Speaker 1: BBC SDS. Hey, it's Maggie. Just a quick heads up
Speaker 1: before we begin. This episode does contain some pretty detailed
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence and deals with adult themes. Tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about Houston. I've never been there. What's
Speaker 1: it like.
Speaker 2: Liston is the most diverse town in the state of Texas,
Speaker 2: very very ethnic friendly, lots of culture, lots of restaurants.
Speaker 1: It might not sound like it, but I've been desperate
Speaker 1: to talk to this guy ever since I started working
Speaker 1: on this story.
Speaker 2: It's a nice little part of Southeast Texas that nobody
Speaker 2: considers to be Texas.
Speaker 1: He has a unique insight.
Speaker 3: We like to go out and test different restaurants.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we have Thai food and sometimes you know the
Speaker 2: stake how is to serve excellent food.
Speaker 1: And his opinion really counts.
Speaker 2: There's plenty of tex Mex and there's even variations of
Speaker 2: tex Mex. So you can go in one restaurant, I
Speaker 2: have a text Mex and then something next week will
Speaker 2: be a little bit different. I think they have the
Speaker 2: most cultural influence, but although the country is getting more
Speaker 2: and more culturally influenced by Hispanic America, so that's always good.
Speaker 1: Totally, I'm with you. It has taken me hours and
Speaker 1: hours of searching online and dozens of phone calls to
Speaker 1: find Air and Day. Tell me why we are talking
Speaker 1: to you today.
Speaker 3: You want to know my take on the Sandra Melgar
Speaker 3: murder trail.
Speaker 1: Do you still think about the case?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, will never leave.
Speaker 1: Me, Arin Day. He was one of the jurors in
Speaker 1: the state of Texas versus Sandra Gene Melgar.
Speaker 3: It's part of my life, part of my history.
Speaker 2: I got called into something I didn't want, but I
Speaker 2: was asked to do it.
Speaker 3: I did it because that's of my civil responsibility.
Speaker 1: Starting at the beginning, I'd love to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the jury selection process.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In the Boorda for dire.
Speaker 1: Which again I'm sure Aaron and I are pronouncing one
Speaker 1: hundred percent correctly, is when perspective jurors are assessed on
Speaker 1: whether they can be truly impartial or not.
Speaker 2: I remember this as far as the prosecutor's first words.
Speaker 2: She said, welcome, ladies and gentlemen to Ordai. I have
Speaker 2: one question I want you to think about. Can you
Speaker 2: convict a person of murder with no motive? I answer
Speaker 2: that question, yeah, I think you know. If there's evidence,
Speaker 2: we should be able to convict. If we can't and
Speaker 2: the evidence isn't prevalent enough, then we won't convict us.
Speaker 2: What our legal system is all about?
Speaker 1: And what did you think of that question?
Speaker 4: When she asked, uh, you know it was really unusual
Speaker 4: that well, I knew it would be an unusual trial.
Speaker 1: A woman found tied up and trapped in a closet,
Speaker 1: her hands tied, the door jammed shut from the outside,
Speaker 1: on trial for stabbing her husband to death without a motive.
Speaker 1: I'm Maggie Robinson Katz and from BBC's Studios and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 1: This is Hands Tied, episode six the trial.
Speaker 5: When Santa Malgar walked into the courtroom, she was walking
Speaker 5: with a cane and I was struck by how petite
Speaker 5: she is and her delicate features.
Speaker 1: That's Amanda Orr, a journalist covering the case for Reuters.
Speaker 5: She had a shock of whitish gray hair that was
Speaker 5: about shoulder length. She was wearing glasses, and she didn't
Speaker 5: seem like a big, hulking woman that would have been
Speaker 5: physically capable of overcoming a grown man.
Speaker 1: Amanda joins her fellow spectators, the media, law students and
Speaker 1: your casual gawkers all cramped onto the uncomfortable wooden benches
Speaker 1: waiting for the show to start.
Speaker 5: Murder trials are some of the greatest dramas any human
Speaker 5: can witness. It's really a fascinating thing to behold. The
Speaker 5: greatest lawyers know that winning a jury over is about
Speaker 5: presenting the facts in a way that engages them, and
Speaker 5: so attorneys are tasked with the job of being storytellers.
Speaker 1: Whoever tells the best story wins. One of those storytellers
Speaker 1: is the silver haired defense attorney Max Seacrest. He's also
Speaker 1: joined by his niece and protege, Allison Seacrest. Max dressed
Speaker 1: in a dark zomber suit and wears round towardous shell glasses,
Speaker 1: while Alison sports an understated linen suit pearls her long
Speaker 1: hair pulled back. Telling another story is prosecutor Colleen Barnett,
Speaker 1: a confident woman with a shoulder length blonde bob and
Speaker 1: a sharp suit. We tried to get Colleen for this podcast,
Speaker 1: but we didn't get a response. So what comes next
Speaker 1: are her words taken from the court transcript, spoken by
Speaker 1: an actor.
Speaker 6: You're going to hear testimony that Heimi's brother knocked on
Speaker 6: the front door and didn't get an answer.
Speaker 1: This is Colleen's opening statement.
Speaker 6: You're going to hear testimony that when he went into
Speaker 6: the house, he found his brother's body in his brother's closet,
Speaker 6: brutally stabbed to death, multiple stab wounds on his chest
Speaker 6: and his neck. He went into another part of the
Speaker 6: house where he found Sandramelgar in her closet with her
Speaker 6: hands tied behind her back and her ankles wrapped. She
Speaker 6: was in her closet in the bathroom, and there was
Speaker 6: a chair on the outside of the bathroom door, wedged
Speaker 6: up against the door. The police were called immediately.
Speaker 1: Colleen tells the jury how she thinks Jim died.
Speaker 6: We're going to show you that what we believe happened
Speaker 6: is that she enticed Timie into some type of maybe
Speaker 6: some sexual liaison or something that she was going to do,
Speaker 6: made him sit in the chair.
Speaker 1: Then Sandy stabbed him to death. She says. She warns
Speaker 1: the jury not to believe the story. The defense is
Speaker 1: going to tell that there was a burglar there.
Speaker 6: What we're going to be able to show you is
Speaker 6: that there was no way for any.
Speaker 1: Burglar to enter that house.
Speaker 7: There was no.
Speaker 6: Reason for anybody to have anything to do against timing.
Speaker 6: He was a loved person at his work and in
Speaker 6: the neighborhood. There was no vendetta from anybody.
Speaker 1: Colleen thinks Sandy could have made it to look like
Speaker 1: a breaken to cover her tracks. She tells the jury
Speaker 1: to not trust Sandy about her health, about her relationship
Speaker 1: with Jim, and about her version of events the night
Speaker 1: Jim died and.
Speaker 6: I didn't hear anything because the jacuzzi was going, and
Speaker 6: that's broken, by the way, and I can't turn it
Speaker 6: off if I wanted to, because it's broken, and the
Speaker 6: noise was so loud from the jacuzzie that I couldn't
Speaker 6: hear my husband getting stabbed, couldn't hear it.
Speaker 1: So if this were a courtroom TV drama, we could
Speaker 1: maybe see Colleen make her way to the jury, looking
Speaker 1: each of them intently in the eye. Maybe she'd rest
Speaker 1: her hand on the wooden divider separating the jury from
Speaker 1: the rest of the court. Because this is her moment,
Speaker 1: the crescendo of her opening argument.
Speaker 6: We believe that we're going to be able to prove
Speaker 6: this case to you beyond a reasonable doubt. Don't know
Speaker 6: that I have motive here, but There's no other way,
Speaker 6: any other thing could have happened other than she just
Speaker 6: brutally murdered her husband.
Speaker 1: Again, continuing my imagined version of what she did, Colleen pauses,
Speaker 1: ensuring that the jury heard those last words, that she
Speaker 1: Sandy brutally murdered her husband.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 1: She thanks the jury and takes her seat. But even
Speaker 1: if they accept that Sandy enticed her husband into a
Speaker 1: sexual liaison before murdering him, how is that possible? When
Speaker 1: Sandy was found trapped in a closet, her hands and
Speaker 1: feet tied. A video is played in court. The shaky
Speaker 1: hand held camera hands across the disheveled bedroom belonging to
Speaker 1: Jim and Sandy Melgar. This is the video the police
Speaker 1: took the night of Jim's murder, capturing the scene of
Speaker 1: the crime. The room is a mess, the bedsheets, rumpled
Speaker 1: clothes everywhere. The camera moves into the bathroom, where we
Speaker 1: see the remnants of their celebratory evening drinks set on
Speaker 1: the edge of the chacuzzi, a tub of cream with
Speaker 1: a strawberry perched on top. Then we see a gloved
Speaker 1: hand pull a white satin chair in front of the
Speaker 1: closet door.
Speaker 6: The Sheriff's Department did a video showing you can be
Speaker 6: on the inside of the bathroom and pull the rug
Speaker 6: so the chair wedges up against the door. They can
Speaker 6: show you that that can happen, that she could have
Speaker 6: done that, and that is what she did.
Speaker 1: To Colleen. This video is proof that Sandy could have
Speaker 1: shut herself in the closet, put the chair on a
Speaker 1: piece of fabric, making sure that half of it was
Speaker 1: outside and the other half inside. Sandy could have cracked
Speaker 1: the door slightly, just enough to place her hand on
Speaker 1: the top of the chair, making sure it hooks underneath
Speaker 1: the door handle, close the door, then crouched down and
Speaker 1: pulled the part of the chair that is inside of
Speaker 1: the closet towards her, causing the chair to be set
Speaker 1: in place, locking herself in.
Speaker 4: This theory clicked for juror aar and A and they
Speaker 4: showed how you can pull that chair with a rug
Speaker 4: underneath it to make it look like the door was
Speaker 4: actually blocked so.
Speaker 2: A person couldn't get out.
Speaker 3: So that was like, oh, okay, that.
Speaker 1: Makes sense, But how could she have done all of
Speaker 1: that when she was found with her hands tied behind
Speaker 1: her back. Well, Colleen has an answer for that too,
Speaker 1: Sandy tied herself up. Colleen stands before the jury and
Speaker 1: takes out a piece of fabric, its ends tied together.
Speaker 1: She methodically loops it around one of her wrists and
Speaker 1: a figure eight pattern. Then, with both hands behind her back,
Speaker 1: she twists the material around the other wrist, holding her
Speaker 1: forearms parallel with each other, each hand gripping the opposite elbow.
Speaker 1: The binding looks tied around her wrists, but Colleen shows
Speaker 1: she can easily slip her hands free, so Sandy could
Speaker 1: have tied her own hands behind her back.
Speaker 2: The prosecution was able to demonstrate to the jury that
Speaker 2: you can bind your hands behind your back and make
Speaker 2: it look convincingly real and not have anybody.
Speaker 3: Actually tie you up.
Speaker 2: So that was the big thing for me, is well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess you can bind yourself.
Speaker 7: The only problem was that wasn't the way that Sandy
Speaker 7: was tied up. That was not at all consistent with
Speaker 7: the testimony of the only two witnesses who saw her
Speaker 7: tied up.
Speaker 1: To Mac Sandy's defense attorney, Colleen's demo doesn't match with
Speaker 1: what actually happened.
Speaker 7: She wasn't tied at the risk, she was tied with
Speaker 7: her arms behind her back. The ligatures ran from her
Speaker 7: wrist up basically to below her elbow. And when you
Speaker 7: look at the crime scene unit photographs of Sandy's arms,
Speaker 7: guess what? She has red marks consistent with that on
Speaker 7: her arms.
Speaker 1: So, if you remember, Sandy was cut free by her
Speaker 1: brother in law, herman, and his wife before the police arrived.
Speaker 1: Herman gives evidence in court to say her arms were
Speaker 1: bound so tightly behind her back that he couldn't untie
Speaker 1: the knots and needed scissors to cut her free. While
Speaker 1: Aaron may be convinced of Colleen's arguments, there's another question
Speaker 1: that looms across the entire trial.
Speaker 2: How can this poor little sick lady commit murder? That's
Speaker 2: what I saw Sandra. I was surprised by the picture
Speaker 2: she portrayed of her physical being.
Speaker 1: And can you say a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2: What is that she walked with her kine when she
Speaker 2: walked into the courtroom. I needily questioned that she couldn't
Speaker 2: have done it because she looked so frail and unhealthy
Speaker 2: the way she presented herself.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor, Colleen Barnett, argues that it didn't matter how
Speaker 1: strong or how frail Sandy might have been, because she
Speaker 1: believes Sandy planned the whole thing and took Jim completely
Speaker 1: by surprise.
Speaker 6: So she gets Himie to sit down in the chair
Speaker 6: and maybe she's massaging his neck or whatever, I don't
Speaker 6: know what, and then she pulls it out and then
Speaker 6: while he isn't looking, she makes a strike straight up
Speaker 6: all the way to his neck. That's what the first
Speaker 6: strike is. Jimie of course, gets up to try to
Speaker 6: defend himself, turns around and that's when she gets him
Speaker 6: on the thumb and that's when the blood starts spurting
Speaker 6: out onto the chair. This was the first strike, and
Speaker 6: then she had him. There was no place for him
Speaker 6: to go. As you saw, there's only two feet wide
Speaker 6: and not that deep. He was just stabbed to death.
Speaker 6: She had the knife.
Speaker 1: Colleen points out that jim wasn't a big guy. At
Speaker 1: five foot seven, he was a bit taller than Sandy,
Speaker 1: but she's heavier than his one hundred and twenty five pounds,
Speaker 1: and the stab wounds weren't particularly deep, three inches at most,
Speaker 1: which gets Duror Air and Day thinking.
Speaker 2: It made sense that she didn't have to be superwoman,
Speaker 2: strong or any of those other things you would think
Speaker 2: a murderer would have to do to murder somebody.
Speaker 1: But there's also the matter of Sandy's health. She's had
Speaker 1: her hips replaced, has epilepsy, and loopis an Ever since
Speaker 1: her police interview, she has pointed to her health as
Speaker 1: a possible explanation for not knowing what happened at the
Speaker 1: night Jim was killed. Sandy suspects she a seizure and
Speaker 1: blacked out. I want to go into that. Colleen has
Speaker 1: her medical records from Sandy's primary care doctor and asks
Speaker 1: a witness to read them to the court.
Speaker 6: Under seizure disorder.
Speaker 1: What does it say that she was stable? Reads the witness.
Speaker 1: Sandy's medical records show that, despite fairly regular checkups, she
Speaker 1: hasn't reported having a single seizure in the four years
Speaker 1: before Jim's murder. According to Colleen, yes, Sandy had a
Speaker 1: condition that could cause seizures, but it was stable, controlled
Speaker 1: by medication.
Speaker 8: Sandy hadn't felt good, she had been resting a lot.
Speaker 8: She had been experiencing auras, which are many seizures.
Speaker 1: Defense attorney Allison Seacrest argues that those medical records don't
Speaker 1: tell the full story or reflects Sandy's health in the
Speaker 1: months before Jim's death.
Speaker 2: If she's using her illnesses and she's saying she can
Speaker 2: veniently had a seizure and then a blackout for twelve
Speaker 2: hours when her drugs were supposedly controlling these things, and
Speaker 2: she was not complaining to her doctors, maybe she did blackout,
Speaker 2: but I can't find any evidence that.
Speaker 3: She did.
Speaker 1: Over ten days. Colleen tears into Sandy's claim of innocence.
Speaker 1: Colleen tells the court that she was unhappy, plotted the
Speaker 1: whole thing and locked herself in the closet and tied
Speaker 1: her own hands. The only thing that is missing is
Speaker 1: why why would Sandy do this? When I've ordired you, guys.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I was a little worried
Speaker 6: about was motive, because I showed you the things we
Speaker 6: have to prove, and we've proven all of them. We've
Speaker 6: proven all of them, but motive is not one of them.
Speaker 6: And one of the things that I worried about being
Speaker 6: able to establish that.
Speaker 1: She offers the jury a theory or two. The first
Speaker 1: is the classic Jim had life insurance policies worth some
Speaker 1: half a million dollars.
Speaker 6: She'd be getting a lot of money.
Speaker 1: The second is religion. Colleen argues that as a devout
Speaker 1: Jehovah's witness, Sandy couldn't divorce Jim without being ostracized.
Speaker 6: But if I kill him and nobody finds out, I'm
Speaker 6: not ostracized and nobody finds out and I still get
Speaker 6: the money.
Speaker 1: I can imagine Colleen locking eyes with the jury, ensuring
Speaker 1: that her last words are heard clearly.
Speaker 6: There's zero evidence, zero evidence, zero evidence that somebody else
Speaker 6: did this, no evidence that anybody else did this. She's guilty,
Speaker 6: ladies and gentlemen, She's guilty. Please find her so, thank you.
Speaker 1: Now it's the defense's turn to take the stage to
Speaker 1: try and convince the jury that the prosecution has got
Speaker 1: it all wrong and Sandy is innocent. When it's the
Speaker 1: defense's turn to address the jury and defend Sandy, Maxiecrest
Speaker 1: makes a big decision. He doesn't call Sandy to the stand. Instead,
Speaker 1: he relies on a very simple but powerful argument.
Speaker 7: It's the worst investigated case I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: He says. The only reason Sandy is on trial is
Speaker 1: because the police fail to do their job properly.
Speaker 7: They had an agenda, they weren't objective, and they jumped
Speaker 7: to conclusions, and they were sloppy. They assumed. It's the
Speaker 7: old rubric that if two people are married and one
Speaker 7: of them's dan thee, the other one must have done it.
Speaker 7: And that pretty much what propelled the entire investigation from
Speaker 7: the get go.
Speaker 1: He claims, potentially crucial evidence slipped through the cracks.
Speaker 7: There's actually a bloody thumb print on a safe in
Speaker 7: the closet where Jimi was found.
Speaker 1: Mac tells the jury that this is the bloody smear
Speaker 1: that Liz noticed when she was packing up her old house.
Speaker 1: When she's called as a witness, Liz tells the court
Speaker 1: she sent a photo of the bloody mark to the
Speaker 1: police and they told her it had already been processed.
Speaker 7: And guess what, they didn't bother to analyze it. In fact,
Speaker 7: one of the detectives said that it had been analyzed,
Speaker 7: when in fact it never had been.
Speaker 1: The crime scene investigator tells the court that his team
Speaker 1: had spotted the blood, but they didn't swab it for
Speaker 1: DNA or toss the safe for prints. When asked on
Speaker 1: the stand, why, he says, because we assumed it was
Speaker 1: Sandy's blood.
Speaker 7: So I mean, again, this is indicative of what we're
Speaker 7: dealing with.
Speaker 1: According to Mac and his fellow defense attorney, Alison Seacrest,
Speaker 1: the police cherry picked evidence that suited their case and
Speaker 1: ignored anything that didn't, like the fact that forensic analysis
Speaker 1: of the Melgar's phones and computers and a keyword search
Speaker 1: for rope not stab, crime scene and murder revealed nothing.
Speaker 1: And according to friends, family, and neighbors, the Melgars had
Speaker 1: a healthy relationship.
Speaker 8: There was no evidence of any kind of infidelity or
Speaker 8: animosity between the pair. Sandra and Jim had a really
Speaker 8: loving relationship.
Speaker 1: Then there's the lack of physical evidence linking Sandy to
Speaker 1: the murder.
Speaker 7: Jim died in a brutal savage attack at least fifty
Speaker 7: one sharp force and blunt force injuries, thirty one what
Speaker 7: we call sharp force trauma. He had all the hallmarks
Speaker 7: of someone who'd been eating to death. What's startling is
Speaker 7: when you examine Sandy's hands, there was no trauma to
Speaker 7: her hands. It's very very common in stabbing cases that
Speaker 7: if I'm holding a knife and I start to stab you,
Speaker 7: and I stab you and I stab you, it's going
Speaker 7: to produce a lot of blood. And it's very typical
Speaker 7: that that blood will cause your hand to slip, and
Speaker 7: the assailant will likely cut his or her own hand by,
Speaker 7: you know, repeatedly wielding a bloody instrument. In Sandy's case,
Speaker 7: the inside of her hands no cuts at all, and amazingly,
Speaker 7: she had ten beautiful fingernails, no brakes, no chips, no cracks,
Speaker 7: and yet she supposedly brutally worked him over, including hitting
Speaker 7: him with her fist.
Speaker 1: Jim's autopsy report details fractures to a skull, bruises on
Speaker 1: his head, shoulders, torso, arms, and legs, and notes that
Speaker 1: there was internal bleeding linked to some of those bruises.
Speaker 7: Because of the fifty one plus blunt and sharp force injuries,
Speaker 7: it was agreed to by all sides that the assailant
Speaker 7: would be covered in blood. There was no blood found
Speaker 7: on Sandy at all. There was no blood found on
Speaker 7: any of Sandy's clothing at all all. The examination of
Speaker 7: her fingernails and the DNA under her fingernails no blood.
Speaker 1: At all, and there was no evidence of a cleanup
Speaker 1: to the defense. This proof Sandy didn't kill Jim, and
Speaker 1: make some question why the police so quickly discounted the
Speaker 1: theory of a robbery gone wrong. They seem to believe
Speaker 1: that there was no obvious signs of a break in,
Speaker 1: no windows broken, no doors knocked in, so no robbery.
Speaker 8: I think she was the only suspect because these officers
Speaker 8: rushed to judgment and made up their mind that because
Speaker 8: there was no forced entry into the house that it
Speaker 8: had to have been Sandy.
Speaker 1: But there is one key sign the police may have overlooked.
Speaker 8: Sandy told the detectives in her interrogation that the garage
Speaker 8: door could have been left open.
Speaker 7: The garage was open when the family arrived and was
Speaker 7: able to enter the house through the unlocked interior door.
Speaker 7: So that's how Hermann got into the house, and we believe,
Speaker 7: of course, that's how the intruders got into the house.
Speaker 1: Did Duror Aaron Day Though this argument doesn't add up.
Speaker 2: My thought process was, yes, the garage door may have
Speaker 2: been open, but if you go to somebody's house to
Speaker 2: rob them, why would you murder one and leave another
Speaker 2: one tied up in a closet. It just didn't make
Speaker 2: sense that the defense said this was a robbery gone
Speaker 2: bad and person got killed.
Speaker 9: It's Sunday, December twenty third, twenty twelve. This is Sean CARIZL.
Speaker 9: Harris kind of Shaff's office, Homicide sixty Henry forty two.
Speaker 9: The current time is nine forty two pm. Okay, ma'am,
Speaker 9: can you identify.
Speaker 1: Yourself for me?
Speaker 10: Sandra Milber.
Speaker 1: One part of the story that I can't quite shake
Speaker 1: is Sandy's interview with the police the night she was found.
Speaker 1: If you remember, she's distressed, can't remember details.
Speaker 7: We went up to eat.
Speaker 3: Okay, where's on the we at.
Speaker 10: Mexican restaurant?
Speaker 1: I think it was a.
Speaker 9: Products pros.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what time was that?
Speaker 7: I wasn't.
Speaker 1: Cucos cucos?
Speaker 10: Uh, I'm listening about eight. I mean, I'm just guessing.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: How will this tape play in court to the prosecution.
Speaker 1: Sandy's behavior proves she's dodgy, She's evasive, unclear, she seems numb, detached,
Speaker 1: and when she cries, they don't see tears.
Speaker 3: Are you governing something else?
Speaker 7: Why would you take a pograph?
Speaker 9: Because I'm so stressed right now I can't even think straight.
Speaker 7: It's not a good reason.
Speaker 9: Well, I just don't want to use against me, That's
Speaker 9: all I'll take it.
Speaker 7: But not just.
Speaker 1: Because I'm stressed, And I mean.
Speaker 10: I just beyond beyond that she.
Speaker 2: Was making them because she would answer questions. You know,
Speaker 2: she would avoid eye contact, she would avoid and she
Speaker 2: would mumble, and she wasn't shedding tears and emotion.
Speaker 1: But the defense call an expert witness, a former police
Speaker 1: investigator who's reviewed the interview. He tells the court he
Speaker 1: didn't see any sign that Sandy was trying to mislead
Speaker 1: the officers or that they ever considered she was traumatized
Speaker 1: in the victim of a serious crime, the ars screaming.
Speaker 10: I didn't hear when he was in pain. We know
Speaker 10: that he suffered a lot. I need you to help me.
Speaker 10: I need you to help me. I need you to
Speaker 10: help me on this. Help me, Sandra, help me.
Speaker 9: Tell me, cousin Deny Scott, he went to a lot
Speaker 9: of pain.
Speaker 10: Help me.
Speaker 9: I didn't hear anything stopping.
Speaker 3: How need help and.
Speaker 7: I need help help me.
Speaker 10: That's it, that's it.
Speaker 7: I need a lawyer.
Speaker 9: I'm not talking anymore because you guys are just trying
Speaker 9: to torture me.
Speaker 7: Here. We wanted the jury to hear her suggesting that
Speaker 7: maybe she ought to get a lawyer, because obviously the
Speaker 7: tenor of the questioning was absolutely unfair.
Speaker 3: So you said, I want to stop ze lair.
Speaker 2: They should have stopped, So that'sn't really where I blame
Speaker 2: the investigators interrogators.
Speaker 1: Immediately after that police interview, Detective Carousel contacts the District
Speaker 1: Attorney's office to try and charge Sandy. However, the DEA refuses,
Speaker 1: saying they need more evidence.
Speaker 7: Here's a guy that even before they know the analysis
Speaker 7: of what the DNA may show, hours before the crime
Speaker 7: scene people had left, it's saying he's trying to get
Speaker 7: murder charges filed.
Speaker 1: Mac wants the jury to see this as yet another
Speaker 1: example of a biased and narrow approach by the police,
Speaker 1: but Detective Sean Carosel says he was just keeping the
Speaker 1: DA informed.
Speaker 2: No wonder why they were suspicious at the onset, and
Speaker 2: that's why I give the police credit for being suspicious
Speaker 2: that they had their murderer and they didn't need to
Speaker 2: do more investigations.
Speaker 1: Mac then reveals his trump card. Detective Sean Carousel has
Speaker 1: been fired. Two of Sean Carousel's former colleagues tell the
Speaker 1: court that his work on a previous case was sloppy
Speaker 1: and that he's not truthful. For journalists Amanda or listening
Speaker 1: to this in court, it's a slam dunk.
Speaker 5: The fact that the lead detective had been fired and
Speaker 5: the fact that there were testimonies that the lead detective
Speaker 5: had been untruthful in other investigations would have been enough
Speaker 5: for me as a juror to say that everything about
Speaker 5: this investigation is called into question.
Speaker 1: But she's not on the jury. Aaron is, and he's
Speaker 1: more well forgiving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody's perfect, Maggie.
Speaker 1: The jury aren't told the full story about why Sean
Speaker 1: Carousel was fired, only that there was an issue over
Speaker 1: a search warrant. But the truth is he forged a
Speaker 1: search warrant in another case and lied about it. We
Speaker 1: reached out to Sean Carasel for the story, but he
Speaker 1: didn't respond to our questions.
Speaker 2: Closing arguments have just wrapped up in the case against
Speaker 2: a woman accused of murdering her husband and then trying
Speaker 2: to cover it up.
Speaker 5: I told Colleen Barnett that she did the best she could.
Speaker 8: Sandy couldn't have done it, and the evidence is so clear.
Speaker 1: The members of the media watching end court didn't seem
Speaker 1: so sure.
Speaker 8: Yes, Bill Well, the prosecutor arguing very strongly that Sandra
Speaker 8: Melgar did murder her husband.
Speaker 1: Now it's up to the jury. Sandra Melgar's fate lies
Speaker 1: in their hands.
Speaker 3: Well, I tried to keep it help in mind.
Speaker 2: I want to believe somebody is innocent until the stake
Speaker 2: can prove them guilty. And then we all went back
Speaker 2: in the room kind of like, uh, okay, where do
Speaker 2: we start.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Hands Tied, a new eight part
Speaker 1: true crime series from BBC Studios and iHeart Podcasts. New
Speaker 1: episodes will be released weekly, so subscribe or follow on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts so
Speaker 1: you don't miss out. If you like the show, please
Speaker 1: help us by spreading the word or giving us a
Speaker 1: five star review. I'm Maggie Robinson Katz and the producer
Speaker 1: is Maggie Latham. Sound design and mix is by Tom Brignell.
Speaker 1: Our script consultant is Emma Weatherall production support is from
Speaker 1: Dan Martini, Elena Boutang and Mabel Finnegan Wright, and our
Speaker 1: production executive is Laura Jordan Rawl. The series was developed
Speaker 1: by Anya Saunders and Emma Shaw at iHeart. The Managing
Speaker 1: Executive Producer is Christina Everett, and for BBC Studios, the
Speaker 1: Executive producer is Joe Kent. James Cook is the Creative
Speaker 1: Director A Factual for BBC Studios Audio and the Director
Speaker 1: of Audio at BBC Studios is Richard Knight.