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Season Six: Holiday Episode 18 (2025)
52 Plays1 hour ago
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Transcript
Content Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Holiday Season Reflections
00:00:58
Speaker
I think it gets harder once you get to this last push to be patient for Christmas. Like, I really have always enjoyed the holiday times, and I think sometime around the 17th or the 18th was always when I knew It was going to be over soon.
00:01:16
Speaker
And so when I was younger, it was more difficult for me to like enjoy the holiday, worrying about the holiday being over. and Oh, wow. That's terrible. Yeah. As an adult, it doesn't happen as much.
00:01:33
Speaker
But, you know, and i have the nice thing in our house where we celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. Yeah. So, like, I get basically the month of December to have a really nice month most of the time.
00:01:46
Speaker
And I like that. So, I don't know. It's like one of those things that, like... It's all made up anyways. You know what i mean? But this year, we're in the middle of Hanukkah as we're releasing this episode. It'll be like the 14th through the 22nd, and then we get you know Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
00:02:05
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I just like this holiday. And it's not I don't like the gift part. I liked that like our families always got together. like there was always, like people were nice this time of year. i liked looking at decorations and lights. The gift part was always sort of irrelevant.
00:02:23
Speaker
It was just like, the people are nicer to each other for a month out of the year. That's probably a weird reason to like it, I guess. People should be nice all the time. Yeah, really should be. i do understand as it's getting close. i You know, it's interesting you see it that way because for me, Christmas has always been like a really stressful time. Not stressful like...
00:02:45
Speaker
I'm unhappy but like stressful because, you know, i'm a mom. i'm i was I'm responsible for Christmas in a lot of ways, you know? Yeah. And so i I always spread myself too thin. A lot of times I end up like extraordinarily sick in December, which is awful. So it's an interesting test of my abilities always. but I do like Christmas. It's just I associate it with a lot of stress. Yeah.
00:03:14
Speaker
I can understand that, too. I mean, i think I've finally gotten over the hump with that, with having the kid move out and, like, the different things that have gone on related to sort of having an adult child. I think it's a little different in some way. um And I'm hoping that one day, like, I get to play the grandparent in the Christmas scenario, and then that'll be a different world altogether. Completely different, yeah.
00:03:37
Speaker
Because I can go home after I sugar them up and give them presents. Yeah, I can see the benefits of that. I don't know. i We traveled a lot when my child was a child and like international traveled because we are insane. Not so much of that anymore or a since like the pandemic happened.
00:03:56
Speaker
i I look back now and I think you know that's a lot of the stuff that really wore me out as I've aged. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't realize it at the time. I wish I had realized that, you know, life is a marathon, not a sprint.
Introduction to the DC Mansion Murders
00:04:11
Speaker
Oh, we yeah. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, today's story is pretty tragic and terrible. I remember this from real time. I don't know if you do um This is sort of as this was playing out in the news.
00:04:30
Speaker
especially like the days right after it, it was kind of peak podcast time. And i think we've mentioned it before. it just is coming up again today to highlight the, the hostage taking part of it, but it is ah it is a terrible case. I brought it back up. And like I said, I think we've talked about it before, but I brought it back up because there is a significant court document involved. And you can go down this rabbit hole,
00:04:54
Speaker
but My like remembering all of it, there's not a lot in terms of like new and interesting information and the rabbit hole, but it is like a... It's a case that has like one or two interesting questions at the end of it all. I think they're nonsense, but i I had a case earlier this year that I'll mention as we do this where I had something strange happen, and it it was very similar to this.
00:05:24
Speaker
But this is known as the DC mansion murders. Do you remember this happening? i do. I remember it happening like at in the news. Right. That's what I was, that's what I meant by real time. It's a, it's a, like, it's a really terrible, terrible case.
00:05:41
Speaker
It is a terrible case. And I want to say there's like at least one long form podcast from like the locals up there that you could potentially find and listen to. um i don't know if it would include this last part that we're going to put in here.
00:05:58
Speaker
I believe the crime happened in 15. Yeah, it was 2015. Okay, and so the aftermath, I could see, like because anything after like Serial, was like that's when like podcasts actually became known as a thing, I think. Yes, like they had been around for a long time, but like they became peak mainstream popularity the year before this. Right. And so then everybody decided they could do podcasts the same year we did, which was like 2020 when everybody was stuck at home. Right. i but Just for the record, we did, we had no idea there was going to be a pandemic.
00:06:33
Speaker
No, no idea at all. Like we had, we had been planning for over a year, how to organize all the information and yeah to potentially do some other stuff with that case that we'd never got to do. and it was just crazy. Like how that all played out. But like,
00:06:48
Speaker
It is not extremely difficult to do a podcast. It is a little bit difficult to do it all yourself. Podcast really blew up. Yeah. yeah It's interesting. I haven't actually listened to any podcasts about this case. I know I've seen something. It seems like I watched something. this is a This is a terrible case. And it actually, you know, 10 years ago, a little over 10 years ago happened. Yeah. Yeah. This would have been, um it starts on May 13th and kind of goes into May 14th, 2015. The story proper is pretty...
00:07:18
Speaker
the story proper is pretty Simple, like overall, um it's terrible and simple.
Discovery of the Crime Scene
00:07:24
Speaker
And the way that we like find out about all of this is May 14th, 2015, there's this family up there, this Salvopolis family, and they live in Northwest Washington, D.C.
00:07:36
Speaker
Their house is on fire and firefighters are called to put the fire out. And inside the house, once they put the fire out, they find the bodies of three members of the Savopoulos family. That's Savas Savopoulos, who's known as Philip. He's 46, and he's a businessman up in D.C.
00:08:00
Speaker
And then Amy Savopoulos, his wife, she's 47. And then their 10-year-old son, Philip Savopoulos. And ah they find the, in addition to that, they find the body of their housekeeper, Verilicia Figueroa, who is 57 years old.
00:08:17
Speaker
Now... The police determined the fire has been intentionally set, but all the victims have blunt force trauma and stab wounds. So, like, it's not fire related, per se, that they died.
00:08:31
Speaker
Well, they put all this together and they label the deaths homicides. And from there, it sort of starts being this complicated story to unravel.
00:08:42
Speaker
The prime suspect in this case is, he's the one we really have to kind of tell you about. And i want to also mention, there were two teenage daughters. I don't know if you remember this, but there's daughters. weren't home, right? Right. They weren't home. They were there at boarding school. And so they survive in terms of the family, but not the incident itself. They weren't there.
00:09:03
Speaker
So...
Suspect Profile: Darren Dillon Wendt
00:09:05
Speaker
The primary suspect is a guy named Darren Dillon Wendt. And at the time all of this happens, Mr. Wendt in 2015, think he would have been 35 years old or 34 turning 35 later in the year.
00:09:23
Speaker
So he's a ah welder and he had worked at a company called American Ironworks, which is tied Phillips of Opelos.
00:09:35
Speaker
So Philip Savopoulos, he's this, or and they ah depending on which thing you listen to, some of them say Savas and some of them say Philip. I don't know the actual thing that he goes by. I just have heard both names.
00:09:48
Speaker
But Mr. Savopoulos, he's the CEO and president of American Ironworks. Now, they're a construction company that had been involved in the building of Capital One Arena. At the time, it was known as the Verizon Center.
00:10:01
Speaker
Might have been MCI Center, then Verizon, then Capital One. But it's a very large, I would say, more than just an arena. It's like almost a landmark in D.C.
00:10:18
Speaker
It's an indoor arena for sports. He also had helped fund the National Child Research Center. It served on that board. There were ah the The family was all apparently very active in the St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral up there.
00:10:33
Speaker
um So this is like ah this a family that's like a big part of the community. And the guy that's accused of all of this, 34-year-old Darren Dillon Wendt, was an employee of theirs.
00:10:45
Speaker
He's originally from Guyana, and he immigrated to the United States in 2000. He had been a recruit for the United States Marine Corps, but he was discharged during basic or MAPS, like so prior to actual training at an A school for medical reasons.
00:11:06
Speaker
He has a ton of charges on his criminal record. He's convicted in 2009 of an assault. He has 30 days in jail for that. In 2010, he pleads out to destruction of property or malicious destruction of property as part of a plea deal where they drop a burglary charge.
00:11:26
Speaker
He had been charged at different times with theft, assault. He had at least one sexual offense in there. And i think... When I read that, like, I couldn't tell if that was going to be more of a, like, you know how sometimes they try and sensationalize things that maybe aren't exactly what they seem to be? Yeah. I kind of felt like that might have been the case with the sexual assaults, but, you know, it it just it's relevant when you've got this a home invasion going on.
00:11:59
Speaker
Right. So, He ends up being, like according to CNN, he's a suspect pretty quickly. And the way that he's a suspect pretty quickly is one of the things that brings us here.
00:12:11
Speaker
ah There's an article by Pamela Brown, Joe Johns, Alexander Jaffe, and Kevin Conlon, May 22, 2015.
00:12:22
Speaker
And it does something interesting. That article says suspect in D.C. quadruple homicide and arson arrested. and then it says the case is as full of twists and turns as it is tragic. A prominent family in Washington, D.C. is found dead inside a burning home, allegedly bound in what may have been a targeted killing over money,
00:12:44
Speaker
And keep in mind, this is happening the week after, you know, like all of this is unfolding. Late Thursday night, authorities arrested the man suspected in last week's gruesome slayings of the Slavopolis family and their housekeeper after his DNA is purportedly found on pizza crust at the scene.
00:13:07
Speaker
So they go into a little bit of detail here I'm going to use. This says, this is in terms of like the arrest, it says authorities believe that a Darren Wendt, who was first, who was wanted on the first degree murder charges,
Hostage Situation and Ransom
00:13:21
Speaker
fled to New York City. and Police looked into whether Wendt had spent the night at his girlfriend's home in Brooklyn.
00:13:26
Speaker
That's according to one of the law enforcement sources for this story. She told police he arrived by bus on Wednesday night said, U.S. Marshal Commander Robert Fernandez tells CNN affiliate WJLA, we tracked him to New York City, we barely missed him last night.
00:13:44
Speaker
But authorities did manage to find him staying at a Howard Johnson hotel in Washington, D.C. So they kind of focus in on the fact that, like, this pizza crust is here.
00:13:55
Speaker
It says that the crust that they get his DNA on is one of two... Pizza is delivered to the Savopolis home May 14th. That's the family is being held hostage inside.
00:14:08
Speaker
So keep that in mind. Like, there's a hostage taking going on. and Pizza is being delivered. They're ordering pizza that's being delivered. Which is... tragically insane right i mean really is it is yeah according to the source for this story they say that the victims were bound with duct tape and there were signs that philip savopoulos had been stabbed and tortured before he was set on fire the pizza was paid for with cash left in an envelope on the porch this article describes went says you know he has the previous criminal history and that he had left uh
00:14:44
Speaker
Marine Corps before completing a you know boot camp or recruit training camp back in 2001. So he would have just immigrated here. But according to like this inside source, who does have some of the things right early on, they say, and and this is at a time the motives for the killings is not publicly known, but pretty quickly, whoever was in this house is declared to have been looking for money.
00:15:13
Speaker
So as whatever unfolded inside of the house, one of Savapolos' employees came to the home and dropped off $40,000. And that was one of the most interesting parts of this for me.
00:15:26
Speaker
So you've got four hostages being held, right? Right. And somebody stops by and says, here's $40,000. Right.
00:15:40
Speaker
I'm sure that they left it in a secure place. I don't know that they saw him, did they? I think it, I was trying to figure out if it was ransom. So that made me go hunting the corporate. Oh, it absolutely, it absolutely was for that purpose. Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he said, I want cash and that's what he, he, the family delivered the cash. I mean, in a way.
00:16:04
Speaker
So how do they end up dead? Yeah. Because ah the hostage taker was a crazy person. yeah And there was never, the pardon the phrase, but it adds fuel to the fire because they paid him.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe it wasn't what he wanted. Could be, yeah. But $40,000 is no small feat. I believe in an earlier episode, i said that hostage taking like never works. It always ends up being a disaster, right? Yeah.
00:16:41
Speaker
Cause the idea behind a hostage taking in theory would be you hold people until you get what you want and then you let them go safely. Right. Right. Never happens that way.
00:16:52
Speaker
Well, it it definitely does not go well in this particular instance. Um, I, I pulled from the court documents because this is one of those cases if you look at it on the surface and you haven't really heard any kind of deep dive on it, it's confusing. So the reason I pulled from the court documents is that at least then i have stuff that's at least being declared in court. and Like even if it's not 100% accurate, we can get a sense of the story.
00:17:21
Speaker
The background on this is really short. It just says early in the afternoon, May 14th, 2015, first responders arrived at a house in a neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of the District of Columbia after receiving reports of a house fire.
00:17:36
Speaker
When the firefighters arrived, they discovered that one of the bedrooms on the second floor was engulfed in flames and they began searching for victims. In a separate bedroom, Firefighters found the bodies of Amy and Savas Savopoulos, who were the homeowners, and Vera Figuera, their housekeeper.
00:17:53
Speaker
And in another room, firefighters found the body of Philip Savopoulos, Amy and Savas' 10-year-old son. When the smoke cleared, one of the firefighters described seeing a bloodbath because blood covered the floor of one of the bedrooms and a bloody baseball bat was on the bed. A medical examiner testified that all four victims had been stabbed and the three adults had been beaten, restrained, and doused with gasoline.
00:18:22
Speaker
So fire seems to be the choice to eliminate evidence here. But the government's case in chief is it's pretty interesting in this case.
00:18:34
Speaker
They say that police find the appellate, because that's the document that we're pulling from, and that's going to be Winton, W-I-N-T-O-N, Darren Winton.
00:18:47
Speaker
They find the appellate's DNA at the Savopolis home. ah Domino's pizza box was found in the bedroom with the adult victims, and it had his DNA on a crust.
00:18:59
Speaker
But then they say appellate's partial genetic profile was on the back of a knife that was propping open a window in the basement. There are two hairs matching the appellant's DNA profile recovered from a hard hat in the garage and bedroom.
00:19:15
Speaker
So the government's theory here that they lay out is that the appellate kidnapped, restrained, and extorted the decedents for cash before killing them and setting the house on fire. They also contend that the appellate broke into the Savapola's home sometime between 11.29 a.m., so the morning so the morning of and 3.14 p.m. on May 13th of 2015 and cut their home phone lines.
00:19:40
Speaker
I don't know how, and maybe I'm off on this, I don't know how important home phones would have been in 2015. It's only 10 years ago, but it's also 10 years ago. Is that going to be, that's going to be security systems because they know like exactly h you know what i mean it must be well they don't know exactly when the phone lines were cut and that's like a so that's a long range so i imagine the narrative that you're about to go through i think that's how they establish that timeline and it be for a home alarm i guess
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, because, I mean, we are at a mansion, so a security system is what I'm thinking. Typically, though, a lot of times, well, I don't know, but I know that before, more recently, a lot of alarms just had sirens that went off. You know what I'm saying? But he cut the phone lines ah for some reason, but it is possible that somebody that was 46 in 2015 would still have a home phone line. Yeah, I do remember...
00:20:54
Speaker
maybe 2013 or 2014, I worked in at least one company that had a home office where there were phones and faxes and things that came on. Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of people that are sort of, I have kind of a point that he would be on the younger side of people that had phone lines going home. Right, right. But it might not have made a difference at all. Who knows?
Crime Scene Evidence and Sequence of Events
00:21:17
Speaker
It may not have. So during this timeframe that we just described, 1129 a.m. to 314 p.m.,
00:21:23
Speaker
They do know that Philip, the 10-year-old, is going to be home with the housekeeper, Ms. Figueroa. And his mother, Amy, is out walking. So the government basically says that the appellate first restrains the child and the housekeeper.
00:21:43
Speaker
So then when Amy gets home, he's going to also basically tape her up. And then when Sabas gets home from work, so a little later in the day, we're gonna restrain dad as well.
00:21:55
Speaker
So we have three people here being held captive. We have the housekeeper, the mom, and the kid. When dad gets home, makes us a fourth hostage.
00:22:07
Speaker
And while all they're being held captive, it it just says the government believes the victims are subjected to various forms of violence, including being beaten, stabbed, and asphyxiated, as well as doused with gasoline and having had their bodies burned.
00:22:23
Speaker
At trial, the government argued that the appellate forced Savas to obtain $40,000 in cash from the company bank account and to have it delivered. After the cash was delivered, so it's about 24 hours later, but not really. It's kind of early morning. The cash coming in, all in $100 bills, we then burn the house. The appellate burns down this house to destroy evidence.
00:22:47
Speaker
So the government presented the following additional evidence that ah that the appellate had been at the Savopolis home, and they they present this as as being like ah an exhibition of the consciousness of guilt.
00:23:01
Speaker
At about 12.10 p.m. on May 14th, two people visiting a nearby home saw the appellate walk into the Savopolis's garage. Later that afternoon, around 5 p.m., two different people see the appellate pacing in a parking lot shortly before firefighters recover the Savopolis' Porsche.
00:23:24
Speaker
So this is their car. It's burning in a nearby piece of woods. So that's a completely different thing. Like the home invasion, now we have a ah car that's been stolen.
00:23:39
Speaker
Now... Around 6 p.m. the same day, from the tech information they have at trial, the appellate began using his iPhone to search for information about how to remove its iCloud feature and whether or not his iPhone had a memory card.
00:23:57
Speaker
The appellate also called his girlfriend and asked his girlfriend if cell phones could be traced. So we're not dealing with rocket scientists here. That night, the appellate used his phone to search for information on how to, quote, beat a lie detector test, end quote.
00:24:14
Speaker
He looked up the fire at Woodland Drive, which that's the street that the Savopolis is lived on. And the following day, May 15th, the appellate went to the gym with his friend and was in possession of $1,200 in cash, all $100 bills that flashed to this friend.
00:24:30
Speaker
but he flashed to this front Later that evening, appellate called the same friend to ask for help burning a minivan, and the friend declined. Shortly thereafter, firefighters found the appellate's minivan on fire.
00:24:43
Speaker
So now we've got the Porsche burned, the house burned, and now we have a minivan on fire. The appellate's girlfriend testified that on May 16th, the appellate went to visit her in New York City, and he paid for items while he was there using $100 He also continued to search for information about the murders on his cell phone and searched for, quote, hideout cities for fugitives, end quote. And he began to research extradition law.
00:25:09
Speaker
While in New York, the appellate and the girlfriend saw a news report about the Savopolis murders that included the appellate's photograph. The next day, the appellate chartered a taxi back to D.C. and he told the girlfriend that he was going to self-surrender.
00:25:25
Speaker
He basically said, I'm going home, and go turn myself in. Later in that day, the appellate's brother, so we're talking about Darren Winton, but the brother, Daryl Winton, contacts a friend named Chelsea Nunez asks her to help get money orders for, quote, a friend who needed to hire a lawyer.
00:25:49
Speaker
So Chelsea Nunez picks Daryl up in her car. He gives her $2,800 to go in and start purchasing money orders. Not sure why we're doing that, but that's why we're doing it. That's what we're doing.
00:26:02
Speaker
Afterwards, they pick the appellate up from a hotel just outside of D.C. The appellate gets into the car with Nunez. Daryl exits Nunez's car and gets into a different car and tells Nunez he's going to follow them.
00:26:16
Speaker
As both cars were driving, law enforcement ends up stopping both vehicles and they arrest the appellate. So the appellant being arrested...
00:26:27
Speaker
They're not going to search these cars. And when police search the two cars, they find $7,300 in cash in the car that Daryl had been riding in. But there's no cash in the car that Darren is riding in with Nunez.
00:26:42
Speaker
The government presents cell site data for Daryl's primary cell phone showing that it did not connect with any cell towers near the Saezopolis home on May 14th. Now we bring another brother into this, Stephan.
00:26:56
Speaker
So Stephan, when he testified, he had no memory of where he was on May 13th or 14th. And the government introduced timesheets from May 13th showing that he'd been working from 6 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. And from May 14th showing that he had worked from 6 a.m. to midnight.
00:27:13
Speaker
The only signatures on the timesheets were Stephan's. And this suggested that his supervisor had not certified the hours that he worked. So when they go to trial, we get the background for the defense and what the defense is saying has happened.
00:27:30
Speaker
So that's the next little thing I'm going to. The appellate presents at trial a third party perpetrator defense, arguing that his brothers, Daryl and Stephan, were the actual perpetrators.
Defense and Prosecution Arguments
00:27:42
Speaker
The appellate testifies that Daryl brought him to the Sevapolos home on May 14th, the day after the kidnappings, under the premise that Daryl and Stephan needed assistance completing a construction project.
00:27:55
Speaker
The appellate testified when he went inside the home, he realized that his brothers were in the process of burglarizing it, and he'd left, but he did not realize the extent of their plan to murder anyone.
00:28:09
Speaker
And then he responds to the evidence that's against him, meaning his lawyers present sort of reasons for why the evidence is there. In the appellant's version of events, he leaves the house in the early morning hours on May the 13th to meet up with Daryl, who had asked him for help with a painting and drywall project that he was working on with Stephan.
00:28:30
Speaker
He testifies that he met Daryl around 6 a.m. near PCM Services, which is a construction company in Beltsville, Maryland, but that Daryl had changed the plan. Daryl told the appellant that he and Stefan no longer needed the appellant's help, but they would pay to borrow the appellant's minivan.
00:28:46
Speaker
The appellant agreed and asked Daryl to drop him off at his friend Ed's house and pick him up in the minivan later. So the appellant testified that he did not sleep at home the night of May 13th because he had spent the afternoon at Ed's house and he fell asleep there after drinking too much alcohol.
00:29:04
Speaker
He also testified that Daryl returned the next morning, May 14th, to pick the appellate up, but he was no longer driving the appellate's minivan. He was driving a Porsche. I got tell you if your family shows up to pick you up on a Porsche, don't get in the car.
00:29:22
Speaker
His are wise words. Daryl told Appellate that he and Stephan now needed the Appellate's help completing the drywall and painting job and drove him to the, quote, job site, which turned out to be the Stavopolis' house.
00:29:34
Speaker
Appellate went inside with Daryl. He sat in the dining room while Daryl went upstairs. Daryl then came downstairs with a pizza box, and the Appellate took a bite before putting the cross back on the box because the pizza was cold.
00:29:45
Speaker
Appellate then realized he'd left his phone in the Porsche. Daryl told him to go get it. but to come back in through the garage. And then when the appellate went outside, Daryl gave him a hard hat construction vest and explained they were going to, quote, unload the house, which the appellate's understanding was they were robbing this house.
00:30:05
Speaker
And the appellate testified that he then told Daryl he wanted no part in the robbery. So he left and tried to find a bus. Later that evening, appellant saw reports of the house fire on the news, recognized it as the house Darrell had taken him to earlier in the day. He explained that he began looking up information about beating light detectors so he could protect his brother if the police were to contact him.
00:30:27
Speaker
He similarly explained that he was looking up information on an extradition and asked for help burning his minivan because he was afraid of being blamed for a crime he did not commit. Okay, we're going to pause there for a second.
00:30:39
Speaker
This guy has an answer for everything, for the most part. Yeah, because it was literally scripted that way. Yeah. it is It feels very scripted. It feels like his attorneys did a pretty good job putting him on the stand and walking him through his testimony. i think the evidence, unless I'm misreading the government's case and they've given us something weird, I think the evidence is a little more involved than what he just described. So there was eyewitness testimony that saw him entering the family's garage, right? Which is why that whole...
00:31:12
Speaker
Right. interchange happened so pet pizza dna right yeah i vaguely recalled this when i was reading about it to talk about it here but when the long island when the gilgo beach killer what do they call the long island serial killer uh rex he were men you know his dna was tested off of pizza correct And it, uh, I thought that that was interesting. And then I'm like, how much DNA do i leave on my pizza? Right.
00:31:48
Speaker
I don't have the crust of my pizza. I don't either. either eat them or feed them to one of my pups. Well, exactly. That's true, right? Because when you have animals, like my dogs get a lot of crust of things. Yeah, and I don't and i don't do that like willingly most of the time just so people are aware. But by the time I get the pizza box, I take it trash or recycling or to burn it. like And I turn around, there's no crust left in there. There's no pepperoncinis left in there. nothing in there. I always make sure I get all the onions and things that can hurt dogs out because I know at some point they're going get a hold of that box.
00:32:23
Speaker
Well, right. And I don't know why. It's interesting because i don't leave crust. I don't know why. i don't particularly like it, but I eat it. you But I thought it was weird with Rex Hurman that they were like, oh, let's test. Because it never would have occurred to me to test like food.
00:32:42
Speaker
like a pizza, because I would assume there was no DNA unless you're like slobbering on it. It's weird. It's a weird thing. But here is another case, right? Yeah. Where his DNA is on the pizza box. He took a he took one bite of pizza, but put it back because it was cold. And I guess he didn't notice the dead bodies.
00:33:01
Speaker
i mean, I guess that's where we're going with all this. Yeah. Because that seems how that would have to line up there. But to be fair, the bodies are in the bedrooms and he's saying he's downstairs. Right, but the pizza box was discovered in the adult's bedroom. Correct.
00:33:16
Speaker
So somebody else moved it after he took a bite of it. he Like I said, he has an answer for everything. He says Daryl took it back up there. Right, which doesn't make any sense. the The best part, though, is that he was looking up how to pass a lie detector test so he could protect his brother right before he throws both of his brothers under the bus. Yes. I imagine Steven was never so glad to be working that very long shifted a job than he was when he couldn't recall his alibi and they pulled his time sheets.
00:33:52
Speaker
Right. Because that's where he was. I mean, that's why he couldn't recall his alibi. All the guy ever did was work. Right. Right. So is that basically he could have just said, I was probably working and it would have been potentially accurate.
00:34:07
Speaker
Right, exactly. So the government rebuts the defense and Daryl comes into play. So Daryl says, I didn't have anything to do with whatever's happening here.
00:34:21
Speaker
He said that he had visited a friend named Anthony Anderson at his home in Gaithersburg, Maryland. And he said this was on a day in May and it was before the appellants arrest, but he could not remember the exact date, but that he could tell them that while he was there, they watched the music video.
00:34:41
Speaker
He recalled that Anderson's cousin and roommate, Ikea Williams was home that day. He recalled that he was staying at Anderson and Williams' house for a couple of hours And then he had left from there to go pick up his son from school.
00:34:56
Speaker
So the government sought to corroborate Daryl's testimony by calling Anderson, who testified Daryl had come to his house and they had watched a music video called Haters Hate, which had he had just produced this and uploaded to YouTube.
00:35:10
Speaker
He could not recall how long he stayed or what time he left. The Haters Hate video was uploaded on May the 13th. Now, there was no like clear evidence that the government had indicating what time this video had been uploaded. And so, of course, the defense now proffers a su-rebuttal, meaning they're going to rebut the rebuttal. After the government's rebuttal, the defense moves to present the testimony of Ikea Williams, who was originally on the government's witness list. And the defense counsel informs the trial court that they were going to introduce
00:35:44
Speaker
like During ah a cross-examination of Ikea Williams, they were going to put forward what they now have to put forward as a proffered surrebuttal. So proffered surrebuttal would happen outside the presence of the jury in front of the judge, and it would be proffered for like what they think would be testified to, and the judge would make a decision whether or not they can testify.
00:36:07
Speaker
So the government had decided not to call Ikea Williams after Anthony Anderson testified, so the defense counsel has no opportunity to cross-examine Ikea Williams.
00:36:19
Speaker
During the grand jury, Ikea Williams testified that she remembered Daryl coming over one day in May around 11 a.m. to watch one of Anderson's music videos. She did not remember exactly which they had made, but testified that Daryl had texted her before coming over and then called her when he arrived.
00:36:37
Speaker
So here's how that question and answer session goes. Question. Do you know what specific day that was in May? Answer. No, i'm not quite sure. Question. All right. Did he either text you or call you prior to coming to your house?
00:36:49
Speaker
Answer. He texted me. Question. Daryl did? Answer. Yes. Question. When he was outside of your house, did he text you or call you as best you can recall? Answer.
00:37:00
Speaker
I believe he called me and told me he was at the door. Question. And when he was outside of your house, did he text you or call you as best you can recall? Answer. I believe he called me and told me he was at the door.
00:37:13
Speaker
Question. And why do you think he called you to let you know he was at the door? Answer. It could have been because I was upstairs, but I mean, Anthony was downstairs, but he usually does that. Like if he's at the door, he'll tell me he won't knock. He'll just tell me he's at the door and then I'll just open it.
00:37:29
Speaker
Phone records, however, show that Ikea Williams did not receive a call or a text from Daryl on May the 13th. The only communication between Daryl's and Williams' phones in this general time frame was May the 19th.
00:37:42
Speaker
Defense Council, therefore, believed that Ikea Williams' testimony combined with the phone records supported an inference that Daryl was in Gaithersburg on May 19th, not May 13th. Before the trial court, defense court argu defense counsel argued that the profits rebuttal concerned a critical issue that could impeach Daryl's alibi.
00:38:02
Speaker
As defense counsel stated, i mean, i dare to say this, is probably the most critical issue in the trial. If the jury believes that Daryl Wendt was at the home of Ikea Williams and Anthony Anderson in those morning hours on May 13th, instead of where Daryl Wendt says he was, then we will lose.
00:38:19
Speaker
So the trial court ends up rejecting the defense's request for su rebuttal, stating that the Profford testimony did not pertain to a new matter of first race in the government's rebuttal, and they would not have rebutted Anderson's testimony in the government's rebuttal case.
00:38:34
Speaker
So that's how we end up with this appeal, by the way. It's over this issue at the time. Okay. Just throwing this out there for a second. That's a lot of words to say what I interpret as like maybe they both did it.
00:38:54
Speaker
Do you get that feeling or no? I didn't get that feeling at all. Like, okay So ultimately the trial date for Darren went like when all this is going on, it's February 2017. Yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker
It ends up beginning September 4th, 2018, but the actual trial itself opens with opening statements September 11th, 2018, because of the time they needed to choose the jury.
00:39:19
Speaker
On October 25, 2018, they found him guilty of 20 counts of kidnapping, extortion, and murder. He's sentenced to four life terms in prison without the possibility of parole February 1, 2019.
00:39:32
Speaker
He starts appealing in December 2020, basically wanted a new trial on the grounds that of what we just read, that the judge, the trial court in this case, improperly blocked his lawyers from calling his witness, and For the most part, the D.C. Court of Appeals affirms his conviction and denies a new trial, but they do note that he was improperly denied the opportunity to introduce some exculpatory evidence.
Appeal Process and Family Reactions
00:40:00
Speaker
They don't reverse the trial results because of the, quote, overwhelming weight of other evidence against the appellate, but this is on December 15, 2022, which that's some of the documents we're reading from because it's a series of appeals that happen.
00:40:18
Speaker
I can't get past the knife, and that happens a lot because I think that was my issue with the Idaho murders, like the the DNA on the knife sheaf in that case.
00:40:28
Speaker
And in this instance, it's the DNA on the knife at the basement window and the DNA on the pizza crust, which you're right, pizza crust is a weird thing for DNA to appear on, but it appears on quite a few famous pizza crusts throughout history.
00:40:42
Speaker
Right, exactly. um so what made you think that it was the both of them? I was just wondering if, like like, both brothers had been involved here. I'm not saying they they were. I'm saying, like, that is, like, the best thing I think I could get from what the defense was trying to do is that maybe they were both there.
00:41:03
Speaker
Because I can't get past all this DNA being everywhere. Oh, yeah, no. Well, to me, no, I don't think both. Nobody else was charged, right? Right. No, no, it's just him. So thinking about like the timeline sort of, and I think they backed off of it at trial a little bit, especially when genetic genealogy became a thing. There was a brief period of time where there were some defense attorneys, especially in these like ah sort of heinous murder cases.
00:41:32
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe it wasn't defense attorneys. Maybe it was defendants. They were trying, they thought that they could get away with blaming a close relative. Right. Right. Like, they could argue um the DNA just looked like it was theirs, but it really belonged, you know, to a brother or a father, like that kind of thing. I don't think that happens that much anymore because it it wasn't really...
00:41:56
Speaker
the level that they're looking at profiles now, it that's not how it works, right? Yeah. It's not, while they share, siblings share like less than 50%, but probably more than like 25% of their DNA. And it can vary accordingly.
00:42:13
Speaker
But there are places that there's going to be differences in the way that they analyze like a one-to-one comparison. Like when you're when they're saying,
00:42:26
Speaker
that the defendant's DNA matches the pizza crust DNA, the defendant's brother's DNA is not going to match it. I think there was this like little period of time where they were trying to, and again, I i don't want to say defense attorneys. I think it was just more of the idea.
00:42:43
Speaker
ah Because we weren't entirely understanding DNA yet where like that could explain it away. Having a surrebuttal witness was never anything that was guaranteed. I feel like in this particular trial, just having read like the appellate documents, I think that trying to explain everything away was a mistake.
00:43:03
Speaker
Yeah. I don't think that's a good, not that I want him to get away with murder. I just, as a defense strategy, it was too perfect of a response to all the evidence. And obviously, i mean, more than likely this guy was actually guilty. There was a ton of evidence, right?
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I, you know, we're not really in the the the question asking mode of our ah our year, like when we do these episodes. But i do I do have some questions about this case, but it's not really about his guilt.
00:43:36
Speaker
It is interesting. i think that the brothers were the only way to go with the DNA as far as the DNA evidence. And again, they back it looks like they backed off of that during trial because i think by, so the crime happened in 15, by the time he's on trial, it'd 18. And see, I think all that had been ironed out by then.
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah, I pulled up a couple of um articles. One is from WTOP News that had an interesting couple of quotes in it. um It's from May of 2015, so kind of like you said. Nick Ionelli wrote this one up, and it says, Darren Wendt's family doesn't believe he's guilty of D.C. murder and arson.
00:44:14
Speaker
Darren Wendt, a man arrested in connection with a quadruple homicide in D.C., is getting support from his family. Attorney Robin Ficker... tells WTOP they're horrified by these events and they can't believe he be he had anything to do with it. Thicker has been speaking with Wint's relatives, including his brother, sister, and mother. They don't believe that he's guilty. They don't think the presumption of innocence is coming. he's being called a murderer.
00:44:38
Speaker
Wint is charged with murder being held without bond. Police arrested him after four people, including a child, were brutally killed inside a $4.5 million dollars home in D.C.' 's Woodley Park neighborhood.
00:44:49
Speaker
Investigators have said more than one person had to be involved, but Wint is the only person in custody. I'm going to drill in on that really quick. Police should be looking for other suspects, and I hope that's what they're doing, Ficker adds. Wint was linked to the crime scene through DNA discovered on the crust of discarded pizza, The evidence is circumstantial and almost unbelievable. Wint's family told me that he doesn't like pizza and never eats pizza.
00:45:15
Speaker
Ficker was Wint's attorney in the past in relatively minor cases. Now he may represent Wint again in the quadruple homicides. He says, I expect he'll be found not guilty in the long run.
00:45:26
Speaker
So that's one article that pops out there. Doesn't hold a lot of weight for me, but there was something from a couple of days earlier That's May 26, 2015. Amanda Iacone, who we've talked about before, um she's writing for WTOP May 22, 2015. And she says, court documents say that Wendt did not act alone. And I think this is what makes me think of the brothers.
00:45:54
Speaker
Basically, she recaps the story and says that he was arrested on a single charge of first-degree murder with the death of Savage Savopoulos. They indicate that Savopoulos was kidnapped and that went, stabbed, and hit him to death.
00:46:06
Speaker
They point out that all of the ah dead were found by firefighters in this home. But the crimes described in this affidavit ah required the presence and assistance of more than one person. That's from the criminal complaint that she's reading.
00:46:21
Speaker
The judge orders went held without bail. He's wearing a white jail jumpsuit, mumbled his name, but did not otherwise speak. During the hearing, prosecutors said they believe they have Wintz fingerprints on a water bottle inside the Slavopolis home. The criminal complaint provided more details about the death of the family's son and the fire that was set, ah basically stating that Philip had died of thermal injuries and sharp first force wounds. His body was found lying on the charred remnants of a mattress.
00:46:51
Speaker
um Investigators noticed the smell of gasoline in the home, and they brought in specially
Analysis and Speculation on Motives
00:46:57
Speaker
trained dog. I thought the interesting detail here is that they they don't believe that Wim could have done it on his own.
00:47:05
Speaker
Wait, but i I feel like the only way he did it was on his own. i Yeah, I don't see anything here that makes me think, like, you don't see anything that feels like multiple people, right?
00:47:17
Speaker
No, i i this isn't the kind of crime that multiple people usually commit. Now, if they hadn't have killed them, then it's possible that like they could have held, you know, like multiple people could have held four people for ransom.
00:47:36
Speaker
But I have a feeling this is complete speculation. I don't know if he had a mental break or if he was on drugs or something, but that's what i was fueling him. this The family was sort of stagger kidnapped.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yes. seriously And the fact that he got the money and still killed them, which I think he acted.
00:48:03
Speaker
i don't know. can only imagine what goes through somebody's head. And then it was over the course of what, two days? Yeah, it basically takes, it's really 24 hours, but yeah, it staggers from one day to the next.
00:48:17
Speaker
Okay, and I don't know like what happened when or whatever, like as far as... Like, we don't know who all was alive by the time the money actually got there. Right. right Versus, you know, a lot of different things. I remember thinking back when it happened, it didn't make a whole lot of sense that the father didn't do something. Right. Or even the mother do something because they did have their 10 year old there. Right. as far as fighting back, but it seemed like, for one thing, they were taken by surprise, but also that there are indications of, like, what all happened that made it seem almost like they were trying to comply.
00:49:01
Speaker
right Like, to avoid violence or avoid, like, the confrontation, and that was a mistake, right, obviously. i do feel like he was in need of money for some reason. Again, possibly drugs. that's what No, I don't think this was a drug situation. Well, but if he was on something?
00:49:21
Speaker
it could have been, but I think this is just an out-of-work guy freaking out. But why kill him, though? I don't know why kill them. Okay, so but he worked for him like 10 years earlier or whatever?
00:49:34
Speaker
right And I have a feeling his life went downhill after he lost that job. Right. So is this kind of revenge money? Is that what you're Yeah. it's so Well, I mean, it's over. it's i think it is revenge. It may be misguided revenge, but either that or he he needed money because everybody, well, most people who take hostages, the end result has something to do with money. i agree. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And so he needed it for something. And maybe this family, he thought, oh, well, they would have the access to the kind of money I want to get, right? Yeah.
00:50:09
Speaker
And maybe it was the only family he could think of. Maybe there were bad feelings. I don't really know the dynamic exactly because, you know, it's possible for somebody to own a company and not know every single one of their employees, right? right So I don't know what the breakdown was here, but he clearly had bad feelings towards the father, you know, in this situation. And it was targeted, right? that And that's really important to consider, I think. This was not a random act.
00:50:43
Speaker
I mean, it was to the extent that they didn't expect it, but the he had in mind who he was going after. And it was for a reason, even if it was only a perceived reason by the defendant, right? Yeah. and it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy um for everybody involved because it accomplished absolutely nothing. But when you are in a hostage situation where you can 100%
00:51:11
Speaker
and you still end up dead, that was like a no-win situation to begin with. And I think there has to be something a little more to it, because otherwise, you're looking at a situation where he was just trying to get as much out of the situation as possible before he committed a quadruple murder.
00:51:30
Speaker
yeah And so there wasn't even really a hostage situation. It was a prolonged murder scene. Yeah. Yeah. It's really sad. And i I remember thinking about how tragic it was that the 10-year-old was killed. And i mean, the parents and the housekeeper, obviously, as well. But the child, you know...
00:51:50
Speaker
That child didn't do anything to him. No, not at all. He wasn't you know capable of it. But I see it the way that basically what you just described, I see it as one guy having a chip and being able to like pick him off the way he did. It just kind of works out. It's almost happenstance with a little planning. It's not really a big genius thing for him to have pulled it off. I remember hearing the story of the housekeeper's husband.
00:52:16
Speaker
That was awful. He had come over to the house and he got this BS answer ah later because he goes to knock on the door because his wife's not home. And it like, I think it's um the dad calls him and says, look, my wife had to go to the hospital. ah Your wife went with her. So she'll be back tomorrow.
00:52:35
Speaker
um oh yeah. And it was all like, just a story. Yeah. It was just a story. and I remember him, he was on the news somewhere and he was basically like, I couldn't figure out why they would want her to go with him she doesn't speak english she doesn't drive and like he was really trying to avoid getting another person held captive yeah that's ultimately what it was and i that suggests that he was trying to comply though i'm with you i think i think that
00:53:06
Speaker
whatever thing happened, I think this became about killing the witnesses for some reason. Maybe if dad remembered him and tried to talk to him, that could have screwed it up.
00:53:19
Speaker
You know, there's a balancing act in life and there's people who would look at that situation and freak out and kill the guy There's people who would like look at the situation and have empathy and sympathy for them. And sometimes it can go too far and you end up dead. right But I think, I always imagined when it happened, I imagined the dad, like, over and over again, just basically trying to talk him out of... Anything to with violence. Yeah. and to the extent that it cost them their life. Because, you know, at any point in time, i mean, I guess he took their cell phones, too. i don't know.
00:53:57
Speaker
i have about 10 million ways that I can communicate with different people that I could get the police... to my house, even if somebody took my cell phone or whatever, right? Yeah. I would, like, figure it out.
00:54:12
Speaker
And i guess maybe that wasn't the case in 2015, but that wasn't, you know, it was 10 years ago. But it wasn't that long ago.
Conclusion: Reflections on the Case
00:54:20
Speaker
And i just think that this was, a like, a surprising situation for everybody. And there was really no point to it because he got the money and it didn't matter. Yeah.
00:54:33
Speaker
Yeah, this one... You know, I try to avoid the dark ones, but like I couldn't avoid all of them because some of them are the most interesting situations in terms of hostage takings.
00:54:44
Speaker
um I think ultimately, you know, this turns out more to be a homicide than a hostage taking, but the people are held. We know that the staggered order of things, which I assume is how you control and get the money.
00:55:03
Speaker
And I assume that's why dad is still cooperating and getting the money brought to the house is because you basically say, I've got your kid in the other room. You're tied up in here. I've got you tied up, your wife and the housekeeper tied up. And you don't want anything to come in terms of harm of those people. You don't want anything bad to happen. you're just trying to juggle everything, right? Yeah.
00:55:26
Speaker
Until you can get through it. And it was just surprising that something took a turn, right? And I don't know if that was his plan all along. It seemed like some of his iPhone history and everything. Yeah.
00:55:39
Speaker
It was sort of like, it didn't seem planned out. No, it didn't. As well as... One would think. However, i do think I do think it took some planning to get them all separated are to take them all hostage the way he did, right? Which was staggering. He waited for the mom to go for a walk, took the housekeeper and the son, then the mom when she came back, and then dad when he came home from work, right? Yeah.
00:56:05
Speaker
And so that, it seems like that would take a little bit of planning. And then in order to, when you separate the family and you induce, are you, you're using the separation as a leverage, like you said, you know, I've got my, your son in the other room, you're going to do this. So he stays safe whatever. But he didn't look like a completely not intelligent guy with his searches and stuff.
00:56:28
Speaker
That's why i assumed that he had to have something altering his thinking, like drugs, alcohol. I don't know. i don't know what the deal was. Yeah, i I don't know how we get here. Honestly, I don't i don't know how we end up with this whole situation. It's absolutely tragic. It's honestly one of the more terrible hostage takings ending in a homicide that I've read.
00:56:52
Speaker
It was said that the family had suffered. And that was one of the things that really bothered me about like the whole situation. was they had I don't know how they knew or anything, but they had basically been tortured. And that was just terrible. Yeah. In terms of rabbit holes for this one, I don't recommend going down this rabbit hole. This reminds me of the Cheshire home invasion. It reminds me of so many terrible things. Like ah this one, if you want to read some of the court documents, there are some interesting If failed arguments being made here.
00:57:24
Speaker
um But for the most part, in terms of the D.C. Mansion murders, um it's sort of one of those stories that should be left to, you know, sort of go to peace on its own.
00:57:35
Speaker
It is a hostage taking. So it comes up in the course of our f our holiday this year.
00:57:50
Speaker
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00:58:01
Speaker
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01:00:05
Speaker
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01:00:24
Speaker
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