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Season Six: Episode 28 Doubtful
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https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/in-video-au-pair-tells-prosecutors-how-affair-partner-developed-fetish-sex-murder-plot/3980331/
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Transcript
Introduction and True Crime Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:57
Speaker
its It's that time of year when things are happening and like DNA is closing cases and trials are going on.
Robert Robertson Case Overview
00:01:03
Speaker
And I've collected a bunch of stories that I'm going to put into some of the episodes that we're doing between now and sort of the end of the year. But like.
00:01:12
Speaker
For the most part, we' I think it's safe to say we're focused then on like holiday episodes and doing that. We have a series that's coming out in a week or so. That'll last us into November.
00:01:24
Speaker
But there were a couple of things that I wanted to talk about now. One I was going to actually incorporate into the end of our holiday episodes And i say that because typically we do kind of a theme. It didn't really fit though. And then I thought about making it the very last one, but we're going to talk about that today.
00:01:48
Speaker
But there, there was at least like one update that happened in another case, maybe two. And I thought I would bring those up today along with one of those interesting stories.
00:02:01
Speaker
So the first thing i wanted to throw out there is that, the A case we covered this time last year, Robert Robertson down in Texas, he was scheduled to be executed 24 hours ago.
00:02:16
Speaker
And that got blocked. Again? Yeah, it got blocked. Yeah, like, it he was back on to be executed. But finally,
00:02:28
Speaker
the
00:02:31
Speaker
Republican Court of Criminal Appeals, who had denied his most recent appeal, 5-4, they granted his request for a stay under a 2013 law called the Junk Science Law in Texas.
00:02:48
Speaker
so but So that was literally deja vu. Yeah, like it it was like it was happening in the background. i pulled up the Texas Tribune on October 9th a woman named Kyla Guo, she wrote ah Texas court block's execution of death row inmate Robert Robertson in the Texas Tribune.
00:03:09
Speaker
And it just says, Texas's highest criminal court on Thursday blocked Robert Robertson's execution a week before it was set to take place, sending his ah case back to the trial court.
00:03:27
Speaker
So that, you know, this article is October 9th. She puts it out nine o'clock in the morning. um It says Robertson's convicted of capital murder in 2003 for the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, who was diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome.
00:03:41
Speaker
He's maintained his innocence for um over more than 20 years on death row. with his attorneys arguing that the science behind Nikki's shaken baby diagnosis no longer holding up.
00:03:51
Speaker
He was scheduled to be executed October 16th, which would have made him the first person in U.S. history put to death in a shaken baby syndrome case.
Shaken Baby Syndrome Controversy
00:04:00
Speaker
After previously denying his recent appeals largely on procedural grounds, a 5-4 majority of the all-Republican Court of Criminal Appeals granted Roberson's request for a stay of execution under Texas's groundbreaking 2013 junk science law, which provides for a second look when the science driving a conviction has since been debunked.
00:04:21
Speaker
The law has never been successfully used to secure a new trial for a death row inmate. though Robinson could be the first if the trial court in Anderson County recommends that the evidence warrants one, and the high court agrees.
00:04:33
Speaker
In its order, the Court of Criminal Appeals cites its decision last year to overturn the shaken baby conviction of Dallas County man Andrew Rourke based on the evolving medical research on shaken baby diagnoses, which, if for those of you who don't know, turns out shaken baby diagnoses are largely bunk,
00:04:50
Speaker
When they are not backed up by other instances of neglect or abuse. That's the nutshell. If there's not something else happening and it comes kind of out of nowhere and someone has done all the right things, which is the case here, like the way they like get involved in his life is he keeps taking the baby to the doctor.
00:05:13
Speaker
Um, so. And she was like so much older. and ah Than a typical SIDS baby or shaken baby. Because, and I remember, look, because there's a picture, I believe, um that I saw of him holding his daughter that died.
00:05:32
Speaker
and I was like, thinking about the effort it would take to cause the injury that supposed shaken Baby syndrome indicates it's it's a brain injury where the brain moves, right?
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah. And it kills them essentially because of like a the brain injury. It's essentially creating a TBI in a very small child who can't heal from it. Right. and And they die. their their body Their brain is not able to tell their body you know to keep functioning, and they shut down and they die. And so I was like, that kid's too big to have been shaken.
00:06:09
Speaker
Mostly, yeah. And it's it's such a... I actually... ah hate to say this. I didn't realize this was going on. This did happen like almost exactly last year. Yeah, yeah, time-wise.
00:06:20
Speaker
And they did not stay the execution until, like I think, the day of.
New Medical Evidence in Robertson Case
00:06:27
Speaker
Maybe the day before. Last time, you mean? Yeah, last time. yeah that was the whole reason it called her a to begin with was... And that was so close.
00:06:38
Speaker
And I go, oh my goodness, we are actually, like, they're going to put to death an innocent father. Right. Yeah, yeah. And he's already done 20 years on death row.
00:06:50
Speaker
But ultimately, we what kind of changed the tide and caught our attention, I think, is that experts found that this little girl, who was, as you said, a little bit older than the typical shaken baby victim, they found that Nikki is her name.
00:07:09
Speaker
that she had undiagnosed chronic pneumonia, and that she had been prescribed medications that today in 2025 would never be given to a ti toddler her age.
00:07:19
Speaker
Those medications had suppressed her breathing. And by having her breathing suppressed, her respiratory system suppressed, her circulatory system kind of went into overload.
00:07:33
Speaker
That led to her brain swelling. This condition caused sepsis, and it caused a bleeding disorder that made the bruises that could be seen on her, ah it sort of exacerbated them.
00:07:48
Speaker
And so her body was bruising more easily as her brain is swelling. And none of this was identified because from the very beginning and with the the emergency department, everybody was kind of like looking for Robert Robertson to have done something abusive and to have caused the death of his child.
00:08:09
Speaker
But it you know it it was delayed last year. um he gets subpoenaed the day before he's set to be put to death. And the subpoena starts this huge political clash down in Texas.
00:08:21
Speaker
The Texas Supreme Court stepped in and they temporarily delayed the execution then.
Junk Science Law and Legal Challenges
00:08:26
Speaker
Lawmakers had argued the courts were not a appropriately applying the junk science law and For the lawyers involved, they had repeatedly tried to use the 2013 ruling. So that's going back 12 years about junk science, the new law, to overturn this conviction.
00:08:46
Speaker
And there's been bills presented to bolster the junk science law and to further allow it to be used in cases like this.
00:08:57
Speaker
It passed the House in Texas, but it died in the Senate. Well, junk science is in and of itself an oxymoron. Correct. These are these are not like they're not real scientific measures that are being used that are causing this. In this case, I recall the pediatrician who initially, I don't know if he testified at Robert Robertson's ah trial, or if it was, he was just the person who coined it as shaken baby syndrome. He was like, this was not my intent.
00:09:30
Speaker
When i said this, he said, there can be cases where a baby can be shaken in anger and desperation. And I'm talking about a baby, like a little baby.
00:09:42
Speaker
um And it can cause the movement in the brain. But he was like, the The man who, the pediatrician who had previously testified about it, he said himself, if I had known it was going to get to this point, I never even would have posited that because it's not what i he was going for.
00:10:01
Speaker
And, you know, junk science, it's an interesting concept. Yeah. Because it's a lot of things, right? I mean, in that science is supposed to not be junk.
00:10:16
Speaker
right? yeah It's the opposition of junk and it's supposed to be this kind of controlled and recreatable methodology.
00:10:29
Speaker
And I think that it gets blown so far out of a proportion in the court setting because it's an easy out, right?
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah. In this particular case with the shaken baby syndrome. It's really sad that that things that could possibly have a very tiny piece of scientific pie they end up ultimately being junk science because they're overused. Oh, well, so they have other problems down there related to this case. They have this one court of criminal appeals judge named Gina Parker. She wrote a dissenting opinion and and I have no idea how she ended up becoming a criminal a court of appeals judge, but Texas, if you're listening, she's out of Waco.
00:11:15
Speaker
Her name is Gina Parker. you need to vote her out. You need to like, realize that you have a very, very serious problem um with her.
00:11:26
Speaker
I have never read a more delusional dissent, and I have read some delusional dissents, but um she states Robert Robertson's case was not a shaken baby case. and She says the trial testimony made it clear from the injuries that the obvious conclusion and the only conclusion to draw was that the child was beaten to death, which makes me think that like ah I briefly read her bio and I thought she was the worst prosecutor ever because um like the interpretation that she has of what she's reading, like like even on a Dr. Seuss level, she's not reading what's being put down there.
00:12:04
Speaker
um She certainly did not read through the orders and the motions in that case. That case is complex when it comes to how much litigation has gone into it. She does not seem to understand the law of her own state.
00:12:16
Speaker
And I will say this, Texas, their criminal justice system is an absolute disaster. They're trying. They just cannot keep up with themselves.
00:12:27
Speaker
And, like, it has caused them problems over the year over the years. They have executed some of the only innocent people that are now documented to be innocent.
Death Penalty and Systemic Failures
00:12:37
Speaker
um And this would have been another case like that. It does not seem they learned.
00:12:41
Speaker
They also have another rep there named Mitch Little out of Louisville. He said he was disappointed and dismayed in the five judges on our Court of Criminal Appeals that they could read the trial court's record and extend relief.
00:12:53
Speaker
I fully expect his conviction to be upheld in the trial court based on the evidentiary record. and put us right back where we started. he is a vocal proponent of preserving Robert Robertson's death sentence.
00:13:04
Speaker
Guys, if you're in Texas, you need to vote him out. Like these two, I'm i'm being as nice as I can right now. You don't want him in charge of anything.
00:13:16
Speaker
I'd really like to know that, like, essentially part a big part of that case was that he was taking her to the doctor. he was trying to get that child help. yep And that completely undermines any notion that he beat that child to death.
00:13:34
Speaker
Right. ah People who beat children don't take them to the doctors most of the time. Right. Right. But I remember reading that part of it and that wasn't the only thing that contradicted No, no, no, no. That's the thing. Like, you know, I'm, that's the thing I'm bringing up these two people because that's what they took away from this. There was an Anderson County judge that was ordered in 2016 to take a further review of this case, which is how we get to where we are.
00:14:03
Speaker
That trial court also was not paying attention. And when I say was not paying attention, I i don't. Meg calls it headline skimming. So that's what i'm going to use.
00:14:14
Speaker
You cannot be a jurist in the state of Texas and be a headline skimmer. So if you don't know how to read and you're relying on your law school 2L, interns. interns to provide you synopses of these cases, meaning you've literally given a 22 or 23 year old kid who has never practiced the law, the duty of summarizing in this case, thousands of pages.
00:14:40
Speaker
And both of them will argue with me and tell me that they read it. And I can tell you right now, Mitch Little didn't read a word of it. I know that. And I can tell you that the clerk of criminal appeals judge, Gina Parker, she had an intern read this.
00:14:56
Speaker
A clerk summarized the intern, and then she read the summary of the synopsis of the summary. If they execute this man, I promise you, they executed yet another innocent person in Texas.
00:15:12
Speaker
And stuff like that bothers me because there's so many other things to be done here. They should have commuted the sentence a long time ago and gotten him off of death row. And at this point, we should not even be talking about his guilt, let alone his execution.
00:15:28
Speaker
i agree. And you say that, like, I mean, Texas's justice system is a mess. And you're right. And it's not the only state that's a mess. But I'm starting to see this trend where, as opposed to, like, people tackling it head on they're literally going through the motion And they don't care.
00:15:51
Speaker
and then, like, people who could have possibly maybe done something someday, they just give up. They're not really interested in the fight. Yeah. So that's concerning to me, but I do realize that, like, this isn't the first time in history that's happened.
00:16:05
Speaker
But at the same time... It's not even the first time in history in Texas that's happened. The blinders are so wide. Yeah. i like one of the Like, one of the reasons...
00:16:16
Speaker
I get up on my high horse about Texas is I have watched them violate the own statutes they fought for, for some reason. They like have these statutes that their attorney general's office and then their district attorney's offices and their own agencies, including the Rangers who everybody at one point held in a very high regard, pay no attention to. you So if you're not following the law, how do you think you're enforcing it?
00:16:45
Speaker
And, If you need a notable example of this, I would just point everybody to the work of Gerald Hurst. You can make your own opinion from what's happening there, and that's related to the execution in 2004 of Cameron Todd Willingham.
00:17:04
Speaker
If you read the Cameron Todd Willingham case, knowing what science is now, and you can go compare it because there are acceptable forms of the same science that have modified the flawed techniques that were used in the first place, that point to Texas executing an absolutely innocent man who lost his children in a fire, then you'll get a better understanding and you can come to your own conclusion about the state of Texas and the criminal justice system.
Judicial System Inefficiencies
00:17:33
Speaker
And I could rant about this all day. i just wanted to point out that here we are again with a another stay for Robert Robertson, And that's not like, you know, I don't know him.
00:17:44
Speaker
I don't have a personal opinion of him. I don't know if he's a good person or a bad person or whatever. I just know based on everything that I've seen, he was simply taking his kid to the doctor. And here we are. Right. And, um,
00:17:59
Speaker
it As harrowing as my like very distant experience with that situation was, because it was happening in real time. We did an episode on how this was scheduled, this was bad, we weren't sure anybody was going to do anything, and I watched the clock kind of tick down on it, and like it was last second.
00:18:20
Speaker
And to see that it happened again... yeah That's insane. It's insanity. This is not um judicial efficiency.
00:18:32
Speaker
It very wasteful. Yeah, it's incredibly wasteful of the resources. the The biggest problem, though, is you're talking about human lives and the way that this is happening is to to simplify it for people.
00:18:52
Speaker
When the state executes an innocent person, you have an untouchable entity operating with absolute impunity, committing murder, which is the whole reason they're executing the person in the first place is because they allege that that person has committed murder.
00:19:19
Speaker
It's really a disaster, kind of unmitigated disaster. Right. And we've gotten ourselves into this position where politicians get into office, they elect themselves into certain positions, they insulate those positions, they insulate the agencies around them.
00:19:32
Speaker
um It is impossible to sue the police in Texas. It is 1,000% impossible. And somebody's going to send me the one link where one person, got a settlement out of something. But I will say that like they didn't let it be adjudicated.
00:19:46
Speaker
But they sure as hell put this guy on death row for killing his daughter 20 years ago. And here we are. I just, I, there's something wrong with the system there.
00:19:58
Speaker
ah This is a ramp that I would do all day long and I apologize for for doing that. You have some good points though. What the one justice that um like sort of switched and said, wait, this isn't shaken baby syndrome. That doesn't apply. That's a weird turnabout face at this point.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's why I'm saying they didn't read it because, like, you you the reason the reason I get on my high horse about ah you know a a court of criminal appeals judge doing that is I'm all for reviewing cases de novo from scratch when you get them on your desk.
00:20:32
Speaker
um I'm not for a complete reinterpretation of the evidence in a way that, like, you're now telling me you don't believe the experts, you don't believe the jury.
00:20:42
Speaker
but we should kill him anyways. That makes you an individual executioner. It's not good sound ah logic. it It really isn't. And that it's disappointing. Right. Because in that case, for any argument you have, they will have a counter argument.
00:21:03
Speaker
Full of logical fallacies. yeah Exactly. And that's alarming. and it really is. It's very alarming. Yeah, and it's it's terrible that like we have legislators involved there. But like if you need to know who to vote for, honestly, this is the type of, like if you're a one-issue person, this is the type of one issue that you can look at and you can go, whoever in the legislator is like supporting, executing this man, you don't want them to be your lawmaker because that could be you.
00:21:32
Speaker
It absolutely could be. and i can't See, we've had this come up like several times about the death penalty and like, I used to be like all for
Personal Conflicts on Death Penalty
00:21:41
Speaker
it. Now I'm like, I don't know, more research needs to be done. TBD about my opinion of it, right? Cause it is a thing in some States it happens.
00:21:51
Speaker
I'm so far from removed from it in most cases that it doesn't matter what I think about it anyway. Robert Robertson, um he got me really close to anticipating an innocent man being killed.
00:22:06
Speaker
by a state that was harrowing because it wasn't something that had happened. It was something that was happening. Right. yeah And i will say this though, if I were the person who had to sign a death warrant, I would absolutely not do it. So it's not that I don't believe in the death penalty.
00:22:26
Speaker
It's just, I don't trust the system. I've seen I I'm with you. I've seen cases even recently I have seen executions that, like, I'm not going to say that, like, I would be the one to sign a death warrant on them.
00:22:43
Speaker
i will say ah don't think the process missed by much. Well, sure. And I've seen cases like that, too. And, you know, in does that... for cases like that, you know, great.
00:22:58
Speaker
For ones that aren't like that, that is like 10 times worse than the one that was great. Right. Yeah. And then who decides, right? Well, that's, see, that's where I get hung up on.
00:23:12
Speaker
i don't think I believe in the death penalty because i would be personally perfectly okay for the people that have recently been executed for some heinous actions that to be held in a tiny cage for the rest of their life. And it's very few people.
00:23:28
Speaker
I feel like even that is an inappropriate punishment. I can look at people as humans and find their bad days. And like, I can like go through and find mitigating circumstances that justify long sentences.
00:23:42
Speaker
I personally have difficulty with a lot of the criminal justice system and, and how we decide on punishments, but to apply, The death penalty equally to some of those heinous crimes, as you do to Robert Robertson, who, unless I am missing something, I'm not.
00:24:05
Speaker
But and if I were to be missing something in his case, I would be glad to be educated on it. The thing is, I've gone through everything. I agree with the original experts who changed their mind because they realized they were missing some facts.
00:24:23
Speaker
Right. And so i feel like now, granted, he just like skated execution again. So it's alarming, but his case is actually sort of like, it's like a case study case.
00:24:37
Speaker
It is. And it's all the ways you shouldn't act. when this is happening, right? Right, but we can't control people's like actions and thoughts. Yeah, but you have to learn from it, right? Yeah. Like, this is for people to look at this case. It spanned time. It had the ultimate penalty.
00:24:58
Speaker
It was a truly innocent victim. and So it's got all these elements to it, right? And then... If you look into, I mean, i guess somebody could disagree and that's fine but I don't believe that he didn't kill her because I want to believe that I believe that he did not kill her because there's butt ton of evidence that indicates she died essentially from sepsis right correct and it is backed all the different things that played into that right so what happened to her to
00:25:42
Speaker
in and in terms of what medically happened to her, it was an anomaly that simple-minded medical technicians would not be aware of.
00:25:54
Speaker
And that's a rare thing that, like, nurses with years of experience, even doctors with years of experience, aren't getting all of the information.
00:26:05
Speaker
So if you want to look at it from a technical, clinical, legal perspective, by their ignorance, we create Brady material. Because we left things out and experts and prosecutors and defense attorneys only get dribs and drabs of what appear to all be bad facts favoring Robert Robertson having murdered Nikki.
00:26:25
Speaker
So that's the clinical way to look at it is like you have all of this potentially exculpatory material that people just weren't smart enough to think of. If you want to go that way. Or you could go with, we got it wrong, which for some reason, there are criminal justice systems and jurists in the country who cannot admit that.
Preventing Wrongful Executions
00:26:46
Speaker
And they certainly want to admit that a colleague got it wrong. And that's how we end up with this ongoing, looming execution, having to have all of these resources dumped into it. Because I promise you, there's a better place to put these resources by people who are in the position to take action, simply taking the correct action to begin with and keeping like at this point, they should literally commute a sentence until they figure it out because we've already created enough of a question that like, even if they feel justified, whoever they might be, legislators, the governor, the, uh,
00:27:22
Speaker
yeah Court of Criminal Appeals, the justices for the Supreme Court of Texas, all of those people could potentially like justify having done all of their due diligence and they've decided on the right opinion.
00:27:36
Speaker
But do you really trust a Court of Criminal Appeals judge to be smarter than an expert who says, we missed this medically and I didn't know enough for the last 10 years to realize how wrong I was. And even the person who was the person to identify this syndrome has now pointed out they never intended for it to go this way.
00:27:58
Speaker
ah i don't i don't trust them. And part of that is because she's saying that the experts said what they said. It just doesn't apply here, like, all of a sudden.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm like, well, that's just completely changing the facts of the narrative of the case. And that's ridiculous. I don't even see, I would love to see, ah you know, where she got that opinion. You you said you don't and think she really...
00:28:26
Speaker
read everything i know she had like she headlines again which i hope i hope that's the case right but in the event like she really did get good information i feel like her brain flipped a switch and said okay so how can we justify this we can justify it by saying well that's what i'm saying we can justify it by saying well the shaken baby syndrome thing doesn't matter here like this baby was beaten to death and And okay, really? That just came out of pretty much nowhere. And it defies where the case has come to right?
00:29:04
Speaker
It's crazy. That's even worse. And that's, like I said before, that's where she's going her brain is going to flip a switch every single time and head in a different direction.
00:29:14
Speaker
yeah And it's getting to be that way a little bit. And I mean, we've seen stuff, you and i we've watched trials this year. couple of them where the outcomes were unexpected.
00:29:26
Speaker
And we've noted that like, it's almost like some juries are overcompensating and some juries just don't get it. And like, we're, we're, I think we're close to the verge of a complete breakdown of certain aspects of the criminal justice system in terms of reliability.
00:29:43
Speaker
And in my opinion, that's why I'm so drawn to all the questions I have about Robert Robertson. And think, When I started looking at this, I thought that I was going to do something similar to what the lazy judge did and that I was going to come to a point where it was going to flip a switch for me. But it didn't exist in what the Court of Criminal Appeals got.
00:30:09
Speaker
It didn't exist in what the Texas Supreme Court got. It does not seem to exist in the case file, which I believe, excepting some of the motions that occurred between 2016 and 2019. I believe I've read all of them.
00:30:25
Speaker
There were some things that were not readily available to me in that little chunk of time, but I believe I've read everything else available in this case, seen most of the exhibits, got my hands on most of the information.
00:30:37
Speaker
And I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the people involved in the adversarial part of this, from the perspective of being pro-execution and upholding the death penalty for Robert Robertson are they're going to be the people that cause the implosion of aspects of the criminal justice system right and what that means essentially is it no one's ever going to know
00:31:10
Speaker
if it was a justified death penalty case or not, because it's insane, right? Yeah, we're just to the point where we have, like, I almost think some of them are doing it for clicks, but I believe that some of these people are doing it because they believe.
00:31:25
Speaker
i You know, I feel like... i I really do feel like in some ah like cases that are so obvious, in my opinion, this is one of those cases.
00:31:36
Speaker
It took a really long time to get it to like sort of the front of the pack and have... and i guess it's national now. I don't really know. um i didn't have it come across in my news this time. I think I did last year. having But watching that happen, though...
00:31:57
Speaker
I feel like it's almost like anybody who's saying differently, they're literally gaslighting us. I don't even think they're gaslighting us at this point. I think they're just, I think we've gotten to a point where certain professions have churned out so many people and so many people got promoted just because they were standing there.
00:32:22
Speaker
that we've now considered their five years of barely middling to be expertise. So we're electing them to positions that like, not only do they not have the experience or expertise to fulfill that position, but,
00:32:37
Speaker
Like all of the people around them have enabled it to the point that like they don't want them where they are. So the best thing they can do is support them moving laterally or up and out.
00:32:49
Speaker
And like, it's getting to be that way everywhere. But one of the things that it's the most kind of critical mass is the criminal justice system. So when you're moving somebody who's barely a lawyer, right?
00:33:04
Speaker
into a position to be a court of criminal appeals judge, and they only win by a quarter of the votes or something. Are not being run against. Well, in this case, it was like 6 million to 5 million votes between her and the other candidate.
00:33:21
Speaker
It was very much a party line drawn there. One was one party, one was the other. and we end up with this person being the one who's elected and fulfilling the duties.
00:33:33
Speaker
And like... Texas is one of those places that the ability to recall is pretty much nil. like particularly Particularly when it comes to these high-level judges, it's sort of a lifetime thing once you're elected.
00:33:47
Speaker
Even though you may not be re-elected, you're going to become some other type of jurist in that field. And it's just unfortunate. Because we're not going to be able to use that person for this field for very long. Because at some point in time, they will reveal themselves to be inept.
00:34:07
Speaker
Right. And they'll drive it right off the road. Right. So Robert Robertson, his appeal has been granted. And his stay of execution has occurred yet again
Brendan Banfield Murder Plot
00:34:18
Speaker
2025. Anything else on this What was the...
00:34:21
Speaker
what was the Like, can he still have a new date set? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're still at a point where, like, they're going to try and figure out what to do with it. We could be here next year yet again.
00:34:33
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So that's how that's a long update. I apologize for that. That's me running off because it's, like, it's really infuriating when I know, like, I can see they're doing the wrong thing and, like, there's just no way to fix it the way that everyone is interacting with each other. um You know, the people who could are clearly – up in arms about something. I had another update.
00:34:54
Speaker
is So this update's a little older, and we kind of talked about it briefly. And then you had a story that I wanted to put in here for today for like the main case. But the other update is out of Northern Virginia.
00:35:06
Speaker
So where we get this is from NBC Washington, which I think is Channel 4 up there. I actually made a mistake and printed out the text-only field of this. But Drew Wilder has been reporting on this. We've talked about it numerous times.
00:35:21
Speaker
This is a case that, like you and I were talking about, may be a trial. This is Brendan Banfield. So what I wanted to bring up today about this case is I got this piece of a recording. ah It's attached to one of Drew Wilder's like sort of sensational headlines, um but it's fascinating, and I'm going to bring it up.
00:35:48
Speaker
It says, Au Pair gives prosecutors grisly account of fetish sex plot murders. Have you read this part? This is, it came out. We covered that, like, we thought some of this was going to be coming out, that there were there's some hearings. We covered that part.
00:36:04
Speaker
This is so interesting. i wanted to read this to you and get your take on it kind of live. I apologize for kind of dumping this on you, but it's fascinating. Here's the text of the article. The au pair who pleaded guilty in connection with a double homicide in Northern Virginia described the gruesome killings for prosecutors in a video entered as evidence provided by defense counsel to News 4. So this is News 4 to this writer.
00:36:31
Speaker
to this writer Last year, prosecutors questioned Juliana Perez-Malgahese as part of her plea agreement. She alleged the man she was having an affair with, her employer, Brendan Banfield, had masterminded an elaborate plot to kill his wife, Christine.
00:36:45
Speaker
Banfield denies all these allegations. His attorney provides this video to News 4. Banfield claims his wife invited another man named Joseph Ryan to their bedroom to fulfill a BDSM sex fantasy. This is the morning of February 24, 2023.
00:37:01
Speaker
Banfield says yeah arrived too late to save his wife to save his wife's life. Perez accuses Banfield of lying. About a year and a half after the killing, she went on the record with Fairfax County prosecutors saying that she and Banfield had had an affair, claiming he spent months masterminding a plan to kill his wife to take her out of the picture.
00:37:22
Speaker
Paris said Brandon Benfield told her about a website called FetLife.com, a kink BDSM and fantasy dating website. She said that Benfield created a fake profile on FetLife pretending to be Christine.
00:37:35
Speaker
She said the two of them would log into Christine's work computer and attempt to solicit someone over to their house to perform a rape fantasy with Christine. um With this article on NBCWashington.com, they include bits and pieces of Juliana Perez-Malgoles talking about this case. And it is fascinating. If you haven't seen it, you want to but I will put that in the show notes. You need to go see it.
00:38:01
Speaker
um First of all, they picked the worst possible camera angle for this woman. There's like a table basic like a table camera mounted it's basically looking up her nostrils the entire time she's talking, which is horrible.
00:38:12
Speaker
But what she describes is fascinating. Here's what she says. The morning of the killings, Brendan Banfield pretended to go to his job as a law enforcement agent for the IRS. But instead, he drove to a nearby McDonald's and waited for her call.
00:38:29
Speaker
Christine Banfield had been left asleep in her bedroom and they hid her cell phone downstairs in the kitchen.
00:38:38
Speaker
Juliana Perez says she took the couple's four-year-old daughter to a car under the pretense they would be headed to the zoo. She says she concealed a gun that Brendan Banfield had given her and told her to carry that morning.
00:38:50
Speaker
And then Joseph Ryan arrived with a knife and restraints. According to her testimony to prosecutors, she says, that's when Brendan had instructed me before, as soon as I was to see Joe's car, for me to call him right away. So that's what I did.
00:39:10
Speaker
Next, she called Christine Banfield's hidden phone. So when Brendan Banfield arrives, he and Perez entered the house with the four-year-old girl through a back basement door.
00:39:21
Speaker
They left the child downstairs in the basement as they went to the first floor. Banfield entered the couple's bedroom with the gun drawn. He announced himself as law enforcement, and Perez followed him.
00:39:34
Speaker
Joseph Ryan was on top of Christine Banfield, who yelled... Brendan, he has a knife. Banfield almost immediately shot Joseph Ryan in the head.
00:39:51
Speaker
She was like, okay, why did you do this? Call 911, according to Juliana's testimony to prosecutors. She did. police have said, but she hung up before saying anything as she said that Brendan Banfield gestured for her to get off the phone shortly after she was connected with a dispatcher.
00:40:10
Speaker
Juliana Perez then told prosecutors she saw Brendan Banfield take Joseph Ryan's knife. and stab his wife in the neck. He was stabbing her.
00:40:22
Speaker
She was just telling him, please let me go. I'm already going to die anyways. I'm going to bleed to death. She was just, leave me here, let me die. And he was telling her, i can't.
00:40:33
Speaker
I don't know why she said, i can't. I don't know why he said, i can't. So according to police, Christine Banfield was stabbed multiple times at different parts of her body. Ryan was still moving after the gunshot to his head.
00:40:47
Speaker
And according to Juliana Perez, Brendan Banfield instructed her to shoot Joseph Ryan again, which she did. She claimed shortly after this, Brendan Banfield started to manipulate the crime scene, including putting his wife's blood on Joseph Ryan's hands and arms.
00:41:03
Speaker
Over the next eight months, detectives returned to the home and something stood out. It appeared to them that after the killings, Juliana Perez had moved into the master bedroom with Banfield, which you and i talked about at length.
00:41:14
Speaker
The picture in the bedside frame had been swapped out for a photo of Brendan Banfield and Juliana Perez.
Prosecutorial Misconduct in Banfield Case
00:41:20
Speaker
Police also said during one of these visits, they heard the four-year-old girl call Juliana Perez mommy.
00:41:30
Speaker
In October 2023, Fairfax County police arrested Juliana Perez and charged her with Joseph Ryan's murder. Over the next year, Brendan Banfield remained free until police arrested him and September, 20, 24, charged him with four counts of aggravated murder.
00:41:45
Speaker
Prosecutors offered Juliana Perez a deal, testify against Brendan in exchange for a manslaughter conviction with a much, much shorter jail sentence.
00:41:56
Speaker
ah Currently, Brendan Banfield is scheduled trial pretty shortly. It's going to be kind of a Halloween time trial. Um, But something weird happened this week in this case, and I don't know exactly what's happening here. When this happens, like i kind of I hold off a little bit usually.
00:42:16
Speaker
have not had time to thoroughly investigate this next part, but it also comes out of ABC7 News. It says Fairfax County prosecutor taken off a pair double murder case after drinking incident.
00:42:28
Speaker
um Said there's a big shakeup in a Fairfax County double homicide, receiving some national attention. The lead prosecutor has been replaced. This comes as the prosecutor now finds himself in legal trouble.
00:42:39
Speaker
The Brendan Banfield murder trial was set to begin next week, but in court Wednesday this week. So that's, what's today? The 15th, October the fifteenth um is the day that they're talking about here, ends up being delayed. So they've reset this trial for January.
00:42:59
Speaker
This comes after the lead prosecutor, Eric Klingon, is being placed on leave for a, quote, personal matter. um This is a Commonwealth attorney that's drunk. A police officer can be heard saying in police body camera video, which was first reported on apparently by ABC7 News iTeams' John Barr,
00:43:19
Speaker
Two months ago, Officer Seth Klingen, a Fairfax deputy Commonwealth's attorney, was drinking and smoking outside of his car shortly after 8 a.m. in the back of a Goodwill parking lot. I'm going to head to work and forget all about this, Klingon told the officers. But officers saw an open beer bottle on the hood of Klingon's parked car and an empty beer bottle nearby.
00:43:38
Speaker
They noted that the beer had a higher than normal concentration of alcohol and cited him for drinking in public. He's been drinking. One officer tells another officer over the phone. He said he's going to work here soon. And I'm like, no, you're not.
00:43:51
Speaker
Our complainant said, you normally come over here and park, the officer told Klingon. They didn't describe who they were. They said they drive through this area every day, and they see you normally here this time with your car, and they see you drinking.
00:44:04
Speaker
This looks terrible, Klingon later told officers, and I get it. After officers said they would drive Eric Klingon home, Klingon requested to be driven in the front seat of the police car.
00:44:15
Speaker
Officers did not cuff Klingon, instead drove him in the front seat of a police cruiser up to his house. An officer who had recognized him said he was trying to help him. He said he's being cool, right? This comes from someone at the Fairfax County Police Department.
00:44:31
Speaker
And he says, yeah. And he says, to me, that makes all the difference. He says, you're in a position i don't want you. i'm i'm trying to help you in the best way possible. This is the officer speaking on body camera to Eric Klingit.
00:44:44
Speaker
ah Seven News is going to let you know what happens with Eric Klingon's case, but they're looking ahead to the murder trial. The Commonwealth said its exhibits show Banfield posed in photos with the family's au pair, including photos in Bayshore, New York, another picture at a pub and a concert hall, and another photo that ah another photo shows them together in appears to be a bathtub.
00:45:05
Speaker
They said the photo was seen on a nightstand in the Banfield home, and this was all evidence showing that Banfield and the au pair had an extramarital relationship. So that's the other piece of news in this weird case.
00:45:19
Speaker
What is he doing? the prosecutor? why is he drinking behind the Goodwill? Because he hates his life. He hates his job. That is where he's at.
00:45:30
Speaker
He does not need to be a prosecutor. But can you imagine being prosecuted for DUI by someone who's just trashed? In court? Oh, no. That is no. He, no.
00:45:42
Speaker
Right? See? you get it. You get what I'm talking about. Yeah, no, I do get it. And honestly, i guess that is so weird to me. Like, you he must you must be right. He must really hate his life because, like, why isn't he drinking at home?
00:46:04
Speaker
Well, I mean. I guess that's my biggest question. he he is hiding what he's doing. he's He's obviously not hiding it all that well. I am sure his colleagues are aware of what's happening, you know?
00:46:16
Speaker
It's just the craziest thing to me. Like, how this kind of, like, and, you know, the cops are trying to help him. i don't I don't feel like that's right. Yeah. But whatever. I'm more concerned about ah sort of what's behind this because you are absolutely right.
00:46:38
Speaker
Every single DUI case that he's ever prosecuted should be chucked because of this. Yeah. I mean, it is it's just, oh. But also...
00:46:53
Speaker
He's drinking a higher concentration of beer that has a higher concentration of alcohol than normal. If you're drinking one of these like pale ales that has 11% alcohol in it at 8 o'clock in the morning, it can't be great.
00:47:09
Speaker
This is just really a bad look. So I kind of dumped all that together, and I apologize for doing that, but it's all related to the Brendan Banfield case. But I wanted to know from you, what did you think of the whole...
00:47:22
Speaker
scenario Juliana Perez-Malgahis lays out there. um I think that's probably pretty close to what happened. That's what I think, too. I had speculated. So, for one thing, um there was a timing thing here because the nanny was charged, it seems like, quite a bit before yeah Brendan Banfield was charged. and i I'm not exactly sure... um Like, I'm not exactly sure how he roped her into this.
00:48:00
Speaker
The nanny? Yes. And then I think that that answered one of the questions because they said that they could prove she was on the computer.
Banfield's Failed Murder Scheme
00:48:09
Speaker
And I think that was because of the work computer. Right. And and and that was the other thing we had brought up previously. You're 100%. She confessed to getting on it, right? Like, they orchestrated that.
00:48:21
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Because there had been some trouble where they were rearranging members of the police department because they had asked this guy to do some really strictly technical stuff. And he said, look, it's Christine Banfield logging into her work computer where this account has been running in the background.
00:48:39
Speaker
Like, it's her credentials. Right, but they just used her credentials. That appears to be what the likely outcome of all that is based on this information here.
00:48:51
Speaker
Right. And ah so had figured that i I believe what the nanny is saying, the au pair is saying. I don't believe that she's going to lie.
00:49:03
Speaker
i also believe that she could have been surprised that she was arrested. Well, you and I have kind of like, so couple of things we had speculated that it was going to be important when Christine Manfield died.
00:49:22
Speaker
i think at one point you had posited but like, she was already dead when the guy arrives. And then like, this contradicts that a little, but the rest of your theory. Well, and I'm fine when that's why I'm saying like, yeah, I did think she was probably dead before he got there. um But I'm, I don't think that nanny's lying in her confession or her,
00:49:42
Speaker
story that she's giving. Well, that version of the story is much more horrifying than what you and I thought it was. It absolutely is. um um That's what I was going to say before he ever got there. But i do under I do see where that might not have worked as well because...
00:49:59
Speaker
They needed him to be very close to her. And if she was dead, he might not have gotten very close to her if he had already seen, you know, an issue. It's very sad that Christine was like, just let me die. I'm going to bleed to death.
00:50:15
Speaker
um I cannot believe like, I mean, i believe her story, but I'm just saying this is awful. And he was like, I can't. And that's because, like, I think she said she didn't know why he said he couldn't. But, like, he needed to make sure she was dead, which is cold-hearted.
00:50:31
Speaker
um And the absolute terror. Yeah. Your spouse stabbing you to death while they just shot this other person.
00:50:42
Speaker
While your nanny's watching.
00:50:47
Speaker
and like That's what I'm like. That part, all of that is what makes it so much more horrifying than what I imagined. It is much worse. if If that's the story she's going to tell on the stand, i don't first of all, I don't know why his defense attorneys leaked this.
00:51:05
Speaker
But i will go ahead and tell you that. Do you think it was the defense attorneys that leaked it? That's what they said. the that's that's They said that this video was provided to the press by Brendan Banfield's attorney.
00:51:19
Speaker
I don't know what he saw there that I'm not seeing, but if this is a part of what they were, quote, giving out to bolster their case. Are they saying she's a liar?
00:51:31
Speaker
I think he's run out of money and they're trying to make sure that the client pleads out. that's so That's weird. odd it's not It doesn't help him at all.
00:51:42
Speaker
No, it it not only does it not help him, like you maybe they're trying to taint the jury pool so that anybody who has seen this and taken an interest in it isn't there, and then they get this suppressed somehow.
00:51:56
Speaker
I, you know, I'm not sure what's going on here. i do know, um this was never going to work. No. Um, I think what I laid out, uh, in one of our, you know, the first episode we covered or whatever, like my theory, um, I was pretty close, uh,
00:52:15
Speaker
The nanny is saying they killed her after ah they had shot Joseph Ryan. Right. And that's different than what I imagined. But it's also much, much worse. Correct.
00:52:28
Speaker
And I think that the reason she's taught, I don't think she thought she was going to get arrested for this. I think she believed in Brendan Banfield.
00:52:44
Speaker
And i think that she confesses because she felt deceived, right? Because otherwise... they have nothing.
00:52:56
Speaker
Why are they, but why is she talking? i don't know. I don't know. You know what I mean? Like if, cause she was clearly in on this, she tells them she could have actually given a story and said, I had no idea this was about to happen. Okay. Yeah. She could have done that.
00:53:15
Speaker
I would say
00:53:19
Speaker
your opinion, dumber smart on Brendan Banfield. What do you think? Dumber smart. He's really dumb. So... I think that he really didn't have a true relationship with her, and he used her.
00:53:35
Speaker
i think she is also maybe not the brightest bulb in the bush. I don't think she is either. So, when you have two people making this quote-unquote infallible murder plot, end quote, um like, you're...
00:53:56
Speaker
You're not dealing with genius-level critical thinking skills. Right, and they got some tunnel vision there, right? i I feel like anybody that is plotting and carries out something like this, they have got major tunnel vision.
00:54:15
Speaker
My question is, why is Because she's not saying, oh, it was self-defense. She's saying, look, we set this all up and then we killed them. Well, a year in jail will do that to you. I mean, maybe it just seems, do you think if he had been arrested when she was that she would have confessed though?
00:54:32
Speaker
I think that it was the fact that he was not arrested. Like she was basically going to take the fall for it. Right. Yep. I, she's, she had months to think about because before she makes this statement, she's been in there a long time and it's clearly not treating her well. If you go and see this video to be incarcerated like this, but,
00:54:54
Speaker
And I'm sure like she started to realize her circumstances were precarious.
00:55:05
Speaker
And I say that based on the fact that like he's out running around free for a year and probably dips off the lovey-dovey shit because he's not bright.
00:55:16
Speaker
And he probably is a little paranoid during that time to even talk to her. And she starts to feel alone and rightfully so, like used.
00:55:30
Speaker
Right. And my question is, okay, to some extent, I don't really know the ins and outs of leading up to that morning, but for all intents and purposes,
00:55:43
Speaker
Brendan Banfield could have done this completely by himself. Correct. There was no reason that the au pair had to come back to the house with the daughter. i am glad to hear they left the daughter in the basement, sort of. I mean, not really, but that was better than her witnessing this, right?
00:56:01
Speaker
Yes. um Okay. And so he could have ah shot... Joseph Ryan, who was over Christine Banfield, he could have and then proceeded to stab her without the au pair being there.
Ethical Implications of Murder Plot
00:56:18
Speaker
Okay. Why didn't he do it that way? Because he's dumb. Is it? Is that what it is? Yeah. Like, this is not. Okay. So, first of all. I think he thought he needed a witness.
00:56:31
Speaker
I agree with you. That's what he thought he was doing to make it somehow. work it that it was never a good idea well it's so funny because like that is the actual opposite of love to bring her into this like that let me put you through this trauma exactly and kill his wife yeah like that's gonna be you in a few years Yeah. Like, i you like, like, how does she not know that? Like, how does she not understand that Like, in terms of when the next thing happens in there, if everything goes perfectly and they get off for the murder, like she can never be anything except future co-defendants with him.
00:57:15
Speaker
And that power dynamic is never going to work. Well, right. And I guess part of my surprise was, And, like, remember, we I think we listened to the 911 calls maybe, or maybe we read the transcript, but she was already saying things like... Oh, she did. Yeah, she was off script, like, as soon as the 911 calls were rolling.
00:57:36
Speaker
And she was saying, like... he was down, but I shot him again or whatever. And like, it was almost like, to me, the way that I heard, which it sounded different because in what you were talking about, she said that he had given her the gun that morning. Yes.
00:57:54
Speaker
And she had it with her instead of in the 911 call, she said something like he told me to go to the other room and get the gun. Right. or something like that. Correct. And So I'm wondering, like, I honestly think, and it possibly almost worked. I'm not really sure why there was such a delay.
00:58:16
Speaker
think he was like 100% setting her up to take the fall for this. He may have been, and she may have realized that. Like, her attorneys may have enlightened her to that being Because otherwise, why involve her at all? Oh, I agree. Unless they're just like a like a really deranged couple, right? Because he could have done all that himself. But I think when she was on the phone with 911, I think she screwed it up from the jump.
00:58:47
Speaker
I think she went off script. it It probably goes something like, he tells her to keep the gun on her, and that's the whole reason she has it, and she's supposed to like you know be the other person with the gun to confuse the scene, and when she doesn't have it,
00:59:02
Speaker
And she's calling 911 and like not sure what to do Because late no matter like how strong or insane a person you are, if you're standing there watching someone who has just shot another person in the head take a knife out of their hands and kill his spouse, it's going to have an immediate effect on you physically and psychologically from the shock of what you're experiencing.
00:59:33
Speaker
And like, like it's going to take you a minute to catch back up to reality. So being off script, he never could have anticipated that was going to happen. and He should have, but he's too blinded by his own raising narcissism that made him think why divorce her?
00:59:51
Speaker
Which I do not understand that concept unless it's, you know, custody and money. Well, and a pair saying, sure, I'll go along with you on this instead of saying, just divorce her. Like, that's a weird, that's a leap there. Well, it's not just a leap. Like, i don't, like, okay, this is me speaking personally, and maybe I'm just ignorant to love.
01:00:15
Speaker
I don't have anyone, even in past terrible partners, that, like, that's the place I go. Like, I don't have a moment where I think involving a current slash future partner in the death of a current slash past partner makes any sense to me whatsoever. Exactly. it absolutely doesn't. And I think that he was setting her up to take the fall 100%. And I think, I think maybe there were some alarming things that happened,
01:00:52
Speaker
Like, for example, just leave me. I'm going to bleed to death. Don't keep stabbing me. It hurts. It's painful. I'm suffering. And that might have been a reality check.
01:01:02
Speaker
Well, one good flash of yourself laying there, you know, that'll do it. Well, and to me, that, up oh my gosh, that is so terrible. I think I like my version better, but I mean, I understand that I just made that out of nowhere, but are based on the information we got. Right. But it was so callous. It's almost like she instantaneously regretted it because, you know, she didn't touch Christine Banfield.
01:01:31
Speaker
Correct. Correct. And she shot Joe o Ryan the second time. Joseph Ryan. That's because Brendan Banfield, in all of his scheme of schemes, failed to even kill the man that he thought he was going to have to kill.
01:01:45
Speaker
And he made the nanny do it. Right, exactly. And I don't... See, that's the other thing, though. I don't think... that it's weird how ah the au pair says, she said, like the au pair says that Christine said, Brendan, he has a knife.
01:02:05
Speaker
Like that's the only thing you're bringing to the attention. It's weird, right? no that's Christine asking her husband for help. Right. I know, but like, she's warning him so that he can take care of this intruder.
01:02:22
Speaker
Man, i can you imagine what went through Joseph Ryan's head?
01:02:28
Speaker
Oh, that dude was so confused. So confused by what was happening. And he died. Yep. like that is like Those two people's last moments on Earth were among the most horrific you will read about in terms of not understanding what was happening. Because that guy thinks he's coming over for a little...
01:02:49
Speaker
And he's doing something completely consensual, planned out. Positive, pleasurable for the two of them because they have this thing in common. And he has no idea she's wildly ignorant and completely like foreign to the concept of what he's about to do.
01:03:08
Speaker
So there's that, the complete dumbfoundedness that would be going through that guy's mind. And so why didn't they let him like take the fall for it?
01:03:20
Speaker
Because they screwed it up. Because they had to kill him. Yeah. like when When Brendan Banfield fails to kill him and he had not... I don't think the plan was for him for that guy to actually murder Christine.
01:03:36
Speaker
So they end up having to doctor the scene. And then you have Juliana who... you thought was going to help as a witness who is now not helping at all. Like if you look at it from the perspective of like, what would it like a version of Brendan Banfield's plan that was going to work look like none of this is involved in that it's the best laid plans. He like, he like had this idea, which like should have stayed a fantasy in the back of his mind while he went and found a divorce attorney.
01:04:06
Speaker
Right. Like this plan is never going
Future of Banfield's Trial
01:04:09
Speaker
to work. No variation of it. No, no iteration of Nothing about this is ever going to work. And so it's amazing to me that I think the biggest thing that shocked me was how long it took for him to be arrested. Right. Right. It took a long time for him to be arrested. It seemed like, cause I think the very first time we talked about this, she was in jail. He wasn't correct. He hadn't been charged or anything.
01:04:36
Speaker
correct And there's just so much that is insane here that I don't understand. And then, you know, maybe i don't know what the motivation was as far as why both of them together.
01:04:52
Speaker
Why is she talking so easily? Like, you know, she watched apparently. And i had I haven't watched the video, but I will. And you read what she said, which is, like i mean, almost exactly what I imagined happened. Correct.
01:05:08
Speaker
And then like she was on board with it. Like was her motivation that she was just going to step into Christine Banfield's life. And that's why she was okay with her being murdered.
01:05:20
Speaker
Like it is a, it's, it's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That goes against kind of human nature. It does. And it's one of those things that like, no matter how many times I look at it, it's, it's it's very confusing.
01:05:37
Speaker
Um, I think he's going to take a plea. He should like, you know, with that kind of of, setup going on, like, honestly, he should take a plea. I don't, I think the person who creates that setup is not capable of taking a plea.
01:05:52
Speaker
I was, I was going to sort of qualify that and say, i think an intelligent man in his position would take a plea, but I don't think an intelligent man would be in his position.
01:06:04
Speaker
Well, what could he say? like he could continue the like self-defense claim. could say it' all that she's a jilted lover. i don't know. it is so difficult for me to wrap my mind around like what was going on here in the first place that he ever thought any of this was better than a divorce.
01:06:22
Speaker
Oh yeah. No, I definitely, was this was never, ever, ever going to work. Yeah. i'm I'm having too much trouble like wrapping my head around, what's going on. to like He might have been able to get away with self-defense if he had let the Au Pair and his daughter just go to the museum. The zoo, yeah.
01:06:46
Speaker
Or whatever. and And said, i came back home, there was a guy on top of my wife, he had stabbed her, i shot him, and she bled to death. Right. That might have worked. But see, the problem would be that like christine would possibly be alive right right and that's part of why she's like he was like i can't just you know let you bleed out this is part of the whole thing and if you if you're not dead that ruins that right yeah gosh it's evil so that's we're already getting like long in the tooth there's a case i wanted to talk about with you do you have much more on the Banfield, Perez-Malghese thing? No, I don't. um I'm interested to see if it goes to trial. at So because of the prosecutor being removed... um It's been delayed out to January. Yes.
01:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, and i unfortunately, that's at a time when I have several trials that I'm involved in. So I don't know I don't know that i can watch it in real time. That'll probably, if it goes to trial...
01:07:49
Speaker
I think they televised up there, but i' have to check. um I don't know that I'll be able to go and see it in person. I'll watch. I would watch this one. I don't think it will be very long. Well, i'm I'm interested to see, like, what they do if they do a ah trial. And this is, like, once this has some resolution, and honestly, in this particular case, meaning this au pair double murder, because that's what they call it, um i would I would cover future updates on it just like I'm doing now. It's one of those things that, like,
01:08:16
Speaker
like I'm interested in it from the perspective that like it's crazy. like The whole situation is just so confusing and out of sorts that you know I keep talking about it and I keep reading about it. It It's a crazy case. And I know I've kind of derailed today's episode with the Robert Robertson thing and now Au Pair homicide
Franklin Bonner Murder Case
01:08:38
Speaker
update. But I did want to talk about something that you brought up with me, largely because there were updates in this this year.
01:08:46
Speaker
um It's not a super long thing. It is a fun rabbit hole to go down to see all the twists and turns. I'm going to cover it kind of in summary to a degree. ah You've heard about this case before. When did you first hear about this?
01:09:01
Speaker
Actually, just recently, okay surprisingly. This is an older case that um it has a National Registry of Exonerations entry. um There's a lot of news articles about it.
01:09:14
Speaker
I think I heard about it in passing prior to this year, but um it didn't a couple of the details didn't stick with me until you had mentioned it recently. And that's ah it's a murder that other podcasts have covered and stuff um along the way.
01:09:29
Speaker
But we had never talked about it, and and it has a couple of absurd elements to it where you and I were just like, what? um it's It's the murder of a man named Franklin Bonner.
01:09:40
Speaker
He dies back in January 2009. So on January 16, 2009, Linda Bonner, she finds her 68-year-old husband, Franklin, duct taped to a chair.
01:09:55
Speaker
And the duct tape is also over his nose and his mouth. He's in their home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He's not breathing. He's taken for emergency care.
01:10:08
Speaker
And when he gets to the hospital, he's pronounced dead. And the cause of death is suffocation. Now, Franklin Bonner is a marijuana salesman. He is known as the lottery man.
01:10:23
Speaker
um He is known to carry cash on him because of selling weed. Now, there are signs that are noted in the autopsy of blunt force trauma.
01:10:35
Speaker
A woman named Shirley Bumpus, B-U-M-P-A-S-S, she lives about two miles away from the Bonner residence. And she tells police that she had called Franklin that morning and come to his house and purchased marijuana from him.
01:10:52
Speaker
So police come to the conclusion that she's probably the last person to have seen Franklin alive, which means there's a strong possibility she could be involved and his death.
01:11:07
Speaker
On the duct tape, which is a terrible mechanism of death, um police find 11 fingerprints and a hair. Duct tape is a very sticky thing.
01:11:19
Speaker
um And by sticky, I mean literally sticky. It has ah so much adhesive on it. It's a great place for evidence to get trapped. At the time, police take these prints and they run them through the Automated Fingerprint Information System, or APHIS.
01:11:36
Speaker
APHIS does not result in identification on these prints. So nine years go past. And in 2018, a 23 year old woman named Angel Bumpus, who is Shirley Bumpus's granddaughter, she fails to appear for a traffic ticket in Kentucky.
01:12:01
Speaker
A warrant is issued for her arrest. And on June of 2018,
01:12:06
Speaker
Angel is arrested. She goes through the
Angel Bumpus Arrest and Trial
01:12:09
Speaker
standard booking process and during the standard booking process, her fingerprints are taken and that fingerprint record is entered into that same automated fingerprint information system.
01:12:24
Speaker
The database runs in the background, automatically searching new records against unidentified crime scene prints. And that search when she's booked, indicates that she is a candidate source of two partial prints from the duct tape found at the scene of Franklin Bonner's homicide.
01:12:48
Speaker
Fingerprint analysts do a further analysis, and they conclude that Angel Bumpus was the source of those prints. She is then arrested for murder and aggravated robbery.
01:13:03
Speaker
What's interesting about this case and why we're bringing it up to kind of talk about it a little bit here in today's episode is that Angel Bumpus was 13 years old when Franklin Bonner's murder took place.
01:13:18
Speaker
According to records, she's five foot tall and weighed 80 pounds in the eighth grade. So she is tiny. Tiny person. She had moved away as a teenager.
01:13:30
Speaker
By the time of her arrest, she had two children She was a student at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky, and according to her, she had no involvement in this crime.
01:13:43
Speaker
At about the same time as Angel Lumpus is being arrested in June 2018, a man named Nicholas Cheaton, who was a federal prisoner serving time for bank robbery, told police that his cousin, Mallory Vaughn, had admitted to committing the crime.
01:14:02
Speaker
Although Nicholas Cheaton subsequently recants this claim, said he was trying to get a sentence reduction. Vaughn, who was 26 at the time of the murder, was also arrested and charged with murder and aggravated robbery.
01:14:18
Speaker
Okay. I'm going to go ahead and throw this out there. If you go down this rabbit hole, you will notice that in 2025, Nicholas Cheaton is being arrested for multiple murders that he has been indicted on.
01:14:31
Speaker
He, I think at this point would qualify as a serial killer, but I don't think he's a serial killer in the terms of the predators you and I talk about. i think he's what you loosely describe as an asshole killer, where someone takes place, takes a part in other crimes and end up killing people who are witnesses or people who anger them during the commission of said crimes.
01:14:57
Speaker
For his part, Mallory Vaughn denied being involved in this crime. He claimed that he's never met Angel Bumpus. So in the fall of 2019, Mallory Vaughn and Angel Bumpus, who is being tried, even though she was 13 at the time of the crime, she's 23 now, she's being tried as an adult in Hamilton County Circuit Court.
01:15:18
Speaker
The prosecution presents testimony that Angel Bumpus is the source of these partial prints. The defense presents evidence that Angel Bumpus had been at school on the day of the crime, and had arrived home around 3 p.m.
01:15:33
Speaker
Franklin Bonner's wife had found him about 5 p.m. if The defense argued that the window of two hours to walk the two miles to Bonner's home, commit the crime, and return was not logical or probable.
01:15:45
Speaker
According to Angel's grandfather, he testified he did do odd jobs occasionally for Bonner. Angel would often help her grandfather in the garage and would play with the roles of duct tape kept there.
01:15:56
Speaker
The tape itself had been destroyed in the years after the crime, but the fingerprint record remained. On October 3rd, 2019, the jury convicts Angel Bumpus of first-degree felony murder, meaning felony is being committed and a death occurs, and aggravated robbery.
01:16:17
Speaker
Now, Mallory Vaughn is acquitted, but Angel Bumpus is sentenced to life in prison. And they were tried together with one jury. Correct. And they did not know one another.
01:16:29
Speaker
Correct. They seemingly have no connection to each other. Right. And that was one of the really bizarre things because um can you imagine being on trial with a stranger? That would be ah very difficult way to try and defend yourself.
01:16:53
Speaker
The narrative of the situation was that you and this, you when you were 13 years old and you wait you weighed 80 pounds and you were five foot tall, and this stranger that you do not know killed a man by essentially smothering him to death with duct tape. That's essentially what happened.
01:17:14
Speaker
um Taping someone up with duct tape is one of the absolute worst ways to die, in my opinion. It's a very slow and painful death, I would imagine. Well, right, because you just slowly are smothered. You're suffocating, yeah. Yeah.
01:17:30
Speaker
And so it it's it's awful, but it also cannot be accomplished with ah by a – I don't think it can be accomplished by 5-foot-tall, 80-pound, 13-year-old when you're talking about a grown man.
01:17:48
Speaker
that was killed. Right. and I could be persuaded otherwise, but it is a long persuasion. That's going to take me that direction. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that a 13 year old couldn't kill.
01:18:02
Speaker
I'm just saying that particular method, i just don't see it happening. I see, um, because he wasn't, there were no other
Controversy Over Fingerprint Evidence
01:18:12
Speaker
injuries. Like he was literally bound and,
01:18:16
Speaker
ah the, he had, if I recall, he had the duct tape, like all the way around his face. Right. Right. And why would he just let that happen? in Because essentially that's what, if a 13 year old girl's doing it, that's what would be happening. He would be just letting her do that.
01:18:36
Speaker
And so that's why I think it was the optics of the fact that they're like, Oh yeah, but there was this man there too. Right. You see, but so the duct tape, um her fingerprints were on the sticky side of the duct tape.
01:18:54
Speaker
And um that posed this like gigantic problem. And i and kind i was kind of torn on it because I was thinking to myself, is this just a mistake, right?
01:19:10
Speaker
What do you mean? Well, like, is it really not a match that they're saying is a match? Like, is there something else to it? Right. Because to some extent, i mean, A-Fist, I mean, it provides leads.
01:19:24
Speaker
Right. I think maybe a mix up would be more likely than like that. But I guess I don't I don't. There was a match made. Like, so APHIS took her arrested. So she she was arrested for failing to appear for a ah traffic violation.
01:19:43
Speaker
And her fingerprints went in the system and there was a match made. So APHIS plucked her from obscurity, right? Right. And said, hey, this matches this. And then analysts looked at it and said, yeah, and that was good enough, right? Right. Now, my question is, like, how many other people came back as a match or whatever, right? There's a lot, like, I'm not convinced that fingerprint evidence is the best evidence, right?
01:20:13
Speaker
Right. um But... There are some details about this case, like, for example, Angel Bumpus's grandfather did odd jobs at the victim's home.
01:20:27
Speaker
Right. Okay. So... That's a connection that APHIS is not going to know, right? Right. So it's matching, like, a possible scenario logically, even though the fact that she was 13 at the time, it didn't seem like she had time to get there whatever.
01:20:47
Speaker
Like, so... it's not like it's out of left field completely. you see what I'm saying? Like it wasn't somebody in California who had never been anywhere near where this man was found murdered. Right. Right.
01:21:02
Speaker
And so that makes me like, go wait, what's happening? Well, um the sticky side of the duct tape. Now, it hurt she was not, I don't know about the DNA situation. I'm not really even sure that they checked.
01:21:18
Speaker
DNA, but there were nine other unidentified fingerprints. Right. And there were only two partial prints of hers on the duct tape. There was not a single fingerprint anywhere else in the house of her.
01:21:37
Speaker
Right. And so I think it was like one piece that went across his mouth. I think that's where the two pieces, i think the two prints were on that one piece, or maybe there was two pieces and there was one print on each.
01:21:53
Speaker
And, know, I was thinking about that and i was sort of, because I'm like, how did you get ah fingerprint on duct tape if you're not there?
01:22:06
Speaker
oh well, I can I mean, the partial print thing, I can explain if you want to, I've seen this recently in a case, if you want to know. Well, i'm I'm just saying, like, it just, that's that's, it seems like it could be incriminating, but, like, in this case, I'm looking for how it's not incriminating, right? So go ahead. So I have recently had a case where a large roll of duct tape was used in a home invasion-style robbery.
01:22:38
Speaker
And the fingerprints that were in dispute were from one of the people who was robbed.
01:22:52
Speaker
And she said she'd never used the duct tape. She'd never had anything to do with the duct tape. um I believe her. The way that her fingerprints end up on the duct tape is the other party said she did. She just doesn't realize she reached up.
01:23:11
Speaker
and moved it out of the way of something else you wanted on the shelf. And when I looked at the duct tape and where they were talking about the partial prints were, this also a smaller person, et cetera, if she had reached up and grabbed it on each side and pressed down just enough to move it from like one space to another space, a couple inches away,
01:23:35
Speaker
She would have left about half of her fingerprint on the mashed down portion of the duct tape that would have happened.
01:23:44
Speaker
And the person who came into the home later didn't have anything on them. They grabbed that duct tape because it was sitting in that other spot where this person had moved it.
01:23:57
Speaker
So the duct tape is actually kind of deep. um like if you've ever looked at a roll of it and this woman's fingerprints would have been on the next round if they had kept tearing tape off actually takes quite a bit of duct tape to go around the body. um Yeah, it does. So it like it's left.
01:24:15
Speaker
So the duct tape in in the case I'm talking about was left attached to the person. Like, so they all was right they had rolled it around them and tucked the ah whole roll without tearing it behind them.
01:24:28
Speaker
So her fingerprints are on it. i mean, she's ruled out early on and in our case because of that reason. But the man explained to me that it was his duct tape and the only time he could think that she would have touched the duct tape would have been moving it the way that he described to me.
01:24:44
Speaker
And that's exactly where her fingerprints were and they were partial prints as well. Right. And so that makes perfect sense to me. I guess my problem was that it was on the sticky Right. It still was like it was on the sticky side in this case.
01:24:59
Speaker
Because it touched the like, i don't know how to explain it, but it's like her fingers like kind of touched in. ah ah Like multiple. So if they had had the roll of duct tape, it would have been on multiple layers. Correct.
01:25:12
Speaker
And it would have been on It was kind of on the silver upside. But when the roll came back together, then is on the sticky side.
01:25:24
Speaker
Well, I came to the conclusion that that to me, what you just described, I feel like that's reasonable. I mean, it does seem a little bit odd, but I get it. And then I also, i came to the conclusion that like, when you go to rip off a piece of duct tape, in theory, you could leave two fingerprints behind, like on the piece that you're not ripping off.
01:25:51
Speaker
Maybe. Maybe. Because you hold it, right? Yeah. to rip it? Yeah. Okay. And then if you're a little kid ripping it off and then you have to like re-grip. I mean, to me. I think a little kid leaves 10 prints.
01:26:04
Speaker
No kidding, right? I mean, that's what I, but so anyway, it wasn't as convincing. So my thought was, and I, and obviously the defense tried to present this.
01:26:14
Speaker
They were like, oh, well, the grandfather had the duct tape at home. He did some sort of project for the victim that had nothing to do with this.
01:26:25
Speaker
And he left the duct tape over there. Right? Yes. At some point in time, then the person who did this crime, they used the duct tape.
01:26:37
Speaker
And that's how Angel's fingerprints got on And... They, it was weird because like nobody was buying that, right? that A jury convicted her, right? Correct.
01:26:52
Speaker
And it was very sad. She had two little kids and she was actually, i think they deliberated for, want to say a couple hours. It wasn't very long. ah He was completely exonerated of it. She was found guilty of both charges.
01:27:06
Speaker
She wanted to leave the courtroom with the bailiff immediately to go to jail because she said, I'm never going to see my kids again. i don't want to be standing here anymore. i have nothing to do with this. Right. yeah So she's like, just take me to jail because whatever, there's nothing I can do
Angel Bumpus's Wrongful Conviction
01:27:25
Speaker
about this.
01:27:25
Speaker
Something I saw, uh, there was a jail phone call made that her defense attorneys had that I don't think they used it in her first trial. or in her trial.
01:27:37
Speaker
um But it was two of her brothers on the phone. One was incarcerated, one wasn't. And the one of the brothers was explaining to the other brother that their little sister had been hooked up, which meant arrested, for this murder.
01:28:00
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And that they had fingerprints that had popped up. And he told him to think real hard because Angel was only 13 in 2009. Think real hard about it.
01:28:15
Speaker
Right. yeah And to me, that kind of indicated some guilt. Right.
01:28:22
Speaker
ah better possibility than her Well, right, but their fingerprints weren't there. right Right. But I was like, wow. And so they're going to let their sister take the fall.
01:28:32
Speaker
i agree with what you're saying, but I also think this is shitty police work that nobody looked at this and went that 13 year old girl couldn't do this. We need to keep looking. Okay, and see, that's exactly what I was thinking. um For one, the guy that turned over the other guy, there was like no evidence against him whatsoever.
01:28:54
Speaker
and I wasn't even sure why he was being put on trial, except that nicholas cheese it fit the scenario where this 13-year-old couldn't have done it by herself, right? Yeah.
01:29:06
Speaker
Okay, so she gets sentenced to 60 years in prison. Life, basically. Yeah. And she she is in prison for three years until her new attorney is able to get a new trial. Yeah.
01:29:20
Speaker
So are you ready to move on to that part? Sure. Okay. So in August of 2022, Judge Tom Greenholtz, who, by the way, was the judge in the trial, he grants a defense motion for a new trial, and he ends up vacating Angel Bumpus' convictions.
01:29:37
Speaker
Now – This is a weird situation, but it's Tennessee, not Texas. So I'm just going to point out, they seem to have a grasp on the criminal justice system a little further north of Texas.
01:29:49
Speaker
The judge rules, there's several errors that have occurred during the trial. And collectively, he decides it's more than enough to put the problems with the case and the prosecution and the way that it was adjudicated back in front of ah ah of a jury.
01:30:06
Speaker
so Collectively, he's decided she's getting a new trial. And those errors include that originally the introduction of an eighth grade yearbook photo of Angel Bumpus was disallowed as being introduced into evidence.
01:30:23
Speaker
Now, the reason on the record is that the defense had not disclosed its intention to use this photo prior to trial. But Judge Greenholt says the exclusion of the photo from evidence as a sanction went beyond what was necessary to cure any prejudice.
01:30:38
Speaker
This innocent looking eighth grade photo of Angel. If I'm reading everything correctly, the photo itself is like a year prior to the crime. So she's even smaller looking in the photo.
01:30:52
Speaker
And he thinks that was justification. But then he realizes it's not. I just want to point out, like, so this is, isn't this the judge that made that ruling? It like it is. That's why I... Overturning himself, basically? Yeah, that's...
01:31:05
Speaker
And who what kind of, and okay, I'm not trying to be like facetious here, but what kind of prosecutor is objecting to presenting what the accused look like shortly before the crime? but You know, I've been, ah and this this could go way off into a tangent. I'll be really simple with it.
01:31:28
Speaker
I've been rereading Stephen Avery trial. Mm-hmm. And some of the things that were done in that case, regardless of where you fall in terms of he did it, he didn't do it. Cause that was a big deal after making him a murderer.
01:31:43
Speaker
I was just rereading it for giggles. And I found, I actually found somebody recently that's doing that as a podcast. So I've been also listening to their take on it, um, where they're just reading the trial transcripts. And it's fascinating to me when stuff like that happens, but some of the absurd nonsense that I see every day is fully captured in the Stephen Avery trial.
01:32:02
Speaker
And It is definitely fully captured here. Your comment was, what kind of prosecutor does that? And the answer that I have for you is... All of them. Any of them that can get away with it.
01:32:14
Speaker
i I feel like in the interest of justice... Okay, justice, not a conviction, right? When you're actually trying to get justice for the victim and the victim's family, you it makes absolutely no sense...
01:32:31
Speaker
to object to the defense putting in a picture of the accused at around the time of the murder based on the fact that, you know, she wasn't charged for, ah what, eight, 10, I don't know, a long time later, right? More than nine years, yeah.
01:32:51
Speaker
Okay. And so to me, I feel like that's a dumb objection. of course, in this case, the prosecutor objected because the defense didn't properly notify them. the um the judge sustained the objection, didn't allow the picture in. And then on appeal, he, or I don't know exactly, I think it was just a motion for a new trial maybe.
01:33:16
Speaker
But when he was ah ruling on that motion, he like overturned himself. He did. He ultimately overturns the way that he ruled in that case, which I actually think that shows great understanding of what's happened. And I think at some point he thought about that picture.
01:33:34
Speaker
That's reason that it's brought up here. I think he thought about that ruling and he was like, that little girl doing this crime makes no sense. And I think that's how we get to where we're headed here. Right. um He rules that the prosecution had elicited information that had been ruled inadmissible.
01:33:51
Speaker
So... That's a little bit of a tricky wicket. But basically, during the course of the trial, in this case, taking place, you know, 10 years after the crime, the defense didn't seek DNA analysis on a hair follicle that is found on the duct tape near one of the fingerprints that's linked to Angel Bumpus.
01:34:13
Speaker
The result of this, he notes this in his ruling, by the way, Judge Greenholt realizes in hindsight that created a suggestion that Angel Bumpus had a burden to prove her innocence, which is the opposite of what our entire judicial system is is built on in terms of trials of defendants.
01:34:33
Speaker
The state is required to prove their guilt, not the defendant proving their innocence. um He criticizes the defense to a degree, almost to the point of being ineffective to a to some degree, for failing to ah make appropriate objections to the prosecution's attempts to link Angel Bumpus to Mallory Vaughn through something that happened years later, where a relative of Angel Bumpus, I think they're referencing one of the brothers being tied back to Mallory Vaughn.
01:35:01
Speaker
don't know. I didn't see that exactly because the whole point is the prosecution was trying to do it and the defense didn't object. So it didn't stand out to me on any of this. I don't think it really stood out in the trial either because he was acquitted, right? Correct.
01:35:17
Speaker
And that's the, so the the last, um, they, they put together our last couple of points on a summary. And the last point that judge Greenhalgh really makes is that Nicholas Cheaton testifies that he doesn't know the name bumpus and he does not know anyone named angel.
01:35:34
Speaker
So the judge noted that if he took all of Nicholas Cheaton's testimony in a light most favorable to the state, that Mr. Cheaton did not connect or implicate Angel Bumpus to the crime in any way.
01:35:49
Speaker
He basically says that him not connecting her means that like we're missing like a lot of evidence.
01:36:00
Speaker
And not only that, but Nicholas Cheaton is really brought in because he's testifying against Mallory Vaughn. Judge Greenholds, he ends up saying that the evidence is insufficient to establish that Angel Bumpus had anything to do with committing a robbery.
01:36:20
Speaker
Make sense? Yes. So if you don't have a robbery and she's not involved in the robbery, there's no way for her to have committed a felony murder. Right.
01:36:31
Speaker
So they boot the charges. On November 2022, Angel Bumpus is released out on bond pending a retrial. About a year later, August 8th, 2023, Judge Amanda Dunn, who now has all of this in front of her, she dismisses the charges. And that dismissal comes after...
01:36:53
Speaker
Weirdly, Angel Bumpus has administered two polygraph examinations. The defense does one, the prosecution does one. Now, keep in mind, that's not normally permissible or admissible in any kind of situation with a court of law.
01:37:10
Speaker
But in this instance, in fact, in both of these instances, both polygraph examiners or polygraphers stated That in summary, Angel Bumpus showed no deception when she denied any involvement or knowledge of the crime.
01:37:29
Speaker
Right. And for a little bit more information about that. sort of in the meantime between her conviction and being um exonerated, ah new ah Tennessee attorney general was elected.
01:37:42
Speaker
She had several like first, I'm not sure if she was the first youngest female or what, but she was a young ah woman who was shaking things up, right? That's what she sort of ran off of.
01:37:58
Speaker
And her So part, you're right about the polygraphs are never admissible. However, her new attorneys, after they had secured the conviction being overturned and she was awaiting a new trial, she was out on a $100,000 bond.
01:38:15
Speaker
thousand dollar bond They, it was her attorney's idea to have her take a polygraph because he very much believed in her.
01:38:27
Speaker
and honestly, I saw her being like talked to about this and everything. And I very much believe that she had nothing to do with this. um Her, and her first attorney asked she, she said, because she showed her pictures of the crime scene. And she said, if I put you under oath,
01:38:45
Speaker
can you say that you've never seen this place? And she's like, I've never seen that place. And then like, so it was a very sort of innocent, like, I have nothing to do with this. Right.
01:38:59
Speaker
And I believed it. And also she really wanted to testify in the first trial and she wasn't allowed. our She was talked out of it. she was sorry I was going to say, it wasn't that she wasn't allowed to. It was just her attorneys felt like they were in a good position and they weren't completely sure how she would hold up on the stand um under cross, right? Yeah. um I think that was a mistake, but they don't even mention it in the judge's order for a new trial, right? Right. So, whatever.
01:39:30
Speaker
However, when... when I was trying to see. um I can't remember what that district attorney's name was. I think that's who you're thinking of. Cody Womp.
01:39:41
Speaker
Cody Womp. Yes. that she's She's the new, I think they call them solicitor's general or attorney's general in that area, but she's the new, um whatever the name of the ah Hamilton County district attorney general or something like that is her name.
01:39:59
Speaker
It's her title. And it's Cody Womp. C-O-T-Y-W-A-M-P.
Angel Bumpus's Exoneration
01:40:04
Speaker
Okay. And so she comes aboard and the ah Angels, defend new defense attorneys, they say, hey, we believe you.
01:40:13
Speaker
how about if you take ah lie detector? Right? Right. And she was, I would say, she was a little bit concerned because she said, you know, well, I'm super anxious. i You know, what if that affects it? I think it was more of a...
01:40:32
Speaker
I don't want to make this worse by, yeah because it's almost like if you pass polygraph, that's really great. But if it comes back inconclusive, you've just dug your hole deeper.
01:40:46
Speaker
Right. And I get that, but see her attorney was really confident. So he goes after she's passed the first polygraph, he goes and talks to, um Cody Womp.
01:40:58
Speaker
who has recently been elected. And ah she is not as enthusiastic about this past polygraph because they used it as a negotiation, ah but as leverage in a possible plea negotiation. Right. Or, like, ultimately, they really wanted her to realize how ridiculous the whole case was and dismiss the charges, right? right And so they presented it to her and she said, fine, but I want her to take another one. And like, I'm going to pick the person or I want it done by law enforcement or whatever the, the, um,
01:41:37
Speaker
whatever the requirements that she had were for it. And they did that. And she passed that test too, just like you said. And then, so I feel like that's highly credible, right? Oh yeah.
01:41:50
Speaker
There was absolute, so from both sides of the fence, they said she took this polygraph and she passed. And she was asked very blunt questions like, did you put the masking tape over the victim's face?
01:42:05
Speaker
Were you at the victim's house at the time he was killed? And she was honest and said, no, I wasn't there. i have nothing to do with this. And so they call in um for a status update on the case.
01:42:16
Speaker
And the, I don't know if it was the judge or the the prosecutor who said, I want all the parties to be present. And so everybody comes in and she gives sort of a long talk when she's presenting her side.
01:42:33
Speaker
And she says that, ah I kind of disagree with it, but she said she felt like Angel was at the scene of the crime when it happened.
01:42:45
Speaker
And that the evidence indicated that. However, she, without question, did not believe that Angel did anything by herself.
01:42:58
Speaker
And therefore... retrying her would not be justice for the victim. And they want to find the people who are actually responsible for it. And she was therefore dismissing the charges without prejudice.
01:43:18
Speaker
Well, I mean, to me, that's the right move. Get rid of the charges. Because this 13-year-old girl did not commit this gruesome homicide against a fully grown man.
01:43:31
Speaker
I honestly was so surprised that, um I was surprised that, you know, she was charged, but the TBI was involved in this. you know, anytime the TBI gets involved in anything, i have to kind of look at it with like an extra big grain of salt.
01:43:49
Speaker
And I, you know, it's just been that way over the years. Look, anytime the TBI is involved in anything, like, I don't want to say they're all bad because that's not true. But like, as an organization, they have had a number of problematic periods over the years.
01:44:03
Speaker
And this period of time where the investigation would have taken place initially, where it's being looked at, is a 10 or 12 year period that it was particularly problematic for the TBI.
01:44:17
Speaker
I would agree with that. um I feel like there the charges being brought, um the fingerprint matching, I feel like there were a lot of places along the way here that could have put a stop to this.
01:44:34
Speaker
I mean, i I cannot believe anyone looked at this homicide and went, yep, it's definitely that 13-year-old girl. Well, right. But they did.
01:44:45
Speaker
and then like it went, you know, they she was charged. She was indicted. She was she had a jury trial and a jury found her guilty, which was just insane to me, because what are they thinking? But that goes back to like.
01:45:04
Speaker
What I think is sort of the natural starting point in any criminal prosecution, I think most of the time when a jury comes in and is seated for a trial, like a murder trial or a felony murder trial, they believe that the state would not have charged this person if they had not done it.
01:45:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that is you know, not a presumption in a sense. That's the only way I could figure out why on earth this, well, she was an adult at the time she was convicted, but that everybody was going along with this narrative.
01:45:48
Speaker
And it was horrifying to me because she was a hundred percent innocent. The, um, The fact that, you know, the judge didn't say, well, I realize you guys have convicted her, but that's stupid. um yeah Her fingerprints were on the duct tape.
01:46:08
Speaker
That is, I mean, it's pretty damning, except like there is absolutely nothing else, right? Right. There was nothing else tying her to any of it. And she was 13 at the time.
01:46:21
Speaker
So, you know, I disagreed that the... um that Cody Womp said, believe she was there in whatever she said.
01:46:32
Speaker
But at the same time, she is listed on the National Database for Exonerations. And in my opinion, she was exonerated. And to also, ah to my knowledge, nobody else has ever been charged with this.
01:46:44
Speaker
Yeah, i the only thing I could think was... Maybe there's some kind of inside baseball we're missing where they think one of her brothers is involved and maybe had used her as a lookout or something and she was holding the duct tape.
01:47:01
Speaker
I did not come across anything that indicates that that is ah based on any kind of facts whatsoever. But that phone call was... was the only thing I could think of where maybe that's why they're holding on to her somehow being involved.
01:47:18
Speaker
um I will just go ahead and say, i don't think she's involved. I think that mistakes have been made. And like, even that phone call to me is more like a brother saying, dude, you took that duct tape from our house and this is what happened.
01:47:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah. There was some some sort of inkling there. But, like, to me, the point, so if you narrow it down and you're not just looking at, like, anything it could possibly mean and you look at it in the context of, you know, Angel Bumpus is on trial for this murder, they're saying, like, well, she didn't do it.
01:47:55
Speaker
And they have some sort of information, whatever it is. Right. or they Or they just have a gut feeling that that's more of their alley than it is hers. Right. Or they could just know who it is and a know it's not her, right? Correct.
01:48:09
Speaker
It's possible. But she was still in this position. She was taken away from
Media Impact and Justice System Critique
01:48:18
Speaker
her children for three years. And she had to serve that time. She was going to jail. She was going to be in jail for the rest of her life, basically.
01:48:26
Speaker
And, you know, fortunately, people there were enough people with enough legal finesse to figure it out. But that's, it's very alarming. And the fact, I feel like if anybody in her family was involved in it, that would have been the time to actually step up and say something. But you can't snitch.
01:48:47
Speaker
you can't but You can't even snitch in this instance. Well, I realize that, you know, that is code or whatever, but like, you're really going to let her take the fall for this?
01:48:59
Speaker
Because I feel like that if her family was at all involved... right if I don't even know if that's for sure. i feel like it's entirely possible her du the duct tape really got there from her grandfather doing a job over there and he just left it.
01:49:16
Speaker
And like none of them had anything to do with it. I don't know. But she ended up being the person charged with it ah along with a complete stranger who was acquitted. Yeah. And so, you know, we end up here asking the questions that we always ask. And like, so I get cold cases and old cases that cold cases, meaning nobody's really investigating them.
01:49:38
Speaker
Old cases, meaning they have a lot of pieces of the puzzle and they've never actually connected the dots and made an arrest. But when I look at these cases that pop in and like, I end up with a big thick file of stuff that like I have to go through and figure out that's 10 years old or 15 years old or 20 years old or whatever.
01:49:56
Speaker
um I always have the question in the back of my mind, like, is this like good police work or is this like somebody trying to make a name for themselves or they got some pressure and they're really trying to close this thing? Because those cases, I think, can be the most disastrous.
01:50:09
Speaker
This case is a little bit extreme with a 13-year-old girl being accused of felony murder like this. We should be questioning all these things. We should be questioning how this all happens.
01:50:20
Speaker
If nothing else from the perspective of we don't want to make mistakes just trying to, like, close a file where we put people in prison that had nothing to do with something. And I personally think she has nothing to do with this.
01:50:33
Speaker
I 100% agree with that. And she can't give them any information she doesn't have. Right. She cannot talk about a crime that she was not present for. Right. And so she's literally in a rock and a hard place because she could speculate, but that's not her job. Correct. That's 100% correct.
01:50:52
Speaker
And she it is really, this is one of the worst injustices that I've ever seen, both for the victim's family and for the wrongfully accused and convicted defendant who was Angel Bumpets. Now, she has been, i think, exant the charges were dismissed.
01:51:10
Speaker
So I feel like she's she was exonerated. i don't know how much weight the prosecutor's statement in court holds. As far as saying, I believe she was there, but I don't believe we have enough evidence to convict her of this crime or whatever she said, right? Yeah. I didn't appreciate that extra little nugget of information. I felt like she put it in there just to not look like she was a pushover or something. I don't know. It just was a weird – it didn't stick with me because I was like, you should have just said this has been – mistakes have been made here. Yeah. And left it at that.
01:51:47
Speaker
but um I do think that ah in the sense that Angel Bumpus was finally no longer in prison, I guess the system worked.
01:52:01
Speaker
Yeah. I don't have a lot more on this case. This is a rabbit hole you can go down. There's other stuff on the people involved here One of the lead investigators that was ultimately... in charge of this case, guy named Carl Fields. He got fired from the Chattanooga Police Department. There's all kinds of stuff about him that you can go and read.
01:52:18
Speaker
He ends up being, at one point, accused of coaching witnesses to lie. He is accused of sexually harassing a couple of women, ah tampering with some evidence. He faces some criminal charges, but some of those were dismissed.
01:52:31
Speaker
um the ah The people surrounding this case and the media surrounding this case is almost as interesting as how absurd this case is itself.
01:52:43
Speaker
The main question for me had always been like, how do we get this 13 year old girl and charge her with felony murder? I don't have an answer for you, except like like there is a rabbit hole to go down that if you really want to watch some media, I think she's on Guilty or Innocent, which is an A&E program. i know that other podcast YouTubers and TikTokers have covered this. So it's it's a fun one to go down in terms It ends correctly.
01:53:13
Speaker
It also provides um sort of one of those like tipping scale types of things that we bring up. Like, you know, when do you know that the DNA is relevant in that? Like, when do you know that the fingerprints are relevant? Right. yeah And and how essentially that was the only thing they had was a fingerprint match. Right.
01:53:36
Speaker
Right, right. that's all That and the like proximity of being you know relatively close, two miles away or whatever, and the connection between Grandma and Franklin Bonner. But there's not a lot to all of that when you consider this is a tiny 13-year-old girl.
01:53:54
Speaker
And she really is tiny, 5 feet, 80, 85 pounds. She's little and not known for any kind of deviousness at the time. I, I encourage anybody to read up on her story.
01:54:07
Speaker
And I would say that one of the most important parts of this case is that it seems to have righted itself. I don't know that we're going to learn a whole lot from it in terms of as a society and like, you know, jurors can really only do what they're presented by prosecutors and it is an adversarial system. It's meant to be adversarial for a reason, but like,
01:54:29
Speaker
Sometimes the ah absurdity of it all just, like, confuses me. um Nicholas Cheaton is a great rabbit hole to go down here. He has been indicted on a lot of different stuff.
01:54:40
Speaker
And I think he'll have a couple of trials coming up if he doesn't plead some of that out or doesn't get dismissed. um In my opinion, him saying it's Mallory Vaughn makes him a real good candidate for maybe having his fingers in it.
01:54:52
Speaker
Well, I would love to know that they thoroughly explored that option and have somehow ruled him out. I kind of doubt it, though. I think I read he was maybe in prison around the time. or so And that's what I was wondering, right, is do they do they have a reason to believe he couldn't have possibly been responsible for it? Because I'm sure, as most good detectives would, you would always want to make sure that youre your informant is not...
01:55:21
Speaker
simply pawning off one of their own crimes onto some unsuspecting former cellmate or whatever, right? Yeah, I tracked him a little bit, but like it was going to be a deeper dive than I cared to do on him. he's definitely been in federal custody here and there.
01:55:38
Speaker
And anytime that happens that somebody is in both state and federal custody at different points in time means they've also been in jails and halfway houses. It's difficult to track their whereabouts and And so i was and I was not able to like come to any kind of conclusion on him.
01:55:53
Speaker
But he's another interesting rabbit hole in terms of the cases that he has found himself in. I just was curious about this 13-year-old girl.
01:56:04
Speaker
And here we are. you know um i know it's this a longer episode, but but I did want get her story out there. Originally, I was going to throw this in to the holiday stuff, but we went with a different theme um and that's a whole, a whole different thing that'll be coming out. So it didn't fit this year. Otherwise, you know, if it had just been a straight up exoneration um and we were doing exonerations that they might've been a part of it.
01:56:31
Speaker
Someone messaged me. ah do you have anything else on angels? No, I don't. Okay. So someone had messaged me some questions and I'm going to address those, but I wanted, if you're going to have anything else, I wanted you to be able to do that.
01:56:45
Speaker
No, I was going to say is that if the the victim's killer was ever brought, like we could, might circle back around. But other than that, this is a full circle situation, right Yeah, I think, so that's a good point. And it brings up something didn't say out loud that I probably should.
01:57:03
Speaker
Just so you guys are aware, one of the other things that happens in these cases that are cold cases and old cases, particularly old cold cases, um when you bring someone, convict them,
01:57:15
Speaker
and you send us into life without parole. really and ah And a prosecutor makes a comment like Cody Wamp did that Meg mentioned earlier. It doesn't really matter if you find the right killer because, unfortunately, Cody Wamp, the real reason that that statement was such an error is she has provided reasonable doubt for every potential future defendant in this case because she believes that Angel Bumpus was involved.
01:57:40
Speaker
And as long as that's hanging out there, unless the person happens to be directly related to Angel Lumpus in some way, which usually, in my experience, it's not.
01:57:51
Speaker
The prosecutor was just wrong all along. The investigator was just wrong all along. It's something completely wacky, which we saw with the yogurt shop murders this year. And um that's the reason that it was actually unadjudicated for so long. it's because the dots weren't connected and and like, you know, it happened to really be random or really be a customer of, of Franklin Bonner's who wanted more weed than he had. And there was that, that roll of duct tape is really just random. It's just laying on the scene.
01:58:15
Speaker
um right But that would make me think that none of them were involved, right? Correct. That's what i'm saying. yeah And so you've provided by going through this prosecution, which is regardless of the conviction, it's been overturned and,
01:58:28
Speaker
it's kind of a weak case. Uh, you've provided reasonable doubt for all future potential defendants in this matter. So ultimately you close the case, whether you want it to or not.
01:58:39
Speaker
That is correct. Yeah. Uh, there was one thing somebody had asked me about why we're not on Sirius XM right now. And I do not know the answer to that question. i apologize, Rain. will try and get an answer to that.
01:58:52
Speaker
Um, i so I looked it up as soon as that message came in, and I do not know why it happened. i had been talking to someone at SiriusXM about doing something different.
01:59:05
Speaker
And i'd like that conversation stopped a while ago. What I can say is it used to be our Stitcher stuff ran through there. And I know Stitcher ceased operations a while ago, and that was all absorbed into Sirius.
01:59:20
Speaker
So it could be they discontinued something in the feed that I just have to go push a button on. I don't think I did anything to undo it, but I apologize. We should still be available most everywhere else that you get your podcast. But for some reason, we are currently not on that particular platform. And I apologize that that has happened, and i'll try and get it rectified definitely before the holiday Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com.
01:59:47
Speaker
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