Episode 4 - Suspects and Suspicions

Summary

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Hands Tied – Episode 4: Suspects and Suspicions

Podcast: Hands Tied
Host: Maggie Robinson Katz (iHeartPodcasts & BBC Studios)
Original Release: August 27, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the aftermath of Jim Melgar's violent 2012 murder and the police investigation that followed. Listeners are taken through a web of suspects, suspicions, and missed investigative opportunities, as narrated by Jim's daughter, Liz Melgar Rose, whose fascination with true crime becomes a real, personal ordeal. Host Maggie Robinson Katz and journalist Tiffany Craig help unpack Liz's efforts to uncover the truth, her skepticism toward the police, and the devastating turn when her own mother, Sandy, is charged with Jim’s murder.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Crime Scene and Early Investigations

• Neighborhood in Shock:
  • Tiffany Craig, a local reporter, describes the unusual number of neighbors at the scene and a mysterious person lingering nearby.
    • “There was someone out there that didn't belong out there...and then it's as if they just vanished.” (04:44 — Tiffany Craig)
• First Suspect: Local Ex-Convict:
  • Police briefly consider a recently released neighbor with a burglary record but drop the tip after he doesn't answer the door.
    • “Not even question this guy with a criminal record...makes anyone wary of the police investigation.” (05:05 — Maggie Robinson Katz)

2. Searching for Clues and Missing Evidence

• Home ‘Ransacked’:
  • Liz revisits her cleaned and altered childhood home, noting missing tools and valuables.
    • “The toolboxes had all been rummaged through. Some of them were empty.” (07:12 — Liz Melgar)
  • Finds stolen items listed cheaply on Craigslist, suspects external involvement.
    • "They were all being sold for like $200, which is just nothing...very suspicious." (07:22 — Liz Melgar)

3. The Tenant Lead

• Suspicious Ex-Tenant:
  • Liz contacts a former tenant, finds evidence of violence in his vacated rental, and relays her suspicions to police.
    • "He had the most melodramatic reaction...screaming and shouting and acting like his own mother has died. It just seemed very suspect to me." (10:05 — Liz Melgar)
  • Detective Carrizel does a perfunctory early-morning interview, rules out this lead quickly.
    • “It was 7:03am...the end of the interview.” (13:26 — Det. Carrizel)

4. The Safe and the Robbery Theory

• Overlooked Clue:
  • Liz discovers her father’s safe still had blood on the handle. Detective says to simply clean it.
    • “You can just clean it like we processed it. It's fine.” (14:21 — Det. Carrizel, relayed by Liz)
  • Believes the motive was robbery, not murder.
    • “The point of breaking into my family's home was not to kill anyone. It was to take money. And then things just went sideways.” (14:57 — Liz Melgar)

5. Patterns: Home Invasions in Houston

• Multiple Similar Cases:
  • Liz and journalist Tiffany Craig note increasing violent home invasions in the area, with methods echoing the Melgar case (tying up occupants, searching for safes).
    • “Multiple cases where the people are tied up...Are they related somehow?” (21:34 — Tiffany Craig)
  • Liz pinpoints one gang led by a Colombian woman targeting immigrants, with links to a high-profile local case.
    • "She [my mom] does look a lot like the person that I saw. And then I just kind of went down that rabbit hole." (24:08 — Liz Melgar)
• Dead End:
  • Liz's efforts to connect this gang to her father’s murder are inconclusive.

6. Suspecting the Unlikely: Personal Connections

• The Theory of an Acquaintance:
  • Police refocus on the likelihood of someone with knowledge of the family and home.
    • “The police said, you know, this seems more likely like it was somebody you...knew, somebody who knew the family and deliberately targeted them.” (26:23 — Maggie Robinson Katz)
  • Liz recalls a figure from her troubled youth—an ex-boyfriend with a history of drug use and a violent falling out with her father.
    • "He basically told my dad to go fuck himself very loudly on the front lawn..." (34:35 — Liz Melgar)
  • She alerts the police but isn’t sure if they ever followed up.
    • "He was never interviewed by the police." (36:01 — Liz Melgar)

7. Fractured Trust and Letdown by Police

• Being Left Out:
  • Liz grows increasingly frustrated as she hears nothing from detectives regarding leads she supplied.
    • "I was constantly calling, asking for updates...It's been months since she last heard from Detective Carousel." (36:11–36:14 — Liz Melgar & MRK)
• Turning Point: The Shocking Indictment
  • Liz receives a mailbox full of lawyers’ advertisements, realizing Sandy has been charged.
    • "As Liz sorts through the piles of mail, it dawns on her none of her detective work...mattered.” (38:05 — Maggie Robinson Katz)
  • Liz is devastated the police ignored other suspects and leads, focusing only on convicting her mom.
    • “I really started panicking when she got charged, when they started ignoring all this other evidence just to make their theory fit.” (38:52 — Liz Melgar)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Crime Scene's Oddities:

  • "There was someone out there that didn't belong...but they were there that night. And then...vanished."
    — Tiffany Craig (04:44)

• On Distrust in Police:

  • "Makes anyone wary of the police investigation. Not even question this guy with a criminal record."
    — Maggie Robinson Katz (05:05)

• On Pursuing Leads Herself:

  • "I felt like I had to kind of check their work or do their work for them...to be taken seriously."
    — Liz Melgar (09:19)

• On Frustration with the Justice System:

  • "I don't even know why they they wasted either of our time because they did nothing with what I gave them. They just ignored all of it because they'd already made up their minds."
    — Liz Melgar (38:25)

• On Her Independent Investigation:

  • “I got in touch with the victims of that crime, and talking to them...it just sounded exactly the same. No forced entry, right? Just pushing your way in ...”
    — Liz Melgar (25:20)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:03: Tiffany Craig describes being called to the scene
• 04:44: Discussion of a mysterious, out-of-place person at the crime scene
• 06:28: Liz revisits ransacked family home, missing valuables
• 10:05: Liz’s suspicion of ex-tenant and the police interview sequence
• 14:21: Discovery of blood on safe—police dismiss the evidence
• 19:39: Sandy Melgar recovers memory fragment about the assault
• 20:32: Liz connects missing drugs and cash to possible robbery motive
• 22:03: Liz uncovers Houston gang, striking similarities to Melgar case
• 24:08: Sandy tentatively identifies possible suspect from mugshot
• 34:35: Liz recounts the explosive argument between her ex and father
• 36:01: Liz notes that police never interviewed her ex-boyfriend
• 38:05: Mailbox full of lawyer ads—realization that Sandy is indicted
• 38:52: Liz’s heartbreak at the focus on Sandy as the only suspect

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Tone and Style

The episode is emotionally candid and investigative, mixing Liz Melgar’s raw, personal storytelling with Maggie Robinson Katz’s clear-eyed reporting. It blends descriptions of family trauma, police procedural missteps, and the heartbreak of seeking justice against a relentless investigative wall. Liz’s voice is analytical, vulnerable, and frequently frustrated; Maggie and Tiffany contextualize and amplify her suspicions and findings.

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Conclusion

Episode 4 of "Hands Tied" lays bare the confusion, misdirection, and grief shadowing the Melgar homicide investigation. Despite Liz’s determined amateur sleuthing and the apparent existence of alternative viable suspects, police focus remains narrowly (and, she feels, unjustly) on her mother Sandy. The episode ends with Liz’s devastation as Sandy is formally charged, reinforcing Liz’s conviction that a grave miscarriage of justice has occurred. The narrative leaves listeners with a sense of systemic failure, and a family shattered not just by loss, but by the machinery meant to protect them.

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Transcript

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[Liz Melgar]

Goodbye, BBC Studios.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Before we begin, I just want to flag that this episode includes some very strong language and references to drug taking.

[Tiffany Craig]

I was in the newsroom, and I was about to eat dinner, and I remember someone at our assignment desk. They're the ones that hear this police scanner said, hey, there's something going on in this quiet neighborhood on the northwest side of town, and we need you to go and check it out. We didn't know what it was, but we knew someone was dead.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

It's December 2012, and Tiffany Craig is halfway through her shift at a local TV station in Houston. Her dinner interrupted, she heads out to the scene of the crime.

[Tiffany Craig]

So we got to the street. Nice neighborhood, nice brick homes. We're just a couple of days before Christmas, and there were lots of families in that neighborhood that had their Christmas lights up.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Tiffany is reported live from countless crime scenes, but this case was anything but typical.

[Tiffany Craig]

There were lots of neighbors out, which doesn't happen all that often whenever we go to crime scenes. A lot of times, people lock their doors and close up, and they want nothing to do with what's going on out there. But this neighborhood was different. This sort of thing didn't happen in that neighborhood.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Tiffany joins the throng of journalists and neighbors craning their necks to see what happened.

[Tiffany Craig]

It was really busy, and there was lots of chatter, and there was lots of people out there asking, what is going on? I remember hearing one of the reporters tell an investigator that there was someone out there that didn't belong out there.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Someone snooping around the crime scene.

[Tiffany Craig]

They weren't a neighbor. They weren't really on the street for any particular reason, but they were there that night. And then it's as if they just vanished. No one ever heard about this person again. But they were on the street. And it was suspect enough that somebody that was with the group of reporters said something about it.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

It's not unheard of for a killer to return to the scene of the crime for some narcissistic kick. The police ask around to narrow in on a suspect, a local guy who'd just been released from prison with a long history of stealing and pawning things. So detectives carousel and Doucet pay him a visit. One afternoon, they knock on his door, but there's no answer. Try again two hours later, same thing. And that's it. They don't pursue this tip any further. I guess they didn't think he was a viable suspect. He lived around the corner from the Melgars and could have just been on his way home. A well known ne' er do well does not necessarily mean well known murderer. All the same, it's this kind of behavior that would make anyone wary of the police investigation. Not even question this guy with a criminal record. I can understand why Liz would maybe be cautious of trusting the work the police are actually doing. But she has no choice. She has to work with them. And that starts with searching her old house for anything that could be missing, anything that could be a possible clue.

[Liz Melgar]

In my parents room, the bed had been disassembled and moved into the living room. Even the carpet had been pulled up and the floor had been painted over where obviously there had been a lot of blood.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

If you remember, the house had already been combed over by the police and then scrubbed by the crime scene cleaning company. It's impossible to know what might have been seized as evidence and what might have been stolen.

[Liz Melgar]

And then I went into the garage because I knew my dad had all those power tools and things were missing.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

As well as finding her old backpack stuffed with the family's Xbox and other valuables taken from the house. It looks like some of her dad's tools are missing.

[Liz Melgar]

You could see that the toolboxes had all been rummaged through. Some of them were empty.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Liz checks to see if she can find any of her dad's tools being sold online.

[Liz Melgar]

There was a Craigslist ad that had three of the tools that were missing, all in one ad, exact same brand, the exact, like, everything. And they were all being sold for like $200, which is just nothing. Yeah, and not the worth of, I mean, maybe one of the tools, but it was such a low price that it was very suspicious.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

She tells the police about the cellar, wondering if this new lead will be the key to finding her dad's murderer.

[Liz Melgar]

I had a list of suspects which I did talk to the police about.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Liz is investigating every possible avenue, looking at all the possible suspects, because in her mind, there's no way on earth her mom killed her dad. And if she's gonna show the police she's right, she needs to find out who did. I'm Maggie Robinson Katz, and from BBC Studios and iHeart podcasts, this is Hands Tied episode four suspects and suspicions.

[Liz Melgar]

I wasn't surprised at first that they were looking at her, because why wouldn't you? That would be stupid not to. I was being realistic about it. I thought, okay, they're going to look into her because like 90% of the time it is the spouse.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

I mean, yeah, if we've learned anything From True Crime 101, the first person the police would suspect would be Sandy, Jim's wife.

[Liz Melgar]

And then I thought, okay, they'll look into her. They'll see that this nothing fits, that whatever evidence they have, they'll look into it and we'll move on.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Move on and start to focus on finding the real killer, Liz thinks.

[Liz Melgar]

And so I felt like I had to kind of check their work or do their work for them. I don't know, just make sure that I had covered everything and had recorded or photographed or somehow preserved everything that I had found or I had done in order for any of it to be taken seriously.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

And despite all of Liz's effort, she feels like the police are continually keeping her in the dark. She says there's been no news on the backpack and Xbox she found and no news on the missing tools. But then Liz has an aha moment. Her dad, Jim, owned a couple of rental properties. Maybe the tenants will know something.

[Liz Melgar]

So I call this guy and say, you know, I'm Jim Melgar's daughter and I just wanted to let you know that this is what has happened. And he had the most melodramatic reaction that I had been pacing back and forth. It just made me stop dead in my tracks. And I just thought, this man is like screaming and shouting and acting like his own mother has died. It just seemed very suspect to me.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

And Liz discovers this guy's behind on rent.

[Liz Melgar]

I did find something my dad had printed out saying that he was going to be evicted and Leslie could come up with the missing rent within this amount of time. And then once they left, we go into the house and there are stab marks on several of the walls and what looks like blood on some of the walls. And it's just like the place has been trashed. That's got me thinking, you know, alarm bells going. So we called the police and we did have them come.

[Detective Sean Carrizel]

Case number 12176269. This is Sean Kerrijel, Harris County Homicide, 60 Henry 39, sitting here with me. Sir, can you state your first and last name?

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

At some ungodly hour in the morning, when Detective Carrizel wakes Jim's ex tenant up for questioning.

[Detective Sean Carrizel]

And you used to rent a home from Jaime Melgar? Yes. Do you remember the address of that location? I do. It's. I thought I did. I just woke up. It's. What is that? Daniel Mattress.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

He tells the detectives he moved out a month before Jim, or Jaime, as he calls him, was murdered.

[Detective Sean Carrizel]

For November 29, 2012. Okay. Did you see him when you. When was the last time you saw Jaime Melgar? I don't remember, but it was. It had to be at least a couple of months before that. Okay.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

The house was vandalized after he moved out. He says, okay.

[Detective Sean Carrizel]

Do you know anybody that would try to hurt Bunny? Need to ever say anything that I can't. To this day, I just can't believe it. I mean, me and him talk when he came over. I mean, all I ever knew about him was he worked at a school. He worked at a school and he think. I think he told me he had two in houses. Okay. Yeah. I'm just kind of trying to get any, you know, insight on what, if anybody, everybody that knew him. That's what I was trying to meet with you today. Anything else you can think of, talk to him. I don't know why anybody would hurt him. I mean, he was just the most calmest person I've ever met. He was relaxed.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Carrizel asks a few more questions, but 20 minutes in, decides he's heard enough.

[Detective Sean Carrizel]

It's 7:03am this is going to be the end of the interview.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Another suspect struck off the list. Back to the drawing board. In January 2013, Liz and her mom decide to sell the family home. The thought of living there, too painful. Sandy has only been back once since Jim's murder, but felt terrified just being there, wanting to leave before it got too dark. So they began looking for a new place. In February, while Liz is packing up, she notices her dad's safe. She'd forgotten all about it, even though it was right there in the closet next to his body the night he was killed. She takes a closer look and notices blood on the handle.

[Liz Melgar]

So I called Detective Carrizel and I asked him about it, and he says, oh, you can just clean it like we processed it. It's fine. You can clean it off. And so I asked my husband to please do it because I just couldn't do it.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

But it gets her thinking.

[Liz Melgar]

To me, it looked like someone had tried to go into it because the keys that were normally in the safe were on the floor.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Around the same time Jim was killed, Houston was experiencing an uptick in Violent robberies where homeowners were tied up and occasionally killed.

[Liz Melgar]

I honestly believe that the point of breaking into my family's home was not to kill anyone. It was to take money. And then things just went sideways.

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[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Back when Sandy was being interviewed by the police, she told the detectives that she couldn't remember much about the night of Jim's murder. The time she says she spent lying in the closet tied up, waiting to be found. It's all vague, impressionistic. She was falling in and out of consciousness, hearing the dogs whining, realizing dimly she was tied up, then blacking out again. But then she tells Liz that a fragment of a memory has come back to her.

[Liz Melgar]

She woke up for a split second and felt somebody with their knee in her back, like pulling on her arms. So she thinks that's the moment she was being tied up, and that's when she saw someone looking at what the person behind her was doing.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Sandy says that after blacking out, she came to momentarily and saw a Hispanic woman in front of her looking at the person who was tying her up.

[Liz Melgar]

And she said this woman looked angry. And then she passed out again.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

This doesn't seem like much to go on, but for Liz, it's a game changer. Liz remembers what the house looked like. There were clothes haphazardly tossed on the bed, Dresser drawers pulled open, purses with their contents spilled out. The house looked like it had been ransacked, searched. What did that all kind of say to you?

[Liz Melgar]

I mean, it said that there was someone there who was looking to take things for money. Even in my parents room, my mom was missing medications that people normally would abuse, so barbiturates, the phenobarbital she used to take for her seizures. We didn't know if anything else was missing, like cash, because my dad always had cash on hand. But there was no cash found, so we don't know whether he had spent it or whether it was taken.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Maybe this was a robbery gone wrong.

[Tiffany Craig]

I can't give you any numbers on home invasions during that year, but I can tell you that I covered multiple.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

That's Tiffany Craig, the journalist we met earlier.

[Tiffany Craig]

Could it be another home invasion?

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

This was a rampant problem in Houston back in 2012, so bad that several task forces involved involving agencies like the FBI, Houston PD and the ATF were formed to try and stop them.

[Tiffany Craig]

We have multiple cases where the people are tied up, and you have to wonder, are they related somehow? Is there something that could tie them together?

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

The similarities hadn't escaped Liz either.

[Liz Melgar]

I was also looking for similar crimes in the area to see if anything could be tied together or if it was the same people. So I did find a few articles of similar home invasions.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

And that's when she stumbles across a report that seems kind of familiar where.

[Liz Melgar]

You know, they force their way in. When the husband came home quite late at night, they asked for safe, they asked for money. They tied the family up with items from the house, and then they used bags and baskets from the house to haul electronics away. And that's basically how they got caught, is that they were able to track one of the iPads that they stole at that home invasion. And so I really started looking into this gang.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

One of the victims, a mother, describes the family's ordeal on a neighborhood community website. She explains how she was watching TV when four armed men in ski masks burst into the house with her husband, who was coming in from work. They'd been hiding in the bushes outside and ambushed him. The family, including two boys, 14 and 12 were tied up and held hostage for two hours, she writes, while they tore up our house, threatening to hurt us if we did not give them money, not knowing if we were going to die. Tiffany remembers that case, too.

[Tiffany Craig]

I know about it because it was close to a family member of mine, and I remember hearing about it because it involved children. And I know that people were tied up, and I know they were business owners. I remember thinking, who did that? Who would do that? Who would do that to a family?

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

The police caught the getaway driver with the stolen property in the car. A mugshot has circulated across the media. It's a young Hispanic woman with dark hair. Liz reads everything she can about the case.

[Liz Melgar]

And she was, like, kind of the head of this gang of people who were going all over Houston targeting immigrant families who were more likely to keep their money at home, who had their own businesses. They hadn't killed anybody. They had hurt people, but they hadn't killed anyone.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Liz shows Sandy the woman's mugshot.

[Liz Melgar]

Her photo was in the newspaper. And my mom said, you know, she was like, I can't be 100% certain, but she does look a lot like the person that I saw. And then I just kind of went down that rabbit hole.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

And so down the rabbit hole, Liz goes and learns that this woman is from Colombia and has been sent to prison for the robbery. A Mexican man is also later convicted for his involvement. Liz follows the lead and tracks the man down. She starts writing to him in prison, even goes as far as getting him on the phone, where she records the conversation, her relative acting as translator. He tells Liz he wants to. To help her, but denies being involved in both the gang and the violent robberies, leaving Liz with yet another dead end, unable to link the Colombian woman to her dad's death. But Liz refuses to give up on that theory. What is some of the evidence that this gang could have been responsible for it?

[Liz Melgar]

So, for me, it was, you know, my mom saying she does look similar to this person, but she couldn't be 100% sure because she was out of it. She'd just been hit on the head. She was on the ground. You know, it was like a split second. And then I got in touch with the victims of that crime, and talking to them, you know, it just sounded exactly the same. No forced entry, right? Just pushing your way in. My dad had gone to get the dogs. He'd opened the door. It would have been an easy chance for someone to come in, and that would have made sense as to why the dogs were Barking was because someone was in the backyard and then just everything else, like asking for the safe. So there was a lot that stood out to me. There's a lot of similarities. But, you know, of course, I'm not the police. I can't run tests, I can't ask questions. So that was as far as I could get with it.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

But the cops aren't convinced. Homeowners were threatened with guns during home invasions, but they weren't stabbed to death.

[Liz Melgar]

The police said, you know, this seems more likely like it was somebody you.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Knew, somebody who knew the family and deliberately targeted them.

[Liz Melgar]

And that did kind of ring true to me. They knew the layout of the house and they knew where the house was located in the neighborhood. Like, it's not just on the corner, on the first turn or as soon as you get into the neighborhood. It's not like in a very obvious place. It's in one of the middle streets. It's not even on the corner. The house is. It's like in the middle of the street. You know, it's just. It just seemed to me that it was somebody that we knew.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

All of which gets Liz thinking about another potential suspect, about someone from her past, a bleak period in her life she'd rather forget.

[Liz Melgar]

I don't ever want to do that again. It was horrible. It's something that I have zero interest in ever being involved in again.

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[Liz Melgar]

So I met this guy when I was a teenager.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

It's the late 90s, the decade of boy bands, grunge and light up sneakers. God, I really wanted those.

[Liz Melgar]

We were raised in the same religion, but we were like there because our parents were there and we didn't really have any interest in being there. And so I think that's why we became friends.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Sandy and Jim brought Liz up as a Jehovah's Witness. Having converted as adults, most of their friends were Jehovah's Witnesses, and Jim was a respected elder in the community. And what was your opinion of the church?

[Liz Melgar]

It wasn't for me. Like, from a young age, I always felt like this was not for me. This is not my belief system. It just didn't fit, didn't feel right. And, you know, I was happy to humor my parents. I had planned that, you know, when I turned 18, I was gonna like slowly fade away from the church and like go off on my own.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

By the time Liz is 20, she's no longer a part of the church, but still kept in touch with the friends she's made there.

[Liz Melgar]

So me and this guy, we started hanging out and, you know, we liked similar music and we had the similar interests, so we'd hang out. There was a few people there.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

A departure from her religious upbringing, Liz started to rebel, pushing away from her overprotective parents, partying instead of praying, staying out late and experimenting with drugs, smoking a bit of weed and psychedelics.

[Liz Melgar]

And then one day one of his friends came over and I was introduced to heroin and it was all downhill from there. We ended up using for about a year straight. It was awful. I said, I can't live this way. I did things I'm not proud of. You know, I stole from my parents. I, you know, demanded certain drugs from my mom. They were mine, but she kept them because she knew I was involved in these drugs. And I remember one time I was demanding them of her and I was like, give me. They're mine. You know, I want them. And. And it's just things that I would not normally do. I don't recognize that person.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

And neither did her parents placing a lot of the blame on Liz's friend. He changed her, took away their daughter and put a strain on their marriage, causing endless arguments on what to do with Liz, how to help her, and how to get this guy out of her life.

[Liz Melgar]

They hated him. Yeah, my dad hated him, and he made no secret of it. My mother, on the other hand, was a bit smarter about it because she wanted to make sure that we still came to her and that she was in our lives. Because she knew that if she pushed back, then I would push back and I might just leave or disappear. The last time I saw him, my dad actually told him. He said, you're entitled. You're lazy. You don't work. You think other people should pay your way. You're a loser. Get out of my house.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

That didn't go down so well.

[Liz Melgar]

He basically told my dad to go fuck himself very loudly on the front lawn and then peeled out and left. And I didn't see him again for a very long time.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Liz doesn't shy away from who she is or her troubled past. She's honest that in her younger years, she was kind of an asshole. But once this guy leaves her life, she's able to use this as an opportunity to not only get clean, but stay clean. Rebuild her relationship with her dad, start a new life for herself, meet her husband Anthony, move to England, and try to forget about her past. But now that she finds herself back in Texas, the memories of this time keep flooding back. And Liz starts to wonder if this person who caused so much turmoil in her life could have been responsible. Could he have killed her? Dad tried to rob the house and things went wrong.

[Liz Melgar]

You know, he hated my dad. My dad was dead and my mom was still alive. And then again, the police had said that because of the layout of the neighborhood and where the house was positioned, that it seemed that it was somebody we knew and not just a random hit. And it just seemed very personal, like a angry type of violent death.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

According to Liz, she shared this info of the police on the day they first interviewed her. She doesn't know if they actually pursued this tip. The guy was never interviewed by the police.

[Liz Melgar]

I was constantly calling, asking for updates.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

But the cops aren't returning her calls or replying to emails. It's been months since she last heard from Detective Carousel.

[Liz Melgar]

I remember it was October, and I asked the lead detective to get an update, and he said, you know, there's one more thing I'm waiting on. I'll call you right back. And then I never heard from him again.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

It's now July 2014, 18 months after Jim's murder. Liz and her mom are trying to rebuild their lives without him. But as they move through the normal rhythms of day to day life, work, errands, dinners together, Jim's absence is acutely felt. Especially as Liz welcomes her first child into the world. A daughter who will never know her grandfather, Jim. Losing a parent is hard enough, but this existential loss of mourning, something that you never even got to have, that can make anyone feel cheated, robbed. And the lack of information from the police is hardly making things easier. But as time goes on, they get used to it and just have to assume they are busy investigating other leads, identifying other suspects. Until one day when Liz is on her way home.

[Liz Melgar]

I had dropped my husband off at the airport for a business trip and I was going back to the house and there was like one of those community mailboxes at the front of the neighborhood.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Think of this kind of like the rows of mailboxes in an apartment complex with each house in the neighborhood getting its own locked compartment.

[Liz Melgar]

So I went and I opened the mailbox and it had just been rampacked, full of like lawyers flyers asking to take on our case and to represent us in court.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

What? Our case? What's going on? Represent us? Why is their mailbox filled with letters from lawyers? As Liz sorts through the piles of mail, it dawns on her none of her detective work finding possible other suspects mattered.

[Liz Melgar]

I don't even know why they they wasted either of our time because they did nothing with what I gave them. They just ignored all of it because they'd already made up their minds.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

The one thing she feared most happens. Her mom Sandy is charged with the murder of Jim Melgar. The life Liz and Sandy were trying to rebuild after the loss of Jim shattered.

[Liz Melgar]

I really started panicking when she got charged, when they started ignoring all this other evidence just to make their theory fit.

[Maggie Robinson Katz]

You've been listening to Hands Tied, a new eight part true crime series from BBC Studios and I heart podcasts. New episodes will be released weekly, so subscribe or follow on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out. If you like the show, please help us by spreading the word or giving us a five star review. I'm Maggie Robinson Katz and the producer is Maggie Latham. Sound design in mix is by Tom Brignall. Our script consultant is Emma Wetherall. Production support is from Dan Marchini, Elena Boateng and Mabel Finnegan Wright. And our production executive is Laura Jordan Rowell. The series was developed by Anya Saunders and emma Shaw. At iHeart, the managing executive producer is Christina Everett and for BBC Studios the executive Producer is Joe Kent. James Cook is the Creative Producer Director of factual for BBC Studios Audio and the director of audio at BBC Studios is Richard Knight.

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[Maggie Robinson Katz]

Ah come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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Whoa. This thing moves.

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[Maggie Robinson Katz]

This is an iHeart podcast.