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Season Six: Too Demented to Die
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In today’s episode, we talk about the resolution of a sixty year old missing persons case and a strange set of appeals.
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Holiday Preparations and Episode Sequencing
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:01:01
Speaker
It is summertime and this some of these episodes are getting a little out of order, but not out of order for the audience, just out of order in terms of how we're recording it, because we're deep into working out holiday stuff.
Interview with Journalist Haley Lloyd
00:01:15
Speaker
And I do want to say it's it's funny because just as we were coming on here, we were talking about journalism today. um Someone tracked me down for a brief interview this week out of Evanston, Illinois.
00:01:30
Speaker
Her name is Haley Lloyd and she's looking for cases out of Evanston to work on, but I wanted to tell her thank you for the interview. ah said some very polite things about the show.
00:01:43
Speaker
She's much younger than I realized. like She somehow tracked me down and actually at first I thought she had tracked me down to like my cell phone and I was like, oh wow, because I didn't know that was on the internet and it's not.
Improving Communication: The Phone Line Fix
00:01:55
Speaker
It was actually one of the true crime excess lines. After five years of trying, it finally fixed it. It now goes to different phones where I can like listen to older voice messages. It used to be i had it on this one phone, and I had to go listen to it strange way.
True Crime News and Missing Persons Statistics
00:02:12
Speaker
I had a piece of true crime news that I dropped about three weeks ago. I had found it and I'm bringing it back up now because someone sent a note and they were, i think they're a podcaster. I didn't get the sense of like them just being a listener, ah but they didn't identify themselves by name. That's Okay.
00:02:33
Speaker
not going to dime anybody out. They had a question. The question was, we talked in the past about missing persons cases that are solved by the person being found. And they asked me for examples of it.
00:02:46
Speaker
and I responded and i and I kind of gave a couple. i didn't give any of the ones that like you and I have come across where we felt like this person just doesn't want to be found. Well, right. But I did give some examples because they asked me like what I thought the percentages were were on that.
00:03:02
Speaker
And i just want to address like missing persons statistics for one minute, then going to tell the story. The number of missing persons in a given year, is a very large number in terms of reports filed.
00:03:17
Speaker
And depending on the year and depending on where you read this information, can range from 180,000 700,000 missing persons reports filed year. That's missing person reports filed. Right.
00:03:30
Speaker
that'sing person reports filed right But what I try to stress to people is if you were to go on NamUs right now, and I don't know the exact number, you're probably going to see a number of missing people that reads more like 20,000.
00:03:48
Speaker
It didn't used to be that high, did it? No, and like vex's a lot of that is technology working and reporting working. Backlogging, getting caught up.
00:03:59
Speaker
yeah Right, getting caught up on things. um It has taken years to get a national database for missing and unidentified people sorted, and they're doing a very good job of it there. i think so, too.
00:04:10
Speaker
A vast majority of missing persons reports filed in a year, particularly when it comes to vulnerable adults and children. There's 25,639 right now.
00:04:21
Speaker
This is Namath? Yeah. Missing people on Namath. Yeah. Okay. I was a little low, but still it's like, it's not as big as that, you know, several hundred thousand per year.
00:04:32
Speaker
And that's because those missing persons reports are cleared. Like they may, they get filed because for whatever reason, like could be a runaway. It could be like a genuine disconnect.
00:04:45
Speaker
We're talking about like 95% those are cleared. Yeah. Yeah, it's a huge number are cleared like right away. um And then in the following weeks and months, and typically up to a year, another three or 4% of those cases are cleared.
00:05:03
Speaker
And you're really only left with a very small number of missing people per year who just aren't found. And that's in the United States and Canada. um I'm really familiar with those two systems. I'm not as familiar ah in Europe or South America.
00:05:19
Speaker
But I'm saying all of that to say it is unusual for someone to really remain missing and for any extended period of time.
00:05:31
Speaker
I didn't see the question or whatever, um but were they asking about like a situation where somebody ah like a mom left to go live a different life and then, you know,
00:05:44
Speaker
That's sort of what they were asking. Or was it when like we are looking at missing people and we find them alive and well on social media? um I think it was a mixture of those two things.
00:05:58
Speaker
It was kind of leaning towards that doesn't happen. I think they've heard other people say it. Maybe they came across one episode of our show. which Which thing doesn't happen?
00:06:10
Speaker
People don't come back from being missing people and show up again.
The Case of Audrey Backeberg: Found After 60 Years
00:06:14
Speaker
it does They do. um it's not It's not a lot. No. But most of the time, it's either children who were abducted by their non-custodial parent. Or just one of the parents. One of the parents, right, and left.
00:06:31
Speaker
It can be that. It can be any person who walks away from their life And we did a weird case a few years ago where a man had left his family and then he started a whole new life, like not too far away. I think it happened maybe in New York.
00:06:51
Speaker
It was in the New England area. Yeah, okay. It was a couple towns over. And then, so he left his, i think he had a couple of kids. He left, and they thought something awful had happened to him, but he was a missing person.
00:07:06
Speaker
And then, i don't know how many years it was later, he died. Right. Well, he was a roommate, right? Right. Of some random guy that he just paid monthly to live there.
00:07:19
Speaker
And, like, he had left his life and he was found again, right? yeah We've covered several, um it seems like women, and I don't know, ah they left their kids and everything. And then, you know, when they're old and gray, they show back up, not necessarily...
00:07:40
Speaker
it's most of the It's not the family usually saying it. It's usually law enforcement saying, just want to let you all know that this we're closing this 40-year-old missing person case because we found her alive and well elsewhere.
00:07:53
Speaker
yeah That kind of thing. And there there's been a couple of fugitive cases that turn out like that where technically not a missing person but a wanted person And we've covered some of those, particularly around the holiday times. We've gotten into two or three of those cases.
00:08:10
Speaker
One, i believe the guy had gone all the way to Australia, but he was from the U.S. and he was wanted. ah yeah. we We covered, yeah, i remember that. But I have have a piece of news that came from Treisman from NPR wrote up.
00:08:28
Speaker
the article on it. And I thought I would share it like at the top of the show to kind of address that because ah don't know that this is the oldest one I've ever seen, but it might be.
00:08:39
Speaker
It was, On NPR May 6, 2025, and I found a ah bunch of sources. I actually was slightly familiar with this missing persons case, but it didn't relate to anything we've ever covered before.
00:08:52
Speaker
I just wanted to highlight it here because it's interesting how old it is. The headline says, police found a missing woman 60 years after she disappeared.
00:09:04
Speaker
She wants to stay hidden.
00:09:08
Speaker
Which is interesting that like now it's a news article when she wants to stay hidden. And I think there may be some mistakes in that. And I kind of debated like how this gets dropped in previous episodes, like where I decided not to do it, was I was debating...
00:09:24
Speaker
do i want to tell that story if she wants to stay hidden? and And I thought I would highlight it just from the perspective of, you know, people asking me questions about missing persons cases. Here's what it says.
00:09:36
Speaker
It says six decades after a young mother vanished from her small city in South Central Wisconsin, authorities have found her alive and well, living in another state. Audrey Backberg was 20 years old when she disappeared from Reedsburg in July 1962.
00:09:54
Speaker
This according to a bulletin on the Wisconsin Department of Justice website. It says the family's babysitter claimed that the two of them hitchhiked to Madison, Wisconsin, which would be about 50, 55 miles away. and And then they got on a Greyhound bus together to Indianapolis, Indiana.
00:10:15
Speaker
According to this bulletin, it says, she said she last saw Audrey walking around the corner away from the bus stop. Audrey never returned home and has not been heard from again.
00:10:28
Speaker
That is, until now. The Sauk County Sheriff's Office announced last week, so the end of April, 2025, that it had resolved Beckenberg's long, cold, missing persons case, saying she is alive and well and currently resides out of state.
00:10:45
Speaker
Further investigation has revealed that Ms. Backenberg's disappearance was by her own choice and not the result of any criminal activity or foul play. That's according to the sheriff up there, Chip Meister.
00:10:58
Speaker
So the NPR article goes on to cite a few other articles, including a report on the Baraboo News Republic It had an article back in 2002, which and know we're talking about 60 years.
00:11:14
Speaker
That would have been the 40th anniversary of her going missing. And they also talked to ABC affiliates, WISN. um ah One of the detectives is...
00:11:27
Speaker
speaking to WISN as well, and they pulled more of the quotes over. It just says, Chip Meister said the case was assigned to a sheriff's office detective earlier this year for a comprehensive review as part of an ongoing examination of cold case files.
00:11:41
Speaker
That process included a thorough reevaluation of all case files and evidence, combined with re-interviewing witnesses, and uncovering new insights.
00:11:52
Speaker
That detective, Isaac Hansen, said that he discovered Backeberg's sister had an Ancestry.com account, which led him to new data, including a possible address.
00:12:04
Speaker
So I called the local sheriff's department, said, hey, there's this lady living at this address. Do you guys have somebody who can just go pop in? This is according to Isaac Hansen. 10 minutes later, she called me, and we talked for 45 minutes.
00:12:19
Speaker
Hansen said that he promised Backberg that he would keep the conversation and her whereabouts private, but said she had her reasons for leaving. i think that she was just removed and had moved on from things and kind of did her own thing and led her own
Why Do People Disappear?
00:12:33
Speaker
life.
00:12:33
Speaker
She sounded happy, confident in her decision, and had no regrets. Right. um That's exactly what I think of, like, when you do have somebody kind of show. And, well, i it's weird. I think of that and then also, like, kidnap victims, right? Right. we You know, there's a lot less of that happening now. Right.
00:12:56
Speaker
So one interesting thing i saw about this, so she's 20 years old when she goes missing, way back when. And you can look her up now, Audrey Backenberg. It's B-A-C-K-E-B-E-R-G. There's a husband that has gotten reported, either by her or someone else, July 7th of 1962.
00:13:14
Speaker
She's picking up her last paycheck. So that's where we have her in time. Three days before that, police got a report that her husband had loaded up some guns,
00:13:25
Speaker
and that he had been carrying them around in his car and had threatened to kill her. Her family kind of stuck with the idea at the time that like they're going to find a body one day.
00:13:38
Speaker
She had two young children at the time of her disappearance. So she's 20, you know, very young children. She made the call to leave back in July of 1962. So now we're in July, 2025 so now we're in july twenty twenty five and This woman has been missing for more than 60 years, but they have closed this case.
00:14:05
Speaker
She just did not want to be a part of the life she was living anymore, and she left. Now, is this a really common thing? don't think so. no it's not it's not a really common thing, but...
00:14:19
Speaker
When you and I are talking and we start running numbers on stuff and we say 95% of missing persons cases are closed, that already has taken that number down to a very small percentage.
00:14:34
Speaker
Then another three or four are closed because bodies are discovered or people show back up. And then some of them, like the 25,000, 26,000 that are on NamUs, they open for a very long period of time.
00:14:47
Speaker
And right now NamUs covers... 125 years, pretty well. There are still people who are missing who are not reported. and There are still backlogs that are slowly being you know filled out.
00:15:00
Speaker
But cases like Audrey Backenberg are more common than you realize. They are. um And those are the, I think we refer to them as people who are only missing to the people that report them missing. Correct.
00:15:18
Speaker
they're not They're actually living their lives elsewhere. And that's not really a missing person, um except to the people who report them missing. Yeah. And I know we covered a case last year, and what sticks out to me was on social media, there was like memorial stuff up, and then a woman from like a fundraiser ah emailed a sister and was like, I just saw your sister right here.
00:15:47
Speaker
And they had mixed the ashes with their mama. yeah Do you remember that? yeah Yeah. That's yeah. That was, I think that's been more recent. i think that was this year. I'm not sure yeah we did it. but and She was in Detroit.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, that was a situation where, you know, actually she wasn't missing. She was, they, she had been missing, but then they had misidentified her as a dead body. Correct.
00:16:14
Speaker
And when they went back to to check it again, it wasn't her at all. Yeah. And that is, that was crazy. yeah, Yeah, but it is, um that's ah it's an interesting thing for somebody to ah wonder about.
00:16:32
Speaker
um The only reason I say it is because of my experience and how much i I look. I don't do it as much now, but ah before we did the show, kind of leading up to it, I would i looked at all kinds of missing persons cases.
00:16:50
Speaker
And, you know, when ah In the case that we just talked about, you've got somebody on a bus with a babysitter yeah walking away. Okay.
00:17:02
Speaker
I mean, she was alive and well. The babysitter didn't kill her, right? Right. And that's exactly what I would have thought happened, right?
00:17:13
Speaker
Is that she was leaving to go live her life elsewhere. Now, it's, you know, it stinks when they don't tell anybody what they're doing, because I feel like that can cause a lot of grief. But, I mean, people are free to do that.
00:17:26
Speaker
But it tells you sort of what kind of person they are.
Resolution of Missing Persons Cases Over Time
00:17:29
Speaker
i mean, not to be mean, but we don't I don't know what kind of person she is. I don't know what kind of situation she was in. All I know is she was determined that she didn't want to be found. Right. No. i Yeah. No. i'm Not necessarily her. I'm just saying, like, if you care about somebody that has left and you think something terrible has happened to them, you know, you've got to reevaluate the situation, right?
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah. That's all. And so she's been covered... Kind of, in newspapers.com, by some of the local papers up there, they've picked up the case here and again. So they've gotten statements from the police over the years. And I wanted to throw a couple of these out there so that people understand what they were looking at this.
00:18:06
Speaker
um and One of the articles quoted says, ah by the point everyone is looking at this, in 2002, it's 40 years after the fact, Backeberg's family believed that she...
00:18:22
Speaker
By the point that everyone is looking at this, back in 2002, Backeberg's family believed that she had long been murdered and they were hoping to find a tip to find her body.
00:18:34
Speaker
In fact, the article says that investigators had gotten a reliable tip from a confidential informant that her body was buried on a rural South County property, which they were planning to search with forensic dog.
00:18:48
Speaker
Now, according to the sheriff at the time, Randy Stammen, he said his officers had spoken with investigators who were on the original case 40 years earlier, and they never felt comfortable that she's simply ah missing person.
00:19:02
Speaker
He said, we don't know if she's simply a missing person living a life somewhere else, but we do know there's been no activity on her social security number. So the sheriff's office over the years has said that they have had investigators pursue numerous leads, and the case was considered to be Cole.
00:19:20
Speaker
So I point all of that out to say, like, a lot of times nobody really knows what's going on.
00:19:31
Speaker
um Investigating a case that old, condensing it into like a 10-part podcast series, which is something that commonly happens in this day and age,
00:19:43
Speaker
is very boring. Like all of the work that goes into that is very boring. You're spending literally years of your life. Um, there's a couple of different podcasts that, uh, I've, I've talked to the, the hosts and the producers and different people behind the scenes over the years.
00:19:58
Speaker
Um, they know when they get into it, that like, This is going to be like a really long road they're going down. And I have seen people, and I myself have scrapped stories, but I've seen people scrap an entire season of a thing because they discover something is off. And some of the time, i would say probably a quarter of the time, if you're doing just missing persons, you discover that that missing person is exactly what Meg has always said.
00:20:28
Speaker
they're only missing to that husband who reported her missing and then her family later reported her missing. So... I don't know if she's in contact with her sister or not, but if it good on her sister, if her sister kept her secret all this time, she clearly didn't want to be a part of her husband's life.
00:20:46
Speaker
I don't really agree with like ditching the kids, but I was not in her shoes. So I'm not going to be the one like to judge her on what decisions she made there. I would have done things slightly differently, I think, but you never know what someone was experiencing that made them do a thing.
00:21:06
Speaker
Right. And to be perfectly honest, you don't have to be experiencing anything. Any adult can walk away from anything they want to, and they don't have to give anybody an explanation for anything. So I brought that up today to be kind of the true crime news and to sort of address like the question of like, do people actually like walk away from their lives?
00:21:26
Speaker
We're finding more and more because like, you know, the easy thing to do for ah news outlets and sometimes tabloid outlets is to cover true
The Troubled Life of Ralph LeBroy Menzies
00:21:36
Speaker
crime things. And one of the more sensational things they do is to cover when unidentified set of remains from 40 years ago suddenly identified and or when a missing person is suddenly found. We've seen that in recent months. I actually saw a teenager that had like been sort of kept by an older boyfriend.
00:21:55
Speaker
She was found. That's been in the last year. ah And I was shocked by like how that case kind of went. There have been multiple cases where i think you described it as like a non-custodial parental abduction.
00:22:10
Speaker
i don't know if they were all non-custodial or not, but I've seen multiple cases where a kid is now turned 18 and like I've always seen them on like NCMEC. So I've seen like their baby picture.
00:22:21
Speaker
But now they're 18 and they show back up and there's no longer missing. There was a recently there was a child that was found ah to the doctor, I think, in Georgia. that where he was talking about? The mom had had taken him.
00:22:38
Speaker
Oh, yes. i don't know how long that kid had been missing. Seven years, maybe? it was a lot it was a while, yeah. um He was on a like maybe a show with a couple other parents who had similar things happen.
00:22:50
Speaker
He had been missing from Georgia, and he ends up being found in Colorado, but he had lived maybe in Connecticut or somewhere. And he his dad still had like his room waiting for him to come back. Yeah. um I saw that one, too. that's like that's To me, that's a little more common. And again, i don't know which side of either parent is like in the right or if everybody's wrong. it's Well, I mean, it if you have a child, unless you can work out an arrangement, you've got to deal with the other parent.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah. um If you do anything to, like, for example, you know that dad wanted to be part of his child's life, and he was, the mother broke a court order to do what she did.
00:23:41
Speaker
no And so what she did was illegal, right? He wasn't doing anything wrong, I don't think. I mean, she just didn't want the dad in her life anymore, and that was wrong. And you know now they've been reunited, I'm sure he's going to have custody, right? Yeah. um Because...
00:23:58
Speaker
I have a few. I mean, I don't know. It's really hard. And I think you really have to look beyond yourself if you end up with a child with somebody that you don't get along with. Yeah.
00:24:08
Speaker
Because you have no idea how much it's affecting your child. Yeah. And i so I point all this out to basically say missing people show Even 60 years later, apparently, in very strange ways.
00:24:23
Speaker
And, like, ah that doesn't mean, like, you should not investigate it or you shouldn't look for missing persons in your family and your friends group. But you should consider boundaries.
00:24:34
Speaker
And I was going to say, like, a lot of missing persons reports are closed as the person showed back up. Yeah. um like They don't typically make it into NamUs or it's rare that they make it into NamUs and become part of that 20,000 people. Right, right. But, you know, it's still, if if a missing person gets report reported, um most of the time they show back up.
00:25:04
Speaker
it But as far as the long cases that are kind of like, you know, something happened here, Right. right that's uh it happens i mean i have no idea i would have to i don't even know that you could quantify that but um it's an option right i have piles that i put people in when they're missing yeah what went missing with them was there a dog was there a vehicle was there a gun like all those things change which pile to go in right yeah to me they do and see and
00:25:36
Speaker
ah The case that you talked about earlier, i would say that I would have strongly felt like she possibly ah was killed because she left her children behind.
00:25:46
Speaker
I also realized that ah it was 60 years ago, and occasionally you have women who know that their husband won't hurt the kids and will take care of them.
00:25:59
Speaker
Right. yeah And it's you that's in danger or you're the one being emotionally abused. And I can see where, um, I can also think about how, like when I had a little kid, like I could have run away from my life a bunch of times and not look back.
00:26:15
Speaker
Because it's hard, right? And I'm not saying that's what she did. I don't know. But, you know, sometimes it's animosity just between the the husband and wife or whatever. And has it's not that he's like an overall mean person and he's going to hurt his children. So I don't know.
00:26:32
Speaker
I'm not sure where that one would have landed. i don't I'd never heard of that case before. But there is a pile that is, they're out there living somewhere. They just walked away from their life.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah. And a lot of times, to me, I don't feel like those types of cases are necessarily our business, right? Well, I tried to avoid them for the most part, but this one got a little bit of national coverage.
00:26:56
Speaker
And I swung back around to it really because I wanted to point out that, like, you know, the weirdest things can happen in these cases. And, like, there's not really any kind of time limit on it that, like,
00:27:08
Speaker
like after this much time, they're definitely deceased or they're definitely living a new life somewhere or whatever. Like you just, you don't really know. yeah that's true.
00:27:19
Speaker
And I wanted to couple this with another older thing that happened. This is kind of ongoing, but you and I talked about this kind of a text earlier this week and the story stuck with me. So I pulled like the court records, which were available on this case. and like there's some good summaries online I'm going to give you a little background on sort of the subject of this, and then I'm going to tell you what i'm talking about him.
00:27:45
Speaker
And i'm going to pull largely from a state Supreme Court ruling from March of 94. And i guess the easiest way to intro this guy is sort of from those, the the court documents themselves.
00:28:00
Speaker
ah This is about a guy named Ralph LeBroy Menzies. He had been born in Utah back in April 1958.
00:28:09
Speaker
He grew up in a lot of abuse. ah By all accounts from the court records, his mom was married multiple times and I don't know which side of this it fell on, but but the stepfathers that she brought into the life of Ralph Leroy Menzies and his siblings, they weren't great people.
00:28:34
Speaker
There were lots of reports of assault. There were reports that at times they would... um fail to feed the children. there doesn't look to be a lot of social services intervention, but at some point we're forcing them to live in these very small rooms that like by description, they feel like they're probably either closets or like little bonus rooms that weren't really designed to have multiple beds for multiple children.
00:28:59
Speaker
They were held back from going to school by their family. and so in
00:29:07
Speaker
You've got the Menzi children growing up without real
00:29:13
Speaker
caretakers or or parental guardians. The biological mom of this group dies very early. And one of his sisters that he shared room with ends up taking care of their younger brother, who apparently had some some type of disabilities that aren't really talked about. They describe him as being in very poor intellectual and physical health, and I don't know exactly what that means.
00:29:37
Speaker
The school records that pop up in the court documents for this gentleman show that like none of the siblings have a great track record for attendance at school. And... When he's 18 years old in 1976, Ralph Menzies is convicted of an aggravated robbery, and he's given a very interesting sentence.
00:29:57
Speaker
That sentence is ah the term of five years to life.
The Murder of Maureen Hunsaker
00:30:03
Speaker
So you've got an 18-year-old that's convicted of an aggravated robbery, and they're either going to be in there until they're in their early 20s, or they're going to be in there forever.
00:30:14
Speaker
So two years into this, when he's 20 years old, July 6th of 1978, a prisoner named Johnny Ray Sloan and Ralph Menzies, they break out of the Utah State Prison.
00:30:28
Speaker
And over the course of the next week, they wreak some havoc. It's covered pretty well in the Deseret News. If you have newspapers.com or just want to go on their site, they have a couple of the articles where you can still read them. They're like screenshots of the article.
00:30:44
Speaker
But a week later, July 1978, It's alleged that Ralph Menzies robbed and then shot a taxi driver with a shotgun. He's put on trial for this in the fall of 1978, but the jury deadlocks on the verdict and the case is declared a mistrial.
00:31:07
Speaker
He ends up in February of 1979, I think there's like a plea arrangement that happens. um It could be a conviction, it's just not recorded correctly here.
00:31:18
Speaker
But Ralph Menzies is given another five years to life sentence in February of 1979 for another count of aggravated robbery. He also gets ah concurrent sentence running at at the same time of one to 15 years for escaping prison.
00:31:37
Speaker
And this is going to go through the Utah court system. And in 1980, it's going to be upheld, the aggravated robbery verdict. But that's the documents that we're able to look at as they sort of unfold.
00:31:51
Speaker
Despite these sentences feeling kind of long with this one to 15 and this five years to life times two, all of it being upheld in 1980, Ralph Menzies gets out on parole um October 9th of 1984.
00:32:06
Speaker
That's just four years later. Keeping up with him in time, he's only going to be 26 years old-ish when he gets out.
00:32:19
Speaker
26 and a half, I guess. He ends up in December of 1985 getting arrested again for what is described as the theft of Christmas decorations.
00:32:31
Speaker
It's definitely the time of year that stealing Christmas decorations would happen in December 1985. And February 10th of 1986, so just a couple months later, he pleads guilty to this attempted theft, and he gets scheduled for sentencing March 11th of 1986.
00:32:49
Speaker
But for some reason, even though he's pled out, to this attempted theft, and he has a serious enough record, which it's kind of at a time when a lot of people were held between plea deals and convictions, but they don't do that here. They release him on bail February 20th of 1986.
00:33:11
Speaker
And that's sort of where we pick up. What happens next is the meat of the story.
00:33:20
Speaker
Three days after he was released on bail, February 23rd, 1986, young woman named Maureen Hunsaker, she's 26 years old. She is working at a gas station in a place called Kearns, Utah.
00:33:37
Speaker
That evening, Maureen's husband, guy named Jim, he calls her, but she doesn't answer the phone at the gas station.
00:33:49
Speaker
This worries Jim. And a little later on, he drives up to the gas station and he finds that she's gone.
00:34:03
Speaker
And not only is she gone, she hasn't left anything behind. And i think if I'm reading this court document correctly, the cash register is empty. He goes home he...
00:34:16
Speaker
he Anticipates something that's very, very wrong. Calls the police. But around 1105 that night, Jim Hunsaker gets a phone call.
00:34:28
Speaker
It's from Maureen. He says that she was upset and she was scared. And she tells her husband that she's been kidnapped by someone.
00:34:40
Speaker
But that she's going to be released soon. The police have already joined Jim Hunsaker at this point. And in the course of this conversation, the phone is cut off.
00:34:52
Speaker
So we know like this is true. And the way that the court approaches this is pretty straightforward. the The facts of it being largely undisputed to this point.
00:35:03
Speaker
And what they say about this is they say, as background reciting the facts that are largely undisputed, at approximately 9.50 p.m. Sunday, February 23rd in Salt Lake County, Salt Lake County Sheriff's deputies were dispatched to the Gasimat station located off of West 4700 South.
00:35:23
Speaker
Deputies found customers waiting to pay, but the cashier's booth was empty and the door to the gas station was locked. The station attendant was missing, but they could still see her coat inside of the booth, and there was a radio playing.
00:35:38
Speaker
The preliminary accounting indicated that approximately $70 in cash was missing. I've seen this number as $100, $116, $125, and $70. So I don't know exactly how much it is, but the bottom line is the TIL doesn't balance.
00:35:54
Speaker
They recount Deputy Scott Gamble going to the home of Maureen and Jim Hunsaker. And while he's at the home at approximately 11.05 p.m., Jim gets this call.
00:36:07
Speaker
Maureen says that she had been robbed and kidnapped, but that either her abductor or her abductors, like with an S like plural, intended to release her sometime later that night.
00:36:22
Speaker
Deputy Gamble actually spoke with Maureen, and she repeated her statement that a robbery had occurred. However, when he asked her if she had been kidnapped, he did not get a clear answer, and he could not tell in court.
00:36:39
Speaker
He could not tell us if she had refused or she was unable to answer the question. He also asked a question regarding her current location. So Jim Hunsaker again speaks with Maureen.
00:36:54
Speaker
Maureen says to him, what should I do? And the phone cut off.
00:37:01
Speaker
So for the next 48 hours, the question is, where is Maureen?
00:37:10
Speaker
But that's going to be answered on Tuesday, February 25th of 1986. So this is Sunday night we're talking. Tuesday at 5 o'clock, a hiker is at the Storm Mountain picnic area in an area known as Big Cottonwood Canyon.
00:37:27
Speaker
And they discover ah body. She had been strangled. Her throat had been cut. Her purse was still missing. It was not in the immediate vicinity of the body.
00:37:40
Speaker
That same evening, ah jailer at the Salt Lake County Jail, so this is Tuesday night, He finds several identification cards belonging to Maureen in a desk drawer that is inside the jail's changing rooms.
00:38:01
Speaker
He recognizes the picture of the driver on the driver's license as a woman who was reported missing the night before on the news. So he's remembering Monday night's news. Detectives later determine how they believe those identification cards get into the drawer.
00:38:18
Speaker
According to jail records, Ralph Menzies had been booked into the jail on unrelated charges at 6.40 p.m. on Monday night.
00:38:30
Speaker
So that's February 24th. It's right in the middle of her going missing and the body being discovered. He left the booking area for a short time without supervision and was found standing in the changing room.
00:38:43
Speaker
Shortly thereafter, and there's two reports on this. One of them says that the identification cards were found in a drawer. And now we find out like that that's not actually the case.
00:38:59
Speaker
The officer who grabs Ralph, because like when you're in jail, they really don't want you wandering around. They want you to stand wherever they tell you to stand. So him wandering away made an officer follow him.
00:39:13
Speaker
And that officer finds these identification cards in a clothing hamper. So he picks them up because he obviously wanted to know what this dude was up to. And he places them in that desk drawer.
00:39:24
Speaker
So they're not going to be found like right away. So that's Monday night. Then Tuesday night, they realize they're there. So according to the court records, also on Tuesday evening, Tim Larrabee is a high school student.
00:39:41
Speaker
He's watching the news and he learns that a hiker has discovered a body at the Storm Mountain picnic area. So on Wednesday, Larrabee tells Salt Lake deputies that he and his girlfriend, a girl named Beth Brown, had skipped school on Monday, February the 24th, and they had been up at Storm Mountain.
00:40:02
Speaker
According to Tim, they had noticed a full-size two-door, late 1960s, cream-colored automobile sitting in the parking lot. I don't know if he says this from memory because of the way the court documents were laid out, but He agrees or brings up that this vehicle would have been similar in appearance to a 1968 Buick Riviera.
00:40:27
Speaker
Tim and Beth both saw a man and a woman at the site, but they said at the time they saw them, nothing unusual had been happening. So that means if if we're tying all this together, Maureen,
00:40:43
Speaker
is potentially alive during the school day on Monday after she disappears Sunday night.
00:40:50
Speaker
They hear a short scream later on, and Tim said the two of them concluded that the woman had slipped or had been frightened by an animal. But about 15 minutes later, Tim Larrabee saw the man walking alone, but neither Beth nor Tim see the woman walking again.
00:41:09
Speaker
And Tim is able to describe the suspect as a white male who's 25 to 30 years age. He says he's probably around six foot one has a medium build, black curly hair with very prominent sideburns and a mustache.
00:41:23
Speaker
And he's wearing wire rimmed glasses. So one of the detectives in this film, Morass creates a composite drawing of a possible suspect based on that description.
00:41:36
Speaker
After they learn that Marines identification cards have been found at the jail, Sheriff's detectives don't have to do much with the composite drawing except compare it to the photographs of the inmates that have been booked into the facility from February 23rd through the 25th.
00:41:52
Speaker
Although I will say this, I found this very interesting. In this jail, 1986, between February between february twenty third Sunday and the 25th, Tuesday, there were more than 200 inmates booked.
00:42:07
Speaker
That's crazy. Yep. But they pull out three photos. And one of those photos is Ralph Menzies. So a detective named Jerry Thompson, he pulls Ralph in to question him about Marines going missing or kidnapping and her ultimate homicide.
00:42:26
Speaker
According to Ralph Menzies, he said that on Sunday, February 23rd, he had borrowed a car from Troy Dentor. He had picked up a young woman on State Street in the evening, and he told the detective that while he was with this woman, he also picked up his girlfriend, Nicole Arnold, and he drove around, but the two women were arguing.
00:42:46
Speaker
Menzies reportedly drops off Nicole Arnold, and then leaves the unidentified woman somewhere around 7200 West Street or twenty five ah twenty and 2400 South Street.
00:43:00
Speaker
So according to Ralph, he then goes back to his house and has a conversation with Nicole Arnold.
00:43:09
Speaker
February 28th, detectives question Troy Dentor. He tells them that he had loaned his cream-colored 1974 Chevy so not a Buick Riviera, to Ralph Menzies on Sunday, February 23rd, sometime in the late afternoon.
00:43:26
Speaker
He said that Menzies did not return the car until the afternoon of February twenty fourth which would have been the following day, Monday. So the detectives at this point do what's called show-up.
00:43:41
Speaker
So it's not an official lineup. But... They essentially have Tim Larrabee and Beth Brown walk around the jail parking lot.
00:43:53
Speaker
And while they're walking around the parking lot, they identify Troy Dentra's car as the car that they had seen at the Storm Mountain picnic area. Then they're shown a photographic lineup.
00:44:07
Speaker
It's got six photos in there. Tim picks out Ralph Menzies.
00:44:14
Speaker
However, according to this court record, several months later, Tim Larrabee will not correctly identify Menzies in a live lineup.
00:44:27
Speaker
So he picks out the photo, but he doesn't pick out the person. And that's caused some time has passed, but it it can cause some questions. I don't know how you feel about that. Did he pick out anybody?
00:44:39
Speaker
you know From the photos, he picks out Ralph Menzies. From the lineup, he does not correctly identify him. They do not tell us here in these court records how that went down.
00:44:52
Speaker
Right. And so, you know, if he identified someone else, that would be one thing. if he did If he just said, well, I just don't see the guy here, I would just say that he had changed.
00:45:03
Speaker
Either his memory had faded or he had changed to the extent that You know, that he just didn't recognize him any longer. I mean, shaving a haircut sometimes will make someone unrecognizable.
00:45:16
Speaker
Right. And so it could also be a combination, right? I'm going to draw from the word did not correctly identify Menzies to say i believe he potentially identified another person.
00:45:27
Speaker
Otherwise, they would say I think they would just say he did not identify Menzies in a lineup. um I would give credence to the first identification.
00:45:39
Speaker
yeah ah They did identify the car that he said he had borrowed. And I believe that photograph is going to be the most recent photograph. Like the mugshot that probably was taken Monday night.
Trial and Conviction of Ralph Menzies
00:45:52
Speaker
Right. And, you know... I don't know anything about him, but people, some people look the same their entire lives and some people change like daily the way they look. Right. Right.
00:46:05
Speaker
and But he, there are a lot of factors there. I don't know. I don't really know what to make of it. I feel like, uh, you can't, I, for one thing, I'm not sure why they wanted him to identify them again, except it was a live lineup.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's just a followup to the photographic lineup. And because he identified the photo that was taken shortly after he saw him and the car and the story matches the perpetrators.
00:46:35
Speaker
I'm sorry, the perpetrator's story matches the identification of the car, right? Correct.
00:46:42
Speaker
So at this point in time, meaning the photographic lineup is done, not the actual lineup, detectives do go through Troy Denter's car.
00:46:54
Speaker
And they find Maureen Hunsaker's fingerprint.
00:47:00
Speaker
So she's been in the car.
00:47:05
Speaker
If they actually found her fingerprint, she's been in this car. I'll say it that way. While they're doing this, they search Ralph Menzies' apartment. And guess what they find in the apartment? Something of hers. Her purse. Her purse.
00:47:19
Speaker
That missing purse. So once they find the purse and they found this fingerprint, they charge him with first-degree murder, which is ah since a capital offense in Utah. After they file these charges, a guy named Walter Britton reaches out to the detectives.
00:47:33
Speaker
And he says on February 27th, so early days of Ralph Menzies being in jail, he tells Walter Britton that he killed Maureen Hunsaker to prevent her from testifying against him.
00:47:47
Speaker
And i I'm going to add on that I believe he means for whatever he had done to her, the kidnapping, the robbery. Right. so that As it pairs to something else. Right. Yeah. Okay.
00:48:01
Speaker
So there's month long trial and a jury convicts Ralph Menzies of a capital homicide and aggravated kidnapping. He waves the jury in the penalty phase And the trial judge sentences him to death.
00:48:19
Speaker
So over time, he files all these appeals. And 92, 94 roll through, the appeals are filed for different reasons. Some of them are errors in how things were put together, like from a technical perspective.
00:48:35
Speaker
And one of the arguments for a new trial was that the record had not been preserved. and was deemed inadequate for purposes of appellate review.
00:48:46
Speaker
Trial court denied the motion. Appellate court affirmed it. Supreme Court affirmed it. The Supreme Court of Utah. and they basically say, look, if you want to appeal, we'll give you more time to appeal, but that's not going to be the reason you appeal.
00:49:04
Speaker
And so his appellate attorneys start to appeal based on issues with the jury and how jury selection went. But ultimately, he is convicted and he sits on death row, even as we speak, even though it's occurred in 1986. So, you know, 2026, 40 years.
00:49:26
Speaker
There has been some DNA tests done in this case, like over the years. ah The murder weapon was found, I believe. There might have been another jailhouse informant.
00:49:39
Speaker
Nicole Arnold... her father finds Maureen Hunsaker's social security card, like the you know the the card that you would, I guess it was in her purse, which I was always told never carry it on you, but he finds it.
00:49:59
Speaker
All of this is pretty straightforward. the The whole idea of him getting the death penalty is kind of what lands him here with us today. The defense had argued that he should have gotten the life sentence, and that's where all this information about his abusive childhood and potential mental illness, one of the things they argue about, they basically were they were trying to save his life, and they were arguing that judicial mercy should be given to him on humanitarian grounds. The prosecution did not believe that.
00:50:27
Speaker
They believed he had had a long criminal record. There was no... little to no rehabilitative effect observed from him having been in prison. He's continuing to be a robber, basically, is was their argument. and Which, I will say this, okay, he was born in 1958.
00:50:45
Speaker
And I don't make this argument a lot, but 1986, when all of this occurs, he would have been 25 years old. He turned 26 April of that year. 25 years...
00:51:00
Speaker
25-year-old people can be really dumb. I'm not saying they are. I'm saying they can be. So, like, do you give them, you know, the death penalty? And i I think I land on I understand how they got there.
00:51:18
Speaker
It's primarily because one of the things Walter Britton said that Ralph Menzies said to him, so it's hearsay.
00:51:29
Speaker
But he said that Ralph Minces claimed that slitting Maureen's throat had given him the thrill of a lifetime. And i I think that sat with the judge in a really bad way.
00:51:45
Speaker
If you hear me say, like, there's a murder weapon with a knife and slitting her throat, um it's because she had ah dueling injuries. She is strangled, but she has a slit to her throat that probably contributed to her death.
00:52:02
Speaker
So it's listed in the autopsy that way. Judge Raymond Uno is the judge that kind of take an issue with what Ralph Menzies has done here. On March 23rd of 1988, when he sentences him to death,
00:52:16
Speaker
it's the weirdest thing to me to see this in like court records. Ralph Menzies has to choose how he wants to die. And he chooses death by firing squad.
00:52:27
Speaker
So he's going to be given a date. And that date is May 20th of 1988. That's going to be the day that he's supposed to die. But usually those first dates that are given in death penalty cases are stayed because there are a lot of mandatory reviews by...
00:52:41
Speaker
usually appellate courts and then the Supreme court of whatever state or whatever the, the ruling body is and whatever state you're in. And there can also be some, some federal appeals that are sort of launched.
00:52:54
Speaker
And essentially those appeals are going to delay, ah Ralph Menzies being executed. Now he's been scheduled several times.
00:53:05
Speaker
That first one is May 20th, 1988. He, uh, he ends getting a rejected appeal 1992.
Decades-Long Appeals Process
00:53:17
Speaker
Then March 29th, 1994, they fully uphold his conviction and his sentence. He gets a death warrant. He's going to be executed by firing squad June 2nd, 1995. But his attorneys managed to get him ah stay of execution on May 4th, 1995.
00:53:33
Speaker
At this point in time, they do talk to the family of Maureen Puntaker. And they, at least their parents, and I think someone else in there, expressed disappointment that he was not going to be executed.
00:53:44
Speaker
May 16, 1996, he ends up filing a request for a federal public defender, and it's rejected by a US magistrate named Ronald Boyce. It's rejected because his state appeals are not yet exhausted.
00:53:58
Speaker
But ultimately, what's happening there is when um when you're represented by a public defender and it the first stage is over, you actually get a new set of lawyers who are called appellate defenders in most jurisdictions.
00:54:12
Speaker
um This case would be even more unique because along the way you would have a capital defender and each type of public defender specializes in a state level type of prosecution defense, either at the the district and superior court level, which is like the local jurisdiction district courts where everything starts superiors, where it goes when it's serious.
00:54:36
Speaker
Once you're convicted in superior court, your appeals go to an appellate court. And usually there's a ruling body. That's like a tribunal called the Supreme court of most States. And they're sort of overseeing it.
00:54:48
Speaker
But if you were to go to the federal system for, some type of rip writ of habeas corpus or something else related to your appeal, you then have to have a federal public defender. And it's rejected at first.
00:55:01
Speaker
He's slated to be executed November 10, 2003 at that point. And again, a new appeal is filed, it's rejected. He starts filing in October 2004 through counsel, requests for different types of DNA testing, and...
00:55:20
Speaker
That's when the children of Maureen Hunsaker, particularly her son, who was, I think he was 10 years old when his mother was killed. They start speaking out.
00:55:32
Speaker
And the appeals get more and more Hail Mary-ish. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like they they're, they're. They're longer shots at having any kind of type of success.
00:55:46
Speaker
For instance, April 2nd, 2012, there's an appeal that's filed in the third district, which is that's the federal system. It's rejected. That one was an effective assistance of counsel.
00:55:58
Speaker
On September 23rd, 2014, Utah stops hearing Ralph Menzies' appeal and rejects the last one. And then he moves into the district court kind of full-time for like the U.S. District Court.
00:56:11
Speaker
January 12th, 2019, there's an appeal that's rejected. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on November 7th, 2022, they dismiss post-conviction relief requests.
00:56:24
Speaker
And then October 2023, His case has wound its way all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and they just ignore it. They refuse to hear it.
00:56:37
Speaker
So on December 23, 2023, there's a lawsuit filed. It's filed on behalf of Ralph Menzies and four other condemned prisoners. And it's basically filed saying that Utah's death penalty laws are unconstitutional.
00:56:54
Speaker
It is ultimately dismissed out of the Third Circuit Court, which that might be Utah, like state court circuit. But we do get into some interesting nonsense with him. Otherwise, why would he be here?
00:57:10
Speaker
um So let's talk about this just for a second. This is a pretty... I hate to say this because there's tragedy in here for an entire family, but this is a pretty run-of-the-mill murder. It's pretty straight up. like They found his fingerprints. There was a witness. They saw him.
00:57:25
Speaker
He talked to his bunkmate more than likely. that guy came to court. like This is not super complicated, right? i I think that it was shown to be him.
00:57:37
Speaker
Right.
00:57:40
Speaker
Well, there's a section of the population out there among attorneys who do not want people to die under the death penalty. And I you know i have to be honest, like sometimes I side with them. like it's It's pretty rare that I look at a case and go, that's a death penalty worthy case. And whether this case is or isn't is not really in my purview right now.
00:58:03
Speaker
but Yeah, but because it's already it was decided, right? this is Yeah. It was decided and it's had lots of opportunities to be overturned, right? Right, right. So on January 17th of 2024, the people that be, meaning the Attorney General, I believe would be the title, in the state of Utah, they request a new execution date.
00:58:29
Speaker
And... He had been sentenced to die before May of 2004. but And because this has dragged on so long, ah he had been allowed to choose at a time you could choose between lethal injection and firing squad. He chose firing squad.
00:58:46
Speaker
But this is the third time the state is going to try to actually execute him.
00:58:51
Speaker
His defense counsel files yet another appeal. And this is what I find interesting. This appeal states that he should not be executed because they have deemed that he is mentally incompetent.
00:59:09
Speaker
They have reported that this has gone on so long that at this point in time, he suffers from dementia, and that dementia prevents him from understanding why he's being put to death.
00:59:22
Speaker
So an official hearing to approve the death warrant was supposed to commence on February 23rd, 2024, but February 13th, 2024, a judge cancels that hearing and directs the state to seek an independent report on Ralph Menzies' current mental competency for execution.
00:59:44
Speaker
Matt Hunsaker, Maureen's son, is now Like he was 10 years old when this all happened. He is now no longer 10 years old. It is 2024.
00:59:57
Speaker
We have moved into where he's in middle age now. He points out that his maternal grandmother died in 2021. She did not get to see her daughter's killer executed.
01:00:09
Speaker
But from his perspective, he wants closure and he has sort of inherited the wish to continue this pursuit of justice. So 39 years later, this guy still wants to see this happen.
01:00:22
Speaker
Well, he that's his rate, right? Absolutely. All of this has been ordered and it's gone through the system, right? It's a little crazy that it's taken this long, but like we know that this happens, right? Yep.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, and so where this like kind of picks up is August of 2024, there's a competency hearing that's set up. He's also sent for psychiatric evaluation, meaning Ralph Menzies.
01:00:53
Speaker
And Matt Hunsaker, for his part, basically just says to the court, please, whatever you're going to decide here, do it in a way that, like, you know, is expeditious.
01:01:05
Speaker
He wants, like, if if defendants get speedy trials, he wants, like, a speedy end to whatever they're going to next. So they scheduled this hearing November 2024,
01:01:16
Speaker
but
01:01:19
Speaker
in October of 2024, so about a month before this hearing is supposed to come up, the counsel that are representing Ralph Menzies now are saying that there's information that the original prosecutors failed to disclose to the defense, and they are charging that prosecutors have been communicating and coordinating with state agencies.
The Impact of Alleged Dementia on Execution
01:01:41
Speaker
And at first, you can't tell if they're talking about now or then.
01:01:44
Speaker
but They make a motion to disqualify the prosecution from Menzies' competency hearing, and it makes it clear that they're talking about current prosecutors. That is denied by Judge Matthew Bates, this motion to disqualify the the prosecution.
01:02:04
Speaker
And they do begin the competency hearing November 18 with Judge Matthew Bates presiding. The state brings forward medical experts, they bring neurologists named Ryan Green, and they bring in a forensic psychologist named Michael Brooks.
01:02:19
Speaker
They're from departments within like Utah's Department of Health and Human Services. They state that Ralph Menzies is competent to be executed.
01:02:30
Speaker
This hearing lasts about five full days. It concludes November 22nd, 2024. They have a final competency hearing that they schedule for May 7th, 2025.
01:02:43
Speaker
And Judge Matthew Bates rules on June 6th, 2025, that Ralph Mintes, who is now, like in all of this, he's going to be 67 years old. I think he turned 67 this year.
01:03:00
Speaker
Yeah. He rules that he is mentally competent to be executed. And the judge says, like, there is, like, some sign that, like, his cognitive abilities have deteriorated as a result of potential dementia, but that he consistently and rationally understood the magnitude of his actions.
01:03:21
Speaker
And there was no evidence that the execution would violate his Eighth Amendment rights. And ultimately, the Eighth amendment is what people would call the protections against cruel and unusual punishments.
01:03:35
Speaker
Bail falls into this, fines fall into this. and June 9th, there's a renewed motion to issue that death warrant that prosecutors wanted from the Attorney General's office.
01:03:47
Speaker
And again, Ralph Menzies defense counsel files an appeal to the Utah Supreme Court to overturn Judge Matthew Bayes' ruling. They seek a second competency hearing, arguing that his mental state had rapidly deteriorated and it made him ineligible for execution.
01:04:04
Speaker
In spite of this, July 9th, 2025, Judge Matthew Bates signs this death warrant and schedules the execution date as September 5th, 2025. And I'm guessing what we will get next is he's continuing to deteriorate, because that's what happens when you have dementia.
01:04:21
Speaker
i bring all of I bring all of this up to ask you, what do you think about the idea that we can't execute someone who has clearly used every appellate trick in the book through very clever lawyering?
01:04:36
Speaker
And I'm saying Ralph Menzies is doing it, but you and I both know these are lawyers doing this. Yeah. Right, there are they are lawyers um and they're doing their job, right? yeah ah It seems to me like they might be doing it too well because you have to think if you have, I mean, he is a little young for dementia. Yeah.
01:05:00
Speaker
yeah But it's ridiculous that a victim's family is little young. would have to go through this, right?
01:05:13
Speaker
Either, you know, put the person in jail for life or, you know, once the appeals have gone through, take care of it, right? I feel like this is like one of the things that sort of fell through the cracks maybe. i don't know. This seems like a really long time.
01:05:38
Speaker
find of yeah i don't know I don't know how they managed to do... like so successfully now, basically 40 years after the fact, I don't know how they managed to make it so sort of compelling.
01:05:53
Speaker
Well, my, I guess while you were going through all of that, it seemed like in between like everybody thinking up all the other reasons they could appeal it, like nobody set, like when something was, you know, denied, they didn't immediately set a death date.
01:06:11
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And so I feel like that gave it more time, you know, in this particular situation. So a judge sent him to death. It makes no difference to to me that he now has dementia. It doesn't change anything about the crime.
01:06:30
Speaker
Right. And while it is unfortunate. And I could also argue the other side. The state waited too long. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That could be the other argument.
01:06:43
Speaker
And, you know, then they would say, well, the defense has has caused this. But as far, you know, if when someone commits a crime ah and then they get charged much, much later, like, depend a lot of times it goes back to what the penalties were at the time, right? Yeah.
01:07:03
Speaker
Well, this goes back to what the punishment was at the time, right? Yeah. And I guess ah somebody could say, you know, if you get to the point you have dementia, your death sentence is automatically ah commuted to life without the possibility of parole.
01:07:22
Speaker
But like, then everybody's going to have dementia, right? Yeah. and i I feel like If you think to yourself that basically anybody who's sentenced to death is really just getting sentenced to sit on death row, it's a lot easier to take, right? yeah But I do find it compelling that a...
01:07:48
Speaker
man who was He was fairly young, right? I mean, he was fairly young when he was sentenced to death. Now he's an old man, and they they say he has dementia.
01:07:59
Speaker
But there's also indications that he... um He's well aware of things in the past. ah That's the other thing. oh ah If you haven't been around somebody who has Alzheimer's or dementia, a lot of times it's their shorter shorter term memory that ah isn't great.
01:08:22
Speaker
And they'll remember things from a long time ago, but like you have to introduce yourself to them every day because they don't know who you are. Correct. and And so that's something to take into consideration. And I mean, what would be the the next step?
01:08:39
Speaker
Could they say that it's unfair to keep him in jail because he doesn't understand why he's there? i I don't know where this is headed. I you know i look at this from the perspective of
01:08:54
Speaker
I'm all for the process being fair and equal. That can be complex at times. When I look at this particular case, I hate to use the word boring because I think that's unfair to victim and victim's family.
01:09:15
Speaker
It's a fairly straightforward robbery that like for some reason he decides to turn into a kidnapping, which for some reason, ah in my opinion, he probably turns into a sexual assault. If not, then it's a witness killing, so take your pick on which thing it is.
01:09:33
Speaker
And then commits a murder. After having been incarcerated, incarcerated I buy the witness killing thing because he is essentially not wanting to go back to prison where he has basically been since he was 17 years old.
01:09:54
Speaker
And i look at a case like this, got the borrowed car, you got the eyewitnesses, have the fingerprint in the car, have the purse in his house, you got the knife that probably slit her throat.
01:10:06
Speaker
You know, he has strangled her on top of that. This is a terrible homicide. But at this point in time, this is a guy that probably should have been executed in 2004. Or earlier.
01:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like, I'm thinking in terms of, like, the standard delays that people complain about. Frequently, it's like 20, 25 years. well and I don't think, I think that they need to stick with what ah it was ordered initially. They've tried all, you know, no body of, no panel of judges has overturned right?
01:10:46
Speaker
Right. right And there's been a
Death Penalty Delays and Debates
01:10:49
Speaker
death warrant issued. And I do see the point, but I can, you know, I can also say, well, it would be cruel and unusual to have somebody be in jail for something they don't know that they did or whatever.
01:11:01
Speaker
But that's not going to undo, you know, think about how that would affect everybody. Right. Right. And I think my solution to this would be at some point in time, like if you're just not going to carry out the death sentence or if everything's going to be like argued the way that it's going to be argued, then ultimately this becomes a life in prison without parole case. But that's not what the judge sentenced him to. you all And When I look at this, that's the only thing I can think of that would kind of make the lawyer stop lawyering here.
01:11:38
Speaker
Is? Life in prison without parole. Like a commutation of the sentence to life in prison without parole. Right, which I would be fine with. However, it doesn't sound it it sounds like the victim's son said, whatever it is, it just needs to happen.
01:11:52
Speaker
Is life... On death row, that where you know they don't ultimately get executed, all they do is die on death row, like natural causes.
01:12:04
Speaker
Is that worse somehow than life in prison without the possibility of parole? I mean, I think they're both relatively awful. It's unlikely that prisoners are able to escape now, right? Especially people who are in jail ah for life without the possibility of parole. They've typically, well, I would say all of them have probably committed a violent crime that got them there.
01:12:31
Speaker
And so we just don't have the same jail breaks that, you know, we had at different times ah before we had more, you know, technology and training and they had learned how to basically keep ah prisoners secure right Yeah.
01:12:48
Speaker
and so there's not a real chance that somebody's gonna get out um here or there sure things happen but i would say that overall you can pretty much bank on the person being in jail for the rest of their life yes unless there's some sort of huge ruling that overturns it, right?
01:13:09
Speaker
Which happened in, what, the 60s or 70s, where everybody that had been sentenced ah to death got their sentence commuted. Yeah. um And so I...
01:13:25
Speaker
I don't think it's, I think it's pointless to distinguish between being put to death and serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.
01:13:38
Speaker
I have not been on the victim's receiving end. Yeah. yeah Right. So I, I feel like I'm talking about it sort of maybe even out of turn. I don't i don't know.
01:13:52
Speaker
I feel like I'm, people should, ah I don't think it matters either way. i don't think the dementia should um ah should cause something that was sentenced so long ago to change now.
01:14:09
Speaker
um that There's got to be a better solution than this. Yeah, yeah. this It's fascinating the amount of resources this is sucking up. And, you know, to be fair, if this were more of an innocence case, I would have questions. like it like But that's not even what they're arguing at this point.
01:14:26
Speaker
We've moved past the phase where, like, everybody's kind of given up and gone, yeah, he probably did this. But one more thing. It's not fair because of this. It's not fair because of that. And, like, I frequently
01:14:41
Speaker
side with the defense. But, like, I don't know what their ultimate goal is here. Well, they want to get the death sentence overturned. And it seems like if that was going to happen, it would have happened.
01:14:55
Speaker
Well, I will say Utah is kind of actively executing people. I think they executed someone last year. They only have about four or five people on death row, and there's been some rulings this year that might come up in a later episode that we'll talk about.
01:15:09
Speaker
where It's interesting um how this is all like played out. I don't think, for me personally, that dementia after 40 years of appeals...
01:15:26
Speaker
should change a ruling other than to state like, all right, fine, he's going to spending the, we're going to do a commutation. If they want to do that though, the appropriate process would have been, and I don't know if they've done this or not. I don't see it in here, but that doesn't mean it's here.
01:15:41
Speaker
This means I haven't seen it. um The appropriate process would be, to petition through whatever clemency process they have of the state governor and have the state governor commute the sentence to life without parole.
01:15:58
Speaker
Right, and that that could have been done and denied, right? Right, that that could have been. It's not mentioned anywhere in here, but that doesn't mean I didn't miss it. I doubt very seriously these different teams of attorneys who have done all the of these appeals miss that.
01:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, it would it would set an interesting precedent if it were to be ruled that you can't execute a demented person. I don't think they can do it. I don't think that you could do that because of the...
01:16:28
Speaker
I mean, there are objective standards of what dementia is, but it's a lot of it's subjective, right? And everybody on death row would have dementia if they didn't want to put to death. Right.
01:16:43
Speaker
And so you can't really, ah you know ah You can't make that distinction because, especially since it would be an appeals court doing it, like, that could set precedent, right? Yep, it could. And then you're going to just, I don't know. i i don't, I realize victims ah sometimes sort of bank on, like, you know, the person getting put to death, and that is absolutely their prerogative for justice for their loved one that they lost. Yeah.
01:17:14
Speaker
But at the same time, it is... i know that being put to death in the United States, even if you're sentenced to death, I mean, it's... I would say it's not a high chance that you're actually going to be put to death. Right. and I think that wastes a lot of resources. it ah It causes the family to be victimized over and over again.
01:17:40
Speaker
and it I don't know how, I just, I'm not sure how fair it is, but if you want to hold out for it, that you can absolutely do that. But it is an interesting concept, right? Yeah.
01:17:54
Speaker
Yeah. The whole idea of competence for execution after years and years and years of on death row. But this could also be proving the argument that like life in prison versus death row, like are equally expensive.
01:18:05
Speaker
In some ways. I actually think that ah the appeals would make death row more expensive. That's a possibility. Yeah, I actually, i i was thinking about that the other day um because of whatever, and it.
01:18:25
Speaker
It seems to me like, especially, you know, once somebody's been sentenced to death row, it's unlikely they they have an attorney besides the public defender, right? Right. Right.
01:18:36
Speaker
And at that point, it's tax dollars at work. And you know while it sounds like these are very thorough attorneys, and every honestly, everybody in the country should get the most vigorous defense possible, right? Yeah.
01:18:53
Speaker
Even if it's just technical appellate issues. that I think the issue here is... Like they can't seem to get it acted on fast enough before they think of something new to bring up.
01:19:06
Speaker
And you have to think that if your client has, or if the defendant has gotten dementia, like the process isn't efficient enough.
01:19:22
Speaker
Yeah. No, especially when he was 25 years old when was sentenced to death in the first place. I mean. Whatever it was. i You know, I don't know. he i feel like he – I feel like I could go either way on it. And I realized ah recently that when I say that, I don't say it from the point of view. I say it from a a a social point of view, a society point of view. I don't say it from, like, a victim's point of view. Right. Because, you know – And so I feel like that would be wrong to take that away from like a victim's family that this has gone through the process and that's the expectation. They're just waiting on it, right?
Complexities of Justice and Victim's Rights
01:20:04
Speaker
And so i think it could be a lot I think it could be streamlined a lot, including just stop sentencing people to death because it's kind of pointless anyway.
01:20:15
Speaker
But I don't know. i I feel like maybe I... Spoke out of I don't know about that. I just can't decide. I go back and forth on I'm actually okay with people being sentenced to death.
01:20:29
Speaker
I'm not okay with the fact that, like, they get sentenced to death, but they're never put to death. That's my problem with it. Yeah, that's an interesting point. That's an interesting take on it. I really wanted to share this story because everything I read like kind of glances over Maureen.
01:20:47
Speaker
And I wanted to bring her up and like focus on her for the larger part of the story. and you know kind of acknowledge the fact that she is a victim who also left behind living victims.
01:21:01
Speaker
And it's just interesting to me that it's taken so long for all of this to happen. I am very interested in seeing how it wraps itself up. And if it wraps itself up, I guess, would be the better way to phrase that.
01:21:13
Speaker
ah Because you know they may execute him in September of 2025. And that is like people being executed in this day and age is is highly interesting to me. And I feel like there's enough time and distance on this case that looking at it um it's one of those rabbit holes that that people can fall down.
01:21:33
Speaker
fell down the, one of the ways we end up here is obviously this current story, but I find Utah's death row fascinating. And at some point it may come up again. um but it's And it's another firing squad because like he already picked the method, right? ye Yeah. So they're going to, I actually, i guess maybe it's just coming front and center because of the whole,
01:22:01
Speaker
Like drug ah cocktail issue when they give someone a lethal injection. But I find it interesting that that has come up several times.
01:22:13
Speaker
And i got in trouble on a social media platform for stating firing squad about the death penalty because, and then I appealed it and I said, this is absolutely something that's happening.
01:22:32
Speaker
Right. And I, so I was like, there are articles about like, there were, I think two men in South Carolina very recently executed by firing squad. yep And my appeal was denied. And I was like, what crazy,
01:22:49
Speaker
lunacy are we living in where that type of comment is like essentially got me in put in social media jail or whatever i did not know that it happened to you i would i think i would be highly irate at that i i was i was pretty irritated because i just thought well And I'm sure it had like a partial automation to it.
01:23:16
Speaker
I do understand like saying firing squad is, I don't know, something. But I was really surprised though, because it it's an actual thing. And I'm thinking to myself, if our social media algorithms looking for, you know, problems...
01:23:34
Speaker
You know, they say that me saying firing squad is bad. Like, where are we in the world? Right. Like, is it what you see what I'm saying?
01:23:46
Speaker
I do. Okay. i do I'm thinking to myself, well, maybe if I can't say it on social media, maybe we shouldn't do it. I don't know. i don't know where we're at, but that was crazy. But it came up, and when I was trying to talk about it, I just couldn't because I just kept getting in trouble. And I'm like, well, this is happening. This is actual news. It was the craziest thing. Yeah. you good So you can currently be executed by firing squad in Idaho, Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah, and Oklahoma, I believe.
01:24:18
Speaker
Those are the places where – It's either a backup method or a primary method of execution. In this case, he picked the method, right? He did. He picked the method 40 years ago. so Yeah, that's... ah And it's come back around. That's so interesting that like it went out because it's barbaric, but now it's come back around. And like you stated, they won't even let you say it on social media, and yet it's happening in six U.S. states.
01:24:46
Speaker
I think that's six, right? Yeah. I wonder, was it wasn't deemed barbaric? Is that why it stopped? I mean, it is barbaric.
01:24:57
Speaker
It is a terrible way to die. But at some point in time, rulings have been made that we're not there to hold their hand and have it all be kittens and butterflies at the end.
01:25:08
Speaker
Well, I was going to say it it's a punishment, right? And the the whole reason it even became ah thing at all was because of the problems getting the drugs for the lethal injections.
01:25:20
Speaker
Yeah. And that is what stymied the entire death row process, like, most recently, I would say, as far as... when they couldn't do the lethal injections, that's when it really slowed down and just seemed like they couldn't get that worked out. And the states that reinstated the firing squad are, I don't know if maybe they just never. i don't think they ever went away. I mean, like they have come and gone in some places.
01:25:47
Speaker
So since 1960, if my reading is correct, there have been six executions by firing squad. Four those were in Utah, two were in South Carolina,
01:25:59
Speaker
One was 1960, one was 1977, one was 1996. Then i think the next one was 2010. there is a lag until 2025.
01:26:13
Speaker
twenty twenty five And then I think there were... how many would that be? One, two, three, four. That's four. So there'd be two more 2012. Yeah, in South Carolina, right? Yeah, yeah.
01:26:24
Speaker
know Right now Sigmund and then... I think those were this year, weren't they? Yeah. Yep. And they were right in a row. And I was like, what wast like I think one was end of February, early March, and the other one was in April. So, yeah.
01:26:37
Speaker
Yeah. I can't believe I got in trouble on social media for that. i was that was Well, I'm going to wrap this up by saying I want to see if this guy actually gets executed by firing. It's September 5th. September 5th of this year. Yep.
01:26:52
Speaker
So he'll be the seventh person in the country or just in Utah? In the country. and It says 1960, I believe. Okay. And so, yeah, seven, you know, for seven people to die by firing squad, um if he if he becomes the seventh, right now it's at six.
01:27:11
Speaker
um You know, I feel like that makes it sort of a reserved punishment, right? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. yeah it's ah It's a weird one.
01:27:22
Speaker
um You know, and like, I wasn't even coming at this from the perspective of like, is the death penalty right or wrong? I was just wanting to have like a story about this particular interesting twist and turn to a death penalty case.
01:27:36
Speaker
Well, sure. But you to discuss it, you have to sort of get back to that, right? Yep. Because otherwise, it wouldn't be up for debate. You would just say, oh, he really has dementia. We can't put him to death, right? Except he didn't have dementia when he committed the crime. and But I also believe it's not really his fault that he hasn't been put to death yet.
01:27:58
Speaker
So I don't know. i don't know what the answer is. But so we'll keep an eye out and see what happens. Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com.
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Speaker
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01:29:11
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01:29:29
Speaker
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