Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2: And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
Speaker 2: worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1: Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
Speaker 1: compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2: And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
Speaker 2: new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1: Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
Speaker 1: cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2: Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1: This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2: Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. We've got Easter coming up. What kind
Speaker 1: of Easter traditions do you guys having Do you celebrate Easter?
Speaker 2: First of all, you know, we would do when the
Speaker 2: kids were younger, we would do the Easter basket and
Speaker 2: hide the eggs type of thing. Even like when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, you know, I was born and raised Catholic,
Speaker 2: you know, so of course Easter was a big deal
Speaker 2: and going to Mass and stuff. But now my kids
Speaker 2: are older, I think my wife will get them some
Speaker 2: basket with chocolates in it, and that's about it.
Speaker 1: Oh, they don't look for Easter eggs anymore, not even
Speaker 1: like the plastic kind of Easter eggs.
Speaker 2: No, thank god.
Speaker 1: Do you know that My mom would do hard boiled
Speaker 1: eggs and I wouldye them, and then she would hide them.
Speaker 1: But she would hide them, I feel like, the night before,
Speaker 1: and then they were sitting out until noon or one
Speaker 1: o'clock the next day, and then she would use them
Speaker 1: for deviled eggs. And I think, decades later, I said,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is a good idea. I should
Speaker 1: boiled eggs sit out for that long? I mean, you
Speaker 1: know better than I do. That doesn't seem like a
Speaker 1: good idea to me.
Speaker 2: I don't know, because one of the interesting things, you know,
Speaker 2: I eat a lot of eggs. You know, eggs are
Speaker 2: my staple for breakfast. But it's like here in the
Speaker 2: United States, we refrigerate our eggs. Over in Europe they don't. Yeah, true,
Speaker 2: you know, so if you boil them, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: there's no reason to have to keep them refrigerated. So
Speaker 2: maybe they're fine up to a certain point. I'm guessing
Speaker 2: that's all it is at this point.
Speaker 1: So my mom is kind of exonerated from having any
Speaker 1: bad poisoning me after you say that we could maybe
Speaker 1: like keep them outside. Issue number two with leaving the
Speaker 1: eggs out all night is we have so many raccoons
Speaker 1: and deer that jump our f and bugs and dirt
Speaker 1: and snakes and everything. I still say it was bad parenting.
Speaker 1: I love my mom, but that was not a great idea.
Speaker 1: I feel like because she would hide an egg and
Speaker 1: then she didn't know where the egg went, and I said,
Speaker 1: that's because a raccoon probably took it, And now you
Speaker 1: want me to eat it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure, But man, you're harsh. Bad parenting.
Speaker 1: Huh oh, maybe not parenting, fit boy, I do. Parenting
Speaker 1: fails pretty much constantly. I think every day. I think
Speaker 1: I just did about an hour and a half ago.
Speaker 2: Actually, I think we all do.
Speaker 1: Actually, so we hide plastic eggs and the kids, you know,
Speaker 1: will hunt around for them and stuff, and they still
Speaker 1: do it, and you know, we'll have sort of a
Speaker 1: traditional Easter afternoon dinner. We're not religious at all, so
Speaker 1: it's mostly about the bunny rabbit. My grandfather, who was
Speaker 1: my dad's father, lived in Missouri. He was a carpenter,
Speaker 1: and he was married to my granny for decades and
Speaker 1: decades and decades, and they were the ones I feel
Speaker 1: like I told you in another case, those were the
Speaker 1: grandparents who slept in separate beds, which I found, even
Speaker 1: at eight weird. I didn't understand it. And you know,
Speaker 1: they had twin beds and they were on the other
Speaker 1: side of the room, which I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would think they would be closer together,
Speaker 1: but they had twin beds. My papa had like a
Speaker 1: massive it was like four acres garden, all vegetables. They
Speaker 1: had a root cellar, all this stuff in Missouri, and
Speaker 1: he used to tell me that he was going to
Speaker 1: sit outside with a gun and chase off the Easter Bunny.
Speaker 2: Of course, I just thought, you're so mean.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know he was kind of a farmer type,
Speaker 1: but I mean I get it. You know, nobody wants
Speaker 1: their garden invaded, but the Easter bunny really Papa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, at least he wasn't out on the porch
Speaker 2: with a shotgun when Santa Claus was going to come. Now,
Speaker 2: we would have potentially a homicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and absolutely, well, I mean, you know that strange
Speaker 1: man creeping along your roof. Yes, he probably hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about that. He just wanted to scare me a little bit,
Speaker 1: I think, And I just thought, it's a bunny rabbit.
Speaker 1: Let him have the lettuce. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: know he chased off animals. So I had an interesting family.
Speaker 2: Sounds like it.
Speaker 1: Well, I am taking you to nineteen sixty three Arizona,
Speaker 1: and this is a case that, on the surface seems
Speaker 1: I think fairly simple, but it was a landmark case.
Speaker 1: And you'll find out why. I try to find stories where,
Speaker 1: you know, we can say this is the reason why
Speaker 1: we have X, Y and Z. Remember the story about
Speaker 1: the man who was accused of sexual assault sneaking into
Speaker 1: somebody's house and he left his fingerprints in fresh paint,
Speaker 1: and that became the landmark case the first time that
Speaker 1: fingerprinting was introduced in court. So this is sort of
Speaker 1: that kind of case. So as we go along, you know,
Speaker 1: this case changes quite a bit to reflect why it's
Speaker 1: important today.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, so relatively speaking, it's a more recent case.
Speaker 1: It's like brand new, it's like yesterday for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure, it's just what five years before
Speaker 2: I was born.
Speaker 1: So you keep dating yourself. I like a guy who
Speaker 1: does that though. I mean, you know, you're proud of
Speaker 1: your age, and I'll lend me too.
Speaker 2: It's better than the alternative, right, And you know.
Speaker 1: What, my mom says that. Now, I'm going to really
Speaker 1: give my mom some props. My mom says that every time,
Speaker 1: you know, she says, well, I have friends who don't
Speaker 1: want to disclose their age, and I'm proud of it
Speaker 1: because you know, a lot of people don't make it
Speaker 1: to you know, my mom's age was about eighty. She's
Speaker 1: going to be eighty two this year, so I would
Speaker 1: be bragging about that too. Yeah, I'll brag about fifty fifty.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to have made it this far.
Speaker 2: I've got you beat you, do I know? I know? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go ahead and set the scene for the story.
Speaker 1: We are, as I said before, in nineteen sixty three, Arizona.
Speaker 1: This is going to be a landmark case. A warning.
Speaker 1: There is a lot involving a sexual assault. You all
Speaker 1: know that we try to handle this with a lot
Speaker 1: of sensitivity, and Paul does a great job talking about this.
Speaker 1: So I just want to give you a warning straight
Speaker 1: off the top. So here is the crime. We're going
Speaker 1: to jump right into it before midnight, shortly before midnight,
Speaker 1: March second, nineteen sixty three. We are in Phoenix. An
Speaker 1: eighteen year old woman is heading home from her job
Speaker 1: at the concession counter at a local movie theater. She
Speaker 1: takes a city bus to a stop that's about three
Speaker 1: blocks away from her home, where she lives with her
Speaker 1: mother and her sister and her sister's husband. The time
Speaker 1: when this happened is a little murky because the woman
Speaker 1: says this happened before midnight on March second, but the
Speaker 1: police filed the report on March third, so it gets
Speaker 1: a little confusing. But we're gonna go with March second.
Speaker 1: She will be the victim of a sexual assault, and
Speaker 1: I am not going to identify her because it's nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three and I would hope she's still around, so
Speaker 1: we're going to leave out her name. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it's difficult to find. In the nineteen sixties. Phoenix
Speaker 1: is in the middle of it's a huge building boom,
Speaker 1: and she lives in a development that's still under construction,
Speaker 1: so the sidewalks are dark, they don't seem to have
Speaker 1: street lights. She's coming home very late by herself. She
Speaker 1: can hear a car pulling up behind her. She kind
Speaker 1: of ignores it and keeps walking. The driver gets out
Speaker 1: of the car and he runs up behind her and
Speaker 1: grabs her by the waist. She says that he presses
Speaker 1: something sharp up against the back of her neck. He says,
Speaker 1: if you don't scream, I won't hurt you, and she
Speaker 1: goes with him and he puts her in the car's
Speaker 1: back seat. And before I kind of get to what happens,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask a question because I feel like
Speaker 1: I don't know what the current guidance is. If you
Speaker 1: are approached by a stranger and he says get into
Speaker 1: the car and he does have a weapon or doesn't
Speaker 1: have a weapon. I feel like growing up I heard comply,
Speaker 1: that's how you stay alive, because otherwise she you right there,
Speaker 1: or he'll force you in and it'll be a really
Speaker 1: bad situation, even worse situation. But I feel also like
Speaker 1: I've heard quite a bit about no matter what you do,
Speaker 1: and I think this is what they teach in schools
Speaker 1: to kids. No matter what you do, don't get in
Speaker 1: a car with somebody, fight, scream whatever it is, even
Speaker 1: if they have a gun pointed out, you don't do it.
Speaker 1: So what's your understanding of what the guidance would be
Speaker 1: from safety experts with this, Well.
Speaker 2: It's not my understanding. I will tell you from my
Speaker 2: casework experience, you never ever let yourself be taken to
Speaker 2: a secondary location. I don't care if they've got a gun,
Speaker 2: I don't care if they've got a knife. What they're
Speaker 2: going to do to you at that secondary location is
Speaker 2: going to be far worse and being shot or stabbed
Speaker 2: or killed at that contact spot. With my other podcast,
Speaker 2: small Town Dicks with Yardley, Dan and Dave, Dan, Dave
Speaker 2: and I are coming out law enforcement. We all tell
Speaker 2: our listeners don't go to a secondary location. Don't let
Speaker 2: let yourself get bound. You know, if you are having
Speaker 2: somebody who is trying to force you into a vehicle,
Speaker 2: you fight, you kick, you go dead weight, You make
Speaker 2: it as hard as possible, and you want to draw
Speaker 2: as much attention as possible so somebody else can either
Speaker 2: come to your aid or at least get law enforcement rolling.
Speaker 2: And oftentimes the offender is not expecting that. He's thinking
Speaker 2: you're going to comply with the gun or the knife,
Speaker 2: and now all of a sudden. He's got a fight
Speaker 2: on his hands. He's got a lot of noise being made.
Speaker 2: There's a good chance at that offender will run off
Speaker 2: some won't you know. But that is you know, straight up,
Speaker 2: because I've just seen what happens to victims when they
Speaker 2: go to a secondary location.
Speaker 1: Well, luckily this woman survives, but her ordeal is awful.
Speaker 1: He has something sharp up against the back of her neck.
Speaker 1: He says, if you don't scream, I won't hurt you.
Speaker 1: He puts her in the back seat of his car,
Speaker 1: binds her ankles together with rope. He also ties her
Speaker 1: hands behind her back. He drives about twenty minutes into
Speaker 1: the desert, remember in Arizona, and he rapes her and
Speaker 1: then he says something odd. He says, pray for me,
Speaker 1: and drops her back off in her neighborhood. You know.
Speaker 1: She of course goes home, tells her family what happened.
Speaker 1: They call the police, doing all the right things. When
Speaker 1: the investigators come, she can give a description of the car,
Speaker 1: but not the make and model, and she says that
Speaker 1: the car was either gray or a light green sedan
Speaker 1: with a dark upholstered interior that has stripes, which is
Speaker 1: great that she sounds so specific there, but she can't
Speaker 1: give a description of the offender. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's because of trauma or he's masked, but you know,
Speaker 1: this is what ends up happening. So what do you
Speaker 1: think so far based on all of this.
Speaker 2: Well, there's plenty of examples where these sexually motivated offenders
Speaker 2: abduct their victims, sexually assault them, and then take them back,
Speaker 2: either to the abduction location or to some other location
Speaker 2: and drop them off. At least within this offender's mind
Speaker 2: right now, he doesn't have the homicidal ideations, at least
Speaker 2: not yet. If he is unmasked and is letting this
Speaker 2: victim go, you know, that's that's interesting because he's not
Speaker 2: taking you know, in nineteen sixty three, most certainly would
Speaker 2: be aware that this victim is going to be talking
Speaker 2: to law enforcement and likely would be able to provide
Speaker 2: a pretty accurate description of him. So it kind of
Speaker 2: tells me a little bit about this offender that he's
Speaker 2: not being as as careful as he should if he
Speaker 2: wants to continue to get away, either get away with
Speaker 2: this particular crime or to continue to offend. You know,
Speaker 2: because this type of offender, you know, abducting strangers and
Speaker 2: sexually assaulting them. That general is considered a predatory type crime,
Speaker 2: and they do that over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: In some ways, he's kind of almost rolling the dice
Speaker 2: and willingly so to where maybe, you know, especially with
Speaker 2: the statement pray for me, you know, he knows that
Speaker 2: he has a fantasy life that society does not agree with,
Speaker 2: that he's committing a crime. He wants to be caught,
Speaker 2: but he's not willing to give himself up.
Speaker 1: Okay, what happens next disturbs me, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: anything involving is a sexual assault disturbs me. But what
Speaker 1: the police do next I had not heard, and maybe
Speaker 1: you have. The survivor goes to the station to be
Speaker 1: interviewed and they make her take a polygraph test. Have
Speaker 1: you heard that before?
Speaker 2: I hate to say it, but this is this is
Speaker 2: an era in which law enforcement did a lot of
Speaker 2: victim blaming. I saw it over and over again from
Speaker 2: cases out of the nineteen six nineteen seventies, and here,
Speaker 2: right off the bat, they are telling this victim, well,
Speaker 2: you got to prove yourself that you're telling the truth. Right.
Speaker 2: It very much was this misogynistic type of mentality that
Speaker 2: law enforcement had back in the day. And remember nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three, law enforcement's all male, very few females are working.
Speaker 2: There almost was a you know, mindset, well, you shouldn't
Speaker 2: have dressed that way, and that is what's happening to
Speaker 2: this victim here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, first of all, let's go back and talk about
Speaker 1: polygraph tests in general, which we know are unreliable from
Speaker 1: American sherlock. You know, I can't remember what year it was,
Speaker 1: but it was like nineteen twenty five. I think that
Speaker 1: in that time period where even the Supreme Court said
Speaker 1: these should not be admitted in court. You know, this
Speaker 1: is not reliable enough because so much can change your
Speaker 1: heart rate, your pulse, everything can change based on medication,
Speaker 1: how you're feeling that. I mean, you know, a host
Speaker 1: of things that can't be attributed to lying. I think
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about that. It's an effective
Speaker 1: interrogation technique, but certainly not something that can point definitively
Speaker 1: to someone's guilt.
Speaker 2: It's a tool, Yeah, that's all it is, you know,
Speaker 2: and you know, poligraphers will you know, pretty much defend
Speaker 2: their results, but also they recognize the variables that can
Speaker 2: skew the results. Oftentimes what we get an investigation from
Speaker 2: a polygraph because the person that's being hooked up to
Speaker 2: the instrument, they now are in a position to where,
Speaker 2: oh shit, they're going to know if I'm lying. And
Speaker 2: so sometimes certain individuals will now tell the truth. Other
Speaker 2: individuals will just straight up continue to lie. But it
Speaker 2: locks them into statements, and some of the most valuable
Speaker 2: investigative statements come out of the polygraph interview. You get
Speaker 2: questioned while you're hooked up to the instrument. Polygrapher goes off,
Speaker 2: he comes back, he's got instrument readouts, and he says, okay, Paul,
Speaker 2: you answered these questions right, but I have concern about
Speaker 2: this question. The next thing, you know, somebody is just like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to make something up in order to
Speaker 2: say why the instrument is thrown off. And then a
Speaker 2: discussion follows, and next thing you know, they're making admissions,
Speaker 2: which now the homicide investigators or sexual assault investigators go, okay,
Speaker 2: we got the right guy. Now we need to do
Speaker 2: we need to do some follow up. It's a tool,
Speaker 2: you know, There's no way you can you know, affect
Speaker 2: an arrest based off of failing a polygraph.
Speaker 1: Well it is inconclusive. And in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting. In two thousand and five, right,
Speaker 1: so twenty years ago, the Violence Against Women Act withdrew
Speaker 1: some federal funding from states that still required rape survivors
Speaker 1: to take polygraph tests. So this is what's stunning to me.
Speaker 1: As it stands, at least twenty five states have since
Speaker 1: banned this practice. This leaves the other states who still
Speaker 1: do it, And that's incredible to me. I just had
Speaker 1: never heard that before, so that it's good to know,
Speaker 1: you know, that this is something that gives me a
Speaker 1: lot of context, that this is something you know that
Speaker 1: happened in the past.
Speaker 2: You know. And I do just want to say, you know, obviously,
Speaker 2: when you have a victim come in, you have to
Speaker 2: listen to that victim and take what they are saying
Speaker 2: as being fact. Right, this is what they experienced. However,
Speaker 2: we do have victims lie. They make up things, you know,
Speaker 2: and so as you investigate, if you do find out
Speaker 2: this victim is likely lying, then of course you have
Speaker 2: to figure out, well, what is going on here, but
Speaker 2: to treat like in this case, this victim straight off
Speaker 2: the bat to hook somebody up to a polygraph before
Speaker 2: even hearing what happened and starting the investigation is just
Speaker 2: straight up wrong, right, And she's.
Speaker 1: Not accusing anybody yet. I mean, it's not like there's
Speaker 1: some wealthy, you know, young man whose life is on
Speaker 1: the line because this woman is accusing him of something.
Speaker 1: There isn't even an investigation yet. This is her, you know,
Speaker 1: a contention, So okay, let's move on. So there was
Speaker 1: a detailed interior description of the car, but not the exterior.
Speaker 1: But the description of the car matches descriptions that have
Speaker 1: been given to the police in reports of other assaults.
Speaker 1: She says it was a gray or a light green
Speaker 1: sedan with dark upholstered interior that had stripes. I mean,
Speaker 1: that still seems kind of vague, But people who have
Speaker 1: been survivors of other similar attacks are coming back with
Speaker 1: the same description of the car. So does that seem
Speaker 1: reliable to you? I mean, police are going to really
Speaker 1: lean into this too well.
Speaker 2: I think in terms of, you know, is it reliable
Speaker 2: necessarily to be able to link these crimes together conclusively? No,
Speaker 2: you know, what is the prevalence of this style interior
Speaker 2: at this point in time? But in terms of this
Speaker 2: is a detail of if these if these crimes are
Speaker 2: similar enough to where these all these victims are saying
Speaker 2: I was inside the offender's vehicle and this is what
Speaker 2: the interior of the vehicle look like, then it is
Speaker 2: a characteristic where you have to consider this may be
Speaker 2: the same offender. Now if you have other behaviors, how
Speaker 2: these women are abducted, you know, how he is sexually
Speaker 2: assaulting them, what his appearance is like, and all these
Speaker 2: seem to be within sort of a you'd say it's
Speaker 2: a bracket, you know, in terms of each characteristic falls
Speaker 2: within a bracket where it doesn't deviate too much from
Speaker 2: each other. Then you go, okay, there's a good likelihood
Speaker 2: that we have a serial rapist on the loose here.
Speaker 1: So the police cannot find this car. And about a
Speaker 1: week later after this woman's attack, this woman's brother in
Speaker 1: law has been escorting her to and from the bus
Speaker 1: ever since the rape happened. At some point, he spots
Speaker 1: a car that matches his sister in law's description. The
Speaker 1: car leaves before the woman's bus arrives, but comes back.
Speaker 1: Once the woman and the brother in law are there together,
Speaker 1: she confirms that it looks like the right car, and
Speaker 1: he runs after it, but the car speeds away once
Speaker 1: he sees somebody as chasing him, and the brother in law,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, jots down a partial plate number. This car
Speaker 1: turns out to be a nineteen fifty three Packard and
Speaker 1: it's registered to a woman. But she lives with a
Speaker 1: man who is twenty three and his name is Arnisto.
Speaker 1: I can tell you about Arnisto. I can talk about
Speaker 1: what ends up happening when police locate him. And remember
Speaker 1: this is a very significant case and you're going to
Speaker 1: find out in just a bit.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know. I think the first comment
Speaker 2: is is that you know, the victim being able to say, hey,
Speaker 2: that looks like the car. It's basically okay, this looks
Speaker 2: like the make and model car that the offender used
Speaker 2: that she was put into. And I'm assuming that they
Speaker 2: must have been close enough to the vehicle possibly to
Speaker 2: be able to see, oh, it's got the striped upholstery
Speaker 2: on the inside. So she's not saying that guy looks
Speaker 2: like the guy that's actually assaulted me. She's saying, that
Speaker 2: looks like the car. Okay, So it's most certainly something
Speaker 2: where it's okay, that's good. Now we have an understanding
Speaker 2: of the making model that the offender was using, potentially
Speaker 2: and a nineteen fifty three packard you know, I'm I
Speaker 2: know of the packard vehicles. I don't think they were
Speaker 2: exceptionally common, but that would be something that I would
Speaker 2: be kind of wanting to know as an investigator. Is okay,
Speaker 2: So is this just a you know, we have a
Speaker 2: ton of these, you know, driving around the city, or
Speaker 2: is this something that is relatively rare that I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I would want I would be wanting to dig
Speaker 2: into that before I put a lot of weight on.
Speaker 2: You know, the person that has access to this vehicle
Speaker 2: is possibly her attacker. So that's probably the first observation
Speaker 2: that I have. And then you know, the registered owner
Speaker 2: being a woman, Well, we know a woman isn't the
Speaker 2: one that is attacking the victim. But we have a
Speaker 2: twenty three year old male, you know, our nesto. So, now,
Speaker 2: based off of what the victim could recount about her offender,
Speaker 2: does this our nesto seem to match? I know you
Speaker 2: said that she could not remember much about the physical
Speaker 2: characteristics of this offender.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not at all. I mean she did at the
Speaker 1: time that she couldn't recall anything specific, but for.
Speaker 2: Law enforcements, there seems to be other cases that are
Speaker 2: matching this victim's case in terms of the vehicle. So
Speaker 2: what are these other victims saying about the you know,
Speaker 2: the physical characteristics of their offender, and does our Nesto
Speaker 2: match that. That's kind of what I would be looking
Speaker 2: at if I'm considering these cases as being related.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you because I do have descriptions of what
Speaker 1: happens in these other cases too, and we can kind
Speaker 1: of see that. On March thirteenth, nineteen sixty three, the
Speaker 1: police come to his house where he lives, or Nesta's house,
Speaker 1: and ask him to come down for questioning. According to
Speaker 1: the police, or Nesto is friendly and helpful, unbothered, and
Speaker 1: he talks freely with the police. This seems unusual to me,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if he is the person. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is someone who thinks he can
Speaker 1: out smart the police and you know, just sort of
Speaker 1: kind of skate through this, but you know he is
Speaker 1: he is someone who does not seem alarmed by the
Speaker 1: fact that he's being brought in for questioning. For it
Speaker 1: sounds like at least one sexual assault, and I'm assuming
Speaker 1: they're going to try to tie him to the others.
Speaker 2: Sure, but there are plenty of people that respond that way. Okay,
Speaker 2: you really can't draw conclusions. You're just noting that he
Speaker 2: seems cooperative. You know, he does not seem nervous, so
Speaker 2: you know, maybe he doesn't have anything to do with this.
Speaker 2: But then there are offenders that when they've been pulled in,
Speaker 2: that's the way they are.
Speaker 1: Well, before I get to the interrogation, let me just
Speaker 1: tell you a little bit about him. He was born
Speaker 1: in Arizona to a very poverty stricken family. His mother
Speaker 1: died when he was young, and he had a lot
Speaker 1: of brushes with the law when he was a kid.
Speaker 1: He was sent to a reform school when he was
Speaker 1: a teenager. He had some prior rest in California, though
Speaker 1: he wasn't convicted. It doesn't sound like anything violent. He
Speaker 1: lived sort of an itinerant lifestyle in his late teens
Speaker 1: and early twenties, which means he hopped around from place
Speaker 1: to place and job to job, so he didn't have
Speaker 1: roots anywhere. He was convicted in Tennacy for driving a
Speaker 1: stolen car. When he is being questioned for this sexual
Speaker 1: assault by the Phoenix Police. He's working nights on a
Speaker 1: loading dock for a produce company and that's what we
Speaker 1: know about Ernesto. So, you know, the brushes with the law.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that before, that certain rushes with the
Speaker 1: law are alarming to you, at least when we talk
Speaker 1: about psychopathy and the potential for violence of somebody later on.
Speaker 1: But these things, you know, he's twenty three, stolen car,
Speaker 1: nothing violent. Is this anything that would alarm you as
Speaker 1: an investigator when you're looking at this case, because right now,
Speaker 1: all it is is he's got a car that people
Speaker 1: are saying might have been involved in, you know, the
Speaker 1: offender being a rapist.
Speaker 2: No, you know, all of it seems to be minor.
Speaker 2: You know, many people have this level of criminality, you know,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't mean doesn't point to anything that would
Speaker 2: indicate that, you know, he potentially is a serial rapist
Speaker 2: or a capable of sexual assault. If he has priors
Speaker 2: as as I think I've talked about before, If he
Speaker 2: has prior sexual assault, particularly sexual assaults on strangers, you know,
Speaker 2: predatory type crime, then that is more of a red
Speaker 2: flag in terms of his past criminality indicating Okay, he's
Speaker 2: capable of this type of crime. And we know these
Speaker 2: types of fenders have a tendency to be recidivous, they
Speaker 2: have a tendency to continue committing these types of crimes.
Speaker 1: Okay, now I'm going to have questions about police conduct
Speaker 1: just in general, when you're interrogating somebody, whether this is
Speaker 1: sort of commonplace or not. Here's point number one, and
Speaker 1: you tell me what you think. They take er Nesto
Speaker 1: to a very small interrogation room. You know, they want
Speaker 1: to try to figure out if he's even the right guy,
Speaker 1: because he does not seem bothered at all that he's there.
Speaker 1: So it's described this interrogation room is described more like
Speaker 1: a cubicle twelve feet squared cubicle, and they refer to
Speaker 1: it as the sweat room. Are you allowed water? Can
Speaker 1: you go to the bathroom? Is that one call? Still?
Speaker 1: One phone call? Still a thing?
Speaker 2: You know? There's when when somebody's brought in to be interviewed,
Speaker 2: there is a level of expected treatment. You know, you're
Speaker 2: not bringing somebody in to you know, put them in
Speaker 2: essentially a jail cell. Typically, yes, he had a part
Speaker 2: of a proper interview is where you're ensuring that the
Speaker 2: subject is reasonably comfortable. Today, law enforcement needs to be
Speaker 2: mindful of the suspects perception. Now under this circumstance, at
Speaker 2: this point in time, I don't think you said he
Speaker 2: was arrested. He was asked to come down to the station.
Speaker 2: He is voluntarily there in this day and age, under
Speaker 2: this set of circumstances. You know, at any point, he
Speaker 2: can decide to get up and leave, and he has
Speaker 2: to have that perception of the capability to get up
Speaker 2: and leave when he is there voluntarily.
Speaker 1: So Smarty, tell me what Ernesto's last name is, Miranda. Yep,
Speaker 1: this is the Miranda Rights case, nineteen sixty three. Yes,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it took till nineteen sixty three to
Speaker 1: sort all this out. But it's an interesting case.
Speaker 2: No, for sure, you know, but this there is a reason,
Speaker 2: because of this case, why people that are in a
Speaker 2: custodial situation, whether they've been told that they are in custody,
Speaker 2: or they perceive that they are in custody, that they
Speaker 2: need to be told their rights. And it's because of
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 1: Well, now we're going to find out why. So he
Speaker 1: is questioned for two hours and he denies the rape
Speaker 1: and several other crimes that police are trying to pin
Speaker 1: him on basically just based on the description of his car,
Speaker 1: which does not seem like a wild description, but I
Speaker 1: guess it is. So they're trying to pin him on
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things. So police put him in
Speaker 1: a lineup. Now we need to talk about lineups. Police
Speaker 1: put him in a lineup, and the young woman eighteen
Speaker 1: year old who was raped, as well as another woman
Speaker 1: identify him out of four men, but they say they're
Speaker 1: not positive. I mean, my notes say that the young
Speaker 1: woman really couldn't give him a description, so I don't
Speaker 1: know what would have changed. And then talk about how
Speaker 1: lineups work. Are they the same as in the sixties, we'll.
Speaker 2: See well, and this is where whether you're dealing with
Speaker 2: a photo lineup or you're doing this in person type
Speaker 2: of lineup is Nowadays there are criteria that these lineups
Speaker 2: have to meet in order for them to be to
Speaker 2: have any level of veracity. In terms of if the victim,
Speaker 2: like in this case, is able to pick somebody out
Speaker 2: of the lineup. There isn't anything that would have swayed
Speaker 2: the victim to point at the person that law enforcement
Speaker 2: is considering the suspect. But let's say Ernesto is you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know his size. Let's say he's five six,
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty pounds, clean shaven, and the other
Speaker 2: three men in this lineup are all above six foot
Speaker 2: and they have facial hair. You know, it's that type
Speaker 2: of thing. And those were some of the things that
Speaker 2: was happening, you know, back in the day, in order
Speaker 2: to get that witness or that victim to point at
Speaker 2: the person that law enforcement has kind of keyed in on,
Speaker 2: in order for law enforcement to write up a report
Speaker 2: saying suspect was picked out of a photo lineup, and
Speaker 2: now they're putting that in a probable cause affidavit for
Speaker 2: arrest for that crime.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the other case. There was another
Speaker 1: woman who identified him in this lineup, but said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not one hundred percent sure. The circumstances from her
Speaker 1: case were that she was grabbed at knife point while
Speaker 1: she was going to her car at night from her
Speaker 1: job as a bank teller. He put her in the
Speaker 1: front bench of her own car, drove a short distance,
Speaker 1: and she was assaulted but not raped, and robbed of
Speaker 1: eight dollars. This seems different.
Speaker 2: It is tough when you have disparate crimes like this.
Speaker 2: Now you have an abduction of females. In both instances,
Speaker 2: you have these females being kidnapped, they're being moved to
Speaker 2: a different location. Okay, there's similarities there, just because one
Speaker 2: case doesn't end in sexual assault and it turns out
Speaker 2: to be essentially a robbery of eight dollars. You know,
Speaker 2: eight dollars is taken by force or fear by this offender.
Speaker 2: Serial rapists will also commit this type of crime and
Speaker 2: not sexually assault somebody, So you can't eliminate them as
Speaker 2: not being related. But I think to your point, yes,
Speaker 2: you can't necessarily say they are related because there isn't
Speaker 2: enough circumstances, behaviors, et cetera that are unique enough to say, yes,
Speaker 2: this appears to be the same individual, the same offender.
Speaker 2: It's just something you have to consider. You know, offenders
Speaker 2: commit multiple types of crimes, so that's just what happens.
Speaker 2: And you know, you take a look at Ernesto's criminal pass,
Speaker 2: this robbery of eight dollars seems to be more in
Speaker 2: line with the types of petty crimes that he's committing
Speaker 2: even though the kidnapp is serious. That's that's a massive,
Speaker 2: major felony that's going on there. But to take the
Speaker 2: eight dollars seems inline, like with maybe some of these
Speaker 2: petty theft arrests that he possibly had in his criminal past.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So remember it was a lineup of Ernesto and
Speaker 1: three other men, and they said it looks like him,
Speaker 1: but we're not one hundred percent sure. That's not what
Speaker 1: the police tell Ernesto and they say that he has
Speaker 1: been positively identified by these two women, and he immediately confesses.
Speaker 1: Now two hours of interrogation. We don't know what that
Speaker 1: involved in. I don't know if about Phoenix, Arizona in
Speaker 1: the sixties, if this was the third degree or what happened.
Speaker 1: But he didn't break until these two women positively identified him.
Speaker 1: I know police can lie, right, I mean how much
Speaker 1: can they lie? When you're interrogating somebody, you're trying to
Speaker 1: trap them.
Speaker 2: You can lie to the person you're talking to, you know,
Speaker 2: with the expectation that if the person's innocent, they will
Speaker 2: stand their ground and in essence tell the interviewer you're wrong.
Speaker 2: You know that wasn't me. I did not you know,
Speaker 2: attack those women or whatever. But we do see with
Speaker 2: select types of suspects that will cave in to an
Speaker 2: interrogation when they are told lies. You know, So it
Speaker 2: is a balance. You know that. This is where you
Speaker 2: have you have an offender, Hey, we've got your DNA.
Speaker 2: In this case, in this sexual assault, the innocent person
Speaker 2: is expected to say, I don't know how that got there. Now,
Speaker 2: guilty guys say the same thing, right, but you expect
Speaker 2: that person, the innocent person, to stand their ground. But
Speaker 2: then you have to evaluate the individual you're talking to.
Speaker 2: And we know individuals that are intellectually challenged, that have
Speaker 2: certain personalities, that are of a certain age, et cetera,
Speaker 2: are more susceptible to caving in, either to being under
Speaker 2: the influence of the interrogator or to caving into the circumstances.
Speaker 2: If I just tell them what they want to hear,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll be let go.
Speaker 1: I've heard circumstances where people say they were interrogated for
Speaker 1: so long, almost days, where they start questioning whether they
Speaker 1: were involved or not. I don't remember the stat from
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project, but it's something like twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: I think wrongful convictions come from false confessions.
Speaker 2: No, for sure, you know. And it's interesting in California
Speaker 2: so that the read interview technique, which has been taught
Speaker 2: forever and it originated out of the Chicago area, has
Speaker 2: been shown to generate false confessions. And so in California,
Speaker 2: I know there's one DA. I think it's Elderiddle County DA.
Speaker 2: I was listening to him at a conference talk about
Speaker 2: how he was championing banning the use of this read
Speaker 2: interrogation technique in California, and I think he was successful.
Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure I know where that's at, in
Speaker 2: part because it does cause susceptible individuals to falsely confess
Speaker 2: to something they didn't do. You know. It's just way
Speaker 2: that these individuals are manipulated, you know. So it's a balance,
Speaker 2: you know, you want to get the truth out of
Speaker 2: the person, and we know people will lie to protect
Speaker 2: themselves from the crimes that they've committed. So you have
Speaker 2: to somehow figure out a way in order to get
Speaker 2: those facts out or at least get them to make
Speaker 2: statements that are incriminating that a prosecutor can use. But
Speaker 2: at what point do you draw the line in terms
Speaker 2: of what you're willing to do in order to get
Speaker 2: those statements out of that particular suspect.
Speaker 1: Well, this prosecutor you were talking about, can you draw
Speaker 1: briefly a contrast between the read interrogation technique and what
Speaker 1: should be done if you have somebody who's intellectually challenged.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the different, what's the right and the wrong?
Speaker 1: What does the read technique do that's so manipulative that
Speaker 1: gets these wrongful.
Speaker 2: Convictions fundamentally sort of like what you're hearing here in
Speaker 2: the Miranda case in terms of you know, very confrontation,
Speaker 2: making up these these lies, you know, really trying to
Speaker 2: persuade the individual down a certain tract. You know, back
Speaker 2: in the day before this case, law enforcement was really
Speaker 2: heavy handed in terms of how they would interrogate individuals.
Speaker 2: She's talk about, you know, being you know, kept awake
Speaker 2: for long hours while you are being questioned over and
Speaker 2: over again. And part of the questioning with this tactic
Speaker 2: is just re asking the questions over and over again
Speaker 2: over the course of many hours to where now the
Speaker 2: person's getting frustrated and so now they're going to go, well,
Speaker 2: my cooperation up to this point isn't working, So now
Speaker 2: I'm going to give them what they want, you know,
Speaker 2: and now they've just confessed to a crime. And then
Speaker 2: what I've seen, in fact, I consulted on an innocence
Speaker 2: project case and I won't go into the details, but
Speaker 2: fundamentally what law enforcement was doing back in the day,
Speaker 2: and this was not back in nineteen sixty three. This
Speaker 2: is back in the nineteen nineties. But this particular agency,
Speaker 2: with this particular couple of interviewers, what they do is
Speaker 2: they in essence, tell the suspect the details and make
Speaker 2: the suspect tell those details about the crime back. And
Speaker 2: then the investigator is the one that's typing up this
Speaker 2: is what the suspect said, and there's no recording, and
Speaker 2: then they make the suspect sign that you told us this, right, yes,
Speaker 2: I told you that, and that suspect just now has
Speaker 2: confessed to a crime, and it is so inappropriate.
Speaker 1: Well, what's hard about this case of Ernesto Miranda is
Speaker 1: he is guilty. He's about to give a full confession.
Speaker 1: Not only that he's going to identify the woman that
Speaker 1: he attacked, but you know the way that the police
Speaker 1: handle it and what they have him sign. We have
Speaker 1: to get a little technical here. That's why this case
Speaker 1: was so important. So he signs a form. He says
Speaker 1: in the forum, he's twenty three. His highest level of
Speaker 1: education is eighth grade. And this is his written statement.
Speaker 1: He said, seeing a girl walking up the street, stopped
Speaker 1: a little head of her, got out of the car,
Speaker 1: walked toward her, grabbed her by the arm and asked
Speaker 1: her to get in car. Got in car without force,
Speaker 1: tight her hands at ankles, drove away for a few miles, stopped,
Speaker 1: asked to take clothes off, did not asked me to
Speaker 1: take her home. I started to take clothes off without
Speaker 1: any force, and with cooperation, asked her to lay down,
Speaker 1: and she did. Could not get penis into vagina, got
Speaker 1: about half an inch in, told her to get closed
Speaker 1: back on, drove her home, and I couldn't say I
Speaker 1: was sorry for what I had done, but I asked
Speaker 1: for her to pray for me. So that's what he said,
Speaker 1: and on the form he wrote this statement. On it
Speaker 1: said with full knowledge of my rights, even though he
Speaker 1: was never informed of any rights. And that's where this
Speaker 1: case is. So what do you think about that? First
Speaker 1: his confession? What do you think about the confession? Did
Speaker 1: he write the well here's the thing, Paul, I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a verbatim. There's no punctuation, almost no punctuation
Speaker 1: in here, you know, And I don't know if he
Speaker 1: actually wrote it, wrote it in eighth grade. You would
Speaker 1: think he would be able to, but it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: You're right, it's hard to tell.
Speaker 2: Well, well, this is sort of like that Innocence project.
Speaker 2: Is you know, what had he been told about the crime?
Speaker 2: When I'm assessing statements, and I do this all the
Speaker 2: time in cold cases, is I'm assessing, okay, what what
Speaker 2: did law enforcement know? How did they know it? Is
Speaker 2: this something that during the interviews law enforcement, during their
Speaker 2: interrogator phase, they're now confronting him with facts and you
Speaker 2: know this fact you tried to raper but you only
Speaker 2: could get in so far. Well, now he's fed that detail.
Speaker 2: At what point during the interview is the the person
Speaker 2: being interviewed bringing up this level of detail. And I know,
Speaker 2: when I evaluate a case, I'm off and taking a
Speaker 2: look at the crime scene and the physical evidence and
Speaker 2: interpreting that. And many investigators don't know how to interpret,
Speaker 2: you know, do like a crime scene reconstruction, so they
Speaker 2: never bring those types of details up to the suspect
Speaker 2: that they're talking to. But when I see a suspect
Speaker 2: say something during that interview that matches up with what
Speaker 2: I am seeing in the physical evidence, I'm going, oh,
Speaker 2: he literally knows something that even the investigators don't know.
Speaker 2: Now I'm putting a ton of veracity on that type
Speaker 2: of detail. So, you know, statement analysis in terms of
Speaker 2: assessing you know, like what Arnesto is saying, you know,
Speaker 2: that's where Okay, who's writing this? At what stage is
Speaker 2: he writing? This? Is towards the end of the interrogation?
Speaker 2: Was this recorded? Was this? Were these details that he
Speaker 2: was fed by the detectives during an interrogation, and now
Speaker 2: he's just regurgitating them because he just wants to be done.
Speaker 2: Remember what I said. You know, they're selecting individuals in
Speaker 2: our society that are more susceptible to these types of
Speaker 2: interrogative tactics and will falsely confess. One of those is
Speaker 2: going to be that kind of that limited intellectual aspect.
Speaker 2: Ernesto has an eighth grade education and he's twenty three
Speaker 2: years old. He's satisfying one of those characteristics of yea,
Speaker 2: he might be susceptible. Now I'm not saying, you know
Speaker 2: that he's innocent of these crimes. But what I am
Speaker 2: saying is is that there's a reason why this became
Speaker 2: a landmark case.
Speaker 1: Well, let me tell you how we keep going here.
Speaker 1: He identifies the eighteen year old woman that we started
Speaker 1: the story with who he sexually assaulted, and then he said,
Speaker 1: I also did a robbery and an attempted robbery. He said,
Speaker 1: in both of those cases, the women have been assaulted
Speaker 1: but escaped before being raped. The robbery was eight dollars
Speaker 1: and he took it from a survivor who is a
Speaker 1: bank teller. After this statement, he's arrested and booked in
Speaker 1: the Maricopa County jail. The prosecutor ends up filing charges
Speaker 1: on the rape and the robbery, not like the attempted robbery.
Speaker 1: So there were three cases that they were interested in
Speaker 1: with him. Again the detail about the bank teller, and
Speaker 1: you know a couple of other details. But right because
Speaker 1: of this is a Miranda case. The Miranda case, we
Speaker 1: have to think about what investigators did to get this information,
Speaker 1: so they're untrustworthy unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, and part of what I want to
Speaker 2: hear from Miranda, you know, as he's giving his statements
Speaker 2: is I want to hear his perspective on how the
Speaker 2: crime was committed. Not what I'm hearing you telling me
Speaker 2: is well, these are the types of statements that the
Speaker 2: victim would be saying. I want to hear his perspective.
Speaker 2: I initially saw this victim at this location. I followed
Speaker 2: her until we got to this particular location. I got out,
Speaker 2: I went around this corner of the front of my car.
Speaker 2: You know something where he's walking through committing the crime
Speaker 2: versus regurgitating. She was a bank teller. Well, law enforcement
Speaker 2: knows she's a bank teller, right, you know, I need
Speaker 2: to hear something sort of outside of what I've heard
Speaker 2: so far. I you know, of course I'm familiar with
Speaker 2: you know why Miranda exists. I'm not real familiar with
Speaker 2: the crimes that Miranda committed. To get to the point
Speaker 2: to where now we have this landmark case.
Speaker 1: Right, I'll tell you more about these trials. There's two trials,
Speaker 1: because remember there is a robbery and then there's the rape.
Speaker 1: So he goes on trial for the robbery first in
Speaker 1: June of nineteen sixty three. It takes a day. He
Speaker 1: has a court appointed attorney who follows emotion indicating that
Speaker 1: he intends to plead insanity, and the court has two
Speaker 1: psychiatrists examine him. One of the psychiatrists says that he
Speaker 1: has an emotional illness that the psychiatrist classifies as a
Speaker 1: quote schizophrenic reaction of the chronic undifferentiated type. At the
Speaker 1: same time, he concludes that Miranda was unaware of his
Speaker 1: actions but aware that he did something wrong. Meantime, the
Speaker 1: other psychiatrist says he's just immature and unstable and he
Speaker 1: doesn't see any evidence of psychosis. So we have the
Speaker 1: arresting officer and the woman who was robbed testify and
Speaker 1: the jury comes back with the unanimous guilty verdict. That afternoon.
Speaker 1: They're waiting on what happens with the rape trial to
Speaker 1: deal with sentencing, and the rape trial is the next day.
Speaker 1: I want to definitely talk about the diagnosis from one
Speaker 1: of the psychiatrists about schizophrenia, because you know, you are
Speaker 1: talking about vulnerable people and being subjected to unethical interrogation techniques,
Speaker 1: so so far, what are you hearing in this because
Speaker 1: he confessed to the robbery as well as you know,
Speaker 1: these other crimes too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's it's really tough, you know, to
Speaker 2: assess kind of the mental health aspect and how that
Speaker 2: plays into this case. Most certainly, I'm familiar with schizophrenia,
Speaker 2: but in terms of wherever he's at a long sort
Speaker 2: of this spectrum a schizophrenia. He's twenty three, we know generally,
Speaker 2: you know, in the early twenties. Oftentimes this is when
Speaker 2: schizophrenia starts to manifest itself and then it progresses from
Speaker 2: that point. I can only right now speculate from my
Speaker 2: dvantage point that, yeah, schizophrenia may be something that would
Speaker 2: influence Miranda in terms of how he interacts under an
Speaker 2: interrogator setting. I mean that is way outside my level
Speaker 2: of expertise. You know, for me, what I'm assessing a
Speaker 2: let's say prime and we start talking psychosis. You know,
Speaker 2: a psychotic offender, a true disorganized offender that has mental
Speaker 2: health issue that is so extreme they're unaware that they
Speaker 2: are committing a crime that is wrong. This is your
Speaker 2: true insanity. I can't form any type of opinion. Does
Speaker 2: you know Miranda fall within that type of vendor. You
Speaker 2: have one of the psychiatrists saying he's not at the
Speaker 2: level of a psychosis, right, I think that's what you said. However,
Speaker 2: both psychiatrists, though somewhat different in their opinions, are saying
Speaker 2: he does have some sort of mental health aspect to him,
Speaker 2: you know, and so that kind of underscores from my perspective. Okay,
Speaker 2: he is a vulnerable suspect, and so the interview of
Speaker 2: somebody like that needs to be handled in a different
Speaker 2: way than likely it was handled in terms of a
Speaker 2: hardcore interrogation.
Speaker 1: Here's the rape trial. It happens the next day. The
Speaker 1: defense tries to shake the survivor's story. She is very
Speaker 1: consistent and believable. The lawyer, for lack of a better phrase,
Speaker 1: completely fucks up his attorney so states Exhibit one is
Speaker 1: Miranda's signed statement which admitted to the rape. But his
Speaker 1: own attorney calls it a confession. No one else in
Speaker 1: the court has called it a confession. They say it's
Speaker 1: a statement. So the prosecutor, at the very end in
Speaker 1: his closing statement set even his own attorney, says he's confessed,
Speaker 1: and this is that. So I mean, this will of
Speaker 1: course set up a pretty decent appeal from Miranda. But
Speaker 1: the defense doesn't dispute the validity of this confession statement thing,
Speaker 1: And within minutes the jury comes back with a guilty
Speaker 1: verdict and he sentenced to twenty to thirty years for
Speaker 1: each count the kidnapping and the rape, and he's also
Speaker 1: sentenced to twenty five years for the robbery. If this
Speaker 1: man's last name were not Miranda, this would be the
Speaker 1: end of our story. But in the sixties, lawyers and
Speaker 1: activists had already started being critical of you know, what
Speaker 1: the constitutional rights are when you are being interrogated by
Speaker 1: the police. And that's why this case turns into a
Speaker 1: big case. So in sixty three, the original lawyer who
Speaker 1: defended Miranda is a guy named Alvin Moore. He files
Speaker 1: an appeal. And there are other cases involving coerced or
Speaker 1: improperly attained confessions that have drawn a lot of national
Speaker 1: attention and established the right for an attorney during interrogations
Speaker 1: under the sixth Amendment. So Moore's basis for this appeal
Speaker 1: to the Arizona Supreme Court is that his confession was
Speaker 1: improperly received as evidence. The state Supreme Court disagrees and
Speaker 1: they uphold the conviction. But there is a lot more
Speaker 1: happening here where eventually, I mean, just to kind of
Speaker 1: shorthand this you know, this takes a very windy road
Speaker 1: and the ACLU gets involved. There's another case in California
Speaker 1: with the California Supreme Court, and that court ruled that
Speaker 1: before a suspect is interrogated, he has to be expressly
Speaker 1: informed of his right to an attorney, and Miranda wasn't.
Speaker 1: So Arizona and California were contradicting each other as a
Speaker 1: matter of constitutional law. And this is where Robert Corkran,
Speaker 1: the retired attorney, decides to step in and he takes
Speaker 1: over the case. Now do you want to do a
Speaker 1: shorthand of what happens or what do you I mean,
Speaker 1: this is such a massive case. We don't know if
Speaker 1: he's guilty, but it sure sounds like it to me.
Speaker 1: But that's not the point, you know. The point is
Speaker 1: establishing your rights, you know, and everybody, even guilty people,
Speaker 1: need rights.
Speaker 2: I know of the Miranda case, but in terms of
Speaker 2: the legal path up to the Supreme Court, not familiar
Speaker 2: with that at all. You know, fundamentally, my training when
Speaker 2: I was with law enforcement, you know, was with Miranda.
Speaker 2: Of course, you're informing the person that you're interviewing of
Speaker 2: their rights, you know, the right to remain silent the
Speaker 2: right to have an attorney. But the primary criteria that
Speaker 2: impacts law enforcement needing to inform this person of their
Speaker 2: rights is the custodial status. Is this person in custody
Speaker 2: which means they are not free to leave? Or does
Speaker 2: a person have perception of custody? And I believe this
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily addressed under the miranda case. There's other case
Speaker 2: law related to perception of custody. So as an example,
Speaker 2: the way you set, let's say a suspect up in
Speaker 2: an interview room and now you have two big burly
Speaker 2: detectives that are between that suspect and the door, and
Speaker 2: that suspect has just been told you can leave any time,
Speaker 2: but he has to push through these two cops. Maybe
Speaker 2: one of the cops is in uniform. That person has
Speaker 2: a perception I'm not free to leave. So under that
Speaker 2: set of circumstances, this is where now law enforcement is going, Okay,
Speaker 2: generally good, you know, and there's a balance. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't want to mirandize somebody if you don't have to,
Speaker 2: or now you just have told this person shut up.
Speaker 2: You want this person to cooperate, But if you recognize, okay,
Speaker 2: this person is talking to me voluntarily, and they're free
Speaker 2: to leave, but there might be a perception that on
Speaker 2: their part that they're not free to leave because maybe
Speaker 2: the way our station house is set up. You know,
Speaker 2: you air on the side of caution, and you mirandize
Speaker 2: them right and hope that that person is still going
Speaker 2: to want to be able to cooperate and provide statements
Speaker 2: so you can further your investigation. There's almost a tactical
Speaker 2: way of having to approach. You have to assess your suspect,
Speaker 2: the situation that you're talking to the suspect, and whether
Speaker 2: or not it truly does require to mirandize them or not,
Speaker 2: or is it in the gray area yep? And then
Speaker 2: generally it's sort of like, oh, you better err on
Speaker 2: the side of caution, because if you don't, pretty much
Speaker 2: you have just killed the case. If they find out
Speaker 2: that you should have mirandized them.
Speaker 1: This goes all the way to the Supreme Court. And
Speaker 1: there has to be clarity because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of cases that are now coming forward where people are saying,
Speaker 1: you're talking about intimidation with the police. A lot of
Speaker 1: the arguments are I'm not educated enough to know, you know,
Speaker 1: Paul holds the banker probably knows his rights, but Miranda didn't.
Speaker 1: And so what the Supreme Court eventually votes five to four,
Speaker 1: you know, in favor of They essentially say that if
Speaker 1: the Constitution only protects Americans who are educated enough to
Speaker 1: know their rights, then not all Americans are protected. So
Speaker 1: you know, this is, like I said, a five to
Speaker 1: four decision, and in response, police departments across the country
Speaker 1: give out those cards to their personnel with language to
Speaker 1: inform suspects of their rights. You know, the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: didn't prescribe any specific language, but this is where the
Speaker 1: little speech that the police will give you if you're
Speaker 1: under arrest. Miranda's conviction is overturned and that drives me crazy.
Speaker 1: But he goes on trial again in Arizona in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. This is only for the rape and the kidnapping,
Speaker 1: since the robbery didn't go to the Supreme Court and
Speaker 1: his original confession is not admitted as evidence. He has
Speaker 1: tried under a false name because Miranda is very famous
Speaker 1: now and his estranged girlfriend, the woman who had been
Speaker 1: living with him, testifies against him, and he has found
Speaker 1: guilty in sentenced to twenty to thirty years in prison.
Speaker 1: Eventually he applies and has denied parole four times. He
Speaker 1: is granted in nineteen seventy two parole, So he serves
Speaker 1: about nine years in prison, and he violates this parole
Speaker 1: with a lot of misdemeanors, goes back to prison for
Speaker 1: another five years. He's released in seventy five, and he
Speaker 1: is stabbed to death at a bar in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five after he's released.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds vaguely familiar. I think I may have
Speaker 2: heard that at some point, but most certainly most of
Speaker 2: what you just told me about, you know, Miranda's back
Speaker 2: and forth with prison and parole, I did not know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, he ends up at this bar
Speaker 1: and he gets into an argument and he's stabbed in
Speaker 1: the chest in the net can. He dies within minutes,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean a little side note, They find
Speaker 1: the guy who did it. They inform them of his
Speaker 1: rights in Spanish because he doesn't speak English. So that's
Speaker 1: how evolved they became. So they inform aim of his
Speaker 1: rights in Spanish, and he waves his rights and he
Speaker 1: tells Billie, you know that he didn't do it, and
Speaker 1: they don't arrest him. So, I mean, the irony here
Speaker 1: is is he waves his rights, he denies that he
Speaker 1: did this, he had some injuries, and the police let
Speaker 1: him go. And when they go back to find him again,
Speaker 1: when employees say we can identify him, he's gone. He's
Speaker 1: in Mexico.
Speaker 2: And this is the suspect in Miranda's homicide.
Speaker 1: Yes, so he's gone where his family lives. He's in
Speaker 1: the wind. So the murder of Ernesto Miranda. You know,
Speaker 1: no one was ever arrested for the murder of Ernesto Miranda.
Speaker 1: And I mean this story. Of course, I'm familiar with
Speaker 1: miranda rights, but I did not know the backstory of it.
Speaker 1: I know this is not our traditional true crime, But
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm always interested in why cases are.
Speaker 1: You know, case law is established and you know where
Speaker 1: different things come from in our history, and this was
Speaker 1: an interesting case.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, no, for sure, it's a landmark case. It's
Speaker 2: you know, it's one of those things you know there's
Speaker 2: for law enforcement, there are select individuals, you know, just
Speaker 2: whether they're patrol guys or investigators. They love staying on
Speaker 2: top of the case law and they often I can
Speaker 2: think of one guy who is a DA investigator. He
Speaker 2: would give training to the other investigators, Hey, this is
Speaker 2: the curt this was just a Supreme Court decision, or
Speaker 2: here's a California appellate decision, because you need to know,
Speaker 2: you know what changes. You go through the police academy
Speaker 2: and you're told about Miranda, but then there's other case
Speaker 2: law that have modified Miranda, right, so you have to
Speaker 2: stay on top of that. And there are people that
Speaker 2: fortunately that do that and that of course, you know,
Speaker 2: the prosecutors, your attorneys are the ones that are really
Speaker 2: the experts. You know. So if law enforcement, if an
Speaker 2: invest stigator ever has a question about the legality of
Speaker 2: let's say a certain type of search, you know, you
Speaker 2: ring up your local prosecutor and you run the facts
Speaker 2: by them and say, hey does this work?
Speaker 1: You know before you do it and you screw something up.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, And and that's where, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I enjoy the cold case side is
Speaker 2: things are slow. They're slow moving, right, they're decades old.
Speaker 1: You don't have that public pressure, right.
Speaker 2: You don't have you know. I don't think people truly
Speaker 2: appreciate whether it's a patrol officer that's responding to an
Speaker 2: active crime or an investigator investigating an after crime. How
Speaker 2: many decisions they have to make on the fly, and
Speaker 2: they have to make those decisions based on what the
Speaker 2: current case law is. It's not something that they necessarily
Speaker 2: have received a bunch of training on, you know. So
Speaker 2: this is part of the evolution as you go through
Speaker 2: your career of seeing how laws change over time. And
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily in the penal code. It's something that
Speaker 2: is now. You know, the attorney for the sheriff's office sed, hey,
Speaker 2: there's new California Supreme Court has just come out with this,
Speaker 2: and so even though you've been doing it this way
Speaker 2: up until today, tomorrow, you need it to do it
Speaker 2: this way, you know, and you have to make that
Speaker 2: adjustment or you potentially could have a case thrown out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, like I said, not our normal type of story,
Speaker 1: but important and I love learning about where things come from.
Speaker 1: Next week, I can almost guarantee we're not going to
Speaker 1: be talking about Miranda rights, probably because from the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and they ain't have any rights, so itus you'd
Speaker 1: be lucky to survive interrogation. But you know, we will
Speaker 1: have a case that definitely has some deep history. So
Speaker 1: I hope you look forward to it.
Speaker 2: Paul I always do and another great job today, Kate.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Paul, I see you next week.
Speaker 2: Sounds good.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 2: For our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot
Speaker 2: com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Alexis Mrosi.
Speaker 2: Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1: Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1: You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Speaker 1: buried Bones pod.
Speaker 2: Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Speaker 2: Age story of murder and the race to decode the
Speaker 2: criminal mind, is available now.
Speaker 1: And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's
Speaker 1: Cold Cases is also available now.
Speaker 2: Listen to Baried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts.