Post Mortem | Justine’s Voice

Summary

Post Mortem | Justine’s Voice – Summary

Introduction to the Case

In the gripping episode titled “Post Mortem | Justine’s Voice” of the acclaimed CBS News podcast 48 Hours, host Ann Marie Green delves deep into the harrowing case of Justine Vandershute. In 2003, Justine disappeared from her parents' home in Auburn, California, sparking a complex investigation that would uncover dark secrets and lead to life-altering consequences for those involved.

The Discovery and Investigation

The investigation took a pivotal turn with the involvement of Matt Scribner, an equestrian who first discovered a freshly dug hole at the crime scene. As Natalie Morales points out, “[Matt Scribner] was key to the testimony in this case by giving that timeline of when he saw this freshly dug hole and then going back later and seeing a mattress and debris covering that hole” (02:23). The unique perspective Matt provided, being on horseback, was crucial in identifying and accessing the difficult-to-reach burial site. Producer Gyanne Kashestian Mendez adds, “Matt was the only one who was able to lead us every single time because he just grew up on these trails” (03:08).

The area surrounding the site was notoriously hard to access, predominantly known as a dumping ground frequented by unhoused populations. The presence of debris and an abandoned trailer made it plausible for items like a mattress to be found there, as highlighted by Gyanne: “From what we've been told... it was really a dumping ground” (05:23).

The Suspects: Danny Besumer and Brandon Fernandez

Swiftly, law enforcement zeroed in on Justine’s boyfriend, Danny Besumer, and his roommate, Brandon Fernandez. The team's investigation revealed a troubling dynamic between the suspects and Justine. According to Gyanne, the prosecution noted, “they had a fascination with violence, with murder... they looked into beating polygraphs” (07:13). This unsettling discovery painted a picture of individuals who not only had violent inclinations but also actively entertained the idea of committing heinous acts.

Natalie elaborates on the toxic relationship dynamics, stating, “there was some history there with Brandon not liking Justine... there was this tense and toxic relationship in this sort of triangle” (07:57). The emotional turmoil among the trio reached a boiling point when Brandon allegedly encouraged Danny to take drastic measures, leading to the tragic outcome.

The Interrogation and Key Evidence

A significant breakthrough in the case came during Brandon Fernandez’s four and a half-hour interrogation with the FBI. In a poignant moment, Brandon wrote letters to Justine’s parents, Don and Lynette Vandershute, which he read aloud to investigators. Ann Marie describes the revelation: “Brandon sorta casting himself as a hero... he was witnessing her take her last breaths. He did nothing to stop that from happening” (10:53). This act was seen by the prosecution as Brandon attempting to rewrite his role in the crime, as he stated, “I did not want any of this to happen... I have protected those she loves” (09:55).

FBI interrogator Jeff Reineck commented on Brandon’s behavior, noting, “it was almost as if he was trying to rewrite... As if Brandon was trying to rewrite his role in what happened” (11:33). This behavior further solidified the prosecution's stance on Brandon’s culpability.

Legal Proceedings and Plea Deals

Ultimately, both Danny Besumer and Brandon Fernandez accepted plea deals, resulting in life sentences. This legal resolution, however, left lingering questions and a sense of injustice among Justine’s family. The Vandershoots, who had welcomed Danny into their home and trusted him implicitly, were devastated to learn the true nature of his character and actions.

Impact on Justine's Family

The emotional toll on Justine's family has been immense. Natalie Morales reflects on their ongoing struggle: “their emotions have really run the gamut... anger in there, but a determination to make sure these guys don't get out” (13:52). The family's journey through multiple court hearings has forced them to relive the trauma repeatedly, intensifying their pain and anger.

Gyanne highlights the family's resilience, stating, “they are incredibly brave... turning their pain into something positive and good” (18:44). The Vandershoots have channeled their grief into advocacy, establishing Justine’s Law to educate teenagers about the dangers of toxic relationships and teen dating violence.

Advocacy and Legislative Efforts

In response to the legal challenges faced by Brandon Fernandez, California amended its laws in 2018 to reduce the culpability of defendants who did not directly commit murder. This change aimed to provide relief to individuals who were inadvertently involved in crimes, such as getaway drivers or accomplices. However, the Vandershoots argue that this amendment inadvertently benefits those like Brandon Fernandez, whom they believe do not fit the criteria the law was intended to protect.

Gyanne explains, “the way that the law was written allowed someone like Brandon, who they say absolutely is not deserving and doesn't fit the bill” (16:32). The family's frustration is palpable as they navigate the judicial system, advocating for victims' rights and pushing back against legislative changes they perceive as unjust.

Reflections and Conclusions

The episode concludes with a poignant reflection on the broader implications of Justine Vandershute’s case. Natalie Morales emphasizes the importance of recognizing red flags in relationships: “there are telltale signs and there are red flags” (20:17). The Vandershoots’ efforts to educate others about these signs serve as a beacon of hope, aiming to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Producer Gyanne adds a personal touch, mentioning her own family’s awareness of Justine’s story: “she knows Justine Vandershute's name. She knows her story... help even one person, one family from having to go through what they have gone through” (21:08). This commitment underscores the enduring impact of Justine’s legacy and the family's unwavering dedication to turning their pain into a force for positive change.

Conclusion

“Post Mortem | Justine’s Voice” is a deeply moving exploration of a tragic crime and its far-reaching effects. Through meticulous reporting and heartfelt discussions, 48 Hours not only unravels the complex layers of the case but also highlights the resilience of a family determined to honor their daughter’s memory by advocating for change and raising awareness about the dangers of toxic relationships.

Transcript

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[Ann Marie Green]

Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, Ann Marie Green, and today we're going to be discussing the case of Justine Vandershute, who in 2003 went missing from her parents home in Auburn, California. Now, law enforcement quickly suspected Justine's boyfriend and his roommate. With me here to discuss this case is 48 Hours correspondent Natalie Morales and producer Gyanne Kashestian Mendez. Thank you so much for joining us again, ladies.

[Natalie Morales]

Good to be with you, Annemarie.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

Thanks for having us.

[Ann Marie Green]

So listen as usual, everyone, a reminder to you that if you haven't listened to this 48 hours episode, you can certainly find the full audio version just below this episode in your podcast feed. So go take a listen or go watch it wherever you get your 48 hours and then come on back for this conversation. You start the hour with a conversation with Matt Scribner. He's the equestrian who had actually first spotted first a freshly dug hole in the ground, and later he goes back and it looks a lot different. You're on horseback. And I think that something that maybe might be missed is that this is an area that's actually kind of hard to get to.

[Natalie Morales]

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And Matt Scribner, you know, he was key to the testimony in this case by giving that timeline of when he saw this freshly dug hole and then going back later and then seeing a mattress and debris covering that hole. Now, what was really intriguing about this is that, you know, had he not been 8 or 10ft above ground on a horse, he probably might not have seen that. But I loved being able to do the interview on horseback because, you know, that's how he saw it. And it also provided for us a little bit of a different element and a way into this investigation than we normally do.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

A key element of the case is that this location was so hard to get to, at least the prosecution argued, and Brandon being able to lead detectives right to it without any hesitation in the dark, through sort of rugged terrain. Even the investigator, the original investigator on the case, didn't know how to get there. Matt was the only one who was able to lead us every single time because he just grew up on these trails, and so he knew it like. Like the back of his hand. There's a couple of road signs, but once you're there to actually get to the spot where the burial site is, there, there is nothing marking it. It's just sort of feeling your way and knowing where to go. And he couldn't really give us ver. We had to have Matt as a guide every time, and he was just very generous in doing that.

[Ann Marie Green]

And I learned something about you, Natalie. I did not know that you were an equestrian yourself. And the horses are pretty interesting as well.

[Natalie Morales]

Yes. Oh, my gosh. The horses are incredible creatures. They are. I think both of them were wild mustangs that had been, you know, tamed or broken. And the horse that Matt Scribner was riding, his name was Astro. And they were so amazing to be on, but also so relaxed and chill, surprisingly, given that we had camera crews all around them. And also we used drones. And we were a little concerned using the drones, because I don't know if you know this, but when they round up wild mustangs, they. They fly helicopters over them. And so there was some concern that the drone and that sound that they make, you know, that buzzing noise, might freak the horses out a little bit. Thankfully, you know, we kept the drones far away from them. The horses seemed to be pretty fine with it. And so we got the footage that we needed, and we were able to do the interview, and it. It all came out great.

[Ann Marie Green]

When I saw kind of the image of the debris, I thought, is that a mattress? What is that? And then I thought, how do you even get stuff out there? You know, what was this place like back then?

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

From what we've been told, and also from some of the evidence photos we've seen, you know, back in the early 2000s, and this crime happened in 2003, it was really a dumping ground, you know, where you would have maybe unhoused populations coming through. There was an abandoned trailer there, so just all kinds of debris. And so a mattress was really not out of place.

[Ann Marie Green]

Wow. So let's talk about the suspects. Because police, you know, identify them pretty quickly. Danny Besumer and Brandon Fernandez. It's not uncommon for investigators to look immediately to a boyfriend or a partner. A little less common for them to also suspect the roommate. You know, tell me about these two guys.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

Sheriff's detectives tell us that they zeroed in on these guys early on. And one of the reasons being is that they did everything together. According to the people in the inner circle in the know who knew Danny, Brandon and Justine. And they found out that they were lying about their alibi that night. So that was sort of a big red flag right away that led them to look at these guys. But as they looked at them, they discovered that they had this fascination with violence, with murder. They talked about being able to kill people and get away with it. They looked into beating polygraphs. Brandon was said to have a website that sort of ranked levels of violence. And based on the, you know, the witness accounts of what they had seen was pretty startling, disturbing stuff.

[Natalie Morales]

Yeah, they were very close friends. They lived together, as you said. And according to investigators, you know, there was some history there with Brandon not liking Justine. And also according to Christine, Justine's sister, Justine had believed that Brandon had been cheating on his girlfriends in the past, so she didn't like him either. So, you know, there definitely was this tense and toxic relationship in this sort of triangle between Danny and Brandon, and Justine being the one in the middle. According to Danny's testimony, he at one point was so heartbroken because he believed that Justine was cheating on him, he was thinking of taking his own life. But Brandon said, why kill yourself? Why don't you kill her instead? So that's sort of where this plan came about.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

But the defense denies that Brandon ever said anything to encourage him.

[Ann Marie Green]

So all of that stuff kind of goes to motive, right? A fascination with violence. Have they been in trouble with the law before? Because that is quite a leap to go from having a fascination with murder and actually committing one.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

Prosecutors tell us that there was nothing serious, criminally serious in these guys backgrounds, but they both had brushes with the law. As juveniles, Danny reportedly had been involved in some burglaries and possession of stolen property. Brandon had been prosecuted for hacking. He was a. He was a computer whiz. So we don't have access to their juvenile Records, obviously. But, you know, again, prosecution says nothing that would lead you to believe that they could be dangerous on this level.

[Ann Marie Green]

So initially, Danny and Brandon say they're each other's alibis. Right. And that doesn't work out for them. So then Danny claims that Brandon was the mastermind of Justine's murder. And Brandon claimed that he had just participated in the cleanup and, you know, the coverup in the weeks afterwards. So let's talk about this four and a half hour interrogation between Brandon and the FBI. First, he says he saw Justine after she was dead. And then he describes her breathing, which would indicate that she was actually alive as she was breathing. So he must have seen her while she was alive as well. And then at the end of this interrogation, he writes one letter to Justine and one letter to her parents and reads it to. Investigators did not make it into the hour. I want to play some of that right now.

[Brandon Fernandez]

This is to the parents, Don and Lynette. I want you to know that your daughter's death has not been in vain. I want you to know that I made promises to Justine. I prayed for her. I did not want any of this to happen. I didn't know it was going to happen. I lied to you because I could not break my promises to Justine. I promised her I would indigenous her death. I have. I've protected those she loves. I was so scared. I wanted to let you know. Everything you knew. I knew dawn. It hurt you. You knew. I was scared. I lost two friends in one night. I lost Justine and I lost Danny. I was left with protecting everybody else. I care. I do. I am sorry it had to be this way.

[Ann Marie Green]

Wow.

[Natalie Morales]

As you heard there, Brandon sort of casting himself as a hero. The prosecution felt this was sort of a telling reaction because if Brandon was truly so fearful of Danny that he felt powerless to be able to stop him or to go for help, he should have cast himself as the victim in the letter. And his narrative was sort of like, I'm the avenger in her death and you know, I'm going to do right by you. But yet he was witnessing her take her last breaths. He did nothing to stop that from happening.

[Ann Marie Green]

Absolutely. What did the FBI agents who interrogated him think?

[Natalie Morales]

Yeah, Jeff Reineck, I mean, he is a skilled interrogator. And he. He told us that he usually has people write a letter to the victims at the end or to their families. And so this is sort of part of his strategy, I guess, in a way, to maybe see what they reveal, you know, in writing and. And he said that, you know, it was almost as if he was trying to rewrite. As if Brandon was trying to rewrite his role in what happened.

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[Ann Marie Green]

Welcome back, everyone. Danny Besumer and Brandon Fernandez ultimately took plea deals, and they're currently serving life sentences in prison. What was it like for Justine's family to realize that this young man that they welcomed into their home was nothing like who he had presented himself to be to them?

[Natalie Morales]

The vandershoots did everything to include Danny. He had a key to the house. He was welcomed to their home whenever he wanted to come in. Don gave him a job at the Mercedes Benz dealership where he worked. So he hooked him up, and this is what happened to them.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

I think their emotions have really run the gamut over the last two decades, having to kind of relive this over and over again every time that they have to face these guys at a parole hearing or now with Brandon, the second go around for the petition to be resentenced. So it's just really hard to encapsulate what they're feeling because it's just such a range of emotions. You know, obviously anger in there, but a determination to make sure these guys don't get out.

[Ann Marie Green]

You guys use a lot of the local news coverage from when she initially was missing. I thought it was so unnerving because you see him, right? You see Danny, and we've seen this before, you know, appealing to the cameras for help. But he's not just doing that. He's trying to throw investigators off. And he does it flawlessly. He doesn't look nervous. It is absolutely chilling.

[Natalie Morales]

It's chilling. It is chilling. And I said to Guyane, like, I kept looking at his eyes, trying to read his body language, trying to get a sense of where was his mindset? Like, what was he possibly thinking, being able to do that, go in front of the media. The way he was holding up her picture and saying, I did everything for that girl. And let's not forget he had dinner with the Vandershoots on the night that he was planning to then take their daughter into that forested area and kill her. The level of depravity and sickness is. Is just so outrageous.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

I think it's important to point out, too, that the defense kind of uses Danny's commitment to this lie and just the way that he's able to do it so flawlessly. And to say that, you know, this is the guy, this is the real danger here. And trying to use that as an argument to say that Brandon was duped by him just as much as Justine was.

[Ann Marie Green]

But that is the argument that Brandon Fernandez is still using, that his sentence should be adjusted. Which brings us to sort of the other part of this hour, Right, A change in the law. You mentioned in the hour. In 2018, the California law was changed to reduce the fault of defendants who didn't actually commit the murder do the killing. Let's just explain, you know, the change in the law.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

We're told that the law was intended to give relief to people who were inadvertently, unintentionally involved in a murder where they neither intended to kill and they didn't actually do the killing, like a getaway driver in a robbery gone bad. And then those people used to be prosecuted at the same level as the person who actually pulled the trigger. This law was intended to fix that. And unfortunately, according to, you know, prosecutors and Justine's family, the way that the law was written allowed someone like Brandon, who they say absolutely is not deserving and doesn't fit the bill on this, to apply and to be given a chance to actually make his case to a judge. If you listen to Brandon's defense attorney, he's exactly the kind of person for whom the law was intended, because he says Brandon didn't commit the crime, that he saw Justine as Brandon, Danny had already killed her and then was so scared that he did what Danny told him, helped dig the grave, bury her, and then proceeded to lie to cover it up for over two weeks.

[Natalie Morales]

I mean, he's serving a life sentence now. He wanted his life sentence thrown out and to be re sentenced as what they call an accessory after the fact. So basically saying, you know, I didn't mean to do this. I didn't take part in it, I just was there and it happened.

[Ann Marie Green]

Right. And so as a result, the Van Der Shoots have had to kind of like, reopen this wound over and over and over again.

[Natalie Morales]

Seven times in seven years. They'd been to court. You know, they took a plea deal because they thought that would be the easiest way to not have to relive the horrific details of their daughter's murder. And yet now they're having to do that over and over again.

[Ann Marie Green]

So how is Justine's family doing today?

[Natalie Morales]

I mean, they're incredibly brave, and I would say the Vandershoots are among the strongest family I've met because they are taking what is such a horrific loss and their pain, and they're turning it into something positive and good. They have, along with the prosecutor's office, enacted Justine's law to help educate teens in high schools across the state of California on teen dating violence, which, unfortunately, is becoming more prevalent, as we know, with social media. They're really trying to turn the page on something that was so tragic in their lives and really doing something powerful with it instead and really, hopefully making an impact in a positive way to remember their daughter.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

The judge, when he issued the ruling in this case, pointed out that, you know, it can seem unfair, the law, the justice system can seem unfair to victims families. And they definitely that resonates with them because they feel that it's only the rights of people like their daughter's murderers that are being protected with the constant, you know, evolution of these laws that provide more protection and more relief. And so they've been advocating for victims rights, and they've been working with, you know, the sheriff's office as well as the DA's office from the beginning to raise money and just to raise awareness.

[Natalie Morales]

We're all parents of teenagers, tweenagers, even here. And, you know, you have daughters. I have a son who's 16 and an older son as well. And it is something that, you know, you don't necessarily really think about, you know, them getting into a toxic relationship that could lead to something so horrific. But there are telltale signs and there are red flags. And in hindsight, Justine's family, they're trying to point those out because there were signs of controlling behavior.

[Ann Marie Green]

It really made me kind of question myself. Have I had these conversations with my daughter? Should I. What's the language I should be using? I just. And I thought, you know, it's not a conversation that my mom ever had with me about toxic relationships and red flags, but it may be time to have that conversation.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

We really wanted to give people something to think about and to also, you know, spread the word on what the family's trying to do. But, you know, doing these murders, I have an almost 13 year old daughter and I tried to shield her from some of the really horrific stuff, you know, and this definitely is at the top of the list. But she knows Justine Vandershute's name. She knows her story. And even though she's too young to be dating, it's just, you know, it seemed like a natural thing for her to be aware of. I think Natalie and I, and obviously Justine's family, they just want to be able to help even one person, one family from having to go through what they have gone through with this just by paying attention to the signs that were right there.

[Ann Marie Green]

Absolutely. And it absolutely will. Natalie Guyann, thank you very much.

[Natalie Morales]

Thank you.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

Thank you.

[Ann Marie Green]

If you like this series postmortem, please rate and review 48 hours on Apple Podcasts and follow 48 hours wherever you get your podcast. You can also listen ad free with the 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Thanks. Thanks again for listening.

[Gyanne Kashestian Mendez]

Streaming on Paramount plus.

[Morris Chestnut]

Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery.

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We don't know what we're looking for.

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Their bodies are the scene of the crime. Their symptoms and history are clues.

[Natalie Morales]

You saved her life.

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We're doctors and we're detectives.

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