Speaker 1: A warning.
Speaker 2: This episode contains depictions of violence and conversations about suicide
Speaker 2: that may be disturbing and triggering for some listeners. If
Speaker 2: you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please fast forward to
Speaker 2: the end of this episode to find out where help
Speaker 2: is available.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: I've been working on this for more than a year,
Speaker 2: and you know, like I have questions. Some people wrote
Speaker 2: in they had a lot of questions and theories and thoughts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, You've never been afraid of hard questions because they
Speaker 4: do force us to take a look at our case.
Speaker 2: As this season is about to come to an end,
Speaker 2: there are still so many unanswered questions, and especially since
Speaker 2: the podcast has come out, I've gone back into the transcripts.
Speaker 2: I've gone back to like, is there anything that I've missed.
Speaker 2: I'm Leah Rothman. This is The Real Killer, Episode sixteen,
Speaker 2: The Perfect Case. Before we can move forward with our finale,
Speaker 2: I need to address something that's happened since our last episode.
Speaker 2: Two days ago, I received an email from Byron's lead attorney,
Speaker 2: Brian Russell on behalf of himself and the rest of
Speaker 2: the legal team about last week's Littering Case episode. It
Speaker 2: began in part like this, quote. We've finally digested last
Speaker 2: week's podcast and are disappointed in how you decided to
Speaker 2: approach the discrepancy with Kelly's misdemeanor. We've been nothing but open, honest,
Speaker 2: and straightforward with you, and we are baffled by this
Speaker 2: one point eighty in your tone and attitude toward us.
Speaker 2: We've never concealed or obfuscated the fact that Kelly's ticket
Speaker 2: on case net had another case number belonging to Brendan.
Speaker 2: Brian continues. Throughout our work on this case, we believed
Speaker 2: that Kelly's sentence of forty eight hours shock time, thirty
Speaker 2: days in jail in two years probation with the suspended
Speaker 2: execution of that sentence was accurate because the charge was
Speaker 2: a Class A misdemeanor, she had skipped her court date
Speaker 2: and only appeared when picked up on a warrant. We
Speaker 2: believed that any discrepancy was the portion of the docket
Speaker 2: that says that Kelly's sentence was quote consecutive with case number.
Speaker 2: Brian continues, that's why we're confused when you said this
Speaker 2: was a new development, that it kept you up all night.
Speaker 2: Brian goes on to say, how in at least a
Speaker 2: few documents and filings which they had shared with me
Speaker 2: dating back to late twenty twenty three. This other case
Speaker 2: number was mentioned in the footnotes. He says I never
Speaker 2: asked about it. Then, Brian says there was a timeline
Speaker 2: they shared where in the notes section this other case
Speaker 2: number was mentioned. He says I never asked about it.
Speaker 2: He also points out that there were emails exchanged where
Speaker 2: I had questions about Kelly's docket and I never asked
Speaker 2: about it then either. Brian wrote that I had plenty
Speaker 2: of time and opportunity to bring this discrepancy up to them.
Speaker 2: He's right, except the reason I never ever asked them
Speaker 2: about it was because in the thousands of pages I
Speaker 2: alone have had to go through, I never saw it.
Speaker 2: Had I seen it, I would have asked about it
Speaker 2: long ago. Had I seen it, the way we presented
Speaker 2: Kelly's littering case when it first came up in episode
Speaker 2: seven would have been very different. Again, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 2: I never saw it. The last line in Brian's email
Speaker 2: reads quote when I said I hoped you didn't feel misled.
Speaker 2: I should have been clearer. We did not mislead you.
Speaker 2: We did not hide anything from you. We did not
Speaker 2: misrepresent anything to you. We were open, honest, upfront and
Speaker 2: answered all of your questions to the best of our
Speaker 2: ability in a complicated and fact intensive case. I remain
Speaker 2: proud of our team and the work that we've done
Speaker 2: to help free an innocent man who was deprived of
Speaker 2: a fair trial. Let me be very clear, Byron's legal
Speaker 2: team has been open, honest, and very available to answer
Speaker 2: all of my questions all along the way, and I'm
Speaker 2: grateful for that. And I never said they misled me.
Speaker 2: I was just surprised that they knew about this other
Speaker 2: case number, and in all of the times we'd spoken
Speaker 2: about the docket it never came up. But whether or
Speaker 2: not they knew about it is not the issue. The
Speaker 2: reason I needed to interview them about the discrepancy was
Speaker 2: first because I simply needed to ask them about this
Speaker 2: other docket number, since again I had never seen it before.
Speaker 2: And second, I needed to share with the lit Listen
Speaker 2: and Byron's team that considering this other case number, I
Speaker 2: now cannot confidently say that that was in fact Kelly's sentence,
Speaker 2: and it needed to be addressed because I gave a
Speaker 2: platform for the theory that that was Kelly's sentence, which
Speaker 2: meant she might have been in some bigger trouble and
Speaker 2: in turn might have cooperated with prosecutors in the case
Speaker 2: against Byron. I know that Byron's legal team one hundred
Speaker 2: percent believes that's Kelly's sentence, and hell, who knows it
Speaker 2: might just be Kelly says it isn't without proof, I
Speaker 2: just don't know either way. Okay, as we are about
Speaker 2: to begin our last episode, I want to acknowledge that
Speaker 2: even with all of the left turns that have happened
Speaker 2: so far, we have never lost sight that this whole
Speaker 2: podcast and investigation is in an attempt to get to
Speaker 2: the truth about what happened to Anastasia. Now stay with me,
Speaker 2: because we are not going to go chronologically. We are
Speaker 2: going to start with my most recent interview with Byron,
Speaker 2: which took place after both of Kelly's episodes came out.
Speaker 2: Byron's lead attorney, Brian Russell, wanted to be on the call,
Speaker 2: so that day, Brian and I speak for a few
Speaker 2: minutes before Byron calls in.
Speaker 1: Hey, Ala, Hi, how are you good? Good good good?
Speaker 2: Just so you know, Brian says, there was so much
Speaker 2: in Kelly's interview that confirms for him. She lied back
Speaker 2: when she came forward, and she's still lying today. Brian says,
Speaker 2: Kelly conveniently doesn't remember key things, then other times comes
Speaker 2: up with wild new details, like a three way call
Speaker 2: that happened between her, Byron, and Justin that night after
Speaker 2: Anastasia was murdered. Brian says, that didn't happen. What do
Speaker 2: you make of the level of conviction that she has
Speaker 2: when she says Byron killed Anastasia and she knows it,
Speaker 2: he knows it.
Speaker 1: What do you What do you make of that?
Speaker 5: I mean, I make of it that she wants people
Speaker 5: to believe her. And then I also think, I mean,
Speaker 5: she's admitted to having major problems with crack, cocaine and
Speaker 5: meth anthetamy. Both of those drugs affect your brain in
Speaker 5: a way that can lead to psychosis, which can lead
Speaker 5: to the creation of false memories. So even where she
Speaker 5: was when she came forward with the story, maybe she
Speaker 5: does believe it. Maybe maybe in her mind these are
Speaker 5: actual memories that she has created, right, but none of
Speaker 5: them line up with any physical fact or any other
Speaker 5: person that can support her story, any element of it.
Speaker 6: We don't need to I don't.
Speaker 5: Care why Kelly was I us know that she wied right,
Speaker 5: I just know that her story isn't true because of
Speaker 5: the physical evidence.
Speaker 3: Here we go, Okay, hold on just saying.
Speaker 1: Then Byron calls in.
Speaker 7: Okay, Willa are you there?
Speaker 1: I'm here?
Speaker 3: Okay, Byron, are you there yet?
Speaker 1: I am Hileiah Hi, Byron? How are you.
Speaker 3: Better than some people would like me to be? But yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it's always an under the circumstances kind of question.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I'm good. Thanks.
Speaker 2: So you've listened to the podcast. I mean, you emailed me,
Speaker 2: you've listened to the podcast. I mean, this is a
Speaker 2: very big question right off the bat. But any anything
Speaker 2: or anything that you want to say right off the bat,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think we kind of touched on this a little
Speaker 3: bit earlier. When I first emailed you, I said that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was kind of withholding John and was sort of waiting,
Speaker 3: you know, for something, for some sort of strong reaction.
Speaker 3: I guess one way or the other or some way
Speaker 3: that I might contribute, and it never really materialized for me.
Speaker 3: So I think as the podcasts went on and I
Speaker 3: heard more, there was a certain point where, you know,
Speaker 3: I was no longer able, so I actually haven't listened past,
Speaker 3: I think because A seventh and so everything that I've
Speaker 3: gotten since then has been kind of second hit. And
Speaker 3: it's interesting because late ever since that happened, it seems
Speaker 3: like that was really when things It seemed like that
Speaker 3: was when for me, at least, more interesting content started
Speaker 3: to come up. There was stuff that I had never
Speaker 3: heard before. You did interviews with people that you know
Speaker 3: that I had never necessarily even heard say certain things
Speaker 3: that they were saying, and so, you know, way I
Speaker 3: was glad that I wasn't able to listen because some
Speaker 3: of that stuff was kind of upsetting and a reminder
Speaker 3: I think of how really I guess I've lived in
Speaker 3: a bubble, and you know, it's not like it's been
Speaker 3: an echo chamber, but I'm in a sense I'm kind
Speaker 3: of protected from a lot of people's opinions as far
Speaker 3: as the case goes, and so it was kind of
Speaker 3: a return to a not very good place as far
Speaker 3: as that goes, you know, just being reminded of those
Speaker 3: people and their and their opinions and you know, some
Speaker 3: of the stuff that they said in that way.
Speaker 2: In your email, you said that you were waiting to
Speaker 2: listen to everything or waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Speaker 2: What was the other shoe? Like, what were you what
Speaker 2: did you mean by the other shoe?
Speaker 3: So that's I think the sort of latent streak of pessimism.
Speaker 7: That I've got.
Speaker 3: It was just sort of waiting for things to take
Speaker 3: an ugly turn. And just from the sound of it,
Speaker 3: Kelly's episodes were were that a turn at least as
Speaker 3: far as I'm concerned, you know, I was, I mean, honest,
Speaker 3: I was initially a little bothered by the idea that
Speaker 3: she would come forward after all of the information had
Speaker 3: come in, after she'd had a chance, had a chance
Speaker 3: to listen to all of the previous episodes. That really
Speaker 3: hit a bigger pature and a greater understanding of what
Speaker 3: was going on with the case and with things that
Speaker 3: I just I know that she wasn't previously aware of
Speaker 3: as far as you know, factual, and so it was
Speaker 3: I just my my sort of kneejered reaction to that
Speaker 3: was to be a little angry, I guess about just
Speaker 3: the I guess giving her the platform to just sort
Speaker 3: of spout whatever she's going to spout with this new
Speaker 3: inform nation to her, or at least after she'd had
Speaker 3: time to formulate whatever she was going to formulate, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, And so that was sort of my
Speaker 3: reaction to that. I felt was a little I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to say unfair, because that's not really
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's not quite the right right word
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: Just so you know that her not speaking, I asked
Speaker 2: her to listen to all of the episodes before making
Speaker 2: a decision on whether or not to talk. So it
Speaker 2: wasn't like she did that on her own, I said,
Speaker 2: because she was considering talking, and I just said, just
Speaker 2: just wait and listen to all of the episodes and
Speaker 2: then make a decision one way or another.
Speaker 1: So just you know, that's on me. That's on me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I understand that, you know, you're trying to
Speaker 3: ensure that the person is going to have an understanding
Speaker 3: that this is not going to be us, you know,
Speaker 3: getting helly on and hit her with a bunch of
Speaker 3: accusations or whatever. I mean, it makes sense because you know,
Speaker 3: you wanted her to see that you're coming in this
Speaker 3: with an even hand. But you know, I think that
Speaker 3: the net effect was the same. I think that her
Speaker 3: having had an opportunity to hear all of that did
Speaker 3: give her I think of a little bit better preparedness,
Speaker 3: I think for some of the stuff and some of
Speaker 3: the directions that things were going to go. Although based
Speaker 3: on what I've heard, I mean, she really didn't use
Speaker 3: that to your advantage much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: You said you haven't listened to the episodes yet, but
Speaker 2: I mean, right, it to me, just at face value,
Speaker 2: didn't seem like somebody who had studied the podcast and
Speaker 2: came in with you know, you know, perfect answers to questions.
Speaker 2: I mean, sure, it's meandering, it's all over the map.
Speaker 2: It didn't feel calculated to me. But but that is side.
Speaker 1: We move on. Now.
Speaker 2: I am a little meandering going between questions I have
Speaker 2: for Byron and asking him to respond to some of
Speaker 2: Kelly's allegations. Let's talk about what did Why did Anastasia
Speaker 2: have a stun gun?
Speaker 1: You know, to the best of your knowledge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't.
Speaker 7: I don't really know.
Speaker 3: I don't remember as I were talking about it as
Speaker 3: far as like reasons or anything. I don't even remember
Speaker 3: when she bought it, or or really or anything about it.
Speaker 7: I knew that he had one.
Speaker 3: But you know, I also, again I knew that Byron
Speaker 3: Mercia that Justin had one.
Speaker 1: Did you have a stun gun?
Speaker 7: I did?
Speaker 1: Why did you have one?
Speaker 3: I bought it, well, hardly because they had them. And
Speaker 3: first just for me personally, it seemed like.
Speaker 7: Not a bad idea to own one.
Speaker 3: The neighborhood that I lived in was not especially I
Speaker 3: want to say it was a bad neighborhood.
Speaker 7: It wasn't great. I lived around a lot of bars and.
Speaker 3: Clubs, and you know, there was a there was a
Speaker 3: bit of violence that would kind of sort of erupt
Speaker 3: here and there, fight assaults, muggings. I was mugged just
Speaker 3: down the street.
Speaker 7: From my apartment one time at my point, you know,
Speaker 7: for like ten dollars in my wallet, you know. And
Speaker 7: I've been at.
Speaker 3: One point beaten up just I guess because I look
Speaker 3: different outside of a Country and Western bar that was
Speaker 3: in that area. Like three guys just attacked me, and
Speaker 3: you know, so it seemed like not an unreasonable thing to.
Speaker 1: Have, Tara.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you know this, but Tara told Sergeant Kilgore
Speaker 2: the story that all of you three, I think, tased
Speaker 2: a homeless guy who were all there for the tasing
Speaker 2: of this homeless guy sitting on some steps he was
Speaker 2: drunk in Westport?
Speaker 1: What why? What can you tell me about that?
Speaker 3: I have absolutely no recall of anything like that happening,
Speaker 3: So I don't know where Kara got that from or
Speaker 3: what she was talking about.
Speaker 2: What do you make of Anastasia's stun gun being found
Speaker 2: on her bed?
Speaker 7: That's a good.
Speaker 3: Question, and I don't really I don't really.
Speaker 7: Have an answer. I can only wonder about.
Speaker 3: It, and I'd rather not use this platform to speculate.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, let's talk about some of the stuff
Speaker 2: that Kelly said in her interview. So let's start with well,
Speaker 2: keeping with the homeless people in Westport, Kelly said that
Speaker 2: you paid an overweight homeless guy named Slog to do
Speaker 2: jumping jacks as a way to humiliate him.
Speaker 1: Did that happen? Why did you do that?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 3: So this is I think a really good example of
Speaker 3: Kelly taking a seed of something and turning it issue
Speaker 3: something else. What happened? Uh, there was a guy who
Speaker 3: also panhandled kind of a mass area, and we justin
Speaker 3: Anastasia and I I don't remember if Kelly was there,
Speaker 3: but I know that the three of us at least were,
Speaker 3: and Dustin had just bought some donuts and we were
Speaker 3: walking down the street. He had a box of a
Speaker 3: dozen donuts and we saw this guy and he asked
Speaker 3: us for some spare change, and Justin said, you know,
Speaker 3: well out of a patenty that we were willing to come.
Speaker 3: And so Justin said that I'll gi you a donut
Speaker 3: if you do some jumping jacks, and.
Speaker 7: And the guy.
Speaker 3: Readily agreed and gnu and did some jumping jacks and
Speaker 3: Justin but haven't don't that it was one of those
Speaker 3: things where I really I was not aultigether comfortable with
Speaker 3: the situation, but I was still in a kind of
Speaker 3: like sort of moment way a hubist bias. And of course,
Speaker 3: you know, not my proudest moment.
Speaker 7: By any means, but yeah, I mean that kind of happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay. So Kelly tells the story.
Speaker 2: That you all went to that Mormon temple, you were
Speaker 2: dressed up as a priest, and you did this big
Speaker 2: tour of the church because there was a plan to
Speaker 2: kidnap you know, the bishop or something and hold him
Speaker 2: for ransom money. But she says, you know, you spent
Speaker 2: this whole Saturday on this tour and what can you
Speaker 2: tell me about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we did.
Speaker 7: Take a short see r LDS Temple.
Speaker 3: On South Chrystler and Independence Surius, the States Fire Building.
Speaker 7: And.
Speaker 3: I did go wearing a clerical shirt that I owned.
Speaker 3: You know, it was one of those one of those
Speaker 3: things where it felt really transgressive. You know, we were
Speaker 3: feeling pretty like goofy and like we were really just
Speaker 3: by being there. I felt like we were doing something
Speaker 3: we probably shouldn't be. So it wasn't really a bad thing,
Speaker 3: but you know, that was something that we definitely enjoyed doing.
Speaker 7: It was you know, or you.
Speaker 3: Know, if it was like kind of pushing.
Speaker 7: Some boundaries, then we.
Speaker 3: As a as a general rule, we were all for
Speaker 3: that sort of thing. As far as a plan, this.
Speaker 7: Actually came up at my trial briefly.
Speaker 3: They wanted to introduce something that Kelly had talked about
Speaker 3: this then too, trying to say that we had justin
Speaker 3: Stasia and I had a plan to blow up a
Speaker 3: church or take the like the president or whatever they
Speaker 3: head of the church hostage or something. So I would
Speaker 3: say to that that we did have a plan.
Speaker 7: In name only.
Speaker 3: We were sitting around one night and it became this
Speaker 3: ridiculous sort of thing. The plan in question calls for
Speaker 3: us getting some T four and having night vision goggles
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. Clearly, this was not an actual
Speaker 3: plan that anybody was going to carry out or anticipated
Speaker 3: plan carrying out.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean, I think that she uses that as
Speaker 2: an example of some of like that and going to
Speaker 2: rob Justin's.
Speaker 1: Parents, that there were these.
Speaker 2: Plans that never came to fruition, so that when the
Speaker 2: plan came up to kill Anastasia, she didn't necessarily believe
Speaker 2: it because there had been so many crazy plans before
Speaker 2: that she didn't think it was anything that you guys
Speaker 2: would follow through with.
Speaker 8: Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2: She says that there was the night of October twenty second,
Speaker 2: and this was a new detail that she shared with me.
Speaker 2: On the night of October twenty second, there was a
Speaker 2: three way phone call that night after every one was
Speaker 2: back home, between you, Kelly and Justin. Was there a
Speaker 2: three way call that evening?
Speaker 1: No, that's no, you never. You never spoke with Justin
Speaker 1: that night.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 3: He dropped me off at my place and I didn't
Speaker 3: speak with him until.
Speaker 7: The next morning. Okay.
Speaker 2: Kelly said that this was a new another new detail
Speaker 2: she had told the story before, where she said, like,
Speaker 2: how could you have killed her? Speaking about Anastasia? You
Speaker 2: know you're a murderer. How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2: And you know, and the story i'd heard this before,
Speaker 2: we hadn't heard this before that she said that, you said,
Speaker 2: I don't consider myself a murderer. Murderer, doesn't feel bad,
Speaker 2: and I feel bad about what happened, or something to
Speaker 2: that effect. But this time that she told the story,
Speaker 2: she said that you grabbed her by the neck and
Speaker 2: threw her or slammed her. Again is the wall did
Speaker 2: that happen?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 3: No, I never laid my hand on Kelly in any
Speaker 3: violent ways. That's not been my character.
Speaker 7: I don't That's just not me.
Speaker 3: And I just like to add briefly one thing.
Speaker 7: I think that.
Speaker 3: When you say, you know, oh, here's a new detail,
Speaker 3: I think, really what you're saying is that that here's.
Speaker 7: Some more bullshit.
Speaker 3: I just think I don't know it is It is
Speaker 3: so ridiculous to me, this idea that you know, she
Speaker 3: just keeps piling on and piling on, and that anybody
Speaker 3: believes her if these were things that actually happened, These
Speaker 3: were things that were troubling her or whatever, she would
Speaker 3: have come out with them years ago. There was the
Speaker 3: time for unburdening was two thousand one, two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: At this point, I feel like anybody giving any credibility
Speaker 3: whatsoever to anything she is saying that his quote unquote
Speaker 3: knew is the officer.
Speaker 2: Kelly also said that you had told other people like
Speaker 2: Abraham and Tara that you killed Anastasia.
Speaker 1: What do you have to say about that?
Speaker 3: And that's another great example of that. Again, you know
Speaker 3: Brom and Tara. While you know Kara's not with us anymore,
Speaker 3: she was not a person in Vince words and Brom.
Speaker 7: Never was either.
Speaker 3: If they had something to say, if they knew something,
Speaker 3: they are so transparent. Tarah was so transparent about everything.
Speaker 3: She didn't keep anything in. This would have come out
Speaker 3: so long ago, becad it actually happened. So that's that's
Speaker 3: all I have to say about that.
Speaker 2: Okay, Kelly says that there was a time that you
Speaker 2: welded a pitchfork to your car and put a chicken
Speaker 2: chicken carcass on it and drove around town with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's actually kind of true. So, like I said,
Speaker 3: we were always into kind of transgressive stuff. I had
Speaker 3: a group of friends who we we all had these big,
Speaker 3: old cars and we One of my friends was a
Speaker 3: welder and an artist, and he said, hey, you've had
Speaker 3: this car for a little while, let's let's put something
Speaker 3: on it. And I said, okay, what have you got?
Speaker 3: I went ounce to the garage and he kind of
Speaker 3: a pitchfork, and I said, absolutely not. And my other
Speaker 3: friend was like, no, no, I think that's I think
Speaker 3: you have to do that. I think that's going to
Speaker 3: be the thing. So I consented, and he welded the
Speaker 3: head of this pitchfork to the hood of my car.
Speaker 3: About a week or two later, I was over at
Speaker 3: my friend Robert house and Abraham was there and they
Speaker 3: had apparently they had thought out an eight pound fire
Speaker 3: chicken and had no intention of actually cooking. And while
Speaker 3: I was using the restroom at one point from took
Speaker 3: the chicken out to the car and put it on
Speaker 3: the hitch work. And then when we when I went
Speaker 3: to go leave that new thing, I saw it there
Speaker 3: and was just like okay, because it was another We
Speaker 3: pranked each other all the time like this. All my
Speaker 3: friends that had these cars, we oftentimes would put food
Speaker 3: on them, and there was kind of a rule that
Speaker 3: you couldn't remove the food to you know, let the
Speaker 3: weather and animals carry it away. So I was stuck
Speaker 3: with a chicken stuck to front of my car. And
Speaker 3: I know that a lot got made out of that,
Speaker 3: calling it a chicken carcass. I think it's one good example.
Speaker 3: It would have been dinner, just like a week before Adams,
Speaker 3: but it was not finished.
Speaker 2: It was just a goof The next two are a
Speaker 2: little uncomfortable, but I'm just going to ask you. So
Speaker 2: she also, Kelly also said that you participated in necrophilia.
Speaker 7: I heard about this.
Speaker 3: I was in a way shot and also disgusted, but
Speaker 3: also it's so outlandish that I had to laugh. It
Speaker 3: is so unbelievable.
Speaker 7: I just I can't.
Speaker 3: Even fathom the idea of this. Unequivocally, No, no, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Did you ever say it to her as as like, you.
Speaker 7: Know just what I think I even know.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've.
Speaker 7: Even joked about something like.
Speaker 3: That, Like I don't know, but I just I really
Speaker 3: believe that that's something that she's just come.
Speaker 2: Up with on her own, And you understand, I just
Speaker 2: have to I mean, I have to give you a
Speaker 2: chance to respond to this this stuff because she says it.
Speaker 2: She also said that you told her, and again this
Speaker 2: is uncomfortable, But she also said that you told her
Speaker 2: the best way for you, or the quickest way when
Speaker 2: you were masturbating, was to do it over dead animals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's absurd too, same or Eason, maybe even more so.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's hard to weigh those sorts of things. I love animals,
Speaker 3: not in that way.
Speaker 2: Okay, this one is definitely more serious. Kelly said that
Speaker 2: there was a plan to kill your father to basically
Speaker 2: keep him from having to die a very painful death
Speaker 2: or a prolonged death, and because you know he had HIV.
Speaker 2: What do you have to say about that? She tells
Speaker 2: a very specific story that you were going to lure
Speaker 2: your father out to like some cornfields in the middle
Speaker 2: of nowhere and say that you had, you know, car trouble,
Speaker 2: and while he was under the hood of the car,
Speaker 2: you were going to shoot him.
Speaker 1: What do you have to say about that?
Speaker 3: There's a lot that I could probably say about that,
Speaker 3: but I'll say this, I do think it's interesting that
Speaker 3: the same or that he's two stories that she's concocted
Speaker 3: one about a death that actually took place, and another
Speaker 3: about a death as she says was planned to take place.
Speaker 3: That they both involved driving out somewhere to a secluded
Speaker 3: thought and shooting someone. I don't I don't really know
Speaker 3: what to make about that, other than you know, it
Speaker 3: seems like it's it's just kind of a motif. I
Speaker 3: guess that shows up in her imaginings. No, that plan
Speaker 3: never used it.
Speaker 7: The idea of that is reprehensible.
Speaker 6: To me.
Speaker 3: I love my father, but the idea of putting him
Speaker 3: out of some of that and misery, uh, that that
Speaker 3: was not something I had a hard enough time really
Speaker 3: making the decision of when the time came to take
Speaker 3: them off fights for the words, that was incredibly difficult,
Speaker 3: and I would say the hardest decision I ever had
Speaker 3: to make. And to claim that that was something that
Speaker 3: I wouldn't impasily, it's disgusting that plan never existed.
Speaker 7: That thought never entered my head.
Speaker 3: It's just poor bullshit.
Speaker 2: Well, another question I have is about the June fifth
Speaker 2: recorded phone call.
Speaker 1: There is a part.
Speaker 2: I mean, so much is made about the should or shouldn't,
Speaker 2: and we've already talked about why you didn't just say
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? You know you didn't deny it,
Speaker 2: but not about that part. My question is about there's
Speaker 2: a part in the phone call where you say to her,
Speaker 2: just say you don't remember. Kelly says, don't you remember?
Speaker 2: You don't remember what we said at all? And you say,
Speaker 2: I do. But what is what were you referring to there?
Speaker 2: And I know it's been a long time, but you know,
Speaker 2: what is the idea? What is the story? I mean,
Speaker 2: what are you about to say? There?
Speaker 7: Oh? I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I you know that that conversation was twenty.
Speaker 7: Four years ago. Whatever I might have had on my
Speaker 7: mind at that time, and was about.
Speaker 3: To say, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Did you think that you were being recorded?
Speaker 3: Again? I don't really remember the conversation, so but no,
Speaker 3: I mean I wouldn't. I don't believe that that ever
Speaker 3: would have crossed my mind.
Speaker 1: What do you think happened that night?
Speaker 3: I know that some things that I've you know, learned
Speaker 3: over the years have inclined me into one theory or another.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. I would argue that I'm sitting
Speaker 3: in prison today, and I set in prison since I
Speaker 3: was twenty two years old, more than half a lifetime
Speaker 3: ago is from where I say now because people speculated,
Speaker 3: and because people acted on theories or or talked openly
Speaker 3: about theories without any supporting evidence, without anything backing up
Speaker 3: what they had to say, just based on feelings, selposition, suspicion,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call them, and I refuse, both
Speaker 3: morally and constitutionally.
Speaker 7: I will not do.
Speaker 3: The same because I don't know looking forward, you know
Speaker 3: what those things that I speculated about might be construed as,
Speaker 3: or what they might hew to somebody else.
Speaker 7: I just I can't do that, and.
Speaker 3: So I've basically resigned myself to ignorance until more comes in,
Speaker 3: until I have something like really substantive, until I have
Speaker 3: something that says, oh, we now know ex Lly and Z.
Speaker 1: I understand.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else you think I should know or
Speaker 2: you want the listeners to know, or anything you want
Speaker 2: to say that I haven't asked.
Speaker 7: I'm thinking.
Speaker 3: I think the big takeaway here for anybody listening really
Speaker 3: is just that there is a lot of information. In
Speaker 3: this case, there's a lot of stuff to have to
Speaker 3: sit through in order to come to anything like a
Speaker 3: reasoned conclusion about what happened, or at least a reason
Speaker 3: and conclusion about whether I had anything to do with it.
Speaker 3: But I think that if you pay attention, if you're
Speaker 3: if you're really like looking at facts, really paying attention,
Speaker 3: it's going to come away with a pretty clear picture
Speaker 3: that Kelly is absolutely full of shit.
Speaker 7: She is a very very.
Speaker 3: Troubled person, I think, more so now than even what
Speaker 3: I knew.
Speaker 6: But that.
Speaker 3: You know, really it just comes down to not so
Speaker 3: much what she says today or or even really if some.
Speaker 7: Of them more exaggerated or.
Speaker 3: Over the top stuff that she spent years ago. It
Speaker 3: just comes down to whether or not it atches what
Speaker 3: we know to be fact. And that's I guess what
Speaker 3: I would encourage everybody to look at what we know
Speaker 3: to be fat you see that it has absolutely nothing
Speaker 3: to do with me. That all those facts point away
Speaker 3: from me. I think the decision is free sream to
Speaker 3: make as far as whether or not you think I had.
Speaker 7: An aging stations then.
Speaker 2: So now, going back in time, the morning after I
Speaker 2: interviewed Kelly in Kansas City, I met with Byron's legal
Speaker 2: team at Brian Russell's law offices for what was supposed
Speaker 2: to be our final interview. And obviously this was before
Speaker 2: both of Kelly's episodes came out and the whole littering
Speaker 2: case thing happened. The entire team was there, including Brian,
Speaker 2: Nicole Gordon, Sean O'Brien, and Quinn O'Brien. Their paralegal, Jenna
Speaker 2: was there too. Because I had four microphones for the
Speaker 2: five of us, Quinn and Nicole share one. Okay, so
Speaker 2: we'll just go around the table. Have you been listening
Speaker 2: to the podcast, and if so, Sean, what is standing
Speaker 2: out to you, any new revelations?
Speaker 1: What has stood out to you?
Speaker 6: I have been listening to the podcast. I read the
Speaker 6: transcript of Kelly Moffitt's right along with Kilgore where she
Speaker 6: goes to Lincoln Cemetery, and it's one thing to see
Speaker 6: it in the transcript, but that's one tape I had
Speaker 6: never listened to. She has never been to Lincoln Cemetery,
Speaker 6: and that's very clear. She can't pick out the you
Speaker 6: know where this where Anastasia was found, But if you've
Speaker 6: been to Lincoln Cemetery and you knew where she had been,
Speaker 6: you would never miss that. It's impossible to miss. She
Speaker 6: also said that she could see headlights going by, and
Speaker 6: if you've been to Lincoln Cemetery. You also know that
Speaker 6: it's impossible. So that's the one thing that stands out
Speaker 6: to me. And then look listening to what other people say.
Speaker 6: You know, there are a couple people who say they
Speaker 6: believe Kelly, but they believe Kelly because Kelly is such
Speaker 6: a good liar.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The only way.
Speaker 6: To know whether Kelly's lying or not is to look
Speaker 6: at what she says and find something in the outside
Speaker 6: world that would say that's truthful. There's only one statement
Speaker 6: where you can do that, the one where Anastasia got
Speaker 6: out of the car. Don Rand says that happened, Bob
Speaker 6: Whitbullshugen says that happened. At least three other unnamed witnesses
Speaker 6: that were hidden from us say that happened. The physical
Speaker 6: evidence says that happened. And so the one truthful statement
Speaker 6: is her first one, and that's really clear, and I
Speaker 6: think the podcast kind of makes that point. So to me,
Speaker 6: it's how well does the lawyer at the trial take
Speaker 6: on those issues and expose credibility, you know, where it
Speaker 6: needs to be. The other thing we know about Kelly
Speaker 6: is that she is a drug addict. An addict line,
Speaker 6: It's just a fact of life.
Speaker 1: We don't need to go for here's Brian.
Speaker 9: What I've found interesting about the podcast is just to
Speaker 9: hear a story told through someone else that we've been
Speaker 9: working on and trying to figure out for, you know,
Speaker 9: several years at this point, and so it's really a
Speaker 9: lot of people on the team or and past members
Speaker 9: of the team would tell you that, you know, when
Speaker 9: you're working on this case, you keep waiting for well,
Speaker 9: wait what he was convicted. There must be more evidence
Speaker 9: than just Kelly and the tape, and you keep waiting
Speaker 9: for something to come out somebody else to say say, well,
Speaker 9: actually I knew this about Byron, or I saw this
Speaker 9: thing happen, and it never happens. It's always Byron was
Speaker 9: a decent guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah he was.
Speaker 9: He could come across as weird or whatever. But even
Speaker 9: this past within the past week, we've gotten other people
Speaker 9: that come forward with statements for us, saying I was
Speaker 9: in need and Byron helped me.
Speaker 8: He was the only person to help me.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that person Brian is referring to
Speaker 2: as a woman named Kim Yeoman. She's written to me too,
Speaker 2: wanting me to know that Byron is a good person.
Speaker 2: Incapable of committing a crime like murder. She said, during
Speaker 2: some of her darkest days when she was a homeless
Speaker 2: teen living in abandoned houses in Kansas City, Byron would
Speaker 2: bring her food and was just a kind, generous, safe,
Speaker 2: trustworthy person to be around. Kim wanted me to know
Speaker 2: that she has reviewed many court documents and she has
Speaker 2: found no credible evidence linking Byron to Anastasia's murder. She
Speaker 2: believes Byron is innocent. Here's Nicole.
Speaker 10: I would say that there are a lot of nuances
Speaker 10: to the story that didn't get told just because there's
Speaker 10: not enough time. The one that I would point out
Speaker 10: would be the timeline. I always go back to the timeline.
Speaker 10: Anastasia called Justin's apartment from the Dairy Queen, and we
Speaker 10: know that because she came back inside and told Don
Speaker 10: Wright that her boyfriend didn't want to pick her up
Speaker 10: because he'd already made plans with his best friend. Anastasia
Speaker 10: could have made that call to Justin had Justin, Kelly,
Speaker 10: and Byron been on their way to pick her up
Speaker 10: at Dairy Queen from Lenexa. So it's the little things
Speaker 10: like that that are weaved throughout the entire case that
Speaker 10: let me know in the beginning and even today and
Speaker 10: even as I hear you tell the story, yeah that
Speaker 10: you know, it just confirms what the facts.
Speaker 9: Say, right, because as we're working on the habeas and
Speaker 9: weighing that timeline back out again for the tenth time.
Speaker 9: According to Kelly's story and her timeline, the fabricated timeline,
Speaker 9: they pick her up Byron and Justin pick her up
Speaker 9: at her place at four o'clock. They go straight to
Speaker 9: the gas station where she calls Anastasia. And this is
Speaker 9: at four fifteen, four thirty, and she says, I've I've
Speaker 9: spoke to Anastasia then, and Anastasia says, where are we meeting?
Speaker 9: And Kelly says at the Dairy Queen. Well, according to
Speaker 9: Diane and Fran, Anastasia was already on her way to
Speaker 9: Mount Washington or at Mount Washington when Kelly says she's making.
Speaker 10: That phone call and stayed at Mount Washington for an hour, right,
Speaker 10: waited and then for an hour and told a couple
Speaker 10: test driving a car in the cemetery.
Speaker 8: Story, No, that's okay.
Speaker 1: It told a couple who is.
Speaker 10: Test driving a car in the cemetery. They stopped her
Speaker 10: and they said the cemetery is about to close.
Speaker 1: It's chili.
Speaker 10: So they were checking on her and they said, you know,
Speaker 10: just to let you know, and she said, that's okay.
Speaker 10: I'm waiting for my boyfriend. And that was an hour
Speaker 10: after she was dropped off.
Speaker 8: And she's in Mount Washington.
Speaker 2: To Mount Washington, it's the lapage. And she asked what
Speaker 2: time it was because she was supposed to be meeting
Speaker 2: her boyfriend.
Speaker 9: Yes, and they say five thirty right, which and then
Speaker 9: back to Kelly's fabrication, So we make this phone call. Then,
Speaker 9: according to Kelly, well, we make this phone I make
Speaker 9: this phone call to quote unquote lure Anastasia out. Again,
Speaker 9: there's so many things that it's hard to keep track
Speaker 9: of them all because not only was this not a
Speaker 9: phone called a lure Anastasia out, Anastasia already had plans.
Speaker 8: With justin that day.
Speaker 9: Her stepmom talked about it, friends talked about it. And
Speaker 9: so then then Kelly says, after I quote unquote lure
Speaker 9: her out, we go straight from Lenexa. We go straight
Speaker 9: from Lenexa to Dairy Queen and Independence, which she estimates
Speaker 9: would take forty five minutes, maybe closer to thirty minutes
Speaker 9: rush hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was Russi hour on a Wednesday.
Speaker 9: So they get there at what five point fifteen five
Speaker 9: point thirty according to Kelly's story, Again, Anastasia is still
Speaker 9: in Mount Washington talking to the Lapages at that time.
Speaker 9: So again Kelly's story is false. That also conflicts with
Speaker 9: what Dawn Wright and Suliman Solid said, which was they
Speaker 9: picked her up after dark. They picked up Anastagia up
Speaker 9: after dark. And like what Nicole was just saying, we
Speaker 9: know that Anastasia called Justin's apartment and talked to Justin.
Speaker 9: So Kelly's story doesn't account for that because she says
Speaker 9: we went straight from the gas station to the dairy Queen. Well,
Speaker 9: then how was Anastasia talking to Justin as a part
Speaker 9: man if you went straight from dairy from straight from
Speaker 9: the gas station to dairy queen with no stops?
Speaker 2: And I understand because I have questions about the call
Speaker 2: that she made from the from the Phillip sixty six
Speaker 2: station near her house, right, Like, it has never made
Speaker 2: sense to me based on Anastasia's plan to meet Justin
Speaker 2: at Mount Washington Cemetery, that she would have that they
Speaker 2: would have needed Kelly to lure Anastasia to the Dairy Queen.
Speaker 2: It's never made sense to me. I asked her about that,
Speaker 2: and she was like, I don't know. All I know
Speaker 2: is that I made a call and I spoke with Anastasia.
Speaker 2: So then my mind goes to, Okay, well could Anastasia,
Speaker 2: But then it messes with the timeframe. But could Anastasia
Speaker 2: have called from the Dairy Queen and left that phone
Speaker 2: number on Justin's answering machine which had been erased some
Speaker 2: of those early messages were gone. Could they have called
Speaker 2: the answering machine found out where Anastasia was because and
Speaker 2: I have some of the trial or I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's her deposition or the trial transcript, but you know,
Speaker 2: she says that Anastasia believed that they were meeting at
Speaker 2: the Dairy Queen. That might have been the secondary plan. Right,
Speaker 2: The first plan I absolutely believe was Mount Washington.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Everyone knew it was Mount Washington, Betsy, Diane fran everyone
Speaker 2: knew they.
Speaker 1: Were meeting at Mount Washington.
Speaker 2: I wonder, and it's because I have to ask questions,
Speaker 2: but I wondered, did something change in that afternoon? Because
Speaker 2: then I was asking myself, did Kelly assuming Kelly's telling
Speaker 2: the truth. Did Kelly call and speak with Anastasia before
Speaker 2: Fran got home that day?
Speaker 4: Okay, so they're luring her out to be alone somewhere
Speaker 4: to kill her, but they changed the place where she's
Speaker 4: supposed to be alone to kill her by going through
Speaker 4: all these extra steps.
Speaker 2: All I'm saying is I have to ask all these questions, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: sure so? And then I looked at what everyone said
Speaker 2: in terms of time, it seemed like friend got home
Speaker 2: at four, So I don't think that Kelly could have
Speaker 2: called before she got home. So then I'm like crossing
Speaker 2: that off, you know, so, but I have to ask
Speaker 2: the questions.
Speaker 11: That's exactly how we work the case.
Speaker 10: And just a thought on what you're saying is that
Speaker 10: if the state didn't believe her story either, if they had, they.
Speaker 11: Would wouldn't needed her to record the conversation with Byron.
Speaker 2: I mean, she definitely had credibility issues because she was
Speaker 2: known to have lied, right, So this phone call has
Speaker 2: never made sense to me. But maybe what happened was
Speaker 2: what prosecutors alleged at trial, that Anastasia had paged Byron
Speaker 2: from the dairy queen and that's the number that was
Speaker 2: dialed for Kelly at the gas station. Again, law enforcement
Speaker 2: never pulled those payphone records from the gas station and
Speaker 2: the dairy queen.
Speaker 9: When she gives that September twenty first statement to Kilgore,
Speaker 9: he says, well, when you told me in your initial
Speaker 9: statement back in October of nineteen ninety seven, you seemed
Speaker 9: pretty confident about that story. And then even a few
Speaker 9: days later, I took you out to ride around and
Speaker 9: you took me on a You took me exactly, it
Speaker 9: took me where you said you guys went, and you
Speaker 9: seemed pretty confident about that. You even drew me a map, which,
Speaker 9: as an aside, wasn't and still has never been produced.
Speaker 9: We've never seen that map that Kelly drew in her
Speaker 9: initial statement. And she says, well, I was so confident
Speaker 9: because before we talked with you for the first time,
Speaker 9: Byron took me back out there and drove me around.
Speaker 9: Except that there was literally no time for that to
Speaker 9: happen because she was with her grandma all day the
Speaker 9: day that Anastasia's body was found on the twenty third
Speaker 9: that evening, and she even admitted in one of her
Speaker 9: statements that Byron's car was broken down, her mom and Evelyn,
Speaker 9: Byron's mom had to give them rides everywhere. Evelyn had
Speaker 9: given Byron a ride to the Moffat residence where they
Speaker 9: hung out that evening of the twenty third, and then
Speaker 9: on the morning of the twenty fourth, Debbie Moffatt gives
Speaker 9: them a ride to the Jackson County Sheriff's Department to
Speaker 9: give their statement to Kilgore.
Speaker 8: So her story is just it never it.
Speaker 9: Didn't make sense, and it shouldn't have made sense to
Speaker 9: the Prosecutor's office and the Sheriff's department if they were
Speaker 9: doing their job at the very beginning.
Speaker 2: I reach out to Kelly with this question from Byron's
Speaker 2: legal team. When did Byron actually have the time to
Speaker 2: take her around to show her the area of Truman
Speaker 2: Road and the I four thirty five. Kelly sends me
Speaker 2: a voice message answering this question. She says, after Anastasia's
Speaker 2: murder was reported on the news the night of October
Speaker 2: twenty third, Byron drove her around so she could learn
Speaker 2: the area in case they had to speak with police.
Speaker 12: Noon we found out like on like the four or
Speaker 12: five o'clock news, and then I came to your house
Speaker 12: and stayed the night, and that's when we made it
Speaker 12: a point to drive around and show me.
Speaker 13: This is just so irritating.
Speaker 12: I hate dealing with anything with him because he just
Speaker 12: he's trying to rely on the fact that the investigation
Speaker 12: was stupid and botched and they didn't do a good job.
Speaker 12: He's trying to pick that apart and hoping to God
Speaker 12: that something sticks. He throws anything against the wall and
Speaker 12: sees it. He gets people fighting over these like little
Speaker 12: tiny indiscretions and stuff so that you don't look at
Speaker 12: the fact that he's fucking guilty as hell.
Speaker 2: For the record, I was curious what was said about
Speaker 2: where exactly Kelly and Byron spent the night of October
Speaker 2: twenty third. At trial, Kelly said they spent the night
Speaker 2: at Byron's mom's apartment. She said the next morning, her
Speaker 2: mom picked them up from Byron's and took them to
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's department to be interviewed. In Byron's first interview,
Speaker 2: he said his mom dropped him and Kelly off at
Speaker 2: her house that night because he had to go in
Speaker 2: for a job interview that evening, and Kelly came with him.
Speaker 2: No mention if they spent the night there though, So
Speaker 2: did they go to Byron's house after the job interview
Speaker 2: or did they stay at Kelly's. Who knows where they
Speaker 2: spent the night, and if there had been time, like
Speaker 2: Kelly said, for Byron to show her around Truman Roade
Speaker 2: and the I four thirty five that night. Back to
Speaker 2: Nicole in our.
Speaker 10: Interview, Kelly's not told the same story, not one time now,
Speaker 10: not even for the state.
Speaker 1: And there have been big differences.
Speaker 10: I mean, we're not talking about minor changes or forgetfulness.
Speaker 10: There are just big differences in each of her stories
Speaker 10: that's unaccounted for.
Speaker 1: The state didn't account for them.
Speaker 10: And so for the state for the state to say,
Speaker 10: we have looked into this again and we decided not
Speaker 10: to take the case because Kelly Moffett stands by her story.
Speaker 1: Well, tell us which story that is.
Speaker 2: Nicole is referring to hearing former Jackson County Prosecutor Jean
Speaker 2: Peters Baker in episode eleven, here's Quinn.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: When I heard Jean Peters Baker on the podcast say
Speaker 4: we have done the work, I wanted to throw my
Speaker 4: headphones off. They did not do the work. They didn't
Speaker 4: even read the work that we gave them.
Speaker 6: In our presentation. I promise you all they did was
Speaker 6: read the trial transcript and call Kelly and ask her,
Speaker 6: if we called you as a witness again, would you
Speaker 6: say the same thing. And she said yes over the telephone,
Speaker 6: is what she told them.
Speaker 13: Because what they want is a perfect case.
Speaker 4: They want the DNA to exclude the client, they want
Speaker 4: the DNA to match somebody else, they want a recantation
Speaker 4: from the eyewitness.
Speaker 11: They want all this, you.
Speaker 13: Know, perfect stuff. And if all of those things are true,
Speaker 13: someone never would have gotten convicted in the first place.
Speaker 13: I mean, they're looking for the perfect case and it's
Speaker 13: never going to happen.
Speaker 6: But the only two things they told us to justify
Speaker 6: their decision not to reopen this case was number one,
Speaker 6: that Kelly had not recanted, and number two, Kelly had
Speaker 6: not recanded, you know, And so you know, and I
Speaker 6: was angry at this meeting, and they could probably tell it.
Speaker 6: But at the end of it, I said, so you
Speaker 6: have effectively made Kelly Moffatt the gatekeeper for your conviction
Speaker 6: integrity unit. Kelly Moffatt has told you not to proceed
Speaker 6: on this, and you're not proceeding on this. That is
Speaker 6: essentially what they said, and so when you asked me
Speaker 6: my reaction to your podcast podcast is great, but that
Speaker 6: episode really me.
Speaker 2: I continue my conversation with Byron's legal team. A quick reminder,
Speaker 2: this interview took place the day after my interview with Kelly.
Speaker 1: I asked her.
Speaker 2: Fourteen pages of questions. A lot of it she couldn't
Speaker 2: remember because it's been But to be fair, it's been twenty.
Speaker 6: Something years, right, says, if you always tell the truth,
Speaker 6: you don't have to remember anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, she remembers that Byron did it. One of
Speaker 2: the things that struck me that I had forgotten was
Speaker 2: that at trials she did not remember going to Abraham's.
Speaker 2: And even the prosecutor said, are you sure you didn't
Speaker 2: stop anywhere else, you know, after the killing before going home,
Speaker 2: and she was like.
Speaker 1: No, not that I remember. So whatever that means.
Speaker 2: Back in two thousand and two, at the trial, she
Speaker 2: didn't even remember stopping at Abrahams. And the prosecution very
Speaker 2: much believes that they stopped at Abraham's, right, correct, So,
Speaker 2: and I'm not making her case for her. I'm just
Speaker 2: saying there could be some things that she doesn't remember.
Speaker 2: When she didn't even remember stopping at Abrahams back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and two.
Speaker 9: Well, she didn't, and she didn't remember it in two
Speaker 9: thousand when she gave her statement, she's in her fabrication.
Speaker 2: I asked her, did you guys go back to the house.
Speaker 2: She said, I don't know, I don't remember. So she
Speaker 2: left that open to the possibility that they may have
Speaker 2: gone back to the house.
Speaker 6: She knew she would do that. Yeah, of course she
Speaker 6: has to. Now, she has to change her story to
Speaker 6: fit the fact.
Speaker 1: Couldn't it be drug brain? Couldn't it be? I mean,
Speaker 1: couldn't that have messed up some of her memory?
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter because the external facts still show that
Speaker 4: Kelly Moffett isn't being truthful.
Speaker 11: I mean, we can sit.
Speaker 4: Here and talk about drug brain and memory and all
Speaker 4: sorts of scientific studies about, you know, how memory changes
Speaker 4: and what happens. But the fact is it can't be
Speaker 4: true because of these other people who don't have a
Speaker 4: stake in this saw Kelly at different times. They saw antesthesia,
Speaker 4: the dairy queen, they saw anaesthesia, the cemetery.
Speaker 11: Fact like, all of these.
Speaker 4: External witnesses disprove Kelly's story.
Speaker 11: So I'm saying that we.
Speaker 2: Can you know, some people wrote in talking about memory
Speaker 2: loss and how that can happen as a result of trauma,
Speaker 2: not just with drug use.
Speaker 1: Back to Quinn, and.
Speaker 4: I have empathy for Kelly too. And in this story,
Speaker 4: Kelly gets to be.
Speaker 11: The hero to Fran and Emma and.
Speaker 4: Anastasia and the Whipwell's Hugan family. She gets to bring
Speaker 4: them closure. You know, listening to the podcast, I cried
Speaker 4: listening to and Emma talk they lost someone really special
Speaker 4: and really important to them, and.
Speaker 11: Kelly gets to be their hero.
Speaker 4: I get that, you know, Kelly getting to play the hero,
Speaker 4: and this story is really compelling, and she's made that part.
Speaker 11: Of who she is.
Speaker 4: And she has the gratitude of the Whipple's Hugan family
Speaker 4: and the girls for providing them closure.
Speaker 11: It's I get why she did that, you know.
Speaker 4: She yes, she had to implicate herself to tell this story,
Speaker 4: but she was never at any risk, not ever. She
Speaker 4: came forward with an attorney who made an immunity deal
Speaker 4: for her before she even said one word on the
Speaker 4: record that would implicate herself.
Speaker 11: She was never at any risk ever, not at any time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she says that she was basically made to come forward.
Speaker 2: She was, and that when she came forward there was
Speaker 2: no deal, no immunity promised.
Speaker 1: She had no idea what was going to happen.
Speaker 11: To Yes, that's not true, that's a lie.
Speaker 2: When she came over to the counselor and then the
Speaker 2: counselor reached out to an attorney and I mean the
Speaker 2: prosecutor's office, she said at that point there was no deal.
Speaker 6: The document showed the deal was on the table before
Speaker 6: she made any statements to the police. The counselor is
Speaker 6: what locked in her story. The councilor called the prosecutor
Speaker 6: and essentially turned her in, forced her to tell a story,
Speaker 6: and then this is the story that she developed off
Speaker 6: the cuff.
Speaker 2: I think what Kelly said is that when she told
Speaker 2: the counselor or was forced to tell the counselor, and
Speaker 2: the counselor said she was going to go contact the
Speaker 2: prosecutor's office about it, Kelly had no idea what was
Speaker 2: going to happen to her. She had no idea at
Speaker 2: that point she would eventually be given immunity. Right, let's
Speaker 2: please talk about Anastasia's clothes and whether or not she
Speaker 2: might have gone home. I know you very much, believe
Speaker 2: she went home. This is my question about it if
Speaker 2: we believe Fran's description of what Anastasia was wearing when
Speaker 2: she left the house. And I'm not supposed to give
Speaker 2: my opinions on anything, but I do believe that they
Speaker 2: had such a detailed conversation about the clothes. I do
Speaker 2: believe Fran knows what Anastasia was wearing that day. Fran
Speaker 2: seems very believable, and not just in the podcast where
Speaker 2: she gave a lot of details about it, but she
Speaker 2: seemed pretty clear in her early interviews that this is
Speaker 2: what Anastasia was wearing. So for Anastasia to leave the house,
Speaker 2: let's just call it black clothes. She leaves the house
Speaker 2: in black clothes. In order for Dawn Wright to see
Speaker 2: her in blue jeans and the socks and sandals, Anastasia
Speaker 2: would have had to go home before going to the
Speaker 2: Dairy Queen. So that's one change to then be at
Speaker 2: the Dairy Queen in the blue jeans, to then go
Speaker 2: home again, to change out of the blue jeans into
Speaker 2: the black clothes, to then later be killed in the
Speaker 2: black clothes. Please try to explain to me the whole
Speaker 2: thing is like did in a Stagia go home once,
Speaker 2: it would have meant she went home twice.
Speaker 9: So I don't think and this is all respect to Fran,
Speaker 9: and you know, she was a fifteen year old who
Speaker 9: just lost her sister. She didn't give a statement though,
Speaker 9: for five days. I believe her first statement was October
Speaker 9: twenty eighth. By that point in time, everybody knew what
Speaker 9: Anastasia was wearing when she was found.
Speaker 8: So I don't know that necessarily.
Speaker 9: Fran's insistence of what she remembered Anastasia wearing wasn't somehow
Speaker 9: muddled by Bob telling her what she was wearing or
Speaker 9: what she was found in.
Speaker 1: But we don't know that. We don't know that someone
Speaker 1: told her.
Speaker 9: We don't know, but you can imagine that within a
Speaker 9: small family there and having just on, you know that.
Speaker 8: The trauma of what's going on.
Speaker 9: So I mean they were I think that it's pretty
Speaker 9: clear that they were communicating with each other about how
Speaker 9: she was found. But I think another part of that
Speaker 9: is you have two competing statements here. You have what
Speaker 9: Fran believes she was wearing and what Dawn says she
Speaker 9: was wearing. Fran saw Anastasia before she left for maybe
Speaker 9: fifteen minutes, whereas Dawn was with Anastasia for an hour
Speaker 9: to an hour and a half before she left, so
Speaker 9: she had simply more time to observe what she was
Speaker 9: wearing while she was at that Dairy Queen. And if
Speaker 9: Anastasia was wearing what Fran said she was wearing, there
Speaker 9: would have been blood on those clothes and in that
Speaker 9: underwear and on that pad at some point by the
Speaker 9: time she was found. That when Anna Stage is found,
Speaker 9: she's wearing clean everything. But because Dawn says that she
Speaker 9: started her period in the Dairy Queen, we know that
Speaker 9: that means that whatever she was wearing it the Dairy
Speaker 9: Queen would have had blood on it somewhere, and none
Speaker 9: of that was found.
Speaker 4: And I'd just like to point out that if Detective
Speaker 4: Kilgore had asked Solomon Suelatt for security footage, Solomon Seuelatt
Speaker 4: had that and was ready to provide it to the police,
Speaker 4: was never asked for it, So we would know all
Speaker 4: of this for sure, we would know the timeline for sure,
Speaker 4: we would know what Anastasia was wearing for sure. If
Speaker 4: Kilgore had just bothered to ask if Solomon Suett had security.
Speaker 1: Footage, does that video still exist.
Speaker 4: No, I've spoken to mister Seuett and he got rid
Speaker 4: of it a long time ago.
Speaker 11: The Dairy Queen wasn't a fire.
Speaker 13: He eventually sold it to some other business.
Speaker 2: It's now an because so much has been said about
Speaker 2: Sergeant Gary Kilgore and what he did and didn't do
Speaker 2: during his investigation. I reached back out to him again
Speaker 2: to see if he's been listening and if he has
Speaker 2: anything he wants to say.
Speaker 1: He has not returned my calls. Here's Sean.
Speaker 6: So, at the time that Fran made these observations, she
Speaker 6: did not know that her sister was going to be
Speaker 6: murdered that night. And memory is very malleable, and so
Speaker 6: I think Fran is remembering what she usually saw Anastasia
Speaker 6: where the other piece of it is the purse or
Speaker 6: the wallet. And how does don Wright know to describe
Speaker 6: a wallet that Bob Whitbolsfugen finds that evening, you know,
Speaker 6: on the stairway at their home, and then he texts
Speaker 6: a picture of it, and the picture as an email
Speaker 6: right different wall.
Speaker 11: I'm not sure it is though as a t okay, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 6: Okay, but yeah, but there is the purse, yeah, and That's.
Speaker 10: Also something that I think wasn't pointed out in the
Speaker 10: podcast or may none of the purse that Don describes
Speaker 10: is like a wallet on a long strap, and it's
Speaker 10: not an usual size purse. And then Bob sends a
Speaker 10: picture of that type of purse exactly.
Speaker 2: For the record, in episode two, we do share Don
Speaker 2: Wright's exact description of the purse. She said she saw
Speaker 2: Anastasia carrying that night. Let me ask you a couple
Speaker 2: of follow up questions. Yeah, so Anastasia was found with
Speaker 2: three dollars and sixty five cents in her pants pocket.
Speaker 2: If she had that money on her, she did have
Speaker 2: that money on her, Why would that not be in
Speaker 2: her purse or wallet? If she was carrying something that.
Speaker 4: Night, changed pants and that was money that was in
Speaker 4: her pants before she put them on, and she the anxiety.
Speaker 8: Yeah, she went home and left the purse left.
Speaker 10: She typically didn't carry it purse, right, she typically didn't
Speaker 10: carry a purse.
Speaker 4: Oh see, I think I think I call that magic
Speaker 4: money when you put your coat on that you haven't
Speaker 4: worn since last fall and you find three bucks in
Speaker 4: the pocket.
Speaker 1: Right, But we don't know, I mean, that's a I
Speaker 1: don't know it's.
Speaker 11: Just Ya's al anymore. That's all. There are multiple explanations
Speaker 11: for it.
Speaker 1: It just yea and in terms of memory.
Speaker 2: So one could make the argument that down right, I mean,
Speaker 2: as we know, I witness testimony is.
Speaker 1: Often wrong, and she could have been wrong about Anastasia's clothes.
Speaker 11: Slomon Sala doesn't think so.
Speaker 1: He doesn't describe what she's wearing.
Speaker 4: No, but he said that he was there when down
Speaker 4: was describing what she was wearing, and he didn't have
Speaker 4: any qualms or quibbles with it.
Speaker 8: This is coming from a conversation. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I interviewed Solomons a lot separately, So this is
Speaker 4: stuff that you would not have been privy to yet
Speaker 4: because it just recently happened. He backs Solomon's all that
Speaker 4: backs up down right and says that whatever Dawn said
Speaker 4: Anastasia was wearing is what.
Speaker 1: She was wearing.
Speaker 9: But you're you're correct that, I mean, of course, anybody
Speaker 9: could be wrong about anything.
Speaker 8: When we're talking about I witness say, you know, yeah, things.
Speaker 9: That's why we go back to what she was with
Speaker 9: her for longer than anybody else that night. She had
Speaker 9: more of a chance to see her and what she
Speaker 9: was wearing. And take that in and remember it. And
Speaker 9: no reason to lie, no reason to lie.
Speaker 6: And yeah, yeah, and socks with sandals is really specific
Speaker 6: as opposed to she was wearing what she usually wore.
Speaker 2: You know, which begs the question, isn't it odd that
Speaker 2: on this particular Dayastasia was supposedly seen wearing something people
Speaker 2: close to her said she never wore. Also, she was
Speaker 2: seen caring a purse, which her friends and family said
Speaker 2: she would never do. Why would Anastasia be seen in
Speaker 2: clothes so out of character for her? Also, they say,
Speaker 2: don Wright has no reason to lie. It might not
Speaker 2: have been a lie, just an honest mistake. Also, Fran
Speaker 2: has no reason to lie.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: Fran was in that interview.
Speaker 2: On ten twenty eight, very specific also about the black bra.
Speaker 1: You know, she they had a conversation about clothes.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just like she saw Anastasia leave in these
Speaker 2: clothes and there was no they actually had a conversation
Speaker 2: about borrowing and like, so what do you make of that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's a little bit more than
Speaker 1: just she.
Speaker 2: May or friend may have been incorrect, because it's what
Speaker 2: Anastasia often wore. They talked, they talked, it seems like
Speaker 2: they talked about it.
Speaker 4: They probably did have an argument, which is why Anastasa
Speaker 4: settled on socks with sandals instead of France Doc Martins
Speaker 4: at that time.
Speaker 6: And I could see later in the evening when she
Speaker 6: went out a second time that her feet were probably cold.
Speaker 11: Her sister wasn't there to argue anymore.
Speaker 4: So you could take her sister's Doc Martens, and her
Speaker 4: sister wasn't there to fight her about it.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the pad versus tampon thing for
Speaker 2: a second, because as we know, don Wright first said
Speaker 2: it was a pad, then at trial she changed it
Speaker 2: to a tampon. Kilgore found a box of tampons in
Speaker 2: Anastasia's room. One could deduce I'm not saying I'm right,
Speaker 2: but one could deduce that that's what Anastasia used. So
Speaker 2: how if don Wright actually gave her a tampon? How
Speaker 2: did she end up in a pad?
Speaker 7: She went home?
Speaker 2: So how if don Wright actually gave her a tampon?
Speaker 2: How to chand up in a pad?
Speaker 8: She went home?
Speaker 1: But if that's not what she normally used.
Speaker 11: Why and why would you change?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if you like once you
Speaker 2: sorry very rapid, but once you put one in, you
Speaker 2: don't need to change it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to.
Speaker 4: Solomon saw That said that when he went in to
Speaker 4: change the trash in the employee bathroom, because that's when
Speaker 4: the Anastasia used uh, there was a you know, tampon
Speaker 4: trash in the garbage can, and there was still blood
Speaker 4: in the toilet, which means that Anastasia is actively bleeding.
Speaker 11: At this point.
Speaker 4: No matter what she was wearing, there should be some
Speaker 4: blood on it. So at some point she puts something
Speaker 4: clean on. And women know, periods unpredictable. Your flow can
Speaker 4: be heavy and light, depending on the second of the
Speaker 4: day and which direction the wind's blowing.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me ask you this question.
Speaker 2: As I mean, as you said in a period can
Speaker 2: start and stop, especially when in the first few years
Speaker 2: they're very sporadic in the beginning. My question is if
Speaker 2: Anastasia went from the dairy Queen in a pad just
Speaker 2: for the sake of argument in a pad, to Mount
Speaker 2: Washington and then to Lincoln where she was killed, there
Speaker 2: would be less time potentially for there to be anything
Speaker 2: on that pad. If she went home, changed into a
Speaker 2: pad and then was killed hours potentially hours later, wouldn't
Speaker 2: there be a greater likelihood that something would have ended
Speaker 2: up on that pad after that many hours of having.
Speaker 8: On there was no blood. There was no blood in
Speaker 8: her underwear either.
Speaker 9: And so if she went straight from Mount Washington, I
Speaker 9: mean straight from Dairy Queen, Mount Washington Lincoln Cemetery, even
Speaker 9: if the pad was clean and there wasn't an opportunity
Speaker 9: for her to bleed onto that, there still would have
Speaker 9: been blood on her underwear from when she started her
Speaker 9: period and needed a product.
Speaker 1: We're getting very intimate with each other.
Speaker 2: A woman can feel her period coming on before anything
Speaker 2: hits underwear. She could have gone. She could have said,
Speaker 2: I'm getting my period, do you have anything? Gone to
Speaker 2: the bathroom. She could have sat down and stuff could
Speaker 2: have come into the toilet and nothing ever ended up
Speaker 2: ending up on her underwear.
Speaker 1: It is a possibility. I think it's.
Speaker 11: A that's a stretch. That's a real stretch.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think he's actively bleeding into the toilet,
Speaker 4: such as the male manager of the restaurant notices that
Speaker 4: there's blood in the toilet and tampon trash in the
Speaker 4: trash can.
Speaker 11: There's probably blood on her underwear.
Speaker 9: Plus it would have I think that they did. In
Speaker 9: her autopsy, Doctor Young did find menstrual blood in her vagina.
Speaker 8: Still right and so right.
Speaker 4: It's more plausible that she cleaned herself up and that
Speaker 4: after the initial period started that it slowed down, or
Speaker 4: that she just wasn't upright as long as we thought
Speaker 4: between the times she returned home and the time that
Speaker 4: she was found over the time that she died in
Speaker 4: the cemetery.
Speaker 11: Yeah, or if if she died in the cemetery at all,
Speaker 11: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But again, if she went home, put on different clothes,
Speaker 2: and changed from a tampon to a pad, then was
Speaker 2: killed hours later, why wasn't there anything on the pad?
Speaker 2: More hours equals more time to bleed? Right, let me
Speaker 2: ask you, following up on a couple of things you
Speaker 2: just said. So because I know that the Kansas City
Speaker 2: Police crime lab came back and said that there is
Speaker 2: a possibility that she may have been lying down when
Speaker 2: she was killed. How do you explain a piece of
Speaker 2: her skull being up to a couple feet away.
Speaker 9: I think that I mean a gunshot wound. There's a
Speaker 9: lot of energy that goes into it, and especially if
Speaker 9: you've got if someone's head is laying on the ground
Speaker 9: to reflect that energy back. I don't think it's inconceivable
Speaker 9: that it could have deflected part of her skull off
Speaker 9: of the ground and out from underneath her head.
Speaker 11: Energy has neither created nor destroyed.
Speaker 4: We know this because of science, and so when it
Speaker 4: is perfectly reasonable to assume that her head came off
Speaker 4: the ground so that the energy from the gunshot could disperse,
Speaker 4: it just physics.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I don't think it was inconceivable that her when
Speaker 9: the bullet passed through her head, that it deflected part
Speaker 9: of that material out and out from underneath her head,
Speaker 9: because I believe it was about four feet from the
Speaker 9: top of her head.
Speaker 2: This seemed a bit far fetched, so I reached out
Speaker 2: to doctor Bill Smock, who is an internationally recognized forensic
Speaker 2: expert in multiple fields, including, but not limited to, reconstruction
Speaker 2: of officer involved shootings and the forensic evaluation of gunshot wounds.
Speaker 2: Doctor Smock is also the police surgeon and directs the
Speaker 2: clinical forensic Medicine program for the Louisville Metro Police Department
Speaker 2: in Louisville, Kentucky. He's also a clinical Professor of Emergency
Speaker 2: Medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. When
Speaker 2: I read doctor Smock verbatim what Byron's legal team just
Speaker 2: said about the possibility that Anastasia was lying down when
Speaker 2: she was shot in a piece of her skull was
Speaker 2: sent feet away, doctor Smock says, if her head was
Speaker 2: on the ground, there's no way that her head would
Speaker 2: have come up from the force of the shot causing
Speaker 2: a piece of her skull to fly and land up
Speaker 2: two feet away. If anything, he said, it just would
Speaker 2: have gone down further into the ground. So doctor Smock
Speaker 2: doesn't believe their theory is possible. Okay, this is a question.
Speaker 2: I don't think you guys are going to like feature faces.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: As I went back through the transcripts, I saw something
Speaker 2: that was a teeny tiny bit of like a pink
Speaker 2: flag or a burnt orange flag. In Byron's first interview
Speaker 2: with Kilgore and Kellogg, they asked him, has just never
Speaker 2: been suicidal? And he says, yes, you know, I think
Speaker 2: he's attempted a few times.
Speaker 1: And he says, I'll just read it to you. He says.
Speaker 2: That night, he says, I know he had attempts in
Speaker 2: the past, he quite a few actually.
Speaker 1: And last night he did. After Anastasia got out of
Speaker 1: the car.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We were driving down Truman Road. We
Speaker 2: were going over I guess it was like railroad tracks
Speaker 2: or something. I don't know, but he was like mentioning,
Speaker 2: you know, he was like, gee, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, like, you know, tonight, I could just kill myself.
Speaker 2: I just thought he was, you know, being silly about it,
Speaker 2: being silly about And then they jump in and ask
Speaker 2: him a couple of questions. Okay, so here's my question.
Speaker 2: I feel like I got a paper cut. The first
Speaker 2: time Kelly comes forward in September of two thousand, she
Speaker 2: says that they dumped the gun near some railroad tracks.
Speaker 2: The only time that railroad tracks come up are when
Speaker 2: Byron says justin thought or mentioned that he might kill himself,
Speaker 2: and when Kelly says they dumped the gun. Is that
Speaker 2: a tell? Did Byron say something that inadvertently he used
Speaker 2: a detail like the railroad tracks that also then matched.
Speaker 1: Or kind of the area where Kelly or.
Speaker 9: Map or is this a tell by Kelly of her
Speaker 9: integrating the actual truth into her fabrication.
Speaker 4: I'm counting the number of railroad tracks they would pass
Speaker 4: over between Washington Mount Washington Cemetery before getting back downtown.
Speaker 2: But I'm not even talking like, not even in relation
Speaker 2: to the area or Lincoln Cemetery or Truman Road. Just
Speaker 2: the fact that Byron says Justin threatened or mentioned suicide
Speaker 2: at some railroad tracks. Kelly says they dumped the gun
Speaker 2: near some railroad tracks. One could say it would make
Speaker 2: sense that Justin threatened to kill himself. It was if
Speaker 2: it was at a place after they killed her, it
Speaker 2: was at a place where the gun was dumped, or.
Speaker 4: They pass over railroad tracks on their way back into
Speaker 4: Kansas City.
Speaker 8: You're saying, yeah, I just think.
Speaker 11: That three times.
Speaker 8: I think that that would be a I don't think
Speaker 8: that that.
Speaker 9: I don't find that fact particularly alarming or anything. I mean,
Speaker 9: take your point, but it's just to me, it just
Speaker 9: seems like Byron is we're calling the story as it happened.
Speaker 9: He's like, so she gets out and then we're driving
Speaker 9: and we start going over some railroad tracks and then
Speaker 9: oh and Justin's like talking about killing himself because of
Speaker 9: this argument they just had, Like.
Speaker 4: It's another industrial area, so there are two opportunities before
Speaker 4: they get back even inside the what we would call
Speaker 4: the Downtown Loop or South Kansas City area, two opportunities
Speaker 4: where there are lots of railroad tracks.
Speaker 1: It just stood out to me.
Speaker 2: But if he just witnessed a murder, or he just
Speaker 2: killed her while the three of them were together, one
Speaker 2: could say, like that would be a response that could
Speaker 2: be believable. So I wanted to ask, because you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, was that go ahead?
Speaker 10: Were those of the railroad tracks by Lake Quavera or why?
Speaker 1: I don't think it even matters where the tracks are.
Speaker 1: I think just.
Speaker 2: Hearing Byron say when we were near some railroad tracks,
Speaker 2: Justin said I should just kill myself tonight. And then
Speaker 2: it turns out that the only other time we hear
Speaker 2: railroad tracks is when Kelly says they dumped the gun
Speaker 2: near them. One could just say, hmm, I wonder if
Speaker 2: there is a connection time just having killed her.
Speaker 9: Every good fabrication incorporates elements of truth in it. But
Speaker 9: she would have been in the car when Justin says
Speaker 9: that as they're going over railroad tracks, and so.
Speaker 6: I would say, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn
Speaker 6: every now and then, they're probably a couple of.
Speaker 1: Truth blind squirrel.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, Kelly's the blind squirrel. It's a corollary
Speaker 6: to the broken clock. Even a broken clock is right
Speaker 6: twice a day.
Speaker 8: To me, it's the same it's the same thing as
Speaker 8: her incorporation.
Speaker 9: She's incorporating real memories into her fabrication.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: We've talked about theories of the case.
Speaker 1: I mean it's all speculation.
Speaker 6: Have no idea, Yeah, we really don't. But the police
Speaker 6: theory of the case from the beginning was a murder supicide.
Speaker 6: That's what they thought. We don't know when or if
Speaker 6: or how Justin would have reconnected with Anastasia that night,
Speaker 6: but for a long time that's what the police belief happened.
Speaker 2: So did Justin say he wanted to take his own
Speaker 2: life because Anastaesia got out of the car or was
Speaker 2: it because he just committed or witnessed her murder?
Speaker 10: I was just going to point out, just for transparency,
Speaker 10: that we all have a different version. I mean, we
Speaker 10: all have different ideas about what could have happened.
Speaker 6: The question is this, what is the physical evidence? It
Speaker 6: shows that the police find her body in the cemetery,
Speaker 6: she has been shot with a gun that was touching
Speaker 6: her nose, when it was fired, and she did not
Speaker 6: turn away. She was probably lying on her back when
Speaker 6: that happened. It could be a pistol, it could have
Speaker 6: been a rifle, but they can't say. All we know
Speaker 6: is that there's not a gun on the scene. If
Speaker 6: there had been a gun on the scene, this would
Speaker 6: have been ruled a suicide, open and shutcase. But the
Speaker 6: crime lab has said the absence of a gun at
Speaker 6: the scene does not foreclose suicide, especially when we know
Speaker 6: there's an unexplained automobile that was there at the scene.
Speaker 6: We cannot exclude. Now, we don't know when that car
Speaker 6: went by, but we do know it went by before
Speaker 6: the police got there. It might have been a few
Speaker 6: days before, it had rained on that like two days before,
Speaker 6: but still a car had been by, and so we
Speaker 6: don't know that the scene was pristine when the police arrived.
Speaker 6: And so, beyond a reasonable doubt, did someone kill Anastatia?
Speaker 6: I don't think they can show that it would go
Speaker 6: on from there. You know, if she didn't take her
Speaker 6: own life, what could have happened? How could that gun
Speaker 6: have been missing? Well, there is evidence that Bob Whitbolsfugen
Speaker 6: thinks he heard the gun that killed her. He thinks
Speaker 6: he heard that shot and he was standing in a
Speaker 6: place and said the shot came from the west of
Speaker 6: where he was, in the general direction of Lincoln Cemetery.
Speaker 6: It is inconceivable that he didn't go there to look
Speaker 6: for the gun. He, by the way, has the financial
Speaker 6: incentive to cover up a suicide because he just increased
Speaker 6: two days earlier the life insurance policy. So there's evidence
Speaker 6: to support that theory. And I'd probably argue to a
Speaker 6: jury that to find Byron guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,
Speaker 6: you have to answer these questions. That all of these
Speaker 6: unanswered questions doesn't mean that Byron is guilty because we
Speaker 6: can't answer these questions. They opposite is true. These questions
Speaker 6: raise other possibilities inconsistent with Byron's guild.
Speaker 2: What do you make of people's varying timelines, Like Suleiman
Speaker 2: and don Wright tell very different times that Anastasia was
Speaker 2: at the dairy, Queen don Rand said that he saw
Speaker 2: her at thirty. None of those timelines really totally work
Speaker 2: with her getting out of the car, then they went
Speaker 2: to Abraham's. Then she was home and Kelly was home
Speaker 2: by nine fifteen. So what do you make of everyone's
Speaker 2: very different timelines.
Speaker 9: Well, the time change, well that happened after but a week,
Speaker 9: like a week after she was found. But I think
Speaker 9: that it's that time of year when it's getting darker earlier.
Speaker 9: I think you asked anybody in October what time something
Speaker 9: happened last night? Your brain is still adjusting to dark
Speaker 9: being eight o'clock versus dark being seven o'clock.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: But Don Wright does start intructor.
Speaker 2: Don Wright does say that she was here until a
Speaker 2: half hour before closing, and we close at ten, so
Speaker 2: that's much later, and we.
Speaker 9: Know that can't be accurate because Kelly was home by
Speaker 9: that point in time, verified by Debbie.
Speaker 8: I mean, that was her curfew. She would have.
Speaker 9: Gone nuclear if her daughter wasn't home by nine o'clock
Speaker 9: she was supposed to.
Speaker 6: This is why the failure to collect that video surveillance
Speaker 6: is so prejudicial to the defense, because we would have
Speaker 6: a definitive point of time at which they left the
Speaker 6: dairy Queen, and then we have DeBie Moffatt establishing when
Speaker 6: Kelly got home, and we would have those two points
Speaker 6: in time fixed, and that would let us test everything
Speaker 6: in between, but and reenact on a clock whether or
Speaker 6: not Kelly's story is even plausible given the timeline and.
Speaker 10: At the end of the day, Kelly told don Right
Speaker 10: Justin didn't want to come to Independence to pick her
Speaker 10: up because an Annastasia told don Wright that Justin didn't
Speaker 10: want to come to Independence to pick her up because
Speaker 10: he was hanging out with his best friend. Does that
Speaker 10: sound like someone who's plotted to kill her all day
Speaker 10: he doesn't want to come get her.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to add.
Speaker 2: That a lot of people wrote in They had a
Speaker 2: lot of questions and theories and thoughts.
Speaker 1: One of them was is Byron a sociopath?
Speaker 2: And I know that you had him evaluate it, so
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about that.
Speaker 9: Absolutely no evidence of sociopathy or any personality disorders or
Speaker 9: anything like that. And in fact, you know, part of
Speaker 9: us we were wondering if maybe he was on the spectrum,
Speaker 9: and I think that kind of came back as inconclusive,
Speaker 9: but which you.
Speaker 8: Know, we were. We were interested in that for explaining
Speaker 8: some of his.
Speaker 6: Demeanor.
Speaker 9: Demeanor, Yeah, and that's not that's nothing that when you
Speaker 9: get to know Byron, he's not, you know, you see
Speaker 9: him for who he is. But I could understand why
Speaker 9: some people would think he was I hate to say weird,
Speaker 9: but why he was different.
Speaker 6: Well, he's brilliant. Yeah, he is smart, and so he
Speaker 6: intellectually ruminates on a lot of things, and you know,
Speaker 6: people can draw conclusions from that, but that's just how
Speaker 6: Byron he is. You know.
Speaker 9: The other thing is we got his prison conduct records
Speaker 9: and he only in twenty some odd years of being
Speaker 9: in prison, has two conduct violations, one for staying up
Speaker 9: past curfew to read a book and the other for
Speaker 9: working on his Innocent's website when they had told him
Speaker 9: to stop working on his innocence website. If he was
Speaker 9: a sociopath, that would be documented.
Speaker 2: At this point, Brian just answered, Actually, another listener's question
Speaker 2: about whether or not Byron is autistic. The listener asked
Speaker 2: if Byron is on the spectrum, suggesting that could explain
Speaker 2: some of his behaviors and judgments. Brian just said that
Speaker 2: testing came back inconclusive. One listener wrote asking if the
Speaker 2: phone records can still be retrieved. It seems that answer
Speaker 2: is no. Another person wrote in asking about the weight
Speaker 2: of the bullet fragment, wondering if that could tell us
Speaker 2: something about the kind of gun that was used, so
Speaker 2: the weight is fifty six point one grains, which unfortunately
Speaker 2: doesn't rule out a lot of calibers. Another person wrote
Speaker 2: in asking if there was a metal detector ever used
Speaker 2: to look for other bullet fragments at the site where
Speaker 2: Anastasia died. A metal detector was used the day her
Speaker 2: body was found. According to a police report, there were
Speaker 2: several small to medium size metal objects located as deep
Speaker 2: as eight to ten inches below the surface of the ground.
Speaker 2: None were bullets. Many listeners asked if this wasn't in
Speaker 2: fact a murder suicide, that maybe after Justin took Byron home,
Speaker 2: he went back out, met up with Anastasia, killed her,
Speaker 2: then took his own life. Sadly, there's really no way
Speaker 2: to prove that. Another question that came in was about
Speaker 2: what items were picked up from Abraham and taken to
Speaker 2: Tara that night, and there are conflicting stories about that.
Speaker 2: There are also conflicting stories about whose house they went
Speaker 2: to first. It's hard to know if there's a there
Speaker 2: there or if it's just that too much time had
Speaker 2: gone by and those memories had faded. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: Bob for two seconds. Is there for all of the
Speaker 2: stuff that seems ridiculous that Bob came up with, like
Speaker 2: the caravan of cars. Is it possible that some of
Speaker 2: the other things he was just mistaken about, like the clothes,
Speaker 2: like the underwear and jeans at the house.
Speaker 1: Could they have been friends? Could they? I mean, he
Speaker 1: doesn't report those for a while, right, So.
Speaker 2: Even though he's says that he found them not long
Speaker 2: after the murder, you.
Speaker 1: Know, he said a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's hard to say, like we're gonna believe
Speaker 2: everything that Bob says, or we're gonna pick and choose
Speaker 2: some of the things that we believe Bob said was true.
Speaker 2: Well we've you know what I mean, Like the audience
Speaker 2: is listening and they're like, well, Bob helps us in
Speaker 2: this way, but it is ridiculous in this way.
Speaker 4: Or because we have external verification again, like when he
Speaker 4: talks about the underwear being in the saying and the
Speaker 4: genes being there, we do know that at least somewhere
Speaker 4: on this timeline, Anastasia cleaned herself up because her underwear
Speaker 4: is clean, her body is clean, the pad is clean,
Speaker 4: so she had to clean herself up.
Speaker 6: So but with Bob, we look at him the same
Speaker 6: way we do Kelly. And so with Bob. I mean,
Speaker 6: the purse that he took a photograph of and email
Speaker 6: to Detective Kilgore matched perfectly the description of the one
Speaker 6: that Dawn writes. AW, So that's pretty good evidence that
Speaker 6: he's you know that the panties and the and the
Speaker 6: genes and the laundry those support his theory that Anastasia
Speaker 6: went home. And so that's how we look.
Speaker 2: At everything in the case a chance that don Rand
Speaker 2: was incorrect and identifying Anastasia on Truman Road that night that.
Speaker 9: Incorrect, it would be such a coincidence that they that
Speaker 9: they just happened to fabricate a story about Anastasia getting
Speaker 9: out of the car at around dusk, and then a
Speaker 9: mechanic at that exact location looks at a picture over
Speaker 9: and says, yeah, that's the girl I saw get out
Speaker 9: about dusk.
Speaker 2: I mean, I asked Kelly about that. I was like,
Speaker 2: what do you make of Don Rand having seen Anastasia?
Speaker 2: And she was like, and don't quote me, because you know,
Speaker 2: but she said, we were stunned because it bolstered the
Speaker 2: story that we made up. We couldn't believe how how lucky,
Speaker 2: we got that there was somebody.
Speaker 8: Wait a minute, hold on, hold.
Speaker 14: On when when when she exactly when was she stunned
Speaker 14: about that? When she says Byron right, he didn't know
Speaker 14: that there was When did they find out that somebody
Speaker 14: at a gas station says they saw her?
Speaker 8: I don't know, but that's the that's my question for Kelly.
Speaker 9: When did you and Byron supposedly find out that an
Speaker 9: independent witness saw Anastasia get out of the car, because
Speaker 9: if that was a week in the investigation.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, I didn't ask Kelly, but I was just
Speaker 2: going to say, because Terra spoke with Don Round, what
Speaker 2: do you think is going to be the greatest likelihood
Speaker 2: of you getting Byron and a new trial? Will it
Speaker 2: be the Brady violations or what?
Speaker 9: We do believe that the Brady violations are the strongest
Speaker 9: and clearest, especially the fact that they did not disclose
Speaker 9: Kelly's criminal record before trial. There's a Missouri black letter
Speaker 9: law right on point when you have a single witness
Speaker 9: that you're resting your case on and you failed to disclose.
Speaker 8: Evidence related to their credibility new trial.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the other claimed that I think is equally important
Speaker 6: if not more so is a now Coup versus Illinois violation,
Speaker 6: which is the prosecutor presenting evidence that they know or
Speaker 6: should know is false, and the transcript they used to
Speaker 6: bolster Kelly's credibility is false. I wanted to point out
Speaker 6: that all this discussion we're having is discussion that should
Speaker 6: have happened in the jury deliberations. You know, you could
Speaker 6: picture making the movie twelve Angry Men about this case,
Speaker 6: or twelve angry people about this case. We should be
Speaker 6: you know, the jury should have been the one arguing
Speaker 6: these facts, and they didn't get any of it. They
Speaker 6: barely got any of it. And we can lay the
Speaker 6: blame at the police for not telling the prosecutor everything,
Speaker 6: not forwarding Bob's emails. We can blame the prosecutor for
Speaker 6: not telling the defense about Kelly's conviction, the fact that
Speaker 6: she's under warrant when she's giving statements and depositions about
Speaker 6: the case. And you know, we can blame the prosecution
Speaker 6: for producing a false transcript that all you need to
Speaker 6: do is ask a court reporter like we did, to
Speaker 6: transcribe it and you get a truthful version of it.
Speaker 6: This is what court reporters are trained to do and certify.
Speaker 6: So it's now certified beyond question that the state used
Speaker 6: a false transcript, and so under natpoo versus Illinois, if
Speaker 6: there is any likelihood that it would have affected the verdict,
Speaker 6: then Byron is entitled to a new trial. The big
Speaker 6: issue is always procedural technicalities. We're not just allowed to
Speaker 6: walk into court and say, here's the new evidence, let
Speaker 6: him go. We have to show that somebody blocked this
Speaker 6: evidence from getting into early Europeans and that's really the
Speaker 6: challenge for us.
Speaker 2: Do you feel that Byron is legally innocent or factually innocent.
Speaker 6: I think he's factually innocent, And by factual innocence, I
Speaker 6: mean he didn't kill anyone, And you know, legal innocence
Speaker 6: and factual innocence is kind of a bizarre little distinction,
Speaker 6: but he didn't do it. And I believe that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I believe Byron is actually innocent. I didn't believe that.
Speaker 9: I didn't have a opinion about that when I first
Speaker 9: got involved in the case.
Speaker 8: When I first got involved in.
Speaker 9: The case, I knew he was legally innocent because I
Speaker 9: knew he didn't get a fair trial. And I believe
Speaker 9: I don't everybody deserves a fair trial. What else is
Speaker 9: the system if we don't have fairness? But you know,
Speaker 9: very quickly within getting into this case is when I
Speaker 9: figured out and fully believe that he's actually innocent.
Speaker 8: It is not in Byron's character to do something like this.
Speaker 9: He just simply is not the kind of person that
Speaker 9: would be a you know, quote unquote thrill killer or something,
Speaker 9: or kill someone because they were annoying. He's too thoughtful,
Speaker 9: he's too empathetic, he's too good of a human to do.
Speaker 8: Something like that.
Speaker 9: And the fact that there is not one shred of
Speaker 9: evidence other than his lying ex girlfriend to convict him
Speaker 9: is Yeah, I have very strong feelings about that, and
Speaker 9: it makes me mad.
Speaker 8: It makes me.
Speaker 9: Sad, It makes me scared for other people that have
Speaker 9: to go through this system that seems to have no
Speaker 9: interest in reforming itself or actually being fair when that matters.
Speaker 4: I believe Byron is innocent because I've done the investigation.
Speaker 4: I went out and I talked to people, We had
Speaker 4: the forensic evidence examined by people who were finally provided
Speaker 4: with the materials that they needed to do a true examination,
Speaker 4: And at every turn, Byron is innocent. Every single time,
Speaker 4: I have in the past started an investigation and found
Speaker 4: definitive proof that someone was guilty, usually by DNA evidence,
Speaker 4: and it's heartbreaking, but you have to step away from
Speaker 4: those cases. I can't say someone is innocent without having
Speaker 4: done the investigation myself. I'm not going to put my
Speaker 4: integrity or my reputation on the line to do that.
Speaker 4: I believe Byron Case is innocent. Factually, legally, he did
Speaker 4: not do this.
Speaker 1: I believe Byron is actually innocent.
Speaker 10: I like Quinn, think that he's legally innocent and actually innocent.
Speaker 10: I don't know what it would take to get me
Speaker 10: to change my mind.
Speaker 1: I was gonna have to take those facts as they come, So.
Speaker 11: I don't know, say the evidence in this case is
Speaker 11: what really matters.
Speaker 4: And you know, we can pontificate and theorize all day
Speaker 4: about what really happened.
Speaker 11: That's an interesting thing to do.
Speaker 4: But every time we do that, every time we talk
Speaker 4: about theories about what happened, and none of those theories
Speaker 4: involved Byron.
Speaker 11: And that's the point. Byron Case didn't do.
Speaker 2: This anything else before we say goodbye.
Speaker 8: I don't think so.
Speaker 9: I think we just we really appreciate the time and
Speaker 9: attention that you've given to this, and we do.
Speaker 8: We appreciate the fairness and the the.
Speaker 9: That you are also fact checking us and trying to
Speaker 9: keep us honest. Then the new things even that you've
Speaker 9: discovered has been very helpful and illuminating for us, and
Speaker 9: so we appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I don't even know where to begin with how to
Speaker 2: end this season. I have said it since the beginning.
Speaker 2: I have only been in search of the truth. Although
Speaker 2: other people have been mentioned as potential persons of interest,
Speaker 2: doesn't it really come down to who do you believe
Speaker 2: Byron or Kelly? By your Instagram comments, messages and emails,
Speaker 2: I can see there are listeners very much on both
Speaker 2: sides of the fence. It's pretty much divided. Byron has
Speaker 2: told the same story since nineteen ninety seven. There's no
Speaker 2: physical evidence that links him to the murder. His legal
Speaker 2: team says, there are people who saw Anastasia that night,
Speaker 2: which proves she got out of the car, and her
Speaker 2: genes and the washing machine and underwear soaking in a
Speaker 2: sink proved she went on home. They say, if she
Speaker 2: got out of the car, Byron didn't do it. They say,
Speaker 2: if she went home, Byron didn't do it. They also
Speaker 2: say the TACIT admission is now a moot point because
Speaker 2: Byron now can be heard saying.
Speaker 1: We should talk about this.
Speaker 2: Kelly says she witnessed Anastasia's murder and the guilt she
Speaker 2: felt caused her to spiral into a drug addiction that
Speaker 2: almost killed her. She says she didn't come forward for
Speaker 2: years because she was scared being told by Byron she
Speaker 2: was as guilty as he was. She also says, before
Speaker 2: being made to come forward, she told her dad, her
Speaker 2: ex boyfriend Jim, and her friend Antigianino that Byron had
Speaker 2: murdered Anastasia. Kelly says she is iffy on some details,
Speaker 2: but remembers the important things, like Byron is the one
Speaker 2: who pulled the trigger. About the TACIT admission call, Kelly asks,
Speaker 2: if Byron is innocent.
Speaker 1: Why didn't he just deny.
Speaker 2: With all of the research and interviews we've done, there's
Speaker 2: still so much you the listeners, and I haven't been
Speaker 2: able to reconcile, Like the phone call Kelly says she
Speaker 2: made from the gas station to Anastasia, whether or not
Speaker 2: Anastasia went home that night. The possibility that some of
Speaker 2: the eyewitnesses might have been wrong about what Anastasia was
Speaker 2: wearing or even if they saw her at all. Why
Speaker 2: didn't Anastasia fight back or run? Why did Justin take
Speaker 2: his own life. Why didn't Byron deny anything in that
Speaker 2: June fifth call?
Speaker 1: Patrick Rock?
Speaker 2: Where were you that night, Bob? Why did you go
Speaker 2: to the exact spot where Anastasia's body was found in
Speaker 2: Lincoln's cemetery before anyone informed you where it was prosecutors?
Speaker 2: Why allegedly were certain things withheld from Byron's defense team
Speaker 2: and Sergeant Kilgore. Why did this investigation.
Speaker 1: Seem to go so wrong?
Speaker 2: Why were obvious things like phone records never pulled that
Speaker 2: could have potentially solved this case right away? Because it
Speaker 2: seems the way this investigation was handled is really why
Speaker 2: we have so many unanswered questions. Also, why did Kelly
Speaker 2: agree to talk with me She didn't have to, and
Speaker 2: why didn't some people want to talk people who had
Speaker 2: already written affidavits for Byron, Horton, Lance, doctor Thomas Young,
Speaker 2: and Judge Charles Atwell. Like I said at the beginning
Speaker 2: of this episode, although we have spent so much time
Speaker 2: talking about Byron and Kelly and what can and can't
Speaker 2: be proven in this case. We must remember that all
Speaker 2: of this is about getting justice for Anastasia. Was justice served.
Speaker 2: A lot of people, including Anastasia's family, say yes, the
Speaker 2: real killer is in prison, case closed. Others say no,
Speaker 2: the real killer is still out there or dead. Regardless,
Speaker 2: the courts will decide if Byron deserves a new trial
Speaker 2: or not. Thank you to everyone who participated, especially Anastasia's
Speaker 2: sisters Fran and Emma. Our hearts go out to you
Speaker 2: and your family. The views and opinions expressed in this
Speaker 2: podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
Speaker 2: If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts
Speaker 2: or a crisis, please no help is available. Call or
Speaker 2: text nine to eight eight, or chat online at the
Speaker 2: Suicide and Crisis Lifeline's website at nine eight eight lifeline
Speaker 2: dot org. To see photos, maps and documents related to
Speaker 2: this season's story, follow The Real Killer podcast on Instagram
Speaker 2: and at TRK podcast on TikTok. The Real Killer is
Speaker 2: a production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia, hosted by me
Speaker 2: Leah Rothman. Executive producers Leah Rothman and Elisa Rosen for
Speaker 2: AYR Media. Written by Leah Rothman. Editing and sound design
Speaker 2: by Cameron Taggi. Mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi. Audio
Speaker 2: engineer Justin Longerbeam studio engineer Graham Gibson. Legal council for
Speaker 2: AYR Media, Johnny Douglas, Executive producer for iHeartMedia, Maya Howard