Murder at the Bike Shop | Ep. 4 – Bondo Beast

Summary

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Proof: A True Crime Podcast

Season 3, Episode 4 – "Bondo Beast"

Release Date: February 9, 2026
Hosts: Susan Simpson & Jacinda Davis
Main Subjects: The aftermath of Earl O'Byrne’s murder, witness recollections, and the tangled web of evidence, memory, and law in the case of Scott Baldwin—and a parallel wrongful conviction case in Kalamazoo’s cold case files.

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Episode Overview

In "Bondo Beast," Susan Simpson and Jacinda Davis dive deeper into the case of Scott Baldwin, convicted in the 1988 murder of Earl O’Byrne at a Kalamazoo bike shop. The episode explores Scott’s life, the cold case detectives’ methods, the credibility of critical evidence, and the wider context of cold case prosecutions in Kalamazoo. Through firsthand accounts and legal analysis, the episode unpacks the system’s reliance on unreliable confessions, dubious witness testimony, and potentially undisclosed exculpatory evidence. A parallel story echoes these themes in the conviction of Roberto Davanzo, shedding light on systemic issues in local cold case prosecutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Scott Baldwin’s Life Trajectory—From Youth to Arrest

[01:04–04:29]

• Scott Baldwin, at 19, was troubled: dropped out, minor crimes, tumultuous relationships.
• His recollections (from prison letters and interviews) indicate regret about his behavior:

  "I was kind of a dick back then and I played around and I was a good looking fellow and I’d go meet a couple girls here or there.” – Scott Baldwin [02:12]

• Scott’s relationship with Stacy ended when he was jailed for check fraud, which she helped orchestrate. She later testified against him in the murder case.
• After release, Scott married, started a family, and became a system admin; he distanced himself from past behaviors.

2. The Cold Case Interrogation and Tactics

[05:44–09:32]

• In 2001, police lured Scott to the station under false pretenses (Stacy was supposedly missing or dying).
• After hours, police revealed their true intent:

  “The real reason you’re here is that [Stacy] told us you admitted that you killed Earl O’Byrne in 1988.” – Det. Workemine to Scott [06:18]

• Scott was shocked, insisting he knew nothing about the murder:

  “I didn’t do this. I know nothing about it. I have no idea why Stacy would say I did.” – Scott Baldwin [08:56]

• Despite being allowed to leave, Scott was arrested a few weeks later.

3. Family Fallout and Relationships Post-Conviction

[10:02–15:56]

• Scott details the strain on his children—especially with his autistic son and his eldest, Cody, who felt abandoned.
• Cody describes the shame and confusion:

  “I did resent a lot of his life choices... I felt like he abandoned me as much as that he was taken away. He was taken away.” – Cody [13:44]

• As Cody got older, learned about Scott's troubled youth, and heard Stacy's accusations, doubts crept in.

4. Dissection of Evidence and Witness Stories

[16:33–31:41]

• Scott and his legal team felt confident prior to trial: witness descriptions and vehicle sighting reports didn’t match Scott or his Jeep.

  “The light-colored vehicle with rectangle headlights—found a 1977 Jeep CJ7 jeeps. 1977 had round headlights.” – Scott Baldwin [17:08]

• Stacy’s account of events (e.g., Scott bouncing a check to buy auto parts) was unsupported—no such account or check existed.
• The so-called murder weapon: Stacy claimed Scott returned with a bloody stick; Missy Jarsma, another witness, corroborated seeing a red-stained stick.
• Scott says the item was not a murder weapon, but a paint stick covered in red Bondo, not blood:

  “It was a stick I was using to stir the Bondo.” – Scott Baldwin [26:50]
  “That red cream filler... is a shiny bright red. Especially from a distance, I think it could be mistaken for blood.” – Susan Simpson [28:15]

• Scott says he tossed it away angrily after ruining the filler job, not to hide evidence.

5. Systemic Issues: Evidence Disclosure and Prosecution Practices

[31:41–36:33]

• Shortly before trial, a Silent Observer tip surfaced: a landlord found a bloody wrench in the home of a disgruntled former bike shop employee (not Scott).
• Prosecution failed to disclose this and other potentially exculpatory evidence, but Scott’s original defense did not formally request pre-trial discovery.

  “Why would you not ask for discovery in a case like this?... Put it in writing.” – Olivia Vigiletti (Scott’s post-conviction attorney) [34:37–34:56]

• Chief Judge Gary Dogger reflects on his time as a defense attorney, acknowledging that sometimes police failed to provide all information even to the prosecutor—casting doubt on full transparency in these cases.

  “Whether Scott Brower always got all of the information that the police had, that’s where the questions remain in my mind and in other people’s minds and other cases.” – Judge Dogger [36:18]

6. A Pattern of Questionable Cold Case Convictions: The Davanzo Case

[36:33–48:19]

• The podcast parallels Scott’s case with that of Roberto Davanzo, convicted of hiring a hitman to kill his girlfriend, Patty Lang, despite being in prison at the time of the murder.
• All physical evidence for a hired killer was missing; case relied on a confession (later recanted and ruled inadmissible) and testimony from jailhouse informants who contradicted each other.

  “Who is the hitman?” – Susan Simpson [39:37]
  “Nobody ever looks into that.” – Judge Dogger [39:41] “I made a terrible story up that afternoon... I didn’t kill Patty Lang.” – Roberto Davanzo [41:32–41:48]

• Police, having ruled out other suspects, structured the case to fit their theory, and cold case convictions in Kalamazoo frequently depended on shaky witness or informant evidence.

7. Silent Observer Tip Controversy and Withheld Leads

[52:37–55:59]

• Defense sought all “Silent Observer” tips in Scott’s case. The court allowed less than a third to be turned over.

  “Prosecutor Stuart Fenton argued that he had no obligation to inform defendants of any tips called into Silent observer about their case. The court largely agreed with him.” – Jacinda Davis [54:59]

• Many tips potentially implicating others were never revealed to the defense, a decision justified in the name of tipster anonymity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the burden of wrongful conviction:

  “It’s always embarrassing when people ask, ‘What do your parents do?’... I have this curse of, I’m kind of like my father. I’m a bit of an open book, and so it’s like, ‘He’s in prison,’ and the next thing you know, I’m that guy.” – Cody [14:34]

• On the power of accusation vs. evidence:

  “A confession is not an answer... You should not believe them unless you find evidence that what they are saying is true. Because false confessions happen all too often.” – Susan Simpson [43:55]

• On the role of jailhouse informants:

  “I personally don’t think any jailhouse informant should be a witness necessarily, but, yeah, that’s all they've got.” – Susan Simpson [52:07]

• On the dangers of prosecutorial assumptions:

  “If you trust the prosecutor and good. If you do, put it in writing.” – Olivia Vigiletti [34:56]

• When a case becomes personal for a judge:

  “I’ve never really forgotten about the case and it’s always been just there in the background as one of the things that made me the lawyer that I am and the judge that I am now...” – Judge Dogger [36:47]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Scott Baldwin’s Early Life & Relationships: [01:04–04:29]
• 2001 Police Interrogation: [05:44–09:32]
• Father-Son Reflections on Prison & Shame: [10:02–15:56]
• Disputing Key Physical Evidence (the 'bloody stick'): [22:36–28:40]
• Legal Discovery and Withheld Evidence: [31:41–36:33]
• Parallel Case: Roberto Davanzo’s Wrongful Conviction: [36:33–48:19]
• Silent Observer Tips and their Relevance: [52:37–55:59]

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Episode Tone & Style

The hosts maintain a probing, analytical, and empathetic tone throughout—balancing legal technicalities with the emotional toll on families and defendants. They emphasize the fallibility of memory, the danger of narrative-driven investigations, and the stakes of hidden or misunderstood evidence.

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Takeaway

"Bondo Beast" exposes a web of shaky eyewitness testimony, unreliable confessions, and systemic opacity in cold case prosecutions. The episode urges listeners to consider how easy it is for the justice system to go awry when unchecked assumptions, flawed investigative practices, and limited access to evidence converge—often with irrevocable consequences for the accused and their families.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[B]

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[A]

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[C]

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[A]

When Earla Byrne was killed, Scott Baldwin was 19 years old. And at 19, it is fair to say that Scott did not have his shit together. He had dropped out of school, was bouncing between jobs, committing crimes like stealing things out of cars. Scott's love life at the time was also an absolute mess.

[D]

The woman had a hold on me for some reason. I don't know what the hell it was.

[A]

So Scott said that even at the time, his friends had wondered why he insisted on dating his on again, off again girlfriend, Stacy.

[D]

Why is Scott hanging out with a stripper and a dope head at that? Because when I met her, I didn't know she was a dope hat. I just knew she was a pretty girl and I was, oh cool, she's a stripper. We'd stay at my mother's, my mother got tired of her, kicked us out. We went and stayed at her sister's for a little bit. That didn't work. We'd go together for two or three weeks and then we'd break up for two or three weeks.

[A]

Stacy hadn't been the only girl that Scott was seeing at the time either. I have a collection of letters that Scott wrote from prison over the decades. And in one of them he refers to himself as kind of a man whore. And well, I'm not going to argue with him on that one.

[D]

I know that me and my current wife were dating at the same time as long as my ex wife and a couple other girls. I was kind of a dick back then and I played around and I was a good looking fellow and I'd go meet a couple girls Here or there.

[A]

Somehow, though, Scott and Stacey kept finding their way back to each other. They got back together for the last time In June of 1989, almost exactly a year after Earl O' Byrne was killed. And Scott said that while driving around Kalamazoo together, they'd stolen a purse out of a woman's car and. And found a checkbook inside.

[D]

She goes, here, take this to the bank. Cash it. So she wrote the check out. And that's when I got caught at the bank cashing the stolen check. I told my attorney and my girlfriend had something to do with it. We stole the check. She wrote them out, I cashed them. She's like, don't have anything to do with her. Don't talk to her.

[A]

That's when Scott and Stacey broke up for good. He never saw her again until she testified against him at his murder trial 12 years later. After getting caught trying to cash that forged check, Scott went to jail for six months.

[D]

I went to jail for it. Got out, got with my wife Tracy, had kids, had a clean life, kept a clean life. That's why this is unreal.

[A]

Scott hadn't known that shortly after their final breakup, Stacy had gone to the police and told them he'd confessed to killing Earl O'. Byrne. He wouldn't find that out until 2001, when the Kalamazoo Cold case team came to talk to him about it. I'm Susan Simpson.

[C]

And I'm Jacinda Davis.

[A]

I'm an attorney and investigator.

[C]

And I'm a true crime TV producer.

[A]

And this is Proof, Season three, Murder at the Bike Shop. Proof is a Red Marble Media production in association with Glassbox Media.

[C]

New episodes are released on Mondays and on Thursdays. You can catch our sidebar episodes where we talk about the case, talk to guests, and tell you more about what's going on behind the scenes.

[A]

This is episode four, Bondo Beast.

[C]

After getting out of jail in 1990, Scott Baldwin got his shit together. Mostly. He got married, got a job, started a family. Kevin and I spoke to his oldest son, Cody, not long after his dad died.

[A]

Yeah, he definitely wasn't the same person he was 13 years earlier.

[E]

No, no, not at all.

[C]

Cody had been nine when his dad was arrested. Old enough to still have clear memories about what life had been like before all of this.

[E]

He was a fun dad. He was, you know, super involved with me when I was. I was the only kid, and it was really good. He used to be just a nerd. He sat on the computer all day, and me and him would play computer Games. He was always. He was big into coding. He liked to do coding and animations and stuff.

[C]

He was sort of, you know, coding before coding was a real thing.

[E]

Yes. He had some really nice jobs out of that.

[C]

In January of 2001, Scott was working as a system administrator for a web company. That's where the cold case team found him when they went to interrogate him. Only they didn't tell Scott. That's why they were there.

[D]

Detective workemine Madsen showed up my office, and they said, hey, we're investigating a missing person report. We think it's somebody that you might know. You ever heard from Stacy? And I said, why? I think, well, she's dying of cancer and her family are worried about it. And we thought maybe she contacted you. Can you come to the police station?

[C]

Stacy did not have cancer and she wasn't missing. That was all a ruse to get Scott to agree to come down to the police station. It worked.

[D]

Let me call my wife and tell my wife. And I said, tell Tracy. You remember that crazy girl Stacy? She's missing, and they want to find out where she's at. Can I come to the station? Help? So can you go get the kids from school? And she goes, yeah, go help them. So I went there, and after two hours of talking to me, they all said, hey, well, the real reason you're here is that she told us you admitted that you killed Earl O' Byrne in 1988, and we actually brought you in here to investigate you for the murder of Earl o'. Byrne.

[A]

The cold case team's interrogation of Scott went on for several hours. It was recorded, but unfortunately, the Kalamazoo department of public safety has lost all of the recordings in this case. So we can't play it for you. All we have is a transcript. Scott told us he'd been shocked when detectives Madison and Werkema finally revealed that he was there because he was a suspect in the murder investigation. He couldn't figure out what was going on. Many of the questions detectives had for him hadn't made any sense. He had no idea, for instance, why they were so interested in a jeep he'd once owned back in 1988. And all of a sudden, they spray painted it to disguise the jeep. That's cold case detective Rich Madison. He believes that Scott spray painted his jeep the morning after he'd killed Earl o'. Byrne. So you mentioned that. The spray painting the jeep. Why was that significant to you? Just him doing the act of disguising the jeep to Madison. Scott's repainting his Jeep was evidence he'd done something wrong the night before that he was afraid someone might be able to identify his vehicle. People paint their cars, though, like, sure they do. But the house had a garage. And to pull it in there so quickly after the murder in a yard barn where it barely fits, he says to dry because he didn't want the dust on it. He hides it. I feel like that could just be a coincidence. Like he spray painted a Jeep. Big coincidence. To me, that's a clue. When the cold case detectives confronted him about his Jeep, Scott didn't deny that he'd painted it. Yeah, I painted it flat black. He said that was the cool color then. And I spray painted the rims gold to make it look nice.

[D]

Yeah, it was dark forest green and I painted it flat black. If you're worried that somebody saw you in a dark Jeep, why wouldn't you paint it a dark color?

[A]

The cold case team had hoped that when they interrogated Scott Baldwin, he would admit to killing Earl o'.

[C]

Byrne.

[A]

Scott did not. I didn't do this, he told them. I know nothing about it. I have no idea why Stacy would say I did. And I'm scared to death right now. You're just scared about the fact that the truth is finally here. Detective Workama replied. And Detective Madison told him, we know Stacy is telling the truth. Nobody is that good a liar. She's consistent all the way down the line. She's not flopping around, not changing her story. The evidence was clear. The cold case team said, you did this crime, but we don't have a warrant for your arrest yet, so you're free to go.

[D]

I went right home, told my wife what they said, and her words were, that bitch is crazy because she knew her.

[A]

Scott went home to his wife Tracy and their kids, and they had six more weeks together as a family before he was arrested and taken away forever. Scott and his wife remained married even after his conviction, but it was too hard to maintain a relationship while in prison. They divorced six years later.

[C]

How's. How is your relationship with your kids after all this time?

[D]

I guess I should give you a rundown. I have 1, 2, 3 with my first wife, Tracy. I have Cody. Then my next oldest is Michael Scott. Mikey is extremely autistic and I have not seen him in over 15 years. Years. Because with his outbursts and his mannerisms, the staff don't know how to handle it and don't know what to do. So I have not seen my son Michael since about 2013. Only see him in pictures. The next one down is Lacy, my little princess. Then my youngest is Jared. I had him out of marriage.

[A]

So remember how I mentioned that back When Scott was 19, his love life had been pretty messy? Yeah. Well, it was still pretty messy when Scott was 31, too. Professionally, he'd gotten his life on track, but his love life was as messy as ever. That was something he hadn't grown out of.

[D]

I, me and my wife Tracy separated and we worked on it, tried to reconcile, went to marriage counseling. It just didn't work out. And I met a young lady named Tara and met her at a restaurant. We went out a few times. We ended up moving in together. And things didn't grow quite as it should have. It was a rushed relationship. She actually was a witness of my case. They tried turning her against me.

[C]

All of this drama was happening just as the cold case team was beginning its investigation into Earl o' Byrne's murder. Once they found out that Scott had a recent girlfriend, they went to talk to her.

[D]

The police contacted her. I don't know how they got her name, found out about her, somehow contacted her and she said, here, here's a picture of his son, let him know he has a son. And she gave that to work them on.

[C]

The cold case team didn't show Scott that photo of his newborn son. But when they brought Scott down to the station to question him, they mentioned they've already gone to talk to his recent ex, Tara. You know she had a baby two weeks ago. They tell him she had a baby two weeks ago. Scott replied, apparently in shock. Holy shit. He told them, I saw the baby. Workma tells him she's got an infant. No doubt about that. Madison chimes in. Do the math for a minute. She had that baby two weeks ago. If you track that back. And that is how Scott learned that he had a newborn son while being interrogated for a murder he says he didn't commit. Scott would never get to spend time with that child, his youngest son, outside of prison visits. He tried to be a good dad from behind bars. But over the years, Scott told us, relationships became strained, especially with his oldest son, Cody.

[D]

Honestly, it is strange with me and my oldest son, me and Cody. He feels I abandoned him. You have to realize me and my wife Tracy had just reconciled in November of 2000. The cold case team opened it up in November of 2000. We had only been together a few short months, so all Cody remembers is when he was little, Daddy leaving him and mommy. So there's some resentment and I don't think he's fully got over it. There's embarrassment, and there's shame. You don't want to admit your father's in prison for murder. I wish we were closer and we talked more, but I don't know how to repair.

[C]

Doesn't mean it's not repairable, especially if you get out.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

I did resent a lot of his life choices, and that led to me not really wanting anything to do with him. And it's hard to say. I felt like he abandoned me. As much as that he was taken away. He was taken away.

[C]

That's Cody Scott's oldest son. He told us that just before his dad was arrested, it had finally felt like things were working out for their family. His mom and dad were back together.

[E]

Yeah. I always thought that they were on a good track.

[A]

It was great.

[E]

I always thought about, you know, if it continued and he did, if he didn't, if he stopped going to the bars and flirting with other girls and, you know, finding other relationships, it would have worked, and it would have been good.

[D]

A lot of ifs there.

[E]

A lot of ifs. A lot of ifs.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

It was really. It's always embarrassing when people tell me and, you know, what do your parents do? I have this curse of, I'm kind of like my father. I'm a bit of an open book, and so it's like, he's in prison, and the next thing you know, I'm that guy.

[C]

It's probably even like, if you tell people, oh, my dad's in prison for murder. That's one thing. But then if you add, and he didn't do it. Yeah, no one believes that.

[E]

Not at all.

[D]

No.

[C]

No one believes that.

[E]

I feel like that makes me look like an idiot to say that. Of course you are. You're all innocent.

[C]

Growing up, Cody never once doubted his dad's innocence. But as an adult, he began to learn more about what his dad had been like as a teenager and his record of arrests for petty theft. And Cody began to wonder.

[E]

I'm going. Okay. Oh, he used to do this. Well, maybe he could be tied to something, because it sounds like he's going out and he's doing stupid stuff around the neighborhood. And that's when the doubts really started to set in, like knowing his past and knowing the girlfriend coming forward. And, you know, I was mad that he kept that kind of company and that he was, you know, he slept around, and I just. I was mad about that, and I was mad.

[C]

Are you angry at your dad or are you angry at the system that let this happen?

[E]

It's a little bit of both.

[A]

After finding out that he was a suspect in the murder investigation, Scott realized he needed to get a lawyer.

[D]

I went to my boss and said, hey man, they're trying to pin a murder on me. I didn't do. This is some crazy shit. I need an attorney. Well, my boss was here. Go to the bank. Here's this. And he gave me $5,000 cash as a retainer to give to my attorney, Tim Hilton. He said, don't worry about it. They got nothing on you. They're on a witch on you didn't do this, so don't worry about it. I'm going great. So that's how I felt.

[A]

Scott hadn't expected to be arrested just a few weeks, weeks later. But even then, he said he still felt confident. His attorneys still seemed confident too. And from what Scott knew about his case before trial, he had reason to feel that way. He wasn't being delusional. There were a lot of reasons to think he could be acquitted. For one thing, the murder victim had been seen with someone else shortly before he was killed.

[D]

That's why that testimony of Harold west, the police officer, was so, so important. I thought was because he specifically said, white male, blonde hair. There's no way in hell I could have had blonde hair.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

The light colored vehicle with rectangle headlights found a 1977 Jeep CJ7 jeeps. 1977 had round headlights. It was dark forest green.

[A]

What Officer west saw that night is at odds with what Stacy, Scott's ex girlfriend, testified Scott had worn that night supposedly committed the murder. Though Stacy herself hadn't known what Officer Wes had seen until Jacinda read his report to her.

[C]

I observed a white male. He was wearing a light colored brown or tan coat. He had on light colored pants. He had light colored hair.

[A]

Doesn't sound like they're describing Scott. I don't think it was much of.

[C]

A secret that black was of color.

[A]

Stacy's statements over the years have been inconsistent, to say the least. But one part of her story she's always been consistent about. On the night this all happened, she says Scott had gone out wearing all black from head to toe. A ninja suit, she'd called it. That was just one of the reasons that Scott thought disproving Stacy's story would be easy. Take for instance what Stacy says about why Scott had left the house that night. She says he left to go find some money because he'd bounced a check from their joint checking account when he'd bought some auto parts to fix up his Jeep. Okay, here's what she says. Scott and I had a joint checking account. Scott took one of the checks we had left and went to some auto parts place and bought a muffler with the check. When it bounced the check, the store called me and told me I'd have to come down and pay for the check Scott wrote since my name was on the account.

[D]

You don't think you did that? I know I didn't do that. We never had the checking account.

[A]

So where do you think Stacy's story comes from about you writing the bad check?

[D]

She never had a check. So how come I write a bad check on something she never had and the detectives couldn't? They checked every bank in Kalamazoo, all the records back in the 80s, and they found nothing in her name or my name. It was a true.

[A]

So going into trial, Scott just didn't think it'd be hard to prove Stacy was lying. So we're obviously in the middle of the podcast season now. Things get hectic and sometimes trying to figure out and shop for dinner is the bane of my existence.

[C]

I think shopping and planning for dinner is the bane of your existence on any day. But yes, especially during the middle of.

[A]

Our podcast season, I do not have the emotional bandwidth or labor to be able to plan out healthy meals. Which is why Green Chef is amazing.

[C]

I agree. If it wasn't for Green Chef, I don't think we'd be eating dinner at night.

[A]

We would not have eaten last night. But we had salmon and cousin and it was hands down the best couscous I've ever had in my life.

[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

It is so true. I think everything I packed came from quints.

[A]

Luckily I wear color and you don't, so we didn't end up being twinsies, which would have been awkward, but you.

[C]

Know, oh, you don't want to be twinsies with me, Susan.

[A]

I prefer to have colors other than grayscale.

[C]

Well, it's because you have Quince then, because they have both relaxed stuff for me and colorful stuff for you.

[A]

The problem is it is now cold as heck and we need new clothes to go out in the field or I'm not going.

[C]

Well, go back to quints. I just ordered some cashmere sweaters that are super warm and super comfortable.

[A]

That's funny because I'm actually literally about to buy the Mongolian cashmere sweatshirt.

[C]

You should totally do that. I splurged and I got my husband the Mongolian cashmere pullover hoodie, which is really nice.

[A]

And you're going to steal it. I'm sure.

[C]

I was going to say I'm going to start wearing it for myself.

[A]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[A]

Stacy was not the only witness the prosecution had, of course. She told the Cold Case team that in the morning Scott had been out repainting his Jeep. Two of their friends came over to visit. They can prove what I'm saying is true, Stacy said. Missy and Lloyd Lloyd. They come over.

[D]

They were pretty straight laced.

[A]

The Lloyd was in college, doing real good. One of the first things the cold case team had done after reopening the bike shop murder had been to get statements from both Lloyd Magruder and his then girlfriend Melissa Missy Jarsma. Lloyd had confirmed for them. Yes, sometime in 1988 I went over to Scott's house and saw him painting his Jeep. But Scott said this statement hadn't concerned him.

[D]

And I've been doing my Jeep for a couple days. My buddy Lloyd's right there. That's missy jar's boyfriend. And he says he didn't notice anything out at all or Gary, and he didn't notice it. He's like, yeah, he was working on his team. I've been working on my team.

[A]

The cold case team spoke to Missy jarzma, too. And what she had to say was more. Much more of a problem for Scott. Like Lloyd, Missy said that she'd seen Scott spray painting his jeep, but she'd also seen something else, something much more important. She had seen Scott Baldwin with the murder weapon he'd used to kill Earl o'. Byrne. Or at least that's what the cold case team believed.

[C]

In Stacy's first police statement back in 1989, she said that on the morning Scott came in through the basement window, he was carrying some kind of wooden stick with blood on it.

[A]

This thing that looks like you broke off a chair and beat somebody. I'm just saying this is what it looked like to me.

[C]

Later that morning, Stacy said Scott had gone outside and taken the chair leg or whatever it was with him. Stacy had stayed inside, but she'd been watching Scott through the little basement window, and she saw him hurl the wooden object across the street and into a neighbor's yard. And when the cold case team spoke to Missy jarsma, she told them, I saw the bloody stick, too. On the morning we went to Scott's house and saw him painting his jeep. Missy said, stacy took me aside and said, hey, I want to show you something. We went over to the neighbor's yard and found a stick about 12 inches long. It had, quote, a red substance that looked like blood on it. Missy told the cold case team this wooden stick had been the handle end of a broken baseball bat, Though at trial she thought it was a chair leg. Whatever it was, Missy said Stacy picked it up and carried it back over to Scott's yard. And when Scott saw what Stacy had done, he was agitated, upset. He took the stick from her and walked away.

[A]

I can see why the kalamazoo cold case team thought Missy jar Smith's statement was such a big deal. I had the same reaction the first time I saw was by far the most damning piece of evidence against Scott that I'd come across. According to detective Madison's report, Missy made this statement about the bloody stick the very first time detectives spoke to her. This wasn't an awakened memory situation. She didn't suddenly remember a bloody stick after previously not remembering it. This is what she remembered the very first time she was asked so yeah. When I read Missy's testimony for the first time, it gave me serious pause. I couldn't see any reason she'd lie about the bloody stick. It seemed much more likely that she really had seen the bloody stick. It was probably the biggest question I had for Scott the first time I spoke to him. There's one witness who corroborates her story about this bloody chair leg.

[D]

Missy jars mom, and I'm curious about.

[A]

Why she says the thing about the chair leg.

[D]

I don't know. I don't know why she would say a chair like it was like a painter's stick. It was a stick I was using to stir the Bondo.

[A]

Scott told me that he thought he knew what Missy and Stacy were talking about when they described seeing a wooden object with blood on was not a baseball bat, not a chair leg. It was, he said, a paint stirring stick, like the little flat kind that they give you at the paint store. And that red substance wasn't blood. It was Bondo. He said Bondo is a polyester filler used to patch up auto body damage. And when the cold case team spoke to Scott in 2001, they'd asked him a lot of questions about the Jeep he'd own back in 1988. What kind of condition was it in? Rusty, Scott told them, and he called it a Bondo beast. A beat up car patched together with a DIY Bondo job. Scott told me that before painting his Jeep matte black, he'd had to sand it down and fix up all the rusted out spots. That was the very first time he'd ever used Bondo, he said, and he hadn't been very good at it.

[D]

I started working on it and I've never worked on anything before. I was breaking down all the time, nickel and diamond, but my dumb ass didn't know that you don't put all the red stuff into the gray stuff at the same time and mix it up. You do it a little bit by a little bit. So it all got all over the stick and dried hard. And I got pissed and I threw the stick because I spent like 20 bucks on a can of Bondo that was ruined.

[A]

That red cream filler, when not properly mixed, is a shiny bright red. And yeah, especially from a distance, I think it could be mistaken for blood. If Scott was telling the truth about the Bondo stick, then that would explain why Missy Jarasma describes Scott as being so agitated by it, why he'd flung it across the yard in the first place. He'd screwed the bondo up and wasted the entire gallon he'd just bought.

[D]

You know, pissed. What I just did, I just. I put 20 bucks on a can of bondo and I'm out there trying to do stuff, and they're like, what's this? I was probably pissed about it, but it wasn't like, don't touch it because it's bloody. If it was bloody, why would I throw it out? My neighbor's yard is out in the open. I threw it in their front yard for my neighbor to find. Why would I throw a bloody stick in the front yard?

[C]

Given what Scott knew of the state's case, it makes sense that he was feeling pretty good about things before trial.

[D]

So what's a jury gonna think? Who's gonna convict on that?

[C]

Hearing Stacy testify for the first time at his pre trial hearing just made Scott more confident. After all, he now knew that Stacy's testimony was that he tearfully confessed to murder on a date when he could prove beyond a shadow of any doubt he'd been in jail. No way would a jury believe her. What Scott hadn't known, though, was that at trial, Stacy's story would change again. She testified she no longer knew exactly when he confessed to her. And with that, what he thought would be simple to disprove no longer was.

[D]

So that's how I felt. I took everybody, don't worry about it. So I just kind of. I didn't do it. So why am I worried? I didn't do it. Why am I worried? You have one minute remaining.

[A]

Before trial, prosecutor Stuart Fenton offered Scott a plea deal. If he'd taken it, he could have been out of prison after 20 years. But Scott didn't take the deal. He chose to go to trial instead. He thought he would be acquitted. And that's another thing he has in common with most of the other Kalamazoo cold case defendants. The vast majority of them went to trial, which isn't normal. Exact statistics are hard to come by. But at most, only 25 to 30% of murder charges nationwide end up going to trial. For the Kalamazoo cold case team, though, a staggering 76% of defendants charged with murder chose to go to trial. Maybe there are other homicide task forces out there with those kinds of numbers, but I'm not aware of any. Only 5 of the Kalamazoo cold case defendants took plea deals. The rest took their chances with a jury. Now, the fact a defendant goes to trial does not mean they're innocent. But it is an indication that their defense team believes the case against Them might be flawed. That the evidence might not be overwhelming. That so many of the cold case defendants went to trial at least hints at the possibility that there was a deeper problem with the kinds of cases that the Kalamazoo cold case team was bringing. Though once these cases did go to trial, things didn't go as hope for the defendants. Statistically, you'd expect at least a few of them to be acquitted. But every case ended in at least one murder conviction.

[C]

The first big clue that something might be going wrong in Scott's case, that maybe his defense wasn't as prepared for trial as he thought, came in June of 2001. Just weeks before trial was scheduled to begin, his attorney, Mike Hills, received a phone call from a man named Donald Ryan. There's something I think you should know, he said. I think a teenager named Duane Field may have committed the murder at the bike shop. Back in 1988, I rented a house to his family, and after they moved out, I was cleaning the place out, and I think I found the murder weapon.

[A]

Do you recall the bloody wrench? Yeah, seems like it.

[C]

We asked Detective Rich Madison about Donald Ryan's story this many years later, Though there wasn't much he remembered about it. But records show that in 1989, Donald Ryan called Silent observer and said, I need to talk to the police about the o' Byrne case.

[A]

Six months after the murder at the bike shop, someone who lived in a house just down the road called in and said, I found a bloody wrench, a bloody antique wrench. It's got some hair on it and blood on it, and it's under this porch. Come pick it up.

[C]

After finding the wrench, Donald Ryan remembered some comments he'd heard made by the family's teenage son, Duane, about wanting to get back at Earl.

[A]

The landlord's like that Dwayne kid worked the shop and didn't like Earl, which is true. Actually, I don't remember that, really. He was mad because the owner had shortchanged on his final paycheck. The call from Donald Ryan had been shocking to Scott's defense team. They had known nothing about the bloody wrench or the report made to Silent Observer. The prosecution hadn't mentioned anything about it. But a report of a wrench with hair and blood on it being found at the house of someone with a grudge against Earla Byrne not far from the bike shop seems like the sort of thing prosecutors are supposed to disclose to the defense. And if the prosecution hadn't told Scott's defense team about the bloody wrench, what else hadn't they told him about? Was there more exculpatory information that the prosecution hadn't handed over? Though to be fair to the prosecution, Scott's attorneys hadn't technically ever asked for that information to be handed over. I talked to Olivia Vigiletti, Scott's post conviction attorney, about what had happened in Scott's case with discovery, which is the process of requesting and receiving information in the lead up to tr. Towards the end of the pre trial period, just before trial, Scott's attorney wrote to the prosecution and said, hey, this witness called me and said that he found a bloody wrench in the home of an ex employee who was mad at Earl o'. Byrne. Why didn't y' all disclose this to me? I never asked for discovery because I thought I didn't need to.

[C]

Why would you not ask for discovery in a case like this?

[A]

Is there any good reason not to? No. I mean, his letter says, like, I trusted you not to. I mean, I assumed you'd give me all the material, so why didn't you? But I. Obviously you didn't give it to me, so now I will request it. But it does show a level of trust in the prosecution that seems odd. Like even if you trust the prosecutor and good. If you do, put it in writing.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. It's just even back when I was handling misdemeanor cases, it was just step A, step B, step C, of course I'm going to file a motion for discovery. That's one of my first orders of business after someone's been arraigned. Because it's just how it works. It's not. It's not insulting to the prosecutor to do that. It's just how you check your boxes and do your job.

[A]

While out in Kalamazoo, we spoke to a few defense attorneys who'd worked on some of the cold cases. One of them was the honorable Gary Jugair, Chief judge of Kalamazoo Circuit Court. Before he was a judge, he'd been a defense attorney. And he told us about his experiences in litigating against the cold case team and prosecutor Scott Brower. Brower didn't prosecute Scott Baldwin's case, but he did handle a number of the other cold cases.

[B]

Scott Brower was the prosecutor in the Titus case as well that you previously mentioned. And he was always kind of, as opposed to some of the detectives who were on the cold case investigative team, he was always like the calming influence and kind of like tamped things down a little bit.

[A]

Judge Jaguar told us he'd always gotten the information he requested from Brower that hadn't been a problem. But that's not to say that Judge Jaguar always felt confident he'd had access to all the information he should have had as a defense attorney. Because what happens if the prosecution doesn't have it either?

[B]

Whether Scott Brower always got all of the information that the police had, that's where the questions remain in my mind and in other people's minds and other cases. But that's largely out of our control.

[A]

Judge Daguerre is very familiar with the work done by the Kalamazoo cold case team because one of his was convicted by them. That's why Weed reached out and asked to speak with him.

[C]

So when you saw my email, what did you think?

[B]

I've never really forgotten about the case and it's always been just there in the background as one of the things that made me the lawyer that I am and the judge that I am now of the work that I did on this. So I wasn't surprised that somebody wanted to talk about this case. I guess I figured that eventually sometime somebody would be interested my former clients. Roberto Davanzo, who I represented in 2003 and 2004 on a first degree murder case in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

[A]

In 1980, 21 year old Patty Lang was murdered at Western Michigan University.

[B]

The crime is a Western student who works at daycare on the side, going to school at Western, living in the dorm, and she's killed. She's shot in one of the parking lots at Western, as I recall. And then, you know, so the community's in an uproar. They want somebody to be held accountable for that.

[A]

Patty's body was found in the driver's seat of her car. She'd been shot once in the left side of her head. Her boyfriend, 23 year old Roberto Davanzo, was the immediate suspect, both for the original investigators back in 1980 and for the cold case team after they reopened the case in 2002. In 2004, Roberto Davanza was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. We talked to Judge Daguerre about why he thinks his former client was convicted and what he thinks investigators may have overlooked.

[B]

There were just a lot of avenues that it seemed to me as a defense attorney that weren't followed. A lot of avenues that could have been explored more. But once I think they had his kind of bad boy, good girl storyline, all efforts were spent kind of like window dressing this up so that we could get it in front of a jury. You know, you have A cute, squeaky clean college student at western who, yeah, happens to be dating someone that has a criminal history and is doing a bit of time.

[A]

Roberto davanzo had been convicted of an armed robbery for which he was still serving time in prison at the time of Patty's murder.

[B]

Everybody recognized he had the best alibi that you could possibly have for actually being the person that committed the murder, but their theory was always the solicitation thereof.

[A]

Davanzo could not have killed Patty himself. He was in prison at the time. So the only way he could have been involved in patty's murder Would be if he'd hired someone to do it. So Roberto gets convicted of hiring a hitman to kill his girlfriend. What happened to the hitman?

[B]

Yeah, there's no. I mean, it ends there.

[A]

Who is the hitman?

[B]

Correct. Nobody ever looks into that.

[A]

Have you seen that before?

[B]

I've never seen anything like this before. I don't know too many people who have.

[A]

Investigators never could figure out who Roberto davanzo had hired to commit this crime or exactly how he was able to hire them from prison. But two months after patty's murder, Something happened that convinced them that that was the only explanation for how patty was killed.

[B]

The police looked at other avenues, but pretty quickly decided for themselves that he had something to do with it. And so I think they started connecting the dots for themselves. Roberto makes a few statements around that time that are not helpful to his case, and he's eventually charged.

[A]

Roberto's statements were not at all helpful to his case. In fact, Roberto confessed In a lengthy, rambling interrogation. On Christmas Eve of 1980. Roberto Davanzo told investigators that he had arranged from prison to. For someone to kill patty. And so he was charged with Patty's murder. But his attorney at the time, Frederick Milton, was certain this had been a false confession. Milton told the kalamazoo gazette Davonzo was just reacting adversely to pressure on him when he made the confession. I felt he had nothing to do with the murder. Based on the logical and credibility of the story. I personally and professionally don't feel he had anything to do with the murder. It wasn't just Roberto's attorney, though, who thought the confession made no logical sense. Here's what the original investigators wrote in their report about it. Throughout the interview, officers were able to pick up on several pieces of misinformation and actual lies being told by suspect davonzo. It was, in fact, an incredible account of conspiracy and much easier to disbelieve than believe. Roberto davanzo's Confession just hadn't seemed like a true story. Too much didn't make sense and investigators couldn't find any other evidence that his claim of hiring a hitman was actually true. Two days after meeting with investigators, Roberto recanted his confession in a typed out statement. Here's what he wrote. On December 24, I started telling lies. Lies that the investigators were waiting and hoping for for a long time. I made a terrible story up that afternoon. Three hours of telling them my make believe story. I didn't kill Patty Lang, he wrote. I know nothing more than anyone else. I'm sure the truth will come out sooner or later. It always does. And I feel a lot better knowing that I wrote all this down. Although he'd retracted his confession, and despite investigators not believing a lot of it in the first place, Roberto was charged with Patty's murder. But they the case never went to trial because a judge ruled the confession hadn't been voluntary. Davanzo had made the statements while under extreme pressure and quote, there was considerable testimony that defendant was continually interrogated, harassed and subjected to shakedowns in the two months leading up to the confession. Not to mention, the police had also failed to read Davonzo his Miranda rights at the start of the interview process. So the confession was doubly inadmissible. It could not be used in court.

[B]

His admissions that are made at the time are suppressed and not allowed to be used in court. So the case is dismissed and everybody kinds of goes about their business for the next several decades. Basically.

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[A]

Though all charges were dropped, from that point forward, investigators were certain Roberto Davanzo was the killer. Even if they couldn't prove it, he'd confess. So he must have done it, case closed. But a confession should never be the end of an investigation. A confession is not an answer. When someone accuses someone else of a murder, then obviously they shouldn't be believed without supporting evidence. And the exact same thing applies to someone who confesses to doing a murder themselves. You should not believe them unless you find evidence that what they are saying is true. Because false confessions happen all too often. And this case has a lot of hallmarks of a false confession. In particular, police could never find evidence that a hitman actually existed. So after learning about Roberto's case, I reached out to him to see if he'd speak with me. I wanted to know more, and I wanted to hear from him directly about what had happened.

[D]

Hello?

[A]

Hi, Roberto.

[D]

Hello.

[A]

Thanks for calling.

[D]

How's it going? Hey, thanks for emailing me.

[A]

I'm sorry for reaching out to you out of the blue like this, but. But I started looking into some cases, old cases from Kalamazoo, and came across your name and honestly just wanted to hear more.

[D]

All right, well, what piques your interest in my case?

[A]

The fact someone convicted alone, charged with a hitman murder where the hitman's never identified or known of or anything like that. Roberto told us he had nothing to do with Patty's murder. He loved her. He said they were planning a future together. She was going to graduate college around the same time he got out of prison and they could start a life together.

[D]

That was my squeeze. That was my love, you know what I mean? You know, she helped me out. She brought me up a couple bucks every once in a while when she could. She never forgot my birthday or Christmas. She was my number one visitor, you know, she was a sweetheart. We probably would have got married, you know what I mean? She wanted to get into special education. She was in her junior year of that. She loved doing that, working with special ed kids. You know.

[A]

Roberto said he had absolutely no reason whatsoever to want Patty dead. So why then, if that's all true, had he confessed to it?

[D]

Well, you know, I was at my wits end. I was to the point where I really didn't give a hoot. And I thought, well, if you really think I did this, come on with it, then. That was my thinking. As flawed as it was at the time, I really didn't care.

[C]

But it's hard for people to understand why anyone would do that, right? It's hard to understand. Understand why, I'm sure.

[D]

Yeah, I'm sure, because people can't seem to fathom of being in that position. You know, they've never had the gun pressed against their head, so they can't fathom how to react. That's how I felt.

[A]

Roberto was speaking metaphorically here. No literal guns were used to threaten him or anything like that, but he says that's what the constant pressure, scrutiny, and harassment felt like to him. He had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He was in prison after all.

[D]

It was branching off to everybody else that I loved and cared about. You know, it was bad enough that the love of my life at the time was murdered. Now you're. You're heresy. My. My ill mother, my sisters, my other friends. Yeah, that's where I was at. That's why I did that. The pistol was pointing at me. Come on, let's do this. I'm ready for that fight. Because I knew I did do this. I knew that whoever did this, whoever was involved with this had no connection to me.

[C]

So were you sort of, like, calling their bluff?

[A]

Like, go ahead.

[C]

Go ahead and see if you can.

[A]

Pin this on me?

[D]

Yeah, exactly. Because I do. I didn't do it.

[A]

So if Roberto's confessions were the only evidence against him and his confession to police couldn't be used against him in court, how did he end up getting convicted?

[B]

In the late 90s, Kalamazoo forms a multi jurisdictional cold case investigative team. And it was pretty big news at the time because there were several open cold cases, unsolved cases that were lingering out there from many of the local police departments. Davanzo was certainly one of those.

[A]

But to charge Davanza with Patty's murder, the cold case team would need new evidence. They still couldn't use his confessions directly, so they found a way to use it indirectly.

[B]

So one of the things that the police did in this case, which was interesting, is when they went back and interviewed witnesses that they had interviewed years before. They actually played recordings of the statements that Mr. Davanzo had made. And then it would be, does that change your mind about what you remember? Does that help refresh your recollection, essentially, in so many words, about how you remember things in this case? And with some witnesses, they did all of a sudden remember other things.

[A]

The cold case team took Davonzo's recorded confession to Patty's murder, the ones that a judge ruled had been made under duress and were unconstitutional and couldn't be used in court, and then went out to men who had been in prison with Davonzo over the years, including some who'd been interviewed before, back in the 80s, when Davonzo was first charged with the murder. And when the cold case team went and talked to these inmates, the first thing they often did was to play the recordings of Davonzo's confession to them so that they could hear it for themselves. And then they'd ask, so did Davonzo ever confess to you? Most of the inmates told the cold case team they knew nothing that would be Helpful to the investigators. Most didn't even even know that Davonzo had ever been a suspect in a murder. But eventually, the cold case team found three men willing to testify that they'd heard Davonzo confess to hiring a hitman to kill his girlfriend.

[B]

I think that the conviction occurred largely based on the three jailhouse snitches that came in and testified that they all had vague recollections of, you know, being in a prison or the county jail with Roberto.

[A]

So other than the jailhouse informants, what evidence did they have that would implicate that? So that's. It is just those. Those things. Okay. Just like with Davonzo's original confession to police, the confessions that Davanzo allegedly made to the jailhouse informants didn't contain much in the way of details. And the informants contradicted each other on the details they said Davonzo told them. One said Davanzo told him that he had Patty killed because he heard she was going to leave him. Another said Davonzo had her killed because she knew too much about his crimes. While the third said, quote, he didn't get into no specifics. There never was any other evidence that could corroborate the confessions that Davanzo made. And in the 45 years now since he retracted his confession, Roberto Davanzo has always maintained his innocence. It made sense now why Judge DeGuerra said he knew that someday someone like me and Jacinda would want to talk to him about the case.

[B]

Yeah, I was emotionally invested in the case. Again, I liked him. And the more I looked into the weaknesses in the prosecutor's case, I mean, I didn't think they had this case beyond a reasonable doubt based on. Based on the jailhouse snitch testimony. I put in a lot of work, and I thought we had a real shot at winning it.

[A]

I would have thought so, too. I mean, I personally don't think any jailhouse informant should be a witness necessarily, but, yeah, that's all they've got. After talking to Judge Yaguar and Roberto Davanzo, we knew we'd need to learn more about this case as well. Where was the proof that Davonzo had hired a hitman? Who could he have hired? Could the cold case team have gotten this one wrong, too?

[C]

Like Judge Jiger, when he was working on Roberto Davanzo's case, Scott Baldwin's defense team had felt good about their chances at trial. They thought they had a strong defense. But the late breaking discovery of evidence that the prosecution had never Told them about the witness who said he'd found a bloody wrench at the home of a former bike shop employee with a grudge. Caught Scott's attorneys off guard. They reached out to prosecutor Stuart Fenton, trying to figure out what was going on. Who is this Donald Ryan guy? Why does he say he reported finding a bloody wrench connected to a suspect in this case? Is this real? Why didn't we know about it? Prosecutor Fenton confirmed that Donald Ryan had indeed made a report, a Silent observer, in February of 1989. He produced a copy of the tip sheet to them, as well as a later police report from Detective Mike Werkema, who talked to Ryan when he tried to follow up about his report. When Scott's attorney saw the Silent observer tip sheet from Donald Ryan, they realized they needed to see all of the tip sheets in this case. What else might have been reported to Silent Observer? Was there anything else they needed to know? Anything that might point towards Scott's innocence? So Scott's attorneys filed a motion with the court seeking disclosure of all the Silent observer tips that had been called in about the bike shop case. Prosecutor Stuart Fenton objected.

[A]

Do you recall the Silent observer tips being an issue at the trial? Like, because the Silent observer tips were not disclosed to the defense and they wanted them. You're surprised by that? Yeah.

[C]

When we spoke to Detective Madison about Scott's case, we asked him about the Silent observer tips and about how they hadn't been shared with Scott's defense team.

[A]

It was. Stu fought it really hard. He won. They did not get most of the Silent observer tips because they implemented. Were they implicating somebody else on some other crime because they were anonymous. People called in want to be anonymous. That should be respected. That's how silent. You know, that's kind of the idea behind Silent Observer, Hence the name. Yeah, but they're. And their name's not even on the tip. So, like, why. Why couldn't you. The IDs aren't on the tips anyway.

[C]

Prosecutor Stuart Fenton argued that he had no obligation to inform defendants of any tips called into Silent observer about their case. The court largely agreed with him. There were a couple hundred or so tips called in about Earlo Byrne's murder and all. But the court ruled that Scott was allowed to see less than a third of them. If the police guarantee anonymity through Silent observer, this court is going to uphold that. Judge Lamb said Scott Baldwin had no way of knowing how consequential this ruling was for him. He had no way of knowing there was. There were leads in there that should have been followed but never were. So he went to trial not knowing that what was in those tip reports would have changed everything for him if only he'd been allowed to see them. I thought, well, I did see something.

[A]

So I'm going to call it in.

[C]

And that's how the silent observer got that report.

[A]

Did you ever hear back from anyone?

[C]

You were the first.

[A]

Decades later.

[C]

Coming up on this season of Proof. And what was the point of her testimony?

[D]

Character.

[C]

Character witness.

[D]

Yeah, that was a smooth talking guy who flirted with all the waitresses.

[E]

I thought he was kind of funny. Maybe that's what I liked about him. I wouldn't even have thought he would.

[A]

Have been able to do something like that.

[E]

If he did do something like that.

[A]

What was that? Do you remember? I can't remember, but I gave it to the detective. It was something that he did. I think it was about the murder, wasn't it?

[C]

You've been listening to Proof, a podcast by Red Marble Media in association with Glassbox Media. We'll be back next week with episode five. Send us your questions and [e-mail] we'll respond during our bonus episodes. Proof sidebar on Thursdays. Kevin Fitzpatrick is our executive producer. Our our theme music is by Ramiro Marquez. Audio production for this episode is by Michael Ulatowski, Michael Alfano and Jesus Orbaez. Our social media manager is Leanne Cook. And thank you to our sponsors who make this podcast possible. Follow us everywhere with the handle proofcrimepod and on our website, proofcrimepod.com that's all for this week. Thanks so much for listening.

[D]

Sa.