transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] True story media. Please note that this show discusses child abuse, which may be difficult for some listeners. For resources about abusive head trauma, go to shakenbaby.org. On January 12th, 2016, one month after Nolan Kelly died from inflicted injuries, a warrant was issued for John Stewart's arrest. Detective Stephen Luke's affidavit lays out the information you've heard over the last several episodes. The accounts from Danica, Larry and John of the 24 hours that preceded Nolan's hospitalization, the messages from John telling Danica that Nolan had had a seizure, the injuries to Nolan's brain, neck and ribs that both Dr. Smith and Dr. Vega confirmed in their reports. The warrant notes Dr. Vega's comments that seizure symptoms would have occurred shortly after the brain and spinal cord injuries he observed during the autopsy, and mentions that Dr. Smith also stated that the initial seizure, the one that John told Danica about, would have occurred around the time of the original injury to the brain, and that the other symptoms he was reported to be experiencing, lethargy, inability to eat or keep fluids down, were consistent with the progression of cerebral edema or swelling of the brain. The detectives laid out their evidence, which is undergirded by the two medical experts in the case. So, what happened? How did we end up here? No one's been held accountable for this child's death.

Speaker 2:
[01:35] Exactly. Well, only one person's only been held partially accountable, and that was me. I spent a year in jail and two years on an ankle monitor, and had my rights taken away, and then they came out with the null process.

Speaker 1:
[01:50] Today, we're going to take a closer look at what happened between John's arrest in January of 2016 and today. We'll dig into what we know about John's time in Manatee County jail, the dependency hearings over his daughter, and why this criminal case never made it to the courtroom. People believe their eyes. That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. If we didn't, you could never make it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop and this is Nobody Should Believe Me. A reminder that if you want to listen to the first six episodes of season seven ad free, you can do so by subscribing on Apple podcasts or Patreon. You'll also get two bonus episodes a month as a subscriber. This month, Dr. Bex and I are sharing some big updates on Kowalski v. Johns Hopkins and rewatching Take Care of Maya so that you don't have to. If financial support is not an option, we'd love it if you could rate and review the show wherever you're listening or share it with a friend, or two, or five. Nobody Should Believe Me is a proudly independent production. We're only here because of you. So thanks for listening.

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Speaker 1:
[03:40] Knowellan Kelly was a victim of violence and of grave injustice. So how did John become the victim of this story? The argument that John made to me essentially boils down to this. Dr. Sally Smith and the detectives and the prosecutors wrongly accused him of Knowellan's murder. He argued that it was really Larry who'd killed Knowellan, a strategy I've heard referred to as the Saudi defense, i.e. some other dude did it. And this tact at least lines up with the reality of the case in that someone killed Knowellan. It was either John or it was Larry. But interestingly, this is not the strategy that John and his lawyers appeared to be teeing up in his dependency case and in the lead up to a possible criminal trial. Instead, they introduced some other ideas about what might have happened to Knowellan that implicated neither of these men. The first was the notion that there just wasn't abuse, that what happened to Knowellan was simply a spontaneous medical event, an idea that John seems to have caught on to early in his conversations with the police.

Speaker 2:
[04:43] I'm pretty sure he just had a seizure, but it's not because I gave him medicine. I know some kids, well, from what I've read, kids who take medicine can have a seizure and stuff like that, or just from having a fever. I mean, there's so many reasons that I've come to find out the seizures happen.

Speaker 1:
[04:59] This shows up in John's dependency attorney, Elizabeth Boyle's questioning of Dr. Sally Smith. Boyle questions why Nolan wasn't tested at the hospital for meningitis. Dr. Smith replies that he did not have meningitis. Elizabeth then asks, how do you know that? Dr. Smith says, because he had an autopsy and he did not have meningitis. Next, there was the idea that Nolan might have suffered accidental injuries from playing around with one of his siblings, something John brought up to me in our interview.

Speaker 2:
[05:29] So obviously something happened in that room. I don't know what, I wasn't in that room. I know that Larry could possibly be there and there was the kids. And the medical examiner, I don't know what he says about it, but Sally Smith says the kids couldn't do it. Even though she never, even though she never interviewed, she never saw something, she never, you know, and I'm not saying this are known in any way, shape or form. What I'm saying is that this is an 100-pound kid. And freaking, if he got roughhousing and there was a slight accident and grandpa's covering it up or something like that, freaking, she stepped there and said that there was no way the kids could have done it. And she never, not once, interviewed S***.

Speaker 1:
[06:16] How old was S*** at the time?

Speaker 2:
[06:19] Six.

Speaker 1:
[06:20] I asked Dr. Smith about this theory. What about the idea that perhaps this was neither of the adults that were present but one of the other young children that was in the house that caused these injuries?

Speaker 7:
[06:32] Well, particularly for a child this age, you know, could a whatever, 10, 12, 14-year-old child kill a little infant? Sure. The oldest child in this household was 6. And she seemed to suggest that he weighed 100 pounds. He was some enormous child or something like that. But, you know, in especially fatal abusive head trauma for a 15-month-old, the size differential, the power differential between the victim and the perpetrator has to be enough so that that high force acceleration, acceleration, rotation of the brain can occur.

Speaker 1:
[07:16] Elizabeth Boyle also tests this theory out in her deposition with Sally Smith and throws out the idea that the fall of the bed that Larry belatedly reported to the police might have caused Knowellan's death. So could the fall from the bed have killed Knowellan?

Speaker 7:
[07:29] No. Can you get injured from falling off a bed? Yes. You could get a skull fracture. You could get a lump on your head where you land. And then underneath those things, you could get a little bit of hemorrhage on the surface of the brain. There's nothing about that 26-inch fall, no matter what the circumstances were, and even if it didn't happen, that would cause this kind of widespread, extensive hemorrhaging. Retinal hemorrhages certainly would not be caused by that kind of a fall. There's no way.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] Yeah.

Speaker 7:
[08:04] There are situations where they've actually got videotape of an older child falling maybe six or eight feet, and they land in a certain way where it snaps the head forward, and there's an injury to the base of the brain, and that can be fatal. But it's certainly not from just a simple fall off a bed if that happened.

Speaker 1:
[08:30] Boyle throws out some other possible explanations in her deposition with Sally Smith. First, trying again with the meningitis after it didn't stick the first time. Here is that exchange. Elizabeth. Is it possible for people to have different levels of meningitis or bacterial disease where someone would have a, what you're saying, it manifests itself with pus on the brain? Dr. Smith. Yes. If you die from meningitis, you have pus all over your brain at autopsy. Elizabeth. Is it possible for someone to die of, say, the fever and extended fever for meningitis, but to not have a lot of pus on their brain? Dr. Smith. No. Elizabeth. Never. Dr. Smith. No. Foyle also brought up that one of Nolan's brothers reportedly had seizures, that Nolan was small for his age, and that he might have been exposed to drugs and utero. None of these arguments are medically plausible explanations for Nolan's injuries, but they all mirror common defense attorney tactics in abuse cases. These are a little maddening to read even as a layperson, because as Dr. Smith and other child abuse and pediatric doctors will point out, kids are being treated for things all the time. So we know that otherwise healthy children don't die from being a little small for their age, falling off beds, rough housing with other children, or mysterious, imperceptible cases of meningitis. And a child who has a sudden seizure needs to be taken to the doctor, regardless of whether his brother has a seizure disorder or not. Kids get colds all the time. They don't incapacitate them or produce the symptoms recorded in those videos. But just because these arguments don't hold scientific weight doesn't mean they're never effective in court. Dr. Smith's testimony as to the evidence of Knowellan's abuse during the dependency proceedings are a key point for John.

Speaker 2:
[10:19] He did not do a proper investigation in any way, shape, or form. They tried to take my daughter from me. And do you know what? Oh, so here's a tie in between Take Care of Maya and their story and my story. Here's an actual another tie in besides Sally Smith. Judge Hayworth was the judge in my TPR case. So they come to court and they change it from a TPR case to a dependency case because after Sally Smith's deposition, they realize how bad their case was against me. And they realize that if Detective Luke and others were deposed in this situation, how bad it would look for them. And then they wouldn't have two years of pressuring me to take a bogus plea deal.

Speaker 1:
[11:16] The pivot he's alluding to here is a change in the Statute of the State's dependency petition that happened about a month before the judge's ruling. The state originally argued that termination of parental rights should be declared, meaning John would permanently lose custody of his daughter, based on the second-degree murder charges for Knowellan, and this was why Dr. Smith was asked to testify. But in July of 2016, the state amended its petition and changed course, arguing instead that John's daughter should be declared dependent because of his unavailability due to incarceration for the murder charges. I only have whatever documents John chose to send me from the dependency trial, depositions from Dr. Sally Smith, Larry Crawford and Detective Stephen Luke, as well as the judge's final order. So I can't tell you much about the arguments presented in court, but there was no evidence that Sally's testimony led to the state's amended petition. John did ultimately prevail in court, and on August 25th, 2016, while he was in pretrial detention at Manatee County Jail, the judge denied the state's dependency petition, meaning that John's legal custody remained intact and his daughter remained in the care of her non-offending parent. This dependency decision is another thing that John leans heavily on as proving his innocence in the case.

Speaker 2:
[12:31] So Judge Hayworth, when it comes back to it, so when it comes down to it, so they decided not to come at me full strength in the TPR and they change it to a dependency because they know they're going to lose their case. So at the end of it, they do their little trial and Judge Hayworth rules that they didn't come within a country mile of proving that I was a bad father. And he's the one who wouldn't even let Maya hug her mom. So he is a very strict judge. And for him to say that, you don't hear that from judges.

Speaker 1:
[13:04] There are some important nuances between a dependency case and a criminal case. They move on two very different clocks. Dependency court operates on a child protection clock, with the urgency of deciding whether a child is safe where they are. Criminal court operates on an evidentiary clock, a slower process designed to determine whether a case can meet the high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge in the dependency case was deciding on a much narrower question than what was at stake in the criminal case. Judge Hayworth was making a ruling about whether John's daughter was being abused or at risk of harm due to John being incarcerated. And this is what he determined there was weak evidence of. We can't know for certain why the state made this pivot in the dependency case, but it likely reflects strategic considerations about how dependency proceedings can intersect with an ongoing criminal case. And the judge's decision does not impact the facts of the case. Knowellan died from abusive injuries. And in my interview with him, John offered this theory.

Speaker 2:
[14:04] You all want to hear what I think actually happened?

Speaker 1:
[14:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[14:09] Okay. I think what happened is that I don't know anything about prior to that morning. But that morning, what I think happened is Knowellan was sick, Larry went in, cleaned him up, picked him up, was walking out with him, he threw up again, he got freaking agitated, upset, because he might have been hung over and freaking, I know for a fact that he was doing coke the night before. So freaking, who knows? Maybe he got upset and he freaking just quickly tossed Knowellan and he hit the bed, and that's where the whole he fell out of bed thing came from, because he hit the bed and fell to the ground. I don't know. They went out of their way to make this timeline. The cops did, and this is before the final autos who came out. And when the final autos came out and it freaking destroyed their timeline, they still pressed the long and they still came after me. And then when Larry lied, they ignored that and still came after me.

Speaker 1:
[15:22] What do you, what did Larry?

Speaker 2:
[15:23] I was the only person.

Speaker 1:
[15:24] You mean when Larry correct, when he added the piece about the child falling off the bed?

Speaker 2:
[15:29] Oh, I mean, yeah, you're right. He lied for nine days, my bad. He lied for nine days and then he corrected himself. After nine days of lying to the medical experts, to the police, to his family, to everybody, he lied over and over and over again, over and over and over again. He lied and lied and lied for nine days. Multiple interviews, multiple interviews, he lied over and over.

Speaker 1:
[15:58] Yeah. Why do you think that he eventually did call the police and tell them about the fall?

Speaker 2:
[16:03] I think because at that time, I think he realized what he had done. I think he is so here's the thing, what the fuck are you doing? If you see a child that is in distress like Knowellan, because I'm telling you, he was not in distress like he was when I had the CPR. The day before, he was not in distress like that in any way, shape or form. When I took hold of him, he was in immediate distress. He was dying at that point when I took control of him and I started performing CPR after I did the sternum rub. So, oh my God. Larry yelled, you can't let a baby get this sick that you have to call the police. Or, I mean, not the police, but you have to call the 9-1-1 doctors. And so why wouldn't you just call 9-1-1? Why did he have to announce that and wait for me to come running to the other room? Does that not strike you as odd? Well, so I understand. I understand y'all are saying, okay, about me not calling 9-1-1 the day before. But when I came into that room, Knowellan was actually in distress. He was dying at that point. The day before, he was not dying. He was not like that in any way, shape or form. And both Danica and Larry both testified to that. So, these injuries happened right before 9-1-1 was called.

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Speaker 1:
[19:40] The timeline of events leading up to Knowellan's death was complicated, especially thanks to the confusing and inconsistent accounts from all three caregivers. And this matters a lot in a case like this.

Speaker 8:
[19:52] Very importantly on these cases is the timeline, because you're not going to have a victim usually that's old enough to tell you anything. And as we all know, abuse is not committed in front of a million of witnesses, right? Abuse is usually done in a very private setting. And so you're going to have a child too young to tell you what happened if they're even still alive.

Speaker 1:
[20:14] That's Detective Mike Weber, who has recently retired after a lengthy career in crimes against children, where he worked on many abusive head trauma cases like this one. In the two weeks following the denial of the state's dependency petition, the prosecutor Julie Binkley appeared to be considering dropping the charges from Murder 2 to aggravated assault of a child. We don't have access to their reasoning for doing so, but it seems likely that this reflected the medical experts' agreement that Knowellan had experienced very serious injuries in the time frame on Friday when John, who documented his symptoms, had been his only caregiver. So the evidence seems clear that there was harm done on Friday. However, there was some disagreement between the ME and the CAP about when the fatal injuries occurred.

Speaker 8:
[20:56] So then it becomes, who was with the child when the child became symptomatic? And you try to work your timeline to exclude individuals. And like, who was with the child when the child stopped functioning regularly, stopped walking, stopped eating, stopped drinking? Basically, there was a huge change in that child's demeanor, right? And that's what I as a detective look for. That's one of the things, when I first get to the scene, I'm going to separate different people on the scene, and I'm going to interview them. And I'm going to ask questions toward that goal, to find out who was with the child when the child became symptomatic. The problem that occurs in these cases is when you have multiple people in that timeline, and you can't exclude them, right? Because I can't go arrest everybody when, let's say, there's three people in the timeline and two of them are innocent. I'm not going to go arrest two innocent people just so I get the third, right? So that's where you have those complicated cases. And I've had cases where I could not exclude. I may have thought I had a pretty good idea who did it, but I didn't have probable cause because I could not exclude everyone out of that timeline in those cases. Of course, you have a scene investigation that you want to do. If the child has fallen on the floor, I want to get a search warrant so I can actually take a sample, a cutout sample of that flooring and put in evidence. At the very minimum, I'm going to videotape that floor. I'm going to do a reenactment if they say the child fell from someplace. Usually, standard story is child fell off couch, bed, something usually about two feet from the ground to cause the injury. I'm going to take photographs of the scene. I'm going to collect devices. Maybe they didn't get the flooring, but they certainly took pictures of the floor and it was a hard tile floor that they could describe.

Speaker 1:
[22:51] After Larry's belated disclosure to the police about the fall off the bed in December, shortly after Nolan's death, the police did follow up with a full video reenactment. About seven months after his arrest on August 25th, the day John's dependency court order was issued, John's bail was reduced and he was released from Manatee County Jail. He was re-arrested, however, on March 1st, 2018, after an unauthorized, unsupervised visit with his daughter. A few days after that, the person who had been supervising John's visitation with his daughter, filed a petition for a restraining order against John. This petition was denied because the person who filed it failed to show up in court. In addition to Dr. Sally Smith, John has a lot to say about Detective Luke and really everyone involved in this case. You seem very focused on Dr. Sally Smith, and I think, you know.

Speaker 2:
[23:42] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I am just focused on her because you gave her a platform. I am very focused on the inept Keystone Cop investigation that Detective Luke and his cronies put on. I am very, very, very upset with them. Again, I am very upset at Julie Bankley for going in and lying to the judge multiple times. I'm upset at Detective Luke for lying to the judge multiple times. I am very upset that Julie Bankley, the state attorney's office, she has by law, she is commanded that when she finds out new evidence by law, she must go to the judge and present that and she never did.

Speaker 1:
[24:25] The new evidence John mentions is likely whatever Julie Bankley was referring to in her Noel Prost memo, the thing that allegedly caused the experts to change their minds about the timing of Nolan's injuries. We don't know what that evidence is and neither did the two experts, Dr. Smith and Dr. Vega, know what she was referring to. I wanted to get Mike's holistic take on the whole thing. What are your sort of overall impressions about what happened in this case? And I guess both from a law enforcement standpoint and also since you worked in the DA's office, you have a fair amount of insight into what a case needs to be able to go forward to prosecution, which this one ultimately did not.

Speaker 8:
[25:07] Right. And I think this is one of the cases where the detectives certainly had probable cause for an arrest, but there was questionable, reasonable, beyond a reasonable doubt, information.

Speaker 1:
[25:19] And what can you sort of sketch out? Because I think these are all interesting. We can talk about all three of them in this case, that you have these different standards of evidence for different pieces of this process, right? You have the standard of evidence that is probable cause for an arrest. You have preponderance of evidence for family court, and then you have beyond a reasonable doubt for criminal court. So can you talk about like, what is that threshold for evidence in terms of probable cause for an arrest?

Speaker 8:
[25:49] So first, let's start with the lowest, which is preponderance of the evidence. It's greater than 50 percent. Probable cause means exactly what it says it means. There's no legal definition that I'm aware of. And what that means is you have a high probability that this crime has committed, or a probability. It doesn't even say high. Probable cause is you have a probability that this suspect has committed this crime. And then proof beyond a reasonable doubt is exactly what it says. There is no definition for reasonable doubt in the state of Texas. So yeah, so those are the three standards. And, you know, what a grand jury does is they just affirm probable cause. Right? And things can change from the time of arrest to a time to a grand jury where maybe you have probable cause at arrest, but by the time a grand jury goes to look at an indictment, you don't have prob… they don't think you have probable cause. Or they may view it differently than you do, which is why we have a grand jury system set up, right? They may view it differently than the police officer and the judge. Because, you know, I just don't go out and arrest people without arrest warrants, right? I have to go to a judge. He has to agree that I have probable cause. He has to look at the evidence also. You know, so that's where that those are the three things here. And in this case, probable cause was obviously evident. When you get further down the line with Larry coming in later, nine days after and saying, oh, by the way, the kid fell off the bed, which he did not tell police originally, that was a big, big, huge wrench into this case, because why is he lying? Why did he lie initially? What is his motivation to lie? Is he lying because he did this? Is he lying because pressure has been put on him to lie to cover for someone? Is he not lying? Did the child really fall off the bed? Or is he lying because his daughter, her only means of support is John Stewart? And John Stewart has put pressure on his daughter to put pressure on him to lie. So those are all things that you have to work out in this investigation as a detective. And you know, sometimes you can give it all that you've got and you're still not going to get that answer. You know, Larry may just not tell you.

Speaker 1:
[28:02] But I want to sort of go through what the evidence that led to John's arrest was. Because it seems to me that the strongest piece of evidence that John had harmed the child because John was the only caregiver for a brief period of time, the day before Knowellan went to the hospital, was this series of photos and videos that he took and then messaged to Danica that were then later pulled from a subpoena of Facebook records because they were messaging each other on Facebook records. So I wanted to talk about this because we have talked to both doctors about this set of photographs and videos. I've heard Detective Luke describe this in his deposition. His description of one of the videos is strongly corroborated by both the doctors and other sources I've spoken to. So I want to talk about that piece because you were just talking about the importance of establishing when the last time the child was normal and then the onset of symptoms. So I want to talk about kind of your impressions of this piece of evidence.

Speaker 8:
[29:20] Yeah. And one of the pictures that I saw, it's when the victim was in a red shirt. And I've seen that posture in children in several other cases. And with the two medical experts viewing that and being in a consensus, you know, that obviously makes this case that some event to cause a neurological episode had happened that previous day, right? So I think they're both in agreement on that, correct?

Speaker 1:
[29:52] Yes, they are. Yes, no delay there.

Speaker 8:
[29:54] And, you know, just the posturing I saw in the picture from my experience, that tracks, right? Obviously, their opinion is much more important than mine on this type of situation. Where you kind of get into the weeds on it is when you start to get, like, you know, with the spinal cord injuries. So, with the ME kind of saying, well, it could have been, could have happened immediately before the call to 911. And with John Stewart's experts saying, no, no, no, it did. Now, he's a paid expert, so take that with a grain of salt. And also take with a grain of salt, you know, we don't go out and give these kids injuries to see how they react. Right? So, you know, was there a progression in the injury? We just don't know. When I look at these cases, one of the first things I want to do as a detective, when I'm working out that timeline, I also want to know who would be most likely to be frustrated around this child. Because these injuries often come from frustration, from the child crying, not being quiet, the child not doing what someone wants them to do, the child misbehaving, they come from frustration. Who is around the child the most to get to a level of frustration that can lead to an abusive situation? That's what I'm also looking for. And this situation with this timeline, that clearly points to John Stewart. Doesn't mean that he did it. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that is something that will make me go, Okay, let's look at that aspect of this also. Because he's the one that's going to be around this child. He's the one that's frustrated with this child. He's the one caring for this child the most amount of time when these injuries could have occurred. Because everyone agrees this child was fine Friday morning.

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Speaker 1:
[33:29] It's hard to say whether or not the police should have done more to rule Larry out as a suspect. He had no known history of violence or criminal record. And while John accuses him of substance use, that wasn't corroborated in any of the documentation I could find. At issue was the spinal cord injury and the idea that it would have led to immediate quadriplegia. But despite the medical complexities of this case, it's hard to look past the photos and the videos and the many hours that John was waiting to hear back from Danica, where he chose as Knowellan's caregiver not to seek medical attention. And this was what the police confronted John with in the interrogation that preceded his arrest.

Speaker 11:
[34:08] That's what we're trying to get to the bottom here. That's what we're trying to get to your side of the story. I mean, people make mistakes. Do I honestly believe that you are caring for Knowellan and you intentionally tried to kill this kid? Do I think that possibly you could have gotten upset and it could have went south and, you know, he's running around or pisses you off and you accidentally, you know. Negative. Look at these pictures. I want you to look at these pictures. This kid is passed out. He's out. This isn't sleeping. No kid. Look at this. This is 1059, 1019, 1022, 1046. He's out. Hold.

Speaker 2:
[35:05] He was sleeping because he was sick.

Speaker 12:
[35:17] I don't know what else to tell you.

Speaker 2:
[35:21] That's, he was sick, he was getting wisdom teeth, he was not feeling well, and he was lethargic.

Speaker 1:
[35:28] As you can hear, John doesn't give an inch. Even when he's asked if parenting five children is stressful, he says, not really. We asked Mike about these types of interviews.

Speaker 8:
[35:39] There have actually been cases where you interview a suspect, and if they admit to actually shaking or abusive head trauma in the child, they'll tell you, well, it worked to get them quiet the first time, so I just kept doing it because it worked type of thing. Yeah, you have these multiple incidents. Most times, it's just a lack of self-control, which I think John demonstrated he has some self-control issues just in his interview with you, I do believe.

Speaker 1:
[36:13] Yeah, if you would like to see the approximately 1,000 e-mails he's written to me calling me a lying cunt and la-la-la-la, I think that all shows, you know, putting those e-mails in writing to a journalist doesn't show the best judgment I've ever seen.

Speaker 8:
[36:30] Was that before or after your interview?

Speaker 1:
[36:32] Oh, before or after, all the way down, yeah. Mostly after, mostly after.

Speaker 8:
[36:37] From your interview with him, this is not the type of guy you're going to get a confession from. He's going to try to control the interview. He's going to try to control the narrative. And when you go to, you know, I actually like interviewing these types of people because you can, they'll talk a lot and you can kind of catch them in some lies. He's not the type that is going to sit, even if you took the polygraph, he's not going to do the interview afterwards.

Speaker 1:
[37:03] About those e-mails. From the first e-mail John sent me last July, I've gotten a lengthy string of expletive-laden conspiracy-tinged messages from John to wade through. I have tried my level best to sort through John's many arguments and find the ones that seem possible to address. John's central claim is that he was wrongfully accused and dragged through a legal process because of a rushed, flawed, and ultimately false diagnosis of abusive head trauma, which then drove police, prosecutors, and the child protection team to collude around a false narrative rather than reassess the evidence. John claims that Dr. Smith ignored evidence in the form of incorporating the caregiver narratives into her diagnosis, that the timing she posited was directly contradicted by Vega's report, which in his mind was exculpatory. John throws various other things into the mix, but this is the argument in essence, and he really wants me to present it that way. This past October, following our interview, he was becoming increasingly insistent that I was ignoring what he felt was the crucial document in the case, the state's Knowell Prost memo. And I tried to explain to him that I wasn't ignoring it, just trying to understand it. I wrote, John, I'm going to ask Sally about the timing and when and if she changed her opinion. The Knowell Prost mentions the state expert and a state child abuse expert, so I need to clarify which they're talking about when. As I'm sure you realize, prosecutors do not always use language perfectly, especially when interpreting medical information. I understand that you're upset about a number of things with regards to this case. However, neither of us is in a position to interpret complex medical findings, which is why I'm consulting experts. I'm devoting time and resources to try to get as complete a picture of this case as possible, which is my job here. In the meantime, I'm going to have to ask you to be a bit more respectful in your communication with me and the team. This sent John into another string of invectives in which he accused me of being in on the collusion against him. These emails made liberal use of the B and C words. However, John insisted that he was not being a misogynist because, quote, gender has nothing to do with it. Luke is a cunt fuck and he is a dude. Cunt isn't only for women. Now, for my money, I don't want to hear a man saying the C word unless he's in a Guy Ritchie film or in full drag. But points for gender parody on calling Detective Luke one, I guess. The reason I'm telling you about this exchange isn't because it has any bearing on John's guilt or innocence. It doesn't. Hostility isn't evidence. But a source reacting this aggressively to a basic follow up question does make it harder to do the thing I'm here to do, which is ask questions and try to get to the truth. And I think John's reaction reveals something else. How little scrutiny this case has received in its previous coverage. John's account that he was wrongfully accused by a bad doctor has been repeated by other journalists and filmmakers. But once you start asking follow up questions and independently checking the evidence, that narrative doesn't hold up. And even the most restrained expression of scrutiny leads to, well, you heard it. So this all begs the question, why did he invite this in the first place? Why reach out to me at all? I asked Dr. Cathy Ayoub, a nurse practitioner and professor of psychology at Harvard, for her read on my interactions with John.

Speaker 4:
[40:19] I don't know whether he actually did this or not. What I do know is that there's a child here who died. And he was with that child for, you know, 36 hours before the child ended up, at least before the child ended up in the emergency room, you know, in extremis. And the story that he tells, in a relatively flat voice, by the way, I thought, and he goes through a lot of facts, but there are some considerable gaps in his story. And he can remember lots of things that happened that day. I don't, you know, I imagine, you know, some of his factual statements, this is when we ate lunch, this is when we did this, that or the other. But, you know, there was a child that was there from probably noon on the day before Nolan went to the hospital, who was unresponsive. And minimally, no one did anything to bring this child to the hospital. You know, and it's very interesting that, you know, there was more than one adult that had contact with this child, and none of them brought this child to the hospital, until grandfather the next day finally said, Oh, this child is really ill. And I think Dr. Smith in her interview actually says, and I agree, a child with this level of injury is not going to be awake and playing a 15 month old, and then, you know, all of a sudden lose consciousness. This is an injury that incapacitates you right away. So when you look at the physical evidence, and then you think about his response, it's quite troubling and really, really worrisome. And it feels to me that he's really working very hard to project all the blame on other people. I mean, he clearly has it in for the doctor that saw, that saw this child in the emergency room. He's focused on him. He now is focused on you as, you know, the person who is speaking against him. And I think this is someone who, for example, would be very, very hard to get a confession from. It would be interesting to hear what my law enforcement colleagues would say. But this may be one of those groups of people with disorders of deception that essentially say to you, I would rather die than confess what I've done.

Speaker 1:
[43:00] So we asked Detective Mike Weber, when do people confess in cases like this?

Speaker 8:
[43:04] Confessions come when you have good evidence. And you can use that evidence in an interview setting. Right. So for instance, let's say John had called EMS Friday afternoon when he was alone with the kids. And they did come and they took the child. Now I've got a really good timeline. I've got a lot of stuff I can confront John with, right? I've got, OK, this kid was fine. You say this kid was fine. She says this kid was fine when she left. Everyone says this kid's fine, but yet here it is. It's 1230. You're calling EMS. And this kid has a terrible head injury. You're the only one who could cause this. The medical people say the children could not, they're not big enough, John. They can't, they can't elicit enough force. You got to help me understand how this happened. And you know, then I would go into, you do the hard confrontation, I follow it with, you know, if this was just, you got frustrated, you know, it's understandable. You give them an out and you give them that out and you hope they bite off on it. They're looking for an out. They're looking for anything that will, in their mind, make this explainable for why they did what they did. You know, I know you just lost control. I know it's not easy. You got four kids there. They're not your kids. You're having to take care of them all the time. You know, that is kind of the tactic that I would use in these cases to get some admissions. It's really, really hard when you have multiple people in a timeline. They can just deflect, which John is ultra good at doing. That's not a guy in this situation that you're ever going to get a confession from. You got to, you're going to have to have hard evidence to confront them with, and pretty much any offender.

Speaker 1:
[44:48] John made some accusations about Larry's drug use, which again, we have no information about either way. The disagreement about timing of the injuries between medical professionals in this case was extremely narrow. It left only doubt as to whether a second injury had happened on the morning of Saturday, December 12th, at a time when Larry would have been present. And while Larry might not have been the most reliable witness, there was no evidence that he'd hurt Knowellan or any of the other kids. And the same was not true for John. In addition to the previous domestic violence charge, there was an unsettling detail in one of the reports that he shared with me. So in the paperwork that you sent me, you know, the reports describe a *** interview. And she said that when she and the other kids were younger, if they wet the bed, that you would give them whoopens. So what is your interpretation of whoopens in this context?

Speaker 2:
[45:40] I've never ever hit *** in any way, shape or form. Like I said, once or twice, I spanked him open-handed because his mom asked me to, because that was their form of punishment. The Larry would whoop him, Karen would whoop him, Danica would whoop him. And that's where it got that terminology was from them.

Speaker 1:
[46:10] Okay. But obviously she said this about you. So why do you think she would say that?

Speaker 2:
[46:16] I don't think she's, I don't remember that she said that. What paperwork did you see?

Speaker 1:
[46:21] It's in, I have it excerpted right here. It's in the state discovery file that you sent me. So they excerpt a few pieces of her forensic interview.

Speaker 2:
[46:29] I disagree. I've never whooped her. I've never put my hands on her. Maybe, no, maybe she's referring to the time that maybe, wet the bed and he got a whoop in, but never wet the bed. So that never happened. So she was potty trained at two years old and knew to get up and go to the bathroom. So never wet the bed. So that couldn't have happened.

Speaker 1:
[46:56] Okay. She also described you spanking them with a hand or a belt. Never. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[47:06] Never.

Speaker 2:
[47:07] Like I said, hand with because Danica had asked me to.

Speaker 3:
[47:15] Never.

Speaker 2:
[47:16] Never not once.

Speaker 1:
[47:18] And then in terms of just your relationship with the baby, with Knowellan, it was reported that you had said to Danica that she coddled him and didn't discipline him enough. Was that your feelings about?

Speaker 2:
[47:34] That was about, yeah, she was her was was her spoiled baby. And he would he would he would reach out his hand and go like this when he wanted something. He would point to it. And I would be like, I'd be like, you're coddling him. Like, that's that's that's ridiculous. You know, you don't you don't just you have them ask you for it. You say, please, may I have this? You don't just let him do this and point to it. He can speak. He's verbal. So freaking that's what I was talking about. Things like that, coddling him like that, that that's it.

Speaker 1:
[48:09] Okay. So you never said that about Knowellan?

Speaker 2:
[48:13] Not that I recall.

Speaker 1:
[48:14] The baby?

Speaker 2:
[48:15] No, he was a baby. What's he doing wrong? Is it like there's nothing that he would do wrong that you go, he's we're coddling him or anything like that.

Speaker 1:
[48:28] In terms of corporal punishment, in terms of discipline, your stances that you...

Speaker 2:
[48:34] I'm anti-corporal punishment, anti.

Speaker 1:
[48:37] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[48:38] I reluctantly did it because Danica had asked me to, because you know, because she, he would, so that's the thing, she will let him get away with anything to the point where he would need to get a whoopin to correct his behavior.

Speaker 1:
[48:54] The out of control child who John is talking about, the one he accuses Danica of coddling and who he admits to whooping when he wet the bed, is Danica's middle son. He was 28 months old at the time of Nolan's death. In one of his lengthy emails, John followed up about his daughter's comments. He'd found the documentation of the incident about the whoopins and explained to me that his daughter had lied and that she was just going along with the interviewer and would lie to get a reaction. But his daughter's interview was not the only reason to be concerned about John's behavior with the children, as Danica explained to the police.

Speaker 13:
[49:31] Now thinking back that was more than that, I mean, do you ever just not want to be around him or to look uncomfortable with him?

Speaker 14:
[49:40] I mean, yeah, all the time. Now that I think about it, Knowellan, I always just thought when I, before I met John, Knowellan was my baby. I coddled him. You know, everybody coddled him. We all coddled him. And then when I got with John, John was kind of like, you know, he's not a baby anymore. He's almost two. You need to take him off the bottle. We need to make him start sleeping in the playpen because I, my kid slept in the bed with me. All of them. I mean, I know you're not supposed to, but at the same time after my kids got out of the bassinet, once they were old enough to roll around and, you know, they pretty much all slept in the bed with me. When I met John, you know, you got to take him off the bottle. You got to make him sleep in the playpen. You know, don't hold him so much. Don't baby him. And I just always assumed that, you know, his tension with John was because he, you know, was because of the changes in me. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[50:44] Danica went on to explain that while she'd hoped that John might be a father figure for Knowellan, that he might come to see him as the son he'd always wanted, the two never really developed a bond. And that the longer they were dating, the more Danica noticed that Knowellan seemed scared of John, and would often cry when John came near him or picked him up. She also described incidents where Knowellan would be happily playing with his siblings and then retreat to Danica or another relative when John walked in the room. She told investigators that John would tell Knowellan to shut up when he was crying, and needle him about being a crybaby and a coddle monster, and that he would toss her two sons in the air which neither one liked. John reportedly told her that her youngest boys, both under two and a half, needed to toughen up. Danica told investigators that Knowellan was the spitting image of his father, Chris Kelly, who John reportedly was not a fan of, and who there had been some increased tension with around the time of Knowellan's death. Chris and Danica had been together for eight years before they split, and their families were close, as Chris told the detectives.

Speaker 12:
[51:45] What about Larry? My dad guy right there is the biggest help I could ever have. I trust him with my life and my kid's life. I live with him. Throughout the eight years, I live with him. He's a good man. He gave, I did so much stuff towards him. He's always walking me back. He always asked me to move in. He always gave me the jobs. Like, he's a real good man. I really trust him with my kids.

Speaker 1:
[52:10] Chris told investigators he was devastated to lose Danica and freely admitted that he wanted her back. Chris had made a dramatic Facebook post on the morning of Danica's second day at her new job, and Danica told John she was concerned about his state of mind. She spent the day in a lengthy text exchange with Chris, which he would later share with the detectives.

Speaker 12:
[52:27] I just, I told you all the detectives how I strongly feel. And to y'all show me facts to prove me wrong, I'll change my mind, but until then, I know, in my mind, I know what happened. What do you think happened? I really think he took his anger out towards me and my son. That's what I really think. I really think somehow...

Speaker 2:
[52:52] Was he angry about these text messages, or was it something else?

Speaker 12:
[52:56] That's what I'm saying. I haven't talked to her like that. I'm not trying to be understanding.

Speaker 15:
[53:02] Yeah, the fragile, emotional state, the both of you have to be in, and I get it.

Speaker 12:
[53:05] I'm not trying to hurt her anymore. She blames herself, and I understand that, but it's not her fault. She was just trying to be a mother taking care of her child, being with somebody that was providing for them, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[53:19] Danica told detectives that John took her phone when he picked her up from work on Friday, December 11th, the day that Knowellan had the first seizure, and that he scrolled through her messages with Chris while he was driving. Once they arrived at Larry's house, John continued reading the messages and told Danica that there were things they needed to discuss later, though that discussion never seems to have happened. We received extensive video of the interviews in this case from her FOIA request, and there really is more to say about them, so we're going to be including extra cuts on our YouTube channel. Danica didn't know the extent of John's violent past with his ex, but she had an idea of how toxic the dynamic was, as John himself had told her that the last time he'd seen the mother of his child, he'd spit in her face. John's violent and controlling behaviors, both with his ex and others, and his hair trigger temper were corroborated by others who spoke to the police about him. John's VA records, which were collected as evidence in the case, describe him becoming aggressive with staff on two occasions. They also reveal that John struggled with alcohol use during his time in the Marines, which he was in remission for at the time of the records, and that he had a history of chronic pain after a couple of accidents he'd been in. John self-reported chronic difficulty sleeping and a four out of four on feeling anxious or tense, irritability slash easily annoyed, and a four out of four on poor frustration tolerance and feeling easily overwhelmed by things. And this pattern appeared to be ongoing. Less than six months after the prosecutors dropped the charges against him, John was arrested on an aggravated assault charge after he pulled a highly realistic looking BB gun on a patron at the motel where he was working the front desk. John pled guilty to a lesser assault charge and was sentenced to six months probation and eight hours of anger management. John was also arrested in 2021 for domestic battery against the mother of his child. Then in 2023, he was arrested for simple assault again against his ex. A domestic violence protection order was issued against John. He pled no contest to the latter charge in September of 2023 and was ordered to pay $875 in court fines. And then the following month, he appeared at the Sarasota Courthouse where Dr. Sally Smith was set to testify in Kowalski v. Johns Hopkins. John waited outside with a sign and pursued Sally to the door of the courthouse before security intervened.

Speaker 8:
[55:37] So what happened?

Speaker 2:
[55:39] With Dr. Sally Smith? She's evil. She's a liar. She's a malpractice Sally. She freaking charged me with a crime that I did not commit.

Speaker 1:
[55:48] The aftermath of the scene where a security guard is trying to calm John down was filmed and shared on TikTok.

Speaker 2:
[55:54] The medical evidence clearly shows that I was innocent and she has never been held accountable. She's freaking medically kidnapped Maya Kowalski. She needs to be held held accountable. The fact that you as a deputy are not arresting her disgusts me and disturbs me on every level. She is fucking killed people. She has literally killed people. She is freaking abused children. She has harmed children. I am reporting this to you. I want her arrested for that. Please arrest her for that. She is illegally kidnapped numerous children. She has illegally imprisoned numerous parents without any medical evidence. She has not been held accountable.

Speaker 1:
[56:35] John's narrative about Sally Smith being wrong in this case, doesn't hold up to scrutiny. This remains a homicide case and the abusive head trauma diagnosis Dr. Smith made wasn't rebuked by the ME. It was supported. The questions were about which injuries had killed Knowellan and exactly when they happened. But all that nuance, all that important detail was sanded away in service of what I suppose feels like a simpler, more satisfying narrative. That the problem isn't abuse, it's the doctor naming it. Don't linger on the fact that someone killed a 15-month-old baby. Look over here. Be mad at the doctor instead. I think this is another way where they reminded me of, you know, it reminds me of Munchausen perpetrator, right? You have an answer for everything. And, you know, John is, even though the piece that really made it into the media was the piece about Sally Smith, he blames everyone. I mean, I think that's pretty clear from the interview, right? It's like, oh, Detective Loop is a corrupt cop and the prosecutor was out to get me. And Sally Smith is an evil child smith and Dr. Vega is wrong. And, you know, it's just like, and it was that fault for my domestic violence and this and that and Larry. And I mean, just like it's everyone's fault.

Speaker 8:
[57:44] And he thinks my fault now, you know, he thinks Sally Smith should be running the police investigation and interviewing all these people. And that's not even what she does. This is that's not what any child abuse pediatrician does. We do the interviews, we give them the information. They work off that information and why he's gotten so focused on her. I mean, I think we all know the obvious answer. It's called a Netflix special.

Speaker 1:
[58:07] I want to say that I do have some empathy for John on a human level after talking to him. It's been 10 years since all this happened and he clearly remains fixated on it. Regardless of John's guilt or innocence, the way he's held tight to his grievances about this time in his life seem completely exhausting. In May of 2019, John filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Manatee County Sheriff's Deputy, Eriberto Adorno and Sheriff Rick Wells that included allegations of wrongful solitary confinement, due process violations, excessive force and disability discrimination, while Stewart was in pretrial detention at Manatee County Jail. This stemmed from a July 2016 incident where a guard removed the extra orthopedic cushions and mattress John had been afforded for his neck and shoulder injuries. They were returned a few days later after it was determined that John was in fact allowed to have them, and they weren't contraband. During this incident, John claims that when he asserted his disability rights, the guards were rough with him. The lawsuit includes a video of the incident in question, but I can't tell much about what happened from watching it. To be clear, the conditions in this jail don't sound great. They require inmates in protective custody, which John was, to be shackled during wreck time. And John was given a 30-day detention in solitary confinement after he was found to have threatened staff, refused to obey an order, and engaged in conduct which disrupts or interferes with the security or orderly running of the institution. There are a lot of good arguments against solitary confinement which can cause severe psychological harm including worsening mental illness and elevated suicide risk while also doing nothing to improve prison safety or provide rehabilitation. And it can even make these behaviors and outcomes worse. But with that said, there doesn't appear to be compelling evidence that John was treated especially badly during his time at Manatee County Jail. The lawsuit was dismissed on summary judgment. This lawsuit was filed by a lawyer who appears to be John's ride or die in the years after Nolan Kelly's death, his attorney Elizabeth Boyle. The two even made a podcast together, which unfortunately was removed before I could listen to it. I originally emailed Elizabeth for some help getting records, which she sent via John, and I asked her if she'd like to speak to me for the show, but she never responded. I also reached out to David Little, who took over John's criminal case, but after initially agreeing to an interview, he dropped off. John's deposition for this lawsuit also mentions some other lawsuits, but I was unable to find any that have actually been filed. But nonetheless, 10 years later, John seems no less aggrieved than when this all happened.

Speaker 2:
[60:48] I don't see anything in your December 29th report which refers to the spinal cord injury. Am I missing something? No, I never saw the final autopsy. Ms. Binkley, the state attorney, asked her in multiple emails to please look at this because I am relying on you for the TPR case and for the criminal case as well. And she never looked. So at the end of the day, at the end of the day, she didn't do her job properly. She did not do a proper investigation in any way, shape or form. She freaking it's it's yeah. So and like I said, they tried to take my daughter from me in order to wipe this case off their freaking hands before she three days before my trial gave me a Knowell-Prost claiming that we found new medical information that they knew about since 2016 and it was 2018.

Speaker 1:
[61:54] The Knowell-Prost memo written by prosecutor Julie Binkley dismissing the case has proved to be a bedeviling document to get to the bottom of. The relevant part of the comment section reads, At the time of the autopsy, the role that the cervical injury played in the timing and causation of the death of KK was not fully known. At the time, it was believed by the state's child abuse expert that KK's death was caused by abusive head trauma that had occurred on Friday morning during the time frame that the defendant had sole custody of KK. This was based on a combination of factual findings from interviews in conjunction with the medical science associated with AHT. Since that time, the brain and spinal cord were examined by a neuropathologist after autopsy. The results were received by the medical examiner and the final autopsy report was completed. The findings were discussed with the state's child abuse expert, as well as further research having been conducted by that expert. With these new findings, the state's expert opines that the spinal cord injury and brain swelling with the associated brain symptoms all occurred from one mechanism. And that mechanism, whatever it was, occurred immediately prior to 911 being called on Saturday morning. During that time frame, the defendant did not have exclusive control over the child, as both the defendant and LC, meaning Larry Crawford, were at the residence. Based on the complete medical findings and the lack of exclusive custody of the child by the defendant and the presence of another adult, the state has insufficient evidence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was responsible for the death of KK. Accordingly, this charge must be Knowell Prost. So, it's clear then why John wants me to focus on this piece of the documentation. Except this memo doesn't match what the experts told me directly. Dr. Sally Smith was very clear that she didn't know what this memo was referring to when it talks about new evidence. She has never wavered on her theory that this spinal cord injury could have been a herniation from brain swelling. And Dr. Vega maintains what he said in his original report, that there were signs of serious injury by the time the photos and videos were taken. And he's unsure about the timing of the spinal cord injury. So contrary to John's narrative, the decision not to prosecute him doesn't clear him. Not at all. Another of John's chief complaints was that Dr. Smith didn't change her findings to match Dr. Vega's, which again do not actually exclude John from the timeline. Both Dr. Vega and Dr. Smith expressed that it was valuable for them to collaborate and both respect one another's work. But these are independent experts. And as DA Matthew Torbenson explained to us, an ME and a CAP working together can cut both ways.

Speaker 15:
[64:37] The defense is almost always going to argue in court on these cases that it's the child abuse pediatrician that's driving the diagnosis and driving the conclusion of abuse in these cases. And so to that end, when that argument is made, I actually think it's very helpful that you have an independent medical examiner's office that's reviewing the case and coming to their own independent conclusions and not having the discussion. So I can see it cut both ways. On the one hand, you want the professionals talking and sharing information and sharing what they see from each one's perspective. On the other hand, the attack in the courtroom is going to be that it's the child abuse pediatrician driving the diagnosis. And therefore, when you have a forensic pathologist coming to their own independent conclusion and not come not having that talk with the child abuse pediatrician or the hospital, sometimes that can be beneficial as well.

Speaker 1:
[65:25] I asked the prosecutor's office to clarify which expert they were talking about in their memo, explaining to them that their memo contradicted what these experts had said to me in my interviews with them. I heard back from Julie Binkley almost immediately. She said she couldn't comment on this case because it was still open. I was surprised by this because the sheriff's office had told me that it was closed, which was why I was able to get so many records. I asked Julie to clarify, but she never replied. There are instances when this can happen, where something's closed in one office and open in another. It's a little unusual, but what about this story isn't? And the truth is, there are many cases that don't resolve cleanly, as Matthew Torbenson told us. But sometimes, they come back around.

Speaker 15:
[66:08] One of the trials I did last year was an individual that went in our community by the name of Silly the Clown, or Ronald Schrader is his real name. But in 1991, Ronald Schrader abused his infant daughter, Catherine, causing her death. He was a domestic abuser. He controlled his wife. He isolated his wife from the rest of her family. And he abused her in a way that made her cover for him and say that he was never alone with Catherine, especially right before she died. She eventually left him years later. And he had a relationship with a second woman and had a child with that woman and then was observed by the mother of that child to be shoving a rag down that child's throat. And when the mom caught him, she heard her child shriek right before this, she went and pulled the rag out and it was filled with blood. She ended her relationship with him shortly after that, but never reported the incident to police. Then in 2005, Ronald Schrader went and had a child with a third woman. And within the first month of that child's life, that child was admitted to the hospital with, I believe it was 14 fractured bones. So over the course of Ronald Schrader's life, he abused three of his own infant children. When the original homicide of Catherine was reviewed in 1991, it was no processed. Everyone knew that she died from back then, it was diagnosed as shaken baby syndrome. Today we call it abusive head trauma. It was reviewed again in 1999 and no process at that point, too. Then in 2020, I was asked by my boss to review it and just see if I thought that we could prove the charges. And I actually saw the pattern of his abuse with these other infants and they occurred in different jurisdictions. So I filed what's called another ax motion. I charged him with the homicide 30 years to the day after the death of Catherine. And he was just convicted by a jury last year in that homicide. So it doesn't mean we can't prove that it was abuse. It doesn't discount what happened to that child. It just means we can't prove who did it when we know process. That's almost always the reason we know process.

Speaker 1:
[68:26] I wonder, just a sort of last question about the Knowell Memo, you know, I see after looking at this case, why it was a difficult case to take to trial. There's obviously discretion from the prosecutor whether or not they could prevail over whatever issues they were. I do think there is extremely compelling evidence that John at least harmed this child. So one of my questions for the prosecutor's office was why they didn't move forward with some kind of aggravated assault charges against him at a minimum. And I wonder about these memos and sort of what's in them and how prosecutors, you know, because this is the public documentation of why they made this decision not to prosecute anyone for a child homicide, which is, I think, something that the public deserves to know. I think if we have, you know, this is, I think most people should be angry that no one, not angry at maybe the prosecutor themselves, but there should be outrage if a child dies and no one is held accountable and someone murdered that child and they're walking around and have access to other children that's, you know, both the only, it was either Larry or it was John and they both have custody of children. So that's that should be something that's a community concern, in my opinion. So I wonder about that sort of, I guess, prosecutor messaging and how you as a prosecutor, when you're making those decisions, when you're having to communicate those decisions, like how do you how do you decide what goes in that public facing piece?

Speaker 15:
[70:07] So to me, the public facing piece says actually very little about it, unless someone specifically from the public is asking me questions. We have a responsibility and a duty as prosecutors, we're fact driven in our profession and we have to make sure everything that we put in that memorandum is factually accurate. So I think that's the first thing that I would say. The second thing is, I think the first meeting I'm having is with the family to explain my decision and how I came to my decision. And those are probably the hardest discussions one can have as a prosecutor to deliver bad news to a family who is seeking justice or who may want charges and explaining to them why we can't prove the case and why we can't bring charges on a particular occasion. To the public in general though, I don't know that I provide a great amount of detail in a no process memorandum unless there's specific questions about the case that the public has that I need to answer to the public relative to the facts of the case or the reasons I'm reaching. I think my first obligation and duty is to the family of the victim.

Speaker 1:
[71:14] The Sheriff's Office clearly felt their investigation had yielded compelling evidence against John and they were not pleased about the decision not to prosecute. In a January 2019 email regarding the return of some of John's property that had been selected as evidence, a captain from the Sheriff's Office writes, I am disgusted that this case was declined slash Knowell Prost by the State's Attorney's Office. We are doing what we can to see if we can get them to reconsider. And while the Knowell Prost memo casts doubt, my interviews with the doctors narrow that doubt to the timing of the fatal injury and who was taking care of Nolan when it occurred. None of this exonerates John. And it's those who survived all of this. John's ex, with whom he shares custody of his daughter, Larry, who now has custody of Nolan's surviving siblings, and Danica, Nolan's mother, who has to live indefinitely with the questions.

Speaker 14:
[72:05] I'm at my mom's house.

Speaker 13:
[72:07] You live at your mom's house now?

Speaker 14:
[72:09] Yes.

Speaker 13:
[72:09] Are you going back to John's?

Speaker 14:
[72:11] No. I moved all of my stuff in today. I told John I was leaving. He expressed to me that he didn't want me to feel like I was being forced to stay and that if I wanted to leave, I was more than welcome. And he helped me pack my stuff up and drove me to my mom's house and dropped me off and helped me get my stuff out of the car. And I told him that, you know, I'll talk to you later on or, you know, I didn't make it. I just...

Speaker 13:
[72:46] Nothing? I mean, didn't concern him at all? Didn't... Was he upset about it? Was he...

Speaker 14:
[72:54] I honestly feel like John is preparing for something really bad. You know what I mean? That's honestly kind of like what I feel like. He's been trying to get a lawyer and he called his grandfather and his grandfather, whom he's never met, is dying. And he asked his... He didn't know until this morning that his grandfather was dying. But he actually... He called up his grandfather to ask if he could borrow some money for a lawyer because of them trying to take his visitation rights from ****. And his grandfather told him at that time that he's dying. And I think, honestly, John is kind of like... I don't think he's very stable-minded right now. Do you think he'll borrow some money? I think that he's probably best by himself. I don't know if it's best for him to be by himself for himself. He told me that he wasn't going to do anything rash or stupid. But I think that, in his mind, now, he hasn't expressed verbally anything to me. You know, other than they're going to try and, you know, they're going to try and pin this on me. That's the only thing he's expressed verbally about himself to me. But it's all very, I'm innocent. You know what I mean? It's all very much like they're going to try and pin this on me and I'm innocent.

Speaker 11:
[74:33] Does he more worried about that than he did to your child?

Speaker 14:
[74:36] That's why I left. It really truly honestly is. That's why I decided that I needed to be with my mom.

Speaker 13:
[74:47] Do you believe him? Do you think he doesn't know what he did?

Speaker 14:
[74:50] I don't know if he knows what he did. I honestly don't know how brain injuries affect people. I don't know how any of that stuff works out. I don't know if he did it and he knows he did it. He's just putting on a show. I don't know if he did it and doesn't remember doing it. I honestly have no idea. I really truly don't. I just know that Nolan was only a baby. And he was a good baby. And he didn't deserve what happened to him.

Speaker 1:
[75:39] John is mad at everyone, including me now. But this story doesn't get filed as a corrupt cop story or an inept prosecutor story. It was presented as a bad cap story. And in that, it's in good company.

Speaker 4:
[75:53] The court is not a medical arena.

Speaker 3:
[75:56] It's a legal arena.

Speaker 4:
[75:58] And God bless everybody who goes in there.

Speaker 9:
[76:00] Hopefully, they're intellectually honest, but it's not.

Speaker 4:
[76:03] It's about winning. It's not about anything more than that.

Speaker 7:
[76:09] And that's the game there.

Speaker 4:
[76:10] But in medicine, it's a very different game. It's a different thing completely.

Speaker 1:
[76:13] We're trying to heal people. That's next time on Nobody Should Believe Me. Nobody Should Believe Me is written, reported, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our co-executive producer is Mariah Gossett. Our editor is Greta Stromquist. Story editing by Nicole Hill. Research and fact-checking by Aaron Ajayi. Additional research by Jessi V. Randall. Mixing and engineering by Robin Edgar. Our production manager is Nola Carmouche. Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Sound Snap, and Slipstream.