transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This episode is brought to you by booking.com. booking.com offers a wide array of hotels and vacation rentals across the US, so you can find exactly what you're booking for. There's literally something for everyone, even those who are impossible to please. Whether you're booking for yourself, your partner, your picky teens, your sleep light, rise early mom, or your high maintenance group chat, you can find exactly what you're booking for. For me, when I'm booking a stay, I already know I need a few very specific things. I'm talking blackout curtains because I hate waking up to sunlight, a comfy bed that actually feels like a hotel bed, and enough space so I don't feel cramped after a long day. And if I'm booking with my girlfriends, it's a whole different checklist. We're looking for a place with room to spread out, somewhere close to restaurants and the latest nightclubs, and honestly, just a stay that fits everyone's vibe without compromise. That's why I love that if I can find my perfect stay on booking.com, anyone can. Find exactly what you're booking for, booking.com, booking.yeah. Book today on the site or in the app.

Speaker 2:
[01:00] Hi, I'm Julia Cowley, a retired FBI profiler and host of the True Crime Podcast, The Consult, Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before, during and after the commission of the crime. You can listen to The Consult wherever you get your podcasts. It's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Speaker 3:
[01:39] I'm Brett, and I'm Alice, and we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, we continue our look at the murder on Songbird Road. Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined, as always, by my astronautical co-host, Alice.

Speaker 4:
[02:42] Big day. Not just because we're recording, but because, finally, those of us who doubted the moon landing can be either further in the conspiracy or proven wrong today.

Speaker 3:
[02:55] Going back to the moon, baby.

Speaker 4:
[02:56] Going back to the moon, baby.

Speaker 3:
[02:58] Back to the moon.

Speaker 4:
[02:59] Back or to the first time?

Speaker 3:
[03:02] Either way.

Speaker 4:
[03:03] Either way, we're at the moon.

Speaker 3:
[03:05] Yeah. We're not there yet. By the time you hear this, we'll be there. We're not staying this time. We're just doing a drive-by. We're going to say hello and then come back. They're going further than anybody's ever gone before though. It's like Star Trek or something. Pretty cool.

Speaker 4:
[03:20] That is kind of terrifying.

Speaker 3:
[03:21] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[03:22] I know there are already people who grew up during some devastating launches. I can't actually bring myself to watch them in real time because I'm afraid. Something's going to happen.

Speaker 3:
[03:32] Obviously, the kids wanted to see it and we wanted to see it. We paused it for three minutes. Just in case. My wife and I watched it on our phone just to make sure it went fine. Thank goodness. Okay, kids, they're getting ready to launch the rocket. Sorry, kids, if you're listening to this later.

Speaker 4:
[03:47] It's not just me who has the true fear. That's not even watching with my kids. I was just like, I don't know that I can watch it in real time.

Speaker 3:
[03:55] Look, I remember Challenger. And one of the things people always say about Challenger, which is a lie, and you saw this on Twitter today, that most people who saw Challenger didn't see it live, they saw it on replay. That is not true. People say that all the time. You could watch all the launches, and I watched all the space shuttle launches with my mom.

Speaker 4:
[04:15] We watched them in school. They would roll in the cart, the big cart from the library, because you had to, and it was strapped on with that little moving strap, and then they'd push it in, and then we watched all the launches live.

Speaker 3:
[04:27] Yeah, and I remember watching it with my mom, and obviously, it went horribly wrong, and I was confused about what's going on, and my mom's like bursting into tears, and yeah, so that was traumatic.

Speaker 4:
[04:39] I was like, is that an effect? Was that supposed to happen? Because I don't know, because there's lots of smoke when it takes off, and I remember every other launch I watched after, the big pile of smoke at the beginning, which is normal, I would just start tearing up. I was like, I don't know if that's normal.

Speaker 3:
[04:53] This is a big rocket, and there's so much fire, and you're like, is there supposed to be that much fire? This one went fine. And then obviously, Columbia was re-entry when it broke up. I don't know that anybody was watching that live, but I remember it happening, and I remember there was a lot of coverage of that. So anyways, that's all very depressing. It was a good day. So let's get away from the depressing astronaut stuff, because we're going to be talking about depressing stuff here in a second anyway. So let's all celebrate the fact that these American heroes are now, as we record, in the depths of space, which is terrifying to me. We talked about this in the Lost Cosmonauts episode. I was talking to my wife about this. I don't know that anything could prepare you. No amount of training could prepare you for being that far away from Earth, and looking back through the viewfinder, or the very small window, and seeing the Earth the size of the moon, because it'd be very small. I can't imagine what that feels like.

Speaker 4:
[05:49] Right. My two greatest fears are number two, and it's a far second, is being lost at sea, not on a boat, just in the middle of the ocean floating, because it feels like space, and then first is lost in space forever. Those are my two biggest fears. Third is quicksand probably, because I am a 90s child.

Speaker 3:
[06:12] People in the chat keep mentioning Canada. I don't know why. It's not like Canada has ever done anything. It has to do with space, so. Anyways, right in if we're wrong about that. No. In all seriousness, there is a Canadian hitching a ride on our rocket, which is cool. He's way braver than I am. I wouldn't want to get on that thing. That's what I was thinking, is they kept showing the inside. I was like, I wonder what it feels like as you're waiting for this rocket to take off. It has to be pretty terrifying. So all very brave people and wishing them the best.

Speaker 4:
[06:40] All of them.

Speaker 3:
[06:40] All of them. Okay, so that's enough great uplifting, fun, wonderful things. We are back with our third episode discussing the murder of 11-year-old Jade Beasley, just to catch you up a little bit where we're at. So first episode, we listened to the 911 call. We went through the timeline. It was presented by Julia Beverly, who was Jade's stepmother. Jade was 11 years old. She was home alone with Julia. According to Julia, she went to Walmart. Took about an hour when she got back. A man dressed in black from head to toe, black ski mask, black gloves, the whole thing is rushing out of the house right as she's going inside. He's got a knife. The knife is raised up in the air. Last episode, we listened to a lot of clips of her describe this terrifying encounter. She's left with some cuts on her hand. Then she goes in and she finds Jade dead in the bathtub and she calls the police. The problem with her timeline is later video investigation and cell phone investigation casts a lot of doubt on this. So we're talking about her interview with the police. The first part, as I said, that we really got into was the interaction with this man and how she describes it. We went through that a lot last week. This week, we're going to start with sort of backing up a little bit her day, how the day went before this encounter, how the trip to Walmart went and how she described those various things and we will play some of her comments for you.

Speaker 4:
[08:20] So Julia tells investigators that she works from home for Hyatt. We talked about how this is in the midst of COVID. This is December 2020 and the hotel industry, if you remember back during COVID, I mean, now a lot of jobs are remote, but this is in the height of we had no idea what was going on. A lot of people work remotely and she was one of them. So she does social media responses and you can tell that that's a very portable job. She can definitely do that from home. But in order to do that job, she has to have strong Wi-Fi and a good cell signal. Indeed, she tells investigators she has those. This is important, by the way, because of course, there is a digital footprint for her. Digital footprint both on her cell phone as well as checking in and out of work and being active on her computer or not. If, for example, she lived out in the country with not good Wi-Fi or cell signal, if you had intermittent signals, that may be due to just poor signal rather than her actual movements. But in her own words, she has strong signal and she has strong Wi-Fi, which lends credibility to how much weight you can give in basically her electronic footprint that we will see. She works 8 to 6.30 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and 8 to 1 on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We know this murder happened on a Saturday, remember, because Jade spends the weekends with her dad, and not by law stepmother, but essentially a stepmother. Now, Julia says she got off work early on this Saturday. Remember, she's supposed to work until one on Saturdays. She gets off at 11 on this day, which is about the same time that she tells investigators she goes to the store. Hyatt's record reflected that that's not quite what happened. So while Julia was scheduled for a break between 930 and 945, she actually didn't log back in from that 930 break until 1015. But she just logs back on to essentially request unapproved time off about half an hour later at 1105. And that was granted two minutes later at 1107. Essentially, that's just saying unexpectedly, I need to take the rest of the day off. And Hyatt was like, okay, it's a Saturday during COVID season. And at 1107, she completely logs off the system. So basically what we have here is she's supposed to work till 1. She basically does no more work after 930. She was expected to be back, but essentially she logs back in really for the purpose of requesting the rest of the day off.

Speaker 3:
[10:47] You know, this is one of those cases where there are so many little things, there are some big things too. We're going to talk about this. But there are so many little things that you can kind of get lost in just because they're interesting. I feel like a lot of true crime, we spend a lot of time on the little things. People like to argue about the little things because that's kind of where the meat is. It's hard to nail down exactly what's going on. And this 45 minutes that she spends on break is one of those things. So look, she gets a 15 minute break. That seems pretty standard. Use the bathroom, grab a cup of coffee, get back on. 45 minutes is a lot longer than 15 minutes. We're not talking 20, even 25, even 30, which would be twice as long. 45 minutes, when you have a 15 minute break, is significant. There's a lot of people, including, I think, the prosecution, who think the crime happened during this period. At some point she realizes, I gotta log back on. She logs back on. She goes back to whatever cleanup, organizing whatever she's doing. She texts her boyfriend, her common law husband, whatever you wanna call him, Jade's dad. She texts him, hey, when are you getting off? Oh, around one. That's earlier than expected. Then all of a sudden she's asking for this time off and she gets it and then the rest of the timeline happens. She will say that this 45 minutes was filled with a heart to heart with Jade, which by the way, and that's her story now. This is one of the problems for Julia. Story changes a lot. Her initial story of the police, if you watch that interview, watch all two hours of it. It's not actually two hours long because some of it's the technician doing some taking pictures and stuff, but it's probably an hour and a half. She never mentions this. She doesn't tell any story about having some long heart to heart. What she says repeatedly is basically she saw Jade in the morning, she had breakfast, then she goes to work. At some point, she decides she's going to go to Walmart, she checks in on Jade, Jade's asleep. There's no discussion, nothing there about. One of the last things I did was I had a 45 minute conversation with her and it was so meaningful to me. Just all the things you could imagine is someone's thinking back over their day on this horrible tragedy when you find your stepdaughter dead. There's nothing about that. But once this comes out and she's got 45 minutes to fill, either that triggers the memory and she says, oh yeah, I had a heart to heart with Jade, which by the way, according to both Jade's mom and Jade's dad would be very unusual. They didn't have a close relationship. There are people who their stepmom's their best friend and because it's a little different relationship than with mom, they actually do have heart to heart conversations and can talk to them and some of you have experienced that in your own life. That was not the situation here. They weren't close like that. But now she's saying, oh, we had this long conversation and that's why that time was taken up because when you're having a deep heart to heart with your stepdaughter, you don't pull away and say, well, I gotta get back to work. You have that conversation till it ends and that's why it took 45 minutes. This is in some ways a small thing, the fact that her break lasted for so long, but could be a huge thing depending on exactly how you believe this case goes down.

Speaker 4:
[13:56] So she's logs off for the rest of the day at 1107.

Speaker 3:
[13:59] That's when she said she's going to go to Carbondale to go Christmas shopping. So it has to be Christmas shopping because if she just wanted to go to groceries, she would have stayed in Marion, but she's going to travel all the way to Carbondale because according to her later on, she doesn't say this once again in her conversation with the police, but she's going to say, look, they had some Black Friday deals still going on. And so I needed to do some Christmas shopping. So I was going to go do this. And as she's telling the police the story, it's worth listening to because it's pretty detailed. I mean, she can't remember exactly whether she locked the door when she left, but she's pretty sure she did, even though it's open when she got home. This will become a problem for her because there's no sign of forced entry. So if the door is open, then it seems like Jade probably opened the door for whoever it was. Now that could have happened for a lot of different reasons. The person could have tricked her into doing so. It could have been someone she knew, et cetera, et cetera. But you have to account for the fact that she believes she locked the door and it's not locked when she arrives. She also leaves the dogs in the back, which we've discussed some as well. These were not dogs that were left outside. It was very unusual to leave them outside when you go somewhere. But she specifically remembers, and this goes to the detail in her story. She specifically remembers them barking at her. So she remembers them being in the back. And I think this is important because, as you're going to see, there are problems with her story. And the question you're going to be asking yourself is, are there problems with her story because she's lying, or just because this was such a traumatic event, she's not really remembering the details? Well, there are a lot of things that she discusses where she seems to remember a lot of details. And one of those is arriving at Walmart. And when she tells a story, and you're going to hear it in a second, she specifically recalls getting to Walmart. She recalls where she parked. She recalls checking her phone to see if she had any messages, she didn't. Then she recalls looking in her purse, and wouldn't you know it, realizing after a 30 minute drive, she doesn't actually have her credit card. She essentially had taken the wrong purse. So she doesn't get out of the car or go into Walmart. She remembers that. She doesn't go anywhere else. She drives straight to Walmart and turns around and comes back. And in fact, the police specifically ask her, did you stop for gas? Well, if she did, or if she stopped at the gas station for anything else, that does not ring any bells for her. She says, without equivocation, no, she did not stop for gas.

Speaker 4:
[16:31] And to be totally fair, she doesn't stop to get gas. She just stops at a gas station. But this is really interesting because we talk about this all the time. People's memories fade. They think they went to the Walmart another time. But here, she's sure that this is the day because of all the events around it. And she's not talking to the police weeks later. She's talking to them within a couple hours of the police showing up here, later that afternoon. So this is not like she talked to the police weeks later and she remembered a different trip to Walmart. It was very specific and you know why? Because she needed this timeline. It needed to be an hour, enough time to be away. She had to account for that time, the time between when she left the house, logged off this electronic footprint job that she had and when she calls the police. And so that's why Carbondale fits perfectly into that timeline. Now, she says that when she left the house, Jade was asleep in her room.

Speaker 3:
[17:25] She changes this part of her story as well. Later on, she will tell Murder on Songbird Road that in fact, Jade was awake. And they had a conversation about her going to Carbondale. And she just told her, you can just play in your phone while I'm gone. That's her new story.

Speaker 4:
[17:39] Right. So either of those stories, honestly, kind of interesting. If you just had a 45-minute heart-to-heart, the heart-to-heart would have ended around 10, 15. And she's leaving the house around 11, 07. So about an hour later, it's not impossible that, you know, preteen is falling back asleep after waking up for some breakfast on a heart-to-heart. But if, in fact, it was this intense heart-to-heart, maybe it would be continued on if, as the later story goes, she's awake. Why not go Christmas shopping together? But she says that it was no big deal because Julia wasn't going to be gone for long. She just wanted to do some quick Christmas shopping and she didn't want to wake Jade in this first telling of the story or send her a text message about where she was. Now, I may buy this story if she were popping across the street to pick up some milk and she'd be gone for five minutes. But we know from this trip, she'd be gone for at least an hour just in transit to go to Walmart at Carbondale. That doesn't account for any amount of time she spends in Walmart, no matter how fast that trip is, even if she runs around like supermarket sweeps and grabs all her Christmas shopping and checks out because there are no long lines at Walmart and she runs out in 15 minutes. That's still an hour and 15 minutes. That's not a quick trip necessarily. So that is her version of the story. And it's not just us telling it. You're going to hear her explain the Carbondale part of her story and her timeline here.

Speaker 3:
[19:03] And once again, there are at least four versions of this story because I say versions and I don't mean that she's changing it every time. Just when she has the interview, as they did with the person holding the knife, they ask her multiple times, let's go over this story again. They're trying to see, trying to lock her in on it, number one, you don't want to just ask her once, you want to get it multiple times, try and jog her memory if something else is going on. So they ask her multiple times so she can tell it. We will play those for you, at least four of them for you, and talk about them as we go. This is in the timeline of the conversation, the first story of going to Walmart.

Speaker 5:
[19:45] All right, can you start from the beginning, what you saw and what happened? I left to go to the store in Carbonville. By the time I got to Carbonville, I realized I didn't have my cards with me. I turned around and came back home. Whenever I got home, I saw the front door was open. As I went to go in, he came out and tried to grab the knife from him. At that time, just multiple things, just trying to grab them and stuff. He got cuts on my hand. At that point, he just ran off. I ran in the house, saw blood everywhere. I ran to my bathroom to grab my rag. I wiped my hand real quick because it was bleeding. I ran to go find Jade when I found her in the bathroom. I touched her to check for pulse or anything. I couldn't really tell. So I saw all of the wounds on her, and that's whenever I called 911. And then the police showed up after that point. But I mean, I just, that's all that I know happened.

Speaker 3:
[21:26] So this is the first time she really tells a story, and she tells the whole story, and it's pretty brief. So we got to go into the store in Carbondale. She mentions Carbondale twice, pretty short. She goes, she doesn't have her card. She comes back. She has this interaction with the man. She walks in, there's blood everywhere. Unusual thing happens at this point. You walk in and there's blood everywhere. I mean, I think the first thing I'd do is go look for the child, but she doesn't do that. She goes, she cleans her hands, she finds her, she's dead. She doesn't have a pulse. She calls 911. So she basically tells her entire story of what happened that day. This is a very short, straightforward version, and she only spends a little bit of time on Carbondale. All right, so that's the first story. Do you have anything on that one before I play the second one, Alice?

Speaker 4:
[22:08] No, it's just honestly hard to listen to. Just like I had to stop listening to the 911 call. It's hard to listen to because even in this telling, there's time to think about this, and there's actually an incredible calm in the way she tells us. I think this is relevant as well, because when you talk to the police, there can be a lot of anxiety around it. An incredibly traumatic thing has just happened. Like this young girl who is essentially a daughter to you, and by the way, you have three other children. So you are a mother to many children. As a parent myself, my first thought is of course my child, but also all my other kids. Like I am now paranoid. They're out to hunt all of us. Like none of us are safe. But there's actually an incredible deliberateness and calmness in telling this version of the story to the police, which we don't do profiling here because we're not profilers. But there is kind of a chill to this interview that is unlike many interviews that I've participated in or listened to when there has been an incredibly traumatic event, like what seasoned investigators say is the bloodiest scene they've ever seen in Jade's murder. So here's something that keeps me up at night as a parent. And you guys know I have four kids. I'm constantly thinking about them eating good enough food, good enough diets to grow up healthy. Well, our kids are the first generation growing up on ultra-processed foods. And the long-term effects, we're only beginning to understand them. That's exactly why Haya exists, to give parents a real solution in a market flooded with kids' vitamins that prioritize candy-like appeal over actual nutrition. Some children's vitamins on the market today contain up to 7 grams of sugar per serving and are stuffed with artificial additives and petroleum-based dyes. But Haya took the opposite approach. Zero sugar, zero gummy additives, just clean nutrition. And the crazy thing? Kids actually love them. The taste, the experience, all of it. My kids ask for Haya vitamins every single day. They were sent these glass bottles that they got to decorate themselves with stickers, so each of them have their own personalized bottles that hold their vitamins. And every night before bed, they say, don't forget, it's time to take our vitamins. I love that they're the ones reminding me. And here's something every parent needs to hear. If getting your kids to eat vegetables feels like an impossible daily battle, Haya's New Kids Daily Greens and Superfoods is a total game changer. It's basically chocolate milk stuffed with veggies. It's a greens powder designed specifically for kids that's packed with 55 plus whole food sourced ingredients. Just mix one scoop with milk or milk alternative, and watch them actually enjoy something that's secretly fueling their growing bodies. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal, you must go to hayahealth.com/prosecute. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to hiyahealth.com/prosecute, and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. So I've been doing a little spring reset with my closet lately, focusing more on quality over quantity. Just building a wardrobe of pieces that are well made, versatile, and easy to reach for every day. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes beautiful everyday pieces using premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton, and super soft denim, with styles starting around $50. Their spring pieces are lightweight, breathable, and effortless. The kind of things you can throw on and instantly look put together. And that same focus on materials carries over into their accessories, like their leather bags, which I love to gift because they look so incredible and everyone loves them. Which are made from 100% hand-woven Italian leather and honestly look way more expensive than they are. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. I love their leather handbags and I've been wearing their Quince linen tops non-stop. They are my go-to this spring because the fabric feels substantial but still easy to wear and they don't cost what I thought quality linen would. Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/prosecutors for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com/prosecutors for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/prosecutors.

Speaker 3:
[27:10] We're not gonna play much of this particular part of it for you, because we're not gonna just play the whole conversation. You should go listen to it. But one thing you're gonna hear a little bit of later is she's asked multiple times to describe the wounds on Jade's body, the knife wounds on her body, which I can only imagine what it would be like to find someone I loved, stabbed to death, in that brutal manner, and then the police asked me to describe the knife wounds. I would be like, man, no, I'm not gonna talk about that. I would be like, do an autopsy. I mean, I just, I can't imagine being asked to do that. But she does describe them, and she describes them in a lot of detail, and it's this very detached way she does it. You're gonna hear a little bit of that later, but if you decide to listen to this interview, pay attention to that when they talk about that part. Okay, second story of going to Carbondale.

Speaker 5:
[28:02] You said you had gone to Carbondale to get groceries. It was Christmas shopping, yeah. So that's not where you normally go for groceries? No, I usually shop in town for groceries in Marion. Alright. But do you know what time you left today? I don't know what time that was, honestly. I'm not really sure. Alright. And were you booking... When was it that you realized you didn't have your cards? When I got to Walmart, I pulled out my purse and I was checking my phone and that's when I realized I didn't have any of my cards with me. Okay. And then you came back home? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[28:49] Okay. So a couple of interesting things about this. Once again, the detail of this story. Now it's not like it's super detailed, but she makes these little points. Oh, no. Because if I was just going for groceries, I would go into town. I was going for Christmas shopping. That's why I needed to go to Carbondale. And remember, at some point, she's going to claim she just misremembered. Oh, I didn't go to Carbondale. I only went 10 minutes down the road to the gas station. That's essentially what she's going to say. But you listen to these details. Oh, I parked. I checked my phone. It wasn't until I got there that I realized I didn't have my cards. I looked at my purse. I didn't have my cards. It's not the most detailed story I've ever heard someone tell. But it has all these little pieces that make it sound like something that she is authentically remembering and describing as what she did only a few hours before on this day. Any other thoughts on that before I go to the third one? I know you have so many thoughts, but you're achieving them inside.

Speaker 4:
[29:48] Now, let's hear the third one.

Speaker 3:
[29:49] The third story of going to Carbondale.

Speaker 5:
[29:54] When you went to Walmart, did you go into Walmart? No, I didn't even get out because I went to check my phone. I didn't realize I didn't have any of my cards with me.

Speaker 6:
[30:05] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[30:06] But you were in the parking lot? Yeah, just in the parking lot.

Speaker 6:
[30:10] Okay. And which Walmart was that in?

Speaker 5:
[30:15] Carbondale.

Speaker 6:
[30:16] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[30:20] And you were there to go Christmas shopping?

Speaker 6:
[30:22] Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 5:
[30:23] All right.

Speaker 6:
[30:27] Do you know about what time you left to go to Carbondale?

Speaker 5:
[30:31] I'm not sure, honestly, what time it was.

Speaker 6:
[30:34] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[30:36] Did you go anywhere else before you went to Walmart? No. When you left the house? Just to Walmart. Just to Walmart.

Speaker 6:
[30:49] Just stop and get gas or anything like that.

Speaker 5:
[30:51] No.

Speaker 6:
[30:56] Just trying to think of a time frame that this guy may have showed up. Just trying to see what that window is. So you pull in the Walmart, realize you don't have your cards, you say you checked your phone.

Speaker 5:
[31:12] Just see if I have messages or anything. And then turned around and went back.

Speaker 6:
[31:18] Kind of had one of those for my card moments. Had one of those the other day. Then went back and that's when.

Speaker 2:
[31:27] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[31:29] So this is really interesting because in this third time, so we've said that she's very honestly calm, cool and collected in the way she's talking. But the investigators, they don't know at this point about the gas station at all. So they're not fishing, they're not trying to do a gotcha moment. They're trying to understand this. And so in every confirmation, they ask back to her what has already been told to her. This is not feeding her lines. They're asking her to confirm. So you went to Carbondale? You're sure it was Carbondale? Yes. You went there to Christmas shop? Yes, to Christmas shop. Did you go get gas? No. And each of these is another opportunity for her to revisit whether her memory has lapsed. So this is the third time. And you can imagine when someone asks you something multiple times, even if you're completely sure, sometimes if you're asked the same thing over and over, you pause for a moment because you're like, am I sure? Because you are asking me multiple times. There is actually no pause and no even a glimmer of self-doubt in her confirmations. Her confirmations are immediate and they're assured in confirming this story, which like we've said already, is pretty detailed and there are hooks in the memory that if this had really happened, she is completely sure that this was the day and this is what happened.

Speaker 3:
[32:39] It's really hard to explain this away when you listen to it, because once again, it's literally that day. I know a traumatic thing happened, but it's literally that day. They are not pressing her. This is not a hostile interrogation. They're not tricking her. They didn't do a polygraph where they asked her if she went to Carbondale, and now they're like, and you lied in the polygraph, tell us the truth. They're giving her opportunity after opportunity to correct her story. You know, the detail of why she was there, where she was, the fact that she parched, then she checked her phone, then she realized her credit cards. One of the cops even makes a joke, yeah, had that happened to me yesterday. Did you get gassed? No, I didn't get gassed, it didn't stop anywhere else. And it's just the fact that later on, she's going to completely change this story. Not, she actually, she only went to Walmart in Marion, and it was only 15 minutes away, and that gives her a very narrow window to commit this crime. It's not that that's gonna happen. She is repeatedly telling them this. They did not put it in her head. They weren't like, did you go to Walmart in Carbondale today? She's the one who offers that, is where she was, and she repeatedly reaffirms that that's where it was. And it's just, when you listen to her tell the story, there is nothing, there is no doubt. Nothing comes across as she's not sure what she did that day.

Speaker 4:
[34:06] No pause even to think.

Speaker 3:
[34:08] Just tell the story. You know, he's talking about just trying to figure out the timeline of exactly where you were. Nothing is happening as they tell this story that is somehow twisting her arm or getting her in a position where she's misremembering and confusing. Oh, I actually went to Walmart yesterday. What am I thinking? No, none of that is happening. She is repeatedly reaffirming this story with details.

Speaker 4:
[34:32] Nor is this an antagonistic conversation. It is incredibly measured. The investigators are almost apologetic. We're asking this again. We're just trying to figure out when this guy came in. Because if you're listening to this as they are, there are lots of holes and this is not adding up. But in no time, do they start slamming the table and saying, look, this doesn't make sense. You're telling a lie. Tell us what's going on. They are still very much in relaxed conversation with her.

Speaker 3:
[34:58] And I'll say this, the Viper Pit podcast played both their conversation with Michael, Jade's father, and with Jessica, I believe her name is, Jade's mother. Exact same type of conversation, exact same way of approaching those people, asking questions, sort of letting them answer the questions because obviously, they're doing the right thing here. I mean, people always talk about rushing to judgment and tunnel vision. I mean, they've got someone who's telling them, it's this very specific person who did this. They're keeping an open mind. They're questioning everybody because they don't know. I mean, for all they know, that person could be Jade's mom in disguise. I mean, we did that case not too long ago. Dan, forget his last name, the guy was a baseball player, right? He dresses up all in black, hides in his in-law's house, and then murders them for money. The man in black could be someone Jade knew or even someone she was related to. So, I don't think they're close minded about this at all, and they're asking all the right questions, and they're letting Julia tell her story, and they're going to ask her for a fourth time. So, this is the fourth story.

Speaker 6:
[36:07] They've expanded the search area. Can you start, I hate to ask you to kind of relive everything again. Can you start from when you checked out from Wyatt, or Hyatt, I'm sorry, Wyatt?

Speaker 5:
[36:21] Clocked out, went and got dressed.

Speaker 6:
[36:24] And how do you clock out? I'm not familiar with it.

Speaker 5:
[36:27] It's just like a... Yeah, long on, long off type thing.

Speaker 6:
[36:31] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[36:33] I clocked out, went and got dressed. It didn't take me real long to get dressed.

Speaker 6:
[36:39] And where did you get dressed at?

Speaker 5:
[36:41] In the bedroom, my bedroom. Then I went, checked on Jade, she was sleeping. And then I left.

Speaker 6:
[36:49] Okay. Can you describe when you left? Because with expanding the search area, if we find any tire tracks or anything like that, we need to know, you know, like, did you back out this direction? You know, did you just back all the way out? This way, if we find tire tracks, we know whether or not they're yours or possible suspect vehicle.

Speaker 5:
[37:09] Um, whenever I back out, I always go out and then like head towards the ball fields.

Speaker 6:
[37:17] Okay. So you back all the way down the driveway? Yeah, all the way down. And then on to the road?

Speaker 5:
[37:22] Correct.

Speaker 6:
[37:22] Okay. Okay. And then just tell us which way you go, like where you turn, stuff like that?

Speaker 5:
[37:28] Go down to Corry League, turn right, follow that all the way till Norman, turn left and then get on the interstate highway.

Speaker 6:
[37:43] Okay. And then you take thirteen all the way to?

Speaker 5:
[37:45] Then it went all the way to Carbondale.

Speaker 6:
[37:47] Okay. And then where do you turn at in Carbondale?

Speaker 5:
[37:51] Turn right, right by Taco Bell and McDonald's, and then turn again into Walmart.

Speaker 6:
[37:58] Okay. And which part of the parking lot did you park in?

Speaker 5:
[38:03] Not in the front, like more towards like the middle, a little closer to the back.

Speaker 6:
[38:07] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[38:08] You know, which side are we in the middle, like the building or on the food side? It's probably the main side. I don't think I went to the food side. I'm not real familiar with Carbondale's set up. I want to say it was more towards the main side of it, though.

Speaker 6:
[38:29] Okay, all right. And you went to Carbondale for...

Speaker 5:
[38:32] Christmas shopping. Christmas shopping.

Speaker 6:
[38:34] And then we're on the street from there.

Speaker 5:
[38:37] So, once I got there, I went to check my phone real quick, see if I had any messages. That's when I realized I didn't have my cards. So, had you actually parked in a parking spot? Yes. Okay. I parked and then just grabbed my phone out of my purse. And that's when I realized I didn't have my keys in there, or my keys, my cards. And then I turned around and then came back.

Speaker 6:
[39:04] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[39:05] And did you come back the same way that you went? Yes.

Speaker 6:
[39:08] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[39:08] All right. And then when you pulled into the driveway, you didn't recognize any vehicles or...? No, there's nothing there, no cars. I didn't see anybody until I got to the door. What about a bicycle or motorcycle or anything like that around? No. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[39:29] So something that really stuck out to me. So incredible amount of detail. Not only incredible amounts of detail of exactly where she's parking within Walmart, but her specific actions from the time she parks the car to the time she leaves back out, all the way to the way that her tire tracks are moving. I mean, this is incredible specificity. But what really stuck out to me in this fourth retelling is when she drops a line that is meant to explain away any inconsistencies with her story about where she parked at Walmart, is she says, I'm actually not that familiar with the Carbondale Walmart. And why that's important is you can imagine if this is a store she goes to all the time, this may just be another day that she goes to Walmart in Carbondale and she's mixed it up with the day that Jade is murdered. But in fact, she goes there so infrequently that she doesn't really know the layout. And so this is an anomaly in her shopping habits and an anomaly would stand out. And this is not mistaken to be another day than the day that Jade was murdered. That one line, if I were in the room, I'd have to pick my job off the floor and put on a poker face.

Speaker 3:
[40:37] That one line may convict her. We talk about this sometimes that you have cases, they have all kinds of evidence, but there's one thing that just stands out to you, and you've nailed it. Number one, tremendous police work. This last time, they get her to go into so much detail to recount the exact way she went. She even corrects herself several times. She got on the interstate. Oh, not the interstate, the highway. Oh, look, I didn't have my keys, my keys. I didn't have my cards. Things that just feel so real, but you've nailed it, because the whole point of what she's going to have to say later is she was confused. It was another day, she's transposing the days. Of course, it wasn't that day she went to Walmart, but it's not the place she goes all the time. I mean, you've nailed it. And the fact that she just so happens on this day of all days to misremember when she went to a place that she hardly ever goes to in incredible detail in a way that just so happens to account for all her time is so damning. And it is hard for me to praise the police enough. And how they handle this interview, and how they walked through this with her, just incredible. Because if she was telling the truth, they would be able to lock it down and eliminate her as a suspect. They would track her phone. You know what? She's telling the truth. She did turn on the Quarry League. She did get on to it. And wouldn't you know it, we pulled the camera footage from the middle section of Walmart. There's her car. We're good. She didn't do it. Everybody, let's find the man in black, right? We have eliminated her, because they have gotten her to tell this story. And I'll tell you what else. To the extent you think they were just trying to frame her or railroad her, well, they did something that you wouldn't think you'd do. They've got her saying she went to Walmart three different times. And they keep giving her the opportunity to say, you know what? I'm mistaken. I didn't go to Walmart. And to correct it. They keep giving her that opportunity. And she never takes it. And that feels like some investigators who are looking for the truth, not looking for a frame job. Oh, we got her confused now. Lock that down. Don't ask her any more questions. We don't want her to correct things. And you'll see that sometimes. Remember when we did West Memphis Three? One of the criticisms of the way that interview went is once they got Jessie Miskelly to say the magic words, that was it. Interview's over. We got him to say the thing we wanted.

Speaker 4:
[42:58] They didn't want to contradict it, right?

Speaker 3:
[43:00] Don't ask him any more questions.

Speaker 4:
[43:01] I mean, honestly, if you wanted to convict her because Carbondale had to do with it, leave it. Or suggest something. You sure? So they suggested one time, but it honestly wasn't a suggestion. It was confirming the story. You say that you ended up at Carbondale anywhere along the way, such as gas, because you said you were only going shopping. What are other things that you may stop, that you may forget? Getting gas, because that's usually not part of your agenda. It's just something you do because you need to fill up with gas. They didn't suggest that again. This was not them trying to feed someone. Are you sure? What about they didn't name the place? Are you sure you didn't pull up to a pump, then think better of it and go? None of those things. I mean, there is really no suggestion. She is driving all of this narrative. They are asking back with her own words, confirmation, allowing her to either confirm, change her story, or think about it again, because again, it's a stressful situation. And note what we're doing when we're picking apart this interrogation, really it's not an interrogation, an interview. We're not focusing on, oh, she never even reacted, or seems teary-eyed when they say we're going to expand the search. Maybe, sure, you can have whole entire profiles about how she doesn't react to the fact that they're talking about looking for the murderer who's still out there, who might have come to get her. There were two people in that house. Maybe they just got Jade because she was there and they really were coming for her. None of this. She doesn't react to it. We're not focusing on that because people can truly have very different reactions and traumatic situations. But what we're focusing on is about black and white here. It's her story of what just happened a couple hours ago with four, five different times of confirmation in order to make sure the story is right. And she doubles down, triples down, quadruple down, quintuples down on her story over and over. So it's really hard for her to walk back this later. We're starting here because there is so much more that is honestly weird about her interview. But that's not where we're starting. This is not meant to be some like fantastical, let's wave it all around. Her words in and of themselves are pretty shocking.

Speaker 3:
[45:03] And we've talked about this, but the reason this is such a big deal, she didn't go to Walmart. She didn't drive all the way to Carbondale. She didn't park there, check her phone, realize she didn't have her cards. Video recovered by the police proved that instead she drove to a Huck's gas station less than 10 minutes away from her home, where she is seen on camera disposing of something in the trash can and then driving away. She wasn't gone for the hour that it would have taken her to drive to the Walmart and then drive back. She was gone for 17 minutes. Her description of returning home is also inconsistent with the evidence. According to Julia, she got home, got out of the car and walked to the house, and you've heard this multiple times now. Her describe, what happened, where she encountered the intruder immediately after she rushes to the bathroom, she gets a towel for her hand, then she finds Jade, then she's calling 911 after briefly checking her pulse. But her cell phone will show, number one will confirm she didn't go to Carbondale, and will also show that she arrived back at the house a full 31 minutes before calling the police.

Speaker 4:
[46:15] Real quick note here. Her story that you just heard, what did she do in her version of the story when she stopped and parked at Walmart? She checked her phone. So in her own story, the phone is with her in the car the entire time. This is relevant, of course, because at this time, they do not have her cell phone data. They will get it later and they will see she doesn't go to Carbondale. But she cannot walk that back either because she herself is not saying, I left my car and my phone back there. So of course, you're not going to see my phone in Carbondale. None of that happens. She says herself in these five retellings of going to Carbondale that the reason she finds out she has no money in order to go into Walmart because she has to account for that time, she can't have been there longer than an hour, is checking her phone.

Speaker 3:
[47:01] And look, we've said this before, criminals are not geniuses. Planned murders have massive holes in them. I don't think anyone thinks if Julia committed this crime, she planned it. If this crime happened, it happened in sort of a rage, and then she had to do the best she could to cover it up, and she made mistakes. And one of them was not leaving her phone at home. Because if she had left her phone at home, much better argument. You know, maybe they still catch her on the cameras, but she couldn't know that, that they were gonna find ring cameras, and there's nothing you can do about that. She couldn't know that the police were going to do an incredibly thorough job, and basically pull every camera from her house to the Carbondale Walmart, and then spend untold amounts of time watching those videos until they caught literally like the brief second of her car speeding past a house on Corey League Road, or until they found the Huck's video, which she'll later claim, her mom will later claim that she alerted them to, which isn't true. They found this Huck's video with her throwing something away in the trashcan. She couldn't know that, but she could have left her phone, but she didn't think about that. I even think it's possible that when she went to Huck's, she really did notice that she didn't have her credit cards. That she really did intend to throw something away and then get some gas and maybe build the story around that, but then she didn't have her credit cards and so she has to go back. Because as we've said many times, I truly believe that in every lie, there's truth and that could be one of the truths in this story. Her biggest problem, her story that she tells fits the timeline perfectly, is the perfect alibi. It allows plenty of time for someone to show up, go into the house, murder Jade, for the blood to dry, for the water in the bathtub to be clear. Because Jade's been in that bathtub so long that she's died and she's stopped bleeding and the water has gone down the drain somehow and now the water is clear. There's plenty of time for all that to happen and that person is leaving just as she gets there. But the reality of the story, proven by both the videos and the cell phone, is utterly inconsistent, not only with what Julia tells us, but with what would have had to have happened if the intruder killed Jade. It is a terrible timeline. For the man in black to have done this, he would have had to have arrived at the house, got inside, committed the crime and come running out all in about 17 minutes. That's how long she was gone, 17 minutes. And then Julia would have had to have just hung around in the house or sat in her driveway checking Facebook while this person just hangs around in the house while the blood's drying and her stepdaughter's body is growing cold in a bathtub with running water in it. Which by the way, the first responders all say that the bathtub was plugged. I can't emphasize enough for you how important that is. If the bathtub was plugged, it should have been overflowing by the time she's calling 911. But it's not. And that makes you think that whatever cleanup happened in that bathroom, another mistake she made was she left that water running and she left that bathtub plugged. And by the time her, because remember, she's on the phone with 911 for 12 minutes, at least first responders, it takes them that long to arrive. They don't find the bathtub overflowing. They find it slowly filling up with water. All that has to be happening. And you have to account for this 31 minutes from when her phone arrives back at that house to when she calls 911.

Speaker 4:
[50:39] The math just ain't math-ing.

Speaker 3:
[50:40] It ain't math-ing. And we're not even done.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 3:
[52:43] Now, let's punctuate this with the one moment in the entire interview, two hours of interview, let's say an hour and a half to be generous to her, with discussions about finding the dead body of a girl you loved, discussions about stab wounds all over her body, what they looked like, did it look like somebody stabbed in and out, or did they kind of wiggle the knife around? Those are the kind of questions these detectives are asking her, and she's answering them with this cold clinical discussion. But there's one time she shows emotion, and I'm going to play that for you now.

Speaker 6:
[53:20] Like this, was it kind of off to the side? Because some people swing lower direction, some kind of go from the side, some's over like this. Which way do you think it was?

Speaker 5:
[53:31] From what I can see on her back, it definitely looked like it was.

Speaker 6:
[53:34] It was definitely up and down like this. Was it kind of real quick? Was it like go in, kind of wiggle a little bit? I mean, which way did you do it?

Speaker 5:
[53:41] I didn't do this.

Speaker 6:
[53:43] Okay, here's the thing, okay? We know you've been through a lot. But there's some things that we're going to have to figure out, okay? Well, then help us through it, Ben. Help us through it. No. Okay, help us through it. Was she...

Speaker 5:
[54:12] No, I'm not talking anymore. If you think I did this to her, I am not talking to you anymore. I keep up not my blood sugar, but you...

Speaker 6:
[54:29] I'm gonna let you talk to her, okay? I'll step out.

Speaker 3:
[54:34] There you go, she's fine discussing the angle of the knife, whether it was going up or down. She's fine talking about that. But the moment she's accused of doing it, that's the moment when the emotions come out. That's when she starts screaming and wailing and being hysterical, because the thing that she has feared the entire time she's been having this conversation has come. Her story that she's telling them is not working. They now think she's done it, and she is reacting accordingly.

Speaker 4:
[55:00] And it was chilling. It was a zero to 100 within a second. Like, if you have to listen to it a couple of times to kind of catch the investigator, you can miss it almost in the way the investigator basically slips it in and says, OK, when you did it, and that's when she goes from zero to 100.

Speaker 3:
[55:15] And there's no confusion on her part. She was waiting.

Speaker 4:
[55:19] I missed it the first time.

Speaker 3:
[55:20] She knew they were going to accuse her.

Speaker 4:
[55:21] I missed it the first time. I had to rewind, because I was like, why is she screaming all of a sudden? Because I actually missed it, because her scream came so close in time to honestly, what could potentially be a mistake in pronoun. The way the questioning is going.

Speaker 3:
[55:37] How did you see it? How did you think he did it?

Speaker 4:
[55:40] Because it was, does it look like the slashing was coming from an angle? Did it look like it wiggled out? When you did it, I mean, when he did it, you can imagine it's a, wait, you can imagine the response would rather be confusion rather than zero to this like wailing and gnashing of the teeth, which matches the wailing and gnashing of the teeth that you heard on the 911 call for 12 minutes as well. Also note within this, you know, some of the things that she says within the crying, they aren't really said in the rest of the interview. She says, she was like a daughter to me at the time. Familiarity, love, those sorts of things don't really come out except in this type of hysteria, which is very interesting. And previously we were talking about the clinicalness of the 104 stab wounds and how they were wiggled out of her, like a daughter, body, finding her daughter, these sorts of things. None of that is what triggers her to talk about Jade as a daughter. So you've heard from Julia's own words what she describes that day in much detail. But the thing is her story doesn't make sense even if you're just listening to it cold, like we all did, nor does it match the evidence that we have. So there's video recovered from the Huck's gas station, and it shows Julia pulling up to the area of the gas pumps. So like a gas station, you can imagine there's like the pavilion, or let's call it the roof part, and then there's like different stalls across. And in this one, the farthest stall from the angle of the camera is where Julia ultimately pulls into with her gray pathfinder. So it's the farthest, you can zoom in and see the video. But instead of pulling up to one of the two pumps, you can imagine what most gas stations look like. There's usually two pumps on one plane, and in between the two, there's trash can, that sort of thing. And that's exactly what you have here at The Huck's. So her car does not pull up to one of the pumps, where you would imagine you would park, even if you're going to throw something away, if you're in fact getting gas. It stops with the front driver door, right next to the trash can bin that sits between two pumps. And then some seconds pass by, nothing happens, you can't really see what's happening in the car, but the door doesn't open, no one comes out, no one's reaching for a gas pump to stretch it over to the car. But after several seconds pass by, you see the door crack open, and a foot come out, as if the person is just stepping halfway out, but half their body maintains in the car, and a hand drops a bag, or some sort of package, not super large, like one hand is holding it, into the garbage bin, and without fully stepping out, or reaching for a gas pump, or anything like that, the hand and the leg go back into the car, the door immediately slams shut, and the car drives away. That's what you see in this video, which you can see for yourself as well. So you can't see very well what it is, but it appears to be a bundle of something. Julia will later say that as she's driving to Carbondale, her gas light came on, and she decided to go to Huck's. Now, that is believable, but remember, in the interview that she gave, the police actually anticipated this happening, this being a regular thing that can happen, and asked on more than one occasion, did you go anywhere on the way to Carbondale? Did you stop for gas? And multiple times she confirmed that she had not in fact stopped anywhere because she didn't know this video existed. By the way, neither did the police at the time. But when this video resurfaces, it's really interesting to note that she doesn't actually deny that it's her car. Let's see, that's not me. I don't know what you're talking about. She then incorporates it into her story. I forgot, I'm so sorry. The gas light, you're right. The gas light did come on. I did in fact stop for gas. Now, you might wonder then if her gas light came on, why didn't she pull up to the gas pumps? Because that's usually where you get gas. She says that she was waiting to turn and she realized she didn't have her credit cards. So she decided to pull into Huck's anyway to throw away some diapers that she had. Now, she no longer forgets that her cards are... What happened to the whole Carbondale that she's not that familiar with? She knows exactly where she parked at the Carbondale Walmart. Now, she say as she's turning in, before she even gets there, it has to be before she gets there. That's what's interesting. She can't have parked yet because she has to explain why she doesn't park in front of a pump. She says she realizes her cards are not there. But notice previously when she was talking about not finding her cards in the Walmart, what does she do? Does she reach for her cards as she's driving and about to park? No. She actually parks completely before she notices the cards. It's really not that she's looking for her cards, she looks at her phone and realizes her cards. So this in and of itself is interesting because if you look at the footage, she'd have to be digging through her purse as she's turning in. Why not just park and then look for your cards?

Speaker 3:
[60:31] Okay. This is one where in order to believe, there's so much. There's so much in this case, it's just like, I don't know how you believe this woman. We talked about Carbondale and Walmart and everything else, and this in some ways is just an interesting little incident. It's not like you have to think much about this. You don't have to really even know about this to decide whether she's guilty or innocent, but it is interesting because her story, it's such a perfect example of how she has to create a post-hoc story to cover up something that happened. Because I think we've probably all been in a situation where we pulled up to a gas pump or pulled into a store and realized we didn't have our cards and are like, oh, and I talked about yesterday being at the pizza shop and the guy comes in, it's like, I forgot my cards. Can I tap? And I was like, I wonder what that is. And then he taps and he pays, right? So you can perfectly imagine this happening, but the fact she didn't pull up to a pump is such an issue because of course you would see your gas lights on, you'd be like, oh man, I need to stop for gas. You'd pull in, drive up to the pump, maybe check your phone, as she says at Walmart, look in your bag, see you don't have cards, be like, man, forgot my cards. Well, I'm here, I'll throw away some trash. I could imagine that happening, but that's not what happens. She pulls up immediately to that trash can. She went to that trash can to throw something away. So she has to tell the story about being at the turn signal. She's in the turn lane at the light. And for some reason, that's when she realizes she doesn't have her cards. And she decides, even though she's on empty, and even though she's just about to go home, instead of just popping a Ui, going home and getting your credit cards, which would make sense to me, and then throwing away the diaper in the trash can that's sitting there right outside your house, or in your house even, she decides to go ahead and stop at Huck's. With her gas light on, just to throw away a diaper. We'll get to what the bag looks like in a second, but even that part of the story is wild. And I'll say this, I feel bad for her mom, who is an absolute advocate for her and her innocence and totally believes that her daughter is innocent. There is a jail phone call where she's talking to her daughter and she's like, yeah, you know, they say you go to Huck's and you pull up to the trash can and throw something away. And of course, you pull up to the gas pump and then you throw something away because you're there. It's like, no, nope, that's not what the video is going to show. And Julia is like, just sitting there silent on the phone, not saying a word because her mom obviously just believes she's innocent in this cockamamie story about her pulling up to the trash can. Of course, she didn't do that. And then you look at the video and she did.

Speaker 4:
[63:07] So putting aside all the major problems of her story, the major problem for Julia is that the failure to go to Carbondale not only destroys her story, as Brett pointed out earlier, it completely destroys her timeline. Now, instead of working with an hour in some odd time, we're working with 17 minutes. And of course, what does Huck's do? We have it on video and it gives her the opportunity to dispose of evidence.

Speaker 3:
[63:33] And unfortunately, the police don't find out about this until four or five days later. They go there, they search the trash can, they search the dumpster. They send a team to the landfill and they're digging through trying to find something. They find like a few broken knives and some other stuff. But number one, even if those knives were involved, the chances of getting evidence off of them, very slim. So they do their due diligence. I mean, they try as hard as they could, but because Julia had lied to them the day of and said she went to Walmart and they didn't realize she went to Huck's until much later, recovering whatever it was she threw away becomes impossible. I want to talk about this bag though, and this is like a minor issue.

Speaker 4:
[64:13] I want to talk about the diapers.

Speaker 3:
[64:15] Yeah, exactly, I want to talk about the diapers.

Speaker 4:
[64:16] I really do want to talk about the diapers. We are in full Huggies land, right? I think we...

Speaker 3:
[64:22] Oh, we got you, baby.

Speaker 4:
[64:23] We got you, baby. Between the two of us, I feel like we are as close to diaper experts as you can get anywhere. So let's talk about diapers. So we'll talk about this package, and she says that it's to have diapers. No judgment, because I've even lived with some people who are disgusting about taking out their trash and that whole thing. She has a Nissan Pathfinder. So it's like a small-ish SUV, not impossible to change a diaper in there, and I've changed a lot of kids in my Odyssey bed of the trunk, right, that's like, it's grooved in, so it's hard for them to crawl out. So look, I have changed a lot of blowouts in my time in my car, or really, it's just blowouts, actually. I really never change a pee in my car, because I only change it in a desperate situation. If like poo is coming out and their clothes are disgusting, that's the only time I'm going to go through the effort of changing them in my car, and if it's like a poo explosion, which we have a lot of at our house, I immediately throw that diaper away. It's not going to sit in my car, because you know what about diapers, Brett? They stink. That's why there's an entire industry of selling diaper pails and specific diaper trash bags, because diapers stink the heck, man. I can leave lots of things in my car. You joked about how you didn't know you'd been robbed because your car was messy. You can smell a diaper. You can smell a diaper from a mile away. I know, because I just took out a trash bag full of diapers, and I gagged as I walked out to the trash can because it smelled so badly. For her to have an entire bag of, I would assume to be pretty messy diapers, because if your normal practice is just to change some slight pee-pee diapers, I don't know. Like, where's your home? Where's your changing pads? Like, this seems like a strange thing to do. Sorry, I can rant all day long about what type of diapers are in your house, in your car.

Speaker 3:
[66:06] Well, once again, why is there funny? Because you got to take into account a lot of different things. And she takes that into account, Alice. She doesn't say, I had a bag full of diapers. She says one or two diapers that I had, which is a much more believable story. I changed the baby and, oh man, I forgot to take the diaper out and I got in the car and I could smell it. For some reason, I was going to drive all the way to Carbondale with it instead of just immediately stopping and throwing it away and then going to Carbondale. But man, when I realized I had to stop at Huck's, I was going to throw it away anyway. Look, you can't tell what's in that bag.

Speaker 4:
[66:40] You really can't.

Speaker 3:
[66:41] Her defenders want to say, it was small to fit in the palm of her hand. No, it's not.

Speaker 4:
[66:45] No, it's not.

Speaker 3:
[66:45] No, it's not. She can hold it with one hand. But I will tell you this. I have put a lot of diapers in Walmart packs. I have done that. And when you put a diaper, number one, maybe she doesn't do this.

Speaker 4:
[66:56] It's about the size of your fist.

Speaker 3:
[66:57] Right. But usually.

Speaker 4:
[66:58] It is about the size of your fist.

Speaker 3:
[66:59] If I have a poopy diaper in particular, I'm trying to package that bad boy up. I'm not leaving it wide open. I'm trying to get it as small as possible. And it's very easy with a diaper to just basically, you take it off, you fold it in half and then you use the straps to hold the diaper on to make it into a little package and then you throw it in the trash can, right? Or you put it in a bag. Say she didn't do that, either way. If you put a dirty diaper into a Walmart bag, it will be, I will call it pendulous, will be the word I will use to describe it. Which basically means you're gonna have the diaper bag and it's going to go straight down and the diaper is going to stretch the bag's a strong word, it's gonna make it sort of like a straight down profile because the diaper is heavier than the bag and so it's gonna cause that profile of a straight down type situation. And if you got out with a diaper or two in your bag, like she did and you threw it away, that's what it would look like. Pendulous. That is not what the bag looks like. I can't tell you what's in the bag, but the bag at the bottom has a very clear straight edge. It looks as though something long and straight is at the bottom of that bag, and it's making the bag not be pendulous, but be stretched wide. It almost looks like a package.

Speaker 4:
[68:15] Like almost boxy.

Speaker 3:
[68:16] Almost boxy.

Speaker 4:
[68:17] Almost boxy. And it's worth noting because I just said that one diaper, depending on how much stuff is in it, but one diaper is approximately the size of a fist. Right? And so what you see though, while we can't perfectly see the bag, you do see a hand holding it. So at least you have a point of reference of a hand, no matter how big that hand is. The bulge of the bag below the hand holding it is factors larger than the fist holding it at the top. So even if this were a bag of diapers, which it doesn't appear to be, it looks to be a dozen diapers, not one or two diapers.

Speaker 3:
[68:56] A package of diapers.

Speaker 4:
[68:57] A package. A package of diapers that's still in the package, which is square, by the way. And it's, when you can imagine what a grocery bag looks like, it's stuffed to the max. Like you see the whole shape of the bag puffed out. It is not, as you say, Brett, a pendulous, you know, where there's like slack in the bag. It's not stretched to the max where it's like you see it ripping at the seams, but you see the entire shape of the bag.

Speaker 3:
[69:24] And Ruth in the chat describes this teardrop shape that when I say pendulous, maybe pendulous is a bad description. If you put a diaper in a Walmart bag, it's going to be teardrop shaped. That's what it's gonna look like. It's not gonna be squared off at the bottom. And you see that. And I don't know if it's a pair of flip-flops or a knife wrapped in a towel that could be at the bottom of that, making it look square, but it looks square. Can't tell you what's in it. Don't know for sure, but look at it yourself and tell me whether or not that looks like a Walmart bag with a single or two diapers in it.

Speaker 4:
[69:59] And there's more, don't worry, there is going to be more. Can I just note though, this really is very good police work. There are obviously a ton of gas stations and countless security cameras at different businesses between this and Carbondale or this and anywhere else when you have no idea where they're going. The fact that they did recover this within a couple of days is actually really good police work. Because you may be looking at this and saying, well, why didn't they get this right away? Just take a 10-mile radius of your house. How many different security cameras? If today you needed to go out and get every security footage within a 10-mile radius of your house, it would take you some time and there would be many leads to have to run down, especially when you're actively being misled. We know that if this is, in fact, her throwing it away, you do want to mislead. You don't want to say you stopped at Huck's. You don't want to say you stopped at Gass because the whole purpose was to throw something away that can't be tracked and guess what? As we'll know, by the time they recovered this video, it's too late to go to that trash can. It has since been emptied.

Speaker 3:
[71:01] The last thing we're going to say, I'm going to go ahead and talk about this just because we've talked about it before, is the dogs. And look, all of you have ever had dogs, you know how dogs are. You have very specific ways you treat your dogs. Your dogs act in very specific ways. And of all the things in your life, your dogs are the thing that if they start acting in a strange way or if something's unusual to dogs, it probably says more about you than just about anything. And as we've said, the dogs in this case, especially the older one, were known to be very protective of Jade. They also tended to be inside dogs. They typically only went out to use the bathroom and maybe to briefly run around and get some exercise. But inexplicably, Julia left the dogs in the backyard when she left home. And this isn't something she just forgot. In fact, if you listen to her interview with the police, she remembered the dogs barking at her as she drove away. This was so unusual that it was one of the things that Michael, Jade's father, simply could not get past. Everything else in the story, yeah, I don't know. But the dogs was something that just stuck with him. The fact that those dogs were outside in the back when she supposedly had left for an hour, he just could not wrap his mind around that. And it's one of those tiny little details that feels like another, maybe not a mistake, because if this murder happened, one of those dogs might have had something to say about it, but something that points to a very different story than the one Julia is telling.

Speaker 4:
[72:41] And this is really important because Michael lives there and he knows these, every dog may act differently, but he lives there, he knows the rhythms of these dogs. And those of you who have pets may be able to understand why this is a fact or a particular point of her story that he just can't get past. We have a cat here at our house and there's a cat that looks just like it that is a neighborhood cat. I don't know that it's wild because it's pretty well kept, but it looks a lot like my cat. I am not particularly a cat person, so I can't totally like tell cats apart. But because the cat that like lives with us never goes out. I mean, like you open the door and be like, go out, and the cat sits at the threshold, refusing to go past the threshold because she just doesn't like the outside, looks up at you, meows, and then scoots back into the house, that whenever I see the other cat that really is our cat's doppelganger, I know for a fact that cat outside in my backyard is not the cat inside. And I never even panic and say, what's the cat doing outside? Because I know it's so uncharacteristic that even if the door were wide open, this cat inside the house would never go out, that you can never convince me the cat who looks like the doppelganger is in fact my cat. So that's like my knowing of the animals inside my house.

Speaker 3:
[73:57] So we've covered a lot today, less than I thought we would. I think this is going to be a fourth episode. I know.

Speaker 4:
[74:03] I didn't think we were going to finish, but still we didn't cover as much as I thought.

Speaker 3:
[74:06] But we'll see because next episode, honestly we don't hide the ball from you. We never do. And we've talked about a lot of damning evidence. The most damning evidence though, coming next episode. We've talked about a lot of real circumstantial evidence in the traditional sense of the word. Well, this is not just a circumstantial case in the traditional sense of the word. There's a lot of physical evidence in this case, and it's going to be physical evidence that is very bad for Julia. So we're going to talk about that next time. We're going to talk about some DNA, just the state of the house, the fingernail scrapings, the blood and the wounds on Julia, and then we will get to our theories. I know you guys have a lot of thoughts on this case. It's generated a lot of discussion on the gallery. Shoot us an email at prosecutorspod at gmail.com and Prosecutors Pod for all your social media. Join the gallery, which is our fan created, fan run Facebook group on Facebook. The gallery, by the way, for those of you who don't know, in a courtroom, the place where the spectators sit is called the gallery, and that's why it's called the gallery on Facebook. If you ever wondered that, which apparently some people do, great group of people, got about 12,000 people there now, always have a lot of different ideas. Wonderful place to have discussions about this. If you want to get your episodes early and ad free, you now have two options. You can join Patreon for $3 a month, or you can join Apple subscriptions for $3 a month. Though if you want to see us record these, the only way to do that is through Patreon, also for $3 a month. By the time you hear this, it'll be, CrimeCon will be upon us by the time you hear this, which is wild to even think about. But I hope you guys will join us there. If you still haven't bought your tickets, get some, Code Prosecutors for 10% off. Or if you just want to come to Vegas and hang out, meet us, we'll be at various bars. I forget what the main one at Caesar's Palace is. We'll be there that night. Come hang out with us. Use the money you would have spent on CrimeCon to play the craps. I'll be there with you. We'll play craps together. And we'll have great time. Always bet on the pass line and back it up. That's the best odds in the casino. All right, Alice, anything else you want to add before we sign off today?

Speaker 4:
[76:30] We said this in the first episode. As you can tell, we don't hide the ball from you, but we are also following the evidence. And in this case, there is a lot of evidence. Evidence coming from Julia herself, as well as your typical CSI DNA, luminal, blood, evidence, not to mention all of the digital evidence that we've gone into today as well. There is more to come. If you don't think that this is a very clear case, I think you will be by next time. If you haven't already, we may not convince you. But this is not a case with shoddy police work, with a preordained outcome that the police wanted. You are hearing exactly what happened in the investigation interviews just hours after Jade was found brutally murdered, 104 sharp knife wounds to the body, an 11-year-old girl. There is a lot more to come. So please do tune in. We always welcome your thoughts. But it's hard not to get heated when you zoom back for a moment and think about Jade and the horrendous last moments of her life and who inflicted this upon her.

Speaker 3:
[77:35] All right, guys, we'll be back next week, maybe with the conclusion of this, maybe with the penultimate episode that we will have to see. But until then, I'm Brett.

Speaker 4:
[77:48] And I'm Alice.

Speaker 3:
[77:49] And we are The Prosecutors. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and go live. That's okay with you.

Speaker 4:
[78:16] Trying to figure out if, wait, what is happening? Is this the microphone that's doing it?

Speaker 3:
[78:22] Do you want me to go live?

Speaker 4:
[78:24] No, go ahead. I'm just trying to figure out my microphone setting.

Speaker 3:
[78:27] I see.

Speaker 4:
[78:28] Which is fine.

Speaker 3:
[78:34] Let's see, where are we at?

Speaker 4:
[78:36] No, it's good. The setting is good.

Speaker 3:
[78:39] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[78:40] Do you think people figured out April Fools or not?

Speaker 3:
[78:43] I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[78:44] I don't think they did.

Speaker 3:
[78:45] They're here. You can ask them. Trying to decide whether to go with an astronaut descriptor or a foolish descriptor. It's like...

Speaker 4:
[79:55] I want to hear everyone's April Fools.

Speaker 3:
[79:57] Celebrate or mock. It's hard for me.

Speaker 4:
[80:04] You're usually a mocker. I'll hop you there.

Speaker 3:
[80:54] We're coming at you with everything we got.

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Speaker 2:
[81:16] Huzzah!

Speaker 7:
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