Speaker 1: A warning.
Speaker 2: This episode contains depictions of violence and conversations about suicide
Speaker 2: that may be disturbing and triggering for some listeners. If
Speaker 2: you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please fast forward to
Speaker 2: the end of this episode to find out where help
Speaker 2: is available.
Speaker 1: I saw him from behind. He was like, he was so.
Speaker 3: Stoic, sitting there in his suit. He was like, it's like,
Speaker 3: I still remember.
Speaker 1: It so well.
Speaker 3: God, he just saw his body just kind of collapsing.
Speaker 2: That's Evelyn Case. Byron Case's mother describing the moment her
Speaker 2: son is found guilty of killing Anastasia Whipples Fugen lapsing.
Speaker 1: And when they took him out of the room, you know,
Speaker 1: it was horrible. My body's shaky, just the memory of it.
Speaker 2: All, Evelyn says, from that moment on, her mission in
Speaker 2: life is clear to prove Byron is innocent. I'm Leah Rothman.
Speaker 2: This is the real killer. Episode seven, Bad, Better and Blank. Okay,
Speaker 2: So show me some of the photos that you have
Speaker 2: of Byron.
Speaker 3: Oh, so many.
Speaker 1: Photos, so many, so many chimneys.
Speaker 3: Look at my little boy. We had a chimney sweep business.
Speaker 3: Because you know, I'm from Germany and I always believe
Speaker 3: chimney sweeps brought good luck, any.
Speaker 1: Cute Halloween or no.
Speaker 3: No, we were chimney sweeps who he had a little
Speaker 3: outfit for him.
Speaker 2: I meet with Evelyn at her home in Kansas City,
Speaker 2: where she lived with her best friend and canine companion, Airbender.
Speaker 1: This is cute to look at us. That's us. That's
Speaker 1: how we traveled to the backpackers. Yes, we were backpackers.
Speaker 1: Is that Dale and by that's Dale and Byron.
Speaker 3: I think they were in Texas.
Speaker 1: This was when we were divorced.
Speaker 3: That wasn't his lover, but they were all friends because
Speaker 3: we had a lot of gay friends. So that's what
Speaker 3: they did to his room. And they had all the
Speaker 3: legos and this is Byron's room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was. Oh so they decorated Byron's room. They
Speaker 1: did really they did good with him. I mean they
Speaker 1: you know, he was loved.
Speaker 2: Evelyn is warm and funny and quite the character, and
Speaker 2: her eclectically decorated craftsman style house is a direct reflection
Speaker 2: of that. It's full of lush plants, art, pottery, and
Speaker 2: mementos from her many travels, as well as several photos
Speaker 2: of the most important person in the world to her, Byron.
Speaker 3: Well, these are not my favorites, but this is what
Speaker 3: don't you love about these photos? Well, that's the goth
Speaker 3: the look on his face like I'm tough for something
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know where this was in
Speaker 3: the coffee shop, but he's got mescara on. And that
Speaker 3: didn't bother me because there's a lot of musicians that do.
Speaker 1: That, so that really didn't bother me.
Speaker 3: Is this Byron when he moved to Saint Louis? Does
Speaker 3: he look unhappy? Does he look like he would have
Speaker 3: killed somebody? He left because of Kelly. He says, I've
Speaker 3: got to get out of here, and he did, and
Speaker 3: he was happy.
Speaker 2: Evelyn and I talked for three hours about Byron's childhood,
Speaker 2: her ex husband, Byron's father Dale, and of course the
Speaker 2: events of October twenty second, nineteen ninety seven, the night
Speaker 2: Anastasia was killed. But wait a minute, So he comes
Speaker 2: home around what time.
Speaker 1: Ten or ten?
Speaker 3: I know Kelly had curfew at nine and he brought
Speaker 3: her home. And then he came home right after that
Speaker 3: and Justin brought him. Robert kept saying he saw Byron's cars. Well,
Speaker 3: Byron's car was in the shop.
Speaker 2: Evelyn is referring to Robert whitbolsfugen Anastasia's father. Remember, Bob
Speaker 2: told Sergeant Gary Kilgore he saw Byron's car with the
Speaker 2: morbid license plates and the caravan of cars going down
Speaker 2: Truman Road the night of October twenty seconds.
Speaker 3: Because when Byron came home that night, when this supposedly happened,
Speaker 3: there was nothing different about him. I mean, I can
Speaker 3: tell things. There was nothing different. He came home at
Speaker 3: ten o'clock, give or take, and so maybe a few
Speaker 3: minutes after and you know, goes to refrigerator, and then
Speaker 3: he had two cats, and he had his room. There
Speaker 3: were times that he would then spend the night over
Speaker 3: at Justin's. They were playing video games and this and that.
Speaker 3: But I knew where he was at, and his room
Speaker 3: was always there when he came home. And then sometimes
Speaker 3: he was gone for three days or something, and I go,
Speaker 3: it's nice to see you, you know, But when do
Speaker 3: you let go of your children? You have to let
Speaker 3: them experience life. But you it's the sad part. You
Speaker 3: can have the best childhood and then something like this happens.
Speaker 3: You know, he was raised, non violent, non racist, non sexist.
Speaker 3: Why would you want to. I mean the things that
Speaker 3: Kelly came up with. Sure, maybe they were talking weird
Speaker 3: stuff at times, but that doesn't mean you're going to
Speaker 3: do something. You know, he was doing good things, always
Speaker 3: doing good things for people.
Speaker 1: Do nobody saw that. It's just always gotten, you know
Speaker 1: what we were hippies or this or that. Everybody's something.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean you know, you know, devil worshippers or
Speaker 3: whatever they came up with, that's not it. He loved,
Speaker 3: he loved wearing black, and he had his trench coat
Speaker 3: and his Doc Martin boots, and and then what he
Speaker 3: did out there, I have no idea them boys, but
Speaker 3: no killing somebody.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: So he comes home around ten, he goes into the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we were watching the movies.
Speaker 3: But he was happy, he was happy to be home,
Speaker 3: greeted us, and everything was there was nothing tense or anything,
Speaker 3: and so I just left it at that.
Speaker 2: Did you notice anything odd about his appearance? Did he
Speaker 2: looked like he had been crying or upset, or did
Speaker 2: he have any boy.
Speaker 1: I would have said something then, oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: You know, if I spot something like this, then I
Speaker 3: asked questions, But I had no questions to.
Speaker 1: Ask no blood on him, No, hardly. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Then I would have freaked out for sure. So imagine
Speaker 1: so he goes to his room. Yeah, did Byron go
Speaker 1: back out that night?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Would you have heard him?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh yeah. His bedroom was right next to me
Speaker 3: and you can hear the doors, you know, it's the
Speaker 3: old apartments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no he did. Would you help with home?
Speaker 3: And I mean Napoleon would be a witness on that too,
Speaker 3: you know, he's there with me.
Speaker 1: And did police ever talk to Napoleon? I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Napoleon Perez was Evelyn's boyfriend at the time. They eventually married,
Speaker 2: then later divorced, but today remain friends. After Byron mentioned
Speaker 2: Napoleon being there that night, I looked through the case
Speaker 2: file I was sent from the Jackson County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 2: again and saw nothing that said Napoleon was ever interviewed
Speaker 2: by law enforcement. I ask Evelyn if she was ever
Speaker 2: interviewed Sergeant Kilgore, Huh did you have any interactions with
Speaker 2: Sergeant Kilgrere?
Speaker 1: Think so? I really don't think so so.
Speaker 2: But the only documentation I have regarding Evelyn as an
Speaker 2: interoffice memo dated May fifteenth, two thousand so that was
Speaker 2: about four months before Kelly comes forward. The memo is
Speaker 2: from Sergeant Kilgore, written to his superiors. Kil Gore says
Speaker 2: he was contacted by Assistant Prosecutor Jeff Busher because Anastasia's dad, Bob,
Speaker 2: wanted to review the homicide case file. Bob was unhappy
Speaker 2: with how the investigation was being conducted by the Jackson
Speaker 2: County Sheriff's Department, so Assistant Prosecutor Buscher was instructed to
Speaker 2: review the file himself. Busher did, and afterwards said the
Speaker 2: investigation up until that point had been conducted quote thoroughly
Speaker 2: and appropriately. Busher did share with kil Gore that he
Speaker 2: didn't believe Bob observed that caravan of cars the night
Speaker 2: of the twenty second the way he described one suggestion
Speaker 2: was made to kill Gore, though Busher thought Evelyn Case
Speaker 2: should be contacted to quote determine if she could verify
Speaker 2: the times mister Case was at her apartment the evening
Speaker 2: of ten twenty two ninety seven and the early hours
Speaker 2: of ten twenty three, ninety seven. I have no real
Speaker 2: ports or memos that show Kilgore ever followed through with this. Okay,
Speaker 2: back to the night of October twenty second. Evelyn says,
Speaker 2: after she and Napoleon finished the movie, they go to bed.
Speaker 2: Nothing else to report, really until the following morning.
Speaker 3: The next morning, the phone rings and it's Justin and
Speaker 3: he says, can I talk to Byron? I says, I said,
Speaker 3: he's still asleep, And he says, could you wake him up?
Speaker 3: And I said, okay, just a minute. So I got
Speaker 3: Byron up, and this is what happened.
Speaker 1: He told me.
Speaker 3: He says, oh, Justin wanted me to go out to
Speaker 3: breakfast with him. He said he couldn't sleep last night.
Speaker 3: He wanted me to go down to breakfast and and
Speaker 3: and he said.
Speaker 1: No, I'll catch up with you later.
Speaker 2: Within an hour or so of that call, Justin buys
Speaker 2: a shotgun. Two days later, on October twenty fifth, Justin
Speaker 2: has found dead, having taken his own life.
Speaker 1: Have you ever known Byron to have a gun? No?
Speaker 1: Have you ever known Byron to go hunting? No?
Speaker 2: Did you ever know Dale, your ex husband, Byron's father,
Speaker 2: to ever own any guns?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Did he ever go hunting? No? Did he ever display
Speaker 1: any guns on his wall?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Have you ever known Byron to be violent? No? Never? Never.
Speaker 1: He's like his dad. His dad do you know that man?
Speaker 1: And I never argued? His father and I never argued.
Speaker 2: Did you hear the rumors that Byron and Justin were lovers?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I heard that too, Yeah, they weren't stupid.
Speaker 2: I wonder what Evelyn thought about Byron's account of that
Speaker 2: evening that the last time he saw Anastasia was when
Speaker 2: she got out of Dustin's car on Truman Road at
Speaker 2: the I four thirty five possible? Did you believe him?
Speaker 2: Did you know? I mean, as a mother, you know
Speaker 2: when your kid is lying. What was the tailtale signs?
Speaker 2: When Byron wasn't telling you the truth?
Speaker 3: I don't remember him not being truthful very often in
Speaker 3: his life. To be very honest, I don't think. I
Speaker 3: really don't, unless I'm just I don't think he lied
Speaker 3: to me. I can't, would you ever? I mean, because
Speaker 3: people might think a mother would cover for their son. No,
Speaker 3: I believe in the truth. Might have been my Catholic upbringing.
Speaker 3: I don't go to church eater. I mean that dog.
Speaker 3: I was cramped down my throat too, But no, I'm not.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do that. No, And if he would have
Speaker 3: done it, then everything would be different, because I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have fought for twenty years. The way I was fighting
Speaker 3: tooth and nail, tooth and nail. I got myself in
Speaker 3: trouble at times, going up to the law school, Young KC.
Speaker 3: Law School and plastering flyers all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just no, I would not be fighting like this.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: In the years following Byron's conviction, Evelyn posts free Byron
Speaker 2: flyers at the local law school and around town. She
Speaker 2: writes letters and talks to even chases down anyone who'd listen.
Speaker 2: It is safe to say she was obsessed with clearing
Speaker 2: her son's name. Around twenty ten, the Midwest Innocence Project
Speaker 2: looks into Byron's case. Remember you heard about them in
Speaker 2: season one. They represented Rodney Lincoln, but ultimately MIP passes
Speaker 2: on taking Byron's case. After that, Evelyn redoubles her efforts.
Speaker 2: She helps Byron petition Governor j. Nixon for an absolute pardon,
Speaker 2: which is eventually denied. She goes to Washington, D C.
Speaker 2: And addresses members of Congress. She meets one on one
Speaker 2: with US Senator Claire mccaskell of Missouri. She shares with
Speaker 2: people the book Byron wrote from prison, The Pariah Syntax
Speaker 2: notes from an innocent man, as well as the Free
Speaker 2: Byron website and Facebook group. Over time, she accumulates ten
Speaker 2: bankers boxes of investigative documents, reports, transcripts, and audio recordings,
Speaker 2: but she has no one to go through them.
Speaker 1: Crickets. Then out of nowhere, I get this call, we
Speaker 1: want to help you. Do you think I'm going to
Speaker 1: say no, we don't want to.
Speaker 6: I was plated.
Speaker 1: I was elated.
Speaker 5: My name is Ryan Russell.
Speaker 2: Shortly after graduating from the University of Missouri Kansas City
Speaker 2: Law School, Brian Russell, an Army vet, and two friends
Speaker 2: formed the firm Meyer, Chord, Russell and Hurdott. And what
Speaker 2: kind of law do you practice?
Speaker 5: We do all personal injury, basically any type of case
Speaker 5: where someone has been hurt by someone else doing something
Speaker 5: wrong and trying to help them get money to make
Speaker 5: up for what they had to go through.
Speaker 2: Brian first hears about Byron's case in the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, about seventeen years after Byron was convicted.
Speaker 5: When I was doing research on a completely unrelated matter
Speaker 5: and just happened to stumble across his website. It was
Speaker 5: freebyroncase dot Com and he had a lot of the
Speaker 5: primary documents on there and reports and trial transcript and
Speaker 5: so one afternoon I didn't have the impulse control to
Speaker 5: ignore it and went down the rabbit hole and just
Speaker 5: started reading all this stuff and doing my own research
Speaker 5: on some of it. I saw that he didn't have
Speaker 5: a lawyer, so I picked up the phone and just
Speaker 5: called him and asked him if he was interested in
Speaker 5: having a lawyer, and went out and met with him.
Speaker 1: And what was that first meeting?
Speaker 5: Like? It was a good meeting. I think before when
Speaker 5: I signed him up, I wasn't even I wasn't one
Speaker 5: hundred percent convinced that he was innocent. I knew that
Speaker 5: he did not get a fair trial, but I wasn't
Speaker 5: sure that he was innocent. And as I talked with
Speaker 5: him more, you know, I was like, I don't I
Speaker 5: don't see how this guy could have murdered somebody. Doing
Speaker 5: injury work generally, you know, we don't get paid. We
Speaker 5: get paid on a contingency fee. I mean, my clients
Speaker 5: never pay me out of their own pocket, and they
Speaker 5: only ever pay me if I get money for them.
Speaker 5: This is very similar to that. You have to be
Speaker 5: willing to put a lot of time, energy and money
Speaker 5: into a case with, you know, a hope and a
Speaker 5: prayer that it works out. And I wouldn't want to
Speaker 5: do that if I wasn't firmly convinced that we had
Speaker 5: at least a shot. So yeah, I asked him if
Speaker 5: you did it? And because I didn't want to represent
Speaker 5: someone that couldn't say no, I didn't do it.
Speaker 2: A lot of people, though in prison, say that they're innocent.
Speaker 2: A lot of them are, but a lot of them
Speaker 2: are not.
Speaker 5: I'm kind of this is a saying from the Army trust,
Speaker 5: but verify, and that's how I've That's how I and
Speaker 5: the rest of our team have approached this whole investigation
Speaker 5: is how can we prove that Byron did this without
Speaker 5: Byron's side of things, you know? Or how can we
Speaker 5: because if it comes down to believing Byron or not, well,
Speaker 5: a jury already heard Byron's story and they didn't believe them.
Speaker 5: For me, it was more the asking him wasn't because
Speaker 5: that's what matters improving his innocence. It was more just
Speaker 5: from my own where you're really in it as partners
Speaker 5: with your client, and I don't want to be partners
Speaker 5: with someone I don't trust. However, our brains. Figure out,
Speaker 5: we can trust somebody just the way he told me.
Speaker 5: I trusted him.
Speaker 2: So for Brian, the trust is there. Now it's time
Speaker 2: to get to work. He reaches out to Evelyn, who
Speaker 2: happily hands over the ten boxes of evidence she's collected.
Speaker 5: I then had a moment of clarity of wait a minute,
Speaker 5: I've never represented a criminal defendant, let alone got an
Speaker 5: innocent person out of prison. But I'm confident that I'm
Speaker 5: a hard worker and you know, reasonably intelligent. But Sean
Speaker 5: O'Brien was one of my professors in law school, and
Speaker 5: if he was one of my favorites, if not my
Speaker 5: favorite professor. So after I had gotten all that stuff,
Speaker 5: I called him up and said, hey, you know, are
Speaker 5: you Is this something you could maybe use for one
Speaker 5: of your innocence classes. Helped me go through some of
Speaker 5: this stuff.
Speaker 7: So I was going to be teaching this class in
Speaker 7: the spring semester of twenty twenty. So when Brian talked
Speaker 7: to me, I said, yes, I need a case for
Speaker 7: my investigation class.
Speaker 2: For those of you have listened to seasons one and
Speaker 2: two of The Real Killer, you are already familiar with
Speaker 2: Sean O'Brien. A quick reminder. He's a full time professor
Speaker 2: at UMKC Law School. He was one of Rodney Lincoln's lawyers,
Speaker 2: but he's probably best known for the landmark Supreme Court
Speaker 2: case on innocence Sloop versus Di Lo.
Speaker 7: I'm not an innocence project. I do not screen my
Speaker 7: cases for guilt or innocence. I just the next interesting case.
Speaker 7: If my caseload will allow it, I'll do it. And
Speaker 7: I knew enough about this case to know that it
Speaker 7: would be a really interesting case to use to teach
Speaker 7: my investigation class. And Quinn and I, my daughter, teach
Speaker 7: this class together. She's an investigator with a journalism background,
Speaker 7: which is great.
Speaker 2: Quinn O'Brien was also in our first season. She was
Speaker 2: one of the investigators who worked on Rodney Lincoln's case.
Speaker 2: Turns out Quinn was already familiar with Byron's case because
Speaker 2: in twenty ten she spent some time looking into it
Speaker 2: at the Midwest Innocence Project. Later that year, she left
Speaker 2: MIP and Byron's case behind to pursue other endeavors.
Speaker 8: There were things that I wanted to work on that
Speaker 8: didn't involve innocence, like early release and parole projects. So
Speaker 8: I decided to leave the project and hang my own shingle.
Speaker 8: I can't take a case with me because I'm not
Speaker 8: a lawyer. I'm just the investigator that can be really
Speaker 8: frustrating sometimes. And I guess the case just languished until
Speaker 8: I got a text from my dad it's like, hey,
Speaker 8: you worked on the Byron.
Speaker 5: Case case, right? Yes?
Speaker 6: Why?
Speaker 8: And I think I remember like looking at that text,
Speaker 8: like texting back like yeah, and then getting in the
Speaker 8: car and I was actually on seventy one. I remember
Speaker 8: where I was when I got this phone call from
Speaker 8: my old buddy Brian Russell. It's like, hey, Quinn, like
Speaker 8: I hear that you were familiar with the Byron case
Speaker 8: case and I wanted to pick your brain. I still
Speaker 8: remember being on the freeway, holding onto the steering wheel,
Speaker 8: being ready to cry, like yes, yes, you can pick
Speaker 8: my brain, Like yes, I want to help you. I
Speaker 8: don't care, I don't care how like what I will.
Speaker 8: I will help you. You tell me what you need
Speaker 8: from me, and I will help you. I have been wanting.
Speaker 2: So Quinn, Sean and Brian are on board. Then one
Speaker 2: more person joins the team, a brand new lawyer named
Speaker 2: Nicole Gordon, who went to law school later in life.
Speaker 2: Back in the spring of twenty twenty, Nicole is in
Speaker 2: her second year of law school when she takes Sean
Speaker 2: and Quinn's investigation class and learns about Byron's case. What
Speaker 2: are some of your early thoughts or feelings about it?
Speaker 9: And I wasn't convinced of his innocence right off the bat.
Speaker 2: After finishing the investigation class, Nicole is the only student
Speaker 2: who continues working with Brian and Quinn on the case
Speaker 2: in Shawn's Wrongful Convictions Clinic.
Speaker 9: That's when I really dived into the case and learned
Speaker 9: more about it and became more and more convinced that
Speaker 9: Byron's innocent.
Speaker 2: The team is made up of Nicole, Quinn, Sean, and Brian.
Speaker 2: Each has their marching orders and they're ready to go
Speaker 2: to war.
Speaker 1: For the record.
Speaker 2: When I decided to take on this story for the
Speaker 2: third season of the podcast, I told Byron's legal team,
Speaker 2: especially Sean and Quinn, whom I've worked with before, I
Speaker 2: am treating this case like any other. If I find
Speaker 2: something that points to Byron's guilt, I am not going
Speaker 2: to bury it. My only allegiance is to the true.
Speaker 2: If you had to sum up the investigation in a word.
Speaker 1: Or sloppy.
Speaker 5: Oh wait, I should have let you finish.
Speaker 1: That's okay, the investigation was sloppy.
Speaker 5: If I had to summarize the trial in one word,
Speaker 5: it would be fast.
Speaker 2: Right out of the gate. Attorney Brian Russell has some
Speaker 2: strong feelings about the way Byron's case was handled well.
Speaker 5: So when I was first digging into everything, I kept
Speaker 5: waiting for there to be more. I was just like,
Speaker 5: surely they didn't convict him based on Kelly's clear fabrication
Speaker 5: that doesn't even line up with the other evidence.
Speaker 2: Is there any physical evidence tying Byron case to the
Speaker 2: murder of Anastasia Whippolsfugen.
Speaker 5: There is no physical evidence tying Byron case to the
Speaker 5: murder or the death of Anastasia Whipples Fugen. Now the
Speaker 5: only evidence of his involvement is Kelly Moffett.
Speaker 2: Examining everything about Kelly Moffatt is one of the first
Speaker 2: things Brian and the team set out to do. They
Speaker 2: dissect her original story, the story she told at trial,
Speaker 2: her character, and her possible motivations for coming forward almost
Speaker 2: three years after Anastasia's murder, and in no time they
Speaker 2: make a discovery. It's related to something Kelly said under
Speaker 2: oath during her deposition about a month before trial. During
Speaker 2: that deposition, Kelly is asked, quote, do you have any
Speaker 2: prior felony or misdemeanor convictions from state or federal court.
Speaker 2: Kelly answers no. Then later she says, quote, I've never
Speaker 2: been in trouble with the police. Nicole says her research
Speaker 2: turns up something to the contrary.
Speaker 9: I think is the fact that Kelly had been arrested
Speaker 9: and was on probation when she testified, and that the
Speaker 9: prosecution didn't disclose that.
Speaker 2: It has to do with an incident that happened when
Speaker 2: Kelly was seventeen.
Speaker 9: Okay, So in two thousand, Kelly was driving back from Columbia, Missouri,
Speaker 9: with a friend. It was about ten am in the morning.
Speaker 9: They were speeding down I seventy and they had been
Speaker 9: drinking or had a peach vove could bottle in the car.
Speaker 9: Peach knops a lot of the two and was being
Speaker 9: pulled over by a highway trooper. And as they were
Speaker 9: being pulled over, Kelly throws the bottle out the window
Speaker 9: because they're underage. Trooper sees it. He arrests Kelly and
Speaker 9: she goes to jail. Months later, she doesn't show up
Speaker 9: for her court date and a warrant is issued for
Speaker 9: her arrest. And throughout two thousand she has this pending
Speaker 9: warrant until March of two thousand and one, something happens,
Speaker 9: we don't know what that is, and she is brought
Speaker 9: in on that warrant is executed and she's brought in
Speaker 9: on the warrant in Cooper County. Now Kelly lives in
Speaker 9: a different state. She lives in Kansas, and this is
Speaker 9: Cooper County, Missouri.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Kelly pleads guilty to a misdemeanor littering charge. She's
Speaker 2: given two years probation and forty eight hours of shock
Speaker 2: time in the county jail. Shock time is meant to
Speaker 2: do just that shock you into realizing you will be
Speaker 2: spending a lot more time in jail if you mess
Speaker 2: up again. Attorney Sean O'Brien says the issue is not
Speaker 2: only that Kelly lied during her deposition, it's that prosecutors
Speaker 2: didn't disclose her criminal record to Byron's trial attorney Horton.
Speaker 7: Lance, And she's asked us in her deposition, have you
Speaker 7: ever been convicted of a crime? And she says no,
Speaker 7: I've never even been in trouble before. And she's on
Speaker 7: probation as she's saying that, right, and so that was
Speaker 7: a lot.
Speaker 2: Do you think prosecutors knew about this and withheld that?
Speaker 1: Do they know?
Speaker 7: I don't know if they knew, they should have known.
Speaker 7: Under the law, the prosecutor is obliged to go out
Speaker 7: and find information that is in the possession of any
Speaker 7: investigative agency, and in Missouri in particular, the prosecutor has
Speaker 7: peculiar access to criminal records. You know, they can get
Speaker 7: into the highway patrol computer. They would they could have
Speaker 7: found this had they looked for it. But in Horton
Speaker 7: Lance's request for discovery, he specifically asked do any of
Speaker 7: your witnesses have criminal convictions? And the prosecuting attorney in
Speaker 7: their written response says no, they do not. So that
Speaker 7: is a Brady violation.
Speaker 1: I think it's not a quick reminder.
Speaker 2: A Brady violation comes from the landmark Supreme Court case
Speaker 2: Brady v. Maryland, which states that the prosecution must turn
Speaker 2: over any evidence that could be favorable to a defendant.
Speaker 2: But besides the Brady violation, Byron's team says there's a
Speaker 2: second part to this, and it has to do with
Speaker 2: the timeline of it all. They say, Kelly's arrest on
Speaker 2: this littering charge, the warrant being issued and served, her
Speaker 2: eventual guilty plea, and probation, and how it all relates
Speaker 2: to Byron's case is at the very least interesting. I
Speaker 2: put in a foyer request, or in Missouri it's called
Speaker 2: a Sunshine law request to where this arrest took place,
Speaker 2: the town of Boonville in Cooper County, Missouri. I email
Speaker 2: back and forth with a circuit clerk a couple of times,
Speaker 2: who says she can't find the case file, but attached
Speaker 2: the docket sheet, which is basically a list of the
Speaker 2: important dates and events in the case. According to the
Speaker 2: docket sheet, Kelly is arrested on this misdemeanor littering charge
Speaker 2: on April fifteenth, two thousand. It seems she doesn't show
Speaker 2: up for the arraignment on June sixth, so on June
Speaker 2: twenty first, a warrant is issued. Now three months later,
Speaker 2: on September nineteenth, Kelly comes forward to say Byron killed Anastasia.
Speaker 2: On December fifth, the tape recorder is installed at Kelly's parents' house,
Speaker 2: in the hopes Kelly will get a recorded confession out
Speaker 2: of Byron. Then about three months later, on March fourteenth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, the warrant in the littering case
Speaker 2: is served and an arraignment is scheduled. On April third,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, Kelly enters a guilty plea. She
Speaker 2: is given two years probation and forty eight hours shock
Speaker 2: time in jail. Then two months later, on June fifth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, Kelly records the call with Byron,
Speaker 2: which will become the tacit admission. So is the timing
Speaker 2: of Kelly's arrest, cooperation with investigators, guilty plea, and recorded
Speaker 2: call with Byron a coincidence. Investigator Quinn O'Brien wonders if
Speaker 2: there might have been something bigger going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 8: We have been searching so many records to try to
Speaker 8: find where Kelly was arrested and for what to be
Speaker 8: picked up on a warrant suggests that the police stopped
Speaker 8: her or had some kind of contact with her, or
Speaker 8: were told to go pick her up for some reason,
Speaker 8: to arrest her and take her back down to Boonville.
Speaker 8: We can't find those records. Lots of rumors from different witnesses,
Speaker 8: from different friends of Byron's and Kelly's, who say, hey,
Speaker 8: we think she was picked up on major drug charges
Speaker 8: up north, maybe in plattin Platte or Clay County. Other
Speaker 8: people say that she was picked up and she made
Speaker 8: a deal with the prosecution to get out of some
Speaker 8: major drug trafficking charges. I don't know if any of
Speaker 8: that's true. The only thing that we have documented is
Speaker 8: that Kelly was taken back down to Boonville. She did
Speaker 8: do some shock time in the jail, and then it's
Speaker 8: shortly after that that Kelly is able to get Byron
Speaker 8: on the phone.
Speaker 2: While in Missouri, I go in person to Clay County
Speaker 2: to submit my record's request and am told all they
Speaker 2: have is on case net, Missouri's online database of court records.
Speaker 2: Of course, I had already looked there, so I asked
Speaker 2: the records clerk if there might be more that hasn't
Speaker 2: been uploaded to case net.
Speaker 1: She says no.
Speaker 2: I send an email records request to Platte County and
Speaker 2: they respond saying they don't have any criminal records or
Speaker 2: reports for Kelly, so there may be no there there,
Speaker 2: or maybe because Kelly was a minor at the time.
Speaker 2: Some of those records are sealed. Here's Nicole again, not
Speaker 2: even Jackson kindivisory.
Speaker 1: So you have to wonder what happened to.
Speaker 9: For that warrant to be executed and for Kelly to
Speaker 9: be picked up on that warrant at that time in
Speaker 9: a different state, different counting. You know, something happened.
Speaker 1: We don't know.
Speaker 9: Does she turn herself in, does she get into some trouble,
Speaker 9: There's just nothing. Her life was pretty chaotic right now
Speaker 9: during this time, and I do believe that she could
Speaker 9: have gotten herself into a situation where she was desperate,
Speaker 9: vulnerable and offered this information to get herself out of trouble.
Speaker 9: We don't know that for sure, but the timeline makes sense,
Speaker 9: from when she was picked up to when she wanted
Speaker 9: to rehab to when she started cooperating with investigators, when
Speaker 9: she implicated Byron. Something happened and we just don't know
Speaker 9: what that is. And Bob is putting pressure on prosecutors
Speaker 9: right now. I mean, he's gotten the mayor involved. He's
Speaker 9: put a lot of pressure on the people involved in
Speaker 9: this case, and they want to they want to resolve
Speaker 9: it and get Bob off their back.
Speaker 2: I do believe Nicole is, of course referring to Bob,
Speaker 2: Anastasia's father. So these are some serious allegations, and I
Speaker 2: obviously want to ask Kelly about them and so much more.
Speaker 2: The last I heard from her she said she would
Speaker 2: briefly talk with me, So I write her again to
Speaker 2: try and set that up. Here's what she writes back
Speaker 2: in part quote, I'm sorry for the back and forth,
Speaker 2: but there's no need for me to talk to you.
Speaker 2: I stand by my testimony and Byron is guilty. There's
Speaker 2: also more evidence now than ever before that he's guilty,
Speaker 2: So him participating in a podcast is ridiculous. He knows
Speaker 2: he's guilty and that he's wasting everyone's time.
Speaker 1: I truly don't think.
Speaker 2: He has a capacity to feel bad or guilty for
Speaker 2: murdering Anastasia. He was all about ein Rand and Fountainhead.
Speaker 2: Some people matter, some people don't. To him, Anastasia didn't matter,
Speaker 2: and murdering her was just a mistake he made that
Speaker 2: shouldn't quote destroy his entire life. Please use your platform
Speaker 2: to help someone who is truly innocent. You are barking
Speaker 2: up the wrong tree just because Byron can be superficially
Speaker 2: charming and right decently. Doesn't make him some misunderstood intellectual
Speaker 2: who was wrongfully convicted. He's always been full of crap,
Speaker 2: and eventually his mask will fall and you'll see the
Speaker 2: real Hymn. There's a reason he was pursuing me when
Speaker 2: I was in middle school and he was eighteen. No
Speaker 2: one his own age had much respect for him or
Speaker 2: believed any of his stories. Kelly clearly stands by her testimony,
Speaker 2: and her resolve around Byron's guilt seems to be just
Speaker 2: as strong as it was more than twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: I can't discount what she's saying, so all I can
Speaker 2: do is keep asking questions. Even though it seems Kelly
Speaker 2: doesn't want to talk, I Am going to try again.
Speaker 2: So Byron's legal team says, at a minimum, they have
Speaker 2: identified a Brady violation. They assert prosecutors withheld Kelly's criminal
Speaker 2: record from Byron's defense lawyer at the time of the trial,
Speaker 2: which could point to an unfair trial. Yes, but does
Speaker 2: that mean Byron is innocent? No, not necessarily without any
Speaker 2: real proof that some sort of quid pro quo took place.
Speaker 2: It's just pure speculation, right, Byron's attorneys firmly believed that
Speaker 2: there were really only two things that got him convicted,
Speaker 2: Kelly's testimony and the June fifth recorded call, otherwise known
Speaker 2: as the Tacit admission. I have wondered why prosecutors even
Speaker 2: felt the need to set up the recorder to try
Speaker 2: to get Byron on tape confessing when they already had
Speaker 2: Kelly saying she watched Byron with her own eyes kill Anastasia.
Speaker 2: Why not just arrest him as soon as she came forward.
Speaker 2: Here's Sean again.
Speaker 7: I've talked to the assistant prosecutor, one of the assistant
Speaker 7: prosecutors who was on this case. They didn't think that
Speaker 7: Kelly's credibility was sufficient to base a charge on her
Speaker 7: word alone. They were not going to file based on
Speaker 7: anything that Kelly said unless they could somehow corroborate it.
Speaker 7: And so they had discussions in the office about how
Speaker 7: they would do that, and the decision was made in
Speaker 7: September of two thousand to put the recording device on
Speaker 7: Kelly's phone. Kelly then is supposed to try to call
Speaker 7: Byron and get admissions. There isn't really a call that
Speaker 7: is recorded until that June fifth of two thousand and one,
Speaker 7: and that's the alleged tacit admission.
Speaker 2: Now, Kelly that June fifth call was effective at trial.
Speaker 2: Here's Brian again.
Speaker 5: On June fifth, two thousand and one, at approximately eleven
Speaker 5: thirty at night, Kelly finally makes contact. Well, she says,
Speaker 5: finally makes contact with Byron, because she claims that she
Speaker 5: had tried to call him several times before. If she did,
Speaker 5: she did not preserve any of those recordings or any
Speaker 5: recordings of her leaving messages, or if they did preserve those,
Speaker 5: they weren't handed over. Regardless, that's her story that she
Speaker 5: had been trying to call him over and over and
Speaker 5: he wouldn't call her back. Then one night, according to
Speaker 5: Sergeant Kilgore's report, out of the Blue, Kelly just happens
Speaker 5: to make contact with Byron. Byron also just happened to
Speaker 5: have one hundred and two degree fever because he had
Speaker 5: strep throat. And we know he had strep throat because
Speaker 5: the next day, before he knew any of this was
Speaker 5: going on, he went to the doctor and was diagnosed
Speaker 5: with strep throat. So anyway, Kelly calls him at eleven thirty.
Speaker 5: She sounds scared. She sounds confused, and she says, I
Speaker 5: don't understand, Byron, why did you kill Anastasia. If you
Speaker 5: could just tell me why you did that, I might
Speaker 5: be able to make sense of this whole thing. And
Speaker 5: the recording quality is very poor and I don't know
Speaker 5: if that was operator error or the equipment error, but
Speaker 5: it's very hard to hear Byron and what he's saying.
Speaker 6: Why, of course we should Byron says we shouldn't talk
Speaker 6: about this, and then Kelly says, of course.
Speaker 5: She says, what do you mean, and then he says,
Speaker 5: probably because we shouldn't talk about this, and Kelly says,
Speaker 5: of course we should.
Speaker 2: But Brian says he almost falls out of his chair
Speaker 2: one day when he decides to listen to the tape again.
Speaker 5: And I pulled up the audio, and I didn't bother
Speaker 5: to pull up the transcript because I was typing at
Speaker 5: the same time, and I had a kind of a
Speaker 5: high high quality speaker on my computer, and I was
Speaker 5: just listening along and kind of only half paying attention.
Speaker 5: And then I heard him say, after Kelly's rant, he goes,
Speaker 5: we should talk about this as clear as day, and
Speaker 5: I was like, wait, what did he really just say
Speaker 5: we should talk about this, and I must have listened
Speaker 5: to it fifteen times. It was it was like a
Speaker 5: lightning bolt or something. It was great, it was it
Speaker 5: was crazy.
Speaker 2: Attorney Brian Russell believes he has just made a potentially
Speaker 2: huge discovery when he listens to the June fifth recorded
Speaker 2: phone call. He says he can now clearly hear Byron
Speaker 2: say we should talk about this, not we shouldn't, like
Speaker 2: what was asserted at trial. So where did this version
Speaker 2: of the call come from?
Speaker 5: There's well, so I had a digital recording that I
Speaker 5: had gotten from the family's website and then in his file,
Speaker 5: in Byron's file, when I had gathered all those boxes
Speaker 5: up were digital files that were produced in twenty eleven
Speaker 5: and twenty sixteen from the Jackson County Sheriff's Department. That's
Speaker 5: the one I was listening to. The one. The audio
Speaker 5: that I had gotten from the website was low quality,
Speaker 5: hard to hear, and it does sound like maybe he
Speaker 5: says shouldn't, especially if you're reading the transcript while you're
Speaker 5: listening to that.
Speaker 2: Here's Attorney Sean O'Brien.
Speaker 7: And the very next meeting we had, Brian comes in
Speaker 7: and says, you guys need to listen to this without
Speaker 7: the transcript, and we played it and by golly, Byron says,
Speaker 7: we should talk about this and it makes a lot
Speaker 7: more sense.
Speaker 2: Okay, enough of them talking about it. I'm going to
Speaker 2: play both versions for you.
Speaker 1: First.
Speaker 2: Here's some of the lesser quality one.
Speaker 4: Justin said for no reason, she said, for no reason.
Speaker 4: It's just all fucked up. And for some reason they're
Speaker 4: talking to me because you won't talk. That's I'm fucked
Speaker 4: and it makes me look horrible because everybody already knows
Speaker 4: that I'm a fucking crackhead, and I'm a coke head.
Speaker 4: Then I'm an alcoholic and I don't remember shit, and
Speaker 4: if I try to talk them, nothing's gonna add up.
Speaker 4: So I mean, if you could seriously explain to me
Speaker 4: as to why you actually felt the need to show her,
Speaker 4: then that would really help me feel better about the
Speaker 4: whole fucking thing. I mean, there's seriously any reason to
Speaker 4: all this? Why of course we should?
Speaker 2: You mean, do you hear, shouldn't or should? Okay, now
Speaker 2: here's the one that they say is the better quality version.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start it a little bit later into
Speaker 2: the call.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you could seriously, explain to me as
Speaker 4: to why you actually felt the need to call her.
Speaker 4: Then that would really help me feel better about the
Speaker 4: whole fucking thing. I mean, seriously, any reason to all this?
Speaker 1: Talk about this?
Speaker 4: Why of course we should?
Speaker 7: I think I need to talk to you.
Speaker 2: You mean, what do you hear this time? Should or shouldn't?
Speaker 2: Here's Sean again.
Speaker 7: And it makes a lot more sense because when Byron
Speaker 7: says we should talk about this, then Kelly says why,
Speaker 7: and then Byron responds, no, I said we should talk
Speaker 7: about this. That's the inflection in the transcript, and then
Speaker 7: they go on and arrange. To me, that makes a
Speaker 7: lot more sense.
Speaker 2: I asked Sean how there could be two different versions
Speaker 2: of the tape. He says, they soon learn there are
Speaker 2: actually three.
Speaker 7: So we asked the Sheriff's department if we go view
Speaker 7: the evidence, and they let us. We went into a
Speaker 7: big room that had a huge table and all of
Speaker 7: the evidence was laid out on the table, and one
Speaker 7: of the envelopes had three audio tapes in it, all
Speaker 7: of them dated June fifth, twenty, two thousand and one.
Speaker 7: So we opened up those and listened to all three,
Speaker 7: and one did sound better than the other, and then
Speaker 7: there's a third one that there was no sound on
Speaker 7: at all. Now, I can't tell you how there came
Speaker 7: to be two copies of the tape, but I can
Speaker 7: tell you that Teresa Crayon, in a hearing before the trial,
Speaker 7: told Judge Atwell that they had sent the tape off
Speaker 7: to a laboratory in Springfield that cleans up audio. The
Speaker 7: expert said, I'm sorry, we can't help you, but there
Speaker 7: are two tapes in the Sheriff's possession, and I think
Speaker 7: one of those tapes must be the one that came
Speaker 7: back from the lab. I don't know, they don't know,
Speaker 7: I don't know how their copy was made.
Speaker 2: But quick reminder that Teresa Craon was the lead prosecutor
Speaker 2: at trial.
Speaker 5: Here's Brian and again this just goes back to the
Speaker 5: quality of this investigation, the practices and procedures of the
Speaker 5: Jackson County Sheriff's Department at the time. Is just how
Speaker 5: are there three copies without there being a chain of
Speaker 5: custody that says I removed the tape, I made a
Speaker 5: copy of the tape. Here is the tape. You know,
Speaker 5: That's what's so important, and that's what they teach you
Speaker 5: a lot in law school and evidence class is before
Speaker 5: you play something for a jury, you have to be
Speaker 5: able to say, this is what I'm telling you it is,
Speaker 5: and this is how I know what it is, and
Speaker 5: instead the chain of custody for the tape in this
Speaker 5: is Kelly Moffatt had a recording device in her home
Speaker 5: for six months. Her training on it was push record.
Speaker 5: She made a recording in the middle of the night,
Speaker 5: somehow had exclusive custody of the tape for twelve hours
Speaker 5: until Sergeant Kilgore picked it up from Kelly's mom, debim offit,
Speaker 5: and then played it for the prosecutor's office.
Speaker 2: Is there any evidence that suggests that the prosecutors had
Speaker 2: a good version or a better version of the tape
Speaker 2: and the poorer version of the tape, and they chose
Speaker 2: to use the poorer version holding the better version back.
Speaker 5: There's no. We don't have any direct evidence that they
Speaker 5: intentionally withheld the better copy versus whatever was played at trial.
Speaker 2: We do know that, Brian says. The question is not
Speaker 2: only about which tape was used in court, It's also
Speaker 2: about the role the transcript played in the jury's minds.
Speaker 5: Prick your brain if you listen to the lower quality version.
Speaker 5: While you're reading the transcript, you can still hear shouldn't
Speaker 5: or it becomes more ambiguous. And we're still trying to
Speaker 5: figure this out and how to unravel this. I remember
Speaker 5: I was just sitting on the couch one day with
Speaker 5: my kids and one of my sons was watching YouTube
Speaker 5: and a video came up with a bunch of with
Speaker 5: a soccer chant, and there were seven or eight different
Speaker 5: phrases that you could read while you listened to the
Speaker 5: soccer chant, and the soccer chant didn't change. It was
Speaker 5: the same thing over and over. But everything that you read,
Speaker 5: you would hear while you're listening to it. And I
Speaker 5: was like, that's that's what happened. That's if you give
Speaker 5: somebody what you want them to hear and then have
Speaker 5: them listen to something that's hard to understand, they're going
Speaker 5: to hear what they're reading. And then doing more research
Speaker 5: on it, we kind of we figured out that there
Speaker 5: was this thing called the McGirk effect, and where when
Speaker 5: you're seeing some visual cue but listening to something that's
Speaker 5: hard to understand, your brain sent sizes that and then
Speaker 5: you hear what you're seeing.
Speaker 2: The McGirk effect is fascinating. The definition is quite involved,
Speaker 2: but basically, if a person is getting poor quality information
Speaker 2: through listening but good quality information through seeing, they may
Speaker 2: be more likely to experience the McGirk effect, meaning what
Speaker 2: they see is what they hear. The McGirk effect seems
Speaker 2: to be mostly referring to watching someone say something, but
Speaker 2: it can apply to reading the written word too. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of interesting examples of the McGirk effect online.
Speaker 2: I'm going to post some of them on TikTok at
Speaker 2: TRK podcast. Do you think there's any chance that prosecutors
Speaker 2: thought they heard shouldn't?
Speaker 5: Of course there's a chance, and I wasn't there for
Speaker 5: them listening to the tape, And I think that's what's
Speaker 5: important in any investigation, is to make sure you're checking
Speaker 5: your own biases as much as possible. The best case
Speaker 5: scenario is they heard what they wanted to hear, rather
Speaker 5: than fabricating a false transcript. It's just very strange that
Speaker 5: all the mistakes on the transcript happened to incriminate Byron.
Speaker 2: Do you know who typed up the transcript?
Speaker 5: We don't know one hundred percent who typed up the transcript,
Speaker 5: but Sergeant Kilgore signed and initialed the transcript.
Speaker 7: Here's Sean again spont in the transcript that the prosecution
Speaker 7: used a trial. Byron responded, we shouldn't talk about this,
Speaker 7: and then Kelly says what and he said no, I
Speaker 7: said we shouldn't talk about this. That's what the transcript said.
Speaker 7: And so that's really the heart and soul of the
Speaker 7: alleged tacit admission is not exactly a denial, but it's
Speaker 7: a refusal to talk it and they arranged to meet
Speaker 7: in Loose Park. He gives her directions and that's it.
Speaker 7: But the prosecution says that was Byron changing the subject.
Speaker 7: That's how they played it at the trial, and that's
Speaker 7: what they argued to the jury. Is the meaning of that.
Speaker 2: But even with all of this, I asked Brian, how
Speaker 2: big of a difference does it really make if Byron
Speaker 2: said shouldn't or should playing devil's advocate for one second,
Speaker 2: if this were the first time that Kelly ever said
Speaker 2: anything as inflammatory or asked the question why did you
Speaker 2: have to kill her? Wouldn't you think that hearing that
Speaker 2: sort of accusation for the first time would potentially get
Speaker 2: him to answer differently than we should talk about this.
Speaker 5: I think that that is true. I think it makes
Speaker 5: sense if you don't know the history of Byron and
Speaker 5: Kelly's relationship. I think that in the context of Byron
Speaker 5: and Kelly's relationship, his reactions make sense because the last
Speaker 5: time they talked on the phone and got in an argument,
Speaker 5: she called the police and said he was suicidal. And
Speaker 5: so I think that Byron's caution. I think we would
Speaker 5: all expect that if someone accused us of murder, we
Speaker 5: would say, what are you talking about? No, I didn't
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 1: You know I didn't do that.
Speaker 5: But when you're dealing with someone that is emotionally volatile
Speaker 5: and unpredictable, he's treating her like a cornered animal or something.
Speaker 5: She sounds scared. She goes from scared to angry to
Speaker 5: begging all through that phone call. And I think Byron
Speaker 5: was being cautious because not because he didn't want to
Speaker 5: incriminate himself. He's being cautious for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 5: He has an attorney that told him don't talk about
Speaker 5: this with anyone, or they can use your statements against you.
Speaker 5: Even if you say I didn't do it, they could
Speaker 5: still use that against him. And he's being cautious because
Speaker 5: of who Kelly is and the history of their relationship,
Speaker 5: he doesn't want to provoke her. And if she really
Speaker 5: does think in Byron's mind, is she thinks I killed her, well,
Speaker 5: then I need to diffuse this situation, or else she
Speaker 5: might go to the police and say some lie that
Speaker 5: gets me in trouble. And that is all assuming that
Speaker 5: he even heard her allegations or understood them as allegations
Speaker 5: in the first place. For all we know, Byron had
Speaker 5: the phone away from his ear while she's going on
Speaker 5: this minute and a half rant asking him these questions.
Speaker 5: This very well could have been why did you let
Speaker 5: her get out of the car? Or why did you
Speaker 5: let justin drive off? But with the poor quality of
Speaker 5: the connection, I think it makes more sense. And the
Speaker 5: bottom line is the jury never really heard any of
Speaker 5: this stuff. They knew about the They knew a lot
Speaker 5: of these facts in terms of Kelly claiming that Byron
Speaker 5: was suicidal when he wasn't, and all of those things,
Speaker 5: but it was never argued to them during closing that look,
Speaker 5: all of this makes sense in the context of their relationship,
Speaker 5: but that also happened because the state put forth a
Speaker 5: false transcript where he says we shouldn't talk about this.
Speaker 5: It sounds like he's trying to dodge the topic of conversation,
Speaker 5: not diffuse it. Calm it down, and figure out, why
Speaker 5: are you accusing me of this?
Speaker 2: I asked Byron about the June fifth tape. He says
Speaker 2: he never actually heard it until it was played at trial.
Speaker 2: He's only read the transcript or What was your reaction
Speaker 2: to reading we shouldn't talk about this?
Speaker 10: My response to that whole thing, the tape in general,
Speaker 10: it was kind of like I just sort of like
Speaker 10: accepted what was there because I didn't really have a
Speaker 10: strong memory of it other than remembering it taking place,
Speaker 10: and so I kind of was willing to accept, like,
Speaker 10: well anything, you know, we could have said anything that night,
Speaker 10: I don't remember it.
Speaker 1: Not to say that I would be capable of saying anything.
Speaker 10: But just like, there's not a whole lot that would
Speaker 10: have been on that tape necessarily that would have surprised me.
Speaker 10: I guess I don't know how to really explain that,
Speaker 10: but like, the whole situation was bizarre being in the
Speaker 10: situation that I was in, and I've compared it years
Speaker 10: since to being like very much like a short story
Speaker 10: by Kafka because it just kind of it defied logic
Speaker 10: in so many places, and it seemed so counterintuitive at
Speaker 10: so many points.
Speaker 2: I ask Byron what even thinks about there being a
Speaker 2: cleaner version of the call?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 11: I haven't heard this recording, but I've talked now with
Speaker 11: five or six people who have, and every single one
Speaker 11: of them has said that they here should.
Speaker 2: So when you heard that there is something that can
Speaker 2: potentially make the test admission non void, you think and feel.
Speaker 1: Skeptical.
Speaker 2: Byron was first willing to accept that he said shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Then once he learns he may have actually said should,
Speaker 2: he accepts that too.
Speaker 1: Why what does that mean?
Speaker 2: It still doesn't answer why Byron didn't just deny killing
Speaker 2: Anastasia altogether on that call with Kelly. Trust me, we
Speaker 2: are not even close to being done with the June
Speaker 2: fifth call, the should or shouldn't tapes and transcript. I
Speaker 2: of course want to know what Prosecutor Teresa Crayon thinks
Speaker 2: about the cleaner version of the June fifth call the transcript.
Speaker 2: Why Kelly's littering charge and probation status allegedly weren't disclosed
Speaker 2: to Byron's defense attorney and whether or not Kelly may
Speaker 2: have had some other legal troubles around the time she
Speaker 2: came forward and recorded that June fifth call. I email
Speaker 2: her office asking if I can send a list of questions.
Speaker 2: They say yes, but that probably Miss Crayon's only response
Speaker 2: will be the statement they've already sent, which is that
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be appropriate for her to comment until all
Speaker 2: litigation in the matter is complete.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard back.
Speaker 2: As Byron's legal team presses on, they say there's someone
Speaker 2: investigators overlooked, someone They're spending a lot of time looking into.
Speaker 7: I think the suspicious circumstances around his knowledge of the
Speaker 7: crime scene before he was told anything. He knew things
Speaker 7: that he shouldn't have known. He knew where the body
Speaker 7: had been found and when he shouldn't have known that.
Speaker 7: In terms of our thinking, he has not been ruled
Speaker 7: out as a suspect.
Speaker 1: Next time on the real killer.
Speaker 8: When they ask if he keeps guns in the house,
Speaker 8: he says, I don't keep guns in the house. The
Speaker 8: next question the deputy should have asked him was, Okay,
Speaker 8: where do you keep your guns?
Speaker 2: Byron's legal team thinks they may have uncovered a new
Speaker 2: potential suspect or two.
Speaker 5: Anastasia's family had said at the time that if she
Speaker 5: called for a ride, she would have called him. He
Speaker 5: changed his phone number the day after her body was found.
Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 2: those of the individuals participating in the podcast. If you
Speaker 2: or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis,
Speaker 2: please no help is available. Call or text nine to
Speaker 2: eight eight, or chat online at the Suicide and Crisis
Speaker 2: Lifelines website at nine eight eight lifeline dot org. To
Speaker 2: see photos, maps and documents related to this season's story,
Speaker 2: follow The Real Killer podcast on Instagram and at TRK
Speaker 2: podcast on TikTok. The Real Killer is a production of
Speaker 2: AYR Media and iHeartMedia, hosted by me Leah Rothman. Executive
Speaker 2: producers Leah Rothman and Elisa Rosen for AYR Media. Written
Speaker 2: by Leah Rothman, editing and sound design by Cameron Taggi,
Speaker 2: mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi, Production coordinator Andy Levine,
Speaker 2: Audio engineer Justin Longerbeam studio engineer Graham Gibson, Legal counsel
Speaker 2: for AYR Media. Gianni Douglas, executive producer for iHeartMedia, Maya Howard,