently is Alec Murdoch. He's got this whole thing going on with that trial where they're going to retry him. I don't know that it matters as much because of like him already being on these long prison sentences with these long adjudications.
00:02:02
Speaker
But like they're going to have to re-adjudicate the murder of his wife and son. i really just want to know where that DNA came from. Right. And so like that one question makes me go through all this stuff in South Carolina. And I like, that's where I was actually. That's what I was like hunting recently was, did anybody cover that? Because there's, there's like sideline stuff happening in that case.
00:02:25
Speaker
And like, I never really understood how that case blew up like it did. So there's also like, in addition to like the actual facts of the case and the coverage of the case, like, I want to know like why the coverage happened in the first place.
00:02:38
Speaker
There's this whole thing where one of the podcasters down there that was covering it from kind of the beginning and all of the the different tentacles of that case, because you have the Stephen Smith situation, you have this whole boat lawsuit going on.
00:02:56
Speaker
That podcaster got found recently. in held in contempt and find like a quite a large amount of money because they refuse to sit for a deposition in something else and like so i was like coming through all of that and i came up with the stuff that were like the rabbit holes that were going to go down today this is like a mix of like dirty badges and then like what is happening got this one page order in the middle of it all. Cause I was like literally going through the South Carolina Supreme court's webpage.
00:03:27
Speaker
And it was like about a judge being removed. And I was like, I can't not read that now. And then it just got deeper and deeper. So what I put together today are these,
00:03:39
Speaker
three stories sort of surrounding South Carolina things that are like, I keep watching them spiral and they don't seem to have an end in sight. And a lot of times when this happens, it happens for me with like fraud cases or con cases. I go down significantly deep rabbit holes that turn out to like, some of them are endless. Like they're just bottomless pits. Yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
Well, I will say that this type of, ah like looking at the peripheral cases, right, like you were talking about to begin with, when you're just kind of looking somewhere and then you see this and that and the other, I never realized how much like content there is until we start doing that, obviously. But a lot of times there's peripheral cases, they lead to much more interesting things, right? Then what makes like the mainstream media coverage. And I think the mainstream media coverage is, it gets started by the right person getting contacted at the right time.
00:04:48
Speaker
I think That's how that launches. And i have mixed feelings about some of that ah because of different cases that have gone big in the media that I didn't think they should have. And i actually have a lot of appreciation for some of the journalists that made that happen. And I'm not really sure why Except that they were just trying to get their break or whatever. I don't want to really want to go too far off on that, but it's interesting though, right? Like yeah how some things blow up and some don't.
00:05:22
Speaker
For instance, this week, and we're not, we're not covering this. I'm just saying this sentence. So people know like where in time we are as we're sitting here, like putting this episode down, Brian Koberger has just come out with like this crazy handwritten petition to withdraw his guilty plea.
00:05:44
Speaker
And I'm not covering that today, but I like read that and I was like, well, didn't have that on my bingo card, but I guess it is like, it's time for that to have died down a little. I think the only other person that might've like shocked me with something like that could have been Richard Allen, but he like legit went through a trial. Koberger did not.
00:06:04
Speaker
I just want to point out, ah Brian Koberger took his plea on, i believe, June 30th of 2025. Right. right And according to like the brief Idaho statutes I was looking at, ah I couldn't really figure out exactly how it applied because it you know he took a plea. This is not a trial situation, a verdict situation. Correct.
00:06:28
Speaker
The ah PCR, the post-conviction relief period, it ends about a year and 40 days after right judgment is entered. And so I'm pretty sure this is a timeline thing.
00:06:47
Speaker
I'm just saying. Yeah. i there's So there's several cases out there covering it saying, oh, he just he just made the deadline. um And I realized that a lot of people are thinking federal orre thinking of their own jurisdiction. um
Legal Misinformation and Public Understanding
00:07:01
Speaker
There's a lot of podcast folks covering this and content creators covering this incorrectly. And it cracks me up when that happens because they'll have like a lawyer on their show that's like from the wrong state or from the federal jurisdiction. And 99 times out of 100, they don't know what they're actually talking about. unfortunately, I see that too. Yeah. Yeah. And and like I listen to their stuff, so I really can't complain that much. But like they they don't they don't understand what's happening. And like they also don't understand that this was the only way for him to reopen everything. And he had to do it himself because new attorneys stepped forward.
00:07:39
Speaker
Well, right. And so those attorneys and and experts, they, I think, inadvertently kind of contribute to misinformation. And I don't even think they realize what they're saying is incorrect. And I'm the kind of person that when I think one way and then an expert, and I'm saying that in air quote quotes, like our listeners can see me. I am the type of person that when an expert says something that I...
00:08:09
Speaker
understand to be something different, I go back and look because I assume I'm wrong, right? I assume the expert knows. Right. That's rarely the case.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's almost never the case. And in this case, so so for everybody out there, um and I don't know where it'll land because I'm sure that like some of the bigger podcasts and YouTubers will be telling all kinds of misinformation about this. um he'll He'll be assigned counsel pretty much immediately, and ah that will go to hearing.
00:08:41
Speaker
like It will immediately go to hearing, and it'll probably zip through the district courts and then stall at the appellate level, depending on the rulings, because All he really has to prove, and and I know, like, I've heard people already saying, the bar is so high. No, not really. In this instance, they don't seem to understand that this is...
00:09:02
Speaker
ah post-conviction relief request. This is not an appellate request. It's not Jenovo or anything like that. What'll happen is he'll get counsel and they will make hay of this. And he will get um a couple of different types of attention. I don't know that it'll go all the way to a trial, but the bar is super low. All he has to prove is that he was too dumb to understand what was happening. That's the only thing he has to prove. And I don't.
00:09:31
Speaker
For those particular um statutes to be met, he just has to prove that he was too dumb or he was misled. And I think he strikes me as the type of guy who is both too dumb and was probably misled either by himself or by his attorneys.
00:09:48
Speaker
um Anytime you're in a situation where the death penalty is on the line originally, like you get a significant amount of leeway in terms of relief and motions for appropriate relief and motions for post-conviction relief or petitions for post-conviction relief.
00:10:07
Speaker
It doesn't mean it's going to go anywhere, but you're definitely getting some court time. Well, right. And anything that the court actually rules on with regard to a request for post-conviction relief can go to appeal, right?
00:10:20
Speaker
Right. So that's the whole point. Like while his plea deal specifically said he could not appeal it, you know, besides the fact that that's basically that concept of no appeal has been basically shot down by our United States Supreme Court, right? Correct. In this case, it's the straightest shot. I don't know what's going to happen with this. I do feel like, um just like you, while I'm, you know, it's still a huge tragic case with regard to the victims.
00:10:52
Speaker
I think that a lot of this is just ah another ploy for attention. But the reason that I came to the conclusion that a deadline was coming was because I was like, well, it was just enough time for it to die down and him to decide he didn't really like prison life, right?
00:11:07
Speaker
Right. And then I was like, oh, that probably means there was a deadline. So um if I'm not mistaken, Ann Taylor's still representing him. um I'd have to look at that.
00:11:20
Speaker
could be wrong. but A lot of times they withdraw on capital cases once the sentencing phase is over because most of the people in most of the jurisdictions that I've worked in um most of the people that are doing like the ground-level public defender work,
00:11:41
Speaker
are sort of divided into groups. So the first group handles district court. And then there are a lot of people that handle district and superior court. And I'm saying that because that's my experience. So district court is kind of in in a lot of places, it's where you get on the door and things start being said. Superior court in a lot of places is where the trial actually takes place.
00:12:02
Speaker
So that's your first group of public defenders. There are specialty public defenders who handle capital cases. So that they call them capital defenders. They come over when the death penalty is on the line to superior court proceedings. So then there's this other group of people, depending on where you're at, they're either regional defenders or appellate defenders. So what happens is the moment you close out a case that a superior court level And in this case, the death penalty was on the line. The capital defender's office kind of lets those people go back to what they were doing. And the public defender's office sort of lets those people go back to what they're doing. And that case file, if it moves, moves from whichever office it was at over to the appellate defenders. What's weird about this case is while it will be an appellate defender's case, it's technically not an appellate case.
00:12:59
Speaker
A petition for post-conviction relief started pro se requires a different type of defender because they will be more like the appellate defender you would get to go federal, if that makes sense. Well, right, but the fact that he filed a pro-state petition says he does not have representation on that. um I was just speaking to the Idaho statesmen.
00:13:25
Speaker
They sued to get access to the civil matter that was set up to track the spending. in Of his commissary or something? No, of his defense. Right.
00:13:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I saw that. And Ann Taylor responded to that. Because the i basically what happened was when Judge Judge got the case, he assigned a different judge there. to it it They had it listed as a civil matter. And that judge, the separately assigned judge, was responsible for approving or denying any funding. Right.
00:14:02
Speaker
And everything in that case file was sealed. And after he pled guilty, after a little while, the Idaho statesman said, hey, we want all those files, right? We want you to unseal them. And Ann Taylor responded trying to keep them sealed.
00:14:19
Speaker
Now, it could be because she has an interest in that. I mean, it's a so it's a wacky situation. I couldn't even, there's not even statutory law to follow on that. um Was it because it was ex parte funding that they were dealing with?
00:14:35
Speaker
I don't really know. All I know is that the the idea was this was going to be a huge, ah expensive case and that the judge judge who was the initial judge on it before it changed venues.
00:14:51
Speaker
ah he did He wanted an impartial party to be involved to either approve or deny funds, right? And the statesman is going to... I don't live in Idaho, so... I mean, this part matters to me, but it doesn't really matter to me because...
00:15:09
Speaker
it's not necessarily my tax dollars right straight out of my pocket, but, you know, talking about it, like the whole case, the Idaho Statesman came to the conclusion that it was like $8 million. Uh, not all of that would have been the defense funding, but it was a very expensive case. And so, you know, they were interested from that angle cause they represent, you know, that constituency over there, ah And it's a very, it's a local paper, right?
00:15:37
Speaker
But I do know Ann Taylor was the one responding in that civil matter, which it was a, the Idaho statesman sued for all of that,
00:15:49
Speaker
ah all of those records to be unsealed. And she said, no, we don't want them unsealed. And like, there's a whole situation happening there. It's interesting arguments back and forth. I realized that we,
00:16:02
Speaker
we've gone longer on this than, you know, we plan to, but, like it's ah It's an interesting thing. And so that's why i don't know why she was representing that situation. She still she still would represent like the spending of the case. That's where they're going.
00:16:18
Speaker
like She would be the one that would be on the hook. for like She would have made motions for experts and things like that. I don't know where they're coming up with that $8 million dollars number. But if they spent $8 million dollars without that going to trial, I would be interested in that. because And i know they're saying both sides. Yeah. And, but no, like 5 million of it was on Ann Taylor's side. Like.
00:16:42
Speaker
I would have to see that. Like they, it is expensive to to defend a capital case, but $8 million, dollars maybe they're counting it as four capital cases because there's four victims.
00:16:55
Speaker
And that's how they end up like getting individual reports, life histories. And like, it's expensive. Like it's extremely expensive to take on a capital case. Not $8 million is expensive usually.
00:17:06
Speaker
But I would interested in digging into that. Well, I was going to say, ah well, the Iowa statesman is, there's a reason they're doing this, right?
Defense Challenges in Capital Cases
00:17:17
Speaker
Like, they're looking into it because it affects who reads their paper.
00:17:23
Speaker
ah Like, those people are the ones who theoretically paid the taxes that are covering that. I mean, the state stepped in as well. But if you think about, like, A situation we've talked previously about how just about nobody that anybody knows could actually afford to put on a defense to first degree murder, right?
00:17:49
Speaker
Correct. Okay. And I think... It's like the top 2% of people, income-wise. and And so, you know, i that When I heard about this lawsuit, it made me start thinking about, well, what if, you know, public defenders, they use it differently if they have the opportunity. I don't know that that happens. I'm just saying, if she made a million dollars, that's crazy. Right.
00:18:24
Speaker
No, I don't. I i doubt that's the case. And what I mean by that is her salary. if if like she she Because that the $5 million or $8 million or whatever, that would include everything, right? But out of that, she got a salary and her team, every person who worked for her on her team, they would have gotten a salary and that would contribute to it, right?
00:18:50
Speaker
To the final cost. Right. But mostly that would, no, mostly it would be the experts, the reports and the consultants. That's mainly what spend money on at trial because but i i and I'd have to look at this. And i I think I was talking about this with my wife this morning and she was asking me what's the average like case hours that I put on per case.
00:19:14
Speaker
And I have to track those by the quarter hour. so For the most part, like a minor felony, major misdemeanor or complicated misdemeanor, I have three hours.
00:19:26
Speaker
Most of my baseline major felonies, i have between three and 20 hours. And if it's over 20 hours, it's either something incredibly complex or it involves either a murder, attempted murder or sexual assault.
00:19:44
Speaker
some, there might be some children's cases that are like right alongside that. Um, and anything beyond, i'd say 50 hours is like some kind of major,
00:19:57
Speaker
series of felonies is not usually one thing. But this is going to be interesting to see that unravel. That is a question I have about that case is like, how was that money spent? um And that might have a bearing on some of the future proceedings there. You were saying it was opened up as a civil case. Sometimes that's done so that the judge and the defense can have a single line of ex parte communication. So a judge can have communication with prosecutors and defense attorneys separately.
00:20:26
Speaker
And the reason for that is you may actually have to go to the judge and be like, look, your honor, our client's wackadoodle. Like he's doing all this stuff, like he's throwing feces at the camera in the jail.
00:20:38
Speaker
And like we need an expert to like come help us with that part before we can even address the case. Because right now we have to address his like current state of mind and his current whatever. And so that's the only type of communication you can really have with a judge ex parte of the prosecutor when you're applying for that funding.
00:20:55
Speaker
Because like nobody's going to come see him for free. Well, right. And I assume it that the expectation, obviously, in a capital case would be that the threshold is going to be pretty high, right? Right. As far as how much it's going to end up costing ultimately. And I think that's that's why, not to mention, you want to make sure everything's done correctly. So an unbiased person saying, no, you can't have this thing happen would be better than the judge on the case doing it Right.
00:21:22
Speaker
Right. Right. And so where that all sits right now, I'm listening to people say things like, oh this won't, this is not a thing. It's a co-burger has a nothing burger. And I'm like, I'm shocked because there's, there's some attorneys and judges, I know commenting on it. And I'm just like, guys, it's Idaho. Yeah.
00:21:41
Speaker
Like, they barely used capital punishment. The first argument that any good counsel is going to make is, like, this was a nothing burger threat they made, Co-Burger, when they said, like, we're going to take the death penalty off the table. was like, that right there probably gets him a brand new spanking trial. And I was like, is that terrible? Probably. I mean, like, everybody knows now a lot of the evidence that's been laid out and, like,
00:22:04
Speaker
you know I haven't heard anything that's changed my mind. I know a book exists that at some point I'm probably going to read just to see how wackadoodle that all is. But I don't think, i don't think there's any chance he doesn't get several like swipes at being able to withdraw that guilty plea. And I mean, if he's been, if any of this has been misrepresented or even appears to have been misrepresented to him or if something is like wrong with him.
00:22:34
Speaker
Cause like, that's the other thing about speculating about someone's mental health, like the entire internet did with Brian Koberger. Like that's fine. Now we pay for that. The reason that we pay for that is because,
00:22:45
Speaker
You know, there's 17,000 YouTube channels talking about his snow channel and how he was autistic and probably mentally ill. And he put out this PhD level quiz about serial killers and how to get away with crime. Like all of those things potentially get him more post-conviction relief, not less.
00:23:04
Speaker
And at the end of the day, it's a capital case. You're putting him in prison for the rest of his life. Or sentencing him to death if it comes back around. Right. And, you know, i idaho from what I can tell, we looked at it before. I haven't looked at it recently.
Impact on Victims' Families and Public Fascination
00:23:20
Speaker
I didn't see anything that indicated they were really going to execute him anytime soon anyways. I was just, I think you and I were talking about a couple of different executions that are going on. They all seem to be from the eighties.
00:23:32
Speaker
Like, so we're like 40 years away from Brian Koberger being executed. We probably have 40 years of legal shenanigans coming our way. Which is unfortunate because to me, it sort of demonstrates that once a capital, ah like once a capital crime has occurred, the victims families, their lives are going to be largely,
00:23:54
Speaker
ah engulfed by that right because there's no way out the thought was he took a plea they don't have to deal with him anymore ah because if he'd been sentenced to death they would have to deal with him endlessly with all the appeals that are involved and so this is just demonstrating that like there is no end oh yeah there's there's definitely not an end and this this It's not going to go the way people think it is going to go because everybody's talking about he's definitely not getting a trial.
00:24:24
Speaker
i i am betting the first thing that happened when all this was filed is the state's attorney reached out to the victim's family and they let him know. In Idaho, it's very likely he's going to get a trial out of this because of the way the statutes lean um and because of like how this was all put together. We all kind of knew if he didn't take it, it could fall apart.
00:24:46
Speaker
And here we are. So my guess is, yeah, he gets a trial. Or at least going to get the evidentiary hearings for post-conviction relief that will lead us towards a trial. Well, we said if he didn't take it, it could fall apart. But like he took the plea agreement. And he was very clear with the judge that he was doing it by all the reasons that are required for him to do it and not have repercussion, right?
00:25:13
Speaker
Uh, was he though? I thought he was kind of checked out. And then I thought a lot of people were yelling at him. I don't think this guy had the wherewithal to understand that he was sitting on the planet earth. Well, I mean, if you were going to be the defense attorney, you could argue that, but from the judge's perspective, obviously the judge would not have t accepted the plea if that weren't the case. Yeah. I mean, I'm not even talking, I'm talking about it more from a practical perspective. Like if you want proof that something's seriously wrong with them, okay.
00:25:41
Speaker
He knifed four people in their sleep. There you There's something wrong with them. ah i just I just wouldn't get too excited about this whole situation yet. I realize that that's impossible. Oh, I don't think we should be getting excited about, I don't think people should be getting excited about crimes at all. I'm just telling you guys, like more than likely, this kid's getting a trial now, which is ridiculous.
00:26:07
Speaker
And I i disagree, i mean, respectfully, but we'll see because i do think that the odds of him being sentenced to sit on death row go up astronomically if he ends up with a new trial, right?
00:26:23
Speaker
Oh, I i mean, 100% agree with that part of everybody's commentary. But everybody's saying, like, it's an impossible bar in Idaho to get a new trial after entering a guilty plea. It's a high bar. It's not very high on capital cases.
00:26:38
Speaker
One thing. You need one thing. And that just needs to be he didn't understand what was happening. And I promise you, Brian Koberger, like, the best paralegal can figure out that Brian Koberger still does not understand what's happening.
00:26:54
Speaker
so I'm not saying he's mentally ill. confident No, I'm not saying he's incompetent. I'm just saying he's a dumbass. Right. but I think this eight page handwritten document that he wrote and filed ahead of the deadline is sort of proof that I'm right automatically that he's a dumbass. He does not seem to be.
00:27:11
Speaker
On the the planet with the rest of us. Well, obviously that would be the case. I just, I think competency is not a question here, whether it was to be tried, to take a plea, you know, because those two things go right along with one another. That's a high bar. Competency in Idaho is a high bar, pretrial.
00:27:30
Speaker
It's not a high bar after the fact, but it's also not about like, is he competent to stand trial? It's did he understand his plea agreement? And the only answer that he has to say to a judge to go into evidentiary hearings the post-conviction relief is, no, I didn't understand what was happening.
00:27:47
Speaker
Well, except he has a few things going against him there because he was a in the criminal law criminologist doctoral program. And the judge thoroughly the examined his, I don't know, cognizance to take the plea.
00:28:11
Speaker
Well, I guess we'll see how that one goes. Yeah, we'll see. Um, it, it was, I'm sure to everybody it's, it's a kick in the gut, right? Yeah. I feel really sorry. I can only imagine what all the families are going through.
00:28:27
Speaker
i don't like them he's like a gnat that will not go away. I appreciate people saying all that stuff, but like they don't seem to be that way online. They didn't seem to be that way at the post-sentencing thing either.
00:28:39
Speaker
they They all seem ready for him to like get a trial. All of them. Oh, yeah. No. They want him to put to death. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They never wanted the plea deal in the first place. They want him put to death because they feel like the evidence is that strong. It's crazy.
00:28:56
Speaker
Well, I guess what I'm saying is I feel sorry that it's now pseudo up in the air again. oh I got you. Yeah, no, i I don't feel sorry for him at all. i You know what, guys? Kick ass.
00:29:09
Speaker
Drag him. Tear him up the whole time. Do it all over the internet. Do it all over social media. to Have fun with it because y'all are already having fun with it, man. Do it. Fucking tear him a new one.
00:29:19
Speaker
i I think it's awesome. Okay. well i think the I think the victim's family having the chance to say all those things is awesome. I think it's way better than like sitting around and like being stuck in the grief mode of it all.
00:29:33
Speaker
like this is He's going to make this a public revenge situation and y'all should take advantage of it. I'm serious. It's terrible. We'll see what happens. We started out with me talking about South Carolina stuff. We got over that out for a minute. But There's like three crazy things going on in South Carolina that I had sent you was kind of talking about. The first one is this order for the South Carolina Supreme Court while I was hunting around for something else down there where they removed a judge. Did you see this? I did. And I was like, what the heck?
00:30:10
Speaker
So I sent you like the the order, and it's it's really small. It's like it's like four lines. it's like, nope, he's done. we've ah We've removed him immediately from his judicial duties, and that's So I had to know a little bit more about that. Unfortunately, by the time we're recording all this, there's very little.
00:30:29
Speaker
But this is, like, sketchy. This comes out of Columbia, South Carolina.
Judicial Misconduct in South Carolina
00:30:34
Speaker
ah Live 5 News had a little article from Colt Yergin. It's just a few sentences, but...
00:30:41
Speaker
It addresses this and it addresses this and I don't know how, sorry, cor them and I don't know how I feel about it, but here's the, here's the article title.
00:31:00
Speaker
SLED charges former Georgetown judge with unlawful conduct of a child. So this guy's name is Richard Todd Jr. He is a chief municipal judge. He ends up being arrested.
00:31:12
Speaker
Georgetown County puts out his mud shot. When you hear the words unlawful conduct of a child, what do you think that means? Nothing good. So it says the South Carolina law enforcement division has charged the former chief judge of the Georgetown municipal court following his suspension on a child neglect arrest on Thursday afternoon. This is all July 30th that we're reading this.
00:31:36
Speaker
It says Richard Dana Todd, Jr., 46, was arrested on Thursday after jail records say he is charged with unlawful conduct of a child. This is according to SLED. So I think child neglect, you left the kid in a hot car, you didn't feed him you went on vacation and left him at home.
00:31:58
Speaker
Like child neglect sounds to me like a step down from abuse to the left where your ignorance or deliberate neglect caused some kind of harm.
00:32:13
Speaker
And those actions were leveled for abuse. And that is not what is happening here. Which I feel like this is where it comes in into play that he's a he was chief judge, right?
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah. like So I hear about things being overcharged all the time. I see things overcharged all the time. You and I talk about things that are overcharged all the time.
00:32:35
Speaker
Undercharged doesn't come up very much. Not really at all. like When you and I look at something that's undercharged, it's a rarity. Unless we're talking about like a traffic ticket like being dropped down to like improper equipment, I don't know that I've ever seen very much undercharged.
00:32:54
Speaker
I mean, i sometimes see plea deals that work out and kind of balance out the system, but they're rare Right. um Like diversion agreements sometimes or deferred prosecution. Sometimes they feel a little underwhelming.
00:33:11
Speaker
i think that everybody on earth ah will agree, at least in principle, that this is not the type of situation where undercharging should be considered. Yeah. so here's what here's what we get out of this. It says, ah South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice John W. Kittredge issued an order immediately suspending Todd from his judicial duties. Chief Justice Kittredge wrote that based on credible information provided to the court, Todd's continued service poses his a substantial threat of serious harm to the public and the administration of justice He will remain suspended until further order of the Supreme Court. He was booked on that charge into the george gown county Georgetown County Detention Center. But the affidavit for this, to back up this warrant, has this line in it.
00:34:03
Speaker
The affidavit alleged that Todd Jr. laid in bed with a nine-year-old and touched himself inappropriately and sexually while viewing sexually explicit content on his phone during 2023 and 2024, those actions placing the victim at risk of harm and affecting the child's mental state.
00:34:23
Speaker
I'm not exactly sure what's happening here, but none of that sounds like good behavior. It also sounds like more than just what he's charged with.
00:34:35
Speaker
I mean, it does, but like like is this like the ultimate balancing act they're doing? Is this really a situation where he didn't realize... Like I'm picturing if your entire family is in the bed, you know, is this, this something that went on, but like, that's pretty explicit. Like that's pretty direct information, ah accusing him of masturbating in the bed with a kid, a nine year old kid.
00:34:59
Speaker
Well, not to mention the arrest warrant, like it says, according to the arrest warrant in 2023 and 2024, does that mean that's when the warrants were or was he just, he was just charged with us, right?
00:35:11
Speaker
He's discharged with us. Okay. So that they're saying that is when the activity occurred. Okay. Yeah. Uh, well, so that could be also, okay So because of the time difference and maybe a lack of evidence and though it shouldn't come into play, the fact that he is in fact, you know, a a judge, uh, a chief judge, no less.
00:35:42
Speaker
Is he? Well, he's a judge, whatever. He's a judge. And perhaps that's why the charge isn't straight up whatever else it could be. Right. Because that is quite a bit of time, right? Correct. And so there's always a question of the longer...
00:36:01
Speaker
the longer ago in time that a crime occurred, the less confidence there is that it can, not that it happened, but that it can be proven, right? Yeah.
00:36:15
Speaker
And so that could come into play. I could see that.
00:36:21
Speaker
Well, it's interesting to me that we find ourselves like talking about something like this. I don't know.
00:36:32
Speaker
It's a little scary to me that we get to the point in time that a judge could be charged with something like this. I have to think there's something somewhere backing this up.
00:36:44
Speaker
Don't you? Well, just to be clear, you're saying that like a judge would commit this type of crime to be charged with it, right? Right, right, yeah. okay Okay, because I'm... i this is ah This is all allegedly at this point, but this is not low-key allegedly, you know, two years, almost three years...
00:37:06
Speaker
it it would It shocks the conscience of a normal average person to think that the people that we've got ah adjudicating criminals would be committing these kinds of offensives.
00:37:20
Speaker
If it were to be true, right? Correct. I mean, it's hard to believe. ah It really shouldn't be happening. i do think now I don't know about South Carolina. I know in other states that there's perimeters.
00:37:38
Speaker
having to do I think it may be judicial officials. I know there's parameters with regard to like you know the as criminal complaints that citizens can take out against one another. i know that there's certain parameters having to do with like teachers um and maybe some other public figures.
00:37:57
Speaker
right Meaning that like while normal citizens can take out arrest warrants against each other for criminal offenses and you get a summons and you have to go you know to court before a judge and explain yourself or whatever, which largely the DA a is not even involved in, right?
00:38:14
Speaker
i I don't know that judicial officials are part of that, but I do know that in some cases it's got to have a law enforcement officer attached to it right? Right. This type of thing would have to have a law enforcement posture. so, too. Yeah, i think so, too. and so but the I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with more charges and more serious charges.
00:38:40
Speaker
I got you. Yeah, you're right on that. It's just when I read it, I was like, No, it's weird. Like, it's really weird, especially since they go ahead and release those other details. And I think that if that information is in the affidavit, that it is aimed low, right?
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah. Like, the charging request is low. And, like... Maybe it didn't meet the threshold for the higher charges, but in this case, I would love to know more background information, like what's going on. ah For example, I don't know this, but if there were to be a divorce and a custody issue happening, right? Right.
00:39:27
Speaker
If there were to be something to that effect, I could see that being ah maybe ah less likely to be true, right? I don't know. i don't know all the information. And so that's why I feel like our system, while someone's presumed innocent until proven guilty, this guy's reputation is over. Right.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, you never, um i mean people people will argue with me on this, but like you never really recover from this. If he were to be found completely innocent of all these allegations, ah that there's doesn't end.
00:40:06
Speaker
Like like yeah that thought never ends for, especially in positions where you have to be voted for and things like that. I mean, some people go on to keep moving forward with the momentum they have, but it is so rare that I mean, I say 95% careers and and lives and stuff, they sort of end in these moments. Yeah.
00:40:27
Speaker
Well, right. And even the strongest, most, you know, law abiding citizen getting accused of heinous crimes. Like, I always think to myself, oh, well, you know, you just have to keep soldiering on. But like it at a certain point, it's so unbelievable. It would knock even the most confident person down like a judge. Right. Right.
00:40:53
Speaker
Right. And that's you know that's where we were headed here. i was just kind of talking about South Carolina. and This came out of Columbia. Obviously, he's out of the Georgetown area. he's over the municipal court. That's a big deal. That's more than just he's a judge. He's the chief municipal judge.
00:41:10
Speaker
um That is really interesting. and they're going to have to handle it in a way that doesn't call every single like thing he's presided over into question. Yeah. Correct. And that's interesting because how do you do that, right? He is only 46 years old. So yeah I don't know how long he's been in that position, but that's pretty young for a judge, right? I think.
00:41:36
Speaker
Very young. Yeah. And so, you know, they're going to have to tread lightly because of that. And I don't, we don't have a whole lot of examples of stuff just because, like, this is not what is expected. I don't know in South Carolina if municipal court judges are a elected or appointed. Do you have any idea? um So this guy his position i went to um Try and and run down ah anything about him recently Richard
00:42:18
Speaker
I'm gonna do this without pausing
00:42:34
Speaker
Doesn't work down there. Hold on one second.
00:42:45
Speaker
All of my links in South Carolina are coming up. Access denied.
00:42:55
Speaker
Mine just did that to you. Yeah. What the fuck? I don't know. Hold on. I can look it up. Maybe.
00:43:08
Speaker
No, that's not him. I keep doing the wrong judge. Okay. Richard Todd Jr.
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah, can't get it to work.
00:43:24
Speaker
Oh, here we go. Jesus Christ. All right. Oh, maybe.
00:43:32
Speaker
He was appointed by the city. Okay. Can you just, like, whatever you got there, just start saying some of it? Yeah. ah So the chief municipal judge, ah chief municipal judges in South Carolina are appointed by ah the city, the local municipal governing body, like a city council.
00:43:51
Speaker
Okay. And so it's not... ah That actually makes a lot of sense. It's odd, though, that the Supreme Court had to do it.
00:44:05
Speaker
Well, because he's still a judge. I mean... Yeah, maybe the council just didn't, or whomever the governing municipal body is, maybe they didn't feel comfortable with it.
00:44:17
Speaker
I could see it either way. um But he's suspended indefinitely, apparently. but that ah that seems right. He's been licensed for 17 years out of the Myrtle Beach area. Yeah. ah It was marked up that he was a
00:44:36
Speaker
government lawyer, but I don't know. like Maybe he was the city of attorney and they appointed him, and there could be a conflict, per se, if they were to be the ones...
00:44:47
Speaker
I don't know, there conflicts come into play. That's how you get SLED involved. So that's their SBI in South Carolina is the state law enforcement ah division of SLED. right So i I guess that could be how we ah end up with the Supreme Court of South Carolina weighing in on it all.
00:45:06
Speaker
But either way, like the city council technically would be in charge of the chief of police. So this went beyond that. They got SLED involved because they felt like there could be a conflict at the local level.
00:45:19
Speaker
um And that's how we get to the Supreme Court, I think. Well, there's also, I just realized, I saw i finally saw the actual order ah from the Supreme Court. And yeah there's an appellate case number. So somebody did something lower.
00:45:34
Speaker
okay. So this is moving up. I just saw that order in passing and I was looking for something else in South Carolina. And I thought you would appreciate the weirdness of the chief municipal judge being removed and that affidavit line being dropped in the news and nobody really saying anything else about it.
00:45:52
Speaker
it's not It's one of those situations where it's, it leaves a lot of people who have a lot to say speechless. Yeah. Right. And South Carolina has been doing a lot of that. If I can find anything else out on this, I might come around to it. But I'm not 100% sure that it's as interesting as I think it is. Like, it could be something...
00:46:15
Speaker
It's either more benign, which means it's not as interesting. Like you were saying, like if there's a divorce or custody thing going on, or if some kid is in the family has recently had to go through mental health treatment and this is the thing that came out of it.
00:46:30
Speaker
ah But if he gets a bunch more charges or if these charges weigh out to match the affidavit, I'm definitely interested in that. How a judge could find himself in that position.
00:46:41
Speaker
Okay, and ah I'm unsure at this point. When i tried to find any sort of lower case action, ah it looks like that ah the appellate case number is just the...
00:46:54
Speaker
the order from the Supreme Court and that's the number they gave it. So I don't know. i i would have been interested, you know, in the lower, this is a very brief ah order, right? It's the Supreme Court of South Carolina ordering the suspension. And so, you know, obviously a lower court action would have, you know, the statement of the case or, you know,
00:47:17
Speaker
it would have all the information leading up to it, which is not the case. I think that this is, this might've been, ah he was arrested like shortly there before, right? Like all this is all tis together. Yeah. a hundred percent Yeah. So it was probably just like, I mean, I don't know that it would be emergency, but it was a quick action of the Supreme court, which, you know, uh, I do see that, uh, uh,
00:47:42
Speaker
Rule 17B of the Rules for Judicial Disciplinary Enforcement, which is Rule 502 of the SCACR, which is South Carolina something, administration of court rules or something, um is that's how they acted. They acted under that. So they have the authority to do it, apparently. Interesting. Well, and that's what should be done. any Anybody that's... ah got you know accusations as long as there's evidence to support them they should be removed well i don't you have anything else on this guy right now now i just i really want to see i'm interested to know what has taken place and how i guess it'll either come out or it won't right
00:48:30
Speaker
Pretty much. I mean, that's that that's where I'm sitting right now wondering is like, is this going to be something? Well, the last time a judge was taken out, it was like by the sheriff when a gun in his chambers, like in Kentucky, I think. Oh, yeah. That whole thing is still pending out there. We've never swung back around to talking about that.
00:48:49
Speaker
Well, nothing's really happened yet, but like you don't really um you don't hear about judges having action taken against them like this, right? Yeah, yeah. um I had this other thing happen. so I have a story that I want to get to, but had this other thing happen. I feel like I need to talk about. This is small town, South Carolina.
Corruption in Local Governance
00:49:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
yeah And like, I like it, this whole town, this area that this happens in is 1.4 square miles. This other thing that I said, yeah, it's 758 people live there right now.
00:49:26
Speaker
Again, very small. Yeah. Like it's very difficult to like wrap your head around what I'm about to say and why anybody's paying attention to it. But the state ran an article down there. This guy, Noah Fee, it says South Carolina mayor and high ranking police officers arrested.
00:49:42
Speaker
Again, involves South Carolina law enforcement division or SLED. It says the mayor of a South Carolina town, along with current and former high ranking members of the police force.
00:49:54
Speaker
How many police do you need for 700 people? um it They were arrested for a money making scheme that involved a quota for issuing traffic tickets.
00:50:06
Speaker
So this is a sled release that becomes this news article. McB, South Carolina, which is a little city in Chesterfield County.
00:50:17
Speaker
i McBee, South Carolina Mayor Glenn Odom, 77 years old, and McBee Police Department Chief Timothy Knight, 51, along with former McBee Police Chief Michael Irvin, 52, and former McBee Police Captain Gregory Block, 41, were arrested this week.
00:50:39
Speaker
On Monday, the three current and former police officers each were charged with criminal conspiracy and misconduct in office. So just because we mentioned the misconduct with a child, I looked at this and I was like, what does misconduct in office mean ah if that's what you get away with?
00:50:59
Speaker
Child neglect. yeah This is not sweater unraveling. I'm just saying. Right. It is. It's totally the parts of the sweater on the floor. I didn't even realize I was wearing a sweater. And now here we are.
00:51:12
Speaker
um On Tuesday, Odom, so that's the mayor, he's 77, he was charged with criminal conspiracy and three counts of misconduct in office. So they arrest these four guys. They book them into the Chesterfield County Detention Center. That's got to be uncomfortable.
00:51:29
Speaker
The mayor, the police chief, the former police chief, the police captain, all in the jail. They're released on $5,000 personal recognizance bonds, so they're not in the jail very long.
00:51:42
Speaker
They were all posted either Monday or Tuesday, according to Chesterfield County court records. The charges are connected to a scheme that began in March of 2023 and has run to the present time.
00:51:54
Speaker
That's according to an affidavit that's shared out by a SLED here. During that time, the arrested officials were involved in imposing ticket quotas and fines that were designed to make money for the town of McBee, South Carolina.
00:52:09
Speaker
I'm just going to go ahead and tell you the rest of this sounds like an episode of Dukes of Hazzard where Bo and Luke were like going down the wrong road and got pulled over by somebody other than Roscoe P. Coltrane. It feels like that's how we get here, but just in 2023.
00:52:26
Speaker
So this Odom guy, he's sworn in as mayor in February of 23. He had been on the town council for five years. In 2023, he asked the former chief to get officers to issue more tickets because they needed to pay down to federal loans around $178,000. Text messages show the mayor telling the chief, so Chief Irvin in this situation is not the current chief, he's the former chief,
00:53:00
Speaker
to tell a specific officer to make sure to keep busy issuing tickets and to stay out of town hall. um He even mentions in these text messages to the police chief at the time that the police chief needs to be writing four or five tickets a day.
00:53:19
Speaker
So during this investigation that is taking up state law enforcement division resources, multiple local police officers were interviewed and said they were under constant pressure to write a high volume of tickets.
00:53:35
Speaker
They even have a March 2024 text from Odom to former Chief Irvin asking for six officers to do 12 tickets a month.
00:53:47
Speaker
that's according to these affidavits. So from 2024 through 2025, the minimum amount of tickets required by each officer was 10 per shift.
00:53:59
Speaker
South Carolina law prohibits a law enforcement agency from requiring any of its officer to issue a specific number of citations during a designated period of time. You know, that's a thing that like we joke about like a lot?
00:54:15
Speaker
quota Quotas, yeah. Yeah, like quote officer quotas coming around at the end of the month or the beginning of the month. What are your thoughts on those? The joke doesn't come from nowhere, okay? There have been various times and places ah that they always eventually get caught, but it's a way of generating revenue, right?
00:54:39
Speaker
Yes. ah There's no question that When people get tickets, especially in like small town situations like this, like they have to go in and they have to pay their fines or whatever. And the idea behind it is that, you know, once everybody's getting ticketed, then why is anybody getting ticketed? Right. And so the quota, uh,
00:55:05
Speaker
situation has been largely outlawed to the extent that it was ever really a thing to begin with, right? Correct.
00:55:15
Speaker
In this instance, we're seeing kind of an example of it playing out like it's 1985. um you know i have to wonder, like how how are we paying off this federal loan for $180,000
00:55:31
Speaker
And like, how much are these tickets costing each that like, if we do it this way, that's the thing that's paying off the loan? like right? Well, okay. So my thought is, for one thing, having taken out a loan, they had to have already had a plan to repay it right? Right.
00:55:50
Speaker
Right. Except, like, where did that money go? Why did they take that loan? And why is there not a plan in place to replay it repay it? And that makes me think the sheriff, I'm sorry, the mayor got ah the loan, misappropriated the funds, or something, right?
00:56:13
Speaker
And... he's scrambling to pay it back because you keep in mind, he just was sworn into office and he had been on the council for five years previously. Right. Yeah. So he's had a hand in something to do with that money because it's unlikely that a i don't want to I guess legitimate, meaning that everybody's doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. like A council or a mayor, they're not going to take out a loan that the town can't afford to pay back.
00:56:50
Speaker
right They're not going to do that. I mean, it so yeah. Well, that's why I said legitimate. I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. There's all kinds of cases where things happen that shouldn't happen. But in this case...
00:57:03
Speaker
ah They essentially were trying to squeeze money out of the city. These are not people that need to be in charge, right? Obviously. the idea that...
00:57:18
Speaker
you want to squeeze your less than 800 people population, right? Yeah. You want to squeeze as much money as you can out of them. That is not a great idea. if they presented it as a tax, we need to, like we're going to ah impose a town-wide tax and the tax has to go to pay back taxes ah the money, which again, this is something that would be on a ballot, right? And people would vote on like people would either say yes or no, and they'd either agree to it or not agree to it. But that should have happened like before the loan even was taken, right? If they didn't have alternative sources to pay for it. That's, that's a lot of um what I see problems with. a lot of times you've got these podunk just people the,
00:58:11
Speaker
like running an important role, right like mayor or on-town council, thinking that, like oh, it's just you know a little bit of money I'm swiping off the top here. right We don't know that he took it personally, though.
00:58:24
Speaker
Well, okay, but again, he's trying he's trying to get... Okay, the money that is collected on tickets is ah allocated to something before this plan ever comes into place, okay? Yeah.
00:58:41
Speaker
In saying what I'm saying... it doesn't really matter if we know that he took it personally or not. He's saying to law enforcement, write extra tickets because we need to pay off this loan. And so that means he's going to use money coming in that's delegated for something else to go towards paying off a loan. And that can't possibly be what it's intended for because, you know, when you go in, uh,
00:59:09
Speaker
When i all court fees and all fines and all that stuff, it's already delegated before it ever comes into play, right?
00:59:19
Speaker
It be. It 100% should be, yes. And so, in theory, you've got to think about the underlying financial structure that would allow for extra tickets to be paying off a loan as opposed to whatever else it's supposed to be doing, right? Right. oh Well, now I've got to get into the like go for it the the Netflix limited series of what's happening here. Because I'm here for it, and I would totally watch this, even if it was just like you know a new season of the Dukes of Hazzard or something. yeah um It says, okay so these speeding tickets, because the location of this place, and you're right, like, there's
00:59:57
Speaker
a very small town. We shouldn't be, we should have planned all of this. We shouldn't be relying on the citizens to make up for this downfall. So luckily this area of Chesterfield County is like right next to North Carolina in terms of like Chesterfield is ah basically attached to North Carolina. So if you're going down and through Chesterfield County and you pop out the bottom Southwest side,
01:00:21
Speaker
And are going to do something else in the state. You've got to cut through this little area. It has a couple of like historic preservation sites in this town where the railroad came through there for just this reason. They're they're largely plotting to get like people from neighboring counties and towns and and and people from out of state.
01:00:40
Speaker
But it says that speeding tickets became the mayor's focus. And one officer said that the mayor sent former Chief Irvin to their home to ask why that officer was writing more seatbelt violations than speeding tickets.
01:00:57
Speaker
The officer says that the mayor gets mad because speeding tickets generate up to $440, but a seatbelt violation only gets you ticket.
01:01:09
Speaker
The officer went on to say that the mayor was manipulating their work.
01:01:17
Speaker
That included increasing the amount of fines,
01:01:22
Speaker
getting the officer to rewrite tickets, telling the officer not to take a driver to jail because that would be a loss of money, and telling the officer to leave a non-traffic-related arrest to go and write more traffic tickets, all while keeping an eagle eye on the amount of tickets the officer is writing.
01:01:39
Speaker
So whoever this officer is that they're talking about in this affidavit says that in August 2024, they were asked by Knight. So Odom is the mayor.
01:01:51
Speaker
Irvin is the former police chief of McBee. Timothy Knight is the current police chief of McBee. So we've switched chiefs in the middle of all this. And Knight is saying you got to write tickets in Block's name.
01:02:10
Speaker
So don't know why they're doing this. Well, because Block is the account that goes to pay off the loan. Right, probably. So Captain Block, um he soon talks to this officer and he says, ah we're going to need you to lie about helping me if you're asked about this.
01:02:32
Speaker
So on June 8th, this is...
01:02:39
Speaker
25 or 24, I can't tell. The officer is paid by the mayor, while the mayor tells two other officers to procure votes in the 2024 Republican primary election for candidates specified by Mayor Odom, including a cousin.
01:02:56
Speaker
So now we're having them procure votes. ah The quote is, can you get your family to vote in the Republican primary? I'm going to give you gas money, 100 bucks, to haul as many as you can.
01:03:09
Speaker
This is in a text from the mayor to this officer. More texts to ah Mike Irvin and another officer show that Odom tells these people working under them, or subordinates, to get more votes for the candidates of his choice.
01:03:27
Speaker
So, Odom, for the record, according to all of this, is also accused of misappropriating funds seized from a private individual by the McBee Police Department.
01:03:38
Speaker
So this is one of the things that really got my attention. It says, during a June 6th, 2024 traffic stop, officers seized suspected drugs and $37,584 cash from the driver The driver says that this money is legitimate income, but Mayor Odom immediately transfers $35,000 of that money into what's known as the narcotic savings account.
01:04:06
Speaker
On January 8th of 2025, so almost six months to the day later, Odom calls over to the bank that controls the narcotic savings account. He transfers that $35,000 out of the savings account into the McBee General Fund.
01:04:27
Speaker
So following this transfer, the balance in the McBee General Fund drops down to $871.97, which means that at least $34,000
01:04:38
Speaker
which means that at least thirty four thousand $128.03 of that $35,000 had been spent. Information about how that money is spent is not available, and there's no word if any investigation is ongoing related to this in South Carolina.
01:04:57
Speaker
The case against Odom, Knight, Irvin, and Block will be prosecuted by the South Carolina Attorney General's Office. Sorry, you go ahead. i was just going to say that those numbers there, are that would reflect if there was zero when the $35,000 was transferred, which is unlikely, right?
01:05:16
Speaker
Well, but that's what they're implying without saying in all of this. Well, right, know. that the general fund was empty, which goes to what you were saying earlier. Except that if it was empty, why was it immediately spent? Like.
01:05:30
Speaker
It seems like you would want to have that on hand for other reasons, but we don't know. You're talking about making good decisions, and none of this sounds like good decisions to me at all. Well, and it also sounds like nobody is even looking into that. So, again, this these are not the type of people...
01:05:50
Speaker
that you want running a town. And don't get me wrong, any mayor, any police chief, any police officer told by a police chief, like across the United States of America could do this, but they don't because you're not supposed to, right? right Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. And here's that type of situation. Now I would bet dollars to donuts that if you,
01:06:18
Speaker
you know were to say, hey, you know you can't like bribe people into voting by votes, etc., I think that he would be like, oh, I was just encouraging them to vote. I wasn't bribing them.
01:06:30
Speaker
Right. I'm just saying. right So, okay, so Odom's got attorneys. They put out a news release. Their names are Mark Moore and Ben Gardner. ah The quote that's pulled from this is that the mayor flatly denies these charges and denies that he's committed any type of misconduct while in office.
01:06:47
Speaker
They say that Mr. Odom is looking forward to the clearing of his good name through the judicial process. ah Information about the attorneys representing Knight, Irvin, and Block, it says, was not available at the time of the Publication of the state article.
01:07:01
Speaker
It says this is not the first time. Irvin was arrested on another ah misconduct in an office charge on July 20th. He had $5,000 posted the same day in that case. In August of in office charge on July 20th.
01:07:17
Speaker
a Block was charged with obstruction of justice and misconduct in office. He was released on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond. um There were no previous criminal charges filed against Odom in Chesterfield County, but court records show he's had dozens of civil cases as defendant and plaintiff over the last 20 years. And they point out what I was saying. They point out at the end of this article. They say, in 2006, the Myrtle Beach Sun knew. So that's 20 years ago.
01:07:43
Speaker
They reported that the McBee police chief at the time, guy named Joseph ah joseph McLemore, and the town judge, Fred Stevens, they were indicted by a state grand jury on public corruption charges.
01:07:57
Speaker
According to South Carolina Attorney General's office, the town was dropping criminal cases if accused wrongdoers would pay cash or sign over the title to their cars.
01:08:10
Speaker
So some McBee residents told the Sun News that police were overzealous during traffic stops along US-1 and South Carolina 151, which is a shortcut from Charlotte, North Carolina to Myrtle Beach.
01:08:23
Speaker
Several years before that, McBee officials got into a dispute with a resident over a sign that he had posted near the city limit warning drivers about the town's aggressive efforts to stop speeding.
01:08:38
Speaker
So all of this ah is bizarre to me. um It's all really over speed traps. Well, but it's it's also like wrong, right? Oh, it's definitely wrong. Yeah.
01:08:52
Speaker
But I keep wondering, like how long has this town been corrupt that we have this many people involved over the last 20 years? And like doesn't it feel like an episode of the Dukes of Hazard? Well, it does. i would say that this is not an uncommon scenario in a lot more places than just you know small-town South Carolina.
01:09:13
Speaker
yeah and it's it's all about money, right? That's all this is. It's all about money. I promise you that... Well, if they were able to get all the information, ah they would be able to see they would be able to see that somebody is using that money for something that it's not supposed to be used for, right?
01:09:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, this is going to be a big scandal for a town of 750 people. I mean, it just seems like why? Like, why on earth can't you just, you know, do your job and and do what you're supposed to do? Why does it always have to turn into something like this, right? Right.
01:09:58
Speaker
I mean, that it these places, obviously, if you have 700 and some huge budget
01:10:07
Speaker
if you only have seven hundred and some taxpaying citizens you're not running a huge budget to begin with You shouldn't be, no. um I find this interesting. i want to see where it goes. Like I said, if theyre like this is the type of thing that if they came up with a limited series, small time the small town like crime drama about this, I'm totally interested in this because there's I hope there's no murder involved.
01:10:31
Speaker
but i I hope so, too. I don't think there is. I think that would have been the headline. Yeah. um and So I have one more thing to round out South Carolina unless you have something else about this.
01:10:43
Speaker
Now go for it. So, um, you and i rant a lot about cases that make it
Cold Cases: Greenberg and Turner
01:10:51
Speaker
into the news. And I've always wondered how something like Ellen Greenberg's case sort of persists to the point of like podcasts and documentaries and TikToks and YouTubes about it. All these years later, we talked about her case to death.
01:11:06
Speaker
Um, I, Came across a case down in South Carolina that is, ah it's coming up on nine years. And I have two different articles. One is from early 2025. It comes out.
01:11:21
Speaker
And I think I'm going to lead with that. But the second article is even more interesting. Have you heard about this case, ah this woman, Heather Turner? Yes.
01:11:32
Speaker
Okay. So here's what the the article says at the top. It says, Paulding County Sheriff says there's resolution in a high-profile cold case from 2017. Now, this article itself is coming out of Five Alive. Excuse me, Eleven Alive.
01:11:52
Speaker
Eleven Alive is South Carolina-based. It's written by Donisha Aldridge. ah It's actually February 2026. She puts the... exactly It's exactly <unk>s actually February 20th she puts this out.
01:12:14
Speaker
It's actually February that she puts... What the fuck, dude? Shut up, guys. And here's the summary of this case. It says on May 4th, 2017...
01:12:27
Speaker
on may fourth twenty seventeen have I got to pulse it. I don't know what's happening. I can't record. bo Well, it got louder. So... um so The title of this article is Pawland County Sheriff Says There's Resolution High-Profile Cold Case from 2017.
01:12:47
Speaker
On May 4, 2017, Heather Turner was found dead by her husband, Andy Turner, inside their bathroom. The sheriff said Friday, nine years later, ah her death had been ruled a suicide. So it's not quite nine years. It's past nine years now.
01:13:04
Speaker
At the time they are announcing this, um it's not quite nine years. But it says, after years of unanswered questions, Paladin County Sheriff Ashley Henson said his office is finally able to provide a resolution in a high-profile cold case from nearly nine years earlier.
01:13:25
Speaker
On May 4th, 2017, Heather Turner was found dead by her husband, Andy, inside their bathroom at their home on Buck Trail in Dallas, Georgia. And I understand we're crossing over out of South Carolina into Georgia, but I was reading this in the South Carolina paper, just saying.
01:13:45
Speaker
um Heather's death has been ruled a suicide. As of today, this case is closed. So had you followed along with this at any point in time? Not really.
01:14:01
Speaker
When I first picked up reading about this case, it it was probably six years ago. um the first article I saved about this case was from Cody Alcorn and 11 Alive.
01:14:18
Speaker
um That was a pretty simple article where he it it you could see the champion behind things or the person that's like pushing. um It says, aunt of Paulding County woman continues to push for answers after niece found shot in that bathroom.
01:14:40
Speaker
um And the article is titled, I want the truth. um So at that point in time, ah The aunt was saying it's 6 a.m. on Thursday.
01:14:53
Speaker
i mean, the article about the aunt was saying it's 6 a.m. on Thursday, May 4th, 2017. Andy Turner calls 911. He tells the dispatcher, my wife just shot herself.
01:15:04
Speaker
During the 14 minute 911 call, Andy said, i was in the bedroom and I heard the noise. The dispatcher asked Andy, you heard her? He replies, and I found her.
01:15:16
Speaker
in the 911 call, Andy alleges he found Heather in the shower. He says, I'm getting her out of the shower. He also told the dispatcher he was going to turn the water off.
01:15:27
Speaker
During the 911 call, Andy's parents arrive on the scene before first responders. At about the 12-minute mark in the call, the dispatcher asks Andy's dad, you believe she's beyond all help? And he says, yes, ma'am.
01:15:40
Speaker
The Paulding County Coroner Lindsay Eberhardt put in a report that officers arrived at 6.13 a.m., followed by EMS at 6.15 a.m. m In a report, she states Heather was found naked on her back on the bathroom floor. She also noted a wall near the toilet appeared to have been washed.
01:16:01
Speaker
Eberhardt requested the GVI medical examiner take possession of Heather's body for an autopsy. And so that's the 2017 talk about this. And then in this article, they point out 2022, five years later, her death remains labeled as undetermined. It's an open investigation according to pauly Paulding County Sheriff's Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
01:16:27
Speaker
The Paulding District Attorney said he could not comment on any open investigations. Okay. Now, Cody Alcorn, he reaches out and talks to Andy Turner by phone on Friday, November 11th.
01:16:40
Speaker
But Andy refuses to do an interview. He says that the truth will come out. And when Cody asked him what he means by this, he says, buy the book, watch the movie.
01:16:52
Speaker
Alcorn asked him to elaborate and Andy refused. Okay.
01:17:02
Speaker
heather turn Heather Turner's aunt, Sydney Klotz, said her niece was full of personality. Oh, she was majestic. She was so charming and so full of joy. i know everybody says she lit up a room, but just her sense of humor and kindness was outstanding. Alcorn asked Klotz if there was any indication that Heather wanted to commit suicide.
01:17:23
Speaker
Klotz explained none, none whatsoever. she would have done She would not have done that with her daughter feet away from her in the next room. andy and Heather had a daughter who was eight years old at the time of the death. The coroner's report indicated a note had been left. The report stated the note read, I'm sorry, I love you.
01:17:41
Speaker
Alcorn asks Clotch about the note. She says, yes, I believe Heather wrote that note. I believe it was stuck on something small long before she ever passed away. Heather was a note writer. She wrote songs. She was very wordy and she expressed her heart. So why now would you not leave a note if you're such a writer?
01:18:00
Speaker
and express he yourself so thoroughly, why wouldn't Heather have left a note for her daughter? This is her aunt questioning all of this. um It says Andy has not been named a suspect. However, the Paulding County Sheriff's Office said he's not been ruled out as a suspect either. Eleven Alive confirmed that Turner had declined on multiple occasions to have a formal interview with detectives. He's never been interviewed by the Sheriff's Office as of this time.
01:18:25
Speaker
Kloch said she just wants to know the truth. If it's suicide, call it suicide. Let's close the case and everyone can get on with their lives. Show me that evidence. Prove it was a suicide and I'm okay with that. Kloch said she won't give up until she finds out what happened to her niece.
01:18:40
Speaker
I can't not think about it. I can't forget about it. It just won't go away. i think of her all the time. Back then, they were still asking that anyone who had information, please come forward.
01:18:52
Speaker
um And they were including the Potting County Sheriff. But the sheriff came out February this year and said he's closing it. um Which is interesting because i i think there's some weight to all of this. Yeah.
01:19:12
Speaker
There's been speculation about what had happened to Heather Turner. The sheriff's office has faced scrutiny about how this case was initially handled. Her death has been deemed undetermined for years until now.
01:19:22
Speaker
Henson said after he was elected sheriff, the department once again took a hard look at the case. They also brought in a cold case analyst named Eddie Herman, who is retired from the Cobb County Police Department, to review the files in this case.
01:19:37
Speaker
Herman said when he brought on, he came in with a fresh set of eyes. He had no prior knowledge of the case. He said he only asked for the basics, such as who the victim was and where the incident happened, to remain unbiased.
01:19:48
Speaker
Over the course of several weeks, Herman said they walked through hundreds of reports, including reviewing the 911 calls. He claimed that half of what was in the case file had nothing to do with what happened the day she died.
01:20:00
Speaker
um And he he throws in the the phrase, the investigation got off track. So he shares that during this review, they dealt with the direct evidence of what what had happened in Heather Turner's bathroom and the direct evidence from ah Heather Turner's bathroom.
01:20:22
Speaker
Last month, Herman said the GBI and investigators also interviewed Heather's husband, Andy, about what happened that morning. So that's January 2026. The sheriff's office show evidence photos of Heather's hand that Herman said tell a lot about what happened.
01:20:38
Speaker
He also went over the evidence about the firearm. He said Heather's DNA was recovered and identified on the trigger guard. It's the only DNA recovered from the gun. and Heather Turner's hands tested positive for gunshot residue.
01:20:53
Speaker
the The results from Andy's test, which I assume they're talking about that day, because gunshot residue is only good for a couple hours if there's no hand washing. He says that GSR test was negative.
01:21:04
Speaker
Herman said that as it relates to the note found at the scene, law enforcement confirmed that the handwriting belonged to Heather Turner. Herman admitted that he believes investigative mistakes were made in Heather's case, but he believes the evidence is sound.
01:21:17
Speaker
In the years since this happened, witness statements, memories, they can be affected, but this has not changed. Herman added that she squatted against the door and died from a self-inflicted wound.
01:21:29
Speaker
ah Hinson read the amended GBI autopsy report from January 30th of this year during the news, ah noting that the manner of the deathaf manner of death had moved from undetermined to suicide.
01:21:41
Speaker
This amendment reflects evidence presented by Paulding County law enforcement and GBI earlier on this date and is consistent with the autopsy findings. This is according to the sheriff.
01:21:52
Speaker
He says, I hope the community, hope the family and the friends and everyone out there can find some closure. He called it one of the most difficult cases the sheriff's department has investigated.
01:22:04
Speaker
um So in a case like this, like that should be it, right? Well, ah I guess if that's all you absorb, ah because an assumption would be made with regard to the change of ah manner, right?
01:22:29
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and so i i absorb that someone has put an incredible amount of time. At least that's how they're presenting it to into investigating what's happened over the course of nine years.
01:22:45
Speaker
Right? Yeah, I mean, you would think that, but I feel like in this case, that may not be the case. ah Just because sometimes it can be the case that when something happens initially, it is left ah hanging ah open, unsolved, whatever you want to undetermined, whatever you want to call it. And then when somebody else takes the reins, they go to ah close it somehow, right? And so in between, there wasn't a whole lot done.
01:23:16
Speaker
but But, I mean, you've got GBI involved because they're clearly the ones that are signing off on the autopsy. So that's the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The GBI is the same thing as in what we're talking about. So SLED is South Carolina. GBI is Georgia. But they're the same state agency that assists local law enforcement when they don't have the resources to do a thing.
01:23:40
Speaker
ah Okay. Yeah. that make sense? Right, but the GBI is who changed the manner? Correct. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, so what it says is, um the it says the GBI...
01:23:58
Speaker
do Hold on, let me read the phrase. It says, the Sheriff Henson read the amended Georgia Bureau Investigation autopsy report from January 30th, noting the manner of death moved from undetermined to suicide.
01:24:17
Speaker
Okay? Yep. Okay. This article ends with a question more than a closure. Like, instead of frasier phrasing of closure, fraser i guess you would call it, phrasing of closure does not exist.
01:24:32
Speaker
ah and And I guess that's part of the point. It says, while the sheriff's office considers the case resolved, Pawlodin County Coroner Lindsay Eberhard Fuller issued the following statement.
01:24:43
Speaker
I have not been formally presented with the evidence or reports relied upon to this new conclusion. I will be requesting all of the investigative, medical, and forensic record for independent review. Until I've reviewed the totality of that information myself, I will not comment on the manner of death or amend the death certificate. After that review, I will determine what actions are appropriate under Georgia law, including whether or not an inquest is warranted. So this is all taking place in February of this year for something that happened back in May of 2017. So that was...
01:25:18
Speaker
it that so that was the last comment by the coroner in February, but there's been news since then. But wait, I just want to make sure I understand. In 2017, the cause, the manner of death was changed from undetermined to suicide. No, no, no. 2017, the manner of death was determined to to be undetermined. So that's what's on the death certificate in 2017. Okay. In 2025, the GBI...
01:25:43
Speaker
okay in twenty twenty five the gbi did another autopsy. And in 2026, in January of 2026, they changed the ruling of the manner of death from undetermined to suicide.
01:26:06
Speaker
And I initially thought, ah and And then it got confusing. But I initially was like, well, law enforcement doesn't have the authority to change manners of death.
01:26:21
Speaker
But then I was like, well, does the GBI have their own medical examiner? Okay, so let me phrase it. Yes, the GBI does. But the phrasing is on the end of the autopsy report.
01:26:34
Speaker
That's not the same as the death certificate. So you're right. in Okay. Do you see what I'm saying? Okay. Right. And so I guess my point, ah what went through my mind was this is from like the fact that they're saying it was a suicide and closing it. Like it's from their perspective only. Right. Law enforcement is closing it because of an autopsy ruling by the GBI from undetermined to suicide.
01:27:04
Speaker
but Right, but it's just on the autopsy. That's just on the autopsy. So finally, that we're a couple months out from that, like five months since all these announcements are kind of made in February.
01:27:16
Speaker
And we have a new article about it, which is why it comes up today, because I read this part on a South Carolina website while I was doing all the other stuff.
01:27:28
Speaker
Well, right, and this thing goes more along with what I was thinking. this is Yeah, this is backing you up with what what where you were headed. That's why that's why I backtrack and read it so carefully so that you would understand this part like is confirming.
01:27:42
Speaker
So Paulding County Coroner's inquest into Heather Turner's death won't support the suicide ruling. So this is just coming out, okay? Okay.
01:27:54
Speaker
The Pawlton County coroner announced Friday that she will conduct an inquest into the 2017 death of Heather Turner, saying she's not prepared to support changing Turner's death certificate from undetermined to suicide because important questions remain unsolved.
01:28:11
Speaker
A coroner's inquest will allow a jury to decide Turner's manner of death. Jurors will have five choices, natural, self-inflicted, accidental, homicide, or undetermined.
01:28:23
Speaker
Coroner Lindsey Eberhardt Fuller's decision comes about five months after the sheriff's office closed its investigation and publicly presented Turner's death as a suicide during a February news conference.
01:28:39
Speaker
Heather's husband at the time, Andy Turner, is the one who found her body in the bathroom and called 911. During the Paulding County Sheriff's Office press conference concerning the death of Heather Turner, the Sheriff's Office announced the closure of its investigation and publicly presented the death as a suicide. But portions of my coroner's report were displayed, marked through, and characterized as inaccurate.
01:29:02
Speaker
This is according to the coroner in the county. She says that requires clarification. It says Fuller defended her original report explaining that it documented preliminary observations and information available when she responded to the death scene on May 4th, 2017.
01:29:18
Speaker
She said that it was not intended to serve as a final forensic finding. A coroner's initial investigative report documents the observations and information available under the conditions present at the scene. It's not an autopsy report, laboratory analysis, or final forensic conclusion. To characterize it as such does not accurately reflect either its purpose or its limitations.
01:29:43
Speaker
Fuller said she never arrives at any scene with any predetermined notions. She said the job is to follow the evidence wherever it may lead. When I responded on May 4, 2017, I did not arrive assuming suicide, homicide, accident, or any other manner of death.
01:29:59
Speaker
I considered all possibilities and documented what could then be observed and what was personally communicated to me. Fuller's initial report documented what appeared to be an entrance wound and the possibility of an exit wound.
01:30:12
Speaker
She said those observations were based on what she could see at the scene before Turner's body underwent a full forensic examination. At the scene, I documented the apparent location of the entrance wound and the possibility of an exit wound based on what could be observed at that time.
01:30:28
Speaker
The autopsy later provided the controlled forensic examination necessary to identify the wounds and determine the projectile's path. Fuller said the subsequent autopsy findings did not mean her preliminary observations were false or improperly documented.
01:30:44
Speaker
That later determination does not make the scene report false, misleading, or improper. Later forensic findings do not invalidate preliminary scene observations. They reflect the normal progression of a death investigation from the scene to a full forensic and examination.
01:31:00
Speaker
The sheriff's office had also addressed the projectile and a section of wall inside the home during this February news conference. Fuller said no projectile had been recovered when she documented the scene. It was later found during Turner's autopsy.
01:31:16
Speaker
She said, I mentioned that no projectile been recovered because none had been recovered at that time. The projectile was later located during the autopsy. I cannot i further documented that a portion of the wall appeared to have been washed because that is what I observed.
01:31:32
Speaker
During the news conference, sheriff's investigators said testing found no blood evidence on the wall and described its appearance as to be the beginnings of a painting project.
01:31:44
Speaker
Fuller said she determined in 2017 that an autopsy was necessary and requested the medical examiner take possession of Turner's remains,
01:31:56
Speaker
which I think that's interesting. Not every death investigation by a coroner requires requires an autopsy. In this case, I determined that further forensic examination was necessary. I reported Heather Turner's death to the medical examiner, requested that an autopsy be performed rather than authorizing the release of her remains without that examination.
01:32:18
Speaker
The autopsy recovered and
Role of Coroners and Legal Discrepancies
01:32:20
Speaker
preserved the rejectile recovered and preserved the projectile and provided the medical medical evidence necessary to evaluate Turner's case and manner of death.
01:32:34
Speaker
The medical examiner initially classified the manner of death as undetermined. The autopsy resulted ah in this classification. Fuller said Georgia law assigned separate but related responsibilities to law enforcement, medical examiners, prosecutors, and coroners.
01:32:51
Speaker
These responsibilities include a coroner's authority to convene an inquest. Georgia law gives law enforcement, the medical examiner, prosecutors, and the coroner different but related responsibilities. The coroner has independent responsibilities within them that death investigation process, including the authority to conduct an inquest as provided by law.
01:33:13
Speaker
Okay, I'm gonna pause here for a second. Do you think she's seeing this and sees something that feels fishy?
01:33:23
Speaker
I think that... ah She was not part of the, I think that the fact that they said it's been changed to suicide and they marked out places on her report and said that they were inaccurate or whatever was said initially. Right.
01:33:45
Speaker
I don't think she was consulted on any of the stuff that came out in the press conference. right And again, they don't have the authority to do that.
01:33:57
Speaker
ah I guess GBI could could say, like, here's this other autopsy report that it it has a manner of death listed as suicide. But that doesn't negate what the coroner did initially. That's what I was thinking anyway. Because, you know, in some cases, we've talked about cases where, you know, the family will have another autopsy done, right?
01:34:21
Speaker
Yes. And until the findings are taken into consideration by the coroner, like, it's just another autopsy report. It doesn't it doesn't hold weight until unless the coroner gets on board with it. And to me, it sounded like the sheriff had...
01:34:41
Speaker
I don't know if she had said, i don't agree with it ahead of time, or if she wasn't consulted and they didn't realize that they had to consult her. That seems like it would be not, it doesn't seem possible that that happened. But to me, i think that ah it sat for a long time.
01:35:03
Speaker
And then I think it was concluded without her input. And I think it, she caught, ah It caught her attention because her findings were being undermined. And I have no idea if she had the opportunity to explain them beforehand or not, but she's taking the opportunity now to explain them. And she's not just going along with what was said.
01:35:29
Speaker
And in my opinion, if you recall, I said in Ellen Greenberg's case that they absolutely should do a coroner's inquest. I don't know if you remember that. yeah but like And so she has to have some sort of baseline disagreement with something, right? Because otherwise she would change it if she saw things the way that ah they see them. Or if perhaps she... I could also see where she...
01:35:57
Speaker
In retrospect, ah because the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, she's not going to argue with them about it. they did I don't feel like what they did was the correct way to do it.
01:36:10
Speaker
I don't know, because like i it's interesting. So this article goes on a little further, and it ends with this phrasing, and then I'm going to address what I just said was interesting.
01:36:21
Speaker
It basically says um the prosecutor's office. Oh, here, I found the wording. It says the Pawden County Sheriff's Office is aware of the coroner's office inquest into the death of Heather Turner and will fully cooperate as that process moves forward. The sheriff's office investigation was closed February 20th based on the findings of the sheriff's office, Criminal Investigative Division, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Medical Examiner's Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region 1 Special Agents, in consultation with the Paulding County District Attorney's Office.
01:36:56
Speaker
it's There's more in this article if people want to go read it, but like I've covered the bulk of it. What's interesting is i always wondered... at what point like a case could take on like a life of its own.
01:37:09
Speaker
And it's this moment, because there's so many different people involved. And I don't know that she's the coroner is right or wrong, that these other people are right or wrong. I don't know any of that.
01:37:20
Speaker
I just know that something about this just became a debate, which means something about this seems like a mystery. But I think that it has more to do with the press conference ah without the consultation of the coroner than it Because I think these types of debates happen all the time. It's just we don't see like the in-between because people don't have press conferences about stuff that is not resolved fully.
01:37:47
Speaker
Why would you not consult the coroner in a way to get them on board? if she If she was consulted, she may have been consulted and she may have disagreed and it may have been disregarded because a lot of times people do not understand their role in things. Right. And as much as as much as it appears that, you know, obviously once it's out, there's pressure.
01:38:17
Speaker
on her right Yeah. once they've said that what what they said like that puts pressure on her and she would have to ah she would have to fight back and she may not feel like doing it She may be fine with it remaining undetermined. I have a feeling that part of the reason that it's come to this is because at some point, somebody finally realized that they had to get the death certificate changed. And she was like, oh, I'm not doing that.
01:38:52
Speaker
And it clicked with many of the different people involved that some things were done out of order. Right. right If I were making this announcement as the law, and for the investigative agency, I would have made sure my ducks were in a row before I started quacking. It does not appear that that is what happened. I could be wrong. They don't go into that. Right. And which is very professional of the coroner, at least, I think she has said,
01:39:24
Speaker
that she's going to put it through the inquest. Now, how much does a press conference ahead of time skew the inquest, right? How many people actually have any idea of what we're even talking about here, right? Right. as far as i know. as yeah As far as like a a ju a jury being brought together,
01:39:43
Speaker
being presented the case and then deciding like, what is the manner of death? You know, is it a natural homicide, suicide ah are undetermined or accidental? Right. Right.
01:39:56
Speaker
And like, I don't know how many people even realize that there's a problem. Obviously there, there is a problem with what happened ah because nothing should have been said publicly until it was completely determined. And once,
01:40:13
Speaker
Once you have the initial ah finding, even though it could be preliminary, you can't just, like, they don't have the power to, like, overrule each other. They actually have to, you know, consult with one another, and it has to be a joint finding. And there's reasons for that, because you don't want someone to be able to unilaterally overrule something that another professional found, right?
01:40:44
Speaker
I mean, think of how that could go ah in the grand scheme of things. If you had the initial coroner said, you know, undetermined, well, if she needs help and she wants help and she tries to get help, she's going to ah eventually come to an agreement with whomever is helping her. It doesn't sound like that that's the case here, right? It sounds like a different agency being the um GBI medical examiner just kind of took over for the case and made their own findings, but that doesn't undo hers.
01:41:16
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And, you know, it's, I did not, I don't, I don't think I can remember a time when I ran into, cause like we have this like corner versus medical examiner pathologist debate,
01:41:35
Speaker
i kind of like, is that a resource that we need both of, or do we need more of this or more of that? Because coroners can be completely different than medical examiners. And I don't know this particular a coroner's background off the cuff, but I do know i feel this is a heck of a place to, to draw a line in the sand.
01:41:58
Speaker
Well, but if she didn't agree with it, they shouldn't have taken the, pi they had to have her agreement. I think so, too. That's the whole reason I brought this up to you, by the way. was I thought like you get everybody on board to take a look at this.
01:42:13
Speaker
Well, and it I don't know that it occurred to anyone that the original ah coroner who has the original investigation wasn't on board, right?
01:42:24
Speaker
Right. don I don't know that that comes up until she makes her announcement and she announces it. And now, see, she did not... For whatever reason, we don't know what it is.
01:42:36
Speaker
she She cited the law that allows her to do what she's doing. And either because of publicity, because of disagreement, because they didn't bother to ask her to begin with, or because she disagreed with them to begin with her to begin with and they went against her, I don't know what happened there. But for some reason... she didn't change the death certificate manner of death. And they had they had to want to do that once they had made this announcement and closed it as a suicide. And then she's the only one with the authority to do it.
01:43:10
Speaker
And she's like, no, I'm not going to do it. And that's how we end up here. I do think the coroner's inquest is the best way to resolve this. I don't know for certain, though, that it's going to be I don't know that the findings will be the necessarily absolute truth, right? i do think, though, at this point where you've got, you know, especially...
01:43:37
Speaker
I would say mostly with homicides versus suicides is when it's going to come into play, right? Because there's always a chance. There's always a thought in a domestic setting that someone looks like they committed suicide, but they were really killed by someone else in the home, right?
01:43:56
Speaker
Yeah. like That's where it's going to come to be important. And in this case, the idea would be either she shot herself or somebody in the home shot her, right?
01:44:09
Speaker
It's not like it's going to be anything else. yeah And so those those cases are very difficult if there's questions about it. Now, it seems to me like the sheriff had evidence to indicate, you know, the stuff like the gunshot residue and, like, the questions that were being asked that by her family that kind of backed up where they were saying she wouldn't commit suicide, you know, that's less physical evidence, more sort of just inferring...
01:44:41
Speaker
Like pseudo facts, right? Like, oh, she would have written a longer letter. Well, we have no idea if she would have written a longer letter. It's possible, right? But, you know, somebody who's about to commit suicide may not be thinking like they normally do, right? And so it might make perfect sense she didn't write a longer letter to her daughter or whatever was being said.
01:45:02
Speaker
And so... I think that once it's skewed in any direction, and and I'm sure it costs, I know it costs resources and money and time and effort and energy. And so I get why a coroner could be hesitant to do it. However, once there's a controversy with regard to suicide versus homicide, a coroner's inquest is really the most justice-seeking way to make that determination the everybody can't get on board one way or the other, especially when the coroner disagrees. Huh?
01:45:44
Speaker
Don't you think? I mean, I just can't, I can't imagine throwing a state level press conference with a County sheriff leading the way presenting the state's evidence and,
01:46:02
Speaker
And saying everybody's on board, but then, like, isolating this corner. Like, I want to know what the story is with why that happened the way it did on my on my Netflix limited series about this one.
01:46:14
Speaker
Well, my guess is that... he didn't realize that the GBI's medical examiner's autopsy findings couldn't render a new death certificate.
01:46:28
Speaker
Right. That's my guess. I think that he thought like they were doing like a ah whole de novo approach to the case, but see, that's never going to be the case because once there's an initial finding, Right.
01:46:44
Speaker
Like, even though it was undetermined, he may he may have thought, well, she couldn't determine it, so, like, we've moved on, we're getting state-level attention now. But it wouldn't make sense to me that that would be okay. Now, on the other hand, he could have thought, perhaps because she had left it undetermined and never went back to it, that she would be fine with whatever somebody else came up with, right? Right.
01:47:14
Speaker
Right. ah That's clearly not the case. And it seems like they would have known that if they had consulted her. but it so It seems to me like she did not know this was happening.
01:47:26
Speaker
that That's my guess. but how i That's kind of how I feel. It's almost like she feels like she's been ambushed by this whole process. Well, they put up pieces of her reports and they had crossed through it and said, like, during the press conference, and they said, like, these were incorrect. And if...
01:47:45
Speaker
If they had consulted her about it and she had explained the way she explained in the article that essentially like striking through her words and saying that's incorrect is not the way that process works. The way the process works is the preliminary report would be amended.
01:48:04
Speaker
Right. Right. And so it's this evolving document. And so that to me says she was not consulted before this press conference happened because I think you're 100 percent right.
01:48:16
Speaker
They explicitly, like, they were, ah like, I don't know that you would call it picking on her. I don't know how how adversarial this is, okay? I don't know. It shouldn't be adversarial at all. But because of where we're at, I don't know what the deal is. However, it seems to me that she has just made it plain that...
01:48:40
Speaker
you know, okay, they've done all this. This is what was not correct about their assessment and their press conference release. And this is what I'm going to do to put an end to it. Right. And there's literally nothing that can be done to stop a coroner from having a, je a coroner's inquest. Yeah. A jury inquest.
01:49:01
Speaker
and A juror's inquest. And, you know, I, I've actually, I've never seen, I don't think, i maybe I have. i don't know. that It seems like a rarity to me.
01:49:14
Speaker
They are pretty rare. They run kind of like um a grand jury does, though. So they exist. you don't always know that they're doing something and sometimes they're not, they're not like a full trial. They're more like deciding like, is this enough to move forward? This would be more specific because it's about like the whole Heather Turner case. It looks like to determine if they can move off of undetermined on the death certificate. Yeah.
01:49:41
Speaker
Right. and But all they're going to determine is what is the manner of death, like, officially on the death certificate. And I'm telling you, um she could she could see where it could be, suicide. And just because of the the way it was done, say, no, I'm not going to go along with it just because of, you know, public pressure or whatever. Right.
01:50:06
Speaker
Honestly... It's a little insane that ah it's very unprofessional that it was presented the way it was. But we can't tell – that's the interesting part about it for me is you can't tell who's being unprofessional in the mix. I sort of defer to the coroner not wanting to hold things up without you know the proof or whatever. But it is kind of like like who did this along the way? Which person is responsible for causing this to kind of go off the tracks and be unprofessional?
01:50:42
Speaker
Well, I can see very clearly because they didn't understand the coroner's process that they didn't consult her. so you think the sheriff did it? And everybody else assumed the sheriff would know how to fix it. It's going to be interesting. I assume the sheriff thought either she would be on board, ah the GBI ah medical examiner could overrule it Or that she didn't care to finish it and would just go along with it. help but Whatever the reasoning was, she took issue with beings with when they said that she had done things incorrectly. So I don't know if that was a triggering point. It doesn't sound like it because she's not. I don't feel like a jury inquest is lashing back.
01:51:33
Speaker
Right. I feel like if that was really adversarial, she would be saying, I'm not changing it. Right. right and And then, i mean, it would be very itd be very difficult, as was displayed in Ellen Greenberg's case. Right.
01:51:50
Speaker
That's what this all made me think of. That's why I brought it to you. and It is incredibly difficult to get it changed. right It's incredibly difficult. And it's not a unilateral decision, which is what the sheriff did here. And, you know, in that area, I imagine that it was a big deal. Right.
01:52:16
Speaker
And that I share a newly elected sheriff. I don't know how newly elected he was, but. I could see where that would give him credence, right?
01:52:27
Speaker
Right. Solving the case. and And if you sidestep things like the coroner, it's going to not it's going to knock the credence down and some, right?
01:52:40
Speaker
Because that's like a whole thing. But there's a reason why statutes require certain things. And there's a reason why... All of the different agencies play different roles, you know, and they all have to come to some determination. Now, granted, if let's say that it they had found it was a homicide, they wouldn't need the...
01:53:05
Speaker
a coroner to change the death certificate to homicide just to pursue the criminal side of that. Now, it could be a hurdle that they would have to ah overcome at trial if someone were to be put on trial, ah charged and put on trial for the homicide, right? Right. But they don't have to necessarily get her to agree with it for law enforcement to investigate it. And I've seen recently where...
01:53:32
Speaker
in these cases, probably largely because of things like this case and Ellen Greenberg's case and other cases like it, where it is a homicide. They treat it as a homicide until it's not, right? Right.
01:53:48
Speaker
And so that kind of covers everything as far as from an investigative standpoint. If you treat it like a homicide and it ends up being a suicide, usually you haven't lost anything. However, if you treat something like a suicide from the beginning, so when they arrive on scene, they treat it as a suicide.
01:54:08
Speaker
Most of the time, they don't have what is necessary to make a homicide case because they didn't treat it like that to begin with. Huh. So this is one of those that like i would I would really like to sit in and watch a a coroner's inquest, I think.
01:54:27
Speaker
Man, I would too. i like I was thinking about that whenever I looked into it for Ellen Greenberg's case. And i I was like, man, that is something that would be very interesting. Not that I want like a lot of people to die and not have their manner of death determined, right?
01:54:44
Speaker
But... I think that it would be – you would learn so much, right? Yeah. Yeah. i don't i don't I don't know, like, how I feel about this case overall because, like, obviously we're just getting what they're kind of dribbling out down in Georgia.
01:54:59
Speaker
But – Was immediately sort of sucked into the idea of, is this going to be a thing? Like, if the coroner's inquest comes back and some big thing ends up being released or they refuse to change to undetermined, like, what happens after that? Like, how do we, how does that get resolved?
01:55:18
Speaker
Well, yeah so... She just announced it on Friday, right? Yeah, yeah. We're just getting here. Like, we're just
Inquest Impact and Media Influence
01:55:26
Speaker
arriving. There's going to be some there's goingnna be some ah pushback on it. I would almost guarantee you. ah And it will depend on... Because it has already been resolved, according to the sheriff, right? Except, like, well, if the death certificate says something different...
01:55:48
Speaker
you you see where the nuances come into play because like, so the sheriff has resolved it as a suicide, but her death certificate says undetermined. Now, to a certain degree that wouldn't necessarily be relevant at this point,
01:56:05
Speaker
it actually matters if she committed suicide or not. Right. Like certain things like life insurance or like, correct. Like legal things. like Yes. Right. Or just the stigma, right. The stigma that happens with suicide. If that's a thing. Uh, I don't know. i don't know. I think some people,
01:56:25
Speaker
would be disappointed that their loved one committed suicide officially on paperwork. I personally, i don't know that I would care. i I don't, I don't care about any of that. Like even now talking about it, I care about the legal part of it. Like how do you, how do you handle the things?
01:56:41
Speaker
but ah so Okay. So two twofold agreeing with what you're saying and like, yes, there's a stigma that is probably a thing. It's not a question for me. Like the the stigma sticks, uh,
01:56:53
Speaker
ever how this is resolved. And like, it's kind of like what we were talking earlier. Once you say a thing out loud, like you were laying in bed naked with a nine-year-old, like you never unsee that. Like that's never undone the way it's presented. So in this case, like, i don't know that we ever resolve the like, was it a suicide? Was it not a suicide? And the biggest legal question in all of this, among the things that you're saying is, can you even prosecute this now?
01:57:25
Speaker
Coroner comes back and says, we actually found evidence of homicide. Well, and see, that's that turns out to be a disaster because no matter what, you fashionable um you've got this press conference with the sheriff saying that it was suicide. And that doesn't go away, right? Which is, again, why like that should not have happened ah unless everybody was on board.
01:57:51
Speaker
At the end of the day, that's why I think It would be strong evidence to say the coroner didn't make this decision alone. It was initially undetermined. And because of the sheriff's action and declaring it a suicide, the coroner presented a ah coroner's inquest to a jury. And the jury decided this if it were to be homicide. Right.
01:58:15
Speaker
And I feel like that would have a lot of weight in a if that were the path that goes down. They may look at all the evidence and say, yeah, this is a suicide. We don't know why we're here. the sheriff already said it was, right? Right. But I still feel like that's the best way to handle that. Because otherwise, you've just got like dueling experts, so to speak. Not that really a sheriff is an expert. But I feel like the sheriff took a very...
01:58:40
Speaker
grandiose position here. I could be wrong. I could be completely wrong. But i I, think that the reason that this type of thing doesn't happen is because like you do things ahead of time to make sure it doesn't happen. yeah Like make sure the coroner agrees. Yeah.
01:59:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of ways they could have approached this, but I think they've definitely ruined a future prosecution. But I would, man, i guess where I really am right now is I would love to be a fly on the wall of that coroner's inquest to see how that works in a situation like this.
01:59:19
Speaker
Right. And, you know, there's all kinds of um ins and outs to that whole situation. i do feel like it's going to be a learning. Hopefully it's a learning experience for all of the officials involved that thought,
01:59:32
Speaker
going down the path they were going, they were they had it all wrapped up. And I guess you can have a situation where you say it's a suicide and the death certificate remains undetermined. And there could be tons of cases like that. I don't know. But in this case, for whatever reason, the coroner spoke out and said, hey, no, wait, right? Yeah. and how much weight does it hold that the sheriff, if the sheriff had a press conference saying that, how much do the coroners and quest jurors take that into consideration? Well, they shouldn't take it into consideration at all, right? It's not part of the facts of the scene.
02:00:10
Speaker
But I mean, i I could see where people pulled in to do jury duty would be like, well, of this was covered in February. The sheriff already said it was a suicide. Why are we here? Right? Yeah.
02:00:26
Speaker
Well, I don't have anything more on this one. i just find the whole thing fascinating. um Just how, like, I think the word you described that was ah the most accurate legal semantics describing the situation is this is a big mess.
02:00:41
Speaker
It is a big mess and it could have been avoided. And, you know, I don't know what it says that we're here. Right. Right. like it's It worries me at times ah that we find ourselves in situations. And the other thing is like, you know,
02:01:04
Speaker
Suicide versus homicide is pivotal in a case, right? It's literally, did you kill yourself or did somebody else kill you? Right. yeah And, and so it this could go either way.
02:01:20
Speaker
And, you know, the paths that divert
02:01:27
Speaker
it leads to completely different futures for for various people involved, right? It's very interesting to think about. Yeah. Because regardless of what the truth is, in this situation, it could be made to go either way. And then it brings out this whole thing, like how much of anything is real and how much of anything is constructed, right?
02:01:47
Speaker
Exactly. And that's like, so that's how i I get here bringing this in with the other people southern stuff that i was looking at was like does this become one of those things that now the case grows legs because there's a thing that happens when you turn the corner of a major ruling like this and that major ruling causes division in this case we can't prosecute it like i'm a hundred percent positive we can't prosecute this as a homicide locally
02:02:18
Speaker
I don't think you even changing the venue will fix that. And not from the perspective of like what will other jurors or judges, like like if it were a bench trial, like what would they do to have a conviction here? I think the bottom line is all you have to do is play the press conference and the defense has automated ah reasonable doubt built into this case.
02:02:42
Speaker
So like it' says it runs on its own.
02:02:47
Speaker
I don't disagree that it's it's a problem either way. yeah Anything else on this particular case? Nope. We'll wait and see what happens. I'm dying to know if they actually do in a coroner's inquest. That would be interesting.
02:03:00
Speaker
I'm interested to know if there's pushback, if I'm correct in that. And I don't know that it would be public where we could see it, but I guess we'll know if it happens quickly or not. But I don't even know that they put that on the calendar, Yeah.
02:03:14
Speaker
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02:04:38
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