Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Manny here from No Such Thing. We are
Speaker 1: so excited to share that No Such Thing was named
Speaker 1: one of Apple Podcasts Best Shows of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: If you've already been listening, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being a part of the No Such Thing community, and
Speaker 1: definitely keep emailing us. We love chatting with you all.
Speaker 1: If you're new to No Such Thing, do yourself a
Speaker 1: favor and go through our catalog because none of it
Speaker 1: is outdated. Each episode is a banger, so be sure
Speaker 1: to go check that out. After that, make sure you
Speaker 1: check out the full best of twenty twenty five collection
Speaker 1: in the Apple Podcast app, and finally, enjoy this week's episode.
Speaker 1: I'm Manny, I'm Noah, this is Devin, and this is
Speaker 1: No Such Thing, the show where we settle our dumb
Speaker 1: arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna find out how easy it is to get
Speaker 1: away with murder. I'm going to talk to a criminologist,
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna have Devin and Noah present their
Speaker 1: plans to kill each other to a former detective.
Speaker 2: So that's that's my plan. What are your initial reactions there?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's messed up.
Speaker 4: But yeah, there's no such thing, no such thing, no
Speaker 4: such thing, such thing, no such thing.
Speaker 1: All right, Fellas, I was watching some stand up recently
Speaker 1: and I came across something that has to do with
Speaker 1: this episode. So I want to play this clip for you.
Speaker 5: On Cold Case Files, they solve old murders, and it's
Speaker 5: really interesting because what I learned from it is that
Speaker 5: it was really easy to get away with murder before
Speaker 5: they knew about DNA. It was ridiculously easy. Like what
Speaker 5: was even going on back then? What was a murder investigation?
Speaker 5: Like in nineteen thirty five, One cop would just walk
Speaker 5: in and be like, detective, we found a pool of
Speaker 5: the killer's blood in that hallway.
Speaker 2: He would just be like, hmmm, gross.
Speaker 6: Mapaa.
Speaker 1: So I think part of what makes this funny is
Speaker 1: that it has to be true, right Like back then,
Speaker 1: before the advent of forensic or scientific investigation, these crime
Speaker 1: scenes were littered with so much information telling you who
Speaker 1: exactly the killer was, but they just could do nothing
Speaker 1: about it. Obviously, it's been a very long time since
Speaker 1: the setting of John Mulaney's joke, but it made me
Speaker 1: think about the current state of criminology, Like what the
Speaker 1: current status of that field is. And I did a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of research. According to a report from the
Speaker 1: New York Times, and despite all of the technological advancements
Speaker 1: we've made since the thirties or whatever, nearly half of
Speaker 1: all murders go unsolved.
Speaker 4: Half.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to get your guys a reaction to this.
Speaker 2: Two that's pretty good odds.
Speaker 1: Basically, if you commit a murder. I don't think statistics
Speaker 1: works exactly like this, but if you commit a murder,
Speaker 1: you have about a fifty percent chance of getting away
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 7: That's pretty insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's the United States, that's in America.
Speaker 8: Yes, especially considering how many people we have god damn prisons,
Speaker 8: you know, not enough murderers apparently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's change the quote is a little.
Speaker 1: And what surprises me too, is that we know that
Speaker 1: the homicide rate in the past thirty years or whatever
Speaker 1: has gone gone down.
Speaker 7: They're gonna make it easier to solve murders. There's less of.
Speaker 8: Them happening, right, Yeah, that's a good point. There's less
Speaker 8: stuff for them to do, so you think you'd be
Speaker 8: more focused. Yeah, you know, I used to have one hundred.
Speaker 8: Now we've got ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I wonder what the type of murders
Speaker 2: that do happen are like in our head, and what
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss later is more of these premeditated
Speaker 2: schemes versus like I imagine most murders are more just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're fighting at a moment, I'm gonna shoot you or something,
Speaker 2: or like a robbery, something like yeah, domestic thing or
Speaker 2: just like more either crimes of passion or just like
Speaker 2: you know, exactly where immediate. That's what I'm just mean,
Speaker 2: way easier to solve than like, right, you know, some mastermind.
Speaker 1: Before reading the stat I would have thought that the
Speaker 1: vast majority of murders would have one clear suspect and
Speaker 1: then it would be easy to solve this. Yeah, I've thought, like,
Speaker 1: the reason we don't really have serial killers today is
Speaker 1: because of these kind of technological advancements in in forensics studies,
Speaker 1: where yeah, if you kill like ten people, it's way
Speaker 1: easier to figure out who you are than it was
Speaker 1: in the seventies or whatever. But I'm surprised to hear
Speaker 1: that that's not really been the case for your regular
Speaker 1: run of the mill murders.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's amazing, like I was reading about the
Speaker 2: BTK killer kind of recently, you know, brushing up, and
Speaker 2: it's like amazing. It's like this guy's killing a lot
Speaker 2: of people, taking photographs all this stuff. Then he has
Speaker 2: like his normal family life, and he basically got caught
Speaker 2: because he was like essentially taunting the police by sending
Speaker 2: them letters. And then like, I think he got caught
Speaker 2: because he sent a flop He like asked the FBI
Speaker 2: or someone like, would you guys be able to trace
Speaker 2: me if I sent you a floppy disc? And they
Speaker 2: were like no, And then he set the floppy disk
Speaker 2: and it had like his logging for like his it
Speaker 2: was like from his church computer something, and it's like,
Speaker 2: if you just shut up, no one would have found
Speaker 2: like maybe after you died they would have discovered something,
Speaker 2: but yeah, you would have been fine. So he really could.
Speaker 2: I think he blew it to be frank, he.
Speaker 1: Was generational and bust.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to ask you guys two questions. The
Speaker 1: first one has to do with this stat that nearly
Speaker 1: half of murders go unsolved. Just curious, like what your guys'
Speaker 1: take on why this might be without having done any research.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna talk to someone who knows why,
Speaker 1: but I want to get your thoughts.
Speaker 8: My initial reaction is the people who are murdered and
Speaker 8: their murders aren't solved, are.
Speaker 1: Poor people m not enough importance on the case. It's
Speaker 1: so the.
Speaker 8: Cops don't care and resources really aren't put towards finding
Speaker 8: because it's like, hey, you know, it's it's poor people
Speaker 8: killing poor people.
Speaker 7: It doesn't affect us that their own thing.
Speaker 8: If something happens within that community, whatever, Yeah, it's sort of.
Speaker 7: Like it's not as important.
Speaker 8: And then I think there's the community has a distrust
Speaker 8: for the police in those communities because of their lack
Speaker 8: of actually helping. So I think people are less willing
Speaker 8: to work with the police.
Speaker 7: In those communities.
Speaker 1: That's a good hypothesis because I do remember a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago the kind of national news about Gabby Petito.
Speaker 7: Do you realize yes, yes, so she.
Speaker 1: Was kind of kidnapped, taken across the country by her boyfriend,
Speaker 1: eventually murdered, and it just ended up being this like
Speaker 1: kind of national news that a lot of people responded
Speaker 1: to this by saying, well, you know, there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of kind of poor black or brown victims where
Speaker 1: the exact same thing is happening, but it doesn't get
Speaker 1: treated the same way. So I could I could imagine
Speaker 1: if if that's true, that might also be true within
Speaker 1: the police departments, where they just have like a certain
Speaker 1: level of apathy.
Speaker 2: I guess to Devin's point, it's like there is like
Speaker 2: that Long Island Beach killer and he's killing like sex workers.
Speaker 2: So it's like these are people who probably maybe don't
Speaker 2: even have a family. No one's looking for them, Yeah
Speaker 2: they are gone, and then he seems like kind of
Speaker 2: a weirdo loner gut like those things magic, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the victim's not high profile, or it becomes one, then
Speaker 2: no one's looking, and then it's kind of like, well,
Speaker 2: why are we going to spend all of our time
Speaker 2: on this when there's other things going on or yeah,
Speaker 2: what have you?
Speaker 9: So?
Speaker 2: And then that's even in New York. It's like, imagine
Speaker 2: more rural areas. In four areas, it's like it's only
Speaker 2: gonna yeah, so you could easily see someone goes missing
Speaker 2: and it's just not that much pressure if there's not
Speaker 2: this kind of ground swell of attention.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, but I've got another question for you guys.
Speaker 1: When I read this stat I don't want to say
Speaker 1: I'm like built different or anything, but I just felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: most people committing a murder are probably driven by something specific,
Speaker 1: know the person, there's some kind of animosity. But I wonder, like,
Speaker 1: if you know the three of us are relatively smart,
Speaker 1: do you think you could get away with murder if
Speaker 1: you really put your mind to it, if you sat
Speaker 1: down and concocted a plant that you felt like would
Speaker 1: elude police? Or do you feel like it's twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: They've got cameras everywhere, They've got the craziest technology you
Speaker 1: can imagine. You're not getting away with it.
Speaker 7: No, you don't think you get away with it.
Speaker 2: I mean, we'll see what the cop says later. But
Speaker 2: in terms of why not, In terms of I just
Speaker 2: think I don't have confidence in one my ability to
Speaker 2: clean up after myself. Mm, like there would just be
Speaker 2: something some way to trace me, Like, yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be able to go deep enough. I don't think into
Speaker 2: like being so careful about covering my steps both before
Speaker 2: and after and as soon as I if I was
Speaker 2: interrogated as a suspect, you'd fold even if I wasn't
Speaker 2: a suspect, but if they were just talking to me like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know this, you know this person, right? Like, I
Speaker 2: think I would just I don't think I would be
Speaker 2: I don't think i'd immediately confessed, but I think i'd
Speaker 2: give enough signs that'd be like, let's talk to this
Speaker 2: guy for maybe ten more hours, yeah, and then I'd
Speaker 2: be like, yeah, yeah, maybe it was Actually I think
Speaker 2: I would give in. I think I think it would close.
Speaker 2: It would very quickly occur to me like I'll probably
Speaker 2: just be better off if I'm good, and maybe I
Speaker 2: can get out and see the sunlight one day.
Speaker 1: What about you, Devin, how do you feel?
Speaker 7: See?
Speaker 8: My thought on this is I do think I could
Speaker 8: get a way with it. But that's also the same
Speaker 8: reason I think I could get away with it is
Speaker 8: the same reason why I wouldn't commit a murder.
Speaker 7: You know, I feel like I'm.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 8: I feel like we talk about this all the time
Speaker 8: anytime there's a big murder case and someone gets caught
Speaker 8: and you're like, why the hell did you do that?
Speaker 8: Or what the hell is that happening? And I think
Speaker 8: we forget these people are not in the right state
Speaker 8: of mind this person they have decided to murder someone else,
Speaker 8: So it's not like they're thinking in some ways. They're
Speaker 8: thinking really logically. You're like, wow, you really planning this
Speaker 8: cart out? And then they do something really dumb and
Speaker 8: you're like why, you know, why do you still have
Speaker 8: the gun? Like what why would you go and sit
Speaker 8: down and eat out of McDonald's when you're on you know,
Speaker 8: like things like that. So I feel like, planning wise,
Speaker 8: I think I would be able to think through a
Speaker 8: lot of stuff, right, But I think me as a person,
Speaker 8: I think I would fall apart emotionally having killed a person.
Speaker 1: You would be able to live with the guilt.
Speaker 8: It would be tough to kill a person, you know.
Speaker 8: I think it would be like, I've never been in
Speaker 8: a fight. To go from never being in like a
Speaker 8: true fist fight to killing a person is quite a nicey.
Speaker 2: That's why you'd be good because no one would suspect you.
Speaker 2: WHOA yeah, he snapped.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to put these these hypotheses to the test.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk to a former detective and I'm
Speaker 1: going to have the two of you concoct a plan
Speaker 1: to kill each other. We're going to present this these
Speaker 1: plans to a former detective, just so that he could
Speaker 1: poke holes in them figure out where you went wrong.
Speaker 1: Or maybe he'll hear your plan and be like, actually,
Speaker 1: that's that would be really difficult for.
Speaker 2: Me to end up on a watch list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we will not be allowed to leave
Speaker 1: the studio. But before we get to the former detective,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth talking to a criminologist about this
Speaker 1: stat that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode
Speaker 1: about how half of murders go unsolved. What really could
Speaker 1: be leading to the decrease of murder clearance rates, especially
Speaker 1: because homicide rates have been on the fall for a
Speaker 1: long time now, despite what you hear on Fox News.
Speaker 1: But that's after the break. Okay, we're back. I'm Manny,
Speaker 1: I'm Noah, and we were just discussing the stat where
Speaker 1: fifty or nearly fifty percent of murder cases go unsolved.
Speaker 1: It's time now to talk to a criminologist who might
Speaker 1: have some insights for us. When I was looking for
Speaker 1: a criminologist, I wanted to pick someone who's been doing
Speaker 1: this for decades, like a really long time, so be
Speaker 1: able to to really pinpoint the kind of movements in
Speaker 1: this field, the developments, and you guys might like to
Speaker 1: hear this. He is a professor at the American University
Speaker 1: Fellow Eagle where the two of you graduated.
Speaker 4: Once.
Speaker 2: Always that's beautiful, We always say that that's lad to
Speaker 2: ask him, that's just a little touch.
Speaker 1: So you know what we said. So here's doctor Brian
Speaker 1: Forrest from Washington, d C. Hi.
Speaker 9: My name is Brian Forrest. I'm a professor emeritus of Justice,
Speaker 9: Law and Criminology at American University in the School of
Speaker 9: Public Affairs, and I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna skip straight to the main question. Why
Speaker 1: are there so many unsolved murders in the US today,
Speaker 1: despite the facts that the murder rate has crashed since
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. Doctor Forest said it has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with what he calls community policing.
Speaker 9: What happened to community policing? Whatever happened to community policing.
Speaker 9: The tragedy of the last twenty years or so has
Speaker 9: been that policing has descended from the model that was
Speaker 9: created in eighteen twenty nine by Sir Robert Peel, who
Speaker 9: was the creator of the London Metropolitan Police Service, which
Speaker 9: was a revolutionary way. It moved from the night watchmen
Speaker 9: to creating police officers as professionals. They were trained to
Speaker 9: be members of public. The police are the public, and
Speaker 9: the public are the police, according to Robert Peel. And
Speaker 9: so the idea was that the police didn't come into
Speaker 9: a community as aliens stormtroopers. They came in as servants,
Speaker 9: as members of the community who were respectful of the
Speaker 9: members of the community, even if those members were not
Speaker 9: always in good standings. And it was a model that
Speaker 9: was at the heart of community policing movement in America
Speaker 9: in the nineteen eighties and nineties. And during that period,
Speaker 9: our crime rate went down, homicide rates went way down,
Speaker 9: the clearance rates went up. We were trending in the
Speaker 9: right direction. So the police really are at the heart
Speaker 9: of the problem and the heart of the solution. And
Speaker 9: we were moving in the right direction from nineteen ninety
Speaker 9: to about the twenty teens, and then all hell broke loose.
Speaker 1: The growing outrage over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
Speaker 6: But the shooting of eighteen year old Michael Brown has
Speaker 6: opened a wound in the community.
Speaker 8: Shocking dash can video has been released of the fatal
Speaker 8: police shooting of Philandel, castile.
Speaker 6: Protesters calling for justice for Breonna Taylor.
Speaker 2: Peaceful demonstrations over the death of George Floyd yesterday turned
Speaker 2: into violence.
Speaker 9: The policing went south, and it's a real shame. And
Speaker 9: the question is can we find ways of returning to
Speaker 9: the noble, decent ethic of community policing where the police
Speaker 9: see themselves as members and servants of the community, rather
Speaker 9: than as better than or entitled to use brutal force
Speaker 9: willy nilly, as they are currently being encouraged from the
Speaker 9: highest levels.
Speaker 1: What is it exactly about the departure from community policing
Speaker 1: that affects the rate at which murders are solved.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a great question. It really comes down to
Speaker 9: a matter of trust between the citizenry and the police,
Speaker 9: and what community policing does is build and when the
Speaker 9: police have good contacts within the community, the clergy, school
Speaker 9: superintendents and principles and teachers, political war chiefs, they can
Speaker 9: have better access to the community. And when they are
Speaker 9: encouraged to despise the very idea of community, as we
Speaker 9: saw with Sarah Palin a few years ago, you know,
Speaker 9: I guess.
Speaker 8: A small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer.
Speaker 6: Except that you have actual responsibilities.
Speaker 9: Police unfortunately brought into more of Sarah Palin's ideas and
Speaker 9: less of Robert Peel's ideas of policing as community service.
Speaker 9: There's a vicious cycle here. When homicide rates go up,
Speaker 9: police resources get overloaded and their ability to solve crimes declinentes,
Speaker 9: which only in Olden's the offenders so basically, if it's
Speaker 9: easier to get away with crimes, and so they commit more,
Speaker 9: which only creates more homicides, more overload of scarce resources,
Speaker 9: and so it really is a vicious circle. And like
Speaker 9: I say, we have to find ways of breaking it.
Speaker 9: And then right now I don't see any on the horizon.
Speaker 1: So I think the basic idea here is that if
Speaker 1: I were thinking about committing a crime, for example, and
Speaker 1: there were good community policing, I would either be less
Speaker 1: likely to do it because I have been in contact
Speaker 1: with these people I know who they are, or if
Speaker 1: I did commit the crime, it would be a lot
Speaker 1: easier to pin me as the suspects because of their
Speaker 1: relationships with the community. And you know, you might be like,
Speaker 1: hey man, he's in a bad way. Like point me
Speaker 1: to where he is or whatever, and they'll come find me.
Speaker 1: Whereas today there's such a distrust in policing that you'd
Speaker 1: be shocked to hear of like regular citizens in some
Speaker 1: cities in the US, like helping the police do something.
Speaker 8: I think people are a bit skeptical of community policing nowadays,
Speaker 8: just because like the way that the system is set up,
Speaker 8: it does not encourage the ideal version of it. But
Speaker 8: I can see in a world in which your only
Speaker 8: interactions with police are not them you getting in trouble
Speaker 8: with them. If they understand the dynamics of the neighborhood.
Speaker 8: Say me and Noah hate each other. If Noah's one day,
Speaker 8: they may know.
Speaker 2: I know you haven't, or just because they're familiar talk
Speaker 2: with him, or they would at least have good enough
Speaker 2: relationships with people around could be able to tell them that.
Speaker 8: But who was the last person you got an argument with? Yes,
Speaker 8: and that sort of thing. You're not starting from zero.
Speaker 8: Where this is a lot of criticism of the New
Speaker 8: York Police Department in the city is that New York
Speaker 8: City Police Department is that a lot of the police
Speaker 8: officers live.
Speaker 7: On Long Island, so the.
Speaker 8: Area they're not they're working in areas that they don't
Speaker 8: visit out so different and they don't live, say, they
Speaker 8: don't have the familiarity with the community. They're just like
Speaker 8: driving in, you know, putting on a uniform, standing in
Speaker 8: a corner playing candy Crush, and then getting calls to
Speaker 8: you know, arrest people or confront people. They're not like
Speaker 8: walking around and be like hey miss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and then then use stories. And it's not
Speaker 2: just like in cities. It's like people call. I think
Speaker 2: there was one last week where you know, people call
Speaker 2: the police for some other reason than they end up
Speaker 2: getting shot or ye arrested or whatever for for another reason.
Speaker 2: And it's like, well, yeah, I mean enough of those.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, at least hesitate. If it's something where
Speaker 2: it's not like an immediate danger, I might be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm not going to call the copsle Yeah, they
Speaker 2: try to sort a shout or call someone else.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we learned a lot from the criminologist and
Speaker 1: about community policing and how important it is. But now
Speaker 1: I think it's time to bring in someone who has
Speaker 1: some on the ground experience with actually solving homicide cases.
Speaker 1: So joining us now is Chris McDonough. Would you mind
Speaker 1: introducing yourself, Chris.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for the invite. My name is Chris McDonough.
Speaker 6: I'm a retired homicide guy. I'm also a director currently
Speaker 6: with the Cold Case Foundation, and I still have a
Speaker 6: job where I work with indigenous people and I investigate
Speaker 6: crime still. So I'm kind of a fossil who will
Speaker 6: not stop working. Forty two years in the business.
Speaker 1: Wow, forty two years. Well, it's good to give me.
Speaker 1: Great to talk to you, thenk since you have so
Speaker 1: much experience, We've had this kind of question about this
Speaker 1: stat that we read recently that nearly fifty percent of
Speaker 1: murder cases go unsolved today. That is a decrease than
Speaker 1: the rate was in the nineteen nineties, where it was
Speaker 1: closer to sixty five to sixty nine. I'm just curious
Speaker 1: about your on the ground experience working on homicide cases,
Speaker 1: working on solving them in the past few decades. Why
Speaker 1: you think that stat is so high.
Speaker 6: You know, it's an interesting question, and it's obviously a
Speaker 6: disturbing statistic, right because every human life counts. It doesn't
Speaker 6: matter what, when, way, or why. I think there are
Speaker 6: going to be a couple of contributing factors. The first
Speaker 6: one is we have these new investigators for lack of
Speaker 6: a better term, who depend on technology. Okay, so I
Speaker 6: think there's a shifting in terms of investigators losing the
Speaker 6: ability to have critical thinking skills because they're not recognizing
Speaker 6: if Google didn't say it or the lab didn't say it,
Speaker 6: then how do I say it? How do I get
Speaker 6: to the answer?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 6: That's very problematic. If you're working south central Los Angeles
Speaker 6: and you go into Compton and you don't have the
Speaker 6: ability to respect people and or have the ability to communicate,
Speaker 6: they end up putting up barriers, for lack of a
Speaker 6: better term, even before they get to the scene because
Speaker 6: they're thinking one way, well, if we get forensics evidence, okay,
Speaker 6: that will solve the crime. And if they forget the
Speaker 6: fundamental piece of human interaction is to do what we're
Speaker 6: doing right now. Sitting here, We're going to have a conversation.
Speaker 6: It may be uncomfortable for either one of us. It
Speaker 6: doesn't matter. The point being is we have the ability
Speaker 6: to communicate.
Speaker 3: Or my time, we.
Speaker 6: Didn't have what was DNA right? I started in nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty two. What was DNA right?
Speaker 3: What's that my generation.
Speaker 6: Used to ring doorbells and kiss babies and shake hands
Speaker 6: and shit with families while they cried and screamed and shouted.
Speaker 6: And then you always get that one dude on the
Speaker 6: side that says, hey, can I tell you someuntain of
Speaker 6: the off the record, And you see, yeah, sure, what's up?
Speaker 6: And you listen and the next thing you know that
Speaker 6: that takes you to another place.
Speaker 1: How would you go about trying to fix this and
Speaker 1: remedy this so that we could get back to a
Speaker 1: place where police officers are in these communities and there
Speaker 1: isn't a lot of animosity between the police departments in
Speaker 1: their local communities.
Speaker 6: I mean, I can tell you a story. I won't
Speaker 6: drop his street name, but he was a main street crip. Okay,
Speaker 6: this guy's like hardcourt. Okay, he's out there swinging dope.
Speaker 6: He's doing the whole game.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 6: I stopped him one night and he had his kid
Speaker 6: in the back seat of his car. And I looked
Speaker 6: in the back seat and I see this four year
Speaker 6: old kid sitting on the seat and this is going
Speaker 6: to answer your question, I hope. And I looked at
Speaker 6: him and I said, dude, I know you're out here
Speaker 6: slinging dope.
Speaker 3: You got to do what you got to do right.
Speaker 6: In some communities, you go to do what you have
Speaker 6: to do to survive.
Speaker 3: So I said to him, I said, okay, where's your dope?
Speaker 6: And he kind of messed around a little bit and
Speaker 6: he finally shows me his dope and I said, okay,
Speaker 6: get out of the car and dump it.
Speaker 3: He says, what do you mean? I said, get out
Speaker 3: of the car and don't dump you dope and step
Speaker 3: on it. Crush it.
Speaker 6: They were all little rocks, right, so he crushes it.
Speaker 6: I said, okay, you owe me. Now what I want
Speaker 6: you to do at ten o'clock in the morning is
Speaker 6: you're going to meet me at kmart And he goes
Speaker 6: why I said, no, you owe me. He said, okay,
Speaker 6: sure enough, ten am shows up. True story. WI walk
Speaker 6: him into the store. I said, grab a car seat.
Speaker 6: He goes, what do you mean? I said, pick a
Speaker 6: car seat, and he gets one. We get the car sheet.
Speaker 6: I take it out to his car. I said, put
Speaker 6: it in, and I looked at him. I said, you
Speaker 6: have a chance in life, but that four year old
Speaker 6: does not until you give it to him. And you
Speaker 6: driving around slinging dope with a four year old not
Speaker 6: strapped in the back.
Speaker 3: Sheet is not a good look. Okay.
Speaker 6: Now, twenty three years later, my phone rings and I'm like.
Speaker 3: Who is it?
Speaker 6: He goes, Yo, he says mc They used to call
Speaker 6: him McDuff. They could never pronounce my last name. This
Speaker 6: is McDonough, so on the street it was always hey McDuff. Right,
Speaker 6: I said, dude, how'd you get my number? Man, I've
Speaker 6: been retired and all this other stuff. He's like, there's
Speaker 6: waste today McDuff. I said, okay, cool, I said, I said,
Speaker 6: what's up? And he goes, I want to invite you
Speaker 6: to my son's graduation from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 6: I was like blown away, okay, and then he says,
Speaker 6: true story, I did it.
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, you did. You broke it, man, you
Speaker 3: broke the cycle. So that.
Speaker 6: You can't invent that. Does that make sense? Studies can't
Speaker 6: make that happen. That trust only comes when you give it.
Speaker 6: Am I serving somebody? Or am I just managing a system?
Speaker 6: And when you figure out it's about not always putting
Speaker 6: handcuffs on people, It's about hearing their story and saying okay,
Speaker 6: I see where you're coming from. You dump the dope,
Speaker 6: and that's old school police work.
Speaker 1: After the break, it's the moment you've all been waiting for.
Speaker 1: Devin and Noah present their plans to kill each other
Speaker 1: to a detective. Before we get back to this week's episode,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of feedback about last week's episode
Speaker 1: answering all of your questions about laundry. Somehow we didn't
Speaker 1: answer everything. One listener, Monica, asked about items that are
Speaker 1: labeled dry clean only. We touched on dry cleaning briefly
Speaker 1: when it comes to suits, but she wanted to know
Speaker 1: if we can wash other items with this label on
Speaker 1: our own. The laundry expert Patrick said yes, he takes
Speaker 1: quote dry clean only to mean essentially wash with caution.
Speaker 1: For more on this and other questions, including a bit
Speaker 1: of controversy around the alleged health impacts of fabric softeners,
Speaker 1: check out this week's edition of our newsletter at no
Speaker 1: Such Thing Dot Show. Now back to this week's episode, So, Chris,
Speaker 1: in order to get a better understanding of this kind
Speaker 1: of old school police work, I thought it'd be interesting
Speaker 1: to see it play out in real time, and so
Speaker 1: what I've done is I've had Noah and Devin come
Speaker 1: up with plans to off each other, so to speak,
Speaker 1: and I'd love for you, as a former detective, to
Speaker 1: essentially grade them. You might be able to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: these guys are idiots. They'd get caught in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: And so we'll start with uh, we'll start with Noah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Noah's gonna present his plan, and as he's talking,
Speaker 1: you feel free to ask him questions about what he
Speaker 1: would do here and there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, feel free to jump in.
Speaker 3: Let me let me grab a hand, real feished?
Speaker 7: Sure?
Speaker 1: Great, you need a lot of notes?
Speaker 2: All right, all right, ready, all right, hit may So
Speaker 2: first of all, I'm gonna take my time with this thing.
Speaker 2: I'm not rushing into.
Speaker 1: This, Okay.
Speaker 2: So first, once I decide I'm gonna kill Devin, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna with cash buy a laptop that's gonna be my
Speaker 2: burner laptop, and I'm only gonna use it out and
Speaker 2: you know, not in my home, not on my Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna use VPNs and I'm gonna use tour
Speaker 2: dark web browsing.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it so dark hopefully.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So then I was thinking, all right, I was like,
Speaker 2: what do I know about Devin. I know he loves tea.
Speaker 2: He drinks tea every day most you know, I think
Speaker 2: three at least three cups. Yeah, I'm gonna make tea
Speaker 2: poisoned tea. I was on my computer, my lap, my burner, laptop.
Speaker 2: I'll be researching what types of flowers are poisonous. There's like,
Speaker 2: you know, night shade. There's the leave of the Valley
Speaker 2: for all the breaking bad heads out there, So I'll
Speaker 2: procure these. At some point, I'm gonna kind of get
Speaker 2: invited to Evan's apartment, maybe a movie night or something,
Speaker 2: one on one hopefully so there's no one else around, okay,
Speaker 2: or you know, wait till everyone's distracted, you go to
Speaker 2: the bathroom or something. So I'm thinking I'll put I'll
Speaker 2: throw gloves on real quick while you're in the bathroom,
Speaker 2: sneak over, take my poison to out, put it back in,
Speaker 2: seal it up nice hopefully, and then just sit and wait,
Speaker 2: because you know, it might be a while before you
Speaker 2: even get to my poisoned t bags. I'm hoping there's
Speaker 2: some time passing so it's not like, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it was over for movie night and then the next day,
Speaker 2: your stomach's exploding. Who knows what's happening. So that's that's
Speaker 2: my plan. What do you What are your initial reactions there?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's messed up.
Speaker 2: But yeah, listen, I didn't enjoy doing this at all,
Speaker 2: but I had to. You know, I'm trying to get
Speaker 2: his stake in the podcast.
Speaker 3: Very intricately thought out.
Speaker 6: Now, the interesting thing about poison is about ninety percent
Speaker 6: of women will use poison as a weapon of choice,
Speaker 6: ten percent of men. So you automatically would fit into
Speaker 6: a rare category of homicide suspects.
Speaker 3: That's number one.
Speaker 2: I have a question, because it's poison, would you then
Speaker 2: be looking for all the women in Devin's circle first.
Speaker 6: Yes and no, And we'd have to see what the
Speaker 6: environments are for you know, where Devon was living, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Are you married Devon? Can I? Maybe I should know?
Speaker 7: I'm not married?
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, So he's out there in the world and
Speaker 6: he's probably got girls around him and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: But that's going to be pretty quick to eliminate that
Speaker 6: situation because you're.
Speaker 3: In that core, you're in the middle.
Speaker 6: Okay, we want to eliminate that medal first and then
Speaker 6: work our way out all the ideas of going ghost
Speaker 6: on you know, the digital footprint, etc.
Speaker 3: Like that, that's not going to be real problem.
Speaker 6: There's some very serious software out there that the FEDS have,
Speaker 6: and so we would collect your data, send.
Speaker 3: It back to the FBI and see if.
Speaker 6: They can rediscover some of those sites that you visited.
Speaker 1: Quick question, so does going on those kind of VPNs
Speaker 1: or tour browsers doesn't necessarily protect you from police activities?
Speaker 6: Now there are ways of making it all go away,
Speaker 6: of course, but that's really you know, you've got to
Speaker 6: hammer the hard drive or you've got to bleach it
Speaker 6: and all this other stuff, right, But the fact that
Speaker 6: he chose poisoning, okay, gives me the advantage. So it's
Speaker 6: very rare for a guy to poison one of his friends.
Speaker 6: So immediately I would want to know what your orientation
Speaker 6: is in terms of if there's an attraction and that
Speaker 6: went sideways, you know, not throwing my man Devin under
Speaker 6: the bus for a second. But let's say the autops
Speaker 6: comes back and says, hey, this is a poisoning. So
Speaker 6: what I would do is I would interview all of
Speaker 6: Devon's circle of influence the folks around him, and there's
Speaker 6: what they call a victim risk continuum. It would say environment, situation, circumstance. Okay, low, medium.
Speaker 3: Or high.
Speaker 6: So the question is what's the environment. Well, that's where
Speaker 6: Devon was found. If it's his apartment, is that a low,
Speaker 6: medium or high risk environment?
Speaker 3: What do you guys think.
Speaker 1: In your apartment would be a low risk I guess.
Speaker 6: Yeah exactly because if it was like down you know,
Speaker 6: at times square at two o'clock in the morning. Yeah, right,
Speaker 6: that Now that shifts a lot of happening, right, And
Speaker 6: so what's the situation right you would go, oh, he's
Speaker 6: hanging out with friends, you know, kicking it here, watching TV,
Speaker 6: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Is that a low higher medium risk activity?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 3: Again, it goes to that low side. So everything in this.
Speaker 6: Murderer that Noah has planned here tells us it hits
Speaker 6: on the low side.
Speaker 3: Of the victim risk continuum.
Speaker 6: So statistically, the lower it shows up, the higher probability
Speaker 6: he was a selected target.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 6: So my first question to Noah would have been, Noah,
Speaker 6: do you know why we're here today?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, sir, yeah, no worries, no worries.
Speaker 6: Many, tell me a little bit about your life.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm a podcaster. I do a show with two
Speaker 2: living friends of mine, Devin and Manny.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I see them once a week, usually in the studio
Speaker 2: when recording. And that's that's about it. Though, have a wife?
Speaker 3: Cool? Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2: Connecticut?
Speaker 6: What I'm doing is I'm asking him questions that I
Speaker 6: already know I'm going to get the answers to. Do
Speaker 6: you know why we live three lives. It's our public,
Speaker 6: our private life, and our secret life. Like that, our
Speaker 6: secret life is where murder then all this other stuff
Speaker 6: takes place.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 6: So my line of questioning for the very first question
Speaker 6: to him was you know why you're here to see
Speaker 6: how he's going to answer. And what he did is
Speaker 6: he answered me and what persona public persona? Of course
Speaker 6: I already knew that, okay, So I threw him a
Speaker 6: bait question to see if he was going to say,
Speaker 6: does this have anything to do with Devon.
Speaker 3: Or anything like that?
Speaker 6: Well, so the answer is no, okay, So he didn't
Speaker 6: even take me to his private life. His private life
Speaker 6: is where Devon and he are buds. And so what
Speaker 6: he's doing is he's projecting this persona that he wants
Speaker 6: me to hear. So what I would do is I
Speaker 6: would take him down this road of no problem. Let's
Speaker 6: stay there, okay. And then when they start lying, hey,
Speaker 6: they're covering their secret life, and it becomes very difficult
Speaker 6: to do that because you can't always remember your lodge, okay.
Speaker 6: And so eventually we would circle back to well, tell
Speaker 6: me a little bit about Devon and his life. That's
Speaker 6: what they call victimology, and we would dive into Devon
Speaker 6: from what Noah may know about Devon.
Speaker 3: Maybe at that point we'll say, you know, you want
Speaker 3: a bag of chips, you want a coke, you want
Speaker 3: a cheeseburger, you know, let's take a break.
Speaker 7: You know, good?
Speaker 3: And you know what I mean, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I would ask you to take a sip
Speaker 6: out of your coffee cup there, okay, And then I
Speaker 6: would say, let me go get you a coke, or
Speaker 6: let me go fill up your cup or something. Take
Speaker 6: your cup and go out and hit it with a buckle, swab,
Speaker 6: get your DNA that Coca cola and yeah, and then
Speaker 6: come back in and hand you your cup back and sale,
Speaker 6: all good, bro, Let's.
Speaker 1: Keep So I'm curious that and that's perfectly legal to do,
Speaker 1: to just get a swab of someone's uh, personal items
Speaker 1: in the interrogation room.
Speaker 6: Yeah if if for an example, those were our coffee cups.
Speaker 3: Right, Let's see, we.
Speaker 6: Walk in, she wants something to drink, she absolutely and you.
Speaker 3: Hand him a coffee cup. If if he hits it, okay,
Speaker 3: it's mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So basically with with Noah's playing here, just this
Speaker 1: kind of circle back, it sounds like a low success
Speaker 1: rate playing and to be fair to know what he
Speaker 1: did say, he did say before we started here that
Speaker 1: he didn't think he would be able to get away
Speaker 1: with this.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do it. I've been scared.
Speaker 7: Now, yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Was super fascinating. I've learned a lot in just that
Speaker 1: small amount of time. So now let's let's go over
Speaker 1: to Devin's plan to do the same thing to know,
Speaker 1: uh and see what you might be able to glean
Speaker 1: from this.
Speaker 8: My plan is a little bit more straightforward than Noah's.
Speaker 7: We're gonna have a.
Speaker 8: Boys weekend upstate, okay, and we're gonna invite Max too,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's four of us.
Speaker 8: Four of us strategically because I need Manny and Max
Speaker 8: to drive up together, and no I'm I'm gonna pick
Speaker 8: up Noah.
Speaker 7: We're gonna have a great weekend planned.
Speaker 8: We're gonna stay for two or three days, and I'm
Speaker 8: gonna have an event plan on the last day.
Speaker 7: So we're gonna be driving back when it's dark.
Speaker 8: Okay, I'm gonna purposely leave something in my back seat,
Speaker 8: so many Manny and Max are gonna be driving back together.
Speaker 7: Yeah, me and Noah are gonna be driving back together
Speaker 7: in a different car. In different car. You know, it's
Speaker 7: a state. The roads are pretty dark.
Speaker 8: At one point, I'm going to say, hey, no you
Speaker 8: mind reaching in the back and grabbing me. Let's say
Speaker 8: get my bag for me. I have something in my bag,
Speaker 8: some gum or something I want. As Noah takes off
Speaker 8: his seatbelt to go in the back, I'm going to
Speaker 8: crash the car.
Speaker 2: Wow, as a bold one.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna have my seatbelt on.
Speaker 8: I'm going to try to crash it in the way
Speaker 8: that I'm going to try to hit Noah head on
Speaker 8: on his side. He is now not buckled into his
Speaker 8: seat at all, right, and I'm going to go for it. Hey,
Speaker 8: if I'm going to murder someone. I've got to take
Speaker 8: a little bit of a I'm gonna end up a
Speaker 8: little bit hurt. But I think that's I think that
Speaker 8: helps with my alibi of like, why would I purposely
Speaker 8: crash my car?
Speaker 2: You know a really bad guy?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: So yeah, my plan is to get into a car,
Speaker 8: crash at a strategic time where Noah is not buckled in,
Speaker 8: and crash into a tree on his side of the Okay.
Speaker 2: All right, say it. I'm injured, but not fully there.
Speaker 2: Would you then like give me a little bludgeon to
Speaker 2: finish the job. Like, what if I'm still alive?
Speaker 7: If you're still alive, I'm like.
Speaker 2: DEVI or would you just be like a horrible accident.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna wait to call the if you're still alive
Speaker 8: after and you're laying on the ground, say you're outside
Speaker 8: of the car. Yeah, well I'm gonna wait it out. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I see how long can I go? Hour or two
Speaker 8: hours later? He's still there?
Speaker 1: Wow, this kind of happened in Sopranos where they got
Speaker 1: in a car accident. I don't want to spoil it.
Speaker 1: I mean spoiler, I'll say two characters get in a
Speaker 1: car accident. One of them then just plugs the other
Speaker 1: one's nose until because then it's kind of hard to tell.
Speaker 1: But but Chris, for the sake of simplicity, let's let's
Speaker 1: say that Noah is killed in the car crash. He's not.
Speaker 1: He's not crawling out of there. That's really interesting though.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty good one.
Speaker 1: Let's hear from Chris.
Speaker 3: That is a good one, and.
Speaker 6: It's just as scandalous as so. The first thing is then, obviously,
Speaker 6: when the cops or the ambulances or anybody gets on
Speaker 6: the scene, are you going to be there.
Speaker 3: At that time?
Speaker 6: Devin, I mean, oh yeah, conscious, yes, I'm there.
Speaker 7: I'm hurt. Maybe even I'm calling the police.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably smart.
Speaker 8: Maybe I'm rehearsing my voice that I'm going to use
Speaker 8: when I call.
Speaker 2: That'd be tough, you know, because they always play those.
Speaker 6: Calls back the Okay, So whatever story you're going to
Speaker 6: tell initially is going to be the story we're going
Speaker 6: to lock you into, right, Yes, so the very first
Speaker 6: words out of your mouth on and that, by the way,
Speaker 6: happens when you call nine one one. It doesn't happen
Speaker 6: when the cops get there. So the first thing I
Speaker 6: would want to do is go listen to the.
Speaker 3: Nine to eleven two and here before you talk to me.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely, because I want to hear. I want
Speaker 3: to hear what you say about the car accident and
Speaker 3: what happened.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to tell you that because I'm going
Speaker 6: to own that. Okay, I'm gonna own that in my
Speaker 6: own secret life. Okay, I'm say yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna tuck that. I'm gonna tuck that away, okay.
Speaker 6: And so then at some point, if you're okay health wise, right,
Speaker 6: you're not hurt in the injury, but Noah's messed up
Speaker 6: over there with no seatbelt because he's been launched out
Speaker 6: into a tree somewhere, you know, off to the side
Speaker 6: of the road. The first thing I would do is
Speaker 6: try to get you back at the station. I want
Speaker 6: to hear what you have to say about how this
Speaker 6: whole thing went down.
Speaker 3: You know what mistake you made? Though?
Speaker 7: Oh so far, what mistake have I made?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 3: You called nine one one?
Speaker 7: Oh I shouldn't call nine one one.
Speaker 3: No, I've got all that phone data with your location.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, I.
Speaker 6: Can get a search warrant and pull all of your
Speaker 6: phone data on when you were making phone calls and
Speaker 6: to who okay, and so what I would do is
Speaker 6: lock you into a story for the very first night.
Speaker 6: I would say to you, Hey, Devin, after we got
Speaker 6: to know each other right and all this other stuff,
Speaker 6: I would say, hey, dude, you know, thank you so
Speaker 6: much for coming down tonight. I'm so sorry that your
Speaker 6: friend Noah passed away. I mean, I can imagine how
Speaker 6: you're feeling. How do you feel.
Speaker 8: I just feel like it's all my fault. Obviously I
Speaker 8: was the one driving. I feel horrible. I don't know
Speaker 8: I'm going to face you know, his dog, his wife
Speaker 8: now that I've done this horrible, horrible thing because I
Speaker 8: just was not paying attention while I was driving.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's messed up, my friend. I totally understand. Uh,
Speaker 6: just out of curiosity. Where are you going to be
Speaker 6: for the next two weeks.
Speaker 8: I'm going to be home. I don't know if I
Speaker 8: can work. We obviously we're not recording a podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotta get a guest.
Speaker 1: He's gonna go home. Little does he know, Noah has
Speaker 1: already poisoned the tea.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 6: Man of what I've just done by asking that question,
Speaker 6: just out of curiosity, what are you going to do
Speaker 6: for the next two weeks? I have triggered a stress
Speaker 6: mechanism internally for him.
Speaker 3: M okay.
Speaker 6: So now what I've done is I'm putting back on
Speaker 6: his heels because I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say, Devin,
Speaker 6: thank you so much for coming down here tonight. We
Speaker 6: really appreciate it. I'll tell you, what if there's anything
Speaker 6: else that you can remember or think of, or something
Speaker 6: I didn't ask you, Okay, would you would you do
Speaker 6: me a favor and reach back out to me? Is
Speaker 6: that okay, Devin?
Speaker 3: Would you do that?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Of course, absolutely, Okay, no problem, bro.
Speaker 6: As you can tell, we're going to do a lot
Speaker 6: of investigation on this thing, and I'll be in contact
Speaker 6: with you.
Speaker 3: But thank you so much. Have a good night.
Speaker 6: Now, what I've done is I've kicked him out of
Speaker 6: the door and bought rent space in his head.
Speaker 2: Boom.
Speaker 6: Okay, Because now you're going to go home thinking what, Devin.
Speaker 8: Why do they want to talk to me? It's a
Speaker 8: simple car crash, you know, like, what are you investigating?
Speaker 8: What are you looking into? They must be onto me. M. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 8: Now he's got to be thinking, oh, crap, what did
Speaker 8: I miss? You know, what should I have done?
Speaker 3: Differently?
Speaker 6: Show with me leaving that planet. In Devon's mind, the
Speaker 6: bigger question for him is what are they doing for
Speaker 6: the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Let's say both of these are probably low success rates
Speaker 1: in terms of getting away with it. Was there one
Speaker 1: plan that was better than the other, that was more feasible?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Who's more likely to get away from murder.
Speaker 1: With these plans?
Speaker 3: Uh? I think the car plan would be a lot
Speaker 3: tougher to prove.
Speaker 6: I think with Noah choosing poison, that was his mistake, okay,
Speaker 6: because that puts him in a whole different category. And
Speaker 6: all we would have to do is connect your relationship
Speaker 6: between Noah and Devon, and you know that that relationship
Speaker 6: would come from Devon's family. I would really spend a
Speaker 6: lot of time with your family man and say, hey,
Speaker 6: you know, what's his relationship with with Noah or with
Speaker 6: this person or that person. And then it would be
Speaker 6: a matter of you know, just taking your time and
Speaker 6: interviewing people, and then at some point you realize, you
Speaker 6: know what we used to call it DLR Okay, don't
Speaker 6: look right or doesn't sound right, because we all wear
Speaker 6: this mask of this secret life, and so Noah's mask
Speaker 6: would fall pretty quick.
Speaker 1: This has been so fascinating and so fun to listen to.
Speaker 1: Before we let you go, just to circle back to
Speaker 1: that stat where there's like nearly half of these murder
Speaker 1: cases are going on solved. I'm curious in your personal
Speaker 1: work before you retired, After you retired, what would you
Speaker 1: say the percentage of the murder cases you've worked on
Speaker 1: were cleared.
Speaker 6: God blessed me. In my career, I had a ninety
Speaker 6: percent solve ability.
Speaker 2: Oh my wow, Wow, it's the Michael Jordan.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know enough to get in trouble.
Speaker 3: How about that.
Speaker 6: Now, it didn't mean I could put the bracelets on you, okay,
Speaker 6: But but what it did mean is I knew that
Speaker 6: you knew there will be a destiny at some point.
Speaker 6: So I was lucky. But I came from a group
Speaker 6: of people. My mentors were really good investigators.
Speaker 3: They did what we're doing right now.
Speaker 6: I mean, look, look what I've learned here already, just
Speaker 6: about you guys. That's what's important, and that's what will
Speaker 6: solve more of these these homicide cases and you guys
Speaker 6: are doing good work here by allowing old knuckleheads like
Speaker 6: me to talk about it.
Speaker 1: All right, that was an incredible conversation. I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like we had just learned so much about police work.
Speaker 1: Probably not surprising that your plans were, you know, had
Speaker 1: a low success rate. I guess like, it's not impossible
Speaker 1: that you couldn't get away with it. His determination was that, like,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure i'd get you guys.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well he was.
Speaker 8: He said, to be fair, I would be more likely
Speaker 8: to get away with it.
Speaker 1: That's true, arguing that was a little bit.
Speaker 2: But you have to be a good you have to
Speaker 2: be a really good actor for years. Yeah, like I
Speaker 2: have a little more time on That's what That was
Speaker 2: my focus.
Speaker 7: Or I need to crash good enough so I can't
Speaker 7: call anybody.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just some someone on the road has to
Speaker 2: find you.
Speaker 1: But the thing too, is like we're forgetting like it
Speaker 1: is about getting away with it. You might be the
Speaker 1: number one suspect as long as they don't have enough.
Speaker 8: It's my thing. I was like, hey, you're gonna I
Speaker 8: did drive the car. You know it's me. You're not
Speaker 8: looking for anybody the guy. Now you got to prove
Speaker 8: that I did this on purpose. Why would I crash
Speaker 8: my car on purpose?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe because of our our love affair. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I'm trying to end.
Speaker 7: Don't tell, I'll tell your wife.
Speaker 1: What I've learned from this episode is you probably could
Speaker 1: get away with murder unless the detective was someone like Chris,
Speaker 1: from this old school way of policing where they really
Speaker 1: get into the community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should get a current day all right, Grock closer,
Speaker 2: You're good? How can't I say so?
Speaker 6: Croc?
Speaker 1: Is this true? No such thing as a production of
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope Content. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne and Mangeshkur.
Speaker 1: The show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and
Speaker 1: Devin Joseph. The theme and credit song was produced by
Speaker 1: me Manny. The show is mixed by Steve Bone. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to our guests this week, doctor Brian Forrest from
Speaker 1: the American University and Detective Chris McDonough aka McDuff. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. It was such an
Speaker 1: incredible conversation. For more information about this episode, visit No
Speaker 1: Such Thing Dot Show and subscribe to our newsletter and
Speaker 1: if you have feedback or a question to ask. Our
Speaker 1: email is Manny Noah Deevin at gmail dot com. If
Speaker 1: you're in the US, you can also leave us a
Speaker 1: voicemail by calling the number in the show notes. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with a new episode next week.
Speaker 7: Joe A
Speaker 4: Hell's as Hell's as Hell's, as Hell's as such Thing