Speaker 1: Bbcsdis before we begin, I just want a flag that
Speaker 1: this episode includes some very strong language and references to
Speaker 1: drug taking.
Speaker 2: I was in the newsroom and I was about to
Speaker 2: eat dinner, and I remember someone at our assignment desk.
Speaker 2: They're the ones that hear this police scanner said Hey,
Speaker 2: there's something going on in this quiet neighborhood on the
Speaker 2: northwest side of town, and we need you to go
Speaker 2: and check it out. We didn't know what it was,
Speaker 2: but we knew someone was dead.
Speaker 1: It's December twenty twelve and Tiffany Craig is halfway through
Speaker 1: her shift at a local TV station in Houston. Her
Speaker 1: dinner interrupted, she heads out to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 2: So we got to the street. Nice neighborhood. Nice break
Speaker 2: homes were just a couple of days before Christmas, and
Speaker 2: there were lots of families in that neighborhood that had
Speaker 2: their Christmas lights up.
Speaker 1: Tiffany has reported live from countless crime scenes, but this
Speaker 1: case was anything but typical.
Speaker 2: There were lots of neighbors out, which doesn't happen all
Speaker 2: that often. Whenever we go to crime scenes, a lot
Speaker 2: of times people lock their doors and close up and
Speaker 2: they want nothing to do. With what's going on out there,
Speaker 2: But this neighborhood was different. This sort of thing didn't
Speaker 2: happen in that neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Tiffany joins the throng of journalists and neighbors craning their
Speaker 1: necks to see what happened.
Speaker 2: It was really busy, and there was lots of chatter,
Speaker 2: and there was lots of people out there asking what
Speaker 2: is going on. I remember hearing one of the reporters
Speaker 2: tell an investigator that there was someone out there that
Speaker 2: didn't belong out.
Speaker 1: There, someone snooping around the crime scene.
Speaker 2: They weren't a neighbor, they weren't really on the street
Speaker 2: for any particular reason, but they were there that night
Speaker 2: and then it's as if they just vanished. No one
Speaker 2: ever heard about this person again. But they were on
Speaker 2: the street, and it was suspect enough that somebody that
Speaker 2: was with the group of reporters said something about it.
Speaker 1: It's not unheard of for a killer to return to
Speaker 1: the scene of the crime for some narcissistic kick. The
Speaker 1: police ask around to narrow in on a suspect, a
Speaker 1: local guy who'd just been released from prison with a
Speaker 1: long history of stealing and pawning things. So detectives Carousel
Speaker 1: and du say pay him a visit. One afternoon. They
Speaker 1: knock on his door, but there's no answer. Try again
Speaker 1: two hours later, same thing, and that's it. They don't
Speaker 1: pursue this tip any further. I guess they didn't think
Speaker 1: he was a viable suspect. He lived around the corner
Speaker 1: from the Melgars and could have just been on his
Speaker 1: way home. A well known ne'er dowell does not necessarily
Speaker 1: mean well known murderer all the same, it's this kind
Speaker 1: of behavior that would make anyone wary of the police investigation,
Speaker 1: not even question this guy with a criminal record. I
Speaker 1: can understand why Liz would maybe be cautious of trusting
Speaker 1: the work the police are actually doing, but she has
Speaker 1: no choice. She has to work with them, and that
Speaker 1: starts with searching her old house for anything that could
Speaker 1: be missing, anything that could be a possible clue.
Speaker 3: And my parents the bed had been disassembled and moved
Speaker 3: into the living room, even the carpet had been pulled
Speaker 3: up and the floor had been painted over where obviously
Speaker 3: there had been a lot of blood.
Speaker 1: If you remember, the house had already been combed over
Speaker 1: by the police and then scrubbed by the crime scene
Speaker 1: cleaning company. It's impossible to know what might have been
Speaker 1: seized as evidence and what might have been stolen.
Speaker 3: And then I went into the garage because I knew
Speaker 3: my dad had all those power tools and things were missing.
Speaker 1: As well as finding her old backpack stuffed with the
Speaker 1: family's Xbox and other valuables taken from the house, it
Speaker 1: looks like some of her dad's tools are missing.
Speaker 3: You could see that the toolboxes had all been rummaged through,
Speaker 3: some of them are empty.
Speaker 1: Liz checks to see if she can find any of
Speaker 1: her dad's tools being sold online.
Speaker 3: There's a Craigslist ad that had three of the tools
Speaker 3: that were missing, all in one ad, exact same brand,
Speaker 3: the exact like everything, and they were all being sold
Speaker 3: for like two hundred dollars, which is just not yeah,
Speaker 3: not the worth of I mean, maybe one of the tools,
Speaker 3: but it was such a low price that it was
Speaker 3: very suspicious.
Speaker 1: She tells the police about the seller, wondering if this
Speaker 1: new lead will be the key to finding her dad's murderer.
Speaker 3: I had a list of suspects, which I did talk
Speaker 3: to the police about.
Speaker 1: Liz is investigating every possible avenue, looking at all the
Speaker 1: possible suspects because in her mind, there's no way on
Speaker 1: earth her mom killed her dad, and if she's going
Speaker 1: to show the police she's right, she needs to find
Speaker 1: out who did. I'm Maggie Robinson Katz and from BBC
Speaker 1: Studios and iHeart Podcasts. This is Hands Tied, Episode four,
Speaker 1: Suspects and Suspicions.
Speaker 3: I wasn't surprised at first that they were looking at her,
Speaker 3: because why wouldn't you. That would be stupid not to.
Speaker 3: I was being realistic about it. I thought, Okay, they're
Speaker 3: gonna look into her because like ninety percent of the time,
Speaker 3: it is the spouse.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, if we've learned anything from True Crime
Speaker 1: one oh one, the first person the police would suspect
Speaker 1: would be Sandy Jim's wife.
Speaker 3: And then I thought, Okay, they'll look into her, they'll
Speaker 3: see that this nothing fits that, whatever evidence they have,
Speaker 3: they'll look into it, and we'll.
Speaker 1: Move on, move on and start to focus on finding
Speaker 1: the real killer. Liz thinks.
Speaker 3: And so I felt like I had to kind of
Speaker 3: check their work or do their work for them. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I just make sure that I had covered
Speaker 3: everything and had recorded or photographed or somehow preserved everything
Speaker 3: that I had found or I had done in order
Speaker 3: for any of it to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: And despite all of Liz's effort, she feels like the
Speaker 1: police are continually keeping her in the dark. She says
Speaker 1: there's been no news on the backpack and Xbox she found,
Speaker 1: and no news on the missing tools. But then Liz
Speaker 1: has an aha moment. Her dad, Jim, owned a couple
Speaker 1: of rental properties. Maybe the tenants will know something.
Speaker 3: So I call this guy and say, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: Jim Algar's daughter, and I just want to let you
Speaker 3: know that this is what has happened. And I had
Speaker 3: the most melodramatic reaction that I had been pacing back
Speaker 3: and forth. It just made me stop dead in my tracks,
Speaker 3: and I just thought, this man is like screaming and
Speaker 3: shouting and acting like his own mother has died. It
Speaker 3: just seemed very suspect to me.
Speaker 1: And Liz discovers this guy's behind on rent.
Speaker 3: I did find something my dad had printed out saying
Speaker 3: that he was going to be evicted and less he
Speaker 3: could come up with the missing rent within this amount
Speaker 3: of time. And then once they left, we go into
Speaker 3: the house and there are stab marks on several of
Speaker 3: the wolves and what looks like blood on some of
Speaker 3: the wolves, and it's just like the place has been trashed.
Speaker 3: That's got me thinking, you know, alarm bell is going.
Speaker 3: So we called the police and we did have them come.
Speaker 4: Case number one two one seven six two six nine.
Speaker 4: This is Sean Carriage. Here's Kenny Homicide sixty Henry thirty
Speaker 4: nine sitting here with me. Sir, Can you state your
Speaker 4: first and last name?
Speaker 1: It's some ungodly hour in the morning when Detective Carousel
Speaker 1: wakes Jim's ex tendant up for questioning.
Speaker 4: And you used to run a home from him, Melgor Yes?
Speaker 4: Or the address that location?
Speaker 5: Hm?
Speaker 6: I do?
Speaker 4: It's I thought I did. I just woke up. It's
Speaker 4: what it is, that dangn madress.
Speaker 1: He tells the detectives. He moved out a month before
Speaker 1: Jim or Hi May as he calls him, was murdered.
Speaker 4: I remember between nine two thousand.
Speaker 6: Okay, Uh, did you see him when you When was
Speaker 6: the last time you saw Homie?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: I don't remember, but it was it had to be
Speaker 6: at least a couple of months before that.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: The house was vandalized after he moved out. He says, Okay, do.
Speaker 4: You know anybody that would try to hurt.
Speaker 6: You?
Speaker 4: Never say anything that I.
Speaker 6: Can't to this day, I just can't believe it. I mean,
Speaker 6: me and him talk when he came over. I mean
Speaker 6: all I ever knew about him was he worked at
Speaker 6: a school. He worked at a school, and anything. I
Speaker 6: think he told me he had two in houses.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, I'm just trying to trying to get any
Speaker 4: cato inside on what if anybody, everybody that knew him.
Speaker 4: That's what I try to meet with you today. Anything
Speaker 4: else you can think of. So he talked to him, I.
Speaker 6: Don't know why anybody would hurt him. I mean, he
Speaker 6: was just the most calmest person I've ever met.
Speaker 4: He was relaxed.
Speaker 1: Karazel asks a few more questions, but twenty minutes in
Speaker 1: decides he's heard enough.
Speaker 4: It's a seven three am. It's going to be the
Speaker 4: end of the interview.
Speaker 1: Another suspect struck off the list, back to the drawing board.
Speaker 1: In January twenty thirteen, Liz and her mom decide to
Speaker 1: sell the family home, the thought of living there too painful.
Speaker 1: Sandy has only been back once since Jim's murder, but
Speaker 1: felt terrified just being there, wanting to leave before it
Speaker 1: got too dark, so they began looking for a new place.
Speaker 1: In February, while Liz is packing up, she notices her
Speaker 1: dad safe. She'd forgotten all about it, even though it
Speaker 1: was right there in the closet next to his body
Speaker 1: the night he was killed. She takes a closer look
Speaker 1: and notices blood on the handle.
Speaker 3: So I called detective Carousel, and I asked him about it,
Speaker 3: and he says, oh, you can just clean it like
Speaker 3: we processed it. It's fine, you can clean it off.
Speaker 3: And so I asked my husband to please do it
Speaker 3: because I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: But it gets her thinking.
Speaker 3: To me, it looked like someone had tried to go
Speaker 3: into it because the keys that were normally in the
Speaker 3: safe we're on the floor.
Speaker 1: Around the same time Jim was killed, Houston was experiencing
Speaker 1: an uptick in violent robberies where homeowners were tied up
Speaker 1: and occasionally killed.
Speaker 3: I honestly believe that the point of breaking into my
Speaker 3: family's home was not to kill anyone. It was to
Speaker 3: take money, and then things just went sideways.
Speaker 1: Back when Sandy was being interviewed by the police, she
Speaker 1: told the detectives that she couldn't remember much about the
Speaker 1: night of Jim's murder. The time, she says she's spent
Speaker 1: lying in the closet, tied up, waiting to be found.
Speaker 1: It's all vague, impressionistic. She was falling in and out
Speaker 1: of consciousness, hearing the dogs whining, realizing dimly she was
Speaker 1: tied up, then blacking out again. But then she tells
Speaker 1: Liz that a fragment of a memory has come back
Speaker 1: to her.
Speaker 3: She woke up for a split second and felt somebody
Speaker 3: with their knee in her back, like pulling on her arms,
Speaker 3: so she thinks that's the moment she was being tied up,
Speaker 3: and that's when she saw someone looking at what the
Speaker 3: person behind her was doing.
Speaker 1: Sandy says that after blacking out, she came to momentarily
Speaker 1: and saw a Hispanic woman in front of her looking
Speaker 1: at the person who was tying her up.
Speaker 3: And she said this woman looked angry, and then she
Speaker 3: passed out again.
Speaker 1: This doesn't seem like much to go on, but for Liz,
Speaker 1: it's a game changer. Liz remembers what the house looked like.
Speaker 1: There were clothes haphazardly tossed on the bed, dresser drawers
Speaker 1: pulled open purses with their contents builled out. The house
Speaker 1: looked like it had been ransacked searched. What did that
Speaker 1: all kind of say to you?
Speaker 3: I mean said that there was someone there who was
Speaker 3: looking to take things for money. Even in my parents' room,
Speaker 3: my mom was missing medications that people normally would abused,
Speaker 3: so barbituates, the PhNO barbeitells she used to take for
Speaker 3: her seizures. We didn't know if anything else was missing,
Speaker 3: like cash, because my dad always had cash on hand,
Speaker 3: but there was no cash found, so we don't know
Speaker 3: whether he had spent it or whether it was taken.
Speaker 1: Maybe this was a robbery gone wrong.
Speaker 2: I can't give you any numbers on home invasions during
Speaker 2: that year, but I can tell you that I covered multiple.
Speaker 1: That's Tiffany Craig, the journalist we met earlier.
Speaker 2: Could it be another home invasion?
Speaker 1: This was a rampant problem in Houston back in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: so bad that several task forces involving agencies like the FBI,
Speaker 1: Houston PD, and the ATF were formed to try and
Speaker 1: stop them.
Speaker 2: We have multiple cases where the people are tied up
Speaker 2: and you have to wonder are they related? Somehow is
Speaker 2: there something that could tie them together.
Speaker 1: The similarities hadn't escaped Liz either.
Speaker 3: I was also looking for similar crimes in the area
Speaker 3: to see if anything could be tied together or if
Speaker 3: it was the same people. So I did find a
Speaker 3: few articles of similar home invasions, and that's.
Speaker 1: When she stumbles across a report that seems kind of.
Speaker 3: Familiar, where you know, they forced their way in when
Speaker 3: the husband came home quite late at night. They asked
Speaker 3: for safe they asked for money. They tied the family
Speaker 3: up with items from the house, and then they used
Speaker 3: like bags and baskets from the house to haul electronics away.
Speaker 3: And that's basically how they got cause that they were
Speaker 3: able to track one of the iPads that they stole
Speaker 3: at that home invasion, and so I really started looking
Speaker 3: into this gang.
Speaker 1: One of the victims, a mother, describes the family's ordeal
Speaker 1: on a neighborhood community website. She explains how she was
Speaker 1: watching TV when four armed men and ski masks burst
Speaker 1: into the house with her husband, who was coming in
Speaker 1: from work. They'd been hiding in the bushes outside and
Speaker 1: ambushed him. The family, including two boys fourteen and twelve,
Speaker 1: were tied up in hell hossage for two hours, she writes,
Speaker 1: while they tore up our house, threatening to hurt us
Speaker 1: if we did not get them money, not knowing if
Speaker 1: we were going to die. Tiffany remembers that case too.
Speaker 2: I know about it because it was close to a
Speaker 2: family member of mine, and I remember hearing about it
Speaker 2: because it involved children, and I know that people were
Speaker 2: tied up, and I know they were business owners. I
Speaker 2: remember thinking, who did that?
Speaker 1: Who would do that?
Speaker 2: Who would do that to a family.
Speaker 1: The police caught the getaway driver with the stolen property
Speaker 1: in the car. A mugshot is circulated across the media.
Speaker 1: It's a young Hispanic woman with dark hair. Liz reads
Speaker 1: everything she can about the case.
Speaker 3: And she was like, kind of the head of this
Speaker 3: gang of people who were going all over Houston, targeting
Speaker 3: immigrant families who were more likely to keep their money
Speaker 3: at home, who had their own businesses. They hadn't killed anybody.
Speaker 3: They had hurt people, but they hadn't killed anyone.
Speaker 1: Liz shows Sandy the woman's mugshot.
Speaker 3: Her photo was in the newspaper, and my mom said,
Speaker 3: you know, she was like, I can't be one hundred
Speaker 3: percent certain, but she does look a lot like the
Speaker 3: person that I saw, and then I just kind of
Speaker 3: went down that rabbit.
Speaker 1: Hole, and so down the rabbit hole, Liz goes and
Speaker 1: learns that this woman is from Columbia and has been
Speaker 1: sent to prison for the robbery. A Mexican man is
Speaker 1: also later for his involvement. Liz follows the lead and
Speaker 1: tracks the man down. She starts writing to him in prison,
Speaker 1: even goes as far as getting him on the phone,
Speaker 1: where she records a conversation her relative acting as translator.
Speaker 5: If I go, He tells Liz he wants to help her,
Speaker 5: but denies being involved in both the gang and the
Speaker 5: violent robberies, leaving Liz with yet another dead end, unable
Speaker 5: to link the Colombian woman to her dad's death, but
Speaker 5: Liz refuses to give up on that theory.
Speaker 1: What is some of the evidence that this gang could
Speaker 1: have been responsible for it?
Speaker 3: So for me, it was, you know, my mom saying,
Speaker 3: she does look similar to this person, but she couldn't
Speaker 3: be one hundred percent sure because she was out of it.
Speaker 3: She'd just been hail on the head, she was on
Speaker 3: the ground. You know, it was like a split second.
Speaker 3: And then I got in touch with the victims of
Speaker 3: that crime and talking to them, you know, it just
Speaker 3: sounded exactly the same. No forced entry, right, just pushing
Speaker 3: your way in. My dad had gone to get the dogs,
Speaker 3: he'd open the door. It would have been an easy
Speaker 3: chance for someone to come in, and that would have
Speaker 3: made sense as to why the dogs were barking, was
Speaker 3: because someone was in the backyard. And then just everything else,
Speaker 3: like asking for the safe. So there was a lot
Speaker 3: that stood out to me. There's a lot of similarities.
Speaker 3: But you know, of course I'm not the police. I
Speaker 3: can't run tests, i can't ask questions. So that was
Speaker 3: as far as I could get with it.
Speaker 1: That the cops aren't convinced homeowners were threatened with guns
Speaker 1: during home invasions, but they weren't stabbed to death.
Speaker 3: The police said, you know, this seems more likely like
Speaker 3: it was somebody.
Speaker 1: Knew somebody who knew the family and deliberately targeted them.
Speaker 3: And that did kind of ring true to me. They
Speaker 3: knew the layout of the house, and they knew where
Speaker 3: the house was located in the neighborhood, Like it's not
Speaker 3: just on the corner on the first turn or as
Speaker 3: soon as you get into the neighborhood. It's not like
Speaker 3: in a very obvious place. It's in one of the
Speaker 3: middle streets. It's not even on the corner the houses.
Speaker 3: It's like in the middle of the street. You know.
Speaker 3: It's just it just seemed to me that it was
Speaker 3: somebody that we knew.
Speaker 1: All of which gets list thinking about another potential suspect,
Speaker 1: about someone from her past, a bleak period in her life.
Speaker 1: She'd rather forget.
Speaker 3: I don't ever want to do that again.
Speaker 1: It was horrible.
Speaker 3: It's something that I have zero interest in ever being
Speaker 3: involved in again. So I met this guy when I
Speaker 3: was a teenager.
Speaker 1: It's the late nineties, the decade of boy bands, grunge
Speaker 1: and light up sneakers. God, I really wanted those.
Speaker 3: We were raised in the same religion, but we were
Speaker 3: like there because our parents were there, and we didn't
Speaker 3: really have any interest in being there, And so I
Speaker 3: think that's why we became friends.
Speaker 1: Sandy and Jim brought Liz up as a Jehovah's witness
Speaker 1: having converted as adults. Most of their friends were Jehovah's witnesses,
Speaker 1: and Jim was a respected elder in the community. And
Speaker 1: what was your opinion of the church.
Speaker 3: It wasn't for me, Like from a young age, I
Speaker 3: always felt like this was not for me, This is
Speaker 3: not my belief system. It just didn't fit, didn't feel right,
Speaker 3: And you know, I was happy to humor my parents.
Speaker 3: I had planned that, you know, when I turned eighteen,
Speaker 3: I was gonna like slowly fade away and from the
Speaker 3: church and like go off on my own.
Speaker 1: By the time Liz is twenty, she's no longer a
Speaker 1: part at the church, but still kept in touch with
Speaker 1: the friends she's made there.
Speaker 3: So me and the Sky we started hanging out, and
Speaker 3: you know, we liked similar music and we had the
Speaker 3: similar interests, so we'd hang out. There was a few
Speaker 3: people there.
Speaker 1: The departure from her religious upbringing, Liz started to rebel,
Speaker 1: pushing away from her overprotective parents, partying instead of praying,
Speaker 1: staying out late, and experimenting with drugs, smoking a bit
Speaker 1: of weed and psychedelics.
Speaker 3: And then one day one of his friends came over
Speaker 3: and I was introduced to heroin and it was all
Speaker 3: downhill from there. We ended up using for about a
Speaker 3: year straight. It was awful. I said, I can't live
Speaker 3: this way. I did things I'm not proud of, you know.
Speaker 3: I stole from my parents, I you know, didn't and
Speaker 3: did certain drugs from my mom. They were mine, but
Speaker 3: she kept them because she knew I was involved in
Speaker 3: these drugs. And I remember one time I was demanding
Speaker 3: them of her and I was like, give me their mind,
Speaker 3: you know, I want them, and it's just things that
Speaker 3: I would not normally do. I don't recognize that person, and.
Speaker 1: Neither did her parents, placing a lot of the blame
Speaker 1: on Lissa's friend. He changed her, took away their daughter,
Speaker 1: and put a strain on their marriage, causing endless arguments
Speaker 1: on what to do with Liz, how to help her,
Speaker 1: and how to get this guy out of her life.
Speaker 3: They hated him, Yeah, my dad hated him, and he
Speaker 3: made no secret of it. My mother, on the other hand,
Speaker 3: was a bit smarter about it because she wanted to
Speaker 3: make sure that we still came to her and that
Speaker 3: she was in our lives, because she knew that if
Speaker 3: she pushed back, then I would push back and I
Speaker 3: might just leave or disappear. The last time I saw him,
Speaker 3: my dad actually told him. He said, you're entitled, you're lazy,
Speaker 3: you don't work, you think other people should pay your way.
Speaker 3: You're a loser. Get out of my house.
Speaker 1: That didn't go down so well.
Speaker 3: He basically told my dad to go fuck himself, very
Speaker 3: loudly on the front lawn, and then peeled out and left,
Speaker 3: and I didn't see him again for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Liz doesn't shy away from who she is or her
Speaker 1: troubled past. She's honest that in her younger years she
Speaker 1: was kind of an asshole. But once this guy leaves
Speaker 1: her life, she's able to use this as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to not only get clean, but stay clean, or build
Speaker 1: her relationship with her dad, start a new life for herself,
Speaker 1: meet her husband Anthony, moved to England, and try to
Speaker 1: forget about her past. But now that she finds herself
Speaker 1: back in Texas, the memories of this time keep flooding back,
Speaker 1: and Liz starts to wonder if this person who caused
Speaker 1: so much turmoil in her life could have been responsible.
Speaker 1: Could he have killed her dad? Tried to rob the
Speaker 1: house and things went wrong.
Speaker 3: You know, he hated my dad. My dad was dead
Speaker 3: and my mom was still alive. And then again, the
Speaker 3: police had said that because of the layout of the
Speaker 3: neighborhood and where the house was positioned, that it seemed
Speaker 3: that it was somebody we knew and not just a
Speaker 3: random hit, and she seemed very personal, like a angry
Speaker 3: type of violent death.
Speaker 1: According to Liz, she shared this info of the police
Speaker 1: on the day they first interviewed her. She doesn't know
Speaker 1: if they actually pursued this tip. The guy was never
Speaker 1: interviewed by the police.
Speaker 3: I was constantly calling asking for updates, but the.
Speaker 1: Cops aren't returning her calls or replying to emails. It's
Speaker 1: been months since she last heard from Detective Caaraseol.
Speaker 3: I remember it was October and I asked the Lee
Speaker 3: detective to get an update and he said, you know
Speaker 3: this one more thing I'm waiting on. I'll call you
Speaker 3: right back, and then I never heard from him again.
Speaker 1: It's now July twenty fourteen, eighteen months after Jim's murder.
Speaker 1: Liz and her mom are trying to rebuild their lives
Speaker 1: without him, But as they moved through the normal rhythms
Speaker 1: of day to day life, work, Errand's dinners together, Jim's
Speaker 1: absence is acutely felt, especially as Liz welcomes her first
Speaker 1: child into the world, a daughter who will never know
Speaker 1: her grandfather Jim. Losing a parent is hard enough, but
Speaker 1: this existential loss of warning, something that you never even
Speaker 1: got to have, that can make anyone feel cheated, robbed,
Speaker 1: And the lack of information from the police is hardly
Speaker 1: made making things easier. But as time goes on, they
Speaker 1: get used to it and just have to assume they
Speaker 1: are busy investigating other leads, identifying other suspects. Until one
Speaker 1: day when Liz is on her way home.
Speaker 3: I had dropped my husband off at the airport for
Speaker 3: a business trip, and I was going back to the
Speaker 3: house and there was like one of those community mailboxes
Speaker 3: at the front of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Think of this kind of like the rows of mailboxes
Speaker 1: in an apartment complex, with each house in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: getting its own locked compartment.
Speaker 3: So I went and I opened the mailbox and had
Speaker 3: just been rampact full of like lawyers, flyers asking to
Speaker 3: take on our case and to represent us in court?
Speaker 1: What our case? What's going on? Represent us? Why is
Speaker 1: their mailbox filled with letters from lawyers. As Liz sorts
Speaker 1: through the piles of mail, it dawns on her none
Speaker 1: of her detay active work finding possible other suspects mattered.
Speaker 3: I don't even know why they wasted either of our
Speaker 3: time because they did nothing with what I gave them.
Speaker 3: They just ignored all of it because they'd already made
Speaker 3: up their minds.
Speaker 1: The one thing she feared most happens her mom, Sandy,
Speaker 1: is charged with the murder of Jim Melgar. The life
Speaker 1: Liz and Sandy were trying to rebuild after the loss
Speaker 1: of Jim shattered.
Speaker 3: I really started panicking when she got charged, when they
Speaker 3: started ignoring all this other evidence just to make their
Speaker 3: theory fit.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Hands Tied, a new eight part
Speaker 1: true crime series from BBC Studios and iHeart Podcasts. New
Speaker 1: episodes will be released weekly, so subscribe, follow on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts so you
Speaker 1: don't miss out. If you like the show, please help
Speaker 1: us by spreading the word or giving us a five
Speaker 1: star review. I'm Maggie Robinson Katz and the producer is
Speaker 1: Maggie Latham. Sound design and mix is by Tom Brignell.
Speaker 1: Our script consultant is Emma Weatherall production support is from
Speaker 1: Dan Martini, Elena Boutang and Mabel Finnegan Wright, and our
Speaker 1: production executive is Laura Jordan Rawl. The series was developed
Speaker 1: by Anya Saunders and Emma Shaw. At iHeart, the Managing
Speaker 1: Executive Producer is Christina Everett, and for BBC Studios, the
Speaker 1: Executive Producer is Joe Kent. James Cook is the Creative
Speaker 1: Director A Factual for BBC Studios Audio, and the Director
Speaker 1: of Audio at BBC Studios is Richard Knight.