WEBVTT - #539 Jason Flom with Cal Harris 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:06.160 Married couple. Cal and Michelle Harris were living separate lives 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:09.879 under the same roof as their divorce proceedings began in 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:15.160 two thousand and one. When Michelle didn't return from work 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.239 one September night, it was assumed that she'd stayed with 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.599 friends or with her boyfriend, but when her van was 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.000 found at the edge of their property, the police focused 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:29.520 on her estranged husband, developing circumstantial evidence as well as 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:33.280 what appears to have been total fabrications, while dragging Cal 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:37.479 Harris through four trials over the course of fifteen years. 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:48.120 This is wrongful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:50.280 can listen to this and all the Lava for Good 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:53.840 podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to 0:00:53.920 --> 0:01:05.600 Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.600 Ron with Conviction, where we're heading to Tioga County, New York, 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:11.840 where our guests today. Cal Harris worked for his family's 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:15.840 auto dealership business while raising his four kids until it 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:20.160 was all derailed, first by marital troubles, followed by the 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:26.000 disappearance of his estrange wife, Michelle. Cal I'm sorry you're 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.880 here because of what you've gone through, but I'm very 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:32.800 happy and honored to have you with us. Welcome, we 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:35.679 thank you, and to help him tell this story. We're 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.480 joined by two of his attorneys from Barquette Epstein, Aida 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:41.240 elyisen Ring and Bruce Barquette. 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:42.120 Thanks for having us. 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:43.360 I'm very happy to be here. 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:45.800 So Cal, We've got a lot of ground to cover. 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.600 Let's rewind all the way back to where you grew up, 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:52.040 the family, the auto business, and then of course we'll 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.120 turn to the tale of you and Michelle. 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.160 I grew up in the Binghamton area, about an hour 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:00.800 north of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and about an hour hours south 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.720 of Syracuse, New York. My father started the business back 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.200 in nineteen sixty seven with a small Ford dealership in Awego, 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.040 New York. And when my brothers and I were of 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.600 age and got in the family business, we grew. We 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:17.680 had eight dealerships in four different locations. We represented almost 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:21.399 every major franchise, domestic in import. We had a very 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:24.360 good marketing system, we had a very good business plan, 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:26.560 and we grew exponentially. 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:29.320 And when and how did you meet Michelle? 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:33.480 Well, Michelle and I started dating in the late eighties, 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:38.480 got married in August of nineteen ninety. Built our home 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.920 in ninety two, and then our first child, Taylor, was 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:45.080 born in ninety four, and then the next year Kayla, 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.400 and then Jenna was born in ninety seven, and then 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:53.280 Tanner was born in ninety nine. Michelle is a great mother. Obviously, 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.840 having four young children was a big task for Michelle. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.560 I was working a lot of hours at the family business, 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:03.280 so we had two part time nannies, and then we 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.519 had a handful of babysitters, so the kids were well 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:09.959 taken care. We lived on a very beautiful piece of 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.400 property and it was a small lake surrounded by two 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.600 hundred and fifty acres. We purchased it from Binghamton University 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.240 and it was a newdist camp for Binghamton University. 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:23.639 See I finally learned something new. 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:25.240 Cal Yeah, that. 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.760 Was back in the sixties and the seventies. And then 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.120 when the newdiest thing kind of ran its course, it 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:34.760 sat empty for years and somebody on the board of 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.360 Binghamton University knew my dad and cut us a deal. 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:41.000 We don't live there anymore. I had to sell the 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.000 property to pay my legal bills. We'll never be able 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.680 to replace that property, but we had our own little 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.760 sanctuary out there, all kinds of woods and nature, and 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:53.360 I taught my kids how to water ski and wakeboard 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.440 on the lake behind the jet ski, and we fished 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:58.920 and it was a great run while it lasted. 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:01.880 And during the happier years for the Harris family. The 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:05.880 New York State Police, specifically Troops C that operated in 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:08.200 the southern tier of the state, was while they were 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.960 experiencing discord, and that began what a detective named Harding 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:15.320 was interviewing with the CIA, and when he was asked 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.360 if he'd break the law for his country, Harding admitted 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:23.040 to manipulating or fabricating evidence against folks that they believed 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.599 to be guilty. That kicked off a fourteen month investigation. 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:31.160 A special prosecutor get an investigation on Troop C, and 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:35.200 he uncovers forty instances of evidence tampering by Troop C. 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:39.680 In his conclusion, he says everyone at Troop C was 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:43.360 either directly involved or had firsthand knowledge on it, and 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:47.080 he said it was generational that they were passing on 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.680 this behavior to new recruits. And even after that report, 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.200 Sue Malby, the lead investigator on my case, gets caught 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.320 coercing a false confession out of a fifteen year old boy. 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:02.440 It sends that to prison, and the only reason that 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:04.880 boy gets out is because the adult male that committed 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:06.240 the crime confessed to it. 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.000 And it appears that this pattern of misconduct was applied 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.520 to Cal, whose once happy marriage by March of two 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.560 thousand and one, had devolved, as these things sometimes do, 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.760 into divorce proceedings. Cal and Michelle, meanwhile, we're cope parenting 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.159 and remained in the home together, but they were living 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:28.960 separate lives. Michelle began socializing more and eventually began working 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.200 at a bar called Lefties in an area known as 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:32.719 the Valley. 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:36.200 So she's been going down to the Valley and hanging 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:40.160 out at these dive bars and she's partying pretty hard. 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.840 She knows what Lefties is, she knows they're dealing drugs 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.000 out of there. But she made it clear to me 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:48.880 that what she does outside the home is none of 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:52.280 my business. So the only people that know what's going 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.560 on in her life are the nanny barb there, Michelle's 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.800 sister in law, Shannon Taylor, and she also had a 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.800 friend named Nicki Burdick that was a friend that she 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.520 would go out with at night. And party with, and 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:09.640 she had a boyfriend at the time. Through the investigation, 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.920 she was also involved with apparently several other guys at 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:18.400 the same time. And I noticed from March two thousand 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:22.240 and one, when she starts to work there till September 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.719 of two thousand and one, things get really bad and 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:28.320 she's living a lifestyle that's not healthy for her, not 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.000 healthy for the kids. And she'd go to work, but 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:34.360 she wouldn't come home. She would always go out afterwards. 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:37.560 Sometimes she'd go over to her boyfriend's house. Most of 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.080 the time she would go out and party and hang 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:42.560 out with these other guys that she's involved with. She 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.039 had been frequently not coming home until five or six 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.480 o'clock in the morning, and there were some mornings that 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:51.040 she was so hungover she couldn't even watch the kids 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.760 and barb theair than nanny had to come over and 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:56.160 take that responsibility. 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.400 But despite the erratic lifestyle, by the summer of two 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.240 thousand and one, tensions between Call and Michelle had died 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:04.680 down and it appeared that they were going to settle 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:08.400 the divorce. Michelle had borrowed money from her boyfriend approachases 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.440 a home, so things were looking up when all of 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.920 a sudden they took a terrible turn. 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:18.120 So the chronology is September eleventh, she wakes up, the 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.720 events take place down in New York City. She works 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:25.360 that night at Lefties. Her boyfriend testified that she visited 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:29.120 him and left around eleven or eleven fifteen pm. Nobody 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.600 else saw her that we are certain of, other than 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.440 potentially whoever was at the foot of the driveway with 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:36.920 her the following morning. 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:41.400 A witness named Kevin Tubbs later came forward describing this 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.680 scenario and a man who may have been a guy 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:46.040 named Stacy Stewart. 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:52.320 Stacy Stewart knew Michelle because they would frequent the bar Lefties, 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.400 and the degree to which they got to know each other, 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.680 I think is up for some debate, but it's purported 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:01.320 to us by number of witnesses Stewart was interested in 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.760 Michelle romantically. We have evidence that she was at the 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.520 foot of the driveway around roughly five o'clock in the 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:11.720 morning with somebody who matches Stacy Stewart's description to a 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.360 t and was driving the type of truck that Stacy 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:16.680 Stewart owned. 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.200 But that wasn't known until after his first conviction. At 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.880 least not by the defense. So after this alleged sighting 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.040 on the driveway on the morning of September twelfth, the 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.600 morning began as usual for Cal the kids. When Cal 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:33.040 noticed Michelle was out of the couch, he continued about 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:35.640 his routine getting the older kids ready for school, and 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:39.360 a little after seven am, when he hadn't seen Michelle yet, 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:43.720 he called Barblayer for help with their youngest, Tanner, while 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.520 everyone else was set to leave and start their day. 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.120 So I called Barb and I said, Michelle's not home yet. 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.840 I'm not sure what's going on. Can you help me 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.480 get the kids to school because someone's got to stay 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.240 home with Tanner. So she said, yep, I'm available. And 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:00.839 a few minutes after I called Barb, Barb, I call 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.920 Michelle's cell phone, and because we live in a remote area, 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:08.480 our cell phone coverage cuts out in about a ten 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.680 mile radius around our house. And I didn't leave a 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:16.440 message because I just assumed, years and years of doing that, 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:19.079 that she was on her way home, she was within 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.080 that ten mile radius, so I don't leave a message. 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:26.240 Years later, at the first trial, Barb Fayer testified that 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:29.200 she was the one who made that phone call, even 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.160 though that was impossible. 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:36.120 I called Barb and then four minutes later I called 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:37.160 Michelle's cell phone. 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:42.000 If you track where she was, she could not have 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.520 gotten to Cal's house in time to make the call. 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.800 And when Barb actually did arrive, she discovered Michelle's van 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:51.240 at the end of the driveway. 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.440 Barb comes in through the garage and she walks into 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.600 the kitchen. It says to me, is Michelle here? And 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:01.439 I say no. She says, well, her van's at the 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.040 end of the driveway. It's unlocked. I looked in it 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.680 and she's not in there. And then I said, well, 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.760 are the keys in it? And she says yes. So 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:14.960 we hop in my truck and we go out to 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:18.480 the end of the driveway, and Barb's not upset. In fact, 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:20.920 we had some small conversation on the way out to 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.120 the end of the driveway, and Barb's saying things like, well, 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.520 maybe she's hungover at at friend's house. 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:30.080 After Cal drove off with the kids, Michelle's party friend, 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.440 Nicki Burdick, called and according to Barb, there she explained 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.400 to Nicky about Michelle's van. 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:40.080 There's a voice message from Burdick on Michelle's cell phone, 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:42.600 You're scaring me, Where are you? What's going on? 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:48.040 That kind of thing, And then Nicky calls Michelle's divorce attorney, 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:52.000 who in turn calls the state police, and that's when 0:10:52.000 --> 0:11:10.679 the investigation starts. The lead investigator on this case was 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:15.480 Sue Andrew's Mulvey of New York State Police Troops c. 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:20.680 As soon as my name came up, she immediately put 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.960 herself on as the lead investigator because for her this 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.200 was personal. And the reason it was personal was because 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:31.760 her father, John Andrews, used to work for me back 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.600 in the day in one of the dealerships and I 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:37.920 fired him and it was bad blood ever since. 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:43.320 So you had the lead investigator's father having worked for 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.840 Cal and being fired, and the lead prosecutor, Gerald Keene, 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:51.599 his wife was part of the team representing Michelle in 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:52.199 the divorce. 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.480 Well, it's the classic case of the small town everybody 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:57.800 it's related to somebody. 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:02.480 So her divorce lawyer turned his file over right away 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.880 to the state police and it didn't take much for 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:12.600 the divorce lawyer, Nikki's there and I think the in 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:15.680 laws the tailors to assume that Cal had something to 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:16.200 do with this. 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.080 Now, at that point, there was no body. In fact, 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.720 her body to this day has still never been found. 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:28.400 So the investigators began searching her van, the house, the garage, 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.240 trying to find something incriminating. 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:36.199 Steve Anderson, he's supposed to be the forensic expert. He 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:41.239 immediately comes in and starts testing the sub millimeter stains. 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.360 There's like a dozen altogether sub millimeter stains in the 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:47.720 garage and in the kitchen as you come into the house. 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.120 The first thing that he did is he saw what 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:53.360 he thought was blood spattered on the wall in the garage. 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.800 It turned out that was non human dog's blood. 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:01.880 Well there is the cookie or pasta sauce on the 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.679 ceiling as well. It's very disappointing that it turned out 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:06.480 out to be blood. 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.280 But Anderson eventually did find some human blood stains. 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.080 So he tests these stains, and the protocol that he's 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.719 supposed to follow is that when he comes down to 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.840 what he believes to be a crime scene, he's supposed 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:25.400 to observe and take notes, then photograph, and then he's 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:28.680 supposed to test with his cotton swab and his solution. 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.880 But that's not what he does in my house. He's 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:36.080 taking his cotton swab, which he admits one of the 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:41.679 stains he totally consumes as he's testing it, but he 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.920 doesn't take a photograph before he does it, so we 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:47.800 have to take his word for it. But the reality 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.600 is he's the one that's altering the stains, and then 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.240 he says it's me trying to clean up these sub 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:54.199 millimeter stains. 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:58.880 So Anderson's missteps were eventually presented as evidence of some 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:04.600 alleged post murder cleanup effort, when in reality that blood 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:06.600 had likely been there for quite a while. 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:11.760 They said that the blood was red, therefore fresh, that 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.440 it had to be depositive within a few days. That 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:19.400 was two lies. One, the blood wasn't that color, and two, 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.600 it doesn't matter what color it is, because the scientific 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:27.120 community agrees you can't age blood based upon its color. 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:30.960 Sometimes it turns brown very quickly, and sometimes it stays 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:34.320 red for an inordinate amount of time, and they haven't 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:36.880 been able to figure out the variables that would cause 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.920 the blood to turn colors in some amount of time. 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.280 It turns out that there was a known explanation for 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:45.560 that blood spatter as well, and we're going to hear 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.360 more about that later. Now, without any known witnesses. The 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:54.440 police began interviewing family, friends and community members, not about 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.120 what you would expect them to ask about, which is 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:01.560 anything they may have seen regarding Michelle's disappearance, but instead 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.720 they sort of narrow focused on Cal. 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.840 I think that the way the police conducted their investigation 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:13.560 throughout the entire community, they led everyone to we think 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:14.280 Cal did it. 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.040 I had friends of mine who didn't buy into the 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.960 state police narrative and questioned the state police, well, what 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:24.680 do you mean you know that Cal did it? And 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:28.200 when the state police wouldn't answer, you know how they knew, 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.400 then my friends were like, well then what are you doing? 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:36.760 Then they had random people and witnesses fill out FBI 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:39.840 profiles like does he ever get mad? Has he ever 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:42.840 done this? Has he ever done that? Day after day, 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:48.120 multiple witness interviews, the news, the chatter, the town talking. 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:52.520 Another day goes by where her body isn't recovered, and 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.880 the zealousness with which they tried to investigate Cal, Like 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.320 that gets you in the entire community in the mindset 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.680 of let's get him. He's getting away with murder. Because 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:04.120 the police believed that. 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:08.680 There the babysitter who came over right away started to 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:11.760 create a diary documenting the things that were going on 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.520 at the house, thinking she was helping the police. 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:18.920 One of his former neighbor's friends says, let me rack 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:21.440 my brain. I do remember, and this is one of 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:25.520 my favorite little details. I do remember. He kept trying 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:29.640 to clean his glasses and the natural implication was that 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:32.840 there was blood spatter on them, and it's like Macbeth 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:35.720 trying to clean the blood off the hands. They interviewed 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:39.760 people in Canada, like, oh, he was on vacation in Canada. 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.840 We hear that the jet skier got into a verbal 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:47.040 dispute with him. They interviewed girlfriends from high school. I mean, 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:51.840 they turned his entire life upside down and found nothing. 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:55.640 But when you have all of these little, tiny pieces 0:16:55.680 --> 0:17:00.600 of nothing burgers together and they've completely assassinated his character, 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:01.520 and in a. 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:05.840 Case that is largely circumstantial, those elements become admissible, contrary 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:08.440 to a case with direct evidence of guilt, in which 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.760 the defense has a better idea of what the issues are. 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:16.120 But in circumstantial cases, the state weaves a web from 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:20.200 these disparate elements that would normally be inadmissible but together 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.520 and create an appearance of guilt and that can overwhelm 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:28.720 a traditional defense. And by two thousand and five, sure enough, 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.160 cal was indicted. And it seems that the prosecution felt that 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:36.080 they had enough to do that, but the first two judges, well, 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:36.960 they disagreed. 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:41.280 The first judge reviewed the grand jury minutes and the 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:45.159 transcripts and gave a heads up to the prosecutor and 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:49.200 to the defense attorney, I'm dismissing this case. It's insufficient. 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:52.680 What does the prosecutor do? The next day he files 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.600 a formal motion to recuse the judge, stating that he's 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:01.560 given the appearance that he favors the defense, and ultimately 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.800 pits his oath of office against that of the judge, 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.919 as the judge claims, sort of requiring at that point 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.280 the judge to get off the case because of the 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.400 animosity and the claims that are made by the prosecutor. 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.960 So he did, and a new judge was assigned, and 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:24.200 that judge also dismissed the case, indicating that the previous 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:28.480 judge's decision stands and it's insufficient. So it got dismissed, 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.359 and then they went on to represent the case and 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:36.120 put on more witnesses. In two thousand and seven, they 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:41.080 try the case in front of a jury pull frankly 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:45.400 that have been polluted by the police investigation, no Cal, 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:47.440 and have strong opinions about the case. 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:51.520 Ultimately, the state's trial narrative was that Cal killed Michelle 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:56.000 sometime late on September eleventh, citing no signs of forced entry, 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.720 the alleged blood evidence, the looming divorce and custody proceedings, 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:03.840 as well as some circumstantial witness testimony, some of which 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.119 were just outright lies. Now, as we mentioned, the morning 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:12.439 of Michelle's disappearance, Cal called Barb Thayer for help with 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.040 the kids and then called Michelle, but didn't leave a voicemail. 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.280 So Keen, the prosecutor, in a deposition that we took 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:24.200 about four years ago, admitted that if Cal had placed 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.200 the call at seven point fifteen, and had he been 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:30.520 the killer, in other words, he knows he's calling a 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.440 dead person's phone, he would have left some contrived message 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.760 about I'm worried about you, where are you, why aren't 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:41.199 you home with the kids, something like that. And Keene 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:44.360 admitted if he made the call and didn't leave a message, 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:46.760 he couldn't have committed this crown because there's no way 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:48.639 he would have made the call and not left the 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.280 message had he did it. Once they realized that they 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:55.159 got there to say she got there in time to 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:58.800 have made the call, despite the fact that they had 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:02.800 asked her about this multiple times and she never said 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.679 she made the call, and in fact denied it, and 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.040 then got on the stand and testified that she had, 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:11.879 and it was clear that they had convinced her that 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.040 she had to say that otherwise the case against Cal 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:16.960 would kind of blow up in the first instance. 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:21.280 This is what pisses me off about circumstantial cases. Now 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:25.080 we're talking about voicemails, the cell signal for a ten 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:30.360 mile radius Barb's location when Cal called. Instead of tackling 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.960 direct evidence of what happened to Michelle, the defense is 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.639 left scrambling trying to fight a ghost. Almost they're trying 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.760 to defend against an image of guilt that the prosecutor 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.040 is only just sort of peeling away the layers of 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:47.159 and revealing during the trial. 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:51.040 With circumstantial evidence, lay people go, oh, it's just a 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:56.840 circumstantial case, and there's a stigma associated with that word 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.679 that there's not much evidence. But they can be some 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:05.800 of the most falsely convincing cases because the government or 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:13.120 the prosecution is permitted to use otherwise impermissible, non relevant evidence, 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:18.120 often negative character evidence, and they stay to the court, Oh, 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:20.400 this is one of the little pieces of the puzzle 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.600 that we need to build up this case because it's circumstantial, 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.120 and the judge goes, well, i'll allow it. I'll give 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:29.720 them some leeway. And then it's every single rock that 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:33.760 builds this massive mound that you can't escape from. 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:38.000 When in reality it's nothing but an exhaustive climb straight 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:41.919 up bullshit mountain where you have to dispel this minutia 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:45.760 or discover the misconduct underlying it before it's too late. 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:50.040 And this case has plenty more like Col's a legend motive. 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:54.399 If you look at the summations from the trials, you'll 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.399 see that they ascribe the mode of the cow. The 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:01.360 divorce case, there was a trial date set for November 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:04.359 of that year, and so they said he had to 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:06.679 kill her because he was about to go to trial 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:09.600 and all these fees were going to come do and 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:12.960 there was a thirty thousand dollars appraisal fee that he 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:15.000 was going to have to pay, and he was going 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:16.840 to have to pay his lawyers, and he was going 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:21.800 to lose everything, and that couldn't happen. That was all false, 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:25.960 and I think knowingly false. The divorce case had just started. 0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:29.600 There wasn't a single deposition taken, very little, if any 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.080 discovery had been traded. That was no more ready for 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:35.840 trial than I am ready to fly a jet. It 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:40.040 just wasn't ripe yet. And the worst part of that 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:44.040 whole fabricated motive was that the case had been resolved. 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:47.240 In the fourth trial, we had Cal's lawyer come on 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:50.879 and testify that Michelle had accepted the offer, that the 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:53.479 case was resolved, and as I need to point it out, 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:57.320 she bought a house. This was done. And even Barbara 0:22:57.359 --> 0:23:01.800 Thayer and Burdick, who were adamant that Cal had done this, 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:05.040 admitted that by the summer of two thousand and one 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:09.160 things had calmed down. They weren't fighting at all, and 0:23:09.680 --> 0:23:11.520 Michelle had resolved that she was going to buy a 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:13.400 house in town and it's was over. 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:16.320 But without this context, at the first trial, the prosecution 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:20.680 had created an urgency for Cal to act that was unimpeached. 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:23.600 Then we move on to the blood evidence, if you 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:25.479 can call it that, and as we mentioned, they had 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:28.960 said the blood was fresh because it was still red, 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:33.680 when not only was it not red, but color canton 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:37.480 doesn't indicate age. And then it got even more misleading. 0:23:37.960 --> 0:23:41.240