The Megyn Kelly Show - ＂Fraud Week＂ Highlights, Scott Peterson Case Lead Detective - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

00:00:00.460 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.160 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's true crime

00:00:16.920 mega episode. We've got some wild ones for you, including two episodes from our fraud

00:00:22.240 week special series of shows, one with Benita Alexander. She's fascinating. A personal

00:00:29.840 story from a longtime NBC News producer, Benita, takes us in depth on how she was fooled by 0.97

00:00:38.140 supposedly one of the world's most charming and successful men. Plus, we have the very first time

00:00:43.880 our pal Matt Murphy was on the show to talk about a case that he prosecuted out in California on

00:00:49.100 the mystery of Ed Shin. And we take a look back at the case of Scott Peterson with the lead

00:00:56.300 detective on that investigation. Enjoy, and we'll see you Monday.

00:01:02.100 We begin with the story of an NBC News producer who fell in love with a super surgeon,

00:01:08.460 a pioneer, a miracle worker. That surgeon was Dr. Paolo Maciarini. The handsome George Clooney

00:01:16.880 lookalike doctor was once the darling of the medical world. He promised incredible

00:01:21.340 developments in regenerative medicine. He was the first person to transplant synthetic windpipes

00:01:27.420 into patients. While covering Paolo for an NBC special, producer Benita Alexander fell for the 0.98

00:01:34.920 doctor. But romantic getaways soon turned into a bed of lies. Benita Alexander is here to tell her

00:01:43.160 story. Benita, it's great to meet you. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me,

00:01:53.160 Megan. It's great to be here. Okay. I've been watching all of it. I did. I watched the Dr.

00:01:59.300 Death thing that originally did this. And then the Netflix special, of course, you did a special

00:02:04.980 on investigative. I mean, like I'm obsessed with your story. It's just, there's so much about it

00:02:11.680 that I find incredibly telling and complex

00:02:15.700 and it raises so many issues.

00:02:17.780 Not to mention the fact that you were a star news producer

00:02:21.040 and I love star news producers.

00:02:23.360 You remind me in so many ways of my own star news producers

00:02:26.600 who I love on my team.

00:02:28.640 And it's one of those things where like,

00:02:30.820 if this could happen to you, it could happen to anybody.

00:02:33.480 Because not only are you smart and savvy, 0.99

00:02:36.480 but you are literally in the business of detecting bullshit. 0.99

00:02:42.480 And yet, right? 0.88

00:02:44.100 So that's some of the things that make it so compelling.

00:02:48.160 So let's start at the beginning

00:02:49.080 for people who are not aware of the story

00:02:50.900 and even people who are aware

00:02:52.100 are gonna be interested to hear you tell it

00:02:53.480 as I have been so many times.

00:02:55.600 You're an NBC News producer

00:02:57.040 and you get asked by Meredith Vieira,

00:03:01.280 who is an NBC, to work on a special

00:03:04.720 based on a doctor that she had read about,

00:03:07.940 I guess, in a magazine,

00:03:09.140 because this guy, Paolo Macchiarini,

00:03:11.540 was getting some press at the time for this very innovative thing he was doing in medicine. So take

00:03:17.260 us there. Yeah, we were actually looking at doing a documentary about regenerative medicine, which

00:03:23.380 is this very promising, exciting field where, to boil it down to its most simple terms, we're

00:03:29.700 looking at a future where you make new body parts and organs in the lab. And this has so much

00:03:34.740 potential, right, to eradicate the need for donor organs and all the problems that come with it

00:03:40.960 and just basically go to lab and order a new body part. And so there's a lot of excitement

00:03:47.200 attached to this field. And when we started looking into it, Dr. Paolo Macchiarini's name

00:03:52.060 kept coming up. He was considered the pioneer in this field, at the forefront of this groundbreaking

00:03:58.480 revolutionary field. And his nickname was the super surgeon. And he worked at the place in

00:04:04.860 Sweden that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine. And so there were tons of accolades, tons of

00:04:11.440 press. I mean, he kind of had this reputation like he walked on water and people were clamoring

00:04:16.520 to work with him. And there was just a lot of excitement surrounding this man.

00:04:22.500 So you decide to do a profile on him along. He's going to get the long form NBC treatment.

00:04:28.480 And this is in advance of him performing one of these surgeries on a little two-year-old

00:04:33.720 girl, right? 0.66

00:04:34.560 And where was she located?

00:04:37.040 So he was about to do one of his transplants on this Korean toddler, beautiful little girl

00:04:42.780 named Hannah, who had tragically been born with no windpipe at all.

00:04:47.060 So she had spent her entire little life in the hospital.

00:04:49.700 She had never left the hospital.

00:04:50.840 And she was going to be the first toddler that had received one of these transplants 0.61

00:04:57.140 and also the youngest person in the world and the first one ever operated on in the US. And so that

00:05:03.180 made that case appealing to us. And then I talked to her family who are just the most beautiful

00:05:09.460 people, her parents, and they had been through so much, you know, trying to save this little girl's

00:05:14.880 life and they were besides themselves. And they thought that Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was

00:05:19.960 the answer to their prayers, basically the savior, he was going to step in and save the day when

00:05:25.740 nobody else could. And that was the reputation that this man had. And so we decided to focus

00:05:30.020 our story around Hannah and her family and follow her surgery. So you and he have to spend a lot of

00:05:38.380 time together. As much as the anchor spends some time with the star guest on a piece like that,

00:05:44.580 the producers spend way more time with him. The producers all do, but especially the lead,

00:05:50.280 which you were. And yeah, what happened? Like he was, is a good looking man. He does look a little

00:05:56.720 like George Clooney. Um, he's, is he, I can't remember what he's Italian. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

00:06:03.720 So he's Italian that you got that going for him too. Exactly. He's very charming. He's one of

00:06:08.880 those people that has that quality that when he walks into a room, you know, he turns head people,

00:06:14.620 people pay attention to him. He's got that commanding presence. You know, he's very

00:06:18.660 arrogant, very confident, very self-assured. He speaks five or six different languages.

00:06:25.440 You know, he's Italian. He dressed very well. He's, you know, he's kind of flirtatious with 1.00

00:06:32.700 everybody, men and women. And he's got that confident air. And also on top of that, here

00:06:38.700 he is doing something that literally nobody else in the world was doing. He's rumored to be in

00:06:43.880 contention for a Nobel Prize himself. And he seemed to be very devoted to giving hope to

00:06:52.260 patients who had no other hope. So there was something very intriguing about him and something

00:06:57.260 very admirable. And so just start with all that, you know, and we had a joke in the office that,

00:07:03.820 oh, you know, he's a George Clooney lookalike. He definitely had that appeal. But then when I met

00:07:08.920 him, he seemed to be incredibly caring. We were friends first. We just started talking a lot over

00:07:15.860 a coffee after a shoot, a dinner after a shoot, on long plane rides. We flew Hannah all the way

00:07:22.060 from Korea to Illinois. I, at the time, was at a very vulnerable place in my life. I would not

00:07:28.500 realize how vulnerable until much later and how susceptible that made me. But my ex-husband of our

00:07:35.180 then nine-year-old daughter was tragically dying of brain cancer. And I was sort of holding it

00:07:41.000 together at work, but inside, I think I was crumbling. I was facing the enormity of what

00:07:47.320 this meant for the rest of her life, for our lives. How was I going to cope with this? How

00:07:52.060 was she going to cope with this? You know, all of it. And I started pouring my heart out to him

00:07:57.580 and he just seemed like such an attentive, caring listener. And that's what kind of blew me away.

00:08:04.340 It was none of the other stuff.

00:08:05.840 It was the fact that this man seemed to genuinely care about this little girl, my daughter, that he'd never met.

00:08:12.320 And that's what got me.

00:08:14.460 He, in some of these documentaries, they show clips of him with Hannah, the two-year-old girl, and with other patients.

00:08:23.280 And his bedside manner seems impeccable.

00:08:27.280 It's beautiful.

00:08:29.340 Exactly.

00:08:30.020 So I can see how you were fooled.

00:08:31.920 Yeah. 0.95

00:08:32.760 Well, that's, I look at those videos now and I think, you know, damn it, that's exactly the way 0.87

00:08:36.800 he was with me. I mean, he appears to be exactly the opposite of what he actually is and what he

00:08:42.480 actually turned out to be, but he, he just seems so caring, so genuinely caring and attentive and

00:08:50.520 really a really good listener. You know, now, of course, I realized he was gathering information

00:08:56.340 to use against me, but at the time I just thought he was an incredible human being.

00:09:00.760 Oh, that's very interesting.

00:09:01.980 I want to return to that.

00:09:02.980 I haven't heard you cover that in your earlier pieces.

00:09:05.660 There's a lot I want to ask you that I, you know, just watching all of this, I have a

00:09:09.300 lot of questions for you outside of the story that I'm like, oh, I got to know this and

00:09:12.060 I got to, okay, gathering information.

00:09:14.320 We got to come back to that.

00:09:17.080 So it moves quickly and we can spend a minute on the ethical piece.

00:09:21.700 You're not really supposed to date your, the subject of your piece.

00:09:25.380 You knew that sometimes it happens.

00:09:27.700 it's not great, but you deal with it when it happened. In this case, it is interesting that

00:09:34.340 it happened because in retrospect, do you believe he made it happen so that you would be so distracted

00:09:41.780 by him and your blossoming love affair that you would not be paying attention to the medical

00:09:46.640 problems surrounding his supposedly groundbreaking work? I now believe that I was targeted from day

00:09:56.220 one. You know, he had a plan from day one and it was not what I thought it was. You know, I thought

00:10:03.340 we were genuinely falling in love and this man was sweeping me off my feet. I now believe when I met

00:10:09.140 him in 2013, the world still thought he was the super surgeon. He was a superstar. You know, he

00:10:14.920 was doing this groundbreaking pioneering procedure, you know, getting all sorts of press, all sorts of

00:10:20.320 accolades. Behind the scenes, the whistleblowers were starting to figure out that something was

00:10:27.780 wrong. Patients were dying. However, at the time, he was still sticking by what he said

00:10:33.520 and has continued to say all along, that whenever you do an experimental procedure,

00:10:38.740 patients do die, which is actually true. You know, you look at heart transplants,

00:10:42.660 lung transplants, anything new, radical and experimental, patients do die at the beginning.

00:10:48.040 However, you know, what he wasn't telling the world and what nobody knew yet was that he had not done one single one of the preliminary steps that you're supposed to do before doing an experimental procedure on humans.

00:11:03.200 He had literally skipped everything. And he's standing at press conferences and interviews saying that his patients are doing beautifully well when, in fact, they were suffering and they were dying slow, horrible deaths.

00:11:14.880 he's lying about the success in papers so all this is happening the world does not know this

00:11:21.360 yet unfortunately I wish we had but he had to know right that it was going to implode it was

00:11:26.980 a matter of time it was a it was just a ticking time bomb so I think he met me and he thought

00:11:33.320 okay here's this successful smart journalist and I'm going to make her fall in love with me 1.00

00:11:38.960 and when the shit hits the fan I'm going to have her in my back pocket so she's going to protect 0.99

00:11:43.720 me. I think that's exactly what he was doing. I think he was using me. Yeah, because you're 0.99

00:11:49.060 a top producer, all sorts of awards, Edward R. Murrow and so on. And you're working for

00:11:56.680 one of the top anchors at NBC as well on this piece, Meredith Vieira. And you're super smart. 0.97

00:12:04.400 So if he can get you to vouch for him in this piece and on an ongoing basis, it's huge. That's

00:12:10.560 gold. So I can see, yeah, that was my suspicion in watching it. Cause that's one of my big

00:12:15.080 questions all along is why, why, why, why, why, why did he do this to her? And especially cause

00:12:20.240 you were so vulnerable and you were going through this personal family tragedy and your poor

00:12:24.300 daughter. So, okay. So that's our suspicion right now is that it was an intentional latching on.

00:12:30.960 You're supposed to be investigating him. I mean, a producer investigates, but it's not like you're

00:12:35.480 treated like a private detective where you're really expected to unearth any crime attached

00:12:40.880 to the guy. You have to do a reasonable level of research on him. When you were doing that and

00:12:46.020 also falling in love, were there red flags? You know, did you see that patients had been dying

00:12:51.060 on this? You know, he had this fake trachea that he would put into this synthetic trachea that he

00:12:56.600 would coat in the patient's own stem cells and put it in their necks as a new trachea to replace

00:13:01.380 one's drunken by cancer, or in the case of the little girl, Hannah, that was never there,

00:13:06.400 that she'd been born without one. So had you seen any of those red flags or deaths?

00:13:12.200 You know, there was an investigation in Italy, which had nothing to do with the plastic tracheas,

00:13:19.160 and he was put on house arrest and accused of extortion. And that raised some red flags for

00:13:24.920 a minute. We actually considered putting the story on hold. And in fact, there was a hold

00:13:29.000 in bringing Hannah to Illinois during that time while the FDA investigated. But then the lawyers

00:13:33.980 in Illinois came back, the FDA came back and everybody said, no, it's fine. He's clear. The

00:13:38.460 charges were dropped. It's, you know, all a misunderstanding. And so that seemed fine. And

00:13:42.840 if the FDA is endorsing him and, you know, a hospital is still bringing him all the way to

00:13:48.580 Illinois to do this very radical transplant, that seemed okay. With the patients dying,

00:13:55.380 he was still at the time able to stick by this argument that these patients are pioneers and

00:14:01.400 whenever you do something experimental you're learning and people do die and all of that is

00:14:07.300 valid if you've done everything you're supposed to do but again what nobody knew is that he hadn't

00:14:12.520 done everything he was supposed to do and he was literally using people as human guinea pigs i mean

00:14:17.880 it's it's atrocious it's all beyond awful but at the time you the patients even the patients of

00:14:24.580 that died, their families were still supporting him. The hospital in Illinois still supported

00:14:31.220 him after Hannah died. The FDA was backing him. Karolinska, for goodness sakes, the place that

00:14:37.260 awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine, they're still employing him. They're still endorsing him. They're

00:14:41.340 still backing him. So there was no reason, you know, really to doubt him. And anytime you're

00:14:48.940 doing something radically new and you're a pioneer, you're going to have critics, of course, right? And

00:14:53.440 he did have critics but most of the criticism was about the fact that he was running all over the

00:14:58.940 world and he didn't stick around long after doing the transplants to take care of the patients and

00:15:04.700 he seemed more like an arrogant surgeon than anything else um yeah there just wasn't there

00:15:10.960 wasn't enough there yet you know unfortunately i i in hindsight god i wish we had known but

00:15:16.240 nobody did sure if you had approached and it was like nine out of nine patients have died

00:15:20.800 NBC would have done a very different, a hard turn away from this guy. I believe that fully,

00:15:26.520 but I understand medicine and these new procedures do go through, you know, highs and lows when

00:15:31.880 they're first being unleashed. And he was pretty open about that. He was talking about that in a

00:15:36.240 way that sounded credible, like, Hey, you know, these are experimental procedures. I'm not trying

00:15:40.620 to hide that. And I only am really kind of doing it on people who have no hope, who are willing to

00:15:47.940 take this huge risk. And yet what he knew and what they didn't know is, you know, this hasn't

00:15:54.140 been tested. He didn't do the animal trials. He's done nothing. You are a human guinea pig. You're

00:15:58.920 the first line of experimentation, and there's been no success with it so far. Here he is.

00:16:04.100 This is from Bad Surgeon on Netflix, and it's footage from an old interview of Paolo talking

00:16:10.580 about this very issue. The more complex the surgery is, the more higher the chances of risk

00:16:16.400 you take the first liver transplant the first kidney transplant the first heart transplant

00:16:22.080 did they go all well no we don't have the magic crystal to show in to look in the future

00:16:30.100 i think that this is the future

00:16:32.420 okay and we'll get to the specifics unfolding after this so you're working with him

00:16:39.240 in early 2013 on this NBC News piece

00:16:43.440 and things are starting to unfold.

00:16:46.020 You're spending lots of time together over in Europe.

00:16:48.380 It's romantic and you know, it's not exactly professional,

00:16:51.200 but it's hard and I'm sure you're feeling sad

00:16:54.060 over your ex-husband dying and all the things.

00:16:57.000 And then it was, what, June of 2013,

00:17:01.740 you flew to Venice, had an incredibly romantic weekend.

00:17:05.380 By the way, he was very generous.

00:17:06.680 This was not a financial con.

00:17:08.100 He paid for everything.

00:17:08.880 Yeah, everything. I mean, that's one of the things that distinguishes him. And it's also so perplexing because most con artists, you look at somebody like the Tinder Swindler or all these other ones that we've heard of, their motive is money, right? They're trying to get money. Money was a non-issue. He was exceedingly generous, you know, over the top generous, not just with me and my daughter, my friends, my family, you know, lavish vacations, everything over the top.

00:17:35.160 he would take 20 people out to dinner and pay for everything, you know, buy the most expensive

00:17:40.440 champagne. I mean, he was just extraordinarily extravagant and generous. You know, even things

00:17:49.220 like I had a friend that was going through breast cancer and he insisted that we send her some money

00:17:53.640 for her treatment because she was struggling at the time. He, yeah, money was a non-issue.

00:17:58.520 mm-hmm so christmas 2013 he proposed things moved very quickly had the piece aired yet

00:18:08.960 no but it was we were done shooting it we had been done shooting it for a while and it's it's

00:18:14.880 sat for a long time as as you know stories sometimes do before they actually hit the air

00:18:19.820 and this one sat for a long time it was i think uh june of 2014 when it finally aired it might

00:18:26.120 have been April, May. But it sat for a long time, which was frustrating. I mean, we were in a

00:18:32.360 difficult position. I mean, as you said, I had crossed this invisible but very important ethical

00:18:38.700 line that you're not supposed to cross in journalism for a very good reason, right? You

00:18:42.240 don't get involved with the source of your story because then your objectivity could go out the

00:18:45.720 window. And it wasn't like I didn't struggle with that. I did. And I had actually pushed him away

00:18:51.400 for a few months and said, we have to wait. We have to wait until the story airs. We can't be

00:18:55.400 together. But it was just so difficult, especially in the wake of my ex-husband actually passing

00:19:00.280 away. And then I had my own health scare on top of it the same year. And even all my friends and

00:19:07.560 family were just like, are you crazy? This man's nuts about you. You know, he's madly in love with 1.00

00:19:11.860 you. What are you waiting for? But this proposal was a surprise. And that's another, in hindsight,

00:19:19.960 another red flag it is things moved very very quickly you know and in the normal trajectory

00:19:26.540 trajectory of a relationship you know things take time right it takes time to fall in love but

00:19:31.460 as that's one similar similarity he does have to other con artists everything was on the fast track

00:19:37.060 everything was moving at rapid fire speed you know he said I love you very quickly he was talking

00:19:42.600 about marrying me very quickly moving in very quickly because he was in a rush I didn't realize

00:19:47.700 that right I just thought it was all very romantic but um so yeah and the the beauty of the proposal

00:19:53.920 because this man was so over the top with everything you know I'd walk into a hotel room

00:19:58.980 and they'd be every time rose petals all over the floor you know bouquets everywhere champagne

00:20:04.080 everywhere and the proposal was just simple it was just me and my daughter and Paolo at home

00:20:10.020 at Christmas and he just handed me a little box without saying anything and I had no idea it was

00:20:16.600 coming but yeah we we actually have a bit of you talking about this uh in the in the special

00:20:22.700 bad surgeon again that's the netflix version of bonita story here it is fast forward christmas

00:20:28.180 2013 paulo came to stay in new york with me it was very casual he cooked a big elaborate meal

00:20:36.640 he handed me this little box and i opened the box

00:20:42.900 and it's this beautiful diamond ring oh my god i just i i kind of froze

00:20:53.520 and then i said to him is this what i think it is and he just smiled and he nodded i said wow

00:21:06.260 you know i was completely floored

00:21:09.900 so he was love bombing you yeah i mean it was a long slow form of love bombing because we were

00:21:20.360 together almost two years and it never stopped in the two years it wasn't this sort of only love

00:21:25.940 bombing you at the beginning but the love love bombing is very calculated also everything about

00:21:31.640 this, I think was calculated. The love bombing is designed, you know, you're, you feel like you're

00:21:36.940 in the clouds, you're floating sort of on a cloud of bliss. And it's very intentional because then

00:21:43.040 you don't look at anything else. You don't question anything. You don't, it's designed

00:21:47.040 to sort of put you in a haze and distract you from what's really going on. I wonder, you know,

00:21:52.740 as I watch that, I think maybe it's just personal preference. I'm not sure. I feel like if somebody

00:21:57.420 did that to me like constantly because i saw every voicemail was like my love my love i think i'd be

00:22:02.220 like and it's a no but would you have said that too prior to meeting him yeah a hundred percent

00:22:09.800 that's not my style at all and actually we did have you know it's interesting because not only

00:22:14.940 was it always these consistent lavish over-the-top gestures but also he was videotaping

00:22:20.420 everything all the time like the video camera was never not on and we had arguments about that i

00:22:26.620 said, you know, number one, I don't need all this. You don't need to do something every time we go on

00:22:31.940 vacation. It's too much. You know, it's kind of embarrassing. You know, everything was a show.

00:22:37.760 And also, why do you have to videotap everything? We don't have to, you know, document every moment,

00:22:43.320 which now is bizarre. It was sort of like he was documenting his own demise because he left

00:22:48.320 so much video. Yeah. That's it's great. Can I ask you why? Why do you think he was doing that?

00:22:55.740 Because you'd think somebody who's, and we'll get into the details of what exactly, you know, we know now about him while he was doing all this.

00:23:01.640 But you'd think anybody who's doing something somewhat nefarious would not want it all on tape.

00:23:06.820 Which is interesting because now when I talk to women who've been conned by men, a lot of them talk about the fact that the man would never pose for a photograph with her, right?

00:23:15.900 But this was exactly the opposite.

00:23:17.660 I think it just goes hand in hand with the narcissistic arrogance.

00:23:23.320 I think this man thought he would never get caught.

00:23:26.860 And I think he got a sick thrill out of lying to people and conning people.

00:23:32.280 And I just think it was part of the game.

00:23:35.320 Gosh, it's disturbing, but I think you're right.

00:23:38.320 That's how it feels.

00:23:39.080 So there comes a day in which he reveals to you that he's got, in addition to this amazing

00:23:47.160 ability to create these regenerative tracheas that he implants.

00:23:52.900 and the people who are suffering,

00:23:55.720 he's got this secret client list

00:23:57.760 and he's got this secret life as VIP surgeon

00:24:02.000 to the most well-known people on earth.

00:24:06.660 And I have to say, I defend you on this piece of the story.

00:24:11.340 I believe coming into it with this amount of press

00:24:14.460 and this amount of like medical professionals

00:24:17.040 touting this guy, this would be believable.

00:24:19.360 this is who Barack Obama might quietly see on the side, right?

00:24:24.280 So give us a feel for the number of, you know, celebs he said he was secretly catering to.

00:24:30.800 So it first came up actually right after he proposed because it was Christmas

00:24:34.140 and he said he couldn't stick around for New Year's and I was not happy about it.

00:24:38.380 And I kept peppering him with questions.

00:24:40.240 Well, you know, where do you have to go?

00:24:41.360 And he kept saying it's an important surgery.

00:24:42.780 It's an important surgery.

00:24:43.720 I'm like, come on.

00:24:44.780 And finally, that's when he said, look, I have to tell you something.

00:24:47.260 And of course, it was all built up with, I've never told this to anyone before.

00:24:51.400 Even my ex-wife doesn't know about this and blah, blah.

00:24:55.240 And he said, I'm part of a very clandestine secret network of doctors from around the

00:25:02.020 world of all different specialties.

00:25:03.860 And we cater to the world's most important people, famous people, dignitaries, because

00:25:09.760 these people don't want their private medical life, you know, known in public.

00:25:14.400 And he told me that New Year's that he was going to take care of Hillary Clinton and that he had been taking care of the Clintons for some time and that he was friends with Bill Clinton.

00:25:24.720 I thought it was ridiculous. And I said, I've never heard of anything like this. This is absurd.

00:25:31.520 However, I did call I called a friend in L.A. who's very connected to a lot of celebrities.

00:25:36.240 And I just said, look, you know, is this feasible? You know, and, you know, she said, Benita, come on.

00:25:40.960 She said, you don't think these people have private personal doctors?

00:25:44.100 Of course they do.

00:25:44.880 They all do.

00:25:45.920 You know, they all have doctors that fly to them privately and, you know, they're private

00:25:49.540 jets.

00:25:49.940 They don't want everything made public.

00:25:52.500 So on the one hand, it seemed, yeah.

00:25:54.700 So on the one hand, it seemed absurd.

00:25:56.780 And on the other, it didn't.

00:25:58.800 And I understand why people who have never sort of been in these circles or don't understand

00:26:04.480 this type of lifestyle would go, come on, that's not true.

00:26:06.800 But I don't think it's so far from the truth, you know?

00:26:09.400 It's not far from the truth.

00:26:10.740 I don't have such a doctor in my life, though I would love one. But I know doctors as friends

00:26:16.000 who get, they get offered $250,000 to fly to Saudi Arabia and help somebody. If you have

00:26:22.020 enough money, this is how you live. And this is how you expect to be taken care of.

00:26:26.600 Right. Right. So he, the name sort of dribbled out over time because it was all,

00:26:32.980 you know, so secretive and he wasn't supposed to be telling me, but it ended up being,

00:26:38.620 um i mean all kinds of people the emperor of japan of all people was in there people in russia

00:26:44.260 because he had a very very lucrative multi-million if not billion dollar grant um in russia to do

00:26:51.340 clinical trials in russia so he said that was real he did have that yeah that was real yeah

00:26:56.120 that was real and then all kinds of celebrities you know the obamas the clintons the sarkozis

00:27:03.280 from France. I'm trying to even remember who they all were. It was a long list. And people

00:27:08.520 at the Vatican, which will become very instrumental.

00:27:17.980 So you're going to get married, but he can't spend New Year's with you because he's got to go take

00:27:21.880 care of some very important clients. And these are his secret patients. And then I do not understand

00:27:28.560 this piece of the story, I don't understand. Why did he say, let's get married by the Pope

00:27:38.800 at the Pope's summer residence, the Apostolic Palace of Castle Gandolfo? Why take it there?

00:27:50.440 Well, yeah, this gets unfortunately very simplified. And I understand from an outsider's

00:27:55.500 perspective why people say, oh, give me a break. You know, she really thought the, sorry, fucking 0.99

00:28:00.040 Pope was going to marry her. Like who believes that? I get that. But it did not happen like that. 1.00

00:28:04.220 It was a very, very slow, meticulous weaving of this very clever lie. It started with,

00:28:12.660 he wanted a big Catholic wedding in Italy. And I said, well, how's that going to work? You know,

00:28:17.140 we're both divorced or so I thought, and I'm not even Catholic, you know, and I don't know much

00:28:22.240 about the Catholic religion, but I don't think Italy lets divorces get married in the Catholic

00:28:26.260 church. And he said, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it all. I was very, very busy at the

00:28:32.680 time. I had a new job at NBC. Meredith had a new talk show and I was working crazy hours. And he

00:28:38.240 said, look, you're too busy. Let me take over the planning of the wedding. Let me go and find us a

00:28:43.440 priest in Italy that will marry us. And so he spent months, actually, supposedly going to one

00:28:50.040 church after another in Italy trying to find a priest that would marry us. And he would send me

00:28:58.560 pictures of these churches. He would send me long texts, you know, all kinds of stuff. And this went

00:29:05.320 on for months and months and months. And finally, he just said, I can't find a priest that's willing

00:29:09.840 to marry two divorcees. And I said, what are we going to do? And he said, you know, I said, maybe

00:29:18.660 we should think of something else. Maybe we should go and get married on a beach. And he said, look,

00:29:22.780 I'm going to go to Rome and call in a favor. And I said, what do you mean? And he said,

00:29:28.340 I'm going to go to the Vatican. Now, as ridiculous as that sounds, he had told me that he had done 0.90

00:29:33.860 consulting work at the Vatican, which again, as absurd as it sounds on the one hand also made 0.83

00:29:39.240 sense. This is one of the world's leading cardiothoracic surgeons. This is a man who's

00:29:45.040 rumored to be in contention for the Nobel Prize, who is doing something that nobody else in the

00:29:50.000 world is doing. He's Italian. Why wouldn't he be called in to consult at the Vatican? And he had

00:29:55.160 told me and many other people that he had helped consult on the previous pope's health care,

00:30:00.480 who actually had his trachea taken out, had a tracheotomy. He did not say that he took care

00:30:04.880 of him directly. He just said that he was called to the Vatican to help. And I had heard other

00:30:09.800 doctors talking about this. I had seen paperwork talking about the work that Paolo had done at the

00:30:16.200 Vatican. So this was not so ridiculous. And that's when he told me, look, the Pope is one of my 0.66

00:30:23.020 clients. He's one of my secret celebrity clients that I'm not allowed to tell anybody. So then he

00:30:28.760 says he's going to the Vatican to ask him for help, ostensibly finding us a priest to marry us.

00:30:34.600 And that's when everything went crazy town because he calls me after this meeting. This was now October of 2014. And he says, look, I have great news. They've agreed to help us. They'll find a priest that will marry us. And I said, great. And he said, and there's something else, you know, and it's all so dramatic. He said, sit down and all this nonsense. And he said, Pope Francis actually agreed to marry us himself.

00:30:58.900 And I said, oh, bullshit. 0.99

00:31:00.520 You know, I said, the Pope doesn't even marry people. 1.00

00:31:02.380 You know, I thought he was playing some kind of game with me, to be honest.

00:31:04.940 And I was so pissed off.

00:31:06.260 And I actually hung the phone up on him.

00:31:08.420 And I went straight to my desk.

00:31:10.860 I was at work and I literally Googled, does the Pope marry people?

00:31:14.660 But what popped up was one month earlier, September of 2014, the Pope had married 20

00:31:19.900 couples in the Vatican.

00:31:21.420 And these were all couples that were, quote unquote, living in sin, you know, that were

00:31:25.120 not, had children out of wedlock or whatever.

00:31:28.080 So the Pope actually can marry people if he wants to.

00:31:31.100 That's the first thing.

00:31:31.980 People think he can't.

00:31:33.000 He can if he wants to.

00:31:34.840 So it took some convincing.

00:31:36.500 You know, it took about three, four days, maybe a week, actually, of Paolo convincing

00:31:41.820 me.

00:31:42.080 And this was also very clever.

00:31:43.900 His argument to me was that because he was the Pope's personal private doctor, and because

00:31:49.720 this is this very forward-thinking, progressive Pope, that the Pope had been looking for

00:31:55.220 a couple of divorces that he could use a sort of poster, a poster couple to marry publicly to make

00:32:02.020 a statement that he was willing to open the doors of the Catholic Church to divorces. And

00:32:07.380 the Pope wanted to do Paolo a favor to thank him for being his private personal doctor. And we

00:32:14.180 now needed to do the Pope a favor and do this. And so it almost became not about us anymore.

00:32:20.340 It wasn't even about our wedding.

00:32:21.840 Paolo made it sound like this was an obligation, that by virtue of—he wanted to do this for the Pope, and by virtue of being his fiancée, I had to go along for the ride, and I needed to do this because this was going to—I might not care because I'm not Catholic, but this would help open the doors of the Catholic Church to, you know, divorces. 0.52

00:32:40.760 Put it in that context, it makes sense because this is not just like Joe Schmoe, who you met at the Olive Garden, saying that the Pope wants to perform the wedding.

00:32:52.600 Exactly.

00:32:53.340 Well, that's what I always say.

00:32:54.740 It's not like I woke up one day and he went, hey, the Pope's going to marry us.

00:32:57.900 And I went, oh, great.

00:32:58.800 You know, it just didn't happen like that, you know?

00:33:00.940 No, he had credentials that could potentially make that an actual thing, or at least some of them were real and some of them were fake.

00:33:08.860 but he had been laying the foundation for you to believe all of this, this, this level of lie

00:33:13.720 for months. Right. So it's not as outlandish as it seems, but what I don't understand what I,

00:33:21.340 so I understood all that. Like I, I saw how he, how he got you. What I don't understand is now

00:33:26.240 with retrospect, can you say, why would he do that? Like, I get why he would woo you and try

00:33:33.880 to reel you in, but why take it to that potentially catastrophic level? It was unnecessary. Why do you

00:33:43.900 think he did it? Complete all of it was unnecessary. And it just kept growing and growing. I don't

00:33:49.560 know. I can't get inside the man's head. I'm not an expert. I can't diagnose him. I believe

00:33:55.580 he's at a minimum, a pathological liar. I think he's probably also a sociopath and he's an extreme 0.98

00:34:03.600 narcissist. And I think people like that don't really have a plan. I think they get a sick

00:34:10.440 brush out of the lie. They get a high out of it, out of getting away with it. And they usually do

00:34:18.540 get away with it. And the more they get away with, the more they want to up the ante and the bigger

00:34:24.900 the high, it's like a drug. And so they don't have a plan. They're just kind of putting one foot in

00:34:29.820 front of the other. And it's like a game, you know, and I think they just think somehow they're

00:34:33.780 going to wiggle their way out of this because usually they do. Yes, because he did not need

00:34:39.040 to propose to you in the first place. You know, he could have rolled along, as you said, it kind

00:34:43.300 of happened soon. He could have just been rolled, rolling along in a relationship if he just wanted

00:34:47.020 you to be close and in his corner. And he certainly didn't need to come up with this.

00:34:51.780 We're going to get married, you know, at the Pope's private residence by the Pope himself.

00:34:55.380 like all of it was so extraordinary. And I completely agree with every word you said

00:35:01.940 about the high they get. And I do think, yes, it's no accident. He chose you as an NBC news

00:35:08.620 producer and somebody with access to, you know, power and messaging that could be beneficial to

00:35:13.340 him. But I also think your smarts were part of the calculation. He enjoyed that. He liked that.

00:35:19.900 Exactly. That's part of the rush. I think they often target smart, intelligent women because that is part of the rush. You know, if I can, if I can pull it over on her, you know, it just, and that also going back to an earlier thing with all the extravagant, elaborate surprises he was doing.

00:35:38.600 I always thought that was for me, right?

00:35:40.560 You know, the roses, the lavish trips, everything.

00:35:45.480 And I now realize it wasn't for me at all.

00:35:48.120 None of it.

00:35:48.660 It was all about feeding his ego.

00:35:50.380 You know, when we went to a hotel and the staff was gushing because, you know, they

00:35:55.140 had helped prepare the room with all the roses and the champagne and women at desks were 0.97

00:35:59.900 pulling me aside and saying, you know, does he have a brother?

00:36:03.060 How do I meet somebody like him?

00:36:05.340 And it was all for show.

00:36:06.580 It's all for his ego.

00:36:07.460 It's all about narcissism.

00:36:09.740 None of it had to do with me.

00:36:11.020 Me swooning over him and me being in awe of, you know, the adulation and just adoring him was just feeding his narcissistic ego.

00:36:23.240 It's in part, it's a conquest.

00:36:25.700 He said Andrea Bocelli was going to sing during the wedding service.

00:36:30.460 I mean, right in line with all these extraordinary attendees.

00:36:33.680 he said, he said that among those who would be attending the wedding would include Mr.

00:36:39.540 Mrs. Obama, Mr. Mrs. Clinton, Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin. I mean, he really, but again, he's got

00:36:45.460 actual connections to all, he is performing these, you know, swing for the fences surgeries

00:36:49.800 in Russia. So it, it, it, it sounds crazy now. We know it is crazy. Yeah. She's built it up

00:36:57.620 appropriately. But then here's another big moment. Uh, in anticipation of your move to Europe to

00:37:04.560 be his wife, uh, you on May 13th left your job at NBC and notified your daughter's school that

00:37:12.100 she would not be coming back. I know this maybe seems small ball in the grants, but like he let

00:37:18.240 you quit your job. He let you pull your daughter out of school. Exactly. Exactly. And it was,

00:37:27.620 a very difficult decision for me to make. I mean, I loved my job. You know, I had a very,

00:37:32.040 very successful career. I never, if you had told me before I met Paolo that I would

00:37:36.160 give up everything to write off into the sunset with Mr. Charming, I would have laughed at you.

00:37:40.780 You know, I mean, I'm not that kind of person. I've never been, you know, the kind of-

00:37:44.760 You're a news producer. It's a bunch of cynical mofos in this business. And that's the only way 1.00

00:37:49.840 you can be a good news producer. Exactly. You know, the Cinderella shit is not for me. So I

00:37:55.540 It just and it was a difficult decision, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

00:38:00.420 I was very cognizant of what my daughter was going through after having lost her dad.

00:38:04.900 And I thought Paolo, he was never going to replace her dad, but he seemed to be a good man and somebody that would be good for both of us.

00:38:14.500 He promised to take care of both of us for the rest of our lives.

00:38:17.460 And I thought this would be a good new start for us.

00:38:20.140 And so I made this difficult decision to to leave my job.

00:38:24.360 and, and even uprooting my daughter, you know, what children need after something traumatic and

00:38:32.100 tragic like that is, you know, consistency and normalcy. And I was pulling her away from

00:38:37.880 everything that she knew. And he allowed me to do that. He sat in front of my daughter.

00:38:42.640 This still burns me to this day, talking about the school he had enrolled her in, in Barcelona

00:38:48.620 and the life she was going to live in Barcelona and on and on and on about this in Barcelona

00:38:53.120 And then in Barcelona, how the hell you do that to a child who just lost her dad to brain cancer is beyond me.

00:39:00.320 But, yeah, he took it to such extreme lengths, you know, and the whole time.

00:39:05.200 But, of course, you know, what we what we know is that at the same time he was doing this, he was killing people.

00:39:13.140 So, you know, just when you get to this point of the story where you're like, how could he?

00:39:15.980 How could he let you give up your amazing career and pull your daughter,

00:39:19.780 who was already having a tough time

00:39:21.580 and the loss of her dad

00:39:22.360 from a school she knew

00:39:23.980 and a life she knew

00:39:24.840 and a friendship network she had,

00:39:27.180 he was killing people.

00:39:28.360 He was recklessly killing person after person,

00:39:31.980 lying about successes that had never been there.

00:39:35.460 And I'm going to get to that next,

00:39:37.160 but before we leave this lane.

00:39:38.740 So that was May 13th, 2014,

00:39:43.280 that you left NBC.

00:39:44.380 2015 now.

00:39:45.540 Oh, 2015, sorry.

00:39:46.880 2015.

00:39:47.280 team. And the next day, May 14th was the day it all started to come down because you got an email

00:39:55.780 from a friend. Tell us. Yeah. And before I tell that, just to back up very quickly, I think

00:40:02.960 we had been arguing for a good four months at that point. And one of the things we had been

00:40:08.040 arguing about was I had never been to the house in Barcelona. He had flown me and my daughter

00:40:14.540 all over the world, all these beautiful trips. But every single time we were supposed to go to

00:40:19.140 Barcelona, the trip got canceled at the last minute because he had an emergency surgery.

00:40:23.440 This happened three, four times. I think one time I was actually at the airport when the trip got

00:40:28.020 canceled. And it was a huge source of contention. I said, you know, I'm not marrying you without

00:40:33.680 seeing the house where I'm supposed to be living after the wedding, without my daughter seeing the

00:40:37.840 house where she's supposed to be living. I mean, who would do that? Who would marry a man without 1.00

00:40:41.280 seeing the place where they're going to live. So we had been arguing a lot about that. And there

00:40:47.120 were other little things that were starting to nag at me, but not huge red flags. It wasn't like

00:40:52.880 somebody was waving a giant flag on a football field saying, alert, alert, con man. But I think

00:40:58.260 there were at that point, little things that were nagging at my gut that I was pushing down,

00:41:03.880 because I think I didn't want to face the fact that I was starting to realize that something

00:41:08.160 was wrong. And then the day after I left NBC, I had a group of girlfriends that took me to a spa

00:41:14.660 because they knew what a difficult decision it was for me to leave NBC. And I come out of the spa,

00:41:20.700 we'd been in there laughing for hours, we'd put our phones away. And I pull out my phone,

00:41:25.000 I'm at the desk paying. And it's an email from a colleague and the subject line just says the Pope.

00:41:30.640 And it's a link to an article that says the Pope is going to be in South America

00:41:35.200 on the date of our wedding, which was July 11th, 2015. And that the trip had been planned for a

00:41:41.040 very long time. The second, I mean, the second I read that article, you know, all those little

00:41:47.300 red flags that had been sort of bubbling up that I guess I had been ignoring all exploded.

00:41:53.120 And I just felt sick. And I, in that second, I knew. I just thought, you know, this fucker is

00:42:00.840 lying to me about everything. This man is lying to me about everything. Everything's a lie. I knew 1.00

00:42:04.580 it. I didn't have all the evidence. I didn't know by any stretch yet the extent of it, but yeah,

00:42:10.740 it was just a moment of, I mean, I almost fell over in the spa. I just felt ill.

00:42:15.480 Wow. Were your girlfriends there? Do they remember the moment? Did you share it immediately

00:42:21.480 or were you embarrassed? No, they immediately, they just said, Benita, what happened? What's

00:42:27.400 the matter? And I could barely talk. And a couple of them came back to my apartment with me. It was

00:42:33.380 still early in the morning. And I was just pacing back and forth and trying to figure it out. And

00:42:37.700 they were so sweet, because they kept trying to say, well, maybe it's not as bad as you think it

00:42:41.680 is. And maybe there's an explanation. And maybe there'll still be a wedding. And you know, you

00:42:46.120 never really wanted the Pope to marry you in the first place, which is true. But I kind of knew and

00:42:51.480 I called him, of course, immediately, I called him texted him. And of course, he denied everything,

00:42:57.860 you know, he immediately said, I don't know, you know, I just found this out myself. And I'm going

00:43:01.640 to get to the bottom of it. It's a misunderstanding, you know, blah, blah. But I knew from that moment,

00:43:06.480 I knew that he was lying to me. You did. That was it. Yeah. Before and after. Oh, yeah.

00:43:12.280 It's almost like, again, I think it was those little red flags. It's sort of been bubbling

00:43:17.820 under the surface and I had been uncomfortable for a while, but couldn't quite figure out what

00:43:22.780 it was. I mostly attributed it to leaving NBC and to my daughter, but I think it was much deeper

00:43:29.880 than that i think at some level i knew you know long before i actually knew and at this point

00:43:35.500 you've already sent out the invitations for the wedding and you've said oh yeah oh yeah like we're

00:43:39.380 going to the no like you know we are eight weeks out we are eight weeks out from the wedding to

00:43:45.000 the day almost because it was yeah may 14th july 15th people had bought plane tickets we had almost

00:43:52.460 300 people coming from all over the world my family's from australia we had people coming

00:43:56.520 from Australia, from Europe, all over the place. They had spent thousands of dollars on fancy red

00:44:02.540 carpet attire and booked hotels and, and everything, you know, this thing was, he had 0.93

00:44:08.640 taken it that far, you know, this, this, it's ridiculous. But don't you wonder, I'm sure you 0.53

00:44:14.340 wonder. So it just happened that a friend, uh, you know, who's paying attention to news events,

00:44:20.840 like the Pope's schedule, saw this and realized it was BS. But what do you think he would have done?

00:44:26.900 What if he hadn't? Yeah. What would he have done? Would he have seen it through and just come up

00:44:31.880 with an excuse at the last minute for why it's not the Pope and we're not at the Pope's private

00:44:36.180 residence and done it like a fake marriage? You know, the only thing I can think of is,

00:44:42.060 because I've asked myself this question so many times, it's one of the big money questions. You

00:44:45.680 know, what was his end game? You know, this had to implode. He was literally lying about everything.

00:44:50.540 He created an entire fantasy wedding. It turned out he had told me he was divorced. He wasn't even divorced, so he couldn't have legally married me in the first place. So this never could have happened.

00:45:01.360 if he had allowed everybody, you know, I mean, 300 people descend in Italy thinking they're

00:45:07.940 going to this, you know, lavish wedding. The only thing I can think of is that he would have said

00:45:13.160 there's some kind of security threat, right? You know, there's been a death threat on the Pope's

00:45:18.140 life or one of the dignitaries or celebrities that were supposed to be coming. We can't,

00:45:21.880 it's too dangerous. It's too controversial. We can't have this wedding. But even if he had done

00:45:26.600 that, what was he going to do with me? What was he going to do with my daughter? I'm there with

00:45:31.600 my bags packed and my wedding dress, and I think I'm moving to Barcelona. I have no idea how the

00:45:36.120 hell he thought he was getting out of this. It's like part of me wishes it had played out like

00:45:40.600 that just so we could see, just so we could know. Yeah, because- Right, it's true. It's true.

00:45:46.980 There was never a wedding scheduled. The Pope had nothing to do with it, and he couldn't marry

00:45:52.440 you because he was already married, which again, in retrospect now, the proposal, sending out

00:45:59.360 invitations, the recklessness of it, Bonita, right? The recklessness.

00:46:05.580 Wow. And of course it would get much worse. I mean, I, and ultimately I'd find out he was

00:46:09.540 juggling four families at the same time. Wait, what? I didn't see that. I did not see that in

00:46:14.840 the earlier pieces. I know about the one wife because eventually you and your girlfriends,

00:46:19.060 and I love your girlfriends.

00:46:20.940 I know, I have the best friends.

00:46:22.760 That's a wonderful piece of the story.

00:46:25.060 But they take you like the best girlfriends would 0.85

00:46:27.460 to Barcelona on what would have been your wedding day.

00:46:30.200 And you've got a fake wig on

00:46:32.060 and the girls go up to his front door, 0.94

00:46:34.980 ring the doorbell and he comes down

00:46:37.420 and it turns out, oh, we have this actually,

00:46:40.300 we have this clip.

00:46:40.980 Let's play it so we can watch a little bit of it.

00:46:43.000 Okay.

00:46:44.360 Nancy, I'm Lee, I just knocked on his door

00:46:46.900 and I saw him come down the steps

00:46:48.200 with his dog. 1.00

00:46:49.020 Asshole, he's there. 1.00

00:46:50.620 Not in fucking Russia. 1.00

00:47:03.760 What are you doing here? 1.00

00:47:05.140 We're passing by on holiday.

00:47:09.380 I'm not sure what's going on, but...

00:47:11.880 Two little kids

00:47:13.340 coming down the stairs. 1.00

00:47:16.400 You lying fucking sack of shit. 1.00

00:47:18.020 Yeah, I see you. Motherfucking fucker, fuck you. 1.00

00:47:24.680 Yeah, so that was the day you learned not only does he have a wife already, but two young kids, which is what stopped you, I think, from going to the door yourself. 1.00

00:47:38.860 When I met him, he told me that he had been separated from his Italian wife for a very long time.

00:47:44.740 So I knew from the beginning, there's a lot of misunderstanding about this, that he had a wife.

00:47:48.680 He had two children who at the time were, I think, 19 and 20, who were actually supposed to be coming to the wedding.

00:47:54.140 And he said that they had been living separate lives for many years, which was well documented.

00:47:58.640 He lived in Barcelona, had been for years.

00:48:00.940 She lived in Italy.

00:48:02.720 And I mean, I met the man's mother.

00:48:05.020 I spoke to his sister.

00:48:06.520 His sister's, his niece was supposed to be one of our flower girls. 0.96

00:48:11.320 So this was no secret.

00:48:12.780 He just told me that they had never gotten divorced because it's Italy and they're Catholic and it's complicated.

00:48:17.420 But he told me when he met me that now he finally wanted to get divorced.

00:48:21.180 And that was why he proposed, because he said he had filed for divorce and that the divorce was going through.

00:48:26.740 So I knew there was that wife. I knew about her. I'd seen pictures of her, everything. 0.97

00:48:31.420 The woman in Barcelona, when I went to the house in Barcelona, I went there because once I figured out he was lying, I went into hyper investigative mode.

00:48:40.240 It's kind of like I woke up out of my love haze, you know, and, you know, woke up and put my journalist hat back on.

00:48:46.920 And I just went nuts.

00:48:48.280 I mean, I was investigating.

00:48:50.380 I hired two private investigators, one here in the U.S., one in Italy.

00:48:54.700 And I mean, my my bedroom looked like something out of a Law and Order episode.

00:48:58.360 There were binders everywhere.

00:48:59.740 I was trying to figure everything out.

00:49:01.180 And for me, the last piece of the puzzle was Barcelona.

00:49:04.680 I mean, clearly there was a good reason he had never let me go to that house.

00:49:08.100 And so that's why we decided to go there. And it was part sort of a fuck you girl, you know, fun girls trip. And which is why I got this hideous blonde wig, which I didn't really know if I would need, but I wasn't sure what I was going to find in that house. 0.99

00:49:23.840 So I ordered this cheap blonde wig on Amazon and we went to the house.

00:49:30.060 And one funny thing about that is when I put in the address for the house, he had given

00:49:35.000 me an address for the house in Barcelona so people could send wedding gifts.

00:49:38.200 It was a bogus address.

00:49:40.280 I had to find the right address.

00:49:42.040 He didn't even he didn't even give me the right address for the house.

00:49:44.260 So he had no idea I was coming and I wanted it to be a surprise attack, so to speak, you

00:49:50.100 know, that he and he he claimed he was in Russia, which is why you hear me saying that

00:49:53.660 in the video. And at the time, I'm still talking to him, right? So when I first discovered that he

00:49:59.340 was lying, I made an almost immediate decision that, okay, this man is never going to tell me

00:50:05.960 the truth about everything. I realize now that he's a pathological liar. And I wanted hard, 1.00

00:50:12.740 indisputable, irrefutable evidence before I confronted him. Because one of the things that

00:50:18.220 goes along with this, of course, is gaslighting. These con artists, including Paolo, are very good

00:50:23.680 if you question them about muddying the waters and making you think that you're the one who's

00:50:28.780 crazy for asking them questions. They're so good at it. It's rapid fire. They have an answer for

00:50:33.040 everything. And so I decided I'm not confronting him until I have all my ducks in a row. And I know

00:50:39.740 every single lie. I've uncovered everything. And so I had to play kind of a game with him.

00:50:44.280 I called off the wedding. And luckily for me, he was being investigated at the time for scientific misconduct. It was sort of the beginning of the revelations about his medical lives. And it was very convenient timing because he was having a very difficult time in Sweden. And I just said, look, you know, there's too much going on right now. Let's just call off the wedding and postpone it.

00:51:05.480 and he must have breathed such a sigh of relief when I did that. I got him off the hook,

00:51:09.600 but it was also the perfect excuse to cancel the wedding. And that's all I told all our wedding

00:51:14.740 guests as well. And so I'm still talking to him, you know, he's, I'm still talking to him,

00:51:19.280 still saying, I love you, which killed me and playing along as if we were going to reconvene

00:51:26.000 the wedding at some point. So he had no idea I was coming to that house and a, he wasn't in Russia.

00:51:32.440 so that was the first thing that pissed me off he had just texted me wait just to clarify so when

00:51:36.660 you when we see that video of you and your friends in barcelona he was still under the delusion that

00:51:40.960 you were fooled and you guys were still together correct correct okay all right okay keep going

00:51:45.840 i mean he had some idea i had been grilling him i had been telling him for a long time that i

00:51:50.880 thought he was lying but i still he i think he still thought he had me under his thumb and he

00:51:54.960 was going to bring me back around and that the wedding was just being postponed he had no idea

00:51:59.380 that I was on to him or that I knew that he was not really divorced, any of that, or that I knew

00:52:06.500 everything about the wedding was fake. And I kind of expected to find another woman in that house. 1.00

00:52:14.560 I wasn't sure if it would be the Italian wife or somebody else. I was prepared for that. 1.00

00:52:19.000 And my girlfriends and I had, we had been through several different scenarios. You know,

00:52:22.760 what if he's there? What if someone else is there? Blah, blah. And the reason I sent them to the

00:52:27.100 door without me was I wanted them to sort of do the initial reconnaissance and see what was going

00:52:32.480 on before I came down. And if he was there, I had planned, I fully intended to confront him.

00:52:40.140 But what happens is he comes to the door. So first of all, he's there. And then I see even

00:52:46.360 from I'm sitting in the car at the top of the hill, he can't see me. And I see a woman and two

00:52:51.880 young children come out on the veranda of the house. And even from where I am, I can hear them

00:52:57.040 calling him dad. And this is a young woman. This is not his Italian wife. I know exactly what his 0.84

00:53:01.880 Italian wife looks like. So this is when I completely lose it and fall apart because this 1.00

00:53:06.820 is another family. This is a third family. It's the Italian wife he never divorced. It's me and

00:53:12.320 my daughter in New York. And now here in Barcelona, the real reason he never let us come to Barcelona

00:53:17.000 is because he's hiding another family here. And it was the children that sent me over the edge.

00:53:23.380 I mean, I another woman. OK, at that point, I was prepared for that. But the kids and little kids, they were about five and seven years old. I was wholly unprepared for that. And that's when I lost it. I mean, you see in the video, I just I think I had been investigating for a couple of months at that point. And I had not dealt with any of the heartache, the devastation. And I just fall apart. I just I'm screaming. I'm kicking. I'm wailing. I'm calling him every name under the sun.

00:53:52.620 it was just devastating. It was just, I, you know, he just took it so far. It just was

00:54:00.880 sort of incomprehensible to me that you had been sitting here, that you let me think I'm moving

00:54:05.980 here with my daughter and you plan this whole fake wedding. You let me quit my job. So much

00:54:11.760 was at stake. You let me pull my daughter out of her school. You let me give up my entire life.

00:54:17.220 And the whole time you're hiding another family here. And the whole time, you know,

00:54:21.820 none of this is ever going to happen. Oh my gosh. It's just so devastating.

00:54:27.360 It's crazy. It's crazy. I spoke with a friend once whose husband had betrayed her and she did

00:54:35.840 what almost every woman does, which is start to obsess over his phone records and anything she 1.00

00:54:42.600 could get her hands on. Right. Just to know she knew, she knew it was, you know, it was, she knew,

00:54:48.040 but she needed the details. She needed the specifics and she needed to know, you know,

00:54:52.620 when and how long and how many times. And I said to her, you know, it's, it's almost like

00:54:58.420 in the Catholic faith, when somebody dies, they have the wake and you go to the wake. And even

00:55:06.200 though many Catholics and non-Catholics especially find it kind of very jarring, what a jarring

00:55:12.100 tradition to go and see the dead body. If it's an open casket, you know, what kind of a tradition

00:55:17.140 is this? Why would you do this to yourself? And I get that reaction very much, but there is

00:55:24.100 something, I don't know if the word's cathartic, if there's something necessary for many people in

00:55:30.180 seeing the dead body. It's like the beginning of coming to terms with what's really happened

00:55:37.240 and how your life has changed from what you thought it was a day earlier or a couple days

00:55:41.220 earlier. And I almost see the behavior you're describing on your part as part of that process

00:55:45.660 for you. Like it's got, you've got to make it real for yourself. So acceptance can come

00:55:50.620 a hundred percent. And I think that's why the house in Barcelona was the last piece of the

00:55:55.920 puzzle for me. I mean, at that point, I already knew that he wasn't divorced. I already knew that,

00:56:01.540 you know, he had created this whole fake fantasy wedding. I mean, everything about it, you know,

00:56:07.520 every place he said was booked the caterer, the, this, the, that, none of them had ever heard of

00:56:11.600 us. I knew that he didn't know a damn one of these dignitaries or celebrities he claimed was coming

00:56:17.480 to the wedding or he claimed he was the personal doctor to. He sure as hell was not the Pope's 0.91

00:56:23.280 personal private doctor. I mean, the Vatican practically laughed at me. But for me, the last

00:56:29.840 piece of the puzzle was Barcelona. And that was the thing that just sort of, and that's when I

00:56:34.800 can finally confront him. Wait, before we get to conversation, who is the fourth family?

00:56:41.600 you see her actually in the netflix special so after um the older woman after um she's she's 0.70

00:56:50.720 younger she's an apollo she comes in the third episode so after i went public which i i do

00:56:55.960 shortly after this she contacted me and it turns out that she and her story is just horrific

00:57:02.040 because her son died um he was a patient apollo's he did not have a plastic trachea but he did

00:57:08.800 operate on him. Her son dies in Italy. There's an investigation into manslaughter. So Paolo's

00:57:15.080 facing manslaughter charges in Italy. So what does he do? He seduces her and basically so that she

00:57:21.360 will drop the charges, which she does. And then he gets her pregnant and she has a child that's

00:57:26.760 born with him basically right around the time that he's proposing to me. So that's four families that

00:57:32.760 I know about. You know, it's the Italian wife he never divorced. It's me and my daughter in New

00:57:37.300 york it's the woman and the two kids in the house in barcelona and then this other poor woman in 0.97

00:57:42.200 italy that he has a child with oh my god it's like in a way you got away easy oh yeah you know

00:57:50.280 which is interesting because he really wanted to have a child he was desperate to have a child and

00:57:55.880 that would be such a nightmare i'm just so glad that never happened i know so can we talk about

00:58:02.140 the confrontation? Because I know that after, hold on, I pulled the email because I know that

00:58:07.120 after you canceled the wedding, you emailed him and it reads as follows. I believed you were

00:58:14.800 exactly who you presented yourself to be, to me, to my friends and family, to the world.

00:58:21.300 Congratulations. You charm me and all of us into la la land. I will never, ever understand how you

00:58:27.240 could have done this to me or to your daughter. Who the hell are you and what the hell is wrong 1.00

00:58:33.200 with you? But this is not the confrontation to which you refer. No, it is. So that was the first 0.99

00:58:40.380 part of the confrontation. This was by text, actually. When we left the house in Barcelona,

00:58:44.760 we went to a place that had Wi-Fi. Keep in mind, he had no idea that I was there. He knew my

00:58:50.620 friends were there. He couldn't get rid of them fast enough. And they told him, hey, look, you

00:58:56.120 know, we, the wedding got canceled so close to the wedding day. We, as a lot of people did,

00:59:00.780 we decided to come to Italy anyway on vacation. And we just dropped by to bring you a wedding

00:59:05.640 gift. That was their excuse for knocking at the doorbell, which the whole thing was so suspicious,

00:59:10.280 right? Because ostensibly he and I are still getting married and we're still talking and he

00:59:15.020 didn't invite them in. He could not get rid of them fast enough. He just wanted them to leave.

00:59:19.780 But anyway, we get to this restaurant and I write him a text that's literally about this long. I

00:59:24.860 I mean, what you read is just one part of it and called him every name under the sun, named everything that I knew he was lying about. 0.99

00:59:32.740 And, you know, just called him a despicable, disgusting human being, told him I hated him and et cetera, et cetera. 0.97

00:59:40.960 And I think it took him about 10, 15 minutes to reply. 0.99

00:59:44.840 And he wrote back one word.

00:59:47.360 Wow.

00:59:49.820 That's all he said.

00:59:50.740 So unsatisfactory.

00:59:52.600 well i think he was caught right what was what was there to say game over there's nothing to

00:59:58.580 say i want more i want to see his face and see him i don't know beg for forgiveness or

01:00:06.420 i want to see him ashamed i know the man has no shame or empathy or remorse or any of the

01:00:13.980 other things but yeah we're never going to see that was there ever any more contact

01:00:18.020 um yes in 20 so what happens right after this is i'm devastated of course um but almost immediately

01:00:28.580 i had whatever you want to call it an epiphany or whatever you want to call it but i thought

01:00:34.160 oh my god you know if he's lying to me like this and creating fake relationships with the pope and

01:00:41.260 with you know celebrities and dignitaries and presidents and creating a whole fake fantasy

01:00:47.460 wedding and allowing people to book tickets and spend money and allowing me to quit my job.

01:00:53.080 And quit their jobs and their schools.

01:00:55.560 Yeah, all of it.

01:00:56.320 If he's doing all of that and will go that far, there is no way.

01:01:00.480 There is no way in hell he's not also lying in his medical and professional life.

01:01:04.100 It can't be.

01:01:05.120 And that thought was so horrifying to me because he has people's lives in his hands.

01:01:10.160 He's doing something revolutionary and groundbreaking. 0.97

01:01:14.540 breaking and people think the man walks on water and I thought shit you know I have to tell my 0.94

01:01:21.060 story I have to go public I have to expose him I almost felt an obligation to do it I thought 0.94

01:01:27.020 you know maybe this happened to me because I know how to do this you know if if I need to go public

01:01:33.020 if I need to tell my story it's not going to be pretty it's not going to be fun but I know what

01:01:37.400 to do. And I need to do this. The world needs to know who Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is. And it wasn't

01:01:46.080 vindictive. It wasn't about revenge. It was simply about sounding the warning alarm that, you know,

01:01:52.380 this man is a fraud. This man is a con. He's not who you think he is. And so I very, very quickly 0.99

01:01:59.760 connected through a friend with a reporter at Vanity Fair who told me that he could do it.

01:02:05.440 he could do it quickly, which is what I wanted. And so this is July of 2014. And the article came

01:02:11.100 out in January of 2016. My story. July of 15? July of 15. Yeah. January of 2015. January of 2016,

01:02:21.540 the article came out. And then on the heels of me, I did not know this when I went public and

01:02:27.380 when I decided to do the story, but within a week of me, my story coming out in Vanity Fair,

01:02:32.660 a scathing documentary came out in Sweden called The Experiments, which exposed all his medical

01:02:39.200 lies. And it was actually worse than I feared. I mean, watching that documentary was one of the

01:02:46.400 most difficult things I've ever had to do because it was so obvious that he blatantly used people

01:02:52.840 as human guinea pigs that he knew, I believe, from the beginning that the thing he was transplanting

01:02:59.680 into them would never work it was it was a plastic tube that might as well have been a straw

01:03:04.260 he knew damn well it wasn't gonna work and he did it anyway he and it just it's just so obvious how

01:03:11.560 reckless this man is and how dangerous he is and it was the combination of the two things that sort

01:03:17.320 of blew everything up because now you have these insane you know over-the-top egregious lies in 0.87

01:03:23.640 his personal life coupled with this evidence that he's been lying in the medical arena and the two

01:03:30.920 things were what finally blew everything up. That lane of the story, well covered in all the pieces

01:03:37.000 I mentioned, as disturbing as your piece is, is the most disturbing. Oh, it's horrific. It's way

01:03:42.860 worse than what happened to me. I mean, there's just, what happened to me is nothing. But it's a similar pattern.

01:03:46.660 It's a similar pattern if you look at it, right? In well-meaning, earnest, kind people in some

01:03:53.920 turmoil, trusting him, just trusting him. Yeah. Trusting him to do right by them,

01:04:02.280 to take care of them, to see them through the most difficult times of their life,

01:04:07.980 wooed by his bedside manner, which we discussed, and his credentials and all of these institutions

01:04:13.220 around him, vouching for him. Only in their cases, it was a deadly mistake. And amazingly,

01:04:21.140 there are still some families still believing in him, even after their loved ones died in his care.

01:04:29.980 And I can only think they have to do that just as a self-protection mechanism. Like they just have

01:04:35.740 to say, we didn't put our loved one in the hands of a madman. You know, we did something smart

01:04:41.880 and we took a calculated risk.

01:04:44.780 And I just, as I see the people

01:04:46.140 in like the Netflix documentary wrestling with,

01:04:48.040 well, no, it's okay.

01:04:48.800 You know, we're still grateful to him.

01:04:50.320 All I can think is that's something other than acceptance.

01:04:55.820 That's, I believe that too.

01:04:57.420 I think Paolo was very good at convincing the families

01:05:02.160 when patients died, that the patients were pioneers,

01:05:05.500 you know, and they would sort of live in history

01:05:08.240 as pioneers who helped him help pave the way for a better medical future. And that's a much nicer

01:05:15.420 thing to think than you put your loved one in the hands of a madman who is reckless and dangerous 0.83

01:05:22.200 and a murderer, quite frankly, probably a serial killer. And I think for some of these patients,

01:05:30.360 families, you know, who had been so desperate and especially Hannah's family, you know, they

01:05:38.820 thought Paolo was the answer to their prayers. They thought he was their last hope. They believed

01:05:44.940 in him. They put so much into that and they sought him out. And I think that's the other

01:05:49.880 thing. A lot of these people found Dr. MacIarini on the internet, you know, they did a Google search

01:05:54.520 And that's how they found him. So, you know, the, to deal with the death of your loved one,

01:06:00.260 especially a child. And then on top of that, you sought out the person, you know, that

01:06:05.240 probably killed her. I don't, I think that's just too much to wrap your head around.

01:06:09.840 Yep. It would be for me. There's Chris Liles, whose story is heartbreaking, a 30 year old man,

01:06:16.940 electrical engineer from Maryland. And he was diagnosed with cancer, but heard of Paolo

01:06:25.660 Macchiarini. And he did the procedure on Chris. And Chris, like all the others who kept that fake

01:06:35.700 trachea in, died. Here's a bit on him from the piece, Sot3. We didn't see Paolo that much.

01:06:45.780 He was flying this place, he was flying that place.

01:06:49.760 He had one of his assistants look after Chris.

01:06:54.800 Is it okay, Chris?

01:06:56.580 Yeah.

01:06:57.240 Don't try to hold it.

01:06:59.360 Very soon after surgery, Chris Lies gained an infection in the airway.

01:07:04.060 So he started to cough enormously hard.

01:07:07.660 This, you know, really, really deep cough.

01:07:10.880 He got mucus clots in the airways.

01:07:14.860 what also happened was he got an infection in this wound so he had a quite dramatic post

01:07:23.340 early post-operative period but it was a little bit unusual that you get the infection so early

01:07:28.580 on after surgery and he had a young daughter and he died and the family continues to stand by paolo

01:07:39.700 No, actually, no, not anymore.

01:07:41.400 They did initially.

01:07:42.880 Yeah, they did.

01:07:44.360 They finally came around and realized,

01:07:46.920 you know, initially they still stood by him,

01:07:50.480 but now, no, now they know.

01:07:53.120 They were in the Netflix piece sounding like,

01:07:55.900 well, you know, Chris, he was terminal

01:07:58.200 and so it was a risk we decided to take.

01:08:00.340 But that's interesting.

01:08:01.420 Was it after they saw the compilation of stories,

01:08:04.600 you know, that they realized how Chris fit into the story

01:08:08.100 or what, what do you think did it for them? You know, I think it just takes time. And I think

01:08:13.980 it's the same for any of the people that Dr. Macchiarini fooled. I mean, we're talking some

01:08:19.740 of the, the world's most prestigious, esteemed institutions, doctors, scientists. I mean,

01:08:26.720 he pulled the wool over so many people's eyes. It's not just me and the other women in his life.

01:08:31.240 It's not just the patients and their families. I mean, so many people. And I think it's a very,

01:08:37.660 very difficult thing, A, to admit that you got fooled, but B, to wrap your head around the fact

01:08:44.860 that this man who you thought was either the answer to your patient, you know, your loved one

01:08:53.540 dying or was, you know, in the case of Carolyn's Get Sweeting, bringing you all kinds of accolades

01:08:59.000 and money and esteem. It's just very difficult to wrap your head around the fact that Dr. Paolo

01:09:04.520 Macchiarini is not who you thought he was and that he's exactly the opposite of who you thought

01:09:10.740 he was. And I, I think it just takes time. And that you may have entrusted your loved one to

01:09:15.880 a madman, to somebody with zero empathy who may have been a sociopath. The, um, the case out of

01:09:22.960 Russia, also disturbing. We've mentioned his contacts there. This young ballerina, 0.96

01:09:29.440 whose name was Yulia he performed her surgery in 2012 and there's a bit of Paolo talking about her

01:09:37.800 in the piece young beautiful she was not she was not terminal um no she did not need this surgery

01:09:44.380 and she begged him actually they actually had a lottery in Russia because he was looking for

01:09:49.340 quote-unquote healthy patients to try this procedure on she had been in a car accident so

01:09:54.260 she had a hole in her throat she had a tracheotomy but she could have lived the rest of her life

01:09:57.740 like that and she begged she made a video begging paulo to pick her and he picked her

01:10:02.620 tragically here's uh here's a bit of paulo talking about her from the netflix show badge surgeon

01:10:08.900 this is julia when i met julia she was not able to play with her child it was a very emotional

01:10:22.340 moment for me and I immediately said this is the right patient and I still do not believe that

01:10:30.080 a few days ago she couldn't breathe and talk normally so she's a little bit

01:10:37.120 afraid of you so please be very sweet

01:10:41.460 you know she was paraded out and around like us like she was one of his success stories

01:11:01.140 and as they point out in the piece it was a lie and indeed she died yeah not only died but they

01:11:09.040 died horrible deaths. I mean, this plastic tube that was coated in the patient's own stem cells

01:11:13.940 was literally rotting inside their throats. So Yulia's mother talks about the fact that she 0.56

01:11:19.660 smelled horrifically because this thing was rotting. She smelled like rotting fish because 1.00

01:11:24.840 this thing was rotting inside her throat. And then they suffocated to death because this thing 0.97

01:11:28.700 disintegrated and rotted in their throats. It's not only did they die, but it's like a torturous

01:11:34.440 death. It's, it's awful. And he kept doing it. He kept doing it. Exactly. Can you speak about

01:11:42.660 the Institute? Kept doing. Hmm. Go ahead. Is it Karolina? What's it called in Sweden? That was

01:11:48.080 Karolinska. Karolinska. Okay. That was principally backing him for a while. He also had the Russian

01:11:53.400 Institute as well, but it seems like those doctors there were like, there are a couple of them who

01:11:59.960 featured who turned out to be good guys who recognized what he was doing was very wrong

01:12:04.700 and started to blow the whistle on him yeah i think um and what they did was very brave

01:12:12.440 and as is typical with many whistleblowers unfortunately they went through hell you know

01:12:16.960 it took them a long time to pull together all the evidence against him and they put their own careers

01:12:22.900 on the line they were questioned i mean some of them were called into the police station some of

01:12:27.420 them were threatened with losing their jobs. Some of them have left Karolinska now. And they went

01:12:32.600 through hell, but they started realizing slowly that this thing was not working, that the patients

01:12:38.960 were suffering and dying, and that Paolo was lying in medical papers, and very, very prestigious

01:12:46.120 ones, the New England Journal of Medicine among them, about the results of the transplant. So

01:12:50.580 he's standing at press conferences talking about how the patients are doing so beautifully well,

01:12:55.780 when in fact behind the scenes they're suffering and they're dying exactly the opposite of what he

01:13:01.820 was saying and also he's publishing in these prestigious medical journals saying that you

01:13:06.920 know this thing is working beautifully and he's leaving data out he's faking data he's lying about

01:13:11.660 stuff so they start piecing it all together and they spent some insane number of hours piecing

01:13:16.920 all the parts of the puzzle together and at first when they first went to Karolinska they were

01:13:22.060 shunned. They were shooed away. Karolinska didn't want to hear it. And I think it just speaks to

01:13:28.060 what happens with somebody who's so cunning and so charming and so manipulative, like Dr. Paolo

01:13:34.460 Macchiarini. He was bringing in so much money to Karolinska, and there was so much promise and

01:13:42.420 hope attached to this man. They were talking about building a whole institution around him.

01:13:47.120 He's getting grants. He's getting published in these prestigious journals. He's operating all

01:13:51.600 around the world. He's bringing them notoriety. So when somebody first comes to them and says,

01:13:57.180 you know what? This guy's not who you think he is. It was a very, very inconvenient truth.

01:14:03.120 Nobody wanted to hear it. And it's a massive crisis. You go from having the golden boy,

01:14:07.720 who's going to make you a fortune and bring you nothing but accolades to having a potential

01:14:13.060 criminal serial killer working for you, who's only going to bring you shame and condemnation.

01:14:20.500 Exactly. Which is why I think initially people tried to sweep it under the rug because it just,

01:14:27.420 nobody wanted to deal with it. But there were a couple of doctors there who just didn't allow

01:14:31.900 that. And they were tenacious. Yeah. They were tenacious. Those, those whistleblowers refused

01:14:37.460 to give up and I've now met them and I, they're, they're lovely guys. And we, um, I really admire

01:14:44.400 what they did and what they went through. Um, but they just refuse to give up. They,

01:14:50.100 and they still do, you know, like me, they still keep talking about him and none of us will stop

01:14:55.020 until there's full justice, which we still don't have. Well, that's the question because I think

01:15:00.360 most people hearing the story at this point are asking, please tell me he's in jail. Is he in

01:15:05.700 jail? There have been some criminal charges, but they haven't gone nothing nearly to the level of

01:15:13.000 what we would want or what we think he deserves. Can you talk about what's happened to him in the

01:15:17.020 criminal lane? Yes, he finally was in Sweden. They had tried going after him a few years ago

01:15:24.200 and it is a difficult case to prove because they're experimental procedures. So to prove that

01:15:29.920 he knew that the patients were going to die, to prove that he did this intentionally is not so

01:15:35.500 easy. So the first time they tried to do it, they gave up. They sort of dropped the charges.

01:15:40.020 Sweden was furious. This is this whole thing is a giant scandal in Sweden. And it's so embarrassing.

01:15:45.640 I mean, people got fired, people on the Nobel Prize Committee stepped down in shame. And so

01:15:50.700 luckily, another prosecutor came back and said, No, I'm going to try again. And so he was on trial

01:15:56.400 in 2022. And he got convicted of one count of bodily harm, they could only go after him in

01:16:03.820 Sweden. For the three patients that were operated on in Sweden, including Christopher Lyles, the US

01:16:09.580 patient. And then he appealed that. And so last year, there was an appeals trial. And I think he

01:16:17.760 was thinking he was going to get off. Well, instead, the appeals court came back hard and convicted him

01:16:23.420 of three counts of aggravated assault for all of the patients that were operated on in Sweden

01:16:28.940 and sentenced him to 30 months behind bars. Of course, he appeals again all the way to the

01:16:34.420 Swedish Supreme Court. But in October, the Supreme Court came back and said, no, we're not taking the

01:16:39.860 case. The conviction stands. That was October. Here we are. Six months later, the man's still

01:16:47.040 not behind bars. It's crazy. He managed, this just came out last week, to negotiate with Swedish

01:16:53.600 authorities that he wants to spend his time behind bars in Spain, where he lives, not in Sweden,

01:17:00.000 on house arrest. So he basically wants to sit at his damn house by the pool, sipping cocktails. 0.99

01:17:06.540 And that's how he thinks he's going to serve his 30 months, which is just, I don't even know what 0.99

01:17:13.040 word to use. It's so horrific and so unfair to those patients. You know, it's just, that is not

01:17:18.120 justice. So what are the likely, what are the odds that that's going to happen? Pretty high, I think.

01:17:24.720 I think now the Spanish authorities have to, Sweden has basically washed their hands of him and said, no, serve your time in Spain.

01:17:32.580 Spain has to agree to it.

01:17:34.080 So that's a more delay without him being behind bars.

01:17:37.820 And if they agree to it, you know, I think he will.

01:17:40.880 I think he'll have an ankle bracelet and be sitting by his pool.

01:17:44.960 The most important thing is that he's not allowed to do this to anybody else.

01:17:48.600 Has he lost his medical license?

01:17:50.500 And even if he hasn't, don't you think that the Netflix show, that your documentary, all the work you've been doing along with these doctors from Karolinska have made his reemergence as a physician impossible?

01:18:04.520 Yes.

01:18:05.300 I get asked this all the time.

01:18:06.700 It's a tricky question because there isn't one medical license to yank.

01:18:10.360 It's not like the U.S. 0.96

01:18:11.540 In Europe, it's country by country.

01:18:15.000 So if a country still allows him to operate in Europe, he could in theory.

01:18:19.960 But as you said, his reputation is clearly severely tarnished and, you know, tanked and his he's had a drastic, you know, crash from from fame and notoriety.

01:18:33.180 So I doubt anybody would want him operating on them.

01:18:36.760 But technically, he still can.

01:18:39.980 He's making a documentary with his side.

01:18:45.240 I can't wait.

01:18:46.800 I'm actually really looking forward to that.

01:18:48.500 I hope you'll come back on after that hits.

01:18:50.560 What on earth do you think that is going to look like?

01:18:56.100 He, because he's not behind bars,

01:18:58.900 he has been doing interviews in Italy in the past months.

01:19:01.340 And he did one, I think it was right before Christmas.

01:19:03.860 And I was on the show and he was not on,

01:19:06.540 but his attorney was not on.

01:19:07.940 And he's desperate.

01:19:10.940 And the only thing that he can do at the moment

01:19:14.160 is try to muddy the waters

01:19:15.360 and try to distract attention from his patients.

01:19:17.580 And so he's going after me and Anna Paula, the woman who also went public in the Netflix documentary, and he's just trying to victim shame us, slut shame us, whatever he can.

01:19:28.720 You know, he's just trying to throw dirt, you know, and make up lies about us and muddy the waters and distract attention from the real issue, which is that he killed people.

01:19:39.580 And none of the things he's saying are true, but even if they were, it wouldn't matter.

01:19:44.960 You know, it doesn't matter. You know, what matters is you use people as human guinea pigs. You broke all kinds of legal and ethical laws and recklessly destroyed people's lives. And you killed people and patients' lives without caring. So nothing else matters. So he's-

01:20:07.320 there been massive civil suits against him? Somebody should own his Barcelona home other

01:20:11.640 than Paulo. I know the Turkish family, that Turkish girl that you see on the Netflix documentary,

01:20:18.200 the one that had something like 200 surgeries. I mean, her case is so horrific. They've sued him.

01:20:23.680 I don't know the outcome of that yet. We need an American family to sue. We're very good at

01:20:29.760 suing. As you know, that's our forte here in America. I know. One of the American families

01:20:34.580 needs to sue for wrongful death and then they will own the home in Barcelona and whatever else

01:20:39.420 he has. That's the true way of punishing somebody like him. It's true. I know. He said to La Nazione,

01:20:47.100 an Italian publication that wrote up his plan to do a new documentary. He said,

01:20:53.360 the deaths are glorified, meaning those he caused, but there is no mention of the lives saved.

01:20:59.320 I was crucified in an inhumane way.

01:21:02.680 The history of transplants must be read.

01:21:05.080 The initial phases are always associated with high mortality,

01:21:08.340 but despite this, they continued until they become almost routine operations.

01:21:16.660 As for you, he said, she's the one who always lied.

01:21:22.000 Okay, so we'll look forward to him filling that out in his, quote, documentary.

01:21:27.720 um i do want to talk to you about a couple of things the the thing you lost your your train

01:21:33.280 of thought on that we were getting to was contact you've had with him since wow since that text so

01:21:40.940 was it after all these pieces hit that you and he connected so in in 2018 i made a film for

01:21:47.400 discovery called he lied about everything and after the vanity fair article which was just i

01:21:52.920 I was in such a state of post-traumatic stress when that article came out, and I felt like

01:21:57.860 it didn't fully encompass the whole story or my story, and I wanted to tell it in my

01:22:02.680 own words, which is why I did the documentary.

01:22:05.740 And during the course of making that documentary, I tried to find him.

01:22:08.840 I traveled, actually, to Russia, to Italy, to several places.

01:22:13.360 I met with some of the families, including Yulia's husband, which was heartbreaking.

01:22:19.320 And I couldn't find him.

01:22:21.700 So finally, I got him on the phone, and it was such an interesting phone call because I called from a phone that wasn't mine, so he didn't know it was me.

01:22:31.160 And I had to tell him that I was recording him, obviously, for legal reasons.

01:22:35.360 But as soon as I said, I said, hi, Paolo, it's Benita.

01:22:39.460 And immediately, his voice, you know, that soft voice, oh, hi, how are you? 0.95

01:22:45.700 and I thought this asshole he he thinks either he thinks I'm calling to reconcile or he thinks he 0.99

01:22:51.520 can get me again he thinks he can you know pull me in again it was just so disgusting and then I 1.00

01:22:58.160 started I you know I started firing questions at him why did you lie to me why did you lie about

01:23:02.420 this and there was silence and you could I it was maybe a minute and you could almost hear the cogs

01:23:08.920 in his brain turning thinking okay I'm being recorded I think I'm supposed to say I'm sorry

01:23:13.360 and so after I shut up he he just says I'm sorry it was the lamest most insincere apology you've

01:23:21.660 ever heard in your life he sounded like a robot you know he didn't mean it and then I asked him

01:23:25.760 some other question and then he hung up on me no yeah that's it that's the moment that's it it's

01:23:34.380 it's over you got me yeah and i have no need to sing or dance anymore

01:23:40.260 yeah but of course now now that he's i think even then i think all of this time he still thought he

01:23:50.140 was going to get away with it you know he still thought somehow he was going to crawl his way out

01:23:54.420 of this and restore his reputation and so i think this prison sentence and the supreme court refusing

01:24:02.940 to take his case was a was a hard awakening and that's why he's desperate and that's why he's

01:24:07.220 doing all this stuff now and calling me a liar calling Anna a liar what else can he do you know

01:24:13.000 there's nothing else he can do so let's talk about what we can figure out in his psychology

01:24:23.840 and really warning signs for other women because you said at the top which I wanted to follow up 0.99

01:24:29.920 with you on um the thing about i believe he was gathering information to use against me

01:24:37.080 from the start so interesting what do you mean so one of the things and i think this is true

01:24:44.800 of most of these guys most of these con artists i thought paula was a very good listener at the

01:24:50.900 beginning right who who doesn't love a good listener especially when you're in a vulnerable

01:24:54.620 place. But what they're doing, if you go back and look at it very carefully, they give you very

01:25:00.180 little information about themselves. And what they're doing is literally gathering information

01:25:05.480 and stockpiling it to use against you. They study you. They try to figure out everything they can

01:25:12.420 about you so that they can use it against you. And they target you when you're vulnerable. And so

01:25:17.600 this is one of the things I tell women all the time now. If you are vulnerable for any reason,

01:25:22.540 whatever there's been a death in your family you lost a job you just went through a divorce a

01:25:28.340 breakup anything anything that makes you more vulnerable than usual you have to be hyper vigilant

01:25:33.580 about protecting yourself because this is when these people target you because it's and it's

01:25:39.520 it's so basic but when you're vulnerable when you're going through something difficult what

01:25:43.840 do you want do you want somebody to tell you everything's going to be okay you want somebody

01:25:47.340 to wrap their arms around you and give you a big hug and reassure you and that's what palo was

01:25:52.320 doing. He, I'm pouring my heart out about my ex-husband is going to die. And I don't know

01:25:58.100 how to do this. And I don't know how to tell my daughter. And he's listening to me. He's

01:26:02.920 reassuring me. And at the same time, he's figuring out what my weaknesses are or what my vulnerabilities

01:26:08.440 are. And they turn it around on you. They use it against you. This is a weird reference, but it's

01:26:15.520 almost like a dog in heat. How, you know, the humans walking around the dog have no idea,

01:26:22.060 but every male dog in the neighborhood is at your door. Like sociopaths had that sense when a woman 1.00

01:26:29.520 is in trouble and when she's vulnerable. I don't know how they develop it. They do. It's a very

01:26:35.440 strong, effective radar. They can find them in a crowded field. They can, they know. And like

01:26:41.320 death in the family. It doesn't have to be like, you're a basket case. It can be like, 0.99

01:26:45.300 I just had something really sad happen to me and I'm feeling kind of low. They have like a homing

01:26:49.840 beacon. Exactly. I call it the vulnerability radar. Yeah. And so even if that applies by the

01:26:58.260 way, that applies by the way to anybody I would, I notice, and I thought about this in hindsight

01:27:03.680 at a party, for instance, you know, there were certain people Paula wouldn't spend a lot of time

01:27:08.880 talking to and later and it was subtle people didn't know but later I had to find out that

01:27:14.380 those people didn't like him or that there was something about him that didn't necessarily make

01:27:19.120 them suspicious but they were turned off by him and he he kind of knows it you know he knew who

01:27:24.320 he could play with and who he couldn't so I yeah they're highly skilled manipulators and highly

01:27:30.420 skilled at knowing who they can target I mean it's yeah not unlike any other criminal they

01:27:36.040 target their prey. It's a lot for mere mortals to respond to appropriately, to see through,

01:27:43.440 to identify. You know, I've said this to my audience many times, but my husband and I are

01:27:48.060 very different in this lane because he would be somebody Paolo would spend no time with because

01:27:52.660 Doug is very good at like sociopath dar. He just knows immediately when he's met a bad person.

01:28:01.640 And I'm ironically as the news person, and you'd think it'd be the opposite, but I'm like,

01:28:05.380 no, you're being too hard on him. He's a nice guy. And Doug's always right. After 16 years of

01:28:13.540 marriage, I finally got to the point where I'm like, if Doug says he's bad, he's bad. He's bad.

01:28:18.380 I should not trust my own instincts on this. But for mere mortals out there dealing with these

01:28:23.380 skilled sociopaths, it's a very uneven playing field. So you, as a mere mortal, if you don't

01:28:30.300 have Doug's sociopath dar you have to follow the clues that Benita's giving you like you are most

01:28:37.520 vulnerable when something has happened to you yeah whether you're strong normally or not you

01:28:43.920 you're putting out the the scent yeah that you know victim here you also I know you talked about

01:28:50.440 it a little bit you didn't use the term but I know you've talked about the fog that these guys can

01:28:54.700 create around you and I think that'll be familiar to a lot of people you feel it you you don't know

01:28:59.480 what it is. You feel the fog. So talk about how they create that and what that is. Well, it's a

01:29:04.760 form of gaslighting, right? So they're, they're master manipulators and they come into the

01:29:10.680 relationship or the friendship, whatever it is, could be even be a business arrangement, quite

01:29:14.980 frankly, with some sort of nefarious intention. They want something from you, whether it's money,

01:29:20.360 whether it's whatever it is. And so they're plotting the whole time. And so they are very

01:29:25.180 prepared so if you start becoming suspicious they're very prepared for that and they come

01:29:30.840 back at you rapid fire you know they have an answer for everything and they shoot you down so

01:29:35.360 fast and they get angry and they question you why would you ask me that and well you know and they

01:29:40.700 have evidence you know they have all the evidence and so it's gaslighting so you start thinking oh

01:29:45.600 okay maybe it's me you know maybe maybe I'm wrong and it feels like a fog you know you just feel

01:29:52.580 you can't quite figure it out but you know that you something doesn't feel right but they're so

01:29:58.420 convincing and so rapid fire and and so determined to shoot you down that you just start thinking okay

01:30:04.720 it must be me and that's why I call it the fog and it's very intentional it's very manipulative

01:30:10.560 because again it's designed to distract you and sort of muddy the waters and you know get you

01:30:17.680 off the scent of something's wrong or whatever it is that you've clued, clued into. And they're

01:30:23.100 very, very good at it. It's cunning. It's the way you feel when you have low blood sugar.

01:30:29.460 Oh, that's so interesting. It's so true. Yeah. That's exactly what it feels like. Yeah.

01:30:35.040 Your brain's just a little muddled. You're not a hundred percent yourself. You're slightly

01:30:39.420 confused. You're not processing things as quickly as you normally do. Just like there's some

01:30:43.860 separation between the real you and the current you. And they're so good at creating it. They can

01:30:49.180 create it just a million facts that they throw at you. And they're smart. The people who get away

01:30:53.660 with this are very, very smart. So it's not, it's not illogical, their responses and their

01:30:58.360 manipulations. And that brings me to another thing you said about how you said, oh, he probably would

01:31:06.060 have canceled the wedding claiming, oh, there's some massive security threat. Or you talked about

01:31:11.980 how he said some trip was canceled because of an emergency. That the big excuse for the

01:31:19.240 cancellation or the letdown is also a characteristic of these people. Yeah, I call it the walking

01:31:26.220 catastrophe. So if you're if you're dating somebody or again, it could be a business

01:31:31.400 relationship. It could be a friendship. And there's one dramatic excuse after the other.

01:31:36.560 It's always dramatic, right? It's somebody's in the hospital or I'm in the hospital or

01:31:41.380 somebody's dead or something so dramatic that if you if you question them let's say you're supposed

01:31:47.120 to go on a date with somebody and they're oh you know my kid got hit by a car if you then question

01:31:52.400 them and well I thought we were going away for the weekend I thought we were going on a date 1.00

01:31:56.800 you look like the idiot and the asshole because you're who wouldn't be empathetic and sympathetic 1.00

01:32:01.660 in that situation and it's very calculated it's designed again to make you know to take the focus 1.00

01:32:08.300 of what they're not doing or why they're not showing up and make you feel bad and but it's

01:32:13.640 a huge red flag i mean if it happens once okay that's life you know things happen but if it

01:32:18.480 happens over and over again these dramatic wild you know excuses and catastrophes that's a giant

01:32:26.440 red flag so looking back on your relationship with paolo before pope gate was there a moment

01:32:35.360 And, you know, now in retrospect, was there a moment or two that you can point to where you're like, I want to talk to that girl and say, sweetheart, this is a big deal. Here's your red flag. Like, run. 0.97

01:32:46.680 It's so hard because it's such a slow weaving of the web of lies.

01:32:53.020 You know, it's so meticulous.

01:32:55.940 And again, that fog.

01:32:58.180 So it's happening very gradually.

01:33:01.420 And by the time you realize that you're ensnared in this web, this spider's web, you know, it's too late.

01:33:07.940 It's been going on.

01:33:09.160 I mean, keep in mind, we were dating for almost two years.

01:33:11.260 So it's hard for me to pinpoint a moment like that.

01:33:16.140 Clearly, not having been to the house in Barcelona was a huge red flag, but we were arguing about that.

01:33:21.860 It wasn't as if I didn't question him about that.

01:33:24.200 And there were things about the wedding that I questioned him about.

01:33:26.260 So, again, there wasn't one big giant thing that said, you know, wake up, because he had the credentials.

01:33:36.140 Everything, as nuts as it sounds, also seemed equally plausible.

01:33:40.280 You know, he he had a he's very adept at explaining things into sense, into them making sense.

01:33:48.680 So with you, we speculated maybe this was about getting a friend in the media, getting a getting a beautiful NBC piece and perhaps more or, you know, who knows, because he did encourage you ultimately to quit NBC.

01:34:02.960 So at that point, but you're still a journalist, you still have connections.

01:34:05.800 And at this point, he may just be seeing it through.

01:34:08.480 But in general, do you think it's just the high that we talked about, like of lying, of fooling someone smart, like a guy who gambles and goes for the high of winning?

01:34:21.680 Is it like that normally?

01:34:23.520 Because I think this happens to people who don't have the kind of power and job that you had.

01:34:28.940 Yeah, I think it goes back to the narcissism.

01:34:33.140 I've asked experts about this.

01:34:35.260 And, I mean, one of the things is people like him don't go into therapy, obviously, so they don't know a lot about these type of people.

01:34:41.920 But one person explained it to me that all the, okay, let's say you were standing on the edge of a cliff and somebody is about to push you off.

01:34:50.320 Think of all the things you'd be feeling, you know, the fear, the anxiety, the trepidation.

01:34:55.660 This person said that it's almost like a part of their brain is missing, right?

01:35:00.080 So all those things that we feel, you know, fear, anxiety, remorse, guilt, you know, all

01:35:06.720 the normal things people feel when they're dealing with other human beings or they make 0.98

01:35:10.500 a mistake, it's like that part of their brain is blank.

01:35:13.480 They feel nothing.

01:35:14.660 They have no empathy.

01:35:15.640 They have no remorse.

01:35:16.540 They have no guilt.

01:35:18.080 And so therefore, they're always seeking a high, something that sort of jolts their brain

01:35:24.640 into feeling something because it's almost blank.

01:35:26.960 And so the rush and the high of getting away with lying is just fueling them.

01:35:33.920 It's just fueling their ego.

01:35:35.220 It's almost like they need it, like they can't exist without it.

01:35:41.560 So now what?

01:35:43.300 Every time I've heard your story, I think, how is she ever going to trust somebody again?

01:35:48.480 How is she going to fall in love again?

01:35:49.980 You're still a young woman.

01:35:51.340 You're beautiful.

01:35:52.300 You're smart.

01:35:53.420 You have to have love in your life at some point.

01:35:56.320 How's that been?

01:35:57.420 And are you up against some major trust issues at this point?

01:36:02.100 So, first of all, I don't think you can go through something like this and not have trust

01:36:07.060 issues.

01:36:07.760 I mean, it would be impossible.

01:36:09.600 I mean, something would be wrong with me if I didn't.

01:36:12.260 And it's taken a while.

01:36:13.780 I mean, this has been, you know, it was 2015, we were supposed to get married.

01:36:18.940 So we're nine years this summer.

01:36:20.520 and I think I didn't realize it at first but what when I first started dating people that were more

01:36:26.780 than casual um I was choosing people that I knew I wouldn't fall in love with and I think that was

01:36:33.940 a way of protecting myself because if I if I wasn't really in love with somebody then somebody

01:36:38.760 couldn't hurt me right um so it has taken me a long time but I am now in a in fact I'm sitting

01:36:45.960 in his house right now. I'm in a very serious, very happy, lovely relationship. We've been

01:36:51.140 together for a little over a year now. So that's awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

01:36:57.340 I imagine he's got his challenges. I mean, I feel like if I were dating you and I was your boyfriend,

01:37:03.800 I'd be like, I'm going to work and you can call me there and you can speak to my boss and you can

01:37:08.480 come by any time. And here's my everything number, right? Like I feel like I would feel the need to

01:37:13.460 bend over backward to prove to you everything I'm telling you is true. Yeah. And yeah, I'm lucky

01:37:19.960 because he's very patient and very, very understanding and really, really gets what

01:37:25.500 I've been through. And I have my moments, believe me. I put him through the ringer, but he's really

01:37:30.080 good. And he's very good at immediately sort of quelling any anxiety I have. And yeah, he's just

01:37:37.340 a good guy. Finally. Because, you know, Benita, I hadn't thought about this word, but I think it's

01:37:41.900 apt, you've been abused. This was an abusive relationship.

01:37:47.400 Yep. Yeah. And there's PTSD that goes along with that. It's trauma. It's, it's, you know,

01:37:53.440 and trauma doesn't go away overnight. So, and it's something you have to be very

01:37:57.000 cognizant of. Um, and there are times when that's really frustrating. You know, sometimes I've even

01:38:02.560 said that to him, I'm behave, I behave a certain way. I'm like, you know, this sucks. You know, 0.98

01:38:06.540 I hate that I'm doing this. I hate that I'm acting this way. I'm hate that I feel this way. You know,

01:38:11.060 I don't want to give Paolo that power.

01:38:15.060 And I try very hard not to.

01:38:17.100 It's not like what happens to women who have been sexually abused,

01:38:20.600 where you take something that's supposed to be absolutely lovely and enjoyable

01:38:23.680 and a source of connection and turn it into something that's really fraught

01:38:27.800 and complicated for a woman.

01:38:29.240 It's the ongoing victimization of a woman in this position. 1.00

01:38:33.440 And that's how I see what's happening to you, too, as a result of him.

01:38:38.640 I'm delighted that you have a partner.

01:38:40.180 what what do you thank you what do you do with your daughter like she must be 21 now is she

01:38:45.840 right she's 20 yeah she'll be 21 in the fall yeah so how do you talk to her about i mean she

01:38:52.620 clearly she's seen it all but like what what are the takeaways like what kind of lessons do you

01:38:57.040 impart to your daughter over something like this so please not repeat mom's mistakes for one thing

01:39:02.400 um and to learn from my mistakes and i'm very transparent i've been very very transparent with

01:39:07.740 her about everything. And we've always had a very close relationship, maybe closer than we might

01:39:14.320 have just because her dad died and it's just been the two of us. So, and she's a strong cookie.

01:39:18.620 She's a smart cookie. You know, that kid is super wise and no nonsense. I'm not worried about her

01:39:24.680 at all. You know, I think, I think thankfully she, I think she's proud of me and she, you know,

01:39:30.080 she sees what I've done with this and she's proud of me for speaking up against him and fighting

01:39:34.980 back but she won't make my mistakes you know she's she has she write about this in her college

01:39:40.720 application essay i certainly hope she used it for some way for good i know she does she prefers

01:39:48.160 not to deal with it and i appreciate that you know she she deserves to have her own life and

01:39:53.060 her privacy and um very adamant about shielding her from this now because you know she's this

01:39:59.480 shouldn't be hanging over her for the rest of her life either at 53 years old i have to tell you i'm

01:40:03.520 a big fan of compartmentalization now. I really believe in it. I don't believe what we were

01:40:07.040 talking about. We have to talk about everything. The more you can shove it down and ignore it like

01:40:10.100 a good Presbyterian, the better. That's my husband. I'm Catholic. But anyway, the last thing,

01:40:16.240 how about professionally? Because you didn't go back to NBC, right? What are you doing now?

01:40:22.180 I freelance, but I'm very busy. I'm a showrunner. I'm showrunning two different

01:40:26.000 true crime shows at the moment. Oh, good. And so, yeah, no, I'm busy. Back to work.

01:40:31.120 I also narrate stuff.

01:40:32.920 So, and I, yeah, I actually like,

01:40:35.640 I didn't think I would,

01:40:36.480 but I like the freelance life

01:40:37.620 and not being, you know,

01:40:39.120 tied to one job always all the time.

01:40:40.840 So it's good.

01:40:41.700 Everything's good.

01:40:42.920 Yeah.

01:40:43.580 And I'm sure, well,

01:40:44.500 if you're investigating murders

01:40:46.140 over on Investigative Discovery,

01:40:47.620 you're not falling in love

01:40:48.600 with your subject matter.

01:40:49.400 So that's good.

01:40:50.260 I know.

01:40:51.000 That door's been closed.

01:40:53.160 Yep.

01:40:53.680 Oh, all the best to you.

01:40:54.780 Thank you for telling this story.

01:40:56.180 Thank you so much.

01:40:57.140 Hope that the whole process

01:40:58.300 has been cathartic to you.

01:40:59.460 And, um, you know, at some point I know you'll probably feel the need to respond to his

01:41:03.540 documentary, but I do hope you can close this door and move on from it.

01:41:06.860 You've got so much to do and so much to live.

01:41:09.280 Yeah.

01:41:10.060 Yeah.

01:41:10.580 It's, it's nice knowing that I'm able to help other women by sharing my story and that always

01:41:15.940 keeps me going, but it does, you know, it's reaching the point where, okay, enough time

01:41:22.320 to stop talking about this, you know, and move on with my life.

01:41:25.800 I just want to, I just want to be happy and move on with my life.

01:41:28.140 I know I and so many others are grateful that you did

01:41:31.560 that you did tell the story and you found the guts

01:41:33.280 even though parts of it I'm sure felt humiliating

01:41:35.820 and you didn't want to do it but good on you

01:41:37.520 you're the only reason you and those doctors

01:41:39.060 he's been held accountable and hopefully more to come

01:41:42.100 all the best to you

01:41:42.960 thank you, thanks for having me

01:41:45.420 wow, so happy to have Benita telling her story

01:41:48.940 and helping others

01:41:49.820 Broadway's smash hit

01:41:54.240 the Neil Diamond musical

01:41:55.540 A Beautiful Noise is coming to Toronto.

01:41:58.660 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more,

01:42:02.180 featuring all the songs you love, including America,

01:42:05.220 Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

01:42:07.920 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here,

01:42:12.000 the Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

01:42:14.800 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:42:19.720 Get tickets at mirvish.com.

01:42:21.560 It was the vacation of a lifetime.

01:42:27.360 Chris Smith was leaving his successful yet stressful business career behind

01:42:31.560 for the open sea and a chartered yacht.

01:42:34.660 He emailed his family to tell them the news.

01:42:37.140 He would keep them updated for a while, but then nothing.

01:42:41.960 The emails stopped, the calls, no, and no Chris.

01:42:45.960 Our guest, Matt Murphy, has an in-depth knowledge of this particular case.

01:42:50.660 He spent 17 years as a senior deputy district attorney in the Orange County Homicide Unit

01:42:56.520 and successfully prosecuted dozens of cases, including this one back in 2018.

01:43:02.100 His forthcoming book is called The Book of Murder, A Prosecutor's Journey Through Love and Death,

01:43:08.300 and it's out in September and available for pre-order right now.

01:43:11.560 That's my kind of book. I'm definitely ordering and reading that.

01:43:14.820 I recommend you do the same.

01:43:20.660 Matt, welcome to the show.

01:43:24.280 Happy to be here.

01:43:26.060 Yeah, happy to have you.

01:43:27.260 And tip of the hat to you for a life spent in putting bad guys in jail.

01:43:31.440 I love prosecutors.

01:43:32.960 I mean, not all, not universally, but as a rule, the good ones are the best and we need them desperately.

01:43:38.540 So thank you for all that you've done.

01:43:41.640 Okay, so let's go back.

01:43:43.280 Where were you prosecuting attorney during the relevant timeframe?

01:43:46.400 So I was in Orange County, California, and Orange County is a little bit different the way they handle their homicides than than almost every other DA's office in the United States.

01:43:56.340 It's called a vertical prosecution concept.

01:43:59.780 And what that means is when you come into sexual assault, where I spent four years before I got the homicide or the homicide unit or certain other specialized units, you get assigned a patch of the county.

01:44:09.920 So I had Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Irvine.

01:44:13.980 and any murders that happen, you get the call in the middle of the night, you roll out to your

01:44:19.220 investigator, you're there at three in the morning signing warrants. So you get in at the very,

01:44:23.660 very beginning. And then it's called vertical because you follow it all the way up through

01:44:27.440 the system. So on certain cases, you're there, you know, as the crime lab is processing the dead

01:44:34.020 body and in others, you're there like in a missing person capacity trying to help police solve the

01:44:40.600 mystery. So it's kind of a unique way of doing it. I think every DA's office in America should

01:44:45.800 do it that way. You get to know the detectives, you get to know all the witnesses, you get a real

01:44:49.720 feel for the case long before you ever stand up in front of a jury and try the thing. So that's

01:44:56.400 where I was. So at the time you're doing that, there's a guy named Ed Shin in the jurisdiction,

01:45:04.080 And he's been leading an interesting life, a very bright guy, an only child.

01:45:11.520 But he, before he came into your life, had definitely had a couple of questionable pieces of behavior, including with respect to his own parents.

01:45:24.000 Yeah, so Ed Shin, as you can see in the photo, he went to UC San Diego.

01:45:28.500 He's a handsome guy.

01:45:29.640 And on the surface, he was kind of an all-American dude.

01:45:36.460 He had a very beautiful wife.

01:45:39.340 He had three kids at the time.

01:45:41.140 He's going to Disneyland.

01:45:42.380 He was engaging in weekly Bible study.

01:45:45.600 And he had parents who were very much devoted to him.

01:45:48.940 But he had some sketchy stuff in his past.

01:45:52.120 He got in a big, bitter lawsuit.

01:45:53.980 He tried to buy a magazine, like a collectibles magazine for sports memorabilia.

01:45:58.580 And that went belly up and resulted in a bunch of lawsuits and accusations.

01:46:03.280 He there was a really bizarre incident where he may have faked his own kidnapping, trying to get money out of his dad.

01:46:12.840 But that didn't go anywhere criminally because it was all sort of inner family wise.

01:46:16.500 But by the time he met Chris, Ed was working in what's called the advertising lead business.

01:46:22.900 so those commercials that you see at like three in the morning like uh consolidate your debts or

01:46:28.480 new hair loss treatment or whatever it is you know um you're old enough that you're probably

01:46:33.360 not rolling home i'm old enough i'm older than you but um you know those things that when you're

01:46:38.060 young you come home from a night of partying and you turn on the tv and it's like those those

01:46:42.280 commercials those are those are advertising leads and the way that works is um like mesothelioma

01:46:47.580 or whatever. These companies will actually put those ads out and people who call aren't calling

01:46:54.380 the law firm or the hair restoration guys or the debt consolidation guys. They're calling the

01:47:00.480 advertising company who then contracts with the people that actually provide the services. And

01:47:05.880 it's this really weird niche where they base it on the amount of time, how many calls or clicks

01:47:12.860 they get. And it was largely unregulated by the FCC at the beginning. So it's kind of the Wild

01:47:18.900 West. And it was an area where you could make a tremendous amount of money if you knew how to do

01:47:25.340 it. And so Chris Smith goes, he's in this business working for a totally legitimate company,

01:47:32.000 grows up in Santa Cruz, moves down to Temecula, California, and he meets Ed Shin, who works for

01:47:37.700 another company they're both like late 20s handsome guys chris is living in a nice place

01:47:44.080 in temecula but they they hit it off and there's a lot of junkets and boondoggles and these guys

01:47:49.300 go to vegas a lot and chris was pretty straight he was like a he was more the artistic side um

01:47:55.400 he would do the the actual ads ed was all business and with this degree from uc san diego he was in

01:48:01.480 a fraternity again kind of the all-american kid um they became friends and they decided that they

01:48:07.220 were going to start their own business. So at like, I think they were 31 at the time. They're

01:48:12.780 the same age. They started a business in Orange County called 800 Exchange, where they would set

01:48:17.580 up these advertising campaigns and contract the various providers of this service. These guys

01:48:22.400 made over $12 million in their first year with almost zero overhead. Right. It was an insane

01:48:30.820 amount of money and they knew how to do it. They're good at it. And they have this very

01:48:35.040 successful business. So Chris, um, moves to Laguna beach. And when I, I went to law school in San

01:48:41.860 Diego, um, I lived in Laguna for my first four years, uh, as a DA. So you got a picture of one

01:48:47.520 of the most beautiful places. I don't know if you've ever been there or not, but, um, it's got

01:48:51.420 these little mountains that overlook the ocean, you know, it's where Timothy Leary went to. Yeah,

01:48:56.260 it's, it's gorgeous. Right. So it's a bunch of artists there. And, um, anyway, he moves there.

01:49:00.500 he is uh he's a fanatical surfer um like i've been for most of my life and he actually lived

01:49:07.040 not far away from where my apartment was and he's got a um he's living the dream really he's got this

01:49:14.120 uh this ridiculously successful business he moves his brother down who he loved to death he's very

01:49:19.680 close to his family moves his brother and his bride and and their their two kids down from

01:49:25.220 Santa Cruz. And life was going great until it wasn't. So 12 million in the first year on this

01:49:34.540 business that Chris dreamed up and then Ed and he formed this partnership. And it seems like a

01:49:39.380 partnership made in heaven because Ed's more straight laced and can handle the business

01:49:43.360 aspects. And Chris is the dreamer, excuse me, who can handle the creative aspects.

01:49:48.200 And they're each kind of doing what they want, though. It must be said, Chris always had one

01:49:53.640 foot in the ocean. I mean, he, he was succeeding at business, but I think it's fair to say

01:49:58.800 his communications with his family made pretty clear. He was always dreaming of

01:50:02.560 doing something else, maybe bartending on a beach someplace.

01:50:06.820 Right. So pretty much any hardcore server that you meet, um, has that dream of, um, you know,

01:50:14.040 sailing off into the sunset, right? I mean, you've, I'm sure you've known servers. Um,

01:50:18.340 I don't know where you're from originally, but I'm from upstate New York, but I have a brother-in-law

01:50:23.000 in california so i do i do know some yeah so it's like they all have that they everybody has that

01:50:29.240 dream of you know literally sailing off into the sunset with a surfboard under one arm with a

01:50:33.560 beautiful woman and um finding a beach someplace where you can you know sort of unplug and go

01:50:38.860 surfing and um chris would go to indonesia every year and do these boat charters um which is

01:50:44.340 something that i've done for the last probably 25 years i get a group of buddies and you take

01:50:48.800 these trips to Indonesia and every one of them, you want to stay a little bit longer because it's

01:50:53.080 living in the ocean, eating great food, surfing all day, every day. It really is the dream of

01:50:58.860 every surfer. And he talked openly about this to friends and family. He was going to be a

01:51:04.440 professional wakeboarder. He was always water oriented, grew up surfing Santa Cruz area.

01:51:12.400 And so now, you know, he's living in Laguna, living, he's driving a Range Rover that's paid

01:51:16.720 for by the company he was about to propose to his fiancee who was um you know this kid and a lot

01:51:23.340 of people think of california you know the the dream of california um less california is uh you

01:51:30.520 know it's farmlands and um mountains um but for that tiny little sliver of coastline um pretty

01:51:37.980 much from you know santa cruz down to the mexican border there are people that really have this

01:51:43.400 idyllic lifestyle. And that was Chris. And he would talk openly about, I can't wait to leave

01:51:48.040 the route race and sail off into the sunset. And he told a lot of people about his dream of doing

01:51:52.760 that. Another thing the two guys had in common, as I understand it, was faith. They were both men

01:51:58.620 of faith. Well, Ed was very, Ed Shen was very into church, like I said, Bible study. And he

01:52:08.020 presented. He's got this, you know, this beautiful young wife. He's got these kids. He's going to

01:52:13.920 Disneyland a lot. Social media wise, he's posting a bunch of photos about, you know, how devoted he

01:52:21.140 was. And in fact, the job that he got in Temecula, the company was called Leadpoint. He met the owner

01:52:29.180 of that company in a Bible study. So, you know, this guy meets Ed Shin and was so impressed with

01:52:35.460 him and his devotion to religion and Christianity. He decided to give him this very almost outsized

01:52:46.120 responsibility in his company. And Ed was doing very well there. And that's really where he learned

01:52:51.400 the lead business and where he met Chris. So Chris also had had some religious leanings,

01:52:57.160 although I don't think he was as devout as Ed was. But Chris was just Chris was he's just this

01:53:04.020 really good he's a good guy you know he loved his family his parents are still together um devoted

01:53:10.720 to his brother um just very uh loved his girlfriend i'm sorry i think the brother's paul is that

01:53:18.600 paul yeah yeah he's also just a a great guy so you this kind of like um quintessential california

01:53:27.860 kid, who's Chris Smith. So what happened before Ed Shin formed the partnership? Because

01:53:34.860 as I understand it, he came to the partnership in debt. He owed some money.

01:53:41.240 Well, so great question. So nothing actually, or at least they didn't know anything had happened

01:53:48.160 before they formed the partnership. But almost right after the ink is dry and they both leave

01:53:53.320 their companies. There was what appeared originally to be an accounting irregularity, which I think is

01:53:59.480 how I was first put, an accounting irregularity with lead point. And what that turned into is

01:54:05.060 the owner got into the books and realized that there was not only a whole bunch of clients that

01:54:11.060 went with Ed, you know, and that's a common thing and that sparks more than one dispute out there,

01:54:16.660 but there's also a bunch of missing money. And in fact, the money at the more, the closer they

01:54:22.340 looked, the more money they found was missing, and it wound up totaling about $700,000. So right

01:54:28.720 after Chris essentially attaches himself to Ed, there are these financial problems that started

01:54:34.660 arising in Riverside County. So they get in there and, you know, $100,000 turned into $200,000,

01:54:41.760 turned into $300,000. Pretty soon, this is a substantial amount of money, enough that it

01:54:45.660 attracted the attention of the district attorney's office in Riverside County. There's a criminal

01:54:50.460 investigation. And as you can imagine, a whole slew of lawsuits over this missing money. Meanwhile,

01:54:56.220 Chris is he's almost learning about this in real time because he worked for a different company

01:55:01.700 when he met Ed and he's he signed on for this. He's totally unaware of it. Now, all of a sudden,

01:55:07.480 there's lawsuits where as as partner, he's being named as a co-defendant. And this idyllic kind

01:55:13.600 of awesome surfer lifestyle suddenly has this huge injection of stress. And he's not sure

01:55:19.400 he's not sure you know how much how much of this is going to drag him down how much his company is

01:55:26.040 liable for it now and remember all this money and he's his his brother has moved down he's invested

01:55:31.300 in the future bringing his family down so chris decides he wants to protect his interests and

01:55:36.960 essentially what their arrangement was chris was the creative guy so he would work he'd surf in

01:55:41.580 the mornings and then he'd work late into the night doing these the creative end of these

01:55:45.880 advertising campaigns. Ed was the business guy. So Ed actually owned 55% of business and Chris

01:55:52.960 trusted him. So it was like, hey, you handle the books, you handle the business side. I'll do all

01:55:57.540 the campaigns together. We'll combine our talents. We'll make money for ourselves and study these

01:56:02.700 other companies. That was the idea. So now Chris has no access to the books and he's concerned

01:56:09.460 that this is going to drag him down. He's worried about his reputation. He's worried about all

01:56:15.320 kinds of like the professional implications of this. But then he, the criminal case progresses

01:56:21.860 to a point that Ed Shin actually pleads guilty to embezzle him. And he's ordered by a superior

01:56:28.380 court judge in Riverside County to pay back $700,000. And he's given five months to do it,

01:56:35.300 okay, which is unusual. And he's allowed to do some custody time on weekends, but he's essentially

01:56:40.720 allowed to remain free so that he can operate his business. But there's a sentence hanging

01:56:48.500 over his head of 16 months in state prison. So he's going to do what that means in California,

01:56:53.820 depending on our crazy legislature, you're going to do at least 50% of that time. And depending

01:57:00.360 on the way it's charged, up to 80%. So he's looking at at least eight months actual prison

01:57:06.100 time if he does not make good on this restitution order. So there's this big, gigantic axe hanging

01:57:13.260 over Ed's head. And Chris knows about this. And he's, you know, the nightmares are, all the

01:57:19.800 lawsuits are a nightmare for him. And then he's worried that to come up with this money, and Ed

01:57:24.680 should have plenty of money because Ed is also controlling the accounts. But Chris starts to

01:57:29.680 worry that maybe he's going to, you know, he doesn't want any of his money to go to pay Ed's

01:57:35.100 debt, right? So he hires a lawyer named Ernesto Aldivar, really, really good guy who specializes

01:57:40.540 in business disputes. And they start negotiating his ability to look at the books and to have more

01:57:45.600 control over the money. And he wants to co-sign checks and things like that. And so this goes on

01:57:51.300 and on for a few months as they're negotiating this. And all of a sudden, Ernesto gets an email

01:57:59.580 from chris saying june 4th 2010 friday june 4th 2010 right uh at i think it's 6 10 in the evening

01:58:09.080 um he gets this uh this email saying i've decided to let ed buy me out of the company

01:58:13.600 and essentially begins um this uh you know telling friends and family everybody starts getting these

01:58:20.780 emails saying hey i've decided that i'm gonna i'm gonna live my dream i've been talking about

01:58:24.640 it for years i'm sailing off into this sunset i met a woman in las vegas named tiffany taylor

01:58:28.980 And I've decided to sail to the Galapagos Islands with Tiffany Taylor. And yeah, that's when I became involved pretty soon after that, which is also kind of interesting.

01:58:40.620 Which is a total head snap moment because everyone thought he was in love and even engaged or close to engaged to another woman. And he wasn't, from what his parents said, the kind of guy who was like, yeah, hot playboy, babe. He wasn't that kind of guy.

01:58:58.980 Right. Right. So Ed was Ed was really Ed loved Las Vegas. They do a lot of business junkets for their company out there. Chris was not into the flash. And we actually had a woman that worked for the company named Jennifer Matthews, who when she testified about Chris and she just described Chris, she said that he was when they do these business junkets in Vegas, Chris would go back to his room and go to sleep.

01:59:23.460 And Ed would be up until, you know, two and three in the morning doing the Vegas thing, which I'll get into in a bit, I guess.

01:59:30.380 But, yeah, this was a head snap moment because he loved his soon-to-be fiance.

01:59:36.800 They'd been dating for a while.

01:59:38.960 And, you know, he flew his brother down.

01:59:41.640 He's supposed to pick up his brother at the airport.

01:59:43.960 His brother's flying back into town.

01:59:45.860 And Chris didn't show up.

01:59:48.000 And all of a sudden he gets this this email that, hey, man, I've sailed off into the sunset with this beautiful Playboy centerfold.

01:59:55.880 And, you know, I'll catch you on the flip side, basically.

02:00:00.740 Wow. And the fiance, too, or about to be fiance, got dumped via email.

02:00:05.440 Right. Right. And dumped in the most brutal, harsh way.

02:00:09.740 It was it was it was done via email and it was from an email that was apparently associated with Chris.

02:00:17.040 and it was basically, I don't love you anymore. I've met somebody else. Um, and I'm, you know,

02:00:24.520 I'm, we're done. And which was at the end, looking back, it was diabolically clever to do that

02:00:33.040 because now she was, um, first she was devastated and then she was very angry as, as you can sort

02:00:40.080 of imagine. So, um, plus she, you know, she'd had a million conversations with him about his dream

02:00:46.340 was sailing off into the sunset. She just always figured it would be with her. Right. So it was it

02:00:52.460 at this point, I would think like in my own life, I would think at this point, if somebody near and

02:00:56.760 dear to me sent these emails, even knowing that he had a penchant to wander and, you know, he just

02:01:02.960 had wanderlust, I think I'd say, I don't know. I'm not sure. You know, hindsight's 20-20. But did

02:01:10.280 anybody in the family right away say something's off so um i think right away everybody was shocked

02:01:20.980 um they were they were shocked that he would they would do this but then when it settled in

02:01:25.360 they all you know they knew about him they knew about his dream of surfing the world and um they

02:01:30.460 knew about his trips to indonesia and you know at at first it was everybody was shocked and

02:01:37.120 disappointed that he would do that but you know the first couple of weeks you know this was kind

02:01:43.240 of it was consistent in a way not not him leaving everybody in the lurch they were they were

02:01:47.960 completely flabbergasted at the way he broke up with with erica his girlfriend but um you know

02:01:53.540 it it kind of made sense now what happened was paul said hey um you know after a couple of and

02:01:59.820 these emails they're they're voluminous you know they went back and forth their emails to his

02:02:04.000 brother there were emails to his mother emails to his father separately um so these things were

02:02:09.240 they were ongoing and the the i'm sailing off into the sunset thing um turned into hey uh galapagos

02:02:16.380 were awesome now i'm heading down to tierra del fuego and i'm gonna check out these islands off

02:02:21.580 argentina and this was an ongoing narrative and paul at one point literally i think it was i think

02:02:27.900 it was i think he started with dude like dude at least show me a photo of you and and this this

02:02:33.740 new woman tiffany taylor so he gets a picture of tiffany taylor getting out of a swimming pool

02:02:39.940 and um tiffany taylor it is a um you know what what paul is looking for is paul is looking for

02:02:46.360 a photo of the two of them together like on the on the boat or you know and what he gets is he gets

02:02:51.540 what looks like a modeling photo of tiffany taylor who's gorgeous getting out of a swimming

02:02:56.680 pool in a bikini. So that, you know, he asked for a photo and he got, he got a photo, but it wasn't

02:03:03.880 really what he was looking for. And so, you know, one month turns into two, turns into three. Now

02:03:10.200 his mother is starting to worry and the emails are getting darker and darker. So it starts out

02:03:15.920 with, hey, I'm sailing off in the sunset with a super hot chick. And that turns into, I've been

02:03:22.220 having a lot of thoughts about my childhood. I've got a lot to work through. And then the

02:03:28.040 description turns into, as the trip continues, it turns into, hey, I'm going to Africa. And I met a

02:03:34.640 guy here in Bombay that he's got a sailboat, just met him, but I'm going to get on a sailboat

02:03:39.980 and go up to Algeria. And then he starts talking about going into the Congo to buy a conflict 0.56

02:03:47.060 diamond for his brother which is like it starts out the most awesome trip ever um i'm sailing off

02:03:53.840 to go pursue my dream of surfing um and that turns into i'm having a lot of like feelings about

02:04:00.180 uh my childhood and you know i've had really dark thoughts i've thought about the worst thing and

02:04:05.340 there's these suggestions of suicide and then it turns into the trip from hell where he's it's like

02:04:11.500 a mother's worst nightmare where the mother is receiving text messages about getting on a boat

02:04:16.920 with a random dude in Bombay or Mumbai and heading to North Africa on his way to the

02:04:23.780 Congo because he's heard of a place where you can sell gold coins because he had he

02:04:28.400 had collected Krugerrands, which is a you know, it's an international gold gold coin

02:04:34.460 that you can sell, you know, and he's talking about he had those the family knew about that.

02:04:38.980 And he's talking about going, you know, to the Congo by himself with a pocket full of

02:04:44.100 gold coins looking about a conflict time. And it's just like, what could possibly go wrong?

02:04:48.980 What could possibly go wrong? Right. So his mother reached a point where she's so distraught. And

02:04:55.960 this is a really nice family. I mean, these are, you know, it's a really nice family. So this is

02:05:03.640 your all American mom who loves her son to death, who's getting emails like that. And she's literally 0.62

02:05:08.720 on Google Earth, like zooming in on the satellite photos in random villages in the Congo, trying

02:05:15.460 to find a glimpse of her son.

02:05:18.320 And so the dad starts getting suspicious.

02:05:24.140 Then the dad sends an email trying to check, you know, I mean, think about it.

02:05:30.620 If you wanted to make sure this person was really your family member, there are definitely

02:05:34.540 questions we could all think of that only that family member would know, you know, something

02:05:39.240 from deep in the childhood, something specific. And so the dad, the dad, did he have a background

02:05:45.520 in law enforcement? Cause he, I guess he thought up this, this idea. He did. So I don't know if

02:05:51.220 you're aware of the rivalry between firemen and police officers. I don't know if you're aware of

02:05:54.900 that. They're always making jokes by each other. Anyway, he started out as a police officer and

02:05:58.840 then he decided he wanted to be a fireman, which is a betrayal to all police officers. But, um,

02:06:03.520 But, you know, he did. He had a background in law enforcement. And he essentially, he started getting more and more suspicious. And there's a couple of things going on here. I think that, you know, this went on for almost a year where these emails are coming into the family.

02:06:21.340 And a lot of people think, you know, how could somebody believe that?

02:06:27.040 But, you know, when you when you have somebody that you love dearly and you're getting these emails that at least demonstrates that they're still alive, the the alternative is almost too brutal to think about.

02:06:39.420 So you you a mother's wish for her son to still be alive is going to it's going to get her past a lot of red flags, I think, if that makes sense.

02:06:48.260 So the dad, however, he starts sending he starts asking questions and they're almost quizzes.

02:06:56.060 And it was what what lake did you grow up water skiing on was one of the was one of the questions.

02:07:01.900 And what was the name of our boat? And the response was, Dad, it was Kelly Lake.

02:07:07.780 Chill out. I'm fine. That was essentially the response.

02:07:11.240 But he doesn't answer what kind of boat it was, which was which was actually one of being very significant.

02:07:16.620 So the dad decides he's going to come down to to Orange County and he comes down and he meets with Ed Shin.

02:07:24.380 And Ed was one of the last people to see him, to see Chris.

02:07:29.320 So he, you know, Ed sits down with the dad and Ed is he's calm and he's smooth.

02:07:36.440 And he explains, look, we have this ongoing business dispute.

02:07:40.580 It's not a problem.

02:07:42.560 He decided that he wanted to take this trip around the world that everybody in Chris's life had heard about.

02:07:48.920 And he's like, so I decided to buy him out.

02:07:51.380 He insisted that he wanted the money wired to the Caymans.

02:07:54.940 I can get you all the banking information.

02:07:56.640 That's not a problem.

02:07:58.820 And then he says, you know, but essentially you should be aware that I was also with him when he got a fake passport because he wanted to go off the grid.

02:08:09.480 Okay, so he provides all this information to Steve Smith, who's completely hinked up. It doesn't make sense. But then it's almost reassuring to talk to Ed because he's so convincing, and he's so smooth, and he's so nonplussed by the whole thing.

02:08:25.840 And so, yeah. So he. But that's the question. Why would he need a fake passport? He's not under criminal indictment. He's not being investigated. Why wouldn't he just be traveling under his own real passport?

02:08:39.840 right so then we and the answer to that really is of course you're right but risk was one of

02:08:47.620 those guys that part of his dream was like i want to unplug from the rat race i want to completely

02:08:52.380 distance myself from society i want to go someplace and just completely you know check out for a while

02:08:58.920 so so yes you're right if you or i take a trip like this i mean i go to indonesia every year i

02:09:04.480 use my own passport. But for him, it almost made sense. You know, it was, you know, he had talked

02:09:13.320 about, you know, Chris talked about his concern about, you know, hey, what if the monetary system

02:09:18.840 collapses? That was one of the things that he kind of talked about. He was a rational guy,

02:09:23.660 but he, you know, this is part of his, you know, his sort of fantasy of leaving. And so when he

02:09:29.380 heard fake passport, it struck him as being very odd, but it wasn't 100% unbelievable,

02:09:35.900 if that makes sense.

02:09:43.220 Eventually, the landlord, right, of the facility in which Chris and Ed Shin ran their business

02:09:53.540 gets involved because they're overdue on rent. They've moved out, like Ed Shin pulled the

02:10:01.120 business and relocated it, but he's in arrears on his old rent, which is irritating to that

02:10:07.220 landlord, which is also another pivotal moment here. Right. So he, they basically skipped out.

02:10:14.400 So they they they've got a year lease and he, you know, nine months later, soon after Chris left for this trip, supposedly, he had packed up the business and moved to a different location and stiffed the landlord for many months rent.

02:10:31.440 So the landlord actually one of the other tenants is a private investigator named Joe DeLue, who's a former officer at Laguna Beach Police, and he makes his living as a as a PI.

02:10:42.320 guy so he the landlord is essentially complaining to him one day about this tenant and he's got this

02:10:48.920 big empty office space and doesn't know where the guy is and would joe be willing to help track him

02:10:54.300 down and joe of course you know was was happy to do it and he starts poking around and he went and

02:11:02.800 one of the first things he did is he went he talked to the dad and he got these emails between

02:11:07.440 between him and Chris. And he looked at the question about the about the boat and the lake

02:11:15.080 and that he saw the answer that it was just that he just answered with the lake. And that struck

02:11:21.700 him as being very odd. So he decided to actually go in and ask for permission to enter the business.

02:11:27.560 And it's been abandoned. OK, so there's there's no reasonable expectation of privacy. If you rent

02:11:33.140 if you rent a business from somebody or you rent a home and you abandon it, the landlord

02:11:39.600 has a right to go back inside. So Joe DeLue walks in and very soon after making entry,

02:11:47.040 he sees what appears to be blood on a light switch. And he realizes that that's something

02:11:53.080 that he doesn't want to mess around. So he backs out and calls the sheriff's department.

02:11:57.400 Now, meanwhile, what has happened is I've got my jurisdiction covered Laguna Beach.

02:12:01.960 The family had filed a missing persons report with with Laguna and they brought Ed in.

02:12:10.000 And this thing is on video, Megan. And I'm telling you, I was a D.A. for 26 years.

02:12:15.600 You see this interview. It is it is fascinating because Ed Shin is so convincing.

02:12:21.380 And these two detectives sit down and they're like, hey, family is trying to find their their son.

02:12:27.460 what's the deal and he he is almost perfect he is calm he is like he doesn't break a sweat

02:12:33.860 he describes how that you know chris was always talking about this around the world trip

02:12:37.740 and he's sitting on a beach someplace and about halfway through the interview i'll leave the

02:12:42.360 names of the detectives out um you can just see they relax and they they buy it they believe him

02:12:48.720 and um you know it becomes uh you know it's sort of a that was kind of the end right i taught a

02:12:56.380 class at the um sheriff's academy for young detectives and right about the same time i

02:13:02.520 finish finish a class i'm walking out to the parking lot and i almost get tackled by this

02:13:07.340 very young detective from laguna beach named julia bowman who says you know i i really want

02:13:13.920 to talk to you about this um i'm going to get in trouble if my my boss finds out that i've

02:13:18.900 cornered you but there's there's something that's all wrong here and this makes no sense and i've

02:13:25.120 looked into it and they believe him and I don't. And we, and I wound up, I actually got sunburned

02:13:30.900 and like you, I'm, I'm Irish, right? I think Irish background for you. So, you know,

02:13:35.440 oh my God. So she corners me next to my car and I went up talking to her for about 45 minutes and

02:13:42.160 I got the worst sunburn because it was so compelling. And, and this is my, this is my

02:13:48.500 patch. This is my jurisdiction. And this is, that was my job to try to help police figure this out.

02:13:53.480 But Laguna officially hadn't come to me with an issue. So I've got this junior detective putting this on my radar. And I start I started looking into it. And I find out right at right about the same time. So San Juan Capistrano is where the business was. So Joe DeLue has just gone in. That was my colleague, Brahim Betai, had that section. So I sit down with Brahim. We have a meeting with Laguna and the sheriff's department.

02:14:18.060 Laguna has almost no murders, but the sheriffs are one of the most, Orange County sheriffs

02:14:22.760 are one of the most professional homicide investigative groups in the country.

02:14:27.120 They deal with enough of them.

02:14:28.720 They're real pros.

02:14:30.060 So we all sit down and we decide I'm going to prosecute or I'm going to help in the investigation

02:14:34.300 if there's anything ever filed.

02:14:36.040 They are going to handle the investigative part.

02:14:38.480 And we start putting the pieces together.

02:14:40.140 And one of the first things we learn is there was another junket out to Vegas.

02:14:45.420 and Paul, who is now really worried about his brother,

02:14:49.740 he's still working for the company

02:14:51.300 and they go out and they are in this casino.

02:14:54.300 They were staying at,

02:14:55.600 almost everything was at the Wynn or the Encore.

02:14:57.940 So two of the nicest hotels in Las Vegas

02:15:00.140 and that's where they would do these business junkets.

02:15:02.860 And there's a world known as atmosphere modeling

02:15:06.720 and I'm not sure if you're familiar with that.

02:15:08.840 There's a great episode in the show, Silicon Valley.

02:15:13.760 I think it's either the first or the second episode where they encounter, they go to a toga party that's thrown by this billionaire, this like tech billionaire, and they encounter atmosphere models.

02:15:25.400 And basically what it is, is it is you can hire beautiful women to come to your party and talk to all the guys that are socially awkward that you want to have invest or whatever.

02:15:36.060 And you can they can, you know, make a company look super bitching and awesome and and all that.

02:15:41.620 And and they Paul looks over and they've got they've got atmosphere models.

02:15:47.860 And there across the room at the business junket for one eight hundred exchange is Tiffany Taylor.

02:15:54.940 And he makes a beeline for her. And he's like, hey, aren't you supposed to be traveling the world with my brother?

02:16:01.440 And she looks at him and says, I'm really sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about.

02:16:06.060 And that's when the bottom fell out for Paul Smith and also for the family because he knows at that point.

02:16:11.920 Meanwhile, Ed is going, no, no, no, dude, it's a different Tiffany Taylor.

02:16:14.540 And he's going, this is the woman in the photo that I got from my brother.

02:16:19.600 And she is, you know, her real name is not Tiffany Taylor.

02:16:23.700 Her real name is Summer Hanson.

02:16:25.420 She was at Playboy Center full and she wound up being kind of a hero in this case in a lot of ways.

02:16:32.020 And she's stunning.

02:16:34.300 And Paul is in this, you know, in this casino.

02:16:38.760 His brother's gone.

02:16:39.800 And at that moment, he knew that something horrible had happened.

02:16:42.980 So let me just jump back.

02:16:45.040 So we pulled some soundbites from some of that.

02:16:47.800 I've listened to the 2020 and the Dateline, a bunch of stories on this, too, just over the years.

02:16:51.500 But this is a piece from NBC Dateline for the moment that the cops went over to that old office.

02:16:59.020 and at the same time just about that paul was finding out there's no tiffany taylor

02:17:03.600 they were finding disturbing things inside the office along the lines of what you described

02:17:07.640 here it is in sought to sergeants don't vote and ray wert orange county sheriff's department

02:17:13.900 first thing to do send some texts over to take a good close look around the old 800 exchange office

02:17:20.380 that's when they started finding more suspicious spots on some ceiling tiles behind some molding

02:17:29.460 They pulled up carpet and found dark-colored stains on the concrete underneath.

02:17:35.700 The spots tested positive for human blood.

02:17:39.000 We confirmed that all the blood in the crime scene was, in fact, Christmas.

02:17:42.900 All of it?

02:17:43.560 All of it.

02:17:44.060 Nobody else was bleeding in there at all?

02:17:45.500 In the end, it was all from one person, and it was one person's DNA.

02:17:49.840 and my understanding is they used luminol on the carpet and it lit up like a christmas tree which

02:17:58.320 detects the presence of blood right so now all of a sudden um we've gone from a missing person

02:18:05.460 and kind of a mystery to um we've clearly got evidence of a homicide and that little clip that

02:18:10.720 you just showed that tiny little droplet on the on the strip that's called cast off so um in the

02:18:16.320 world of forensic science when you have blood drops on a ceiling it means that somebody has

02:18:20.980 either been stabbed multiple times or beaten with a blunt object and when they fling it back whether

02:18:25.720 it's a knife or a bat it tends to fling viscous blood and there was blood on the on the strips on

02:18:32.220 the ceiling so this was um this was helter skelter and and at that point we knew and right about the

02:18:39.440 same time, we're also learning that Ed's, you know, Mr. Bible study guy, he was spending hours

02:18:48.520 at the tables in Vegas. And we start interviewing employees that are telling us that Ed would gamble

02:18:54.920 all night long with purple chips, which are $500 chips. And then we find out that he's spending so

02:19:01.340 much money that he's getting comped. The presidential suite at the Encore Hotel, which

02:19:06.240 is a, just to give you an idea, it's a two-story hotel suite with an elevator on the inside

02:19:12.420 and 24-hour Butler service.

02:19:14.260 It's maybe one of the nicest physical spaces in the entire world.

02:19:18.540 And it is, they're flying him out from Orange County on the Encore jet to go to Vegas.

02:19:24.980 Oh, this is not a good sign.

02:19:27.200 No.

02:19:27.700 So when we get back with Ernesto Aldivar, the attorney, it became pretty clear that

02:19:34.200 The pressure that Chris was putting on Ed created a huge financial motive here because, you know, they're not – they have – you know, Ed's married.

02:19:44.340 Chris is about to get engaged.

02:19:45.320 They're not dating each other's girlfriends or wives.

02:19:47.960 There's no – they're not neighbors with a dispute over offense.

02:19:51.160 They have literally no beef with each other other than money.

02:19:54.960 And if Ed does not come up with $700,000 within five months, he literally goes to state prison and he doesn't get a hearing.

02:20:01.980 Why can't he do that if they've made $12 million in their first year and Ed owns it 55%?

02:20:08.380 Viva Las Vegas.

02:20:10.960 Because when you're a degenerate gambler, he literally blew probably $10 million on the tables of the Encore and Wynn hotels in Las Vegas.

02:20:22.160 That's how you get a presidential suite comp to you.

02:20:24.200 That's how you get the casino jet because you are a high roller.

02:20:28.500 I'm sure you've seen Casino.

02:20:30.080 It's one of my favorite movies.

02:20:31.060 You know, they talk about a whale and they're, you know, they have that that scene where they want to get him back into the casino to, you know, to to go lose his money at the tables.

02:20:40.060 That basically was Ed Shin.

02:20:41.920 And it was he was gambling Chris's money.

02:20:45.260 And as soon as he opens up the books, he knows that Chris is going to Chris is going to bring some sort of court order so that Ed, you know, his accounts are frozen and he's going to go to state prison.

02:20:58.360 So that makes sense.

02:20:59.000 Honestly, I don't do a lot of gambling, but I know some people who do.

02:21:03.220 And one of them was telling me, you know what they call people with a gambling problem? 0.95

02:21:07.560 Losers. 0.85

02:21:09.040 The ones who go out there and just win because they go out there so infrequently, they don't have a problem. 0.96

02:21:13.700 It's the people who go there all the time, and they lose invariably because the odds are against them.

02:21:17.720 Those are the people who have a gambling problem.

02:21:20.120 Right.

02:21:20.640 Yeah, Vegas and all the glitz.

02:21:22.060 I mean, I'm sure most of you viewers have been there.

02:21:24.320 I mean, that was not built on winning nights by amateur gamblers.

02:21:27.180 So that's from people losing money.

02:21:30.820 I can't imagine that, Matt.

02:21:31.700 Like if my husband ever said to me, the Encore Hotel is going to fly us out there on their private jet and we're staying in the presidential suite because of what happened the last time I was there, I'd demand a forensic accounting of every account we have.

02:21:45.120 I mean, it would be horrifying.

02:21:47.780 Oh, well, and it gets worse than that, too, because then we get into we interview.

02:21:52.300 ed basically hired a gopher like a personal assistant who he moved into chris's apartment

02:21:59.760 that was being paid for by the company and the don and i mean watching that clip i gotta tell

02:22:06.100 you i left the office five years ago i love those guys don and and ray just um i miss them almost

02:22:13.100 every day you know um they're such good such good detectives and you just see that steely eye you

02:22:19.080 know with all the crap that the police get today um the vast majority of police officers in my

02:22:25.540 experience are really hard-working honest guys and ray and don um you know putting this together 0.85

02:22:32.060 with them what it's it's like it was it was amazing watching those guys work so they they

02:22:38.320 go to chris's um apartment and they find this dude kenny craft living there who is ed's personal

02:22:44.660 assistant and they get um he's driving around and chris's range rover and they and for me the

02:22:51.900 moment is this is all coming together i think this is even before we got the blood i can't

02:22:56.600 remember the exact sequence but um uh for me the the absolute alarm bell went off when they got

02:23:03.120 into chris's apartment and his he had two surfboards that were there two custom-made surfboards

02:23:08.760 and any surfer knows that if you're taking a surf trip anywhere you're not leaving your boards

02:23:13.860 behind so um then they did a forensic workup of the range rover and they found blood in the back

02:23:19.820 of the range rover so that was clearly used to transport so um we then get into um we get into

02:23:27.180 ed's phones and we find out that a couple of nights after chris went missing um ed's phone

02:23:33.980 is pinging uh at this place called desert hot springs which is a tiny little like dot on a map

02:23:40.800 just north of the Mexican border on the way to Calexico and Mexico. This is like

02:23:45.640 East County, San Diego, middle of nowhere, right? And as a general rule, when you work homicides in

02:23:51.780 Southern California, if you get a human body out into the Pacific Ocean, or you get a human body

02:23:57.120 out into the desert, that body will not be found. If you throw a body in a lake, it's popping up.

02:24:01.560 But if you throw a body in the ocean, or you get somebody out in the desert, it's gone. And so we

02:24:06.340 have one cell phone tower and it's got like i think it's 120 mile radius of desert land and ed

02:24:13.520 pinged off that at three in the morning after renting a truck at like um u-haul or something

02:24:20.060 and he drives off into the desert in the middle of the night in a pickup truck and so we we we

02:24:25.700 know where chris's body is um but so now so now so at this point you decide let's arrest him but

02:24:33.440 he wasn't going to make it that easy. It was a bit of a challenge.

02:24:39.140 Well, right. So what happens is, I don't know if you used to watch Get Smart, the old show Get

02:24:43.700 Smart. There's a gag that he'd do over and over again. Right when he gets caught, Maxwell Smart

02:24:48.220 would say, would you believe? Like, okay, I know I said this, but would you believe? And that's

02:24:53.420 what Ed does. Ed was getting on a plane to go to Canada, which was a violation of his probation

02:24:58.300 in riverside and also um we're getting pretty close here and um so i made the decision uh that

02:25:06.920 you know we we needed to we needed to step up the investigation and basically take him off the

02:25:12.380 plane before he flew out of the country um so uh we communicated with this probation officer to

02:25:18.400 determine whether or not he had a probation vote or whether he could leave the country without

02:25:22.120 permission and he could not so um ray and don arrested him at lax and they drive him down

02:25:28.060 and they have um an interview with ed and they kind of let him talk for a while and he tells

02:25:35.160 the same story that he told the detectives at laguna beach and then he told steve smith the dad

02:25:40.380 um and uh he basically tells the same tale and then they confront him with all the information

02:25:46.700 they have they confront him with um you know the the forensics and everything else that had just

02:25:51.980 been put together and um and they he essentially changes the story to okay okay here's what really

02:26:00.040 happened would you believe um we got in a big argument over money and he attacked me and we

02:26:06.080 got in this fight and i pushed him down and he hit his head on the corner of the desk and i didn't

02:26:10.640 know what to do and i panicked so i got this uh i got this guy who's a fixer for me in vegas who's

02:26:17.280 like a vegas host that i use and he hooked me up with this russian guy who came and took the body

02:26:22.940 i have no idea where the body is so that became his new story and what's interesting is that um

02:26:28.660 in addition to ed gambling all that money um when we interviewed kenny craft ed was also

02:26:35.440 we had information that he was he was sleeping with hookers two at a time in vegas and like high

02:26:42.180 like really high dollar, um, sex workers, uh, to the tune of about $5,000 a pop. 0.91

02:26:49.620 So he's having sex, spending $10,000 with two of these, these sex workers at a time, 0.58

02:26:56.140 which kind of gives you an idea in the presidential suite, like the lifestyle that he's living. 0.93

02:27:00.900 That'll do it. Right. You can go for nothing, but this is why, this is why we, we have an

02:27:05.460 advertiser, Cozy Earth and their, their latest pitch has been take our sheets with you when

02:27:09.060 you travel don't like yes yes that's how i'm feeling right take them ed shin is a freaking 0.67

02:27:16.220 walking commercial for that i mean like yeah two two at a time in vegas and the nicest suite 0.90

02:27:21.400 probably in vegas and yeah there's probably some guy like ed in there with two prostitutes um it's

02:27:27.240 not good so let me show you so he does eventually and i want to go back to where you are in the

02:27:32.000 story but just to show the audience eventually uh you prosecuted ed shin and you got him on the

02:27:37.220 stand. And it was on cam, which is great. And there's a little bit about with of him. This is

02:27:43.320 from 2020. Trying to tell this nonsense story. Here it is. Not three.

02:27:47.440 Lunged at me again. And I think at that point, I thought I had to fight back.

02:27:54.480 I don't know if I threw him or if I shoved him, but somehow I pushed him into this area.

02:28:00.860 And that's when he fell and he hit the desk really hard.

02:28:04.780 okay and just because the audience is gonna enjoy this here's a little bit of our guest

02:28:11.560 matt murphy the prosecutor in the case grilling ed shin on this story and some inconsistencies in it

02:28:18.980 watch top four so how is it mr shin you didn't have a bruise or you didn't lead somewhere can

02:28:25.840 you explain that for us i cannot okay there you are he's on the floor of the office he's just

02:28:33.020 sustained a significant physical injury and you can dial 9-1-1 and they can come sail so if you

02:28:39.200 didn't want him to die why didn't you tell 9-1-1 mr shen so i was in shock you didn't dial 9-1-1

02:28:45.100 because you knew that if he died you got his money isn't that true no

02:28:49.560 wow okay so keep going okay so first of all that suit that he's wearing is like george

02:28:57.460 show our money. It's worth more than my entire closet put together here and in my place in New

02:29:02.220 York. So, um, his luggage that he had off the plane was like, I, it was, I think it was Louis

02:29:08.920 Vuitton, Louis Vuitton luggage. And I remember they were, they were trying to get it out. I mean,

02:29:14.220 everything, his, his watches, his jewelry, it just, the guy oozed money. So that I look at that and I'm,

02:29:20.620 I'm looking at his suit as I'm watching that clip. But so we yeah, we know body cases are really interesting.

02:29:31.220 OK, so we never recovered Chris's remains and which is brutal for the family.

02:29:36.120 But there's two ways you can do a murder case where you have a missing body.

02:29:42.020 One, since I've got Ed describing how he fell down and hit his head, I can prove that Chris Smith is dead.

02:29:48.920 if i play ed's ridiculous bs um can i swear on this no yeah okay go for it uh okay all right so

02:29:57.940 i can say this is the first time public i've been able to say this but it's just it's such 0.98

02:30:01.380 bullshit he's he describes this scene where this guy falls down and hits his head right like and 0.95

02:30:07.320 then he and then he lets him die and this is this is the same night according to him that we've got 1.00

02:30:12.140 this you know we've got an attorney saying that everything was coming to a head and if he can pay

02:30:16.980 the money he stays out of prison and gets to keep going to vegas but if he can't he's going to he's

02:30:21.360 going to freaking prison and like the most fortunate you know accidental head wound in

02:30:28.840 history and he's not calling the police because he's in shock and then he actually says he drove

02:30:33.560 around for a while and then megan what he does is he describes we get into it like who is the guy

02:30:38.620 that that that came and got the body and he's like well he's a russian guy and he had a flat top and

02:30:44.260 He had blonde hair, and he's wearing a leather jacket.

02:30:47.500 And he describes Dolph Lundgren from Rocky III.

02:30:52.400 Oh, my God.

02:30:52.720 It's like he describes Draco.

02:30:54.260 It is like literally I'm sitting there listening to it going, I know this guy.

02:30:57.620 This is a villain in a Rocky movie, literally down to the detail.

02:31:02.080 He's channeling that in his head as he's testifying.

02:31:05.080 And I'm taking notes of this.

02:31:06.600 I'm going, this is insane.

02:31:14.260 so i've done five no body murders okay i did the hawks case um at a newport the couple that got

02:31:22.060 tied to the anchor and thrown overboard did a case called judy blot that nobody's ever heard of

02:31:26.280 um and you know when you first start out as a prosecutor you think that you don't know how

02:31:31.400 jury's going to react to that and um and when you do a few of them you realize that there there can

02:31:38.680 be certain advantages if you don't find the body and one of them is if you have to prove the death

02:31:43.860 Normally, you just have the death of a human being is the element.

02:31:47.260 So if you have a dead body, that element is satisfied.

02:31:49.600 But if you have the ethical and burden of proof obligation to prove that somebody is dead, the way you do that is you put their mom on the stand or their best friend or somebody that tells you how much they love their dog or the grandma who said you'd never miss Christmas.

02:32:10.960 You know, and what you're able to do as a prosecutor is the jury will be able to get a sense of who the person was as a human being.

02:32:19.560 And my old mentor in homicide, his name is Lou Rosenblum.

02:32:23.320 He basically brought me into the unit.

02:32:25.160 He's one of the I know you've had mentors over the course of your career.

02:32:28.820 I love this man. And he took me in his wing and taught me how to do murders.

02:32:32.360 And he had a quote I will never forget about nobodies.

02:32:34.720 He said, the jury can always see the soul of your victim reflected in the eyes of those

02:32:40.460 who love them.

02:32:42.180 So, and that's one that always stuck with me.

02:32:44.540 So I don't want to put Ed's BS self-serving story on to prove that Chris Smith is dead.

02:32:53.220 I want to be able to prove it other ways.

02:32:55.760 And with all of the emails with the Galapagos, the easiest way for me to do that would be

02:33:00.300 to call Tiffany Taylor, right? And just have her come in with her passport and say, I've never been

02:33:06.040 to the Galapagos Islands. And, but we couldn't find her. And we, I had Vegas Metro going out

02:33:13.880 there. We could not track her down. And I don't know if that's because she's, if she's moved and

02:33:19.700 she's, she's an atmosphere model, right? Which is weird by itself, right? But it's a legitimate

02:33:24.800 business. It's basically your, your live model. And I don't know if she's, I don't know what 0.78

02:33:30.020 her involvement is in Vegas. I don't know any of this stuff. Like all I know is I need her

02:33:35.200 in order to do the no body prosecution. And, um, I'd given up and, uh, I, the case was actually

02:33:43.480 going to be pretty difficult the way we had it. And especially given that he told all his friends

02:33:48.000 and family about this round the world trip. And, um, and I get a phone call in my office

02:33:53.020 And it was Summer Hansen crying, saying, you know, I just found out you guys have been looking for me.

02:34:00.840 I've been in Virginia with my parents. I am so sorry. What can I do to help?

02:34:05.060 And she she flew in and I was able to put her on the stand with her passport.

02:34:09.340 So that's what forced Ed to testify. If Ed, if I hadn't been able to do that, Ed Shin could have relied on his bullshit self-serving interview with with Don and Ray, 0.83

02:34:19.840 where he came up this cockamamie absurd story um and why how did she disprove the cockamamie

02:34:27.840 story just that it showed you you could establish that ed shin was the one sending those emails

02:34:32.040 and why would he tell such a lie like how how did how was she the clincher she was the clincher

02:34:37.920 because i could prove that chris smith never left the united states because she supposedly went to

02:34:42.340 the galapagos islands which means she would have had an entry into her passport because there was

02:34:46.780 all the stuff that's if you had that photo of her was that yes stop one that was stop one okay yeah

02:34:53.040 i see it right so by her saying i never went it means chris never went which means the emails

02:34:58.460 were all fake and we were able to the ip address my expert on that wasn't my favorite i'll leave

02:35:03.580 his name out of it but he basically said that the the text messages came that the ip address was

02:35:09.160 um from north america so that still leaves a lot of wiggle room for defense so basically

02:35:14.760 i wanted to do this as a nobody and i needed her to do it and she stepped up and um i've actually

02:35:21.020 kept in touch with her over the years i was so grateful for the way she she she handled that

02:35:25.860 um because she wasn't under subpoena she came in voluntarily yeah i just got the playboy model 1.00

02:35:30.660 with a heart of gold i like that i like that you know what story and and it's and i'm telling you

02:35:36.000 i've never i've never asked her um you know how much the seedy vegas underbelly she she saw but

02:35:43.200 But but, yeah, she stepped him a huge way.

02:35:46.460 That's what forced Ed to testify.

02:35:48.300 And there was a point in there where he he starts talking about the emails that he sent.

02:35:55.060 And he's he on direct examination.

02:35:57.360 He starts tearing up.

02:35:59.540 And so he starts shedding some.

02:36:01.960 I have it.

02:36:02.720 So he teared up.

02:36:03.840 He teared up and you were not having it.

02:36:07.060 Here's a bit of Matt Murphy's cross-examination on that.

02:36:09.880 So five.

02:36:10.280 Oh, my gosh. So well done, Matt.

02:36:40.280 No, thank you. As a prosecutor, that's what you want. You want the bad guy on the stand. And if every trial kind of has a moment, you know, where you can point to it and it's like a turning point. That was the turning point of that trial. And his direct, by the way, I mean, this is the thing about the fraudsters, Megan, and I know you've probably encountered this before, when you got a guy who makes his living by fooling people, right?

02:37:06.700 But they tend to be really good at that.

02:37:09.560 And all you need is one juror.

02:37:11.660 It's a gift.

02:37:12.400 And his mom was sitting right behind me in the front row in the gallery.

02:37:17.260 And the jury, we had to have her testify because, again, we got to do it as a nobody because of Summer Hansen.

02:37:24.060 And so there, you know, he's on the stand and he gave me that gem.

02:37:27.600 And you almost never know exactly what's going to happen when they hit the stand.

02:37:30.880 But that was when it's like, wait a minute, dude, you're crying.

02:37:35.200 You're trying to show emotion. And you sent a year's worth of emails. You broke up with his soon to be fiance by saying, I don't love you anymore.

02:37:43.440 Like one of the most ruthless, heartless, freaking psycho things I saw in 26 years. And there he was on the stand. 0.91

02:37:52.480 But that's the difference between you. I mean, there are a lot of prosecutors who have a script for their cross, and that's the script that's going to be delivered and they're not going to deviate.

02:38:00.880 But to your credit, you were nimble. You saw him try to engender sympathy for him.

02:38:06.620 It was so hard for me. And you stuffed it down his craw.

02:38:10.420 It's like you were leading this poor mom to believe her son was about to kill himself because of the kind of parent she was.

02:38:16.520 Where were your tears then? That is just perfectly done.

02:38:20.040 That had to be a good night for you when you went home that evening.

02:38:22.320 Thank you. No, that's that's it's the fundamentals of every good cross-examination that you'll hear from any real trial lawyer is you can prepare.

02:38:30.480 I mean, I prepared that cross for years and you have to be prepared to, I think the journalism 0.93

02:38:35.280 term is kill your puppies. 1.00

02:38:37.380 Like you have to be prepared to abandon the story that you're in love with. 0.99

02:38:40.380 If the truth leads you someplace else, you have to do the same thing with, um, with cross

02:38:44.800 examination.

02:38:45.120 You have to be able to, to put aside every note you've made all your careful preparation.

02:38:49.480 When you get a moment like that, you have to, because that's, that's, that's how you

02:38:53.420 win trials.

02:38:54.040 I think. 0.98

02:38:54.680 So it's, it's, I think it's, it's just from Hemingway, kill your little darlings and no 0.98

02:38:58.840 one's killing any puppies. 0.98

02:38:59.580 it's a christy gnome thing you confused us she's she likes to kill the puppies we don't kill the 1.00

02:39:06.440 puppies yeah the last the last moment in that um you know i gave him one last chance uh i i got a

02:39:14.400 i got a uh like a topographical topographical map and i put it up and i had a marker for him

02:39:20.540 and we had a search and rescue team out staged during his cross-examination in the desert and

02:39:28.200 And I don't know if you have that photo.

02:39:31.520 Actually, I don't think I put it on.

02:39:32.860 I should have sent this to you.

02:39:33.720 There's one where they were out there for two days and they were sitting in the cold and they were waiting.

02:39:41.340 And what I love about it is the cadaver dog that we had was named Karma.

02:39:45.500 And they're all waiting.

02:39:47.540 And it's like, okay, Ed, here you go.

02:39:49.620 Here's his family.

02:39:50.820 Here's a Sharpie.

02:39:52.060 Here's the map.

02:39:53.200 Do the right thing.

02:39:54.140 so their fans to this family the family of your foreign partner do the right thing so they can

02:39:59.140 bury their son tell us where the body is and he almost almost looked like he thought about it for

02:40:04.060 a second and he said i i have no idea where where the body is sir i have no idea but we had him out

02:40:09.300 there and this is kind of this is sort of funny behind the scenes but i'm like i i you know i

02:40:16.200 asked to take a photo of the of the staging crew and it was like about a dozen people and the two

02:40:20.620 orange county detectives kind of drew the short straw to sit out in the desert in the one in a

02:40:25.380 hundred chance that ed chin would actually do the right thing and they just looked i asked them to

02:40:29.640 take a photo and they looked it was like one of those high school uh football team photos where

02:40:33.940 they're all grim you know they're all lined up yeah yeah i'm like you know can you i'm like they

02:40:38.440 just look so to don or ray i'm like guys they just looked they look too mean can they take another

02:40:45.580 one. And these guys snapped a photo. I wish I had it where they're literally jumping up in the air

02:40:51.040 with big smiles on their faces, holding big accents and shovels. Like, you want us to look

02:40:55.360 happy? Here we are freezing our butts off out here in the middle of nowhere. Gallows humor there.

02:41:00.320 Oh, my gosh. But yeah, so the jury goes back. And that judge that you saw there is his name's

02:41:08.200 Greg Prickett. He's retired now. He's one of the finest bench officers I've ever tried a case in

02:41:12.500 front of him. And again, with all the heat that the judicial system, especially the way it's under

02:41:17.440 stress lately, where I think a lot of people are losing confidence in it a lot of ways for reasons

02:41:22.740 that I'm sure you're aware of that I won't go into, but that's a really good, fair judge, right?

02:41:28.440 And his staff was really professional. And the bailiff, this guy Zane, who I loved, done a million

02:41:33.920 murder trials in front of him. He goes back and I'm kind of arguing with one of the defense lawyers

02:41:39.100 in a not a bad way to very his defense team were excellent attorneys but this guy al stocky who's

02:41:45.480 been around a long time in orange county and we're arguing about you know some way that the evidence

02:41:51.300 is going to go back so the way what happens is the jury gets instructed they go into the

02:41:55.040 deliberation room bailiff goes in um and like gets them all settled and comes out and the um you've

02:42:01.900 got uh then the evidence goes in right and al is arguing about what you know some something that 0.98

02:42:07.940 He thought she'd go in in an envelope or something stupid, not stupid by him, but something unimportant. 0.96

02:42:13.760 And and so Al and I are kind of mixing it up a tad. 0.99

02:42:16.760 And Zane comes out after the jury had been back about, you know, 30 minutes, just getting settled.

02:42:21.700 And he kind of comes out and he's got this really funny look on his face.

02:42:25.140 And he goes, Al, he goes, I don't think it matters, buddy.

02:42:27.300 It's like they don't even want to see the exhibits.

02:42:29.860 They're asking for verdict forms already.

02:42:32.120 So, yeah, you knew that was a good sign.

02:42:35.520 That's yeah, that's a great sign.

02:42:37.000 And look, as a DA, my plan was I was going to do this for like three years, learn how to try cases and then go make money in some civil firm someplace.

02:42:46.520 And the longer you remain a DA, the more interesting it gets.

02:42:51.280 And then pretty soon you're doing the serious stuff and then you're doing felonies and you get your own investigator.

02:42:56.040 And then, you know, for me, I was 34 years old and I'm doing murder cases and I'm walking through murder scenes.

02:43:01.480 And what becomes really addictive for you as a prosecutor, if you're if your career and you're dedicated to it, is you get families like the Smiths.

02:43:12.980 And Paul came to me after the verdict. And I will never forget the sensation that his wife was lovely.

02:43:19.200 He had such a nice family. And this is a really good guy who loved his brother.

02:43:23.560 And imagine how wronged, you know, a person is.

02:43:27.700 I mean, death of somebody we love is the worst thing that we can ever experience, right?

02:43:32.260 Death because of murder is the worst of the worst.

02:43:35.180 But truly, I think the darkest thing we can experience as human beings is if you have somebody you love dearly and they're killed so somebody else can get money and that person gets away with it, it's about as bad as it gets.

02:43:49.680 As a DA, especially for moms like Debbie Smith or brothers like Paul, it becomes kind of an addiction.

02:43:58.820 And when, you know, when you go through those dark moments of trial and you're not sure of the issues and doubt, Paul came up to me crying right after the verdict.

02:44:09.060 And he gave me a hug.

02:44:10.180 And I can still feel like the stubble on his face.

02:44:14.400 And he cried and cried and cried.

02:44:16.240 And it's it's an incredibly gratifying thing. And like it was for good cops like like Ray and and Don.

02:44:25.980 And, you know, we got a really good judge. That's that case was what keeps you doing it because it's a dark, dark profession, as you alluded to.

02:44:35.700 I mean, it's you're on the toughest of cases. You see awful things. It's your job to make sure this person who's dangerous doesn't get returned to society. So the stakes could not be higher. This is why most do get in and get out. They can't make a whole career out of it. It's just an enormously stressful way to make a living.

02:44:56.140 it is but it is more so than the stress you're absolutely right 100 right um but what is uh

02:45:04.740 it's more gratifying than it is um that it is stressful believe it or not for moments like that

02:45:09.900 you you kind of i tried 52 murders or 52 cases while i was in the homicide unit um and every

02:45:17.120 one of those uh there's a there's a mom you know or or somebody loved every one of those victims

02:45:22.620 And you, you know, especially on the hard ones, on the cold cases where you reach back in time where they effectively got away with it until you come in with a new team and dust off the boxes.

02:45:34.420 And most people can't understand how important that is to a family member unless, God forbid, you know, you experience it yourself.

02:45:42.060 It is holding the person accountable is becomes, for a lot of them, it becomes the center of their entire life.

02:45:49.420 And as a prosecutor, you're becoming very important.

02:45:51.720 It's the one last thing you can do for your loved one, the one last thing.

02:45:54.660 And ideally provide them with some sort of a proper burial, which is why you were pressing him and he did not give up the location of the body.

02:46:04.520 And then Camo, my old colleague over at NBC News, went to the jail and interviewed Ed Shin and gave it his best shot.

02:46:14.960 I mean, it's very rare to see Keith Morrison fired up.

02:46:18.800 This is about as close as you're going to get.

02:46:20.680 He was clearly frustrated with this guy who, even once he's in jail for the rest of his life, won't give it up.

02:46:27.040 Here's a bit of it in SOT 7.

02:46:28.780 You wouldn't reveal either where you put the body personally when you drove that rental truck down to wherever you drove it to.

02:46:38.960 You won't reveal that.

02:46:40.560 I can't.

02:46:41.420 I don't have that.

02:46:44.920 And it's not something that I can do, unfortunately.

02:46:48.340 There are just some secrets that a man is willing to give up his life for.

02:46:52.960 All right.

02:46:53.580 So, then I think we're kind of at an understanding, which is that you know.

02:47:00.060 It's just somewhere that I can't go.

02:47:01.620 It's right.

02:47:02.540 I'm sorry.

02:47:03.600 I know as a journalist, that's, you know, everybody wants.

02:47:07.420 That would be a coup de grace for you to unearth.

02:47:10.640 I don't give a sweet flying about that.

02:47:13.380 I don't.

02:47:14.120 I don't care.

02:47:15.780 I kind of care.

02:47:17.000 Well, you do care.

02:47:17.800 The family has a chance to get some closure that they have been begging you for.

02:47:24.040 They don't have closure.

02:47:25.380 They don't know where their child is.

02:47:30.140 And he didn't give it up to him either.

02:47:31.760 And he's never given it up.

02:47:33.220 Why?

02:47:36.060 Well, I think that one of the reasons why, and this is something that I hit him up with on the stand,

02:47:40.400 it's like, dude, if he hit his head against the desk, there will be a forensic record of that.

02:47:45.760 There will be one one skull fracture. And if the body is found, I've always believed he bludgeoned him to death.

02:47:55.160 There was a member. There was a bat, a baseball bat. We didn't actually put this in evidence, but there was, you know, he's a sports memorabilia collector.

02:48:02.680 And there was one that he used to have in his office that I don't think was ever located.

02:48:05.860 I mean, it was like a year later by the time it was searched.

02:48:08.700 But if he hit him in the head 10 times to kill him, then there will be – if the body is found, it will reflect that.

02:48:19.800 There will be multiple skull fractures inconsistent with him just falling and hitting the desk.

02:48:23.140 But why would he care, Matt?

02:48:24.600 Why would he care if he's serving life in prison?

02:48:26.420 What was the ultimate sentence?

02:48:28.660 It was life without possibility of parole.

02:48:30.160 So if you get that, what does it matter if it turns out now we can prove that your story is BS? Already the jury has said it was.

02:48:38.740 Right, because in the state of California, our legislature does something crazy just about every week on behalf, essentially, of homicide defendants or people serving life sentences.

02:48:53.020 They've been after the death penalty for years, but they've openly said that LWAP is next.

02:48:58.960 That's life without possibility of parole.

02:49:00.220 They're trying to undo that sentence.

02:49:02.020 And I think that he sees it as being into his legal advantage, not to cough it up.

02:49:08.420 And because, you know, maybe someone down the line will go, hey, look, it's possible that he hit his head.

02:49:14.120 Like you see some crazy stuff in the appellate process in California.

02:49:18.360 You know, most of the appellate justices are fine judges, but, you know, with the legislature, you just, there's such an ideological bent to a lot of the things that they're doing that a lot of really bad guys like Ed Shin, you know, the California legislature is kind of their, it's their best hope that they're going to do something that benefits them.

02:49:40.280 I mean, in California, unfortunately, we see that all the time these days.

02:49:43.800 We have a very activist group of people that have been elected, and they have some ideas about crime and punishment that, in my view, it's just – it's madness.

02:49:55.400 Yeah, they're dangerous.

02:49:56.360 Guys like Ed Shin.

02:49:57.840 Yeah, it's dangerous.

02:49:58.640 It is absolutely dangerous.

02:50:00.300 With our condolences to the entire family, it's just terrible.

02:50:04.260 And, I mean, they were lovely in all the specials I heard them into.

02:50:07.440 They sounded so reasonable, so kind, so thoughtful.

02:50:10.280 but you eventually did leave the DA's office. And then what are you, what are you doing now

02:50:16.800 for a living? Writing, right? We're coming out with a new book. That's exciting. You're welcome

02:50:20.100 to come back on when, when it hits to promote it. I'm happy to get into some of these other stories.

02:50:24.080 Um, so I've, I've got a lot of practice here in, in California where I'm largely, um, defending

02:50:30.740 police officers. Um, I've got a case right now against, uh, where George Gascon is prosecuting

02:50:35.980 one of my clients who is innocent. And I've got a contract with ABC News. I'm doing a bunch of

02:50:44.880 those 2020s. And by the way, I know Keith, of course, Keith Morrison works for NBC. So my

02:50:52.200 overlords at ABC will probably be mad at me for saying this. But for those of you who have never

02:50:56.360 met the man, he really is one of the nicest people on the planet. And I'd love seeing him get fired

02:51:01.180 up in that interview with Ed Shin because Keith Morrison is a force for good. And those guys sat

02:51:06.980 me down. I was so exhausted when the verdict came in and they wanted to interview me that night. I

02:51:10.760 did my Dateline interview that night with him and Josh Mankiewicz. But Keith Morrison is wonderful.

02:51:16.100 Total pros. And honestly, the best thing about NBC, easily.

02:51:21.100 Yeah. Well, yes. Right. Right. Those guys, they're good guys. I'm like all the politics

02:51:26.680 which i know you know a little bit about um but the uh yeah so i'm defending police officers

02:51:32.480 i've got a uh that's that's a large part of my practice um i'm splitting time between la and

02:51:37.800 new york city i got a place in uh in new york where i've i wrote the book and i'm doing a bunch

02:51:42.980 of stuff with a bunch of live tv um with people that have moved over to news nation learning how

02:51:48.040 to do that a little bit and is that my friend danny you're doing that kind of that show that

02:51:51.980 he does? Dan has not had me on his show yet, but Elizabeth Vargas, Ashley Banfield, and Chris

02:51:58.380 Cuomo have all been kind of rotating me in on, like, various topics of the day. Oh, that's

02:52:03.860 awesome. I mean, Dan has revived Live PD in another forum where he gets, you know, mostly

02:52:09.440 cops on to talk about the arrest, but that's something I'm sure he'd love to have you on.

02:52:13.800 I love that you've found another way to use your many skills, but maybe now you can have a nicer

02:52:20.880 hotel room, and you should still travel with the cozy earth sheets because one never knows. But

02:52:27.260 I know it's odd to say to a prosecutor, but I feel the need to say thank you for your service.

02:52:32.380 I really admire what you do and what you've done. Thank you. Thank you very much.

02:52:38.140 All the best. And we'll see you in September when the book hits.

02:52:41.760 Love it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. And I told you, producer,

02:52:45.680 I, I, I fanboyed out a little bit. I, I follow you. I loved your interview. Your, your, your thing

02:52:51.780 with, um, uh, Bill, Bill Mayer, Bill Maher, uh, love it. Um, I think everybody in America should

02:52:58.180 watch that. I really do. Thank you. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it too. It was, it was

02:53:03.720 interesting. I give him credit for coming on. Cause not, not a lot of these, you know, liberals,

02:53:07.600 even if they're centrist will come on with somebody like me, but he did came into the lion's den.

02:53:11.560 It was spicy.

02:53:13.680 Yeah.

02:53:14.340 And you guys had broad areas of agreement that I think reflect 80% of America.

02:53:19.180 You know, you can disagree on some stuff, but like when it comes to the fundamental

02:53:22.040 values, like it was such a rational, it restored a little bit of my faith that's being tested

02:53:26.980 daily, especially as I'm dealing with Soros-backed DA candidates, you know, here in LA.

02:53:32.040 But yeah, I love that interview.

02:53:33.760 It's where you describe yourself as a political six.

02:53:36.700 I don't know if it was that.

02:53:37.560 That is me to a T.

02:53:39.600 I'm a political six.

02:53:40.660 Yes, welcome. It's fine. Come on in. The water's fine right here in the rational middle. I love it.

02:53:46.820 Rational middle. What a concept. So all the best to you, sir.

02:53:55.540 My guest today is John Buehler, a retired detective for the Modesto, California, Police Department.

02:54:02.820 Almost 20 years ago on Christmas Day, he got a call to help on the case of a mother to be who went missing on Christmas.

02:54:10.420 Eve 2002. Her name was Lacey Peterson. John worked with others in the Modesto PD to find Lacey

02:54:17.340 and the person responsible, her husband, Scott Peterson. John, so great to have you here. Thanks

02:54:23.200 for coming on. Yeah, thanks for the invite. I appreciate it. Okay, so let's just start for

02:54:28.380 our listeners who aren't familiar with the case with the story of Scott and Lacey Peterson. They

02:54:35.020 were living in modesto california how long had they been married at the time she disappeared

02:54:40.540 well right about five years been married about that long and they'd come up from down in southern

02:54:46.100 california and moved up to modesto to be closer to lacy's mother and her sister and brother okay

02:54:52.720 and were there any reports um of marital problems or bad behavior by scott or any of the stuff you

02:55:02.080 look for once somebody's been convicted of double murder? You say like, oh, he tortured the neighbor's

02:55:06.100 cat. He did, you know, when he was growing up, things like that. Anything like that with him?

02:55:10.060 Gosh, Megan, nothing at all. I mean, this this guy was he was the guy you want to marry your

02:55:15.100 sister or your daughter. I mean, there was she just couldn't find any any flaws in this guy at

02:55:19.580 all from outward appearances. You know, immediately when we met him, you know, it took a while before

02:55:23.700 things started to fall into place. And we saw that there were another side to him. But from all

02:55:28.800 appearances you know he didn't have a criminal record he i mean everybody liked him you know

02:55:33.160 you'd have a barbecue you want to make sure you invite scott there because he's going to be part

02:55:36.540 of the fun so he wasn't that guy who people are like there's something creepy about him

02:55:40.260 no and you know that's kind of the thing that's a little bit unusual about that is nobody really

02:55:44.440 could come up with that although a lot of lacy's friends then once amber came forward and i know

02:55:50.940 you want to cover that but once she came forward then people when they went away from uh talking

02:55:56.440 to him as much as they were earlier. They started bringing up facts that were a little bit

02:56:00.860 inconsistent with the all-American boy, but nothing really alarming. It's nothing that you

02:56:04.740 would think of on an individual basis. They're all anecdotal, but when you tallied them up,

02:56:09.560 then they showed a little bit different side to him, a side of a guy who really didn't want to

02:56:14.100 be a dad. How long have you been a detective for? How long were you doing that? Well, I did it for

02:56:21.800 17 years. And I was probably 12th year at that time, probably my 12th year.

02:56:27.660 And so I assume you've seen your fair share of homicide cases.

02:56:31.700 Yeah, when I left, I'd been involved in about 140 of them, 26 of which were mine. So,

02:56:38.260 you know, you have those, you have missing people, you have suicides, you know, you deal with family

02:56:43.400 members that are under stress, that are dealing with the death or the loss of a loved one. And

02:56:48.540 And so you kind of get used to what to expect from people within a certain range of emotion

02:56:54.260 and reactions.

02:56:55.940 Right, right.

02:56:56.540 And you, I mean, I assume in that time you met or dealt with some defendants who you

02:57:02.260 thought this is a sociopath right here.

02:57:04.160 Like this guy has no emotion, no feeling or empathy for others.

02:57:08.720 Was there ever a defendant like that?

02:57:11.660 Yeah, I can remember a couple of them.

02:57:13.480 One in particular, he did.

02:57:14.720 Actually, the worst crime scene I ever went into was done with a knife and a claw hammer, no guns involved or anything like that.

02:57:20.960 And the guy who did that murder, he truly was TV quality evil.

02:57:25.100 He was the guy that, you know, a script writer would detail out.

02:57:28.340 Even when you looked in his eyes, they were cold.

02:57:30.400 Like it was like there was nothing behind them.

02:57:32.600 And, you know, Scott doesn't have that look.

02:57:35.040 But obviously, with this situation, our belief is and the jury's belief was that he had that capability.

02:57:40.740 Yeah.

02:57:40.820 Yeah. I was talking to Mark Garagos on the program not long ago. And, you know, he said this about virtually everybody we talked about who he had represented. You know, he's like, I knew him and I can get a sense for whether somebody is capable of this. And I just don't think he was. He wasn't that guy. Now, he also said the same thing about Jussie Smollett, which I don't believe either one. You know, it's sometimes we see what we want to see. But it sounds like you're not disputing that if you just met Scott Peterson on the street, you wouldn't have a creepy vibe. You wouldn't think, oh, something wrong with him.

02:58:11.560 Well, no, I don't think he would. And that's the reason that, you know, he would be successful when it comes to, you know, committing a crime like this, because his suspicion level really wouldn't be there.

02:58:20.840 It's a situation where you don't, he just doesn't look like a killer, which is a thing that made him in this case so dangerous, because Lacey had no idea that this was coming.

02:58:30.840 But he, over the years, you know, you meet a lot of these guys, and there was, I gotta tell you, Megan, there were a lot of guys I met that committed murder, and the murder aside, I kind of liked them.

02:58:39.860 And it's really the same thing with Scott.

02:58:41.640 He was difficult not to like because he's so charming.

02:58:44.560 He's so engaging.

02:58:45.580 He's so polite.

02:58:46.880 And I don't know what he was saying behind our back all the time.

02:58:49.400 I know some of it wasn't too polite.

02:58:50.820 But to our face, he was always easy to deal with.

02:58:53.500 But at the same time, that was a picture for us that painted something different than maybe he expected.

02:59:00.540 When we deal with people that are accused of this or we're focusing on them, usually we'll see a little bit of frustration on their part as things go by.

02:59:07.360 He didn't have that the entire time we dealt with him.

02:59:09.740 And he was always cooperative to a point.

02:59:12.480 And then, of course, he would always draw the line in his cooperation because he'd only go so far.

02:59:16.580 He'd pull out that attorney card and he'd say, well, I'm going to talk to my attorney about that.

02:59:20.340 So we dealt with that quite a bit.

02:59:21.620 We saw that in some of his public interviews.

02:59:23.960 He gave one to a local reporter.

02:59:25.940 And whenever she got him on something where he tripped up a bit, you know, like, what do you mean you told Lacey that you were cheating on her and then you continued the affair?

02:59:35.660 Why would you do that?

02:59:36.720 And he'd be like, well, the lawyers don't, you know, this is the point at which I can't

02:59:40.140 get into anything that was tough.

02:59:42.520 He was like, oh, I'm not allowed to get into that, you know, and was really like, let's

02:59:45.880 keep the focus on Lacey.

02:59:48.260 But to me, watching that interview with the local reporter, watching the interview with

02:59:52.040 Diane Sawyer, you walk away thinking he never comes close to losing his composure.

02:59:57.420 This is a man who's used to wearing this mask.

03:00:01.240 Yeah, I think so.

03:00:01.840 And again, when dealing with him, he had an enormous amount of emotional control, and that kind of fit in with our departmental psychologist, Phil Trumpeter.

03:00:11.000 He told us that this is the fit of a person with a narcissistic personality disorder.

03:00:16.600 He wouldn't go so far as to call him a sociopath or a psychopath.

03:00:19.440 I mean, you can label your wand on anybody, but in this case, he was just a little bit different than us.

03:00:25.600 But if you I don't know if you remember, there was one segment in one of the local reporters from Sacramento where she was asking him questions and this phone was ringing in the background.

03:00:35.260 It was back in the kitchen. And the thing that really strikes a lot of people that, you know, we hadn't found Lacey at that time.

03:00:42.120 And he tried to continue with the interview and then he goes, hey, you want me to turn that off?

03:00:45.700 And he goes back, he finds a phone, he turns it off. Well, that could have been Brokini or me or Grogan calling him and saying, hey, we got Lacey down here at Bakersfield.

03:00:52.360 him. But, you know, nothing like that. He didn't want to take the call. He just wanted to continue

03:00:55.140 with the interview. So, you know, where's the concern? Where's the urgency on his part? It just

03:00:59.380 was absent, at least at that moment. Yeah. And we'll get to what his half-sister said about him

03:01:04.840 because she spent a fair amount of time with him, I guess, during those weeks that we were looking

03:01:08.720 for Lacey. And she did not walk away with a favorable view of her half-brother, who she

03:01:14.040 wrote a whole book about. Okay. So there they are. They're living sort of, they call them an

03:01:18.200 all-American couple. You know, she's got the thousand-watt smile. He's obviously a very good

03:01:22.500 looking guy. They get pregnant with their first baby after five years of marriage. They've got

03:01:27.460 the golden retriever, Mackenzie. She's nearby her mom, who's adoring. And everything's, you know,

03:01:35.060 coming up roses, or so it would seem. And then December 24th, we think, well, at least December

03:01:40.780 24th is when she was called in as missing. He says he went to fish in the local marina with a 14-foot

03:01:51.960 fishing boat he only recently bought that Lacey had never stepped foot in because that's just what

03:01:57.240 he does for entertainment. He says some guys would go golfing. I like to fish, so I went fishing.

03:02:01.620 And Lacey was going to get together a couple of food items to share with her family later.

03:02:07.040 He says he left the house at 930 that morning for his fishing trip.

03:02:12.680 And what time does he say he returned home to find No Lacey?

03:02:18.480 Yeah, it's late afternoon.

03:02:20.000 I'm trying to remember exactly like 330 or 4 or something like that.

03:02:23.460 But if you recall, his original claim that he had told everybody is he was going to be golfing that day.

03:02:29.840 And he told us, of course, that he changed.

03:02:32.040 Yeah, he changed his plan to go golfing because it was too cold to golf.

03:02:35.980 but it wasn't too cold to go out in san francisco bay which is certainly not the tropics i can tell

03:02:40.800 you that so it you know that a lot of little things and this is the point for us is you know

03:02:46.840 a premeditated murder is not going to have a witness and it's not going to have a videotape

03:02:51.920 you know the luxuries the things that we all want and of course with scott you're never going to get

03:02:55.220 a confession so you have to build that case by eliminating suspects from suspicion by proving

03:03:01.440 out their alibi and showing that they had no reason to do the killing. But in Scott's case,

03:03:06.540 although everybody else we dealt with in this case was pretty easy to clear, we couldn't clear

03:03:11.040 him. We would always be conditional about that. So when he decides he's going to change his plans

03:03:16.060 at the last minute and go fishing instead of golfing because it's too cold to golf, that's

03:03:20.100 a red flag for us. Maybe not bright red, but it's certainly a red flag. And then he couldn't remember

03:03:24.880 what kind of bait he used. That's weird. Yeah, there was, I think he was more of a

03:03:31.080 freshwater fisherman than a saltwater fisherman. And so he wasn't sure what lures he had. And I

03:03:36.000 think Al Brocchini mentioned that the tackle that he did have in this boat was all freshwater

03:03:40.940 tackle that you would use up in one of the lakes in the Sierras or the foothills,

03:03:44.700 not something that you would use in San Francisco Bay if you were going for like sturgeon or striper

03:03:49.440 or something like that. So, you know, the fishing trip really wasn't much of a fishing trip.

03:03:54.040 It was more of a trip. So that, yeah, I met you mentioned earlier that Lacey had never set foot in that boat. Well, she had never set foot in that boat alive. She certainly was in the boat after he killed him.

03:04:05.100 Right. So he on the way home from the marina leaves what you guys, you and your partner believe, because you're you and I'm sorry, I forget the man you just mentioned was your partner. You were the main two detectives on the case.

03:04:19.220 Well, actually, there were three of us.

03:04:20.680 There were Craig Grogan and then Al Brocchini and I.

03:04:22.860 Now, Al started the case on Christmas Eve when he was notified about the missing.

03:04:27.420 And he knew that I always liked overtime, but he also knew I had my kids with me on Christmas Eve.

03:04:32.620 So he called me on Christmas Day as I was taking them over to their mom's house.

03:04:36.360 And, of course, I was all too happy to jump on some Christmas Day overtime because I didn't have everything going that day anyway.

03:04:42.880 But, yeah, Al Brocchini, when he first started talking to him, he started gathering a lot of evidence from the beginning.

03:04:50.600 And there goes your next three years completely devoted to this case.

03:04:54.860 So when Scott Peterson was on the way home from the marina, he left what appears to be to, you know, I've said to my audience, I believe Scott did this.

03:05:03.040 So I am on your side, though, open minded and like bring it on.

03:05:06.320 If you've got evidence to prove that he didn't do it, let's see it.

03:05:08.860 what appears to be sort of a cover your rear end voicemail to his wife, Lacey.

03:05:16.980 And here is how that sounded.

03:05:18.760 This is Soundbite One.

03:05:20.300 Hey, beautiful.

03:05:21.160 I won't be able to get to Villa Farms to get that basket for Papa.

03:05:24.680 I was hoping you would get this message and go on out there.

03:05:28.140 I'll see you in a bit, sweetie.

03:05:29.180 Love you.

03:05:29.580 Bye.

03:05:32.360 Not unusual for a killer to do something like that.

03:05:35.620 Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, for me,

03:05:37.820 That was one of the first things that Brocchini did when I met with him on Christmas Day is I met him at the office and he played that tape for me.

03:05:44.460 And, of course, the first thing I said, how long have these guys been married?

03:05:47.120 And he said five years.

03:05:48.240 And I thought, I don't know.

03:05:49.200 That seems kind of flowery for, you know, somebody married for five years.

03:05:52.520 It just seems sort of, you know, I mean, just like you said, you know, to me, it was a staged call to take the focus off of him.

03:05:58.620 And it didn't mean he did it.

03:05:59.600 But, I mean, you know this stuff and your viewers know this stuff.

03:06:02.700 How do we start a murder investigation?

03:06:04.280 We start at the victim and we work outward.

03:06:05.940 and who's the first one you check when you've got a you know deceased girl well you're going to look

03:06:10.900 at her boyfriend or her husband and especially when you've got a pregnant girl that goes dead 0.98

03:06:15.900 or goes missing and i think they had that 2001 study where murder was the vast majority by an

03:06:22.220 overwhelming margin of the cause of death for pregnant girls and so oh yeah it's just i thought

03:06:29.220 you saw that you probably did you said you got too much going around in your head so you forgot

03:06:32.360 about it. Or I chose to ignore it because it's disturbing. It's very disturbing. And so,

03:06:38.280 you know, but like, again, you go back to Scott and it's easier to work a case when you don't

03:06:44.080 despise the guy that you think did, you know, when he's polite to you and he's not saying

03:06:48.180 anything bad about your mother or anything like that. And so you just kind of follow the evidence

03:06:52.200 and like, this is another strike and strike against him. So when Al played that tape for

03:06:58.180 me, I just thought, this just doesn't sound quite right. But I've had other guys like this before

03:07:02.820 that I've dealt with where it didn't seem right. I remember one in particular, he had no reaction

03:07:08.620 whatsoever to his wife and daughter being missing. And I thought, gosh, this is kind of freaky.

03:07:13.440 And but we were able to clear him right away, not only through a polygraph, but we also verified

03:07:17.660 his alibi. And he was just a cold fish guy. He just, well, that's, that's a good emotion.

03:07:22.560 That's something that we should keep in mind as we go through this case over the next two hours,

03:07:26.360 is could he just be that person you know that sort of oddball whose affect is different from

03:07:32.740 what we're used to and maybe he's not a cold-blooded killer maybe he's just got a weird

03:07:37.780 affect um so i'm i have space in my head for that possibility but there's a lot of evidence against

03:07:44.880 scott peterson beyond his affect can i ask you this one of the things that seems so weird about

03:07:50.600 the case was, who kills their wife on Christmas Eve? You know, it's like, if you want to kill

03:07:56.320 your wife, your pregnant wife, like, wouldn't you choose a quieter date? Like, how cruel, 1.00

03:08:03.120 how sadistic, like extra sadistic beyond killing a pregnant mother of your child?

03:08:10.520 Well, you know, that's kind of an interesting, you know, question to ask. But the thing is,

03:08:16.060 is whether you're killing your wife on the 4th of July, or you're killing her on Christmas Eve, 0.94

03:08:20.360 I mean, it's still pretty, pretty nasty stuff, you know, to do that.

03:08:23.920 So I think in a situation like this, you can't really apply the common sense things that we operate on our day to day basis and try to put those on somebody who does something like this, because you're going to be disappointed every time because we don't do those things.

03:08:39.300 And so to try and make sense of things that don't make sense, gosh, it's just, you know, you're going to be battling frustration the whole time you're batting that around in your head.

03:08:49.620 So you guys get involved in the case. And one of the first things you ask Scott Peterson is, would you take a polygraph for us? Right. Is that standard procedure? And do you usually receive a yes in response to that?

03:09:02.060 well yeah the polygraph I love the polygraph because it does a variety of different things

03:09:08.420 okay now of course it's not admissible in court well I don't care about that because I'm not

03:09:12.840 using it to go into court with it but the the first thing you do is what's the person's

03:09:17.420 cooperation level when you say the word polygraph you know do they run like a scalded cat away from

03:09:22.180 you or do they say oh absolutely I'll take it you know and somebody who who wants the focus to be

03:09:27.580 on Lacey and wants us to be trying to turn over every rock and log and look under every car and

03:09:33.380 blanket that might be in a park or something like that to try and find her take the poly take the 0.98

03:09:38.300 focus off of you and let us move on so we're not spending time trying to clear you but when he

03:09:42.620 originally he said yes to the poly on Christmas Eve when Brock asked him and then on Christmas

03:09:48.140 day when we were getting ready to do it because when when Al called me Al Brochini called me

03:09:53.660 and we went down there and we started to the office and started talking and then we went over

03:09:57.800 to Scott's house and that's when I first met him pleasant nonchalant you know he greeted us you

03:10:03.880 know and it's like he just didn't have any concern I mean he walked away he had something else that

03:10:08.800 he had to attend to and I just kind of thought well gosh how come you're not asking me 90 questions

03:10:13.920 why aren't you you know asking me what are we going to do next are you going to get helicopters

03:10:17.440 up you know you're going to get a boat patrol I mean whatever he wants to come up with he didn't

03:10:21.160 have anywhere near the same emotional urgency that Sharon had or any of Lacey's friends or

03:10:27.400 family. And so when we got done meeting with him and chatting with him, then the first thing that

03:10:32.440 I did after that is my neighbor two doors over was the senior polygraph examiner for California

03:10:38.900 Department of Justice, Doug Mansfield. And so I called him and he usually gets calls from me

03:10:44.960 because I like doing the polygraph. It was a pretty good tool. And I, you know, of course,

03:10:49.220 I hate to call him on Christmas Day, but he's always good for things like this.

03:10:52.460 And so he said, yeah, I'll come down.

03:10:53.560 So he came down and with the intention of, you know, putting Scott on the box.

03:10:57.940 And then between the time that Al had asked him the night before, if he'd take the polygraph.

03:11:02.920 And then that afternoon, when Doug came down to get him hooked up, he apparently had talked to his father and Lee had told him, no, don't take it.

03:11:10.040 Now, I'm not sure what Lee's reasons for that is, but, you know, Lee's a successful businessman from San Diego.

03:11:15.300 Great. But, you know, that's maybe not the best advice to give your son, not to take the poly when the detectives are trying to clear him so we can start going towards, you know, better suspects than your son.

03:11:25.320 But it is what it is. He did what he did. And I get it.

03:11:29.040 I get it, too. What this is December at this point, 25th, 2002.

03:11:35.580 It was too cold for him to golf. So he went out on the cold water.

03:11:40.060 Was the swimming pool at the at the Peterson house still open?

03:11:45.300 oh gosh no you wouldn't be swimming this time of year so do you remember was it closed up

03:11:50.440 well i mean there was water in the pool but you know it's way too cold in northern california

03:11:57.180 to go swim at that time of year so yeah he wouldn't have been swimming in there and obviously

03:12:01.280 we checked the pool no lacy in there you know we you know checked all over the house well the reason

03:12:05.880 i ask is because his his half sister i guess he had a half sister was given up for adoption and

03:12:10.480 And then she came back to the family and she got to know Scott and their mother, Jackie, well, and another sibling, I think.

03:12:17.020 And she would write in the book that she would ultimately publish something like 33 Reasons Why He's Guilty.

03:12:22.180 So her conclusion is right there.

03:12:25.440 She had a feeling that he was obsessed with his swimming pool at his house and that the way he would go back and take care of it and clean it and so on.

03:12:34.660 Her own theory was he drowned her in that swimming pool.

03:12:38.300 gosh i'd never heard that i didn't read her book um it's an interesting take i i kind of don't

03:12:44.900 agree with that because he would have had the i mean they both would have been soaking wet and it

03:12:48.820 would have been a gosh that would have been a violent fight to try and you know drown her in 1.00

03:12:53.900 the pool there would have been splashing and noise and the houses were close together there

03:12:57.740 the house to the south where uh his neighbor karen lived i mean that's right there and um i i think

03:13:04.400 that would have potentially attracted too much attention much easier to carry out a suffocation

03:13:08.820 or strangulation inside the residence itself underneath a pillow or a blanket or whatever

03:13:13.500 you would choose to use and hopefully that along with the walls of the house would blank out the

03:13:19.660 noise if there was any well what about mark gara goes this and i said what you know why couldn't

03:13:26.040 because he's like there are no forensics at all tying him to the murder which i think is pretty

03:13:29.640 true. And I said, well, why couldn't he have just suffocated her or strangled her? And he said there

03:13:35.460 would have been secretions, which would have provided, you know, some evidence that a murder

03:13:40.880 had taken place there or something bad had happened to Lacey wherever he did that.

03:13:46.100 Well, I don't totally agree with that. I mean, Mark's got his take and I know, you know,

03:13:50.120 what side he's on and I respect him. He's, you know, he's walked the courtroom many, many times.

03:13:54.880 So I get that, but I see it a little bit differently. There was a whole ton of evidence

03:13:58.840 there. Now, if you take a look at this case and you think in terms of what if Scott didn't know

03:14:03.460 Lacey and we went and processed the house as a crime scene, we would have found a multitude of 0.71

03:14:09.520 evidence that would have linked him to the victim. We would have found hair. We would have found

03:14:13.200 fibers from clothes. We would have found maybe lipstick on a glass, all sorts of things,

03:14:18.760 fingerprints all over the house. And one of the things that we did just so that everybody wouldn't

03:14:23.500 think that we were one-sided on this is when we did process the house for evidence of a stranger

03:14:29.640 in abduction or intrusion, and there was no forced entry, of course, we had the FBI come down from

03:14:34.860 Sacramento with their evidence response team and had them independent of the medicinal PD. They

03:14:38.860 processed the house. And when they did that, of course, you know, I think there was a saying that

03:14:43.320 you attorneys use, evidence of absence is absence of evidence. And there was no evidence that anybody

03:14:49.140 else had come in that house so when you when you look at this situation well of course there's

03:14:54.820 evidence there but it's not the type of evidence that you would think of on a on a you know movie

03:14:59.940 or something like that because they lived together they were married so of course you're going to

03:15:04.200 have her stuff there there was one spot of blood that was on the comforter that probably wouldn't 1.00

03:15:09.440 have been there if lacy was alive because lacy was known as a fastidious housekeeper that blood spot 1.00

03:15:15.300 was was linked to scott of course scott had a cut on his finger i don't remember which one it was

03:15:21.280 but one of them and which could be consistent with her scratching him or something like that

03:15:25.880 as he's trying to suffocate her or strangle her in bed now whether or not she would defecate whether

03:15:30.820 or not she would urinate i mean i don't know it just said all depends on the i don't think you

03:15:34.960 could rule that out i don't think you could rule it in and i certainly wouldn't say that the absence

03:15:38.820 of that those two things would suggest that he couldn't have done it in there do you remember

03:15:43.880 john whether the bed for example had you know fresh linens on it you know did it look like he

03:15:50.520 had cleaned up at all well the only thing i remember from the bed is there was an indentation

03:15:55.500 on the comforter at the foot of the bed that would be consistent with a human body lacy size

03:16:01.980 being on the foot of the bed and then moved from there and you know i mean it could have been a

03:16:07.760 variety of different things maybe scott sat there or laid back or something like that i mean it

03:16:11.400 It doesn't mean that she was there, but it is consistent.

03:16:14.080 And once again, you know, Megan, these cases are built on, you know, circumstantial evidence.

03:16:19.040 And you find a couple of things and, well, that's kind of interesting.

03:16:22.380 And then it kind of becomes suspicious when you find a few more.

03:16:25.940 And then when you've got, you know, two dozen, now it's kind of compelling.

03:16:28.860 And that's really how we work these cases.

03:16:31.160 You just follow what you have, you document it, and you look at it, you know, with an eye of experience.

03:16:37.980 And you say, gosh, this is not looking too good for this guy.

03:16:40.680 And there's plenty of plenty of stuff that pointed the finger at him. But I'm just I'm kind of stuck in the forensics like as a as an amateur. Have you ever show have you ever been to a scene where somebody was was strangled or suffocated? And would there necessarily be, you know, urination or something by the person being killed? Like, do you have any idea whether that's true?

03:17:02.960 Not at all.

03:17:03.660 You can't say that there's an absolute on that, that there would be anything like that.

03:17:08.040 And that's the thing with this case.

03:17:09.260 It's not all the murders that happened to be able to say that everybody who was strangled, everybody who was smothered is going to either defecate or urinate or something like that.

03:17:19.400 It doesn't really mean it.

03:17:20.960 And, of course, you'll remember that there was some laundry that was done by Scott after he got back from his fishing trip.

03:17:28.380 Clothes, his clothes.

03:17:29.340 Yeah. And anything that he discovered that might have been there, or maybe if she had left anything on a blanket or a towel, there's no reason he couldn't have taken that with him and disposed of that with her body up there in San Francisco Bay.

03:17:42.540 So, you know, there's a lot of things. I remember that he had been mopping. Somebody said he'd been mopping the floor area. And he had said something earlier that Lacey was mopping when he left.

03:17:54.580 Well, the cleaning lady had mopped the house the day before. 1.00

03:17:57.900 She had noticed that Lacey was very tired at the time.

03:18:00.540 So she even doubted that Lacey went for a walk.

03:18:03.140 But for Scott to be doing any mopping or cleaning up seemed kind of suspicious.

03:18:06.880 And even one of Lacey's friends, Stacey Boyer, the next night, I think it was the 26th, she

03:18:13.880 had said something about Scott was doing some vacuuming around the house to take his mind

03:18:18.540 off of what was going on.

03:18:19.960 I mean, if I'm stressing about something, the first thing I'm not going to grab is my

03:18:24.160 Hoover. I'm going to do something else. But that seems kind of funky. And then you probably also

03:18:29.060 remember there was a bunched up rug and a straight path from the bedroom to the side door that goes

03:18:34.360 out to the carport where his truck was backed in. Unusual. Neighbors had never seen him back

03:18:38.680 the truck in before. Bunched up rug. Scott gave the explanation the dog did it or something like

03:18:43.860 that. Okay, maybe the dog did do it. But also maybe he did it when he was dragging Lacey from

03:18:48.920 the bedroom out to the carport to put her in the truck and then put the patio umbrellas on top of

03:18:54.460 her that were in a blue tarp so nobody would see her underneath there. And people saw him drag out

03:18:58.620 the patio umbrellas. Yeah. And even one of the neighbors, she was walking up, I think it was a

03:19:04.220 chocolate lab, a gal named Kristen. And she was eight months pregnant. She was walking by at the

03:19:09.240 time. She greeted Scott that morning, said, good morning, Ari, or something like that. And, you

03:19:14.180 You know, he just he reacted just like Scott normally does.

03:19:16.840 And, you know, nothing suspicious there.

03:19:18.480 But there really would be no reason for anybody to be suspicious of him.

03:19:21.820 Because, again, we weren't looking at somebody that looked like Charles Manson.

03:19:25.980 We're looking at somebody that's more resembling, you know, maybe Ted Bundy or something.

03:19:30.080 Yes, I've thought about him many times.

03:19:32.400 He has a lot of the same qualities.

03:19:34.660 I mean, he was a charmer.

03:19:36.200 There's a reason he was very good looking.

03:19:37.660 And there's a reason so many women fell for his fake charm. 0.98

03:19:41.680 And he truly was a sociopath.

03:19:43.060 OK, there's so much more to go over in terms of the investigation, the huge, huge bombshell of Amber Fry, who John interviewed and worked with to get all those tapes, some of which we've heard.

03:19:54.120 So we're going to get into that next. She changed the entire course of the investigation. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

03:20:05.620 John, so we'll get back to the forensics in one second, including Scott Peterson on tape showing his injured knuckles and hand.

03:20:11.480 But as you guys were investigating this, the biggest bombshell, I think we'd both agree, is the emergence of Amber Fry, 27 year old single mom, massage therapist who had started dating him only on November 20th.

03:20:26.280 Now, you know, again, she goes missing. Lacey does December 24th, November 20th. 0.93

03:20:30.460 So it's not a long term affair, but she comes in.

03:20:34.900 And can you just walk us through, like, what was that like when you first talked to her?

03:20:39.400 And you're thinking about Scott Peterson as a suspect, but you don't have him yet.

03:20:42.780 So when you met with her for the first time, what was that like?

03:20:47.280 Well, it was it was really groundbreaking for us because until she called, we didn't have anything that we could find in Scott's background.

03:20:55.080 suggested that he was anything less than perfect i mean he just you know there was just no stain on

03:20:59.760 this guy whatsoever and we almost kind of lost amber uh originally because her original call

03:21:05.300 came in and she had volunteered to give the uh call um call takers uh the scott peterson's uh

03:21:12.500 date of birth of the one that she was dating to see if it matched up with the one we were

03:21:16.540 investigating and the call taker i guess just couldn't connect the dots on that one and said

03:21:20.460 well i can't give you his date of birth and then amber was frustrated she said well i'm not looking

03:21:23.960 for his. I got the date of birth of the guy I'm dating. If it matches up with the guy you're

03:21:28.800 looking at, then I probably got information for your detectives. And so anyway, she finally hung

03:21:32.940 up in frustration. But the next day, she calls in. Yeah, you're lucky she was persistent. She calls

03:21:39.060 in and Al Brochini, he's standing at the clerk's desk that is right next to my desk as the clerk

03:21:46.440 is taking Amber's call and she's typing it into the databank thing that she had on her desk there.

03:21:52.940 And Al's reading this as she's typing.

03:21:55.000 And then Al says, is she on the phone right now?

03:21:57.000 And Bev said, yeah, she is.

03:21:59.780 And so, of course, Al grabs the phone and he starts talking to her and he gets some details and he goes, oh, this is pretty cool.

03:22:05.140 So he says, we'll be right down.

03:22:07.040 So he hangs up and he grabs me.

03:22:09.140 We go into the sergeant's office and we just said, you know, this is what we've got.

03:22:12.960 And he just says, go.

03:22:13.740 Don't tell anybody.

03:22:14.360 Just go.

03:22:15.060 So Fresno is, you know, 100 miles south.

03:22:17.640 So we drive down there, record time, no lights and siren.

03:22:21.140 And we get there.

03:22:21.880 and amber's there with the friend that originally introduced her to scott and so we interviewed both

03:22:28.180 of them separately and we got enormous detail from the friend about scott's behavior at these

03:22:33.660 conventions i guess there was a convention in anaheim that they had gone to and and he of

03:22:38.580 course was representing himself as being single and then this uh sean decided that you know i got

03:22:45.020 this friend amber she's pretty nice and so she you know played cupid and then of course they met

03:22:50.540 Well, when we came time to interview Amber, and I think this is kind of true of most girls, you guys have a memory that is spectacular.

03:23:00.280 And she had dates.

03:23:00.780 For certain things.

03:23:02.320 Yeah.

03:23:03.680 You know, especially everything men do wrong, which, of course, is a lot.

03:23:07.180 But different show, different subject.

03:23:09.200 Anyway, so she ends up giving us incredible detail on their dates and what they did.

03:23:15.280 And luckily, she held down to souvenirs.

03:23:17.600 So she had wine corks and she had tickets and all sorts of things that, you know, would back up what she was doing.

03:23:23.620 And it was almost like she I think she she didn't know us.

03:23:26.660 It was almost like she had a concern that we wouldn't believe what she was saying.

03:23:30.520 So she backed all these things up with, you know, real physical evidence of this stuff.

03:23:34.720 She showed us a gift that he had bought for her daughter, this little star globe and some other stuff.

03:23:39.800 And and it was it was just really interesting because now this this emerged, you know, this different kind of guy that we really didn't know was there.

03:23:49.820 And certainly we were suspicious, but we had nothing to hang our head on.

03:23:53.240 So when we left her house, you know, we were hungry.

03:23:57.960 It was mid-afternoon. And so we said, well, you know, we're going to go get a bite to eat.

03:24:01.580 If you guys want to come with you, come with us.

03:24:03.820 And so she said, well, hey, would you want to stop by the CVS or Walgreens or something like that?

03:24:08.680 I don't remember which one it was because I've got some pictures and we're thinking pictures yeah we'd

03:24:13.860 probably be interested in those so we go to the photo counter there at CVS or Walgreens and she

03:24:19.680 gives a claim ticket to the gal and the gal brings out the envelope and they're twin pics there's two

03:24:23.560 pics of each and we're looking through these and it's a famous picture of Scott and Amber at the

03:24:29.280 holiday soiree I think she's in the red dress he's in the tux and everything like that and we're

03:24:33.560 looking at this it's like yeah this gal's probably telling the truth here and you know they were just 0.99

03:24:37.220 from a couple of weeks earlier and it i mean it was pretty impressive and i'm sure that you know

03:24:41.520 the gal behind the counter had no idea what she had just handed us and and so anyway then we went

03:24:46.840 over to radio to buy a little device to hook up to a recorder because we always kept a couple of

03:24:52.380 recorders in the trunk of our cars in case because we use these many times on cases we'd give them to

03:24:56.960 a victim or a witness and see if they could get the guy to talk to him and so we retrieved a

03:25:02.280 recorder out of my trunk along with like 10 tapes and some batteries and then we went to radio

03:25:07.120 shack which was nearby and brock bought the connecting unit that would go to her phone

03:25:11.480 and the recorder itself showed her how to use it as he's showing her how to use it the phone rings

03:25:15.760 and brock he goes gosh that's scott's number right there so she's looking at us like take take the

03:25:21.420 call and so she took the call and that was like the first recorded conversation and and it was

03:25:27.000 just um it was just very interesting and this is the one thing that um yeah i i don't understand

03:25:33.020 why this case was so popular with everybody because we had many other murders that were

03:25:36.620 actually more to me more interesting than this one although this one had you know tv quality

03:25:41.560 victim and and you know responsible in it you know that i mean definitely the made for tv you

03:25:46.640 know cast on this one other than the detectives of course but when it came to this it was just

03:25:52.000 gosh we're here working this thing everybody's looking at this and it's just another modesto

03:25:55.900 murder you know i mean it's important to us it's important to the family but it's it was kind of

03:26:00.320 it was just difficult to believe how it was getting so much attention and well you know

03:26:05.480 it's got all the elements it's got like these beautiful people a pregnant mom again like i 0.99

03:26:13.200 said with a thousand watt smile the gorgeous affair partner who has been duped but in the

03:26:19.060 beginning days you're wondering was she duped we don't know were they in on it did they both

03:26:22.820 get rid of lacy scott you know this gorgeous guy who lacy seems to have you know

03:26:28.920 won the jackpot with right like it just he's like yeah he's got a good job he's got a seemingly

03:26:34.880 nice family. He's good looking. He treats her well. It's like every woman's worst nightmare 1.00

03:26:39.800 that this man you meet and fall in love with and marry and get pregnant by turns out to be 0.98

03:26:46.360 a sociopath who would murder you in your bed with your, it's like the worst thing you can imagine.

03:26:53.180 So it's, it taps into, I think a lot of things for a lot of people, but especially women. 0.88

03:26:58.120 So, so can I ask you, cause Amber Fry, we've got that famous and I'll play it,

03:27:02.940 part of it, the Happy New Year call on New Year's Eve that he calls Amber while he's at the vigil

03:27:10.220 for Lacey. But did she start taping him before that? Yeah, she started taping him. Gosh, I think

03:27:22.780 that was. Well, it was right around that same time because it was within a week of the 24th. So it

03:27:30.160 was the recorded call for uh new year's eve yeah that was right after we had met her okay because

03:27:37.440 we've been scratching him for several days you know it's like gosh is there nothing wrong with

03:27:41.460 this guy and you know other than his limited cooperation we're thinking well maybe he didn't

03:27:45.500 do it and you know but you know we're still even though we were working him craig and al and i

03:27:51.620 you know we weren't the only ones working this case there were a lot of other detectives that

03:27:56.040 were working on this, you know, detectives that were clearing out sex registrants and parolees

03:28:00.320 that had violent criminal pasts that could be good for this and verifying their alibi and stuff like

03:28:05.660 that. And of course, as you guys, as you paid more attention to this case and it became bigger,

03:28:10.600 anybody that we looked at, you know, they wanted to be away from this thing big time. They did not

03:28:15.720 want to be involved in this. They did not want to be linked to this as being in any way possibly

03:28:20.340 related to Lacey's murder. So the cooperation level that we got from a lot of people that

03:28:24.780 ordinarily probably wouldn't have cooperated with us probably wouldn't like us because we were cops

03:28:29.160 was a little bit different this time and that was one of the good things that the media brought to

03:28:32.960 us that made things easier in some ways but in other ways not so much well it's the reason amber

03:28:37.900 fry knew to call you she she saw all the media coverage of this guy who's was missing his wife 0.95

03:28:42.900 and she was like holy that's my guy and he had told her that his wife was dead yeah let me do a

03:28:49.580 quick correction for you on that actually she didn't see any of the coverage see amber didn't

03:28:53.420 watch TV or she would have called us much earlier. She was alerted to Scott by a friend of hers. He

03:28:59.640 was a Fresno cop. And I think his name was Richard. I can't remember his last name, but he

03:29:04.380 caught the coverage and he thought, gosh, that sounds kind of like that girl or that guy that

03:29:09.660 Amber's dating. And so he called Amber and said- He remembered? I mean, Scott hadn't even been in

03:29:14.180 Amber's life that long. He remembered the description of him or that he would fit it?

03:29:18.860 Well, she was, you know, I mean, you're a young girl, you're blonde, and you're dating Scott Peterson, you're going to flash him around like a nickel plated 38. And so she's telling all of her friends, you know, hey, look what I've got. And, you know, and I don't blame her, you know, I can see her doing that. So this, you know, this friend of hers, he, you know, platonic, he was just a friend. And he caught the, you know, the intense media coverage. And so he called her, he says, you might want to check with those guys up there in Modesto and see if this is the same guy.

03:29:45.260 Because I can't remember for sure, Megan, if he had told her that he actually lived in Modesto or Sacramento.

03:29:50.200 I know he told somebody at one time that he lived in Sacramento.

03:29:53.240 But anyway, she hadn't seen any of this coverage.

03:29:56.240 And, of course, as you remember, there was great frustration with people in the media because they couldn't get Scott on camera hardly at all.

03:30:03.140 He was always in the background at the center where they were coordinating the search outside of law enforcement.

03:30:10.120 He talked to several people from the media and he just said, hey, I don't want to be a part of this.

03:30:15.100 This is all about Lacey.

03:30:16.300 This is the fine Lacey.

03:30:17.280 I don't want to be the distraction.

03:30:18.960 And of course, you know, you can interpret that both ways.

03:30:21.380 Maybe he's sincere about that.

03:30:22.640 Or you can look at it that he didn't want his face out there because he didn't want

03:30:26.060 Amber to see it or anybody else.

03:30:28.160 So, you know, if you think about how he appeared on the.

03:30:31.360 I'll just finish this up real quick with you.

03:30:33.500 Yeah.

03:30:33.740 Had there been other affairs besides Amber?

03:30:38.200 Yeah, there have been at least two that we knew of that were called in.

03:30:42.260 Girls have called us and told us about things.

03:30:44.220 And, you know, I hate to say that, but I mean, they are what they are. They're in the record. And, you know, it is what it is. But he lied about that, too, when he gave his interview to I don't know if it was Diane or if it was Gloria Gomez and the Sacramento affiliate.

03:30:58.120 But he told one or both of them that Amber's the only one he ever had an affair with.

03:31:01.760 yeah he's he he stretched the truth on a lot of things a lot of things that he didn't have

03:31:06.940 to stretch the truth on so it was really difficult you know dealing with him to know where the you

03:31:10.740 know the truth ended and the lies started because he he would lie sometimes for no reason on things

03:31:16.200 that were inconsequential and that was kind of difficult for us to kind of pick through

03:31:19.360 but um it you know it was he just he was just he was just interesting to work you know because he

03:31:25.980 okay so amber fry uh she does put on the wire and she does start recording her calls with him

03:31:31.960 and the the one that i remember just from covering it at the time i was you know a very young reporter

03:31:36.760 um was the one he's at the vigil for lacy and connor with the candles this is before they

03:31:43.580 found the bodies or know that they're dead you know sharon rocha the whole family's there like

03:31:48.180 praying to god that there'll be a sighting a return of ransom demand something and what's

03:31:54.100 Scott doing. He's all smiles and he's on the phone with Amber. And here's a snippet of that

03:32:00.740 conversation. Yeah. And he goes on to say the crowds are amazing. The crowds. He's looking at

03:32:18.280 the crowd for his wife's vigil i mean it's like that's that's something wrong there's obviously

03:32:24.240 he is a sociopath that's like no normal person can do that john well and that kind of you know

03:32:29.740 falls into why we don't really have any doubts that he did this now yeah again it's a premeditated

03:32:34.660 murder there's no videotape there's no eyewitness he's never going to confess at least i don't

03:32:38.220 expect that he would he could probably waterboard him you're not going to get it out of him but

03:32:41.600 it's one of those things where when when on one hand he's telling us how worried he is and how

03:32:46.180 he you know he wanted to keep his face away from the media coverage because he was afraid that you

03:32:51.240 know it would be a distraction or if he was afraid that if amber came forward then you know we would

03:32:55.860 no longer search for her which yeah gosh we were going to search for her regardless it doesn't make

03:32:59.680 any difference if amber's part of the equation or not and so you know when he's doing that you

03:33:05.340 notice at the vigil he's got the baseball hat pulled down low he's got the collar up on the

03:33:10.520 jacket everything like that and you know you from a distance you might not even connect them as your

03:33:15.380 boyfriend if you're amber you know cooking spaghetti and you just glance over your shoulder

03:33:19.320 at the tv which of course she didn't do because she didn't watch a lot of tv wow well notwithstanding

03:33:25.420 that gloria allred got her hooks into amber and we've seen that show many times now and that this

03:33:32.560 was the moment that stunned the world i remember watching this thinking omg here it is amber fry

03:33:40.740 at the press conference coming forward and telling the truth, SOT 5.

03:33:45.860 First of all, I met Scott Peterson November 20, 2002.

03:33:51.940 Scott told me he was not married.

03:33:55.020 We did have a romantic relationship.

03:33:57.320 I am very sorry for Lacey's family and the pain that this has caused them.

03:34:06.660 And I pray for her safe return as well.

03:34:13.760 Now, why did she come out at that point, John?

03:34:16.060 Because she had been working with you guys and she had gotten something like 27 or 29 hours of tape, as far as I read.

03:34:24.320 So what led her to go public?

03:34:27.200 Yeah, there was a total of 29 hours of recorded phone calls between the two of them.

03:34:31.780 But what happened with that is, you know, we were going to keep her on ice as long as we could.

03:34:36.180 And we didn't want to bring her forward.

03:34:37.740 You know, we didn't necessarily expect that he was going to tell her that he killed his wife and he wanted to run off to Belgium with her or anything like that.

03:34:43.700 But we were hopeful that we might be able to get something else out of it.

03:34:46.940 So we were going to keep working this for a while.

03:34:49.840 But unfortunately, somehow the Inquirer found out about her and we got a tip that they were going to be running that photo of Amber in the red dress and Scott in the tux on the whatever edition it was that came out.

03:35:03.780 I don't know if it came out on Thursday or Friday or whatever that was.

03:35:06.040 Well, of course, you know, out of consideration for both families, you know, Scott's family down in San Diego, and of course, Sharon and the family in Modesto, we knew that we couldn't, you know, let that happen. And, you know, they'd be in the grocery store line, and then they see the Enquirer there with this picture, and, you know, then they drop their groceries and freak out. So we knew we were going to have to tell both families about this.

03:35:26.160 So Craig Grogan and Phil Owen went down to San Diego to tell Lee and Jackie about this.

03:35:33.500 And then, of course, Al and I, we called Sharon into the office to tell her about it.

03:35:38.480 And, you know, she came down there with Ron Gransky.

03:35:40.980 And, you know, and that was one of the heartbreaking things of the whole case.

03:35:44.860 You know, you can work a lot of murders and, you know, but you're touched by these victims.

03:35:49.400 You know, they they stay with you.

03:35:51.120 I mean, there's some of them that stay with me even to this day that I still talk to.

03:35:54.240 but it she came down and they knew that there was something up because we didn't generally call them

03:35:59.720 to come down to our office um but they came down it was late afternoon and i said they had a they

03:36:05.500 had a scheduled interview with uh greta um that was going to go on after our meeting and so she

03:36:12.620 sat down and you could see the you know they were you know anxiety and so we said well hey you know

03:36:16.620 we called you down here we got something's going on we want to get you in front of it so that you're

03:36:19.940 not surprised by it and then I had this folder in front of me it was on the table and I just

03:36:24.160 opened the folder and split it across and you know Sharon looks at it and she just you know

03:36:28.400 put her head in her hands and said why did he have to kill her and I remember that like it was

03:36:32.720 yesterday that she said that and I think you know the family wasn't you know none of these families 0.99

03:36:39.200 are stupid and I think they all knew this they knew it was coming but they were hoping for that 0.90

03:36:45.680 one little chance out of a billion that that she would come back alive and you know this kind of 1.00

03:36:52.340 you know dash those hopes and it's really sad to see this you know to see a family have to go

03:36:56.800 through this and then you know of course now pick up the pieces and you know hope for the best and

03:37:00.680 the rest of it can you catch the guy who did it and can we ever recover our family number to give

03:37:05.140 you know a proper you know burial and things like that but that is that was the moment sharon

03:37:11.120 realized he was behind this and that lacy would not be returning yeah i think she had a you know

03:37:20.340 she's pretty bright i got a feeling she had a feeling about this beforehand but she probably

03:37:24.980 wouldn't even acknowledge it except you know deep in her mind but yeah this pretty much showed her

03:37:29.660 that was the deal and then of course because publicly they'd been standing with scott they

03:37:33.820 there wasn't a public rift between the families until amber yeah exactly and and you know you'd

03:37:40.600 expect that. I mean, that's, you know, there was nothing, they didn't have anything concrete. I

03:37:43.800 mean, we look at the thing a little bit different. You know, we're not going to, we don't tell people

03:37:47.720 everything that we know when we're working one of these cases. You can't, you know, because maybe

03:37:51.600 you're wrong too. And it might, you know, you're not going to disrupt the family and the relationships

03:37:55.060 with your suspicions. You know, you work your suspicions and you gather your evidence to

03:37:58.680 prove your case, you know, to present it to a jury. And you don't want them to slip up. I mean,

03:38:03.080 even a well-meaning family member could slip up and say something to Scott before you're ready

03:38:07.080 for him to know you're working with amber and yeah i understand that makes makes perfect sense

03:38:11.840 to me um there's so much more to go the trial gets started and scott's defenders to this day

03:38:19.600 point to the lack of forensics but is that fair we're going to get it into a bit more um what

03:38:25.080 the prosecution actually had and now what the defense is saying uh we should take a new look

03:38:30.560 at don't go away there's much much more to discuss with retired detective john buehler

03:38:34.540 And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

03:38:41.600 And the full video show and clips when you subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.

03:38:46.880 If you prefer an audio podcast, you can subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

03:38:54.860 If you leave a comment in the Apple comments, which you can do underneath by subscribing there, I will read it.

03:39:01.620 I have read all 21,000 of them.

03:39:03.120 I find them actually very helpful.

03:39:04.540 People write the most thoughtful things.

03:39:06.500 And I'd love to know what you think about this story and this case.

03:39:10.120 And by the way, when you're there, you can find our full archives with all of our true crime Christmas shows.

03:39:14.800 Don't go away.

03:39:20.700 John, there was an incredible moment where Peterson sat down with Diane Sawyer of GMA

03:39:24.920 and actually claimed that he told Lacey about Amber, his affair partner.

03:39:33.000 Here was that moment.

03:39:33.820 Did your wife find out about it?

03:39:37.000 I told my wife.

03:39:39.060 When?

03:39:39.540 In early December.

03:39:43.160 Did it cause a rupture in the marriage? 0.97

03:39:48.220 It was not a positive, obviously.

03:39:53.540 It's inappropriate.

03:39:56.680 Um, but it was not something that we weren't, um, dealing with.

03:40:05.680 A lot of arguing?

03:40:06.680 No, no.

03:40:09.680 No, um, I, I, you know, I can't say that, that even, you know, she was okay with the idea.

03:40:18.680 But, uh, it wasn't anything that would break us apart.

03:40:23.680 there wasn't a lot of anger? No. Bull. I mean, that's such an obvious pack of lies there.

03:40:33.520 But my question is, why? Why did he feel the need to say he disclosed the affair to Lacey?

03:40:39.720 You know, that remains a mystery to me, but it also plays kind of against his claim about fishing.

03:40:44.280 I'm sure, you know, OK, two weeks later, he's on Christmas Eve. She's breaking gingerbread

03:40:49.200 cookies and she's going to say it's OK for him to go fishing, thinking maybe he's going

03:40:53.600 fishing or maybe he's going down to fresno again i mean it it's i just don't see that and then you

03:40:58.040 know this we get a lot of insight into lacy and what she was about by you know her friend laurie

03:41:03.360 and renee and stacy and kim you know they they tell us a lot of things along with amy and brent

03:41:07.740 and of course sharon and ron but when you know when we talk to them about things like this you

03:41:12.540 know there's no way on this planet that she would be okay with this you know she would have tossed 0.95

03:41:16.300 him out of the house like a bag of garbage you know she wouldn't have put up with that and she 0.73

03:41:21.380 You would have told someone. 0.97

03:41:23.160 That's what all of her friends said.

03:41:24.540 And any woman knows you've always got at least the one friend who you tell everything to.

03:41:28.880 You know, you don't want to go blab your private marital problems around.

03:41:31.940 But something like that, you tell somebody.

03:41:34.980 And I never understood why he felt that lie was necessary, how he felt it was better that she knew.

03:41:42.000 Like, did he think we thought the motive of killing her was she was going to say he was a cheater?

03:41:46.080 No, that's not what we thought.

03:41:47.860 I'm going to pause it right there, squeeze in one more quick break.

03:41:50.280 Got to pay the bills.

03:41:50.860 and then come back and we'll take a deep dive into forensics.

03:41:54.900 Don't go anywhere.

03:41:55.480 John Buehler stays with us, and I hope you will, too.

03:42:05.420 John, so what was the final catalyst for the arrest of Scott Peterson?

03:42:11.800 Well, of course, you remember the bodies were discovered in a two-day period in April.

03:42:15.400 and when when the first body was discovered i was just kind of that might not have anything to do

03:42:21.620 with our case i really wasn't hopeful that that would you know be anything to do with what we

03:42:26.200 were dealing with but then when the second body came up so you've got a a female that doesn't 1.00

03:42:33.220 have all the limbs attached and everything that shows it's been in salt water for three to six

03:42:38.680 months and then you have a almost full-term baby that doesn't have the same marine activity on it

03:42:45.400 and looks, you know, essentially normal, you know, that kind of tells you a story of what

03:42:50.880 you got there, especially when they're found so close in proximity to each other and to

03:42:54.700 where Scott was fishing.

03:42:56.200 So when you have that, that pretty much, oh, okay, well, we can figure this one out.

03:43:00.280 And we put together an arrest warrant for Scott based on that information and other

03:43:05.740 information that we had gathered to that point.

03:43:07.440 And it was almost interesting the way this case went for that, you know, four-month period

03:43:12.380 because it seemed like anytime we ran out of something

03:43:15.220 or we're getting close to finishing up

03:43:16.780 all the different things we were doing besides Scott,

03:43:19.640 then all of a sudden something would pop up

03:43:21.380 and it would like fill the tank with gas

03:43:23.060 and we'd have more to go on.

03:43:24.760 And so this was a point before those bodies showed up,

03:43:27.460 we were just about ready to charge him.

03:43:29.220 But unfortunately the DA in Stanislaw County,

03:43:31.420 he said, hey, if you don't have a body,

03:43:32.960 I'm not gonna give you a filing.

03:43:34.440 Now we've been working this case

03:43:35.960 as a no body homicide from the start.

03:43:37.920 And we were using a protocol

03:43:39.340 that was developed by a prosecutor from Merced County,

03:43:42.900 south of Stanislaw County, where we lived.

03:43:45.640 And this case fit everything on all the things that he had on the protocol

03:43:51.180 with you have a victim that doesn't have any prior history of leaving.

03:43:54.560 They've got ties to the community.

03:43:55.680 They don't have any family problems.

03:43:57.100 They didn't clean out the bank account.

03:43:58.340 They don't.

03:43:58.900 All these different things that are going on there.

03:44:00.920 And so she's like the victim that you want

03:44:04.300 when it comes to putting one of those cases together.

03:44:07.100 So, of course, when the body showed up, that got everything jumped up into high gear.

03:44:11.820 So arrest warrant was put together.

03:44:13.380 We had a surveillance going on for Scott down in San Diego by agents from Department of Justice, Ernie Lamone and his crew down there, because we didn't have enough cops to help out on this.

03:44:23.700 So we used help from a lot of different agencies throughout the state.

03:44:28.040 So we drove down to San Diego and we hooked up with those guys.

03:44:32.400 And then we were going to make the arrest the next day when the DNA results were going to be released.

03:44:38.820 Bill Locker was the attorney general in California at the time, and he was going to be in charge of releasing those results to the media and to the public.

03:44:46.520 And the instructions that we got from Judge Beauchene, who gave us the arrest warrant, was, I know what you have here, but don't execute this arrest warrant until you get those DNA results, if you can.

03:44:58.600 he didn't tell us we couldn't but he wanted us to wait until we got those results and so when we

03:45:06.300 started following scott that next morning he was a i don't know if he was nascar quality but he was

03:45:13.000 a pretty darn good driver i mean high speed and he could cut lanes and take an off-ramp and of course

03:45:18.560 we we didn't drive like that we'd roll our car or something and so we'd have to miss some you know

03:45:22.580 we'd drive down another off-ramp and it was just a big you know it was kind of like a comedian of

03:45:27.920 cars driving around. It was ridiculous. So they had a helicopter up. So luckily we were able to 0.87

03:45:31.920 stay on him, but even the helicopter lost him at one point. But was he fleeing? Because we all

03:45:37.240 remember, our audience, I think, he had dyed his hair blonde. He had grown a goatee. He had $15,000

03:45:43.480 of cash on him. He had, I think, did he have a fake driver's license? His brother's ID.

03:45:49.840 Yeah. Okay. He had camping gear. It certainly seemed like he was about to flee, perhaps across

03:45:55.100 the southern border well yeah we couldn't rule that out i mean he knew san diego well he grew

03:46:00.060 up down there and you know that's not very far from mexico um we didn't know if he was if he

03:46:04.840 thought the cops were after him or if he thought that you guys were after him you know trying to

03:46:08.560 you know get an interview or you know dye their hair for us john well you know it's funny because

03:46:15.040 on that hair dye thing he had two versions of that he told somebody that he is he dyed his hair

03:46:19.840 because he wanted to be more anonymous he didn't want to be spotted in public and then he told us

03:46:23.860 it got dyed because he was swimming in a pool with too much chlorine so oh please the thing

03:46:28.560 yeah every little every little brunette girl in america knows that's not true because we all tried 1.00

03:46:33.580 to get our hair dyed that way and it doesn't work yeah i wish i knew about that it's great

03:46:38.440 it's kind of old but uh anyway so yeah he'd come up with these different versions of things which

03:46:42.680 were you know they're mildly amusing when you're working the case but it's like you don't have to

03:46:47.820 lie about this stuff you know just tell it straight it's in his nature all right so so

03:46:52.380 listen so i want to move it along so so you affect the arrest the the trial takes place and

03:46:58.120 what forensic evidence did you have what was i know it was circumstantable as i'm looking and

03:47:04.320 getting ready for this interview okay scent sniffing dogs picked up lacy's scent in the 0.98

03:47:09.880 berkeley marina four days after she disappeared scott's team and garagos was saying this just

03:47:15.140 the other day say you cannot rely on that dogs fail two out of three of these tests under similar

03:47:21.220 circumstances. That was a bunch of BS evidence the dogs sent. Your thoughts on the dogs?

03:47:28.940 Well, I know a few dogs in the neighborhood. You know, I feed them some little milk bone treats,

03:47:34.420 but I don't know dogs like canine handlers do. My understanding is dogs have an incredible

03:47:39.860 sense of smell that is multiple times better than humans. You know, I can't disagree with

03:47:45.800 what Deragos is saying because I don't know enough about that subject to make the call on that. But

03:47:50.000 once again, it was just one of those strands of physical evidence. And if you remember Vincent

03:47:54.680 Bugliosi's book, Helter Skelter, he described a circumstantial case as a series of strands or

03:48:00.660 cables or strands of wires on a cable that become increasingly big and strong. And okay, you can

03:48:05.940 attack the dog, well, get rid of that little strand, but you still have all the rest of these.

03:48:10.320 And so when you add up all the circumstantial evidence, that paints a very compelling picture.

03:48:15.580 It'd almost be like if you had a jigsaw puzzle on your table and you were missing three pieces in the middle, but you'd be pretty sure what the picture says.

03:48:23.280 And that's what we had here with all the circumstantial evidence.

03:48:26.020 So when it comes to physical evidence, well, we've got Scott's behavior.

03:48:30.260 We could do a whole show on that.

03:48:32.040 But you've got the absence of intrusion from another person coming in there.

03:48:37.560 You've got the condition of the bodies and where they're found.

03:48:40.280 You've got Scott's behavior when it comes to how he's dealing with everything involving this case, whether it's returning to the scene where the bodies were disposed, I think, five or six times.

03:48:51.140 And this is consistent with what killers generally do if they have little doubts about whether or not they hid the body enough.

03:48:56.860 So you've got all of those kinds of things.

03:48:58.620 You've got Amber coming in. 0.99

03:49:00.000 You've got the absence of anybody else involved in it.

03:49:02.580 We've got the burglary across the street that we were able to clear those burglars from involvement in this.

03:49:07.420 Ah, let's stop there.

03:49:08.360 You know, that's that's a big item being pushed by Scott's sister-in-law right now, saying there was a burglary in the neighborhood.

03:49:15.500 She thinks that she says that there is proof that it happened on the morning.

03:49:20.700 Lacey went missing, which she says was definitively 1224 and not 1223, which was something the police had suggested could have been the case.

03:49:30.780 She said, we believe Lacey was killed after she stumbled upon that burglary live.

03:49:36.700 She said a neighbor, Diane Jackson, said she saw three men in a van in front of a home there

03:49:43.000 on December 24th. But then I understand that the two robbers apprehended, denied any involvement

03:49:51.140 in the case, and they were cleared by the cops. Moreover, there was apparently a second person

03:49:56.000 in the neighborhood, maybe, I don't know, maybe it was a woman you mentioned earlier,

03:49:59.320 who was pregnant and walking a dog that day. But you tell me why we shouldn't be putting 1.00

03:50:03.820 much stock in the burglary theory, that they nabbed Lacey because she saw them?

03:50:09.680 Well, it's pretty rare that a guy doing a property crime is going to turn into an abductor

03:50:15.380 of a pregnant girl when it's walking a dog. I mean, if everybody, if Diane Jackson sees a van

03:50:21.480 at 1140 in the morning with three guys in it, but she can't even tell us if it's white, tan,

03:50:25.980 or black, it kind of calls into question her viability as a witness. In addition to that,

03:50:32.840 one of the burglars, a guy named Steven, we rode that route daily as he was sourcing a narcotic

03:50:40.300 habit. But that would be his route when he went to his girlfriend's house. So on the 24th,

03:50:45.100 he noticed that the house across the street looked like maybe people had left for the holidays.

03:50:50.220 As he went over there on the 25th, he was pretty sure they did. So he broke into the house on the

03:50:54.500 25th and he took a bit of property on the 25th. But there was a safe and some tools and other

03:50:59.660 things that he couldn't take on his bike so he returns home and he's living in a shed behind his

03:51:05.060 friend don who's living with his mother and he tells don hey there's a safe over there we need

03:51:10.300 to go back over and get that so they return on the 26th and the reason we know that they were

03:51:14.500 there on the 26th is they said they saw the media down the street when they were in the house and

03:51:18.840 it was a big hoopla and they couldn't figure out what it was because they didn't know but it was

03:51:23.520 interesting to them that the media would be out in the street well they're going in and out through

03:51:26.640 the back of the house. So they're, you know, I mean, whether it's Geraldo or Greta or you or

03:51:31.080 anybody else out there, they're not going to see these guys carting a safe out the back of the

03:51:35.100 house. When they came under suspicion for this burglary, this is one of the things that we've

03:51:40.880 run into is cooperation level from people that are doing property crimes. It's very rare that

03:51:46.180 they cooperate with us. But these two guys, not only did we arrest one of them on an active

03:51:50.720 warrant, they both rolled on their involvement in the burglary because by that time they knew

03:51:54.560 what was going on down the street. They wanted to be as far away from this case as humanly possible.

03:51:59.920 If they could have gotten a flight to Burma, they would have gone. But that wasn't their option. So

03:52:04.360 they begged to take a poly because they knew and they wanted to share the results of the polygraph

03:52:09.180 because they knew if they went to jail, which they were going, that they wanted to be able to share

03:52:13.080 that with the other inmates because the other inmates ain't going to take too kindly to two

03:52:16.720 guys that they think might have killed this woman and her unborn child. So not only did we recover

03:52:21.880 property from that burglary, we recovered nothing of Lacey's, no jewelry, nothing at all. And we

03:52:28.520 even recovered property from another burglary that wasn't even related. Everybody that these guys had

03:52:33.680 sold or given property to in exchange for drugs turned stuff in. We even had one guy came in the

03:52:38.240 police lobby and dumped off a bag of property from the burglary and run out before anybody could

03:52:43.320 grab it. Of course, they didn't know what was in the bag until they opened it up. So as far as these

03:52:48.200 guys being involved in this, one of the things that I'm sure you remember is there was a $500,000

03:52:53.440 reward at the time leading to Lacey's, you know, recovery and, you know, locating her and everything

03:52:59.260 like that. Well, in Modesto, when you've got guys that are using meth, and, you know, two guys

03:53:05.160 involved in an abduction to try and convince me, I mean, I worked in a different world than maybe

03:53:10.120 some of your viewers, but to try and convince me that one wouldn't roll on the other for $500,000.

03:53:14.700 I mean, my gosh, that's that's, you know, pure Santa Claus. I mean, there's just no way.

03:53:19.320 What about well, what about this other thing? Let me because there's a few things I kind of I kind of jumped ahead there.

03:53:24.240 But there was Jenny, Janie, the sister-in-law of Scott Peterson, says there was evidence Lacey was alive on Christmas Eve morning past the point at which Scott left, which we've established was around 930.

03:53:35.860 She said there were sightings of Lacey at 945 and 1030 on Christmas Eve.

03:53:42.500 She said that that there are a couple of witnesses who saw the pregnant woman walking her golden retriever around the neighborhood.

03:53:52.520 And what's your response to that?

03:53:54.900 Well, there were two pregnant girls that were pregnant about the same stage as Lacey that walked dogs in the neighborhood. 1.00

03:54:00.540 There was one named Michelle who was walking a golden retriever and another one named Kristen that was walking a chocolate lap.

03:54:07.080 And then there was a third girl, another attractive gal, all three attractive, that easily could have been mistaken for Lacey by somebody in the neighborhood who did not know Lacey. 0.99

03:54:15.920 Now, and this is the interesting part, is none of these people that came forward and claimed they saw Lacey there actually knew her.

03:54:22.760 They never had a barbecue with her.

03:54:24.760 They'd never been to her house.

03:54:25.860 so it's easy to misplace or misidentify somebody especially with the coverage going on when with

03:54:32.160 the thought of being helpful or maybe the thought that I want to be involved in this but we couldn't

03:54:36.420 find any evidence that anybody who actually knew Lacey had seen her in the neighborhood at that

03:54:40.780 time and as far as anybody identifying her as walking around there it could have been an easy

03:54:45.680 mistaken identity with any of these other three girls I interviewed two of them and you know if 1.00

03:54:52.680 you're looking out the blinds and you don't know who you're looking at. I mean, think about

03:54:56.620 yourself. You know, you're at your home, you see somebody walk by in the morning, and then two

03:55:00.800 days later, maybe something comes up. That might have been the same person. But if you don't know

03:55:05.040 them, yeah. I don't have that kind of memory. I could never, I would not be able to do that. But

03:55:10.140 let me throw another one at you. Sure. There is an allegedly a prisoner confession overheard by

03:55:16.260 an officer named Lieutenant Aponte at Narco Prison in California. The lieutenant phoned in a tip in

03:55:23.800 2003, claiming he overheard an inmate's conversation about Lacey. Later, this Lieutenant Aponte

03:55:29.420 changed his story, saying, I don't really know what I heard. He was not called as a witness at

03:55:36.440 trial, but this could become a thing, I suppose, that if he heard a prisoner confession of some

03:55:42.340 sort. Do you know about this? Yeah, I know about what you said right there, because it was it

03:55:47.780 apparently wasn't a big enough deal on our radar to have him called as a witness. And again, you

03:55:52.740 know, when you look at Garagos, I mean, he not only is he a skilled attorney, his staff, I mean,

03:55:59.320 I don't know if you ever talked to any attorneys on his staff, but he had a bunch of great attorneys

03:56:03.420 that were digging up every single thing they could. I don't think they missed anything. And

03:56:07.880 if Aponte would have been something of value, I highly doubt that Mark would not have called him

03:56:13.340 to the stand. Now, there might have been some tactical legal reasons for that. I don't know.

03:56:17.060 Or maybe some information came up later. And if that's an appeal issue, put him on the stand.

03:56:21.720 Let's hear what he's got to say. You know, I mean, if Scott didn't do this, I don't want him in jail,

03:56:25.520 but I have no doubts that he did it. What about back to the timeline? Apparently,

03:56:29.760 a neighbor testified seeing the golden retriever, McKenzie, inside the Peterson's gated yard

03:56:36.360 around 10.15 a.m. Janie, Scott's sister-in-law, says the mailman was there. He arrived at 10.30

03:56:46.200 a.m. and said that he didn't believe the dog was there, or at least he heard no barking,

03:56:51.360 which he would have if the dog had been outside because it barked at the mailman every day.

03:56:55.680 She says this proves that Lacey was walking that dog at around 10.30, that it was in the

03:57:02.920 yard at 10 15. It was gone by 10 30. Lacey would have been walking it at that point. 0.99

03:57:07.900 And then at some point it returned back to the house, just its leash attached. And Scott had

03:57:12.940 left the house an hour earlier. Now I will add the mailman says he doesn't have a very clear

03:57:18.840 recollection of the day. He didn't remember anything out of the ordinary, but that doesn't

03:57:23.220 necessarily clear up the question of whether at 10 30, he delivered the mail and a dog that would

03:57:28.320 normally have been there barking at him wasn't. Yeah, I look at that from a from a different

03:57:34.500 aspect. There was Scott and Lacey had gone down to Disneyland in November. And for part of the

03:57:40.660 days that they were down there, she had to be in a wheelchair because she was having so much

03:57:44.600 difficulty walking. Not only her yoga instructor, but of course, also her doctor had told her at

03:57:50.380 the tail end of this pregnancy, you just don't need to be out doing any walking. The day before

03:57:54.920 the housekeeper had mentioned that she was exhausted. Sharon had told us that she was

03:57:59.220 exhausted. Sharon did not believe that Lacey had gone walking. And to think this girl that

03:58:03.780 couldn't even move a mop bucket, according to Scott, would go down an uneven grade down to a

03:58:11.080 park with a dog tugging at her when she's unstable on her feet and exhausted from everybody's account

03:58:15.820 makes it sound to me like she didn't do that walk. Now, of course, I wasn't there. I can't

03:58:20.100 make that call. But all I can do is I can compare the evidence of information that we received

03:58:24.760 that seems valid and that doesn't really have a stake in this versus Janie's devotion to family

03:58:31.880 and love for Scott. And I get that. I understand family members are like that. And I applaud her

03:58:36.920 for her tenacity. But I don't believe that Lacey was ever walking that morning with the dog just

03:58:43.380 based on the other information that we have. So when did he kill her and what did he do

03:58:49.240 in the moments after? That's where I'm going to pick it up with John Buehler in one minute.

03:58:54.180 Don't go away.

03:58:59.040 So, John, what do you think actually happened inside that house and when?

03:59:05.240 Well, of course, none of us are ever really going to know that other than Scott himself.

03:59:08.980 But my my take on it is he probably suffocated her with a pillow or strangled her and then rolled her body up in maybe a sheet or something like that.

03:59:20.880 moved her out to the truck put her in the truck put the umbrellas on top of her so that nobody 0.97

03:59:27.580 could really see her in there drove over to his warehouse loaded her in the boat used the tarp

03:59:33.400 on the boat to cover the boat and then of course hooked the boat up and drove her up to berkeley

03:59:38.980 marina launched the boat took her out to brooks island and rolled her into the water with four 0.99

03:59:44.620 or five of the concrete anchors that we believe he made is judging from the residue rings of

03:59:50.620 cement powder that was on a flatbed trailer that was in his warehouse, one that would be used to

03:59:56.580 deliver fertilizer or something like that. That's kind of the way I think it. It could be off

04:00:01.560 slightly. I mean, I'd certainly buy Scott some imported ale if he wanted to tell me what really

04:00:06.580 happened, but I don't think he's going to be doing that. Why wouldn't there be any forensics in his

04:00:11.500 truck? Well, why would there not be? I mean, if he's wrapped up in a...

04:00:18.940 you know, something. Well, don't you remember that hair that was found in the pliers that were

04:00:23.020 in the boat? One hair of Lacey's in the pliers in his boat. But I mean, couldn't you make the

04:00:27.320 argument, you know, my husband takes our boat out all the time. Like I'm not, I'm rarely in it, but

04:00:31.880 if my hair were there, I guess he could say, you know, I get Meg's hair on me all the time.

04:00:38.240 Right. Yeah. The transfer of that is, is, you know, it's easy. I can, I can see where the,

04:00:42.540 you know, where the hair came from in the boat, no problem there. And then of course,

04:00:45.380 there was concrete residue in the boat that it was consistent with somebody rolling somebody

04:00:49.880 with anchors attached over the side into the water. So, you know, you have that. But as far

04:00:55.140 as any more evidence in his truck, well, she's in the bed. You know, I can't say that there

04:01:01.460 wouldn't be, but the mere fact that the scent dogs were able to trace her path essentially in

04:01:08.960 the truck as he drove from there down to the south and then turned west and went over towards

04:01:13.760 his warehouse and they followed him over there they followed the scent from the warehouse out

04:01:17.800 to 132 which is the drive that you go up to san francisco tracing it all the way up to berkeley

04:01:22.700 marina i mean uh yeah mark garagos can say that that's invalid and and okay i get that that's

04:01:29.360 what he's paid to do that society's on but it's all just additional circumstantial evidence that

04:01:35.520 leads to the fingers pointing at scott but as far as evidence that you would expect if he doesn't

04:01:41.060 harm her to the point where she's leaking blood. And he puts her in a position where she's wrapped

04:01:45.840 up, where maybe saliva or any kind of purge that comes out of her mouth after death is not going 1.00

04:01:50.320 to get through whatever he's got her wrapped up in. You're not going to find anything in the

04:01:54.340 truck, especially since he was only in there for what I would estimate to be a short period of

04:01:59.240 time from the house to the warehouse loaded in the boat and gone. No one would have seen him

04:02:03.560 loading up the boat with her body at the warehouse because your theory is he did that inside the

04:02:08.160 warehouse yes okay and so the only way they would have seen her getting loaded into that truck would

04:02:13.520 have been from the house into the truck but as you said earlier he had backed the truck all the way

04:02:18.400 up to the house in an unusual move yeah neighbors noticed that that he you know you that was first

04:02:24.560 time they'd ever seen the truck backed in and they also noticed that there was a first time that they

04:02:27.660 can recall that the blinds weren't open on the front of the house in the morning they let the

04:02:30.820 morning sun in that was something that lacy did all the time that particular morning those weren't 0.90

04:02:34.880 open, which is really suspicious when you think that if she was home watching Martha

04:02:38.540 Stewart or something like that, that she wouldn't have opened those blinds.

04:02:42.140 Quick note on the boat, though, that there was a cover that went over the aluminum boat.

04:02:46.060 And when Scott found out that we were doing more digging around, he took that cover and

04:02:50.440 he put it in a shed behind his house underneath a leaking gas can that would put gasoline

04:02:55.080 and leaf floor or something like that, that kind of two-stroke oil on the boat cover itself.

04:03:01.980 Now, Scott was fastidious about taking care of his property, whether it was his vehicles or the surface of his kitchen table or anything like that.

04:03:10.180 But the thought that he would take a relatively nice boat cover and put a leaky leaf blower gas can on top of it for any other reason other than maybe destroy Lacey's scent seems kind of strange to me.

04:03:21.180 So, again, just one more piece of circumstantial evidence.

04:03:23.580 And by themselves, anecdotal, they don't mean anything.

04:03:25.840 But when you add those things up, they become very, very convincing.

04:03:29.280 And this is one of the things that I think a lot of people that don't think he did it are missing is they're not making themselves available to all the individual circumstantial evidence, because you have to ignore just a giant heap of this stuff to believe he didn't do it.

04:03:43.960 I applaud Peterson's family for their love for Scott and what they're trying to do, but you're going to have to do something else.

04:03:49.540 We understand their motive. Okay, let's talk about the boat because Garagos was lamenting that his experiment trying to show a man Scott's size, throwing a body, a pregnant, an eight and a half month pregnant woman's body overboard with a bunch of cement anchors, that he did that experiment and it showed the boat sinking.

04:04:10.460 We've actually got that, the videotape that he tried to get in that the judge kept out.

04:04:15.840 Let me ask you about it, because as I watch it, you know, he does raise an interesting question.

04:04:20.140 Could a man as big as Scott Peterson get a pregnant woman, that pregnant, overboard with four anchors attached to her without the boat capsizing or sinking?

04:04:29.640 Here's Garagos' clip from his would-be evidence that was denied.

04:04:40.460 For our listening audience, it shows an exact replica of Scott's 14-foot fishing boat and a man in scuba gear.

04:05:03.500 You know, they're not purporting that it's actually Scott.

04:05:06.000 It's a reenactment, what they say is.

04:05:08.020 and a dummy that is a pregnant woman and he can't the boat is sinking he's basically can't get 0.73

04:05:15.240 overboard without sinking the boat the back of the boat is going down down down and under the

04:05:20.080 water so i get that the prosecution wasn't there when he filmed his experiment that's why the judge

04:05:25.040 said no because that didn't give them the chance to object to the currents weren't the same on the

04:05:30.400 day you did this as they were on december 24th or who knows how heavy was that dummy that mark used

04:05:36.860 who knows, right? Like, we don't know because they weren't there. But does he raise some good

04:05:41.140 questions about whether it's possible, you know, given the laws of physics?

04:05:45.960 Oh, yeah, of course, he raises good questions on that. And, you know, my whole thought on that is,

04:05:50.040 gosh, if you're going to do that experiment, send us an invite, let us come there and let us,

04:05:53.840 you know, do it with you. I've seen that same tape. It's been a while since I've seen it. Of

04:05:59.400 course, I can't see it on this, you know, device here, the way we're doing this. But I saw it and

04:06:03.940 And I thought, gosh, the guy could have tried a little harder to not let the boat go over.

04:06:08.800 I'm of the belief that it could have been done.

04:06:10.780 I don't think that there's anything unusual about that.

04:06:13.400 But if it's a situation where they only want to show one version of it, that's why it was

04:06:17.740 subjected to.

04:06:18.400 Let's do a scientific study.

04:06:19.740 I mean, it doesn't mean you have to get a physicist there, but let's try it a couple

04:06:22.660 of times.

04:06:23.100 Maybe get somebody in there that wants to keep the boat from going over.

04:06:26.340 Somebody that isn't really on that same side.

04:06:28.700 Well, you have to think if he believed that he could do it without the boat sinking.

04:06:33.260 They tried it.

04:06:33.940 five times and every time it sunk he would have said you know what let's go back and do it we'll

04:06:38.060 do it we'll do it tomorrow let's prosecution can come with me right there's a reason yeah he didn't

04:06:44.120 yeah he didn't round back and say oh that's your objection and you're sustaining it your honor okay

04:06:48.160 no problem we can we can do it uh right now um the the uh the anchors you believe he made

04:06:57.080 for cement weights? Because I also read that they found planter pots at the bottom of the

04:07:05.320 water and that they matched, that they were found by divers in the marina and that they,

04:07:10.880 they, many believe that they were used to weigh down Lacey's body because they match broken pots

04:07:15.720 in his storage unit. Is that not the right anchor? It was those concrete blocks that he made?

04:07:21.860 Well, I never heard about them finding planter pots up there. That's a new one for me. You know,

04:07:26.400 of course, this case had, gosh, I think I got the note here on it, over 43,000 pages of reports.

04:07:35.480 So there were a lot of people that could be a lot of us. Yeah. But at the same time, I remember

04:07:40.700 the one anchor and one concrete anchor that was in Scott's boat, it didn't even have a rope

04:07:45.040 attached to it. Now, most people I know, if they're going to toss an anchor out to hold their

04:07:49.040 boat, they usually have a rope attached there to work better. Yeah, generally. But it was one of

04:07:55.300 those things where the cement ring suggests that he made four or five of them, and I believe it

04:08:02.080 was five. And the fact that one was found, okay, cool. But if you remember, when Lacey was found,

04:08:09.800 minus the head, minus the four extremity limbs, that suggests five anchors on her when she goes 0.96

04:08:15.960 in. And one of the things that was noted on her condition when she was recovered, again,

04:08:20.120 the forensic pathologist said it appeared that she'd been in the salt water for three to six

04:08:26.820 months that the limbs had been separated by either surgical precision or they had been weighted and

04:08:32.640 then the weights separated them and then that she also had three broken ribs well she talked to her

04:08:37.880 mom the night before you know on the 23rd and she didn't say anything about broken ribs and

04:08:42.180 lacy probably would have told somebody if she had broken ribs and so that also fits with scott

04:08:46.860 kneeling on top of her, you know, suffocating her or strangling her. And of course, the way

04:08:52.840 the limbs were separated supports that there were weighted devices, anchors, concrete anchors on

04:08:59.360 each one of the four extremities and maybe around the neck. So it's not counting on her torso coming 0.98

04:09:04.920 back up. And that torso had their baby in it for most of its time underwater, right? The forensic

04:09:12.780 pathologist said the umbilical cord was still attached and that and i mean it's so sad but that

04:09:19.420 lacy died still pregnant with her unborn son and and um they were they were put to a watery grave

04:09:28.920 and they but they came back up they came back up to tell the tale and it was first connor's body

04:09:35.380 and then lacy's the remains of it that were found and while it wasn't exactly uh evidence of scott's

04:09:41.820 involvement you know it didn't show whatever a gun shot like a bullet that was linked to him

04:09:48.540 it really was the the final piece that you needed to to bring him to justice

04:09:53.880 well it seemed like it to us i mean again it's all circumstantial but you know there's a lot of

04:10:00.060 cases are circumstantial you know it's that's kind of the way we put them together if you don't have

04:10:04.760 an eyewitness or a videotape and um it's it was compelling to us and apparently it was compelling

04:10:10.840 to the jury the first time around. I, you know, I, I wouldn't have any doubts that we would get

04:10:16.080 another good verdict on a second trial. You wouldn't, you would not. I'm confident in the

04:10:21.280 prosecutors that we have, Birgit and Dave, and then of course they bring somebody else in because

04:10:26.140 Rick is now a judge, but you know, you can bring things up all these years later. I believe we had

04:10:32.660 a good case. If you get a good jury, I think you get a good verdict. And if somebody gets on the

04:10:36.760 jury that, you know, maybe the jury's always a crapshoot, as you know, you've done this for a

04:10:42.380 while and you just never know what you're going to get with them. But well, you know, here's the

04:10:47.160 other here's the other element kind of goes back to what we discussed earlier, which is

04:10:51.020 there is a part of me and there's probably a part of a lot of people watching this that that

04:10:56.360 wants him not to have done it, that would like it to have been the burglars or some random sicko

04:11:03.040 on the street and that it's not possible for what appears to be a loving husband to strangle

04:11:10.280 the mother of his unborn son a month before that son is going to be born, completely viable baby,

04:11:18.040 and then anchor her, shove her in the back of a truck under a tarp and tie five concrete blocks

04:11:25.000 to her neck and each limb, hoping she will stay in that watery grave. But he was so efficient that

04:11:32.180 the torso broke free and that body floated in four months later it's like i would rather believe

04:11:37.660 some random creepy boogeyman did it you know there's something about it that that i think

04:11:44.300 might be one of the biggest challenges at the trial that the need to believe that

04:11:48.260 well i think you know we all share in that you know you look at him and he just doesn't look

04:11:54.180 evil but evil does exist and one of the reasons that evil is successful a lot of times is it

04:11:58.660 comes disguised as you know a beautiful man or a beautiful woman and so you never know what you're

04:12:03.540 going to get with that but the thing is is you know people you want to look at Scott and you

04:12:08.940 want to think he couldn't have done this but gosh he wanted to sell you know the house within two

04:12:13.960 weeks of Lacey going missing he will be sold Lacey's car a month or so after she went missing

04:12:19.180 he turned the nursery into a storage area I mean this is the guy that is wanting his wife to come 0.98

04:12:24.620 home. This is the guy who was looking forward to the birth of his son. You're going to have to give

04:12:30.060 me some better evidence of that because I can get past his looks, which are so disarming. And I can

04:12:37.240 see what actually he did because his actions are speaking evil, even though it's coming out of an

04:12:43.040 attractive package. All right. I'm going to squeeze in a break because up next, we're going to talk

04:12:48.160 about what the sister said he was doing in that same time frame John just referenced and another

04:12:54.840 piece of his Diane Sawyer interview that was very, very telling. More with John Buehler right after

04:13:00.960 this. Stay tuned. The sister, her name is Amy Bird, and she wrote, John, that she spent a lot

04:13:13.660 of time apparently with scott in the weeks after the disappearance and before his arrest and she

04:13:18.960 wrote in her book that he appeared smitten with her and birds 22 year old babysitter this is while

04:13:26.600 they're looking for lacy and connor before the bodies came smitten with her 22 year old babysitter

04:13:31.440 on more than one occasion he told his sister and bird how attractive the sitter was i mean this is

04:13:37.100 in his world, his version, his wife is missing and so is their baby. How attractive the sitter

04:13:44.260 was. With Lacey still missing, he plied the sitter with drinks that he called, quote,

04:13:50.020 flirtinis based on peach schnapps. And she said he looked like a charming young man without a care

04:13:57.600 in the world. She went on to write, he seemed totally uninterested in any new leads

04:14:03.500 or new information. He never once shed a single tear for Lacey or Connor, the situation.

04:14:10.420 And that two weeks after Lacey's disappearance, he ordered two porn channels on his home TV.

04:14:18.200 And she was a witness to that. I mean, like that alone would make me convict him.

04:14:27.880 Well, yeah, I mean, and that's that's just consistent with his behavior. And this is one

04:14:32.320 of the reasons that he you know we couldn't discount him because he just didn't show the

04:14:37.220 interest in this case the way he would say on tv he's waiting for the little guy to come home he

04:14:41.560 won't even refer to him as Connor and he wants Lacey to come home but when the camera's turned

04:14:45.800 off then he's just not interested in any of this and especially when you compare his reaction and

04:14:51.280 the way he dealt with all of this with Sharon and and all the other side of you know Lacey's family

04:14:57.060 and friends they were all just urgent going crazy wanting some solutions and suggestions so they

04:15:04.180 were they were always interested in this and he just wasn't and this is consistent with what i've

04:15:08.400 seen on other guys that have done similar types of killings they just they don't you know they

04:15:13.580 don't have that interest in it i remember scott's dad said one time you know lee he mentioned that

04:15:18.560 you know grief doesn't have a playbook and you know maybe it probably doesn't for people that

04:15:23.640 haven't dealt with a lot of families that have suffered a loss but when you when you deal with

04:15:29.640 families and and friends that have suffered a loss over a period of time you kind of get a

04:15:35.400 you know a data bank of what reactions are from subdued silence to hysterical you know you know

04:15:43.060 punching on the you know back of the one who gives them the death death notification how i remember

04:15:47.260 that and everything in between but when scott doesn't even move the needle on this and he

04:15:52.660 isn't asking the questions that you expect and that you get from sincere people. It just fits

04:15:58.140 with what he did, you know, and by itself, it doesn't mean he did it. It just is one more

04:16:03.240 strand that to me shows that he did. What kind of a man is flirting with a 22 year old babysitter,

04:16:11.200 offering her flirtinis and then downloading porn while his wife and unborn baby are at best for

04:16:18.160 scott peterson at that point missing i mean it's just it's so clear that he was involved then he

04:16:25.420 goes on with diane sawyer and we talked with garagos about what a mistake it is for these

04:16:29.620 high-profile defendants to give interviews to the press you guys must love it you're in the opposite

04:16:34.400 seat than garagos who's like no you guys are like go for it diane sawyer's amazing she's a great 0.81

04:16:41.200 choice and here is one of the things listen to this for the audience at home listen to him refer

04:16:46.280 to Lacey before the bodies, long before the bodies were found, in the past tense.

04:16:51.380 Listen here.

04:16:52.720 Tell me about the state of your marriage.

04:16:55.660 What kind of marriage was it?

04:16:59.580 God, I mean, the first word that comes to mind is, you know, glorious.

04:17:03.640 I mean, we took care of each other very well.

04:17:09.620 She was amazing.

04:17:10.980 She is amazing.

04:17:11.620 that's telling well you know it's interesting because he even referred to lacy in the past

04:17:21.340 twice during brockini's interview with him on the evening of christmas eve so even from the start he

04:17:27.900 was doing that and you know it was you know you can't hide that stuff i mean he's he's pretty

04:17:34.000 slick for the most part but you know those things slip out when you're doing it and no matter how

04:17:38.840 slit you are, you can't be that good. And then there was the interview with Gloria Gomez of

04:17:45.340 Sacramento. And in that, you referenced it earlier in the show, he slips in the fact that he had a

04:17:52.940 cut on his hand. It reminded me of OJ. It reminded me very much of OJ, but we know OJ's murder was

04:17:58.260 with a knife. Listen, I'll just let the audience hear it, but I don't think this was by accident.

04:18:04.380 He knew somebody was going to notice it, and he was laying the foundation for what happened. Here

04:18:07.700 it is it wouldn't surprise you if they found blood sure in your vehicles explain why well

04:18:13.940 take a look at my hand and you can see you know cuts here on my knuckles numerous scars i i work

04:18:22.580 on farms i work with machinery um i know i cut my knuckle that day on what day on christmas eve

04:18:30.840 Doing what?

04:18:32.140 Reaching in the toolbox of my truck and then into the pocket on the door.

04:18:37.480 I cut open my knuckle and there's a bloodstain on the door, on the driver's side door.

04:18:46.040 What did you guys make of that?

04:18:49.440 Well, a pretty good way to explain that away.

04:18:51.940 And, you know, I can't rule out the fact that it's possible he could have cut it that way.

04:18:56.500 But it's also possible that Lacey may have scratched him as he was killing him.

04:19:00.360 and so you know those again without a witness in a videotape or a confession you're never

04:19:05.780 really going to know on that but but that was not accidental that he raised that

04:19:09.560 well you know and that's all for the jury you know the jury you know listens to that and they

04:19:15.620 draw their own conclusions on that but just the fact that he's volunteering it talking about it

04:19:20.020 it's almost like he said guilty conscious coming out and he wants to make sure he gets in front of

04:19:24.660 that with this story so what of the toolbox john what of the toolbox because one of the things that

04:19:30.360 One of the evidence rulings was that Garagos' boat video couldn't come in.

04:19:34.260 But as I understand it, there was a ruling that the prosecution introduced showing that he could have fit a body the size of a pregnant woman in the toolbox of his flatbed truck.

04:19:46.540 Is this familiar to you?

04:19:49.000 No, because it was a pickup.

04:19:50.920 The flatbed was the trailer.

04:19:52.400 But I know we did an experiment and it was submitted to the court where we had a eight month pregnant clerk in the investigation division at Stanislaw County District Attorney's Office.

04:20:04.840 And we took an overhead photo of her inside the boat between the seats.

04:20:09.140 Now, the seats go across the width of the boat and she easily fit in between those two seats and she was consistent in size with Lacey.

04:20:16.820 So that was one of the things that we did to show that that was possible, that she could have easily been hidden in the boat.

04:20:22.400 But I don't even remember if we were able to get that in at trial or not, because it's been too long ago.

04:20:26.820 But, you know, I like Judge DeLugie.

04:20:30.700 I thought he was pretty, pretty right down the middle.

04:20:32.860 He gave some good, favorable decisions to the defense and then maybe some that they didn't like.

04:20:37.940 But that's true in every trial, as you know.

04:20:40.260 You know, you get that, you get ones that you like and you get ones that you don't.

04:20:43.280 You're just hoping that the judge is doing it right.

04:20:45.580 Well, and I mean, their big basis for appeal is not necessarily, you know, judicial misconduct.

04:20:50.500 It's juror misconduct. Juror number seven, who called herself Strawberry Shortcake, did not disclose in her juror questionnaire that she had apparently been the victim of domestic violence while pregnant, which I agree the defense had a right to know whether it was enough error to allow whether that was prejudicial enough to throw out a verdict in a case like this is a different story for the listeners and the viewers who don't remember her.

04:21:18.980 We used to call her Pinky at the time.

04:21:21.560 Here she is, along with another juror, celebrating their guilty verdict.

04:21:26.220 You don't always see the jurors talk in California.

04:21:28.860 In this case, you did.

04:21:30.120 It's a quick snippet of her.

04:21:31.620 Watch.

04:21:32.300 San Quentin's your new home. 0.99

04:21:33.740 And it's illegal to kill your wife and child in California. 0.97

04:21:38.780 So that's the gal.

04:21:40.820 And I wonder what you think about now this push, because he's had his sentence reduced

04:21:45.540 because of a different juror misconduct issue not related to this gal.

04:21:49.940 And now in February, we will have a hearing to see whether Scott Peterson gets a new trial

04:21:55.620 on the guilt or innocence phase of the whole thing because she, that juror,

04:22:01.020 did not disclose this fact on her questionnaire.

04:22:03.660 Yeah, well, that brings up two points.

04:22:06.060 Number one, I had heard that her lack of coming forward with that information on the juror 0.67

04:22:11.420 questionnaire was that she was the victim of a threat from a boyfriend's ex-girlfriend and she

04:22:17.700 didn't see that as domestic violence now there may be more to it than that but that's what i

04:22:21.780 had originally heard the second thing is that's better for the prosecution than what i just said

04:22:26.260 for sure yeah and then of course when it comes to the death penalty thing i'm not a huge death

04:22:31.460 penalty guy because i think it's been 17 years since california has carried one out so to even

04:22:37.840 try somebody on a death penalty seems to be kind of a placebo. They're not going to get the needle.

04:22:42.580 They're probably going to die in custody. I would rather have more flexibility in jury selection

04:22:47.880 without a death penalty case. So maybe you get a good juror that just doesn't want to, you know,

04:22:52.940 do a death penalty thing, but they can be fair about it. To me, that's a better way to go,

04:22:56.840 because I just, my personal feeling is the death penalty in California is kind of a joke.

04:23:02.540 Yeah, it doesn't, you know, they're not serious about it.

04:23:04.800 What kind of life does he have now? Describe his prison life.

04:23:10.420 Well, San Quentin Prison is a very interesting place. It's got an enormously interesting culture

04:23:17.880 and heritage. It's not a very pleasant place. It's frightening, even to us, when you go there 1.00

04:23:24.200 when you're a cop and you go into one of the prisons for an interview or whatever you have

04:23:29.620 to do up there. It's a scary atmosphere. It's interesting you talk to the correctional officers

04:23:33.840 And we ask them, you know, how the hell can you do this?

04:23:35.960 Be locked up with these guys all day.

04:23:37.560 And they go, well, how the hell can you do what you do?

04:23:39.680 At least we know who the players are.

04:23:41.520 And I can see it from both sides.

04:23:43.180 But it's death row, I think, if I had to be in San Quentin, I'd want to be on death row

04:23:48.600 because I'm not really exposed to that many of the other inmates.

04:23:51.960 And general population in San Quentin can get you hurt pretty quick,

04:23:55.900 especially if they don't like you for killing your wife and your child.

04:23:59.040 So, you know, if they do stay with the verdict of guilt and he does get, you know, life without parole, we call it L-Lop, and he stays in there, they're going to have to assure his safety by keeping him isolated because he would be a target for other inmates.

04:24:14.540 There's a National Geographic special that was on a couple of years ago that profiled San Quentin.

04:24:20.180 And even one of the inmates that they interviewed would talk specifically about Scott, that he would be attacked if he was in general population.

04:24:26.600 They'd even do it with a pencil.

04:24:28.280 Pretty interesting show to watch if you get a chance to catch that one.

04:24:31.380 Of course, it's not as good as your show, but it's nearly as good.

04:24:34.260 Naturally.

04:24:34.780 But the prison code of justice is so weird.

04:24:37.380 It's like you don't get into San Quentin for being a Boy Scout, but like there's certain

04:24:41.360 lines they won't cross.

04:24:42.520 I guess you're not allowed.

04:24:43.540 What? 1.00

04:24:43.920 I'm killing your wife. 1.00

04:24:44.720 I don't know if that's a problem, but killing your unborn baby. 1.00

04:24:46.680 Is that the thing that's going to get him the pencil on the neck? 0.96

04:24:49.720 Yeah, it's a very interesting, it's a violent, but a very interesting culture up there.

04:24:55.160 Any of the state prisons in California are, you know, not everybody gets to go in unless you do something really bad.

04:25:01.780 But it's a very interesting culture up there.

04:25:03.780 I don't think Scott's days are very good.

04:25:05.780 Now, Scott has an enormously impressive emotional control.

04:25:10.220 And so he can, I'm sure he adapts better than I would.

04:25:14.740 And, but it's not, you know, he's not ordering flirtinis up there.

04:25:18.500 You know, he's stuck and he ain't going anywhere.

04:25:21.540 And they don't smell good.

04:25:23.020 They're noisy and you're not there with the faculty at Stanford.

04:25:26.960 So, you know, it's not a very pleasant place to be.

04:25:29.620 What do you think?

04:25:30.120 Because, you know, people debate this all the time in our society because the death penalty is still recognized as constitutional and implemented in certain states.

04:25:40.020 I've heard I've heard people who oppose the death penalty say I oppose it because I think it's too it's too kind.

04:25:48.320 It's too swift that I'd rather see somebody, you know, especially a young man like Scott Peterson.

04:25:54.160 I mean, Sharon Rocha at the hearing just most recently was just saying Lacey would be, I think she said, 47 now and Connor would be 18.

04:26:01.800 And it really does give you a flavor for the passage of time and how much they've lost.

04:26:06.040 And Scott Peterson, too, is not getting any younger.

04:26:08.640 But what a tortuous existence.

04:26:10.660 And I wonder what you think about what would be worse, a death sentence or a life in prison without parole?

04:26:16.520 well I you know that's kind of a flip of the coin I mean that's you know do you you know do you have

04:26:22.860 the fish or do you have the steak I mean I they both are you know kind of equal in some ways I

04:26:27.840 I think the anxiety of knowing that the the grim reaper is coming when you got that death sentence

04:26:33.280 if they're going to carry it out would be very difficult to deal with but again most people that

04:26:38.540 end up in there don't think the way we do so their their thought process is probably slightly

04:26:42.720 different there was some good things recently there was a guy put to death recently in one of

04:26:47.700 his closing statements before they gave him the needle was he he solved another case for him he

04:26:52.420 did the last minute he he said something about another murder that had been uh committed and

04:26:57.160 that they cleared him on that or cleared cleared the case based on what he said i guess he committed

04:27:01.700 it so i mean for me if they're not going to carry it out don't bother with it don't don't cause

04:27:07.420 additional problems don't make the trial longer by having a penalty phase just get by with you

04:27:12.360 know, your life without parole and leave it at that. And then you sit there and you think about

04:27:15.980 it for the rest of your life. Uh, the concern also, of course, you know, you put an innocent

04:27:20.040 man to death. I wouldn't want to ever see that. Um, and in this case, you know, you don't have

04:27:24.720 a confession, you don't have an eyewitness and you don't have a videotape. So, you know, there's

04:27:28.700 always that, but we, we have the, we have the fear that, you know, he's good looking, that we live in

04:27:34.200 a celebrity obsessed culture and he is for better, for worse, sort of a celebrity, um, that the

04:27:40.440 jurors of 2021 or this would be 22 have been completely trained to expect CSI like investigations

04:27:47.160 where the proof is always there and the absence of tight forensics mean you don't have a case

04:27:52.640 right that all these things are challenges if this case has to be retried we didn't even talk

04:27:57.320 about this woman Evelyn Hernandez who she was up in San Francisco and she went missing in May of

04:28:04.020 2002 her body washed up in San Francisco Bay in July of 2002 that case considered I think unsolved

04:28:10.080 as of a couple of years ago, right?

04:28:12.200 So there's so much that the defense could make hay with.

04:28:15.320 You know, was there a serial killer?

04:28:16.500 Were they wrong about the burglars?

04:28:17.580 Was there something happening on December 24th?

04:28:20.680 And I just wonder whether we're so obsessed

04:28:24.060 with like armchair detective work in 2021,

04:28:27.500 it would be more of an uphill battle for the prosecution.

04:28:31.380 I'll give you the last word.

04:28:33.300 Well, it probably would be,

04:28:34.420 but again, I have confidence in the prosecutors

04:28:36.480 from Stanislaw County District Attorney's Office.

04:28:38.400 They've got some incredibly bright trial attorneys there, and so I don't know who they would assign to it the second time around.

04:28:44.780 With it going to trial again, hopefully not.

04:28:47.600 The big thing for me is the torture for the family, for Sharon and the rest of the family, for them to have to go through this again, and even for this to come up for resentencing here in December.

04:28:57.060 What a great time of the year to do that, to just open that wound again.

04:29:00.700 Now, granted, every Christmas is going to be different from before Lacey went missing to now, and I get that.

04:29:07.520 But then they have to add, you know, salt to the wound by having this thing happen.

04:29:11.120 Now, why couldn't they have done this in February and put it off a little bit longer?

04:29:14.320 But, you know, that that is what it is. And this is what we're dealing with.

04:29:18.060 As far as I'm concerned, I'm close to the case, along with Craig and Al.

04:29:25.060 We were in it from the start. And, you know, it is what it is. It was a team effort.

04:29:29.140 I appreciate you referring to me as the one who solved it. I didn't solve it.

04:29:32.480 We worked it together from those of us that were on the core unit investigating it from the beginning to the other detectives that came and helped with us, the other agencies, sheriff's departments, detectives from other agencies, the FBI that helped us out on it.

04:29:44.960 Our crime analysis did a wonderful job putting things together and the evidence clerks, the evidence technicians and everybody that joined in on it.

04:29:52.860 It was a big team effort.

04:29:54.000 I just hope that if we go to trial again on it, that we get a good jury and they can see right through this stuff and they see every strand of this circumstantial evidence makes an unbreakable cable and they come back with the right verdict.

04:30:06.360 I hope the same. John, thank you so much for your investigatory efforts and for being here to tell us the story.

04:30:14.340 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

04:30:24.000 Amen.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 22, 2026

＂Fraud Week＂ Highlights, Scott Peterson Case Lead Detective - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

Episode Stats

People

Summary

Transcript