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Season Five: A Trial
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In Today’s Episode, we talk about a crime that shocked a small college community and how the trial has wrapped up convicting the perpetrator in less than a year.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Content Warning & Case Selection
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:49
Speaker
This is True Crime XS
00:00:59
Speaker
So you and I do a lot of live trials over the years, but we don't, like, we're kind of picky about which live trials that we sit down and like put our time into, I would say. I think that's an accurate assessment. Um, I would say yes and no, because I probably would watch any live trial, uh, if it was available and I was, you know, able to watch it. But I'm pretty,
00:01:28
Speaker
I I insist on watching the entire thing If we're going if it's going to be of any substance if we're gonna talk about it I want to be in the position of the fact-finder which Sometimes you can't do that because there are some things they won't show even on a live trial, right? Yeah, and I and Like this year, I don't like getting secondhand information about trials, which is one of the reasons we didn't cover Delphi. The murders of the two girls in Delphi, I would have been high on my list if it was televised, I think. And I ended up getting all the secondhand information. So it wasn't interesting to me. It wasn't like the Murdall trial where I can get into it and watch every day.
00:02:16
Speaker
Great. I think that my least favorite thing is getting secondhand information ah about a trial. Yeah, it is kind of secondhand if you if you're watching the whole thing. I did I sat through Karen Reed this year. And I guess I should clarify what I mean by that is somebody else summarizing. Oh, i got to yeah yeah like their interpretation or their summary. Yeah, right. Because I want to hear the facts, right? Because in the court setting, you have attorneys, you have a prosecutor and a defense attorney, and they are
00:02:49
Speaker
examining witnesses and nothing that the prosecutor or the defense attorney says is evidence, right but what is presented, that's the evidence of the case, right right what the witnesses testify to, all the different layers. I want to see all that for myself and I don't want to end summation from anybody that was sitting there watching it just because That is me processing their interpretation of the evidence, right? i want to I want to have my own interpretation of the evidence to process. And of course turn around and give my summation to everybody, which is, I mean, I, I get the irony in that, but I would rather just watch it or not watch it. Right.
Trial Coverage Decisions
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a trial I want to talk about a little bit and
00:03:44
Speaker
We can't figure out exactly what it is, but I think you said you felt like it tied back to something that we had done earlier in the year. We might talk about that too. This is like, I would call it a, I would call it a relatively quick trial. Do you think that's accurate? It is accurate. And I would just point out that right now,
00:04:07
Speaker
There's a trial that's not being televised that is happening in, I believe, New York City, and it's Daniel Penny. And that trial started and continues on. I believe the defense rested on Friday.
00:04:22
Speaker
And in the intermittent period of time, this entire trial happened, the one we're talking about on the show. And so I, I compared the two sort of, because I was like, wow, that one went on for, you know, 10 days or something. And this one has come and gone already. Right? Yeah. I, have you heard about the Brian Camp case?
00:04:44
Speaker
i I don't know. This is, that's one that I'm following that I feel like is like sort of prosecutorial overreach. Um, I'm not even gonna give a summary today on that, but we may come back around to that one. And like I said, I i followed Karen Reed a little, like I was so interested in and what was happening there. And typically I take a defense perspective, but that was like, I was more on the prosecutor's perspective. I feel like the,
00:05:12
Speaker
Prosecutors put together a good case, it ends in a mistrial, but like i was I was coming at that from a different opinion. So i we don't really end up talking a lot about that on the show. But I did want to talk about this one because we were able to watch, like I know you said it happened while you were watching another trial unfold.
00:05:33
Speaker
but Right. just I was just hearing the tidbits of it because it is not a ah a televised trial. Right. But this case that we're going to talk about for a minute, like it wraps up. It like it it starts in February of this year. We kept our Valentine's Day and it's already wrapped up and the sentence has already been given. I think there's something about college age kids in kind of current crimes, meaning after 2000, I consider anything after 2000 to be kind of current, kind of current. Yeah. Um, I, there's something about those cases that I ended up finding sort of fascinating and I always like follow them, whether I talk about them on the show or not, I ended up following a lot of those, but the case that you brought up that I wanted to sort of,
00:06:24
Speaker
summarize, I guess, or comment on before the year.
Laken Riley: Media and Trial Coverage
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, is um it's the murder of Lake and Riley, which is she's a Augusta University student, but she was basically on or right off of the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens, because the reason for the like the the difference there and and me stating it is like she had been a student doing one thing and then now she was doing another thing. She's a nursing student, basically. And I, I found it senseless. I found the coverage of it to be strange. It got quite a bit of media attention, which normally would put her off my radar. Well, and she, it put me, it put the case off of my radar because not only was it covered, it was politicized. That's, that's what I was about to say. Like I don't get into the big,
00:07:18
Speaker
political debates over cases. And so I sort of just I wouldn't say I ignored it. I just it's a tragic case to begin with and the the politicizing of it just put it a little too over the top for me. So while I was hearing it and hearing it and hearing it, I wasn't really delving into it a whole lot. I was actually surprised when the trial started that the crime had occurred this year. Yeah. That's what, that was one of the things that shocked me was like putting all that together. And at first I didn't see a motive in it and that bothered me, but you, you came to like this pretty interesting conclusion and I felt like your conclusion was so spot on with things that I see.
00:08:08
Speaker
that if we didn't mention it by the end of the year, plus this like nagging feeling of like her age and the time, there's just something about these 20 to 24, like even if you go right under that, like 18, 19 years old, there's something about these cases that are so tragic. And I think people miss the point in a lot of the coverage of it when it gets politicized. And like her case got this extensive media attention for the political angle, but also for the fact that like,
00:08:38
Speaker
She's a beautiful, young, vulnerable college student. And like the picture makes a great sensational headline, and her case is tragic. But the point I want to get to, I guess if in order for us to get there, we have to talk about the case overall. If you haven't had a chance and you're not doing a lot over the holidays and you're done with all the True Crime XS episodes and you're you're still listening to us talk, I would say like getting into that trial, I think it wraps up in under five days. Does that sound right to you? Yes, that sounds right to me. it's a great
00:09:13
Speaker
It's a great trial if you've never watched a live trial. I knew Law and Crime covered it. I think Court TB had it. It's well publicized. For the most part, they were very respectful in how they handled everything. I thought the prosecutor did a fantastic job. I thought the defense attorneys did the best that they could with what they had to work with.
00:09:31
Speaker
it kind of Part of the reason I wanted to talk about this case in particular is because of the illustration it provides and what the defense attorneys were doing. I think that a lot of times I'm not very clear when I'm trying to explain it, but one of the things that's interesting if you watch the trial is that the judge wears a suit. He does not wear a rob a robe.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's an interesting aspect of it. Let's, okay. Let's just talk the crime for a second and then we'll just jump into like why this trial is important. Okay. Lake and Riley, she's born in January of 2002.
00:10:08
Speaker
She's got multiple siblings. She graduates from high school and and she ends up going to college in Athens, Georgia area. She's an active member of the Alpha Chi Omega Sorority. i She has this amazing setup with her roommates where they're basically like a second family for each other. They do all these things together. They keep track of each other.
00:10:34
Speaker
and On February 22nd of 2024, she goes out for a morning run. She had made arrangements according to what we've been able to gather from the trial to kind of talk to her mom during this run. And she doesn't get up with her mom and it creates like a really slow ripple panic among her roommates and her family. ah During this run, her phone dials 911.
00:11:04
Speaker
According to arrest warrants, they have a really broad window on this, but in the trial, it's not broad at all. It's like down to the second. Um, essentially they say that she was attacked and killed between 9 AM and 1 PM on these arrest warrants by 12 07 PM. Her roommates had already reported her missing. They had done a tremendous amount of work to try and find her. They knew her location and they were meeting with the police by 12 38 PM.
00:11:34
Speaker
Lakin's body is discovered by a police officer ah in this forest park ah by a lake. ah It's kind of, I guess you would call it adjacent to the intramural fields of UGA. That's correct. And ah there's body camera footage that's played in some of the feeds, but like I know they had to edit it because there were some mistakes made with the body cam footage.
00:12:02
Speaker
For the most part, you get like the first-hand officer's accounts, the roommate's accounts, the family accounts. When her body is found, the crime scene is pretty, I would call it, set up. like like they There's a lot of evidence of the crime scene. It was also immediately clear to the officer that she had been attacked. Of course, he didn't know when she had been attacked. and ah The trial actually shows them trying to revive her, which was very sad because there was no way she was going to be revived. But after they found her, they immediately
00:12:46
Speaker
started their investigation and they brought in everybody. The GBI is an agency that ah they already, I think they call it a request-only agency, which means that another law enforcement agency has to bring them in. They don't just take cases. Yeah. They have to reach out and basically say, we need your help.
00:13:10
Speaker
Right. And so they had immediately contacted GBI and they were on scene before her body was even removed. Yeah. So there's pretty quickly a suspect in this case because he makes a lot of mistakes and he leaves evidence behind in a number of different ways. Uh, I'm not going to bury the lead as a 26 year old, uh, Venezuelan man who had come into the U S illegally in September, 2022. His name is Jose Abara.
00:13:39
Speaker
He disposes of the evidence on camera, essentially, and you can see this unfold over the trial. He sort of immediately doesn't or isn't gonna have a real defense, I would say.
00:13:52
Speaker
Well, something to keep in mind, he does dispose of evidence on camera. However, initially, the only reason it's found is because some alert patrol cops are aware that a young woman was killed. And this is a rare happening in this area. It doesn't happen very often that they have a murder that they're working on. But an alert patrolman decided to go and look and see if there was anything of interest in some of the dumpsters and the recycling bins at the lake, their apartment complexes. But i'm not I never really figured out like what was student housing versus just normal apartments or whatever. But he happened to peek into a recycling bin and see
00:14:42
Speaker
that there was an out-of-place jacket. correct And it looked like it had some possible blood on it. Well, they call the investigators who are covering the murder, they come, they get the jacket out for evidence, and then they look over and they see that there is a camera pointed right at it. Like, I assume it's just some sort of doorbell camera, right? yeah And so they go to that apartment and they're able to retrieve the footage and they have a very clear picture of a person who has on a very notable hat. And it's, to me, I mean, it's not like super high quality, but you can tell who it is, right? Yes. And that shouldn't be lost because without that patrol officer taking it upon themselves, knowing, because nobody told him to go do that. He just took it upon himself because he knew a murder had been committed.
00:15:40
Speaker
and his thinking was, well, they had to have disposed of some of the things involved in the murder somewhere, right? Correct. And so from the video, they were able to not only see the person who disposed of the jacket, right, that hat that ended up being ah a i very important piece of evidence in this case. They also saw him sort of walk away and throw some gloves in the bushes, right? Yes. Yeah, so they're able to connect him back to this bloody fingerprint on her phone. They're able to sort of walk through the crime. and
00:16:23
Speaker
They get down to like two people and it's kind of, did this guy do it or this guy do it? All of this is taking place in what I would describe, and this is based on the testimony that you would hear if you listen to the the live trial, is about a two mile circle, like from where she lives, where her body is found, where this guy lives.
Investigation and Suspect Profile
00:16:43
Speaker
They expand that out slightly and they and they encompass like these evidence disposal areas ah It really is a great example of collaborative law enforcement work on kind of all levels. It is. And I think that the community ah setting being that like, it's practically like a, it's a very low crime, low violent crime area, right? Yes. And they were able to focus a lot of attention and it got a lot of heads thinking, you know, what,
00:17:17
Speaker
What can I do to help as far as all the different law enforcement agencies? Because the university itself has its own law enforcement department. And then, you know, the city or county has their own. So there's automatically two starting, right? And then they call in the GBI. So there's a lot of resources there. And a lot of these law enforcement officers who've never dealt with anything in this area having to do with, you know, murder.
00:17:47
Speaker
they're going, okay, what can we do? And so it they really came together nicely. Yeah. I would say like, and this comes through in like the body cam footage, you hear it more than see it, but these guys like say things along the way that show that they're thinking about like, how do we collect as much evidence as possible? They're asking active questions within days of this crime.
00:18:16
Speaker
uh, we're seeing this evidence collected in a way that is going to point right out of suspect who by all accounts, he becomes a very highly politicized suspect as he is a illegal immigrant. He had been charged in multiple jurisdictions. He had been arrested multiple times by multiple sets of authorities ah going back like six months from when this happened.
00:18:42
Speaker
Right. And he had been in the Bronx, New York. He was working a food delivery job yeah and he was stopped by law enforcement there for having a five-year-old oh on a ah baby electric scooter or moped. I'm not really sure. He was on, but he was on some sort of transportation and neither he nor his nor the five-year-old that was with him. I'm not sure if it's his son or his girlfriend's son or his wife's son. I'm sorry. I don't know really what the relationship was, but that's what he was charged with. And it was charged with the child endangerment because the child was not wearing a helmet. Right. And neither was he. Neither was he. But to me, that that sent a little flag off for, and it's going to be relevant. and
00:19:34
Speaker
as we talk about this. Yeah, so then he goes down to Georgia. He's tracked through a flight from New York to Georgia. In October of 2023, his brother gets reported for being in the area. He gets reported for being a member of a Venezuelan gang. He had, I guess at some point, the brother has worked at the University of Georgia, and they end up being arrested by Athens police on theft charges.
00:20:05
Speaker
So they essentially were arrested for charges of possessing stolen merchandise from a local Walmart. So Jose Abara has a bench warrant that's out. It gets issued to him in December, 2023, because he fails to appear for that shoplifting case. I don't know if it's the same case or if there's multiple cases. And at multiple points in time, this is according to immigration and customs enforcement agents, he should have been detained at a couple different places here.
00:20:33
Speaker
The arrest in New York was enough, but he gets released before the detainer can be issued. The Georgia situation should have brought him ah to a point where he was arrested, but he's not. but He was just, in that case, he and his brother were just issued citations. The warrant was actually a benchmark because they failed to appear for court. Right. Grand jury gets a hold of this case in May of 2024, and they indict Jose Barra on 10 charges. They hit him with three counts of felony murder.
00:21:04
Speaker
malice murder. They hit him with false imprisonment. They hit him with kidnapping. They hit him with aggravated assault with an intent to rape. They hit him with obstructing or hindering a 911 call, ah concealing the death of another. And they hit him with an interesting charge that I did not understand until it came out of trial. They hit him with a peeping Tom charge, which basically is a voyeurism charge. It's when you're looking into the residence or safe quarters of another for the purposes of either violating their space or sexual gratification. There's a number of ways that you can ah get this peeping time charge. He pleads not guilty to all of these charges. He gets no bail. The district attorney comes up pretty early on and says they're seeking life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. His attorneys try and move it out of county saying there's too much media attention. It gets denied by the judge.
00:21:59
Speaker
He ends up in a very last minute move that you and I are still baffled over. Did you ever figure out why you did this? I have a theory, but it's not a great one. So he waves his right to a jury trial. He opts for a bench trial. What's your theory? Well, this was, I believe, the Tuesday before the trial was to start on the Friday. Right. Yeah, it's like right. It's very last minute.
00:22:28
Speaker
Right, so the only thing they didn't do in preparation for this was pick a jury because he said I'm waving that and I'm going to trial. Now, I watched, I watched. I had to go back because i didn't have I didn't know anything about this case except just that it had been on the news and Then when the trial started, I watched the beginning, which was on a Friday, and then I went back and I watched all the pretrial hearings that have happened over time, right? Yeah. I think that the avenues they were trying to take, the defense, because so if you go into a trial, pretrial, and you plead not guilty,
00:23:18
Speaker
The prosecution has the burden of proof. They have to prove each element of each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. And lacking that, in theory, you don't have to put on a defense if your if your position is that the state has not proven their case.
00:23:41
Speaker
now
00:23:44
Speaker
I don't feel like that works most of the time with jurors because I'm not sure that that broader concept is understood. It's almost like, oh, they didn't even say anything. so you know we can't They don't understand that.
00:23:59
Speaker
the state didn't prove their case. With a judge being the ultimate finder of fact as opposed to a juror, I feel like a judge would understand that more so, but that's not what happened, right? So anyway, I think that it was an exercise of few futility yeah to take this thing to trial.
00:24:29
Speaker
I think that it could possibly be furtherance of other things involved that aren't really appropriate, like the political part of it. yeah It could be also though that there was some perhaps not clear communication.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, I noticed, so he wears his headset throughout the trial. My guess is, and this is maybe not wrong, at some point, some attorney gets translated, hey, either they're offering no plea or they're offering you life without parole or life with parole in 40 years or something, we may as well take it to trial because that's not a good plea deal.
00:25:23
Speaker
And that's how we end up here, maybe? Possibly. um i I know that in cases where the only thing you are going to be offered is basically you don't have to go through a trial and we're going to give you life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Sentencing and Legal Outcomes
00:25:40
Speaker
There's not a whole lot to lose by taking it to trial. However, it I mean, I hate to say like, I'm glad he went to trial because I felt like there was a very thorough presentation of the crimes that were committed and I got to see that play out. I hate to say that, but that is true. And that wouldn't have happened if he had taken a plea, right? I don't know that a plea was offered. I have no idea. I know that the district attorney vowed when she was elected to not seek the death penalty on any cases.
00:26:17
Speaker
i feel like this was a death penalty case i don't necessarily believe in the death penalty um as much as i used to not know about it as much but this was a death penalty case yeah tend to agree with you and i just so everybody's aware i come from the defense side 99.9 percent of the time if i'm covering it i have no questions i really already decided made up my mind a long time ago and i i come from the defense angle whether i play devil's advocate or whatever there was just really no way to do that in this case
00:26:53
Speaker
He's disposing of the evidence. All of the evidence points back to him. His DNA is under her fingernails. His fingerprint is on her phone in her blood and his blood. like it A defense attorney came out here and said, oh, this is all circumstantial. But it that's fine. We just didn't have any other options. And we have this tragedy we have to deal with. And he did it. He has scratches on his arms. His knuckles were red. like He's the guy in the video.
00:27:23
Speaker
it's him so after the After he disposed of the jacket and the dumpster, the following day, kind of following up on that happening the night before, there are patrol cops that are in the apartment ah parking lot. They're just, they're looking for anything out of the ordinary, right? And a guy, a Hispanic guy who could possibly be the guy in the video with definitely the same hat on goes walking by.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah. And they're like, huh, is that him? They start talking to him. He does not speak English. And they don't speak Spanish. But there's some communication that goes back and forth. And they end up kind of following him to to his apartment. And then you know a lot of time is going by here. But other officers show up that speak Spanish. And they're able to communicate with them. And they realize that there are three other people inside the apartment.
00:28:25
Speaker
And slowly, like that all unfolds during the trial on body cam footage. You can see how everything sort of plays out. And Jose Abara is in the apartment sleeping. And once they see him, they realize very clearly that that's the guy on the video. Now, during the trial, the defense uses the initial identification of his brother walking through the apartment complex wearing the hat That's because that's what triggers everything. That's where they're like, hey, that kind of looks like the guy. That's definitely the hat. It was an Adidas hat. It had a very clear logo on it. Additionally, it had a sticker on it, which the sticker is what makes it like that's literally the only hat that's like that because. Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
it was placed by one of them. I don't know which one of them put the sticker on there, but it made it unique. and ah So the defense used that sort of, I don't know that it's a loophole really, but like it was it was a fact of the matter that there was enough to that sighting that it led them to the actual perpetrator for them to try and cast doubt on Jose Abara's guilt by throwing the brother under the bus.
00:29:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's all they had. And like there, there was so much going on in this case that you just couldn't combat. I mean, his DNA is all over the scene and where his DNA isn't on his side is her DNA. So every time you turn around, there's hair, there's blood. And he just like, if in terms of a defendant, he is pretty much indefensible except to try and throw Someone in the, like if he had been an identical twin and you have the identical twin possibly at the scene, it's, there's a physicality difference between him and the person wearing the hat that you can't get around. And because of that, he just looks like exactly who had been walking along disposing this evidence. I probably could have made a case for, my brother came and asked me to do these things. So I went to the dumpster and I threw it away, but then he has to get on the stand.
00:30:44
Speaker
Well, right. Plus, they were able to coordinate the peeping Tom charge stems from an incident that happened approximately two hours before Lake and Riley went out on her run. And that is on video. Correct. And it's clearly him, not his brother.
00:31:05
Speaker
Correct. And that part, I think the Peeping Tom is what ends up securing all this for me. The way that it goes for him is, so he's he's got this bench trial, everything that we've just been talking about comes into play. And on November 20th,
00:31:24
Speaker
twenty twenty four So he wants to have this bench trial. The bench trial opens November 15th, November 20th, we're at a close and the judge finds him guilty of every single charge. And he sentences him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. When he does this, it was clear to me that this was all correct, that the judge had had made the right call. The prosecution's case was as close to, I don't want to use the word airtight, but as close to definitive as I've ever seen in a case. Right. And that's based on the evidence. No other reason. Yeah, not their opinions. That's based on ah like, honestly, this sounds terrible to say, but it's kind of like the police force had nothing else to do for a few weeks.
00:32:18
Speaker
And they just focused in on this case, did really good work. And it is almost airtight in my opinion. The defense had no angle to go on other than what I mentioned about maybe trying to like shove it off on another brother and like have them it somehow coordinating this scene. Like I probably could have come up with a story that would have worked for like some of the evidence in the defense, but I don't think I could have combat. I don't think I could have combated all of it.
00:32:45
Speaker
So what was left at the end of it for me was this is a completely senseless and tragic murder that's been drug out and politicized. And I had no clear reason for him having done it. Is that kind of where you ended? It is. And so just to like emphasize here, we just sort of did the quick summary. But so To add to that quick summary, this is a stranger killing someone who, as far as I know from the trial and everything else, she he did not know her. She did not know him. They'd never crossed paths. There was no indication whatsoever that there was any sort of personal motive that they knew each other at all, right? She is literally on a run
00:33:41
Speaker
And he is literally hunting in the woods for lack of a better what word, I guess. Yeah, I think that's a good description of it. And I could see, like, if you guys sit down and watch this, there are incredibly graphic descriptions of what happened here. The crime scene people involved here were incredibly thorough. They are on their hands and knees going through the scene.
00:34:10
Speaker
They find every rock that he hit her with. They find her blood on the rocks. They find elements of him at the scene. They find her phone. There's a really kind of harrowing moment for the roommates when they find one of her AirPods.
00:34:26
Speaker
and I have never seen a crime scene mapped out for us by the evidence quite as well as this one was because the officers know what they're looking for. Like you hear the officer radioing back into dispatch as he's going through these woods telling them they can stop looking for the phone because he thinks he knows where it is. You know, they've got all of this technical digital data where they're able to map out her last moves. And you have this defendant who
00:34:58
Speaker
To some degree, he kind of paints a sympathetic picture because of the politicizing, but then you see him in court listening to the translation, and you hear his attorneys arguing about the coverage of this trial and where cameras are placed, and you realize that like you know this is happening to real people, and the moment that you realize that, he becomes ah less sympathetic. i I had shown you like different pictures of him throughout the trial where I was like wondering, like what is this guy Thinking sitting there knowing that like all of this is certainly for him um There's a moment in the trial where we hear from the different 911 calls that came in and There's a very interesting Angle change for me and it it doesn't happen related to Lincoln Riley it happens because of the secret peeping charge and
00:35:56
Speaker
And this girl is reporting someone in kind of real time where they almost, they don't quite, but they almost sync it up like the video of him outside of her apartment with the 911 call. And he's like ducking down and then he's like watching her. She's essentially watching this woman and they go to great detail to explain like her, the, her location and her windows and her apartment set up. And she is,
00:36:25
Speaker
Terrified by the fact that someone is trying to come into her apartment and is watching her in her early morning routine as she's getting up and getting dressed and going to start her day right and he's on camera opening the storm door and Trying to manipulate the knob to like actually go in so if it had been unlocked he would have entered correct and So there's no question that like a he wasn't like just accidentally doing this. right It was that repeatedly over a period of time. They do fast forward so you don't have to watch you know nothing. it They cut it to where you're looking at what they want you to see, which is helpful because they feel people like people lose track of things if they have to watch too long. But there are
00:37:13
Speaker
You get to see a a predator, a hunter, contemplating what he's doing. And this is at, I believe it's seven o'clock in the morning. Yeah. And they have it laid out. Now, I have to believe that he had no idea he was on he was being videoed. No, he had no idea what he was doing. was He And the way that he sort of walks around and,
00:37:40
Speaker
he opens the door and tries to get in. It is, it's startling. And then the other part of this, so it again, this person, he was a complete stranger to the woman in the apartment. Correct. He didn't know him, he didn't know her. There are people probably not, you know, 30 yards away waiting for a bus when he's doing this. It's very brazen.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah. And it's happening in early morning hours, but like it it has this broad daylight feeling to it. Well, what the activity around, so this is an apartment. Uh, this is a college apartment complex.
00:38:26
Speaker
Well, I don't know that it's a college apartment complex, but college kids live there and UGA buses pick up students to take them to the university classes. And so there's a lot of movement. Yeah. And so it feels like it is broad daylight. And there's no reason for him to think he's doing anything secretly, right? Correct.
00:38:49
Speaker
And the fact that it gets a little bit weird because she's calling 911 and then of course it's where the apartment that he peeped into that spawned the 911 call from the Peeping Tom victim, it's not too far away from where the murder happens. Correct.
00:39:15
Speaker
and So there are police that respond to the scene and they continue to respond because they're looking for whoever's looking in the apartments, right? It's it's alarming. when you're When you're in a situation like that, something like that is alarming because you're you have an unsuccessful, I mean, he was successful in peeping, but like he didn't get in the apartment, right? But you have to keep in mind that like, oh, this person's probably going to keep doing this until they get to an open door or whatever, right? And so the police were, they were paying attention to what was happening. Correct. The, the way that this unfolds in terms of data,
00:40:06
Speaker
we're able to watch like a lot of interesting things that I've had some doubts about in terms of people's phones and like who's where, when, and it's able to be coordinated pretty carefully with video and with 911 calls in this case in a way that like, I think the reason I haven't seen it, and you can correct me if you think like this is wrong, I think most cases like this don't ever go to trial.
00:40:36
Speaker
I feel like you're 100% right. There was literally nothing that could have been interpreted as any sort of doubt in this in the way the case was presented. And I don't know if the defense initially thought maybe there was going to be something. And that's why they pushed it. But I feel like the switch to a non-jury trial, to a bench trial, I think that that might have stemmed from, like Just a final sort of like, well, let's not make this even worse than it already is.
00:41:11
Speaker
yeah I would tend to agree with that. I, so for me, um, I think you were watching this kind of in real time. Is that right? I was. Yeah. And I was on a delay of about a day. I was able to kind of catch up, but my work day was not, I was, I was basically having to watch it at night after it happened. So I was slightly behind it. Everything wraps up. He's sentenced essentially. And I saw the gears start turning by your text messages. So I think the way that you kicked it off,
00:41:43
Speaker
and you know correct me if any of this is wrong, is you were looking at it from the perspective of different jogger murders. Sort of. um One element of this is essentially Lake and Riley was beaten to death with rocks. Right. That is a heinous method of committing a murder.
Patterns in Jogger Murders
00:42:05
Speaker
It is. And it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense when you're thinking of stranger murders in the context of he didn't take her anywhere. the He was charged with attempted sexual assault, and he was found guilty of it. But the argument, there was a to and against argument as far as that's concerned. I think he absolutely was trying to rape her, and he couldn't because she did not allow him to.
00:42:33
Speaker
but Because of the heinousness of that murder most of the time when we hear about joggers they have disappeared Yeah, they have been taken yeah, that was the thing that I you kept coming back to in the text messages and I went through I've looked at a number of um ah Jog I could do a podcast on jogger murders at this point and you're right for the most part um I would say 99% of jogger murder
00:43:04
Speaker
because, and this is this is sort of my flippant response to it, if you end up with a jogger being found close to where they were last seen or missing or whatever, and it's close to the jogging trail, typically it's more of a vehicular manslaughter. And those cases don't really make the news. But when it's like a this case, as you kind of eloquently put it, is a stranger abduction of a jogger for the purposes of a sexual assault,
00:43:35
Speaker
And it's taking place where the victim's body is found. Like he doesn't have a vehicle. Right. And I don't feel like, I mean, I realized that there was a legal definition of abduction, but I don't even feel like he really even did that. Well, yeah, I see. i they're You're right. it's so It's a legal abduction, but he doesn't do what you and I typically talk about in terms of abduction.
00:43:57
Speaker
Nor would he have had any way to have done that. So it wasn't like a thwarted plan. He had no vehicle. He had the apartment that he was living in was a one bedroom sort of multi room situation. yeah So it's one main room and like five people lived in that one main room. So he wasn't taking her back there. Yeah.
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah, so what was the thinking and I couldn't get it I couldn't Figure out because it's very bothersome the whole the whole case is bothersome, but the fact that he beat this 22 year old jogger to death with rocks Which is heinous right and it's also It's almost like you have to be enraged and full of like hateful passion to kill someone with rocks. Okay it It boggled my mind because I couldn't figure it out. Anybody can you know pull out a gun and pull the trigger. right that's like That doesn't take a lot of effort. But this particular murder, it was egregious. It was so bad.
00:45:04
Speaker
and If he had just turned and walked the other way, Lake and Riley would still be alive and we would have had none of this have happened, right? And so I couldn't quite put my finger on what was going on. And it really bothered me because this is a strange situation. It is. And we don't get to see it play out in such detail most of the time, but I think what I would have done, and this is sort of me,
00:45:34
Speaker
rolling this out as we talk. I think if I were a defense attorney in this case, I would have tried to make it look like there was some kind of altercation between the two of them and it was exactly, you used a word that's very appropriate, that it was ah some kind of crime of passion. Try to get it down a second degree or could try and get it like down to some kind of manslaughter. I think we lose that. And I didn't know why they did this at first, but this is my perspective now having watched the trial in hindsight. I think we lose that because of the peeping Tom incident at seven o'clock two hours earlier. Absolutely. Because that's what makes it premeditated is because he's hunting, which is a great word stalking his prey, so to speak, which is terrible to say, but it's exactly what he's doing.
00:46:20
Speaker
Well, and from that, so if he is looking to sexually assault a female, it he doesn't get into the apartment. A couple hours later, there's a an intense struggle that occurs, having because Lake and Riley's Garmin watch and her phone show that she's jogging along and that she suddenly comes to a complete stop. Correct. All right.
00:46:48
Speaker
and Within seconds, this got a little bit confusing because they were being a little over technical as far as I'm concerned, but within seconds of coming to a complete stop, she had dialed 911. Correct. And so in, I am imagining myself running like for exercise reasons, what would happen that I would come to a complete stop and dial 911 within seconds because 911 is about the last thing I want to be doing, okay? yeah Dealing with it, dealing with whatever it is. So I'm more than likely going to, I'm more confrontational, right? I would be like, you know, what are you doing or whatever.
00:47:42
Speaker
to try and move past whatever the problem is. that None of that happened. And then we have this like minute and 20 second phone call to 911, and you don't hear a word out of Lake and Riley. And all you hear is her getting hit with the rocks. Yeah. And then right before the hang up, you hear a male Hispanic voice say Yo Tango. Yeah. which means I have in Spanish. And it it's eerie because you basically listen to her die. So in my mind,
00:48:22
Speaker
I'm thinking you've got a jogger who comes to a dead stop. so she's going She's running fast. like I think they were saying she was doing like seven, eight minute miles or something like that. yeah so That's a quick pace. and there She goes from doing you know a ah quick pace to dead stop and dialing 911 within seconds.
00:48:44
Speaker
and then the 911 call disconnects by the by the person on the other end of the phone in other words not the 911 operator they try to call back twice and they don't get an answer and then they go through sort of all the different people who because it alarmed Lakin's mother that she had called her and then her mother didn't get to the phone and when she went to call her back she didn't answer and it alarmed her mom that she still wasn't answering. And to me, the fact that there are people in this situation who immediately went to something bad has happened to Laken on her run, it was um astounding to me, right? Yeah. Because I would literally poo-poo that thought the majority of the time. Like if I was out
00:49:38
Speaker
exercising and somebody was upset because I ignored them, I'd be like, nothing's going to happen to me, which I imagine Laken probably thought the same thing, right? Because nothing should have happened to her. yeah And instead, you know, here we are. But my thought was, well, she's running along and something stops her. And she calls 911 without and I don't know if she said anything to him or not. What can you do to someone though, that's going to cause that to happen?
00:50:10
Speaker
ah All you can do is disable them completely.
00:50:16
Speaker
so and what is that What would that entail, I guess? You're knocking them down, you've got your hands around their throat, you've dragged them to the ground, you've hit them in the head, something along those lines. Right, and so that seems like that would all register as movement though. What do you think it is?
00:50:34
Speaker
I don't know. Well, okay. So I do know what I think it is, but i I'm still not sure completely how it fits in. And of course he didn't testify, so we don't know. But I'm thinking um i I did some snooping outside of the trial and I found a picture of Jose Abara and his wife. Okay.
00:50:53
Speaker
And there are there's sort of ah rumor mill type statements that are made where they got married for asylum purposes and like they weren't this wasn't like true love or whatever. I don't really know what the case is. Anyway, we know that he lived in New York with her right up until September of 2023.
00:51:20
Speaker
when he moved to be closer to his brothers in Georgia. Right. And then his wife did not come with him. So they were split up. For whatever reason, yep. For whatever reason, right. And so we know that that occurred. But in the pictures that I found of him with his wife, she has long dark hair. And I was able to find a picture of the peeping Tom victim who went unshone on the trial and i don't I don't even think she was named, honestly, but I found it and you'll have to go find it for yourself if you wanna know who it was because she's completely a completely innocent victim, but she has long dark hair. And she has locked down everything about her social media and everything. I i figured out who she was as well. Right, but it's really not important except- The long dark hair. that That's the only thing I wanna say here is that she had open windows
00:52:20
Speaker
because she liked the light coming in. And so pretty much everything that was happening in her apartment was would be visible to someone on the ground floor and she had long dark hair. So my point in saying all that is it was more than likely he had caught at least a glimpse of who was in the apartment yep when he made the decision to try and open the door. And then I think that ah if you watch the trial, you will see Lake and Riley on her run. and it actually There's actually- Ring doorbell footage. Well, but there's also um CCTV from the park of her right before she cuts down the trail. Correct.
00:53:01
Speaker
and her hair is it's back in a ponytail and it's long dark hair. And so his wife, the Peeping Tom victim and Lake and Raleigh all have long dark hair. And there's also information that a styrofoam cup that Jose Ibarra is seen with in multiple instances that morning on different surveillance type videos had alcohol in it. yeah So he was drinking.
00:53:32
Speaker
And I think that his, I think that he took out his aggression towards the situation he found himself in and his, the feelings he had towards his wife, I think he took that out on Laken. yeah And I think that her sudden stop was him grabbing her by her ponytail.
00:53:56
Speaker
yeah and I think that the fury that he felt, now I've said, I know this is wrong. I say that it's vicarious, but that's not really the right word. It's like projected or something. But he was literally like taking out all the anger he had towards his wife and the situation that he found himself in and all of his unhappiness. And I think that she just resembled her just enough from behind.
00:54:28
Speaker
that he was able to had he was able to funnel all of that rage the way that he did. And that, to me, explained it better than I had been able to process it otherwise. Yeah, you forwarded me a series of pictures of her and of the two of them. And when you did that, I immediately went looking for the Peeping Tom victim. And I had already seen, I had Laken's face pretty much memorized at that point.
00:54:58
Speaker
And I 100% agree with you. I think that you're right that that the it was the alcohol, which i I think even before I had gotten to that part of the trial, I replied with he'd been drinking all night or something to that effect. and And in that rage, let's not call it anything but what it is, that rage of misogyny that he felt, he took it out on the first person he saw with long dark hair that he could get his hands on. and I think you're right. I think it was him grabbing her by the ponytail and dragging her. And that's what made her suddenly stop. It's what made her call 911. And I think that that explains so much for me about this case. Right. And it was more than likely an alcohol induced rage, right? Oh yeah.
00:55:49
Speaker
and If you, there is a a touch of this that you can find compassionate and you've got a grown man living in a tiny apartment with four other people. um They are basically, they're having to share beds with one another. They're having a hard time getting jobs. they're and I think they're all undocumented. At this point, they are all in federal custody because this brought holy hell down on all of them as far as that whole situation goes.
00:56:19
Speaker
But I can empathize a little bit with how unhappy he must have been. I cannot empathize with him with regard to what he did to Lake and Riley. No, he loses it. He loses all of the compassion and empathy I could develop the minute he does that.
00:56:34
Speaker
and i I was just startled when you were laying it all out for me and I was like, all right, that's a reason to come back around to Lake and Riley because we're starting to see like a motive there that like is undeniable and is easy to get, you know, your mind around because this can be very difficult in these ah terribly tragic cases.
00:56:55
Speaker
And I don't know that i I may be using it as a coping mechanism, but it was driving me crazy because it doesn't make sense for a stranger to attack a female, not successfully sexually assault her and beat her to death with rocks. That is something that is is very rarely if ever going to happen. It's too much, right? yeah It's too much with, it's all this risk with no benefit to them whatsoever. And it doesn't make any sense. And it, I, in some ways, the way that I started sort of processing it was Jose Abara without a weapon. Okay. Cause he picked the rocks up from there somewhere.
00:57:44
Speaker
Without a weapon, he killed her with his bare hands. He did.
Theories and Comparative Analysis
00:57:49
Speaker
yeah And it has the overkill of like a familiar relationship with it as well, which is like doubly unusual. yeah Yes, right. And that it did make it hard for me to process like all of this until you put all those pieces together for me.
00:58:07
Speaker
um And then I felt like that was something we're sharing to like sort of show how that unfolded while we had it in the moment. Because like we have these thoughts and we have these processes, we go through all the time with these different cases. And sometimes we're able to capture it, but we also have this problem where if you and I don't capture it on the first go round, sometimes coming back to it later on, we're unable to put the story back together and show people what we were thinking and why this felt like it was important.
00:58:37
Speaker
Right. And so Lake and ra Riley was a 22 year old nursing student in Georgia and I could not help but think during the trial and then at the adjudication of the perpetrator, Jose Abara being found guilty of 10 various counts, including malice, murder, being sentenced to prison for the rest of his life without the possibility of parole. Of course, it took me back to think of Jay Polhill, who was a 20-year-old college student in Chicago, Illinois, who was brutally murdered. And he has gotten no justice. yeah And so this heinous crime
00:59:25
Speaker
it brought me back to that because i it's almost unbelievable. Lake and Riley's case with the at adjudication, with her killer being put behind bars, like it's awful, but at least there's a semblance of something there, right? Justice being served, I guess. And then Jay Polhill died equally as atrociously, right? Yeah. And nothing.
00:59:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's, that's a case that like I continue to work on in the background. It's a case that frustrates me. I think of his family every single day when I wake up and I keep hitting these walls if I don't know what to do next with J. Paul Hill's case. And what's bizarre about it is that's been 14 years now. And in this case, like, so when the same time period rolls around like January, February,
01:00:24
Speaker
rolls around in the spring. J. Paul Hill will have been gone for 15 years. Lincoln Riley's murder wraps up to the conviction of the perpetrator within 10 months of her death. And the the juxtaposition of those two cases in our criminal justice system is wildly infuriating to me. And I, again,
01:00:55
Speaker
I come from a defense perspective. I find absolutely no defense for the murder of J. Paul Hill. I do not find any defense of the murder of Lincoln and Riley, but I cannot help but note the differences in how those suitcases have played out and how length they are in my mind, since you've mentioned it to me as well.
01:01:14
Speaker
Right, because they are intrinsically linked, um even if just through our own work, but young people being ah heinously murdered, right? yeah Yeah, there's something about that age of innocence between 18 and 22 years old, 23 years old, where you're just finding like how to find yourself in the world, even though it'll be another 10, 15 years. When you're taken during that time, um there there are certainly, you know,
01:01:43
Speaker
tragedies that might exceed that with younger children and with particularly, uh, with victims who are vulnerable. But I, there is just something about the identification that I have, uh, identifying with Jay, identifying with Lake and, and like how ah tragic their cases are that makes me want to keep talking about them. And, you know, that ultimately,
01:02:12
Speaker
I like solving mysteries and I like like digging deep into cases to understand them. But there are cases where afterwards I look back at our coverage of them and where they are now and I am confounded by them. And Jay Polhill is one of those cases where I don't know what to do except you know keep following down the path of eventually I will find someone who will understand what I'm saying about that case and how easy it is to wrap it up.
01:02:42
Speaker
And then I look at a case like Lake and Riley's case and it's already wrapped up with a nice little bow on it. And he will never see the outside of our prison. And it's also appeal proof, which I rarely say that. Usually there's an appeal for everything, but everything that happened in this case, he and his counsel did it to him. Right. But there will be a pills. I'm sure.
01:03:08
Speaker
And though they should all fail. um I watched for that aspect of anything that you know was objected to or whatever I was watching. And I don't think that they are going to come up with anything that's going to be overturned. I don't either. I like i even went through the pretrial stuff. i Ultimately, I'm talking about this case because of ah of sort of putting a button on the year for us, but also like, you know, I wanted to like walk through some of the realizations that we have in terms of the, why we were consuming true crime and like what we're looking for and all of that. And it gives me the chance to talk about J-Pole out one more time before 2025 rolls around. And I, and I cannot not do that, you know? Sure. Do you have anything else on Lake and Riley or on Jay's case?
01:04:00
Speaker
Well, this is this is our new year's episode so I hope that everybody is able to ah go into 2025 with family and with friends and having the best happiness and health that can be offered And that's always the weirdest thing to offer when we're telling these, these terrible stories. But it is truly what I, like, I, I wish there was a world where like murder ended and like all these assaults and and attacks ended. And like, when you wake up, everything was sort of utopian. I know it's not going to happen in my lifetime forever, but, uh, it doesn't, doesn't hurt to, to wish everyone good health and glad tidings. I agree.
01:04:43
Speaker
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01:05:49
Speaker
Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:06:09
Speaker
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01:06:26
Speaker
And we we were able to join their creator network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. you know I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcast. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now and i'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.