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He Was Here: Interpretations (Contains Autopsy Info) (Season Five) Limited Series; Open Homicide Case image

He Was Here: Interpretations (Contains Autopsy Info) (Season Five) Limited Series; Open Homicide Case

S5 E31 · True Crime XS
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THIS EPISODE CONTAINS PARTICULARLY GRAPHIC CONTENT.

In today’s episode, we continue the limited series “He Was Here” about an unsolved 2010 murder in Chicago.

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Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS by slip.fm. The song is “No Scars”.

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Sources:

www.namus.gov

www.thecharleyproject.com

www.newspapers.com

Findlaw.com

Various News Sources Mentioned by Name

https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2015/chicago-crime-stats/

https://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com

https://fstoppers.com/education/biggest-dangers-photographers-face-299728#comment-thread

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/4/20/18346909/pair-sentenced-in-death-of-woman-featured-in-chicago-magazine

Recommended
Transcript

Content Warning and Initial Thoughts

00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.

Autopsy Report Contradictions

00:00:59
Speaker
When we started this, you and I thought, okay, maybe this is a fall or something happened to this kid where he either fell or jumped, or there was an accident. But reading the autopsy report, clearly that's not what happened.
00:01:18
Speaker
So with all the other changes to the narrative, the autopsy changes a number of things. Tell me what you thought of the injuries. Cause I know it's hard for you to get through an autopsy report. You have to pay particular attention to it. And like you're not big on kind of the squeamish side of it. What did you think?
00:01:34
Speaker
So there's the initial autopsy report it and then there's a a a private autopsy report that's done so subsequent to that, right?

Notable Autopsy Findings

00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah. And if you recall, it it's very apparent to me a non-medical person who is very squeamish um with regard to anything that has anything to do with the human body.
00:01:59
Speaker
not even It doesn't even have to be a non-living human body. But the very first thing that I questioned was the strap muscle bruising. And that is indicative of a ah strangular of manual stranding strangulation, right? yeah um Anytime you see that in any case, part of the difference is that is notable to me is when you've got just that bruising as opposed to ah you know a laceration indicating something there or a garat or whatever on the outside, when you've got just that strap muscle bruising, we're talking about manual strangulation. Correct. Okay, and that comes into play in my mind because you cannot manually strangle yourself.
00:02:58
Speaker
Correct.

Evidence of Assault

00:02:59
Speaker
Okay. And so, um, the autopsy shows that, um, I did not see that mentioned in any of the conclusive statements made in any of the reports. I don't know about you. I'm sure you'd tell me if I missed it, but and we have a situation where this young man was hit, uh, in sort of succession.
00:03:25
Speaker
causing extreme wounds to his skull, right? Correct, yeah. Okay, and so at that point he's been hit repeatedly and that's going to render him unconscious or semi-conscious, like this is gonna this is taking him down. Yes.
00:03:48
Speaker
while it has um disrupted his conscious state, it has not killed him. And so he's still breathing. And if you think about it, somebody that is attacking someone, and you know we don't know what the circumstances are, but it makes sense that somebody I don't know if the instrument broke or like what happened, why they stopped hitting him in the head, but then they went to cut off his airway with their hand, right?

Interpreting Neck Lacerations

00:04:23
Speaker
Additionally, his fairnecks was lacerated. and I was telling you that if a little child is running around with a lollipop in their mouth and they fall and they push the lollipop,
00:04:38
Speaker
like into their mouth all the way, it hits the pharynx. So that gives you an idea of where that is, right? Yes. And there is, on the left side of Jay's neck, there's a one inch laceration that has a contusion surrounding that one inch laceration that's three by two. Yeah, it's a big bruise, yeah. That's a big bruise.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I couldn't figure out what that was. However, and i'm not a um I'm not a medical professional. However, I feel like that is the quickest way to figure out how the pharynx got lacerated. And I feel like that may be a stab wound. And if you think about it, somebody who has a knife in their hand,
00:05:35
Speaker
And they puncture and make a laceration hard enough to, because they're he's trying to kill this guy that is unconscious. The hand on the handle of the knife is what's making the two by three bruise.

Consistent Homicide Indicators

00:05:52
Speaker
Right. Okay. And so, it you know, so it's a very hard stab.
00:05:59
Speaker
This is a big leap from what has been mentioned in the rest of the reporting. I'm not sure why nobody else saw it. I don't feel now i could be wrong about the laceration, but if I am, I am interested to know what ah an alternative explanation for the fair next being lacerated is.
00:06:25
Speaker
because that's a very hard thing to lacerate independently of like a huge indication elsewhere, right? Yeah.
00:06:38
Speaker
Okay, and so, like I said, we have a situation where we have a young man who, there's signs of manual strangulation. He's got a lacerated Therinox. He's got a one inch laceration that has a two by three inch bruise on the left side of his neck.
00:06:59
Speaker
and To me, this is from the initial autopsy report, which was done just within hours of of him being found, right? Okay, and to me, the manual strangulation, the putting together those wounds to make it seem like it indicates he was stabbed in the neck, those are things that point away from an undetermined death to me.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, the pathologist agrees with you. Like once the second pathologist comes into the picture, there's some changing that's done by the original pathologist. I would say not only was it done within hours of the death, the autopsy's prepared pretty quick.
00:07:45
Speaker
And I say that notwithstanding the fact that toxicology had to come back. But

Intentional Actions Indicated

00:07:51
Speaker
here's a little paragraph from the second autopsy report that supports what you just said, part it partly, um but also points out that like this person is trying really hard to be sort of neutral about this whole thing. It just says that several other significant injuries were present having clearly occurred prior to death. Specifically, there were injuries caused by a blunt object on both the left and right sides of the head.
00:08:15
Speaker
with fractures of the skull underneath. In both of those areas, there are multiple irregular areas where the skin has been torn, and they have an underlying fracture. In both of those areas, there was at least one likely multiple blows by a blunt object, because it takes a minute to you know leave the marks you're describing, and sometimes it's not on the first blow. There are injuries to the brain, which had swollen. That's a huge deal. Both sides of the head show like direct impact injury with application of blunt force, there's a blunt injury to the left side of the neck, which is what you're talking about, and to the point that there's tearing of the skin, there are a large ah area of bleeding into the soft tissue, and a fracture of the left side of the hyoid bone. Now, a hyoid bone in a 20-something year old person, is a it's very hard to break it.
00:09:10
Speaker
That also coincides with what I was saying about about the laceration being on the left side, the one inch with the two by three bruise. So that coincides with breaking the hyoid bone and the pharynx being lacerated. Correct. it It goes on to basically say the pattern and the severity of these injuries is typical when someone is beat with a hard object. And then you know they sort of go through the the four things that can happen in a situation like this and that is It could be natural could be accident could be suicide and they discount each one point being this isn't a natural death and
00:09:52
Speaker
The pathologist didn't totally disagree with the medical examiner because they did say undetermined is an appropriate classification if the certifying doctor feels that there is a possibility of the deaf being due to a suicide or accident. And and then they change direction and they say, based on the autopsy findings and limited knowledge of the facts of the case, accident seems unlikely because these injuries don't collectively indicate a jump or a fall from a bridge.
00:10:19
Speaker
Similarly, they say that suicide seems unlikely for the same reasons. And it's these head injuries and these neck injuries that they're basing all of this on.

Manual Strangulation Focus

00:10:30
Speaker
Right, and I took it a step further further, not being a medical expert, just having to have had to have looked at a lot of autopsies that I didn't want to be looking at to begin with, because I have am so squeamish about it. I look at it a certain way. And even if the one inch laceration is a neck wound, is a stab wound, like it is possible if somebody stabbed themselves, right? Right. I find it unlikely he hit himself in the head, but I maintain
00:11:00
Speaker
without question, you cannot manually strangle yourself in a way that shows up in an autopsy. Additionally, it can't be an an accidental strangulation like with a rope or something because that is different. right And so because I see these these signs of a manual strangulation,
00:11:27
Speaker
To me, there is no other way that can happen but by someone's hand. right And someone's hand being on someone's neck like that is going to point to homicide.
00:11:41
Speaker
even if they didn't mean to do it, right? Like saying accidental, this is not an act, like, you know, because a homicide is death by someone else, right? And notice that it's homicide, it doesn't necessarily say murder, right? yeah And so and that is what struck me the most was that to me, the findings actually go beyond undetermined,
00:12:11
Speaker
and logically conclude that with the signs of manual strangulation that are there, absent other ways it could have gotten there, the only thing that could have happened was somebody used their hand to try and cut off his airway. And that lends towards homicide. Yeah. And so the way that we picture this going down, we don't know like where, when, why this is happening, but we picture it being the first blow essentially rules out us getting any real defensive wounds because it either knocks them unconscious or it stuns them to the point that like the rest of the blows can happen.

Speculating on Assailant’s Strategy

00:12:51
Speaker
You know, whether that's like an exact scenario, we don't know. But the idea is that the the rest of the blows are kind of to put them out. And we don't know where the strangling happens in there. We just know that more than likely that strangling was
00:13:10
Speaker
them trying to kill Jay or. They're trying to cut his airway off. Yeah. and And that part, like you said, you can't manually strangle yourself. I don't know. like and i I've run, you know, before people jump on this, I've run a lot of scenarios here. You and I have talked about snow plows, car accidents, buses, being on the L. We have talked about so many different scenarios where we try to make all of these things happen.
00:13:40
Speaker
And we just can't do it. Like I went so far as to say, if he's in a precarious situation and he's got a camera strap around his neck and he's trying to get a shot of something and he gets hit by something that knocks him over the side and the camera strap causes an injury, none of them will account for all of these things happening to this kid.

Pulmonary Edema and Implications

00:14:03
Speaker
The only thing that accounts for it in any meaningful way is that he has an encounter with someone who assaults him. They continue that assault until they either dump him in the river or they kill him and then dispose of the body in the river. There is pulmonary edema, let's say, in the autopsy. And for people who don't know, that's when you get fluid in your lungs. And and it typically is found in in drowning victims, so to speak. But it's not is not
00:14:37
Speaker
the only way that it happens. But there's this whole list of external evidence of injuries on the initial undetermined autopsy report, it gets to 11. And the bottom line is the 11th one doesn't bother me because it's post-mortem. These are the wounds that they think happened by him being in the water and potentially hit by a barge or a boat and and the propeller or the screw making these post-mortem wounds on his thighs.
00:15:05
Speaker
But the other 10 injuries, they it's very difficult to put all those things together and discount them. But when you add in the strap injuries, which is what we've sort of covered here, the these injuries to his neck, um as you said, you really only get those and the hyoid fracturing in a manual strangulation, meaning hands on a neck, around the neck, for the sole purpose of trying to cut off someone's air supply until they die. Typically you would find under someone's fingernails DNA from trying to defend against that, but not when you've got these kinds of head wounds. And and that's what makes us put the head wounds first. Right, because he has no defensive wounds at all.
00:16:00
Speaker
Right. and And the body is in the water. So we lose a lot of things, but we don't lose these injuries. We don't lose the neck injuries and we don't lose these head injuries. And they're they're not like these injuries are not small. One of them on the back of the right side of his head had a full five inch area

Ruling Out Accident or Suicide

00:16:19
Speaker
covered. Like they, they end up saying like the largest one is a laceration that's an inch and ah half or just under, and the smallest one's about half an inch, but it but it's like multiple confusions and lacerations in this area. He's got ah lacerations on the right side of his forehead, and then he's got multiple lacerations on the left side of his head along with the confusions that go with him.
00:16:48
Speaker
one of which is huge, which is probably the the big first blow. It's just very difficult for me to read all of this. And I have, I've read tons of autopsies over the years. Nothing about this like strikes me as a suicide. It would be a pretty big stretch for me to look at this and go, maybe it's an accident because of there's so many different things happening on so many different parts of the body. And typically and a fatal accident, you might see a bunch of little things happening,
00:17:19
Speaker
And I guess you could look at this and go, all right, these are little things, but they're really not. I still feel like you're not going to get the manual strangulation absent an additional laceration on the neck where something was pressing, like a camera strap or whatever. um You're going to see that, and that wasn't there, right? Right. But i mean even the initial autopsy, they note that the anterior strap muscles, so both sides,
00:17:52
Speaker
So when I think of a camera strap or something, I think of it getting one side and causing a problem. um I don't think there's any way to get that twisted so that it does both sides. Right, but there's no damage to his skin. No damage to his skin. That's what I'm getting at is because if you think about like how you, okay, like imagine someone cutting somebody's airway off, okay? And you see how they push, they put their hand on their neck and they kind of push up, right?
00:18:21
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That's what's bruising. Right. Okay. Well, anything, any, anything besides the hand doing that is going to leave evidence of itself behind on the skin. Right. Like an indention or something. Your, your hand can do it just bruising. There's the muscles inside. Correct. You know what I'm saying? Okay. And so to me, that's a definitive point.
00:18:51
Speaker
The only thing that might be relevant that you know if if it was a completely separate incident where he somebody tried to cut off his airway at a different point in time and he still had bruises left from that, they were not successful in cutting off his airway. Correct.
00:19:09
Speaker
Okay, and so that's important to note because that isn't, ah they they were attempting to do it. They weren't strong enough to actually, you know, because it's really hard to manually strangle somebody, right? yeah And I don't know what the circumstances were, but they stopped doing that for whatever reason. Either because they couldn't complete it or because it wasn't having the effects they wanted or they thought they were done.
00:19:37
Speaker
Sure. And then, or they got the bright idea to just put them in the water, right? Yeah. Yeah. But to me, that almost definitively rules out it not involving another person. It does. It it really does. but um And i I tried to think the accident scenario is far enough to like, did he get hit by a snowplow and it was on a bridge and when the plummet of second pass, it like pushed him over. None of them account for the strap muscle injuries.
00:20:07
Speaker
No matter what I did, and and these injuries are not small, okay, they extend from the hyoid bone to the arch of the aorta is how it's described by the initial medical examiner's report in this case.
00:20:21
Speaker
Right, not to mention that any time someone's hit by a car or a snowplow or whatever, um you know there's a if you look at a person standing in front of a vehicle, there's going to be a range of area that's going to be hit and have sustained injuries, right? Yep. These injuries are concentrated.

Contradicting Accident Theory

00:20:42
Speaker
on his head. He doesn't have a mark on the rest of his body. Well, he has injuries to his legs that are post-mortem, but you're right. theyre Other than that. Okay. Yes. Other than that, there's no indication that he had any pre-mortem injuries like that a, you know, a car hitting him would cause. Right. He doesn't have any of that. So to get hit by a car, you actually have to get hit by the car and there's always going to be evidence of that. Yeah. Yeah. There's no injury to The lower extremities, there's no injuries to the neck, the chest, the pelvis. the They didn't indicate there were any fractures to legs, arms, anything. So that's where we end up as, and just in terms of the autopsy reports, like that's where we ended up coming to this conclusion that we don't feel like any of this at all lends for suicide.
00:21:40
Speaker
It's a huge stretch to get it towards accidental. Just to be clear, I don't feel like he, I don't even feel like when his body was dumped that it was dumped from a height. If that helps with that whole situation there. ah There's no indication in the autopsy that there was more to it than the severe beating that another person did to him. Cause you know, there's speculation that like, oh, he fell and that's what caused all those head wounds.
00:22:10
Speaker
Right, but instead it's more like somebody walked to the water's edge and dropped them in. I'm saying that yeah, I'm saying I don't even feel like somebody like dropped him off a height to get him into the water. So that's where I stand on that. So that to me would make it impossible for it to have been accidental. Because you're going to have to have that distance of falling for it to be an accident, right? Yes. And to me, that's not what happened. ah There would be other things present if he had fallen from a height. I'll tell you one thing that was in here that I was not familiar with before. Have you ever heard of the word hypermobile? Yes.
00:22:56
Speaker
I did not, they they stayed in here, the neck is not hypermobile. And I had to go hunting quite a bit to like look that up.

Debating Neck Injuries

00:23:08
Speaker
But they also in the same sentence say the neck is not hypermobile and shows an injury to be described. And and that is what put me on to the strap muscles and that laceration that you pointed out. And I think that that being as big as it was, do you think they, do you think that was made, did you get ah any information from here that let you know if that was made paramortem or post-mortem? Which thing? The laceration to the neck. The laceration to the neck is made before he was killed because it has a three by two inch contusion around it. That's a conclusion I came to too.
00:23:54
Speaker
And that is indicative of a one-inch blade being shoved into his neck. And the it's being shoved so hard that when the bald fist around the handle of the knife hits the side of the neck, it is making a three by two bruise. Yeah. Measure your fist. Yep. Okay. Holding the knife the way, because I...
00:24:23
Speaker
presume that after this awful beating, after trying to cut off his airway, and then this was sort of a last ditch type of effort. Now, keep in mind, there is no indication on the autopsy report that that's what this is. Correct. ah Okay, there's a lacerated pharynx,
00:24:51
Speaker
And there's notation of a one inch laceration on the left side of his neck that has a three by two contusion around it. And I have come to my own conclusion about this. Okay, now it's a little bit out of my ability to really kind of deal with as far as like, you know, being squeamish about stuff. um I didn't see where a fair next could be lacerated externally.
00:25:22
Speaker
ah You make a good point there. Well, that's what led to all this. And, you know, I so okay, what is making the lacerations because, you know, a laceration in an autopsy report indicates a soft force injury that has ah disrupted the skin. Okay. right Yeah. All right. And so it's not an abrasion, right? It's not a scrape. It's a situation where you've got an opening.
00:25:50
Speaker
And if you think about it, you know if you most of us, I don't think even have any idea like what it would be like to hit somebody with a baseball bat and have them have a gaping wound from that, right? Right. OK. And so you know I had to really think this through. um The one-inch laceration, it's kind of hard to come up with what that is. It is.
00:26:17
Speaker
And so coupled with the lacerated pharynx inside, like the example I gave, you know, are I guess another good one would be if you're brushing your teeth and you fell and your toothbrush was in your mouth and you fell face first, the direction your toothbrush goes is where that's how a pharynx gets lacerated, right? Correct. Okay.
00:26:40
Speaker
and The only reason I say it that way is because that's what you're looking at as far as an external laceration. There was no indication any of that happened. Right. so I went looking for not just lacerations because that's actually difficult to find. like A pharynx or pharyngeal laceration is actually complex to separate out and find like another reason for it. But I did find perforations, like different types of perforations, not a lot. They're actually, them happening in a situation that doesn't involve two people hurting each other is really rare.
00:27:23
Speaker
Like, it can happen from blunt external neck trauma, but it's exactly like you've described so far. The the most commonly the most common type of pharyngeal lacerations actually occur during... Car accidents. Car accidents, and secondarily, it is during medical procedures.
00:27:45
Speaker
with ah with say different tube Yeah, breathing tubes and other instrumentations. Those are the most common types of like pharyngeal andliferations Yeah, injuries. But they they can occur during falls and blows to the neck. They're just very, very rare. And it usually usually where you read about it is children. Now, I did narrow it down to what you're describing, toothbrushes, lollipops, things like that during a fall, frequently calls that in children, sometimes adults.
00:28:21
Speaker
But the next ah adults fall last with lollipops in their mouth. Right. Um, but trauma to the larynx, uh, coming from a blow to the neck is actually third on the list. And it's rare. Larynx laceration or a fair neck laceration. A, uh, both actually. Faryngeal and there It's

Analyzing Injury Scenarios

00:28:50
Speaker
third on both. It's a blow to the neck. But you have to understand, like when I say that, I think I read 11 total cases had been recorded by 2010 of pharyngeal perforation. And so you're not talking dozens of things that you can read about. You're literally reading about
00:29:15
Speaker
four car accidents, three medical procedures. So you're already at seven out of the 11 and the others are individual like instances. Does that make sense? I think one was a hockey injury. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I've looked at all that information you're talking about. I was led to understanding based on the autopsy report, he had a lacerated fair next. That seems really weird to me.
00:29:42
Speaker
is I start putting together the other things that are called out in the autopsy to try and figure out how that happened, right? yeah um It did not seem plausible that the strap muscle bruising would have led to the lacerated pharynx just based on everything I put together. But he does have this laceration that's an inch on his left the left side of his neck that has a big contusion around it. So that happened ah because it has a contusion around it. That means it happened before he died because in order for a contusion to appear on the body, the blood has to be pumping. The heart has to be working, right?
00:30:24
Speaker
right And that's how they can tell that the um the places on his legs are postmortem, meaning after he died, because there is, it's just straight up gouges, right? There's no sign of any sort of bruising or anything else that you would find in the event his heart had been pumping at the time that those injuries were made. And so all of this stuff that happens to his,
00:30:53
Speaker
all of his injuries, except for the two on his legs, are made before he dies, in my opinion. There has been speculation about him falling. I don't think he fell from anywhere. I feel like he was he was put in the water. And yeah and while that may i mean to me, that takes a lot of this equation out of it, right? I don't know why it wasn't as he was associated with a fall immediately.
00:31:23
Speaker
Um, except that that explains like, cause you think, well, if you fell head first, that could explain some of the injuries, except the way his injuries were, this is somebody with a, a blunt force object and they're hitting like multiple places on his head that would not be hit in a singular fall. Right. Right. Like it wouldn't be possible. Yeah. So.
00:31:50
Speaker
The way that these injuries line up, like I can account for chunks of them, but all of them happening together, like the only thing that even came close, I found one instance that was recorded and sort of talked about where someone had everything but the strap muscle injuries in a car accident as the driver of a car who had collided with something that that object then hit the steering wheel and the steering wheel and the object hit the person.
00:32:19
Speaker
Right, but we don't have any evidence that this there he was in a car that, like all that stuff would come into play, right? And, you know, if he was in a car accident and he sustained the injuries we're talking about, he would have at least had a seat belt strap across his chest.
00:32:36
Speaker
Right. He would have had the marks better. Like he doesn't have the rest of the injuries, if that makes sense. Like he has some injuries that don't line up with it, but he doesn't have the rest of the injuries that you typically associate with that person. Like even if there is no seatbelt involved, there are other injuries that happen to you when you're in that type of car accident that are visible on your naked body at autopsy.
00:32:58
Speaker
Right, exactly. And and it would have been, you know, there's other things that would come into play, like, I don't know, a wrecked vehicle that had blood. Yep. And none of that has happened, right? Like, none of that comes into play here with the situation as it unfolded. Correct. And that's how we, you know, ultimately, like, when people are gonna ask, like, how do you end up on like, knowing for sure, it's more likely than not a homicide. This is the path that we take to get there. Right, and I i am not completely against learning how you could have bruising on your the straps of your neck, the anterior strap muscles, um indicating that it was caused by something different.
00:33:48
Speaker
along with some of the other injuries he suffered. i'm I'm not saying that there's absolutely no way that could happen. It's just in the painstaking research I've done, which it is very painstaking. This is the most logical conclusion because it does take, and you know, it actually makes sense because you think about putting your thumb and your finger on somebody's neck to try and cut off their airway. I mean, I don't think about that very often, but you know,
00:34:16
Speaker
That's where that bruising's coming from, the pressure that's being put there. yeah Yeah, I wish there was a Colombo moment in all of this where somebody could say, such and such was left-handed and that means he did this. It just doesn't, we don't really land there because we're missing some of this story and some of the information.

Concluding with Homicide Hypothesis

00:34:33
Speaker
But this is how we get from the first autopsy report through the second pathology report to looking at it all and concluding that until homicide is ruled out or some very interesting type of accident has shown
00:34:50
Speaker
that basically someone killed Jay Paul Hill and they haven't been brought to justice. Right. And that's what I don't understand. And, you know, maybe there's a reason, um maybe I have completely misunderstood how um anatomy works and how, you know, pathology works. I don't think that's the case. um I feel like that it's pretty spot on actually.

Expressing Frustration and Seeking Expert Input

00:35:21
Speaker
yeah And it's disappointing it's a little disappointing, honestly, for it to go through like what it went through. um And I'm not saying that this is the case, but I can imagine a lack of wanting to you know deal with this case could have occurred. That's how I can see it being a situation where it's undetermined. This is just one of those very clear cut cases to me. And I hope somebody can actually like look at it and explain to me why it wasn't. That would make me feel better. Because if I can see it, certainly everybody else on earth can see it.
00:36:14
Speaker
That's what you would think. And yet, here we are. Well, that's what I'm i'm saying, but I would love for a doctor to be like... This is why you don't understand that this is an undetermined death. And to give me the explanation that actually like explains how J. Paul Hill had these bruises on his anterior scrap muscles, and it is not indicative of manual strangulation. That's all they have to tell me, really, because the rest of them could be attributed to something besides somebody else's hand, right?
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like there's different there's different instruments that, like I've looked through a couple of different things, like knives using the hilt of a knife to do some of these injuries and then, you know, the tip of the knife for other injuries. And then I looked at like certain things that you find in your car. Like I looked at a lug nut wrench. I looked at a number of different things that you could hit someone with. And I i didn't land on any particular thing being more likely than another, but I realized that like,
00:37:20
Speaker
If I hear a story, like if you got a suspect sitting there telling me a story, I'll know what's not BS because they'll tell me about something that makes sense for these injuries. One thing about this particular case is there was a fury of blows.
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, the head and so I don't know that that's going to be I feel like the first hit was probably planned and then the rest I Don't know. This is how I imagine this situation. It's me trying to hit something like a mouse.
00:37:55
Speaker
with a baseball bat, right? And I miss it and I keep heading back for it, you know, I'm trying to get it. And so that's immediately where my mind goes, right? I understand this as a human being, right? But on the others, but that's how I imagine these blares happening. yeah Sort of the pattern of the back and forth between them, right? They were vicious and they were they were unrelenting and they did not kill him.
00:38:24
Speaker
he did not He was unable to fight back though. Well, if you asked me to sit down and determine like what I'm asking an expert to explain to me is I think what I see here is I see the first blow when there's an unconscious and I think the blows after that are out of frustration and anger, not knowing that he's unconscious. For whatever reason, I do agree with the flurry of blows happening I think the first one knocks him out, and the rest are overkill because you've got probably a number of things going on with an offender doing something like this. But I think that, like, ultimately, once that first blow happens, I think he's out, and that's why you have zero defensive wounds of any kind. I think that's your proof there. And that's what I want an expert to confirm for me, and that's probably what I want the suspect to confirm for me when I'm talking to him. Next time on True Crime, Texas.
00:39:22
Speaker
i cannot believe how much the department of corrections in illinois protects the records of these inmates it's very interesting to me and i'm actually going after so he's got a probation officer named will smith and he had him for the bank robberies and i'm hoping that guy will come on and talk to me because i found him talking about another Chicago incident, I was like, well, maybe I can get him. He he was actually a lot younger than I realized he would be. It's only been 14 years. But I was thinking if i could get if I could get him to come on and talk to me, I'd like to know why this guy bails. like he So right after Jay's death, something happens where he comes into probation for his like probation check-in, parole check-in. He's been in prison for a really long time.
00:40:10
Speaker
And the probation and parole officer, he makes the decision to add mental health counseling to what's going on with this guy. So he had to have come in and said something. So there's that to think about. In talking to everybody about the suspect himself, people had plans where we should go get a sale call from particular times.
00:40:31
Speaker
Two different people mentioned that to me, and I tried to get him. I don't know if that's even a possibility. He has some family. I've started reaching out to his family. I reached out to him directly. He's indicating he wants to have a conversation with me, but I don't think he's going to like what I have to say, so we'll see if that goes any further. Well, now I feel like an idiot because I missed a bunch of stuff. We've got to go back and talk to Jay's mom again.
00:40:56
Speaker
So here's the kind of the takeaway. This is the third person that's mentioned something kind of in this vein. Some of this stuff is like potentially evidence of sexual assault. So keep that in mind. like That's a weird road to go down, um and I have absolutely no proof.
00:41:12
Speaker
the reason i bring that up is because i've been talking to the suspect and i thought about this and i don't know if it'll work but we had an investigator that was going to work with us that was kind of conflicted out because they have a contract related to that area i don't want to go into the whole thing but like something they said Like really stuck with me. Even underwater, the shirts might retain DNA in a way that we could go look at it. But this is the other thing that was said to me today. Third person that said this. What if the post-mortem injuries are not anything to do with a boat?
00:41:53
Speaker
So the idea was, what if the dumping the body in the river was a last minute thing? And what was actually going on there was this guy was trying to dispose of the body by cutting it up. And i I miss these things. I miss the potential assault evidence. I miss the potential body disposal evidence. And i I feel kind of dumb about that. But I think you can go back and kind of put all this together.
00:42:24
Speaker
The other thing that has come up is there was a plea deal offered in this case. That's crazy to me. Like, okay, it's it's a serious crime. This guy is in prison for sure. But the plea deal goes out and it's between two different county, uh, assistance based attorneys.
00:42:45
Speaker
And for some reason, they don't want to close this case out. They feel like they have him cold on this other case. But even one of the investigators who finally reached back out to me, I don't think he wanted to talk to me at first. He was very nice. um He actually has a very good take on all of this. And he confirmed some of the things that I've you know been thinking.
00:43:08
Speaker
I, look, there was a plea deal here. This guy was, like, going to plea out to this, and I would love to know, like, how real that is. I don't know if any of these assistant face attorneys are gonna call me back on it. I was just curious, because it blew up at the last second, and this guy gets sentenced to years and years and years in prison for something else, but ah this was gonna be part of it, but I think the idea was maybe the evidence was a little weaker here. It really bothers me that that happened.
00:43:39
Speaker
Oh, and check this out. This guy has got a link to Odinism. And that's something that recently came up in another case of people have been kind of running with that theory. Not heathenism, not like, like, not all of the things that are good, the Odinism part, the prison part, this guy's linked to that. And then I thought about it. I went back and like looked through his booking stuff.
00:44:04
Speaker
His tattoos are all Viking. So I would i was like, maybe that's his thing. Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
00:45:25
Speaker
Crime XS is brought to you by John and Matt It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.